No MOre Piano Lessons by Barry Rachin (dark books to read .TXT) 📖

over in the blink of an eye. Allan felt a crushing despair. Mercifully, Ruthie, who in her excitement had rushed a dozen paces ahead, never witnessed her father's fall from grace.
It wasn't just the derisive remark from a preternaturally pretty girl that sucked all the joy out of his life. Twenty years earlier when he was their age, Allan felt that same heady rush, that intoxicating exuberance of being on the threshold of some great adventure. But that was before the inguinal hernia, periodontal disease and an anxiety attack in the parking lot of Cooper's Hardware Store the day his wife had him served with divorce papers.
The threshold of a great adventure ... What adventure? Had anything even vaguely resembling a great adventure ever materialized. The girl with the beguiling breasts would go from the Fourth of July fireworks to even more dazzling pyrotechnics. She was a comet streaking through the heavens, more glorious than all the bottle rockets, cherry bombs, sparklers, spinners and jumbo jumping jacks. Like a territorial animal peeing on a bush, she drizzled her insouciant scent everywhere. But Allan, the crusty old geezer with post nasal drip had absolutely no right lusting after the glorious creature. He deserved what he got. Yes, he truly deserved public humiliation.

* * * * *

Thirty years earlier in nineteen fifty-four, the nation was buzzing with the first nuclear powered submarine. The Kellogg's Cereal Company came out with a miniature facsimile that ran on baking powder. Allan was eight years old. He hand delivered a cereal box top and twenty-five cents in an envelope to the post office. Exactly two weeks later the plastic toy arrived in the mail.
His best friend, Morris, was visiting that day. They locked themselves in the bathroom with the metallic gray submarine, the printed directions and a box of Clabber Girl baking powder. Allan filled the raised compartment on the submarine deck with the white powder, inserted the lid and placed it in the sink. The four and a half-inch toy sunk to the bottom coming to rest on the scaly enamel. Then, miraculously as the baking powder reacted with the water, carbon dioxide was produced forcing some of the water out and causing the device to drift back to the surface.
Fizz! Fizz! Fizz! In much the same way that a real submarine rose to the surface by purging its ballast tanks, the toy delivered the goods. What did Allan or Morris know about buoyancy, density, or the production of C02 when sodium bicarbonate mixed with acidic cream of tartar? The toy burped, gurgled and bubble. Over and over again, it rose up and settled back down until the baking powder was exhausted. Then the third graders spooned another heap of mix into the top and did it again. An hour and a half later, only when the box of Clabber Girl baking powder was completely empty, did the bathroom door swing open. Allan's mother wasn’t going shopping until Thursday. For the next few days it was agreed that Allen would bring his toy sub over to Morris' house and they could continue the great fun until that caché of white gold was gone.

Apparently the clever gadget was still popular even today. A slew of baking powder submarines, deep sea divers, frogmen and sea creatures could still be ordered from a toy manufacturer in Sherman Oaks, California. The cost was negligible. He located the supplier over the internet. Thirty-eight year old Allan Swanson gawked at the offerings for a full five minutes before shutting down the computer. Nostalgia was one thing, but, short of a psychotic break, people couldn't travel back in time. A sink full of baking soda submarines couldn't dull the melancholy or fill the void. He shouldn't have gawked at the obscenely pretty girl. He should have made better choices with his stultified life.

• * * * * *

The Tuesday before Labor Day, Allan stopped by to collect his daughter. "I could never picture them as a married couple." Muriel tossed the comment out - a total non-sequitur. When she realized that Allan had no idea what she was alluding to, she added, "The Beagles."
"No, they seem like an odd match," Allan added with a self-conscious chuckle. "But then, it's not like I'm the leading authority on marital bliss."
"Speaking of romance, how are you doing these days?" Muriel cocked her head to one side and poked her tongue in the side of her mouth causing the cheek to bulge.
"Okay."
"Seeing anyone?"
Allan flinched. Muriel meant no harm. His former spouse was neither vindictive nor intentionally malicious; it wasn't in her genetic makeup. And she seemed genuinely happy, fulfilled in the new marriage. "Nobody special."
Allan was still ruminating on the mismatched Beagles. The husband, Bruce, was a strikingly handsome outdoorsy type with Robert Redford good looks. One week when he brought Ruthie to her piano lesson, Allan ran into him loading up the Jeep Grand Cherokee with camping equipment and fishing gear. "Going white water rafting in Vermont," the man explained.
'What about the little woman?"
Mr. Beagle cracked a conspiratorial grin. "No women allowed, little or full-size, on this trip." He crammed a pair of waterproofed hiking boots to the left of a propane stove. "We're just a bunch of working stiffs traipsing off to commune with Mother Nature."
His easy-going, if slightly chauvinistic, charm was infectious. Allan certainly couldn't picture the joyless, pokerfaced Muriel Beagle slogging through the underbrush, fighting off mosquitoes as big as raisins and poison ivy for the privilege of sitting on an inflatable raft as it catapulted through roiling water, dodging jagged rocks.
Allan spent a good fifteen minutes talking with the piano teacher's husband while Ruthie finished up her lesson, and the boisterous man never came up for air. As Bruce Beagle explained it, he and a group of buddies from the heating and refrigeration firm that he owned were heading north to tackle class III and IV rapids on the West River. Driving in separate cars, they would rendezvous at the base camp in Stratton Mountain. They had opted out of the full package, which featured an Alpine village with full amenities in favor of tents and sleeping bags. "I prefer going whole hog with the back-to-nature shtick," Bruce noted.
Allan was delighted - flattered even - at the way Bruce took him into his confidence. He could almost picture himself shooting the rapids, camped out later that evening on the banks of a placid lake buried in the New England wilderness, throwing back long neck beers and bullshitting with the guys.
"We put in at Ball Mountain Dam, but the first big water doesn't come until we hit Landslide Rapids."
"How long a stretch?"
"About two miles of continuous churning white water." Bruce unscrewed a water-tight aluminum canister stacked with sulfur-tipped wooden matches. Lips moving silently, he counted the slender sticks before securing the lid back in place. "There're a couple of pretty tricky S-turns that push your paddling skills to the limit, but it's really tons of fun."
Her piano lesson over, Ruthie emerged from the side door. Mrs. Beagle cracked a toothy smile and waved sharply before disappearing back into the music studio. "Seems like you got the best of both worlds," Allan noted, watching his daughter near the porch, playing with a calico kitten. The Beagles had several dogs, three canaries, a painted turtle and indeterminate number of cats.
"How's that?"
"Along with a beautiful family, you still get the privilege to come and go as you please." No sooner had he spoken, Allan wished the words back. It sounded peevish - as though he might envy the handsome man's inordinate capacity for pleasure and personal fulfillment.
Bruce simply smiled and jutted his chin out with a mischievous smirk. Raising his hands, palms splayed to the bright sky, he whispered, "Guilty as charged." Then the robust man winked - a conspiratorial gesture - and turned his attention back to the packing.

* * * * *

Allan took Ruthie to see Toy Story II over the weekend. Afterwards, they went to Ryan's Diner for supper where she ordered a hot dog with curly fries from the children's menu. Allan settled on the brisket. "That Mr. Beagle seems like a swell guy."
"He cracks tons of jokes," Ruthie waved a French fry in the air, "and he's always smooching and hugging his wife." She dabbed the fry in a puddle of ketchup and deposited it in her mouth.
"Mrs. Beagle … you're piano teacher? He's always kissing her?"
"Who else?" Ruthie looked at him queerly. "He can't hardly keep his hands off the woman. It's a bit embarrassing but sort of cute." The waitress returned with a pile of napkins which she centered on the table. "Were you and Mom lovey-dovey like that?"
Allan speared a slice of brisket and jabbed it in the brown gravy. "Yeah, sort of."
"Well, were you or weren't you?"
"At the beginning… for the first few years." He cleared his throat. "I don't think, maybe with the exception of the Beagles, too many people stay that way much beyond the honeymoon."
"Well they ought to."
Allan shook his head up and down just a bit too vigorously. It suddenly occurred to him that, somewhere up in the pristine wilderness of Vermont, Bruce Beagle was probably hunched over a campfire with his buddies sipping black coffee. The good-natured man, who brazenly pawed his wife in front of the piano students, would curl up in a sleeping bag and be lulled to sleep by a symphony of frogs, crickets, owls and assorted night creatures. "You know what I liked best about the movie," he blurted, deflecting the conversation elsewhere.

Allan needed a new life - a hobby, an ardent passion, a raison d’être. He definitely needed a break from the tedium, something a tad more adventuresome than honking on a saxophone at weddings and bar mitzvahs. White water rafting was out of the question. First of all, he had no intention of becoming a Bruce Beagle clone, replicating the man's back-to-nature lifestyle and habits. Secondly, as a swimmer, he hadn’t progressed much beyond the dogpaddle. At one point earlier in the week when they were commiserating, Bruce Beagle wandered into the garage to retrieve an item. "That's one hell of a weapon." Allan gestured at a crossbow hanging from a rack on the far wall.
Bruce lifted the bow free of the wall and ran the palm of his hand over the wooden stock. "It's a, Excalibur Equinox model with a sixteen and a half inch power stroke." He pulled an ominous looking arrow from the bow-mounted quiver. "Velocity’s up around three hundred fifty feet per second, which will bring down a full-grown stag instantly as long as you set the shot up properly." He passed the bow to Allen who lofted it up and down in his hands. The lethal device was remarkably light. "I always try to set my shots up broadside or quartering away."
"And why's that?" Allan had no idea what the man was talking about.
"The razor sharp arrow’s got to penetrate both lungs for a quick kill." He took the crossbow back, repositioning it on the far wall. "You don't want an animal to suffer needlessly."
"No certainly not," Allan agreed.
"I hit a buck last year in Aroostook County, Maine, and the poor son of a bitch ran off into the brush. I had to track him for three miles before the injure critter expired." Bruce wagged his handsome head thoughtfully then tapped the bridge of his nose - once, twice, three times - with a taut index finger. "The nose knows - it's a saying among hunters. An injured animal can smell the fabric conditioner or laundry detergent your well-intentioned spouse