The Bear Comes Home

by Rafi Zabor

  144 Rafi Zabor

  herbed basmati rice complemented it well. Steamed asparagus spears lay roughly parallel on the plate under a scattering of shaved almonds and a gleam of olive oil; a bowl of salad showed its colors for later, and he knew that Iris had already loaded the espresso pot and set the cognac glasses and the bottle out. Life chez Jones had not been like this. But it had been easier to figure out. Ah sweet mystery of love at last I've found you. Subtlety^ upon subtlety. Veil upon veil. The feminine. Duh.

  "My glass is empty," Iris told him.

  "Is that my job?"

  A simple nod sufficed.

  Before long the Bear had finished his piece of salmon and Iris brought in the uncooked remainder on its oaken cutting board. The Bear, trying to figure out the right decorum, cut it into two-inch sHces, abstracted the first and put it into his mouth.

  "Save some for Jones in case," Iris reminded him.

  "Rf," the Bear agreed.

  Iris almost made a face as he took in the second raw slab of fish and chomped down. "Remember to ask him about the apartment," she said.

  Repeating this request was such a low blow that it was all the Bear could do not to drop his jaw in classic fashion. "Yes, dear," he said.

  Iris ignored the irony. "WTiat time do you expect him to come over?"

  "Depends on how many times he thinks he has to change taxis. The man has so many phantoms to dodge."

  "I thought that was your job. Does he think anyone's still looking?"

  "I'd Hke to think that's over."

  "But you still won't go out."

  "Miat for?" asked the Bear.

  "Fresh air."

  "InXew^brk?"

  "The river's not far."

  "Alaybe I'll have a look at it late tonight. See if Godzilla's up yet, ask him if he's still into urban renewal or has maybe found another trade."

  The rest of dinner went quietly, with the air delicately frosted in branching crystal patterns of silent tension, and Iris holding firm after her second short glass of wine; the Bear poHshed off the bottle and yawned when he was done, revealing a mouthful of ivor^ and purple terror from which Iris could not avert her eyes.

  Blocked by his snout, the Bear did not observe this widening of her eyes, and if his ears heard her intake of breath his brain did not take note of it.

  The better to devour me with, Iris almost said aloud, and shivered.

  (

  The Bear Comes Home 145

  When the Bear had finished off the last of the salmon, save a segment for the possible Jones, they sat quietly until, responding to the easefalness of the wine, the Bear sucked too loudly at his teeth.

  Saved by the bell, or rather the intrusive blaring buzzer: Iris' exchange on the intercom confirmed that it was his old buddy downstairs, wanting in.

  He felt he had to touch Jones' gaunt-cut face when he came in. "You putting some meat back on, man? You're still so pale."

  Jones tossed his lank hair back and exposed his crooked teeth in a smile, a bit of bright blood running fanshaped down one of his foreteeth. "I'm making it," he told the Bear.

  "You're starting to go grey," said the Bear, noticing the new streaks at Jones' temples.

  "All this physical trauma shit took it out of me, but it gives me character don't you think." Jones tugged at his white shirt. "Wanna see my scar?"

  "Would you like coffee now?" Iris asked them. "Or, Jones, perhaps you'd like some dinner."

  "Naw I ate already. Thanks. Coffee'd be great. You think I could rest on your sofa there?"

  "Of course. Do you want to leave your briefcase here?"

  "Nope. Got some stuff to show the Creature. I take it black no sugar."

  "There's cognac too."

  "Then 'tis very heaven."

  Iris went off to the kitchen and they both watched her go.

  "Hey Jones."

  "Hey Bear."

  A hug.

  Jones walked through the dining area into the living room and slouched himself down on the long beige textured sofa. The Bear took an armchair set at an angle near its end. They eyed each other, looking for the right cadence, didn't find it, nodded anyway, laughed.

  "Here we jolly well are."

  "Ahn'twe."

  "You all set here?" Jones asked him, raising inquisitive brows.

  "Set?" wondered the Bear aloud.

  "You know." Jones snuck his eyes sidewise toward the kitchen. "Set."

  "You mean set in a nudge-nudge wink-wink kind of way?"

  "Well, yeah."

  "I'm offended by the question."

  "You mean it's no go?" Jones asked, leaning toward him. "No shit. I'm amazed."

  146 Rafi Zabor

  "You always amazed easy."

  "Wliat's the matter?"

  "We're comporting ourselves like human beings. Well, one human being and a talking bear actually. I'm not talking about it with you."

  "Suit yourself," said Jones, and stuck out his chin. "I really like the pants. You wear them all the time now?"

  "xMph," said the Bear, and thought about all the cutting things he could say about how Jones had been humiliated by women all his life, but didn't come close to giving it voice. Still, look at the way Jones was assuming a certain skeletal arrogance there on the sofa. What was up with him? Jones had changed somehow. The Bear wondered, just noting in the margin that he was already somewhat stupefied by desire, if maybe he should lose all this deUcate beauty jazz and turn his attentions to Sybil Bailey, a woman made more to his own measure than the frail exquisite vehicle of Iris, obiously too finely made to complement his massive energies. I'd burn her up. She'd break. I need a woman with a bit more heft. I wonder if Sybil digs me. Am I really thinking this? Censorship ain't what it used to be. Maybe it's the vino. On the other hand maybe it's the Veritas.

  "I was kind of thinking," said Jones.

  "Really" said the Bear.

  "Well, wondering really, how well you were set up here." He looked both ways, as if about to cross a particularly tricky street. "Because Hke if you were, I was thinking of maybe modng in with Sybil and closing up the old apartment."

  "You were 7^'/?^/^?"

  "Not that Sybil and I have talked it all the way through yet, but I mean it'd be so much safer. The old place is blo^Tl, don't you think? It ain't no safe house no more. I could put the books and things into storage."

  "Jones. I'm appalled. I feel as if everything's being pulled out from under me."

  "Well, get used to it. Seems to be the law of the land in these parts."

  "What is going on with you?"

  "You mean you really can't nail her?" Jones asked with what the Bear thought was unprecedented vulgarity.

  "Jones, what the fuck has gotten into you?"

  Jones grinned and reached for his briefcase. "Let me show you what's been happening. There's a lot you don't know."

  "Evidently"

  "You're gonna like it."

  "I'm gonna lap it up and grin."

  The Bear Comes Home 147

  "C'mon Bear, get with the program. Things're looking up."

  Iris entered with steaming espresso cups, brandy glasses, and a Napoleon bottle on a tray. She walked gracefully, as if on hydraulically cushioned joints, and nothing rattled or shook.

  Jones gave her a big smile. "Don't she look great. Bear?" he asked.

  Iris set the tray down on the coffee table and sat beside Jones on the sofa. "Now, who wants what."

  "Everybody wants the perfectly obvious," said the Bear.

  "Coffee and cognac all around then," Iris said.

  Jones heaved a sheaf of papers out of his briefcase and onto the coffee table. "Okay Guess."

  "They found Judge Crater," said the Bear. "Shit floats, the Pope's Polish, manifestation's a hoax and we're all really one, man."

  "That too," said Jones, "but what's more important in the short run, the whole first pressing of the Tin Palace record just about sold out in two days and Megaton International wants to buy it fl
at, pay you a quick twenty K, put out a hundred thousand copies worldwide for starters and get you into the studio to cut a new one as soon as poss." Jones grinned at him from his privileged seat. "I been working."

  Iris, sitting up straight, clapped flat hands together like a child. "Goody," she said.

  "What the fack happened?" said the Bear, whose first uncensored thought was. This is a disaster.

  "In a word," said Jones, taking a large theatrical sip of cognac, "the good guys won."

  "How'd they do it."

  "Basically because you're such a great musician but also because there was a little item in the Voice about the gunshots on the end of the album and Down Beat picked it up, and people wanted to know whether you're a hoax or not, and Wynton Marsalis piped up to say you were a degrading image of the jazz musician either way—"

  "Wynton Marsalis the young trumpet kid with all the chops and brains?"

  "A lot happened while you were inside, B. These days he's the law of the land in this part of the forest, gets to say what's jazz and what's not. Anyhow you offend him enough to talk about in print and that helped Cummins' Httle pressing vanish from stores quick fast in a hurry on both coasts and also Chicago."

  "I like what I've heard of Wynton. It'd be nice to play with him. But I'm degrading, huh."

  "Say thanks if you see him, 'cause he gave you the best publicity you ever got. Something about the always false image of the Noble Savage."

  148 Rafi Zabor

  "Well," said the Bear, "I'm not very savage, and I can't say I find anything noble about me ..."

  "You have a certain . . ."Jones maintained, and waved a hand in the air.

  "Naw," said the Bear, "I always thought I was about the soul's exile on earth and some of the other lesser Gnostic heresies. It's a bunch of shit I've been bored with, personally speaking, for a couple of decades already, but it's more germane than any noble savage variations. If you see Wynton, do me a favor and wise him up."

  "Nothing noble then?" Jones asked, pretending to take notes.

  "Once upon a time," said the Bear, "but that was only inexperience. What's biting Wynton's ass? I can play. I know my music. I'm no semifinished knuckle-dragger. I'm no faker." The Bear wiped his right paw across his eyes. "God, it's hideous to have to talk like this."

  "Don't worry," Jones told him. "I'll stop you before you kill again."

  The Bear downed his cognac in one burning gulp and Jones polished his off in answer. Iris refilled their snifters, took a small sip from her own and assumed an attentive air.

  "I didn't have to do a thing, hardly," Jones continued. "Cummins started getting calls. Columbia, Blue Note, Megaton. I did the callbacks and Megaton's got the best offer. They're the only one who wants to buy the old record out and redistribute, and they want to make a new one on BFD, give it high-art tone and worldwide distribution."

  "I'd love to make a Blue Note record," said the Bear. "Too bad Lee Morgan's dead, I'd do it with him."

  "Now there's a guy had even worse luck in clubs than you did," said Jones. "The bullet with his name on it didn't miss."

  "Sure," said the Bear. "His girlfriend fired it, not some working stiff of a cop." He didn't look at Iris, but he could feel her looking at him. "If you want the job done right," he said, "what you need is love."

  "Well," Jones resumed, "Blue Note's only offering ten to Megaton's twenty. With Megaton you get the first record out there in big numbers now. With anyone else it'll be months before anything new comes out. I say let's keep you current. I say let's move. I say let's take the money and run."

  "Whoever it is," said the Bear, "as far as the old album's concerned, they'll have to change the title."

  "Shouldn't do that," said Jones. "It's already made its bones under one name. Change it and the buyers'U get confused."

  "First," said the Bear, "I'm not sure I want that album out at all—"

  "What!"

  The Bear Comes Home 149

  "Maybe if the cops'd let me do another set before they blew the whistle, but as is . . ."

  "What!"

  "And I don't know how you let them put it out with that title. You know what J wanted to call the record."

  "Everyone agreed that IfThere^s a Bleecker Street Than This One I Donh Know Its Name wouldn't fit on the cover, and besides no one but you ever thought it was any good. It was such a downer."

  "Jones, is it possible you don't realize it was a joke?"

  "Not a very good one, B."

  "But Blues in Ursa Minor, Jones? Have you lost every remnant of sense and taste?"

  "What's so wrong with that?"

  "Phphrrr."

  "Jesus McChristmas, I come over here with all this good news and you're sending out vibes like a cracked reactor. What the hell is going on with you?"

  "You fucked me up," said the Bear, getting down to it.

  "I worked Hke a goddamn slave to find you is what I did," Jones insisted. "I got stabbed for you. I crawled bleeding across Washington Square Park for you."

  "You got stabbed because you don't know where to walk at night when I'm not with you." The Bear heard a sharp intake of breath from Iris' direction, and looked at her, her eyes widening, face going red, sitting rigid on the sofa. No, he thought. I'm right about this. This has to be said.

  "I got stabbed because I'd been looking for you for months and this was the only way the world could figure out to turn the trick."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "You had to be there," said Jones. "And in a sense you were. In fact I was hoping to talk with you about it, but since you're being so unreasonable, like what's the point."

  "When was I ever reasonable?" asked the Bear, with some thunder. "I was never reasonable. What I'm being now is monstrous."

  "I'd say."

  "Even so I find all this 'I was stabbed for you' a fittle hard to take. You know where /was?"

  "Bear," said Iris. "If Jones hadn't been in the hospital, and if I hadn't gone to visit him, if I'd been able to quit smoking, and if Tim hadn't been sitting in the smoker's lounge ..."

  "My grandma'd be a trolley," said the Bear, "instead of dead in a circus cage at twenty-seven."

  150 Rafi Zabor

  "Stop this," Iris announced. "I want you both to stop this, or both of you can leave. What is it about men anyway?"

  "I ain't," the Bear began, but left it there.

  "Just stop this."

  "She's right," Jones told him.

  "Of course she's right," said the Bear. He got up and began to pace.

  "Watch the carpet," Iris admonished him.

  "Let a bear pace, won't you?"

  "Do you have to dig your claws in so?" she asked. "Look at what you're doing to the weave."

  "I know," said the Bear. "There's a great disturbance in the Force. I walk through the world doing damage. It's my job." He paced more gently, laying his paws down softly heel to toe. "Howzis?"

  "I gotta pee," Jones informed Iris. "Where's the?"

  Iris indicated the way. "Bear," she said when Jones had gone.

  "You're right," the Bear told her. "You're right absolutely. Let me walk it off. It's your house. It's my fault. Agh."

  "If you think I'm going to contradict you you're wrong."

  "Was I that bad?"

  "You were awful. How could you do that to him?"

  "He let them change the name of my album. I think that's an area in which I can legitimately expect to exercise a degree of control."

  "He took away your toy," said Iris, "so obviously you should kill him."

  "Good idea." The Bear paced more vehemently.

  "The carpet," Iris reminded him.

  "The eggshell," said the Bear.

  In the course of his pacing, during which he tried to see the situation straight and also not rip the rug up, the Bear asked himself. What's wrong with you? Don't you realize we're all in the same old leaky boat?

  "What?" Iris asked him. "What did you say about a boat?"

  "You're hearing me thin
k again. I was just trying to tell myself that we're all in the same old leaky boat."

  "Then you're more of an optimist than I am," Iris said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You still think there's a boat."

  "Of course there's a boat," he said, but avoided her eye. "Of course there is."

  "With you behaving like this," said Iris, "I'm just about convinced there isn't. How can you? Do you think he's your dog?"

  "You were hoping for something from me," said the Bear.

  "I was hoping for a lot."

  The Bear Comes Home 151

  "You were? Really? Still?"

  "Of course I was. What do you think is going on here?"

  "Damned if I know," the Bear told her honestly.

  Jones came back from the bathroom smoothing down his shirtfront and double-checking his fly.

  "We be of one blood, thou and I," the Bear said wearily.

  "Okay, peace. Did you listen to the Tin Palace record?"

  "I'm afraid to," the Bear confessed.

  "Don't be. It's better than you think."

  "I thought it was very good," put in Iris.

  "Betrayal on all sides. When did you Hsten to it?" the Bear asked her.

  "Headphones," Iris explained. "You ought to hear it. It's good."

  "It's lucky we were a working band. Still, we needed another set to get into it, but by the time we did the gig we never started completely cold. And Billy was so good."

  "You ought to hear it," Iris said.

  "You'd be surprised," Jones added.

  "Maybe tomorrow," said the Bear, meaning maybe a week or so, or never.

  "So," said Jones, changing the tone, "what about the offer from Megaton and BFD? Say the word and you can be in the studio within the month."

  The Bear made an unconscious face-washing motion with his right paw. "I don't think I can do it."

  "What? Kee-rist. Here we go again."

  "I'm not doing this just to be difficult, you know."

  "You mean it's a bonus?"

  "Jones, I really can't find the music in me. I've been practicing around the apartment, and it's not there, or at least not where I know how to find it. I ain't no burning bush. I get consumed. I lose touch with the root. I get all burned up."

  "You are what you are. We know you can play. At the moment it would be good for you, and you probly need the bread. How you gonna pay Tim back for all the fish?"