Chapter One

Four months later. November, another Friday. Manhattan, New York, New York. A young saxophone player named Lonnie Blake was doing a gig at a place on Ninth Avenue.

It wasn't much of a place. There wasn't much of a crowd in the small hours. Three or four people were at the wooden bar. Four or five more were lounging at the small round tables. Almost everyone there was young but almost everyone looked sort of pale and specterly, glazed and wander-eyed as if they'd gotten lost somehow on their way to the happening thing. One doofus in the corner was actually wearing sunglasses -- he was dressed in black and wearing sunglasses and bobbing his head as if stoned on the music. The supply lines of hip, in other words, were stretched a little thin in here.

The place was called Renaissance. On the walls, running around the walls, there was a mural of Florence. The owner's girlfriend had painted it, copying a picture in a book she'd found at the Strand. The mural actually hadn't been too bad when she'd finished it. But about six months ago she and the owner had a fight. She hauled for San Francisco, and now her delicate blue firmament was chipping away and the intricate white-and-red skyline was starting to blur with grime.

Against that backdrop, up on a small stage smack in front of the fading Duomo, there was the band. A trio: keyboard, bass, saxophone. Fred Purcell, Arnie Cobb and Lonnie Blake.

Arthur Topp, meanwhile, was at the bar. He'd been sitting there for close to an hour. Nursing a scotch or three, listening to the music. Watching Lonnie.

The trio was playing standards mostly, Jurassic classics. "Night and Day," "Always," "Savoy," that kind of thing. They were snapping their fingers and saying "Yeah" a lot to make the crowd think they were really wailing. But so far, Arthur hadn't heard anything that excited him at all.

Arthur was a white man. Small and thin, forty. Bald up top but with his fringe of black hair grown long and tied into a ponytail. His pullover red shirt looked expensive and made him stand out here. And his gold watch made him stand out. He'd inherited the watch from his father. He dressed to look more prosperous than he was.

He went on scoping Lonnie with quick, dark eyes. He tapped his hand impatiently on the bar.

The saxophone player had skill. Arthur could see that, hear that. Lonnie had fast fingers, a smooth, controlled tone. His jams were flawless too; he could find his way out of the melody and back with precision. But it was pretty uninspired stuff, Arthur thought. The same old tired barroom riffs. The kind of drone you could hear anywhere.

Arthur glanced at his father's Rolex. Nearly 1 A.M. The last set was winding up. The band was preparing to stand down. Arthur felt ready to write this one off, to pay his check and bail.

But just then, just as he was turning to flag the bartender, something happened.

Here it was. Last song. "Haunted Heart." The trio was swinging into the finish. Fred Purcell, the keyboard player, nodded for Lonnie to take the break. The saxman blew into his final solo. Only the bass kept a three-note rhythm line behind him.

Arthur Topp paused. He listened. Nothing at first. Same-old same-old. The bridge embellished with a few smeared grace notes, a couple of ornamental mordents. A chromatic fill where a rest had been to make it sound like a genuine jam.

The doofus in the sunglasses was impressed. He slapped his hand down on his table. "Man!" he said, swinging his head back and forth.

Arthur Topp stifled a yawn in his fist. Lonnie Blake was sleep-walking the baby, he thought. Same as he had been all night.

Then -- then, all at once -- that changed. Lonnie was floating up some fake-out scale, going through the motions, floating up and up, one note after another -- and then he held there, held dully in the low reaches as if tied to an invisible tether. One note, bobbing, tethered and leaden, bobbing until it threatened to become a miserable drone...

And then -- then, all at once -- the tether snapped.

Suddenly -- Arthur was watching him, astonished -- suddenly, there was Lonnie, bent back against the painted sky, against the painted dome. The sax was uplifted, a Selmer Mark VI, a fine machine, glistening in his long fingers. And he was blowing that thing. He was wailing. His dark lips were kissing the hard black rubber of the mouthpiece. He was whispering over the reed with a sort of Miles Davis vu that filled the mellow blue tenor with a ghosty nothing...

And up on that empty breath he flew, glissing his way to a high riff of incredible Coltrane sixteenths, peaking in a seamless vibrato, a barely trembling leap from pitch to pitch.

Oh, thought Arthur Topp. Oh, oh, oh.

Then came another held note, but this one singing, a singing E-flat floating like a yogi in the impossible air. Then a shake, that quick trill with the lips, and then just as the note had to fall, still another shake -- and then it did fall, it plummeted, bam, and like a rush of warm wind, the keyboard and the bass swept in under it and Lonnie wafted back -- just wafted back -- down into the melody. And the trio polished off the song.

Purcell, a gray-haired elder, looked around from his keyboard, surprised. "All right," he said.

Arthur Topp clapped and whistled. The doofus slapped the table again. A few other people let go of their drinks long enough to flop their hands together.

Purcell and Cobb, keyboard and bass, nodded, smiling slightly.

Lonnie Blake turned his back on all of them. The show was over.

Copyright © 1999 by Amalgamated Metaphor, Inc.