Ghost Music (2 page)

“Have you lived here for long?” I asked.

Kate went to the window and looked out over the park. I could
just make out her transparent reflection in the glass. “It depends what you mean by ‘long.' Longer than I should have done, I suppose.”

“I see,” I said, although I didn't. “What would you like to drink? I have iced tea or zinfandel or beer. I even have Dr Pepper.”

“Zinfandel would be nice. Did you know that Jared French used to live here once?”

“The realtor told me. That's why I bought a Jared French painting. I almost lost consciousness, though, when I found out how much they were asking for it.”

“All of the houses in this row have their ghosts,” she said, raising her voice so that I could hear her. “Theodore Dreiser lived next door at number sixteen—that's where he started to write
An American Tragedy
. Sherwood Anderson lived at number twelve. Jared French shared this house with Paul Cadmus. He was another artist. Both gay, of course. Paul Cadmus was always painting sailors in ridiculously tight pants.”

I came back from the kitchenette with two large glasses of chilled white wine. “Hey—I
like
places with ghosts. It makes you feel like you're part of history, you know? So long as I don't get goosed by some ice-cold finger when I'm taking a shower.”

“Oh, you don't have to worry about that. The ghosts in these houses are all at peace. Most of them, anyhow.”

“Glad to hear it. You haven't ever
seen
one, have you?”

“When we first moved here, I was sure that I heard somebody weeping, in one of the rooms up in the attic. A woman, it sounded like. But when I went up there and knocked on the door, nobody answered.”

“Spooky!”

“It was probably the wind, that was all. This house can be very drafty in the winter.”

We sat for a moment in silence. I had an odd feeling that Kate wanted to tell me something, but didn't know how to say it. She
kept glancing at me, but when I looked back at her, she gave that secretive little smile and sipped her wine.

“You don't have children?” I asked her. “I haven't
heard
any children, anyhow. No skateboards in the hallway.”

“We did once. A little boy. But we lost him.”

“I'm so sorry. I didn't realize.” I felt terrible. Talk about opening my mouth and putting both feet in it, Nikes and all.

But she said, “No, please, don't feel bad about it. It was a long time ago now, and you weren't to know.” She paused, and then she said, “I wanted to try again, but Victor was too angry about it.”

“Angry?”

“I don't know. Angry with God. Angry with the doctors. Just angry.”

I nodded, although I didn't entirely understand what she meant. You feel grief-stricken when your child dies. But
angry
?

“I would have loved to have a little girl,” Kate told me.

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. I would have named her Melinda. I could have dressed her up in frilly frocks, and fussed with her braids, and taught her how to bake chocolate-chip cookies.”

“Wow. It's not too late, though, surely? Maybe you could twist Victor's arm.”

“Victor's arm is untwistable. Besides—it's
always
too late.”

I didn't really understand what she meant by that either, but she didn't seem interested in discussing the subject any further, and so I left my next question unspoken.

“How about you?” she asked me, after a while. “Do you like to travel?”

“Travel? Are you kidding me? I
hate
to travel. I have to go to L.A. every month, to work at Capitol Studios. I can't wait for them to invent a
Star Trek
transporter. You know—step into one cabinet in New York, step out of another cabinet ten seconds later in L.A. Mind you—knowing my luck, I'd have a fly in there with me.”

“I didn't mean
that
kind of travel. I meant Europe. You know—Rome, and Vienna, and Prague.”

“Oh, like
culture
? Well—I was in London once, for a week, but that was for work, too. I saw the inside of a post-production studio in Soho, and that was about it. I didn't even get to see Buckingham Palace.”

“You
should
travel,” she said. “It's good for you—good for the soul. And you can learn so much. The farther away you go, the more you discover about what you've left behind.”

I waited for her to explain what
she
had discovered, but she didn't say any more. I distinctly felt that we were talking at cross-purposes—either that, or she expected me to understand something about her that should have been obvious, but which I couldn't fathom at all. Everything she said made perfect sense, but somehow it didn't make any sense at all. It was like she was carrying on a different conversation altogether, or else she was speaking in riddles. It was strangely provocative, as if she were flirting with me, but it was frustrating at the same time. Maybe she didn't want Malkin the cat to know what she was telling me. Maybe Malkin would report back to Victor—he of the untwistable arm.

“More wine?” I asked her, although she had taken only three or four sips. “How about some potato chips? I have sea-salt or jalapeño or something herby.”

Again she shook her head. “Tell me something you've written,” she said.

“Well . . . the theme music for
Magician
. Did you ever see
Magician
? That's the cop who used to be a stage magician, and he solves all of his crimes with conjuring tricks.”

“Yes, I think I saw
Magician
once. I can't say that I remember the theme music.”

I leaned over and picked up my Spanish guitar, which was leaning against the end of the sofa. I gave it a strum, and then played her that soft, eerie, complicated melody, which rose higher and higher with every bar.

“That was very good.” Kate nodded, when I had given her a final flourish. “That was almost beautiful.”

“
Almost
beautiful?”

“Debussy is beautiful. Delius is beautiful. That, on the other hand, was a little too commercial for its own good.”

“Hey, be fair. Debussy and Delius didn't have to pitch their music to Jerry Bruckheimer.”

Kate laughed, and even when she had finished laughing, her eyes were filled with that same shared intimacy that I had seen on the steps outside. She didn't look away, she didn't blink. Instead, she stared at me as if she wanted to remember forever how I looked this afternoon.

“Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”

“Thirty-one,” I told her. “I know I look older. My hair started going gray when I was twenty-six. It's hereditary.”

“I like it. It makes you look as if I can trust you.”

“You think so? I guess that kind of depends.”

She didn't ask me what I meant. I think both of us knew that she didn't really have to. She continued looking at me for another long moment, and then she turned toward the painted wall clock next to the mirror, with its frantically swinging pendulum, and she glanced at her wristwatch, too. “I have to be going, I'm afraid.”

“You're cooking dinner?”

“Oh, no. It's too late for that, too.”

“You could always get takeout. They do a great arroz con pollo at Little Havana. The chef will give you free tostones if you flutter your eyelashes at him.”

Either she wasn't listening or else she didn't like Cuban food,or maybe she was a vegetarian, because she stood up without saying a word.

“Do you work?” I asked her. “Or are you usually free during the day?”

“I'm a magazine designer. I do fashion layouts for
Harper's
. Well, I used to. Not anymore.”

“So—at the moment—you're free?”

“It depends on your definition of ‘free.'”

“Well . . . if I said to you, come up again tomorrow around twelve, and I'll make you some lunch, and play you some more of my almost-beautiful music, there wouldn't be anything to stop you?”

Kate said nothing, but continued to stare at me. Her stare was so penetrating that I began to feel light-headed, as if I had drunk too many tequila slammers. But Malkin started to scrabble at the tassels that hung from one of the spoon-back chairs, and I turned and called, “Hey, kitty! Cut it out, will you!” and that broke the spell.

Malkin trotted across to Kate like a scolded kid, and Kate knelt down to pick her up.

I said, “Listen . . . I understand you're married and everything. All I'm asking you to do is come up and eat some salad. Working on my own all day . . . it almost turns me into a gibbering loony sometimes.”

“Okay,” she said. She held up her hand so that I could help her back up onto her feet. Once she was standing, though, she didn't let go. “You shouldn't worry about Victor. Victor is a very strong character who believes that he owns the world. He wouldn't imagine for a single moment that I would betray him.”

I was very tempted to ask,
would
you betray him? More to the point, would you betray him with
me
? But it was a little too soon to be asking questions like that. I definitely felt that Kate found me interesting; but maybe she was bored, and she was teasing me for her own amusement. Every minute that went by, I noticed things about her that were increasingly attractive: the tilt of her nose, the way the sunlight shone on the upward curve of her lips, the faint blue veins in her wrists. But she had a guarded side to her, a prickly defensiveness, and I suspected that she was capable of putting down any man she didn't like—in public, too.

“Right,” I said, releasing her hand. “If you don't think that I
should worry about Victor, I won't worry about Victor. How do you like tuna, with Chinese cabbage salad?”

“Sounds delicious. I'm sure that Malkin would adore it, too. I'd better not bring her, in case she's a nuisance.”

I saw her to the door. Before she left, she turned and reached up, touching my hair just behind my ear, like a conjuror pretending to find a nickel. Then she kissed me very lightly on the cheek.

I watched her go back downstairs. Once she had gone, I quietly closed the door and went back into the living room.

I stared at myself in the gilt-framed mirror, trying to see what
she
was seeing, when she looked at me. I always thought that I looked more like a second-rank tennis player than a musical composer. Six foot one, rangy, with kind of disconnected arms and legs, and the long, angular face of my Finnish grandfather Luukas, and the same ice-blue eyes. Same gray hair, too, when it came to that. But I like to think that I'm reasonably good-looking, in a Nordic Kris Kristofferson kind of a way, although Margot used to accuse me of looking morose for no reason.

I picked up my guitar again and started to play the theme music to
Magician
, but I stopped in mid-chord, halfway through.

“Kate Solway,” I whispered, just to feel her name come out of my mouth.

Shortly before eleven o'clock that evening, I was working on the incidental music for
The Billy Wagner Show
when I heard car doors slamming in the street outside, and laughter.

I hesitated, with my fingers poised over the keyboard of my Roland electronic piano. I heard more laughter, a woman, and a man's voice saying, “You're crazy. You know that? You're totally crazy.”

I knew I was being nosy, but I stood up and walked barefoot through the living room and looked out of the open window. I saw a red-haired woman in a green satin dress climbing the front steps, unsteadily, as if she had been drinking. Close behind her came Victor Solway, in a white dress shirt with his bow tie dangling loose, and a maroon tuxedo slung over his arm.
Maroon
, yet.

He was deeply tanned, Victor Solway, with two white wings on either side of his jet-black hair. He looked like George Hamilton's shorter and bulkier brother. He made a playful grab for the woman's bottom as she reached the top of the steps, and she screamed and flapped her pocketbook at him.

“My friend Daisy warned me about you! She told me you couldn't be trusted to keep your hands to yourself!”

“You're blaming
me
? It's all your fault, you temptress! You shouldn't go waggling your tush like that! What do you think I'm made of? Granite?”

At this, the red-haired woman collapsed with laughter, her hand held over her eyes and her white breasts wobbling. Victor
Solway took out his key and opened the front door, and the two of them staggered inside.

I heard the front door slam, and then Victor Solway's door. After a while, I heard the muffled sound of Tony Bennett singing “Cold, Cold Heart.”

Shit and double-shit
. I could tolerate almost any composer in the world except John Williams. I mean,
Star Wars
, do me a favor. And I could tolerate almost any singer except Tony Bennett.

I went back to my keyboard. I had been scoring a link for Billy Wagner to accompany his interview with an eccentric family in Bakersfield who insisted on dressing in turn-of-the-century costumes, 365 days of the year. The mother and her two daughters even wore whalebone corsets. But I had totally lost the mood now. How could I write tinkly 1890s piano music with Tony Bennett droning through my floorboards?

“Another love before my time made your heart sad and blue—”

Jesus. Couldn't they play something halfway cheerful? Apart from that, what the hell was going on down there? I heard more hysterical laughter, and banging around. I couldn't believe that Kate was joining in. She had seemed far too aloof for a threesome with Victor and a tipsy redhead in a bulging green satin frock.

I played a few bars of
Magician
, and then I switched the keyboard off. I went through to the kitchenette, opened the fridge and poured myself a large glass of zinfandel. Grow up, I told myself. Stop being such a stuffed shirt. Kate could do whatever she wanted, couldn't she? It's none of your business. If she wants to have a drunken orgy, that's entirely her affair. She can take the whole cast of
Spamalot
to bed with her if she wants to.