Blues for Zoey

by Robert Paul Weston

  It was a humid night, so a bunch of the streetcar windows were tipped open. That was how I realized it wasn’t a kiss. She wasn’t frenching the cross, she was playing it. It was some sort of musical instrument.

  Just as the streetcar rounded the curve at Emerson, I saw the horn, something like a bugle or a trumpet, nailed to the crossbar.

  The melody she played was a sad one, all in a minor key, slow and kind of beautiful. We only heard a snatch of her music and then she was gone, the streetcar grinding around the shallow corner.

  We got off at our stop and I tried to hurry back. I was so curious. Nomi, however, wasn’t in the mood to rush.

  “I’m tired,” she whined.

  “It’s just two blocks. C’mon!”

  Instead, she stopped dead. “Can you carry me?”

  Stupidly, I figured with Nomi on my back, we would both go as fast as I could run. When she climbed up, however, I realized I hadn’t carried her in a long time. She had grown a lot since then, and it didn’t help that she started up with a familiar complaint.

  “We used to have a piano, didn’t we?” she asked suddenly, speaking directly into my ear. (I wondered if this was the real reason she wanted a piggyback: to get my undivided attention.) “Mom gave you piano lessons, didn’t she? When you were my age?”

  It was true. Once upon a time, Mom had been a real professional. She gave recitals and had a great job playing with the city orchestra. Back when I was a kid, I worked pretty hard under Mom’s tutelage, but I was never any good. I took after Dad more. He was the athletic one. Mom kept trying, though. She never really gave up on me, at least until the somnitis started. Then it all fell apart.

  Her first attack was right in the middle of an afternoon performance at Rosemount Concert Hall. Every time I hear that music, my stomach clenches. Gymnopédie Number 1 by Erik Satie. It was one of her favorite pieces. Halfway through the song, she slumped forward on the piano and … zzzzzzzzz.

  Nobody could wake her up. She slept for eighteen hours, and the first thing she did when she was conscious again was quit the orchestra. Since then, she hasn’t played a single note.

  When I was a kid, she always talked about how deeply music affects the human brain. That’s why she stopped. She thought the illness was triggered by the music. She believed that by playing just the right notes, in just the right sequence, she had flipped some forbidden switch inside her mind.

  Now, she works part-time at the Evandale Public Library. When she applied, she didn’t tell anyone there about her illness. Her idea is that if her work environment is quiet enough, unmusical enough, it’ll prevent anything from happening. So far, it seems to have worked. She still has attacks—obviously—but she’s never had one while sitting behind the checkout desk. Between the money from Dad’s life insurance and what she earns from the library, we get by.

  “Okay, yes,” I said to Nomi, “but that was back when we had room for a piano.”

  “We still have the synthesizer. In the laundry room.”

  This was also true. In the closet where we kept the washer and dryer, wedged in between the machines and the wall, there was a thoroughly outdated Casio electric piano.

  “I don’t even know if it still works,” I said.

  “But you could teach me to play on it. I asked Mom again this week, but she said she can’t remember how to do it. She says something’s wrong in her head.”

  “Maybe.”

  When I came around the bend, I expected to hear the girl’s music, but I didn’t. The sidewalk in front of Dave Mizra’s place was empty. The girl, whoever she was, had vanished.

  14

  Fire & Ice

  The next morning, Mom was still in the hospital. I had the early shift at work, so Nomi came down to the laundromat with me. She brought pillows and a blanket and curled up on one of the benches near the counter. By the time I’d put out the pressed clothes for morning pickup, she was snoozing soundly. About a minute after I had flipped the OPEN sign, Dave Mizra came jogging across the street. Dave lived directly above his jewelry store, Mizra’s Fire & Ice. Like half the other businesses on the block, the name was a pun.

  Fire = gold.

  Ice = diamonds.

  Ha ha.

  Yes, it’s lame, but it’s hard to talk when you work at a laundromat called the Sit ’n’ Spin.

  “Kaz-o-matic 3000! Good morning, good morning!” he shouted at me.

  I put my finger to my lips and pointed to Nomi.

  “Ah, sorry.”

  Kaz-o-matic 3000 was the nickname Dave Mizra had given me. It was a mash-up of the name on my driver’s license (Kazuo, which in Japanese means “harmonious man” and which I almost never reveal to anyone) and the fact that every washer at the Sit ’n’ Spin was stencilled with the name Lav-o-Matic 3000.

  He had given himself a nickname too. His real name was Dodi, but he went by Dave because, as he explained once, in English Dodi sounds too much like a child’s toy. Like Lego.

  “I am afraid I have only shirts for you today,” he said, laying a pile on the counter.

  “Premium Service for Delicates?” I asked.

  “Of course! Always Premium.”

  “Just these?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, suddenly more solemn than usual. “This is all.”

  I was surprised. Dave Mizra was known around Evandale for having extravagant taste. He drove a fancy car (an old Mercedes); he wore swanky clothes; he spent tons of money on hair pomade.

  It was his clothes, however, that stood out the most. Dave Mizra strutted around the neighborhood in suits that ranged from shark-blue gangster pinstripes to colorful patchworks of hippie suede, complete with tassels swishing from the arms. This was the reason I knew him so well: his entire wardrobe was dry clean only. So it struck me as odd to see him come in with so small a bundle of clothes.

  “Is everything okay?”

  He glanced out into the street. “Oh, yes-yes. Everything is perfect.”

  Dave Mizra is the only person who thinks Evandale is a paradise. He never told me why he left Algeria, but my impression is that it had something to do with a civil war they had in that country back in the nineties.

  “I left, and because I speak French,” he once told me, “I moved to Paris. Over there, the immigration people said I must become a welder. Either that or drive a taxi. A welder! Yes, I work with metal, but I am an artist! So I come here, instead. And I followed my dreams.” Whenever he mentioned his dreams, he always pointed across the street.

  It was debatable whether or not Dave Mizra was an artist. He designed a few pieces of his own jewelry, sure, but he also had a massive placard out in front of Fire & Ice that read: WE BUY YOUR GOLD!!! It wasn’t the sort of thing that made you think of Picasso.

  The only thing missing from Dave Mizra’s paradise was his wife, who was still back in Algeria. A few years ago, they had met here and gotten married, but even though they were hitched, there was some problem with the immigration papers and on their way back from a visit home she was stopped at the border. That was almost two years ago. Dave Mizra had been trying to bring her back ever since.

  Of all the things that were interesting and eccentric about Dave Mizra, the oddest thing about him wasn’t his clothes, his car, his pretensions of being an artist, or his crazy idea that Evandale was a paradise. No, the most surprising thing about Dave Mizra was his deep, abiding, seemingly bottomless love of seventies punk rock and glam. Seriously.

  Everything I knew about the Ramones, the Clash, David Bowie, Slade, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, T. Rex, the Jim Carroll Band, and so many others, I had learned, improbably, from Dave Mizra. In order to educate me musically, he was always bringing over CDs from his cherished personal collection.

  “I have brought you something special today,” he said now, obviously trying to shift the topic from whatever had distracted hi
m outside. He slid a CD jewel case out of his man-purse and clapped it between his hands, holding it like he was praying. “I think you are finally ready for this.”

  “Who is it this time?” I reached out for his hands, but he pulled away.

  “How do I know you are ready?”

  “It would help if I knew what I was supposed to be ready for.”

  He nodded as if my wisdom had impressed him. “Of course. There is no way to prepare.”

  He opened his hands and revealed a CD. The plastic case was scratched and worn, but the cover was clear enough. It was a white square printed with something like a Rorschach test, one of those random ink blots a psychiatrist uses to reveal whether you want to have sex with your auntie or just torture rodents.

  The blot itself resembled a spider, except each of the eight legs weren’t hairy or insect-like. Instead, each one was the bare leg of a woman, complete with eight pointy stilettos. Sprouting from the legs was not one but two naked torsos. What you ended up with was the silhouette of a twin-stripper-slash-eight-legged beast. In heels.

  The only words were at the top, printed in a tiny font like something clanked out of a broken typewriter:

  Shain Cope

  Freudian Slap

  “Kaz-o-matic 3000, it is my pleasure to introduce you to the genius of Mr. Shain Cope.”

  “Who? ”

  Unlike the other CDs that had come to me via Dave Mizra—all of which had rung vague bells somewhere in the back of my head—I was certain I had never heard of Shain Cope before.

  “‘Who,’ he says!” Dave Mizra was clearly disgusted. “In every age, there is a—what do you call it? A maverick. But in those days—oh! Everyone was a maverick! That’s what made Shain Cope special. Here you have the maverick of the mavericks.” He leaned over his pile of shirts and pressed the CD into my hand with both of his. (Dave Mizra is the sort of guy who’ll never, never, never discover downloads. He’s too much of an old-school fetishist for the tattered little booklets that come with CDs.)

  I did what I always do when he brings me new music. I turned it over and read the names of the songs, not that the name tells you much.

  “‘Colt’s-Tooth Blues,’” I said. It was the first song on the album. I liked how the consonants bumped rhythmically over my lips. The words kind of forced you to hold the vowels a bit longer, almost as if you were singing. So maybe I was wrong. Maybe you could tell something about a song just from its name.

  “Yes ! A classic!” Dave Mizra hummed a bar from a tune I almost recognized. “Do you know this? You must have heard it!” It was the same incredulous question he asked every time he came over with a CD.

  I flipped it over again, eyeing the lurid ink blot. Just as I did, Mr. Rodolfo pounded up from the basement. I hadn’t even known he was down there.

  “What the hell is that?” he asked, looking over my shoulder at the CD case. Before I could answer, he reached over and plucked it out of my hands. After looking at it for a second, he frowned at Dave Mizra. “What’re you putting in this kid’s head?”

  “An education.”

  “More like insect porn.”

  Dave Mizra rolled his eyes. “Philistine.”

  “Wrong,” said Mr. Rodolfo. “I’m Portuguese.”

  Dave Mizra scoffed again and Mr. Rodolfo stalked off to check on the machines. (Whenever he was in a bad mood, he either tidied up or tinkered with Ol’ Betty.)

  In general, Mr. Rodolfo and Dave Mizra had never really gotten along, but a few weeks earlier, things had hit a new low. The Evandale Chronicler published a story about how the lead singer from Wild Blue Bounce had stopped in at Dave Mizra’s shop. I wasn’t really into the band, but I definitely understood it was a big deal for Veronica Heller to sample your wares.

  Dave Mizra had the article posted in the front window of Fire & Ice, which of course made Mr. Rodolfo dead jealous. As I’m sure my boss would say, having a minor celebrity visit your store was nothing if not good for business.

  “Just listen to it,” Dave Mizra told me. “This is music like nothing else.”

  When he said that—music like nothing else—I thought of the girl I had seen.

  “Can I ask you something? Have you seen a girl with, like, weird dreadlocks? Hanging around your corner?”

  “Of course,” he said. “She’s my angel.”

  “Your angel?”

  “My maverick angel.” He really liked that word.

  “So you’ve met her?”

  “Not really. But it’s like I said.” With one hand, he waved a little flourish in the air. “She plays like an angel!”

  “Kind of a weird instrument, though.”

  “That is what makes her a maverick.”

  When Dave Mizra left, Mr. Rodolfo gave up his tinkering and came to the front of the laundromat. I was tagging Dave Mizra’s shirts, and when Mr. Rodolfo saw what I was doing, he shook his head.

  According to him, Premium Service for Delicates was exclusively for women’s wear. So when he read the tags, he said the same thing he had been saying ever since that article had been published in the Chronicler.

  “Faggot.”

  Then he thumped back down into the basement.

  15

  What It Said in the Chronicler Article Taped

  to the Inside of Dave Mizra’s Window

  * * *

  Indie Rocker Visits Local Shop

  It’s not every day an honest-to-goodness rock star stops by, but for David Ibrahim Mizra, custom jeweler and the owner of Mizra’s Fire & Ice, that day was yesterday. The rocker in question? Veronica Heller, lead vocalist with indie rock darlings Wild Blue Bounce. The band will be playing a show at Foo Bar in July.

  “I was just opening my shop when she walked right in,” Mizra, 45, told the Chronicler. “I recognized her from photographs, but she was much taller than I thought.”

  The Chronicler earlier reported that Heller would be in the city’s Evandale district to shoot material for a new video. In recent years, film and television crews have been drawn to the neighborhood’s gritty, inner-city atmosphere, not readily available in more gentrified boroughs north of Steinway Avenue.

  “She told me she had heard that there was a famous jewelry designer in this area,” Mizra said with a proud grin. “Of course she meant me.”

  When asked what the singer had purchased, Mizra was tight-lipped. “She was interested in many things, but all I will say is that perhaps you will see them soon at one of her concerts.” Mizra also hinted that Heller wasn’t the only celebrity to frequent his store. “Oh, yes,” he added, “my shop is doing very well!”

  Neither Ms. Heller nor her management were available for comment.

  * * *

  16

  Nobody Gets Carded in Evandale

  It took me all day to convince Nomi to sleep over at a friend’s house. After that, I called the hospital to check on Mom. She was still sleeping. The person I spoke to told me not to worry, but this is why we have the expression “Easier said than done.” Later, when Calen pulled up in front of the Sit ’n’ Spin, he was surprised to see Nomi standing beside me.

  “Thought you said she was sleeping over somewhere.” He stepped out of the car and slung both arms flat across the roof, drumming his hands and bobbing his head. If anyone else did that, it would have looked dorky, but not Calen. He made it look natural. It was how his body worked (i.e., not like mine). He was one of those guys who can play any sport like a pro. Even car-roof drumming.

  I explained that Nomi’s friend lived in Rosemount, pretty near Toph’s place, so we could drop her off on the way.

  “I don’t know.” He poked a thumb at the back seat. “It’s pretty tight in there. Like only room for one.”

  “Lemme quote you: ‘Dude, your sister is. Like. Tiny.’ Remember that?”

  “I’m the third-ta
llest girl in my class,” Nomi informed us.

  In the passenger seat, Alana was listening. “Not a problem,” she said through the window. “She can sit on my lap. There’s tons of room.”

  It was true. Calen had this thing about skinny girls and Alana fit the bill. She was nearly as small as Nomi, but there was no mistaking her for a child. She was pretty, too, in a cheery-cherry-cheeks kind of way. She always looked like she was on the way to audition for a part in a movie in which the recurring motif was pixie dust.

  “She’ll fit no problem,” she said.

  Calen responded with a stern look. “Wait, it’s not cool. We still hafta get—you know what.” He mimed drinking from a glass. “We thought we’d stop down here because we figured, well—nobody gets carded in Evandale, right?”

  I didn’t love that my best friend thought I lived in a place where alcohol flowed in lawless torrents through the streets, but I kept my mouth shut.

  Alana laughed. “Not like in Rosemount. Before we drove down, Cal got carded—at three different places.”

  At least now I knew what was bothering Calen. He had failed to procure the requisite booze for tonight. You couldn’t show up at Toph’s without at least a six-pack.

  “I don’t get it,” Calen said, genuinely pissed. “My brother even lent me his ID, which we all know he never does, and look.” He pointed to his mouth. “I grew a moustache and everything.”

  I recognized this moustache. It was a pathetically wispy rip-off of the already pathetic one his brother wore around.

  “I don’t have to go to the Czerneckis’, you know,” Nomi announced, sensing our hesitation. “Katie’s not even my best friend anymore. It’s Jennifer now. She’s in fourth grade and she plays the violin.”

  “That’s nice, but you’re staying at Katie’s tonight, okay?” I helped-slash-pushed her into the front seat with Alana.

  When we arrived at the liquor store, Calen eyed me nervously in the rear-view mirror.