They took a different route back to town, one that brought them close to the burning mountainside. Kaufman had almost forgotten the smoke after this afternoon in the relatively clean air at the lake, but now he found it irritating to his eyes. On the news, they heard that the fire was 20 percent contained, which didn't sound all that promising. From various points on the road, they could see it pluming thickly off the mountainside into the sky. He thought again of those train cars stuck in the tunnel, glowing white with heat.
When they got back to the hotel, her rental car, a green Dodge Neon, had been decorated with shaving cream, Just Married spelled out across the back window in thick, white letters.
"You could admit it," said Kaufman. "I'm sure she'd let you keep the room."
"Never," said Elizabeth Moore.
Irving Straight came by a few hours later, while Kaufman was tending bar, wearing a freshly pressed tan shirt and a bolo tie. "I was over to see a guy this afternoon, lives in the Indian Paintbrush subdivision. He has to get out of there by tonight. They're spraying all the houses with slurry in case the fire moves any further down the valley."
"Friend of yours?" asked Kaufman. It was 8:00 P.M. Earlier he'd served two nice-looking older women who stared right through him like he was made of glass, but now it was just Straight at the bar. No sign at all of Elizabeth Moore or her not-husband. He had the TV on, sound off, tuned to a cooking show.
"Customer—owns three paintings. Shouldn't never have built up there in the first place," he said. "None of them. Just a matter of time. These people with money get arrogant."
Kaufman thought of the painting from Pompeii of a woman picking flowers. Of course, it wasn't a resident of the town, just a decoration on someone's wall, but he'd always thought of it that way, as if he were looking at one last pretty moment in a life before the sudden wave of lava swept down and stopped time.
Rhonda came in, wearing a black silk shirt, open at the collar, jeans with high heels, and some dangly, Native American-looking earrings. She touched Straight on the shoulder. "Ready?"
"I'll be there in a second."
Noticing the surprise on Kaufman's face, she smiled. "Have fun, Skip."
When she was gone, Straight looked at Kaufman and poked him in the chest with a meaty finger. "Sint Jans," he said. "Nativity at Night."
"I thought a classical reference might be fun," said Kaufman. "Hey, it rhymes with Injuns."
"It took me over an hour to make that cow back into one of my cows."
"Sorry," said Kaufman.
"Any references in my paintings are going to be to Stagecoach or The Searchers, not the Northern Renaissance." Straight downed the rest of his drink and smoothed his moustache. "Damn nice brushwork, though," he said.
"You think?"
But that was all the man was going to give him. "This isn't a joke," he said. "This is what I do."
Kaufman closed up at eleven, locking the register and hitting the lights. He made a brief, unsuccessful attempt at conversation with Shari, the Navajo girl who was working the front desk, then figured he'd go read in his room for a while before bed. Through the lobby doors, he saw Elizabeth Moore putting luggage into the trunk of her rental car.
"Number 5 check out?" he asked.
Shari flipped the page of the People magazine she was reading. "Not to my knowledge."
He pushed his way out into the cool night. "Howdy," said Elizabeth Moore when she saw him.
"It's late."
"Exactly. But not too late."
The air was full of tiny specks of white ash, suspended, almost weightless, nearly invisible. An owl made a noise like a distant train.
"What about what's-his-name?"
"I killed him," she said. "He's back in the room."
"Killed him how?"
"Brained him with a mandolin. I'll need to get going now so I can keep a couple steps ahead of the law."
"If they catch you, they'll hang you."
"I reckon." She shook his hand. "I want to thank you for the lesson in colors. All that time I thought they were just sitting there, and it turns out they were trembling."
Words were like bricks in his mouth; he might have been a sixth grader asking a girl to dance. "If you ever come to Baltimore," he said.
"Don't even say it. I'm not coming to Baltimore. I barely know where it is." She sniffed her shoulder. "All my clothes smell like smoke," she said. "I bet they will forever." She looked at him, smiled. "Next honeymoon, I'm going on a cruise."
After she left, Kaufman walked around the grounds. No lights were on in number 5. He sat on a carefully placed boulder at the edge of the path and imagined her driving to the airport—where else could she drive to?—perhaps sitting in the parking lot for a while, determined to make her point, whatever it was, staring up through the windshield at the same ashy sky that stretched over him now.
His colleague who died had taught biology. On April Fool's Day, his heart had simply given out. A faulty valve or whatever—there really wasn't much to say, no lesson to draw from it. He hadn't smoked, had drunk only moderately, played basketball once a week with some other faculty members. His wife had thought he was kidding around. Their children were in college—the whole next part of their lives was coming up. They'd been having a beer and peanuts together at a pub, and he'd suddenly put his head down on the table and started to snore. She thought he was making fun of the story she was telling. By the time she realized, it was already too late.
From within, Kaufman heard the muted, tinny sound of mandolin strings being tuned. One of them kept slipping; there was the gentle climb toward unison, a moment where all was right, then a quick falling away. Probably, something was wrong with the tuning pegs, and yet the guy kept patiently at it. Kaufman could see how that sort of thing could drive you nuts.
This Is Not A Bar
I went to this new hotel downtown to hear my guitar teacher play. My girlfriend, Lorna, came along, although she doesn't care much about jazz—she plays classical piano. From the lobby, we made a left and passed along red halls with chandeliers lighting them, heading toward the hotel restaurant until we heard music. It was just a trio, upright bass and drums and my teacher, whose name is Arthur. They were set up outside of the eating area, in an open space between the entrance to the restaurant and a nice-looking bar about fifteen feet away, lots of burnished dark wood and brass fittings, which was completely empty. We took seats at the bar and listened.
"They aren't very loud," said Lorna. "I'll bet those people eating dinner don't even know there is a band."
It was a new hotel, like I said, and it smelled that way. New carpet, new paint, new everything. It made me a little headachy. So we sat at this new bar and listened for a while, waiting for someone to take our orders. After a while, a man came. He had a moustache, a thin one, and the badge on his suit jacket read "Manager."
"I'm sorry," he told us, "but you can't sit here."
"Why?" I asked. "We came to hear the music."
"I understand," he said. "But this isn't a bar."
"It isn't?" I turned and looked again. There were cabinets filled with liquor bottles, whiskey, vodka, various flavored liqueurs. There was a cash register, with one of those computer screens. Sprouting up from the center of the long, impeccably polished bar were beer taps with the usual brand names on them.
"I know it looks like a bar," he said. "But it's not."
"We're sitting here," I said. "Everything seems good to go. All we need is for someone to bring us drinks."
"It's for show," he said. "There's another bar, a real one, in the Chesapeake Room, if you'd like to go sit there. It's just at the end of the hallway."
I looked at Lorna, who looked back at me. She'd put on lipstick for this, and a pretty flowered skirt. We didn't get out all that much. "But there's no band in the Chesapeake Room," I said to the man. "We came for the band."
"I'm sorry."
"Really?"
He nodded. I could see the situation wasn't somet
hing he was proud of. "Look," he said. "I'll tell you what. Seeing as how you're here specifically for the band, you can sit here."
"Can we get a drink?"
He thought for a moment. "Yes, of course. I'll have to bring it from the other bar. What would you like?"
"A beer," said Lorna. "Rocky Oyster Pale Ale."
"And I'll have a Beefeater martini," I said. "Olives."
He was gone a long time. We sat, listening to the music. I held Lorna's hand for a while. We could see into the restaurant, and it was just us paying attention. There were a lot of mirrors in there, to make the place look bigger, and some tasteful little holiday lights had been wrapped around the fluted columns.
"My mind keeps drifting," Lorna said. "I'm barely here." She took off her glasses and smoothed her eyebrows, then put them back on. "I think it's the improvisation."
Between songs, I went up and said hi to Arthur, who seemed pleased to see me. He had on a white shirt and a gray sweater-vest, and looked more like an elementary school teacher than a jazz cat. "You should turn up," I said. "We can barely hear you."
"We started louder," he explained. "The restaurant manager came and told us to turn down."
"Strange gig," I said.
"You know it, man."
Our drinks arrived, the manager carrying them on a tray from down the long hall, so I rejoined Lorna. "Thanks," I said, and he nodded, then disappeared. We clinked glasses and listened to the next song. They were good, these guys—as good as you'd hear anyplace. It was pretty much a secret that they were working so hard; over in the restaurant, you probably got the impression of piped-in Muzak, or something.
The martini was solid—very cold. I was munching on the second olive when a scraggly-looking kid in an army jacket came and sat on the next stool. He waved to Arthur, and Arthur acknowledged him with a big smile, without breaking rhythm or losing his place in what he was doing, which was playing three different things at once: bass line, little two-note chords popping on and off like Christmas lights, and an improvised melody line on top. The guy was some kind of genius, and his fingers were extralong, slender, pale, and tapered. I didn't recognize the song, but that was hardly the point.
The kid kept looking around. Finally, I leaned over to him and said, "It's not a bar."
"It's not?"
I shook my head. "Nope. I know, I know, it looks like one. But it's not. It's a fake bar."
"But you have drinks," he pointed out.
"I know," I said, raising mine, then taking a sip. "They made an exception."
"If it's not a bar," he said, "why did they hire a band to play in it?"
"Your guess is as good as mine." There was something about his face I liked. He had acne on his cheeks and forehead, and curly brown hair that looked like he never brushed or combed it, but just showered and let it dry however. He reminded me vaguely of me, just a long time ago. I'm forty-eight; he might have been twenty-three. "Are you one of Arthur's students?"
"Yeah," he said.
"Me, too."
The manager came back to check on us. "Anything else?" he asked.
"I could use another," I said. I looked at Lorna, and she nodded. "And my friend here would like to order, too."
The manager wasn't sure what to do with this one, I could see. "Did you—"
"I told him," I said. "He knows it's not a bar."
"It's just for show," said the manager. "We have other bars. I really don't know why they put this one here."
"He's here for the music, too," I said. "Maybe you could break the rules for him, also? I'll bet he just wants a beer."
"Jack Daniels, actually," said the kid.
"Ice?" asked the manager.
"Ice," he said.
"All right," said the manager, then headed off down the hallway again.
We sat there, just the three of us, listening. The drummer was using brushes, whisking so lightly around the top of his snare that the sound he produced wasn't much more than wind makes shaking leaves from a tree. I felt bad for him—all the drummers I'd ever known liked to make noise. It was why they got into the business in the first place.
"I'm Andy," said the kid to me.
"Cleve," I said.
"Nice," he said, as if I'd just hit a jump shot. "Cleveland?"
"My dad was a history buff. It's better than Grover."
"I guess." He adjusted his balance on the bar seat. They were reasonably comfortable, wooden swivel ones with padding, but they had no backs. "He liked Sesame Street, too, huh?"
"I doubt he'd ever heard of Sesame Street."
The manager reappeared, saving us from the rest of this conversation. He gave us all our drinks and promised to come back and check on us later.
"That's Lorna," I said.
He nodded toward her, and she responded with a little smile and wave.
"Arthur's amazing, huh?" I said. "You been his student long?"
"Couple years." He was paying close attention to the music. "Nice," he said, appreciating some of Arthur's tricky fingering. He took a sip of his drink. "Huh."
"What?"
"It's not a drink."
"What do you mean it's not a drink?"
"I don't know." He held his glass up to the light. It looked pretty much like it ought to look. Amber liquid, some rocks. Lorna had taken to doodling on a napkin, and I could tell she was getting near her limit already. "It's weird."
"You want another?"
He grinned suddenly. "Sorry. Just my sense of humor. Thought it would be funny if this not-bar were serving not-drinks, you know?"
"Do you think I could smoke?" Lorna asked.
"I doubt it," I said.
"You can smoke in bars," said Andy.
"I think we've established what's wrong with that argument," I said.
He tipped his head to one side and looked at me with great seriousness. "How do you feel about the minor seven flat-five?" he asked.
"I don't really know how to answer that."
"It's probably my favorite chord. It's just so there, like your pivot foot in basketball. Know how I think about it when I'm soloing?"
"How?"
"Like a red ladder, leaning against a wall I have to paint. But instead of starting with the first rung, I step onto it a few rungs up. If I'm in E minor, so it's an F-sharp minor seven flat-five, I forget about the F-sharp entirely and just think A minor triad."
"A minor is red to you?"
"Of course it is."
"Are you synesthetic?"
"I couldn't say."
"Why a wall?"
"I paint walls for a living."
"Excuse me," said Lorna. "I'm going to see about a restroom."
"Make sure it's a real restroom," I said.
"Pretty," he said, when she was gone. "Your wife?"
"Not yet. I'm kind of doing her taxes. That's what I do. She's a real musician, plays all over the place. Recitals, accompaniment gigs. She made fifty thousand dollars last year."
"Damn." I could see he was impressed. "How long have you been doing her taxes?"
"Going on two years now. It's an open-ended kind of thing."
"I get it. Endings are overrated anyway."
"Hey, maybe we could jam sometime," I suggested. "Since we're both students of Arthur's and all."
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe."
"You pretty good?"
"I'm all right."
"Me, too," I said. "I'm all right."
I dropped Lorna off at her house. I call her Lorna, because that's what she says, but on her tax forms, it says "Laura." I tried asking her about it one time, but she just corrected me. "Lorna," she said. "My name is Lorna."
"I could come in," I said, now. "It's not that late."
"Oh, I don't know," she said. "I have an early day. I'm giving lessons all morning, and I have to practice for Seattle. And then there's this guy who's going to call me about a gig in Liechtenstein."
"Liechtenstein?" I said.
"The country."
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"It's hardly a country."
"You're right. Technically, it's a principality. Apparently, you can rent the whole thing out for functions, like a Sheraton."
"Wedding? Bar Mitzvah?"
"It's more of a corporate deal. But they want music. German, preferably. This is some German company that's renting out the country. I think they make razors."
"Principality."
"Exactly."
We kissed a little, but not the very best kind—we were both sort of phoning it in. I ran a finger along the outside of her bra and she licked my ear. She was thirty, just turned, a secret late-night consumer of frozen edamame and watcher of Friends. "I'll call you," she said, and then she went inside.
I wasn't sleepy, so I went to this actual bar, Dapper Dan's, which is only across the street and down a block. A locals kind of place. I wasn't there more than a few minutes before Andy came in. I'd never seen him there before, but then I thought maybe it was sort of how you learn a new word, and then suddenly you start hearing it everywhere.
"Jack on the rocks," I said to the bartender, when he came in. "I'm buying."
"That drink at the hotel was nine bucks," he said.
"You should have paid them with not-money."
"Where's Laura?"
"Lorna," I said. "She went home. She has a recital in Seattle next week, and she's practicing all the time. Brahms, I think."
"Longhair music." He seemed a lot more at home in Dan's. The bar was just a converted row house, very narrow and very deep. A lot of cops drank there, and the food was pretty good, burgers and such. They had a fire going in the fireplace, and the air was thick with the smoke.
"You're doing her taxes, you said?"
"That's correct."
"So, you're, like, an accountant?"
"No. Years ago, when I was about your age or so, I got a job doing people's income taxes at this storefront office in Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn. After a while, I took those skills to another office in Manhattan, a much more upscale place. Before I know it, I'm getting three, four hundred bucks for a tax return. Then they send me to represent a client at an audit, because no one else is available. The IRS says, 'We can't talk to you.' But they send me back the next week for another client, and the next week for another. Then in the mail I get this letter with my Enrolled Agent number. All of a sudden, I'm official with them. I figured it was a sign."
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