Orfeo (37 page)

None. There aren’t many to break.

Hope flashed across Maddy’s face.
Then turn yourself in.

The answer: so simple, so obvious. For a moment, he was ready. Then he remembered.

I believe I’ve burnt that bridge.

Why, Peter? I don’t understand.

She looked up across the ellipse of eateries and pointed. There, near the food court entrance, two men in uniforms, a slant rhyme for
police,
nosed through the unnoticing crowd. Mall security. Panic filled Els. But he needed only fifteen seconds to do what he’d come here to do. He leaned forward, but didn’t touch her.

Mad? Before I met you
,
I thought I was going to be a chemist
.
That’s what I studied in college.

I know this, Peter. I was your wife, you know.

I’m sorry. I’m rambling.

So, what are you saying? That this was all some kind of vicarious fantasy? The road not taken?

In a way. I was . . . I was trying . . .

Oh, shit.
Her hand rose and her eyes widened.
You were composing. In DNA?

It did sound ludicrous. But what was music, ever, except pure play?

She stared at him as she’d done once, the night they broke. The night she’d said,
The game is over. Nobody’s listening. They’re never coming back.

What
is
it you want?
she hissed.

Her anger surprised him. The stored years. He’d never wanted anything but to give back something as fine as he’d been given. To make something worth hearing, and to send it out into the world.

Listen
, he told her
. I made a mistake
.

She smoothed back her thinned hair.
Apparently
.

No,
he said.
Not the genetics. I’d do that all again.

The mall security officers looped up the concourse. They stopped to flirt with the Latina fast-food counter help. In another moment, they came abreast of the seating area, scouting the crowd. Els braced and hid his face. Maddy smiled at the heavyset officer as they passed the table. The man saluted her with one finger to the brow. The two guards ambled on, toward the wizard talent show. Maddy blew out her cheeks and exhaled. She would have made the greatest accomplice that any musical terrorist could have wanted.

When he could talk again, Els said,
I think I must have been mentally ill.

Maddy swung to face him, twisted her head.
This is what I’m wondering
.

No. Back then. I never should have left you and Sara for music. Even to change the world.

He’d said the last thing he needed to say in this life. Peace came over him, one he hadn’t felt since Fidelio died. She looked away, her gaze now as blank as the past. The middle-aged lovers at the next table—married, but so obviously not to each other—stood and walked away, giggling and licking ice cream off each other’s fingers.

We already had music,
Els said.
All the music anybody might want.

The high lonesome denim band went into some kind of finale. The child wizard contest was coming down to the final four. Maddy inspected the food court—the sounds they had—then turned back to the sounds he still wanted.

This cell thing. You were trying to live forever?

Could be
, Els admitted.

Her chest rose and fell.
That was always your problem.
She looked for something in the bottom of her cup.
I only ever wanted now.

They sat in the cauldron of sound and light, as they once had in Cage’s
Musicircus
. He held his pepperoni crust aloft.
This was our first meal
.

Was it?
She asked.

You’d just read through my Borges songs. I’d posted an ad at the Music Building, promising pizza for an hour of woodshedding. You answered.

Did I? I was always hungry back then.

I was mad at you for not loving them at first listen.

Oh!
She looked up, surprised.
But I did!

He fell back, puzzled. He’d driven here to admit to this woman the central mistake of his life. But more mistakes than he could number filled the air around him. Something loosened in him, a landslide of dread.
Your quilt,
he said.
I buried it with the dog.

She shook her head, not getting him.

I was in bad shape
.
I didn’t know what I was doing.

Oh, for God’s sake.
She pawed the air.
I’ll make you another while you’re in prison.

Really? You’re quilting again?

Retirement. Something to do.

Careful,
he said.
That’s how it starts.

She reached across the red plastic table and covered his fist in her palm. Her hand was cold. Her shot skin no longer held in heat.
Peter. They’re going to use you. Make a lesson out of you.

He opened his hand and took her finger. His life had been full of fearless music. The trick was remembering the sound of it, now that it was no longer playing.

She squeezed his hand hard, then flicked it away.
Speaking of which. Your daughter is beside herself. She’s tried every possible way of reaching you for the last three days. She told me last night she was afraid you might kill yourself
.

Tell her I’m good. Tell her I’ll be all right.

You want me to lie to her
?

His eye fell on a kiosk near the center of the court. Its banner read Because there is no such thing as natural beauty . . .

Tell her what I told you.

All right,
she said.
I can do that. But you should tell her yourself.

Maddy stood and stacked the trash, the plastic plates and disposable silverware.

It was all fear,
she said.
Fear got us. By the way: Who’s Kohlmann?

The name came from another planet. So did the note of jealousy. Els glanced at Maddy, but his ex-wife was taking a last, too-large mouthful of now-congealed cheese and trying to hide her pleasure.

Friend. With a phone
.

She led Els to the garbage station, where they jettisoned their final meal. Then they ran the gauntlet of shops back toward the entrance, Maddy leading, Els stumbling two steps behind her, through the world’s endless profusion.

Outside, it had begun to drizzle. At the car, Maddy said,
Let’s blame Richard
.

Els snapped a finger.
Perfect! Why didn’t I think of that?

They slipped into the Fiat as if they’d just made a pit stop and it was now back to the highway, license plate bingo, and the annual trip to Yosemite. She fiddled with his shoulder, absently, as he cranked the engine.

How does he seem to you these days?

He goosed the pedal.
You hear from him?

Wait
.
You don’t?

He backed out of the parking slot right in front of an SUV, whose driver laid into his horn for a full ten seconds. The Fiat lurched forward. The lot was a maze of perverse and pointless turns, leading nowhere but toward more shops.

He said,
I haven’t spoken to the man for seventeen years.

She took her hand back into her lap.
He called me a few months back. He’s in a clinical field trial out in Phoenix. New Alzheimer’s-arresting drug.

Phoenix
? Els asked. His head was wrong. He was driving at random.
Why Phoenix
?

Because that’s where the old people are.

He turned toward her, but she looked away. He looked back to the parking lot, crisscrossed with hazards.

She said,
He calls sometimes.

He’s
calling
you?

Only at night. When he’s terrified. Mostly around two a.m. Charlie wants to kill him.

Does he . . . is he . . . ?

Much the same,
Maddy said.
For now. A little flakier. Early-stage. That’s why he’s in the trial. He’s pinning everything on this drug. He calls me up to prove that it’s working. He talks like the two of you are as thick as ever.

Els didn’t even see the stop sign until he was through it. He pressed on, his field of vision narrowing to a brown tube.

You’re in touch. I thought you hated him.

Richard? I loved Richard. And I loved you. I just hated the two of you together.

After two more capricious right turns, he asked,
Where exactly am I going?

I was just going to ask. Peter?
Her chin rose and fell; her eyes shot down the road.
What are you going to do? You don’t think I can shelter you, do you?

Of course not
, he said.

I can help you
, she told the glove compartment
. Get you a lawyer. Run interference. Character witness. Whatever you need
.
There’s still the law, isn’t there? You are innocent, right
?

He caught her eye. Too late for foolish optimism. She closed her eyes and held up one hand.

Let’s not go there yet.

He’d gotten them onto a quiet residential street full of modest ranch houses. He nosed the car to the curb along a maple-lined parkway. The rain had turned real and the sky was indigo.

I . . .
he began.
I don’t need anything. Just your forgiveness.

Maddy grinned, a grim Minnesota girl’s grin.
You’re an idiot. How am I supposed to forgive that?

He couldn’t hold her look. He said,
Mad. Meeting you like this . . . ? Ten minutes ago, I was ready to surrender.

Yes,
she said. She placed a palm on his shoulder and turned away.
But now you need to get to Arizona.

SHE GUIDED HIM to another chain motel, not far from westbound 44. This one looked like a Swiss chalet. An early start the next day, and he’d be in Amarillo by nightfall. She went in to rent the room. He waited in the parking lot, underneath a streetlamp that buzzed like something Ming the Merciless might use to torture freedom fighters on Mongo.

She came back to the car with the room key, laughing.
Why do I feel like I’m cheating on my second husband with my first?

She gave him Richard’s address. Then she guided him to her bank. She made him park on the street while she walked up to the machine and drew out enough money to get him to Arizona.

Thank you,
he said.
I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.

If you don’t, I’ll get the law on you.

You know . . . they might pay you a visit.

You think?

Fearless, she was now. Or very tired of fear. Tired of giving it everything she was afraid it might take.

He, too, was exhausted.
You need to get back home
.
Charlie must be starting to worry.

Peter! Are you trying to save my marriage?

Small twists in her pitch and rhythm told him: she was autonomous. And she had been for a long time. Her melody insisted that everyone ended up autonomous in the end. Had they known as much when they were young, they might have grown apart together.

On the way back to her house, he remembered he had something urgent to ask her, but couldn’t remember what. Instead, he said,
When was the last time you sang?

Three hours ago
.
While showering. You?

He pulled up to the curb where he’d phoned her a lifetime before. Night had fallen. The past that he needed to atone for had vanished. He killed the engine and they sat a moment in the dark. Maddy patted the dashboard of the Fiat.

Can I go with you tomorrow?

She grinned at his confusion, until he found her.

You always do,
he said.

She undid her seat belt and shook her head.
It was a good piece, Peter. The two of us. I’d sing it again
.

She leaned over and kissed him.
We’re good,
she said.
Really.
Then she opened the passenger door and flooded the little remade past with light.

I depart as air.

He wanted to destroy the opera and start again, now that he knew what it meant to be burnt alive.

He couldn’t stop a single performance. The three-hour exercise in transcendence got dragged into the shit-storm of human events. He fled back to New Hampshire, but the noise about
The Fowler’s Snare
followed him. Bonner gave interviews on his behalf. Art, Richard proclaimed, didn’t take moral stands. All opera did was sing.

The production made the cover of
Opera News.
The
Times
reviewer called
Fowler
“visionary” and labeled Els “the mad Prophet’s prophet.” An article in
New Music Review
by one Matthew Mattison concluded, “One stroke of luck has turned a nostalgic exercise into something electric.”

Reporters couldn’t get enough of the eerie coincidence. They praised Els for an artistic bravery he never possessed. They faulted him for failing to exploit the full political significance of an event he couldn’t have predicted.

City Opera extended the run. Dallas and San Francisco wanted to mount productions while the freakish story was still hot. Els refused all requests, and for a few weeks his refusal itself became industry news.

Bonner drove up in mid-June, to bully Els into compliance. Even the next day, Els couldn’t remember the details. Richard got no farther than the driveway. The altercation happened there, on the obliging gravel. The talk started out civil enough. Richard spoke of creative duty, of all the people Els owed, of the moral cowardice of abandoning one’s work.