Intermusings

by David Niall Wilson

  He lifted her chin so he could look into her blue eyes. "You're as human as anyone I've ever known, Melissa. No one will ever say different when I'm around. And if you'll have me, I'll always be around."

  Her answer was a kiss and, a moment later, to take his hand and set it against her stomach. "I think," she said, "that the three of us are going to be very happy."

  Note: The authors wish to acknowledge the work of Thomas R. Insel and C. Sue Carter of the National Institute of Mental Health, James T. Winslow of Hoechst-Roussel Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Lowell L. Getz of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

  Sing a Song of Sixth Sense

  By Patricia Lee Macomber & David Niall Wilson

  Vanace exited the men's room and stepped into the club, hacking his way through the smoke with one hand. He walked with a swagger, the gentle roll of a body too old to be up at this hour and too young to retire. His face was a road map of his life, deep-etched by time and emotion. He hid it, along with his smile, behind a long shock of graying black hair and a scraggly beard which had been too long in control of itself.

  One hand, fingers knotted and curled by arthritis, came to rest on the piano, a lover's caress. The piano, like Vanace, was more form than function, its surface marred from years of abuse at the hands of drunks. Its once varnished mahogany was polka dotted with glass rings and spattered with beer. The keys, once ivory, had been replaced by plastic. The ivory, like Vanace's pride, had been auctioned off for the sake of easy maintenance.

  He spared no glance for the crowd as he eased onto the old bench, feeling it shift and groan beneath him as he settled. The tip jar was there, his drink was there. All that was missing was Vanace.

  He hadn't really been there for years. Not since his mother had finally passed, broken and muttering to long-dead friends. He'd held her hand and stroked the sweat from her brow like any good son would do, but he hadn't wanted to be there; not really. He'd wanted to be playing.

  Playing was cathartic - escape - life. In the absence of real life, in the face of death, music was all there was. Vanace put his fingers to the keys and wasted a long stare on Jimbo, who stared back with glee. The puppet sat motionless on the piano top, holding court over an empty ashtray and a crumpled napkin. His strings dangled down the front of the piano, begging to be used.

  "Not tonight, Jimbo." he muttered under his breath, "Not tonight."

  The crowd behind him grew still. Vanace drew a deep breath, his fingers moving before his mind could catch up. Jazz…blues…rock n' roll…whatever the mood called for. He worked the keys in an unfeeling dance, stroked them into submission and stumbled occasionally over that one key with the nick, a gift from an angry patron and the man who'd tried to escort him outside. It was amazing what a highball glass could do when thrown by a strong arm.

  Vanace was ten bars in when he realized what he was playing. In that moment, he nearly stopped. The song—her song—stabbed deep into his heart. Slow and sultry, deep and sad, like a prayer before dying. It was the song he'd played for her in the home every time he visited. Every day for 27 months without fail, he had hammered out the notes in their proper order on a poorly tuned upright before a crowd of people nearly as lifeless as the piano itself.

  Dim light. Dimmer than any club, fluorescent haze that smelled of urine and antiseptic cleaner. The notes of the song floated around his head lazily, drifting through the crowd. She watched, eyes emotionless, focused on some world beyond him, beyond any of them.

  Vanace closed his eyes, shutting out that sight and played harder, forcing the keys to bend, flickering from major to minor and drawing out each stanza. She was out there, he knew, out there at the end of each note. She heard. Nobody here moved when he played, except the wrinkled old man in the corner, whose foot would tap, incessantly, shifting rhythms only when Vanace shifted songs.

  She heard.

  "You play that song, Vanny," she'd told him, "you play it, no matter where you are. I'll hear. I'll always hear that one. Makes me think of daddy. Makes me think the world might be more than it seems. Wherever you go, whatever you do, you play that one for me."

  Vanace played, tears sliding softly down his cheeks. On the couches and chairs, surrounding the card tables and leaning against the wall, his audience stared. Some at him, some at nothing, some at places he would never see. On the piano top, Jimbo rested against the dingy wall, grinning widely, strings dangling limp. Vanace opened his eyes, and Jimbo seemed to wink.

  "Sounding good, man,"

  Edgar's voice startled Vanace from his reverie. The words whispered into his ear harshly as the older-than-dirt and twice as hard to get rid of regular passed the piano, too close, on his way to the men's room. Edgar was always there, though Vanace knew the man didn't come for the music.

  In the rafters above, the air conditioner sprang to life, a long gust of hot air washing over Vanace's face, tousling his hair and, finally, cooling. It tousled Jimbo's hair too, pushed him just a bit to one side and made his strings dance against the wood. Vanace looked up, distracted by the motion. His brow furrowed. His hands lay still on the keys. The air coming from that vent was cool, but something colder had frozen the blood in his veins.

  Soft laughter mocked him as Jimbo's strings twitched back and forth across the line of Vanace's vision. The audience was growing restless at the sudden silence. None of them acknowledged it when Vanace played, but if he dared to stop?

  Perhaps from the gust of fetid ventilation, or perhaps from simple exhaustion, the song had ended, but Vanace hadn't noticed its passing. He took a deep breath and concentrated, shifting his gaze from where the strings danced in the artificial breeze. He shook his head and started again, letting his eyes slip shut and the dull roar of the blood in his ears become part of the music.

  A quick flash of light as someone walked past the bar, their shadow trailing far behind them and shifting the mood. Bright golden sunlight washed over his skin, the blaze of summer and heat of restless youth as he sat in the huge chair of his parent's living room. No longer the man, again the boy, he watched idly as his brother, Kevin, played soldier with the dog. The sound of piano music drifted softly in his head, melting from present to past, carried gently in the breeze from the open window of a neighbor's house.

  The back-beat of the music shifted; the staccato thud of large boots on old wood as his father crossed the house in long strides. Vanace watched through ten-year-old eyes as his father scooped his brother from the floor, nudged the dog out of the way with the toe of one boot. One high-pitched yelp and the dog fled. Vanace fled too, his head still filled with images from the last time Kevin had been too loud.

  From his vantage point behind the sofa, he watched his father as he shook Kevin, the boy's small body dangling helplessly in the grip of huge, calloused hands. Vanace covered his ears and hunkered down, moaning deep in his throat and fighting to block out his brother's screams, rocking to still the vibrations of the heavy man's movement across the old floor.

  Memory melted into memory, the last more brutal than the first. When finally the room fell silent, Vanace chanced a look, his head appearing slowly over the back of the couch, eyes wide and glistening with frightened tears, he was alone. He stood, eyes sweeping the room, taking in the torrent of dust motes as they stained the sunlight. On the floor, Kevin rested, his body strewn across the wood, his life leaking into it. One sneaker had come off and was lying beneath the coffee table. And there, on that table, staring dolefully down at Kevin, was Jimbo…

  A white-hot flash of pain shot through Vanace's head. He clamped his eyes shut and pressed one fist to his temple, trying to find his breath and to dislodge the image of his brother's body. He reached for the water glass with a shaking hand, sipped, then slapped the glass down a bit too hard on the keyboard, sloshing the water over his fingers and sending a single, jangling note of discord through the club.

  ...Jimbo, one leg swinging idly, bright blue glass eyes glaring at Vanace, mocked him. As his mother had tol
d it, Jimbo had been a gift to her from a carnival barker, his affections even more unwanted than Jimbo himself. Always too, the hint of that music, the only tunes his mother had hummed, save for lullabies and dirges. Carnival music, bright and superfluous, hinting at joy and threatening madness. It had blasted from the carny tent where the barker had worked, had seeped into Jimbo's soul and emerged time and again, unwarranted, from Vanace's mother's lips. "Kitten on the Keys," a riotous song, bawdy and filled with full-fledged mayhem. Vanace hated it.

  The crowd had thinned, growing quiet in the absence of music. Vanace felt the glass slip in his hand, his other hand racing to catch it and nearly missing. He returned it to the piano top, snatched a napkin to dry the keys, and concentrated. No more blues. He let his fingers ripple over the keys, finding what he sought in that touch, the quick motion jarring him loose from the past for a moment.

  Jazz always helped the most. Not the modern, chaotic strings of barely associated notes, but the deep old notes of the masters. Thelonius Monk slipped down his arms to dance like quicksilver beneath his fingertips. He felt a gentle touch on his shoulder, ignored it. The air took on the sweet scent of jasmine.

  "You okay honey?" Heather's voice whispered softly. She reached over his shoulder, breast brushing him softly as she retrieved his nearly empty water glass. "You didn't look so good a minute ago."

  Heather was the one waitress who worked the late shift. Early evenings there were plenty of tables full and a lively crowd, but the aftermath was dreary and quiet. Heather had been serving those same regulars the same drinks so long she melted into the background of the club if you didn't look close enough. Her light-toned black skin had faded and wrinkled in a parallel time line with the wallpaper, and the dusty, smoke-filled air had permeated her own dark locks, now dusted with gray. Despite it all, she had a beauty that had weathered a rough life, elegant and poised.

  "Maybe you better bring me something a little stronger," Vanace said softly. "I got to make it through another hour."

  Heather nodded and slipped away behind him. The notes flowed smoothly, and he leaned in, losing himself in the sound. He kept his eyes closed. Jimbo was there, he knew it, but he didn't have to see. He could feel those lifeless eyes tracking his fingers across the keys. He could feel that image just as he felt the other, itching at the back of his skull. Jimbo, Kevin, Father, Jimbo. Endless progressions and countless regressions. Vanace shook his head again and played. He forced his mind to other images, other memories.

  His mother's arms sliding around him, her fingers pressed to the keys of their old piano, along with his. He remembered her patience. The songs. Some songs just for Vanace, and others that she loved, songs, even, that made his father smile when she played them.

  An arm crossed his field of vision, disappeared as quickly as it had come. In its wake there was a glass, three fingers of Whiskey and one cube. Just like always. He fought the urge to down it in one fast gulp, settled for sipping instead, as one hand picked out a few solo bars. The air duct creaked as the machine shut off, Jimbo now leaning precariously to one side, a time-stiffened arm propping him up.

  Jazz, slow and sweet, melting into a soft flurry of ripples, notes freed and set on their own journey as his mother's face melted in his memory. A glint of light from the glass, flash of blue from Jimbo's eyes, and now there was snow falling outside, drifting lazily past a brittle dark window and piling up on the sill.

  A fist, strong and hard, was targeting his face, knuckles white with the strain. Vanace ducked, dodged to one side. Tears streamed down his young man's face as his father's fist cut the air above his head. Colder still than the snow outside, Vanace's hand lashed out, grabbed the only thing he could find: his mother's favorite lamp. It was large and hard and the sound it made as Vanace slammed it against his father's head rang in his ears like a death-bell.

  But it wasn't the blow that dropped his father to his knees, though it made the man's knees wobbly, and his eyes confused for the first time Vanace could recall. He was wobbling there, hand raised to brush aside the blood, when it hit him. Something else. Something horrible and frightening that stole the color from his face and let it bleed down his neck in a steady stream of flushed skin.

  Those hands that had once brought such fear clutched at chest and arm. Vanace's father’s eyes froze, locked on his son's face and growing dim, even as he fell toward the floor. His body tilted crazily, lost its fight with gravity and slowly crumbled. As he fell away, the motion revealed Jimbo's leering grin in impossibly slow-motion.

  Dead. His father -- large -- powerful, and...dead. Vanace stared down at him, the moment past's rush of power melting to shame and revulsion. He could feel no remorse, could take no pleasure in the ending of a life, even one as worthless as the old man's had been.

  A hand fell on Vanace's shoulder, startling him from the vision. He glanced down and saw that he was standing, somehow, hands shaking as they rested on the piano's ragged keys, his body trembling with a chill that did not originate in the club. Heather leaned in close and whispered, "Nobody's gonna blame you if you go home."

  He twisted his head, swollen eyes dancing over her face and stealing what he could for memory's sake. "It's only another hour. I'll be okay."

  She watched him, concern and skepticism warring in her gaze.

  "You gonna stay, sugar," she said softly, "you better play. Don't got many here, but those that is, they're not in a mood to put up with your mood, if you know what I mean."

  Vanace nodded. The fan seemed to have speeded overhead. Jimbo's strings slapped in a steady tick, tick, tick against the piano. Vanace fought to ignore it, failed, then went with it, using the rhythmic slapping to pace his notes, launching into a slowly undulating dance tune. It wasn't appropriate, exactly, but he bent the notes, bringing them to his service and drawing just enough pizzazz into the sound to make a few tired, drunken feet tap in time.

  It was one of his mother's favorites, one he'd practiced long and hard so he'd be able to play it for her, and please her. It wasn't her favorite, but it was one that could drive away the dark clouds. It was one that could make her dance. Vanace played, his eyes wide open in a vain attempt to ward off the visions. Sweat beaded, cold and clammy on his forehead, and he felt it dripping down his brow, over his cheeks. He ignored it. He knew if he stopped, he was lost. Maybe he always had been lost, but for that moment, within those notes, he was free.

  The wall beyond the piano shimmered. Vanace stared. He shifted his eyes to the side, trying to avoid the vision, the inevitable. His gaze locked to Jimbo's, and deep within his mind, a voice whispered .

  "Party time, Vanny . . . ready to rock?"

  Suddenly, the wall was gone, the bar stolen by dingy mists and memories so deep they had swirled and confused and run down some inner drainage system to his soul. Beneath his feet, carpet the color of mulled cider, and his gaze fixated on his father's face as the man drained the last of his life into that carpet. Turning, finding himself trapped in the depths of his mother's soft eyes, which watched him silently, glazed and full of sorrow and pain.

  His meaningless words echoed once again, across the years, falling on her already deaf ears. He hadn't killed his father, couldn't make her understand. He stood, again, in the memory of that storm of emotions and watched as his mother's mind, the tattered remnant of that love that had sustained him, slipped away, her skin paling with each flicker of the vision.

  Then images began to careen across his field of vision. The phone, its numbers somehow too-large as he stabbed at them, the ambulance, bright flashing lights strobing everything from light to shadow and back, screaming brilliant beams of color through the fog in his head. Endless moments in the hallway outside the emergency room. The face of the doctor pronouncing Vanace’s mother alive. The slow lowering of the nurses' heads as that same doctor explained how she would never fully recover.

  Once the police had finished their questioning, once all the papers had been properly collated and annotated, Vanace ha
d gone home. Again, as then, he felt the deep pounding of blood through his head, the cool brass of the door knob turning in his hand. He ignored the lights, leaving shadows and time to hide the bright stain which marked the moment of his sin. In the morning, there would be more papers, more faces. He would have to see his mother off to the convalescent home, would have to make arrangements for his father's burial.

  He slumped onto the sofa, senses dulled by exhaustion. He pressed one hand to his forehead and shut his eyes, letting his head loll back against one soft cushion. Sleep stole over him quickly, drawing him into a pool of quiet darkness. He was nearly gone, when something dropped softly, and suddenly, into his lap, startling him back to reality. One reality.

  Jimbo. The puppet must have slipped from the back of the couch, though Vanace couldn't recall having seen him/it there when he'd collapsed there moments before. He was tired, senses confused and slowed by exhaustion. No way to know for certain where Jimbo had been sitting, and not enough strength left to care. Vanace lay still, not breathing, not thinking, staring at the puppet

  Vanace's fingers grabbed Jimbo, gripped until his knuckles went white and the joints ground together as he watched the puppet's head turn. It wasn't the quick flick of something suddenly tilted, tossed carelessly from side to side. It was slow, methodical. Real. Vanace fought to close his eyes, turn away, and negate that image, but he could not. Jimbo's face had turned square into Vanace's gaze, and the eyes winked open.

  Vanace knew the images so well, and yet, that instant caught him each time in the depth of despair, and fear, and revulsion. He let loose a long wail, lungs nearly exploding from the effort, and hurled the puppet across the room with as much force as his tired arms could manage. The distant future gloom of a seedy bar flickered before his eyes a final time, and Vanace leaped to his feet, screaming, fists pounding on the piano, shaking it until Jimbo toppled onto the keyboard in a rain of strings and wooden limbs, water, ice, and scotch.