The Magic Keys Albert Murray (read novels website TXT) 📖

stream of others joining in, some directly from the coat-check windows. My old roommate and I had always stopped at the refreshment table for a waxed paper tumbler of student punch-bowl punch, which he always spiked—his, not mine—with his own chem lab cocktail concoction from his pewter hip pocket flask. But this time I took mine and sipped it as I slowly meandered my way toward the bandstand, because I still had no way of knowing whether I was going to see what I hoped I wouldn’t see.

So she may have seen me before I saw her this time, because when I came within eight yards of the bandstand, there she was sitting at a front-row table in the waist-high spectators’ gallery on my right. And with her were two other sophomore coeds whom I remembered from the year before but had not met. And when I was as sure as I could guess that I was in her line of sight, I waved and she waved back and when I held out my hand, she stood up and came down onto the dance floor. And when I said her name, she said mine.

XV

Hi ya, fellow, the voice on the phone said. And I said, Eric von Threadcraft. And he said, Got you. He said, Got you in two rings. And I said, Hey, man, I said, What say, Mice? I said, Goddamn, man. How you been and what you been up to? And he said, A little of this and some of that plus the same old ongoing, but always on the afterbeat, man. You know me, fellow. And then he said, Hey, what this is about is that I caught the band in person out here tonight for the first time since you cut out, and naturally I went backstage to check with Papa Joe and he gave me your number and told me what you were up to and into these days. So how is school and how is family life?

And I said, Man, the thing about graduate school is that the more advanced the courses of study, the more basic the material and the more obvious the assumptions and the more relative and tentative the conclusions. So it’s the also and also all over again, my man, the also and also and also, perhaps even as the also and also of arithmetic becomes the also and also of algebra, calculus, and trigonometry.

Then before he could say anything about that, I said, As for family life, affirmative by me, man. What can I tell you, man? Je suis tout à fait en train d’être dans le vrai, if you remember that old Flaubert riff you tried to sneak in there on me that time. Or should I say heureusement en train?

And that was when he said what he said about me spending the time I spent keeping the time as a bass player, and about how lucky I was to have come across that particular instrument of all musical instruments the way I did. Then he also said, Speaking of fundamentals, my man, that fabulous Miss Hortense Hightower you used to tell me about, had your number, fellow. Just think about it, Schoolboy, if you will pardon the expression. There you were up there in college because your Miss Lexine fairy-tale aunt Metcalf had earmarked you as early on as the third grade for some undefined something special requiring higher education. So there you are up there on the campus flat broke except for what little was left over from the fellowship grants, but determined to pass the academic equivalent of every obstacle that Jason the argonaut was supposed to pass to qualify himself for the ultimate boon of a golden fleece and here you come out of there on commencement day having earned yourself not only the magic sheepskin but also the bull fiddle, of all things. A goddamn completely unacademic jazz-anchoring bull fiddle!

That’s something else, fellow, he said. That’s something to think about. Because, man, are you sure that your Miss Hortense Hightower was not your Miss Lexine Metcalf in the disguise of an after-hours nightclub diva? And what about that roommate of yours that turned up down there from Chicago and stayed around just long enough to become in some ways even more and certainly no less indelible than your Mr. B. Franklin Fisher himself, without whom, after all, there would have been no Miss Lexine Metcalf in the first place? No him without her, but hey, no her without him to bring her there as if specifically to find the likes of you. Fairy-tale stuff U.S.A., fellow.

Just look at how it all hooks up, he said. It was Hortense Hightower who got you that incredible quantum leap of a break that didn’t just land you a gig with the greatest band that ever was, but also meant that your elementary, repeat elementary, as in beginner’s school music, faculty was made up of none other than Joe States, Old Pro, and the Bossman Himself ! Incredible, fellow! Incroyable! Think about it, fellow, think about it.

And I said, I hear you, man. I really do hear you. But you feel like that because of what music means to you as a musician. But man, I was doing what I was doing because that was what came up for me that summer, and I’ve always done the best I could and once more it was good enough to get me by. Because they were not looking for an expert. You know the Bossman, Mice. Sometimes he just likes to find out what he can make of whatever turns up. You and I have been over that, I said, reminding him of references he and I had made from time to time to how visual artists sometimes used unaltered and somewhat altered found objects!

I said, man, they weren’t even looking for an expert when they picked up Scratchy McFatrick. They were looking for a replacement