Pinball (15 page)

“Now get lost,” her companion said to Osten. “D’you hear?”

“I’m truly sorry,” said Osten, but now the man ignored him. As the waiter came up with a dry tablecloth, Osten discreetly handed him several twenty-dollar bills. “Get them another bottle, will you?” he said, and without giving the couple another look he turned and walked away.

Unsettled, angry with himself and humiliated, he moved toward the stage and watched the band members
perform in turn for the groupies gathered around. But in a few minutes, with no mood to guide him, he decided he had had enough of the Goddard Beat. He was about to leave the disco when someone touched him on the shoulder. It was the black girl, her jump suit clinging to her body like another skin.

“Thanks for the champagne,” she said with a faint smile.

He mumbled that he was glad they had liked it, and she caught him peering behind her for a sign of her companion.

“Paul’s gone,” she said. “He went home to save his precious suede pants.”

“I’m sorry,’ Osten said slowly, as he stared at her full breasts, partly exposed by the open zipper of her jump suit. When he raised his eyes, he saw that she was amused to have caught him staring.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “That’s what they’re there for. Women peek too.” She was smiling widely now, showing two rows of impeccably white and even teeth. “And although tough guys always think we’re looking for things that are big and long, that’s not what turns us on.”

Her self-assurance put him off. “Really. What does?” he asked, afraid as he said it that he was setting himself up.

“A cute ass.” She gave him a studied once-over. “And a body that’s tall and slim and leggy.”

“Aren’t you talking about yourself?” he bantered.

“Maybe I am,” she laughed. “But also about you.” She paused, then gave him another assessing look. “What do you do when you’re not knocking over tables, boy?” she asked jokingly, intoning like a southern overseer.

“I travel a lot,” he said. “How about you, ma’am?”

“Why, I just play, honey,” she answered.

By now he was convinced she was a hooker. He had never been out with a hooker, and the thought of pulling the zipper of her jump suit all the way down and having her step out of it on her high heels straight into his arms excited him greatly. Regaining his composure, he said,
“I’m Jimmy.” Then, staring openly at her breasts, he asked, “Are you free?”

“Free?” She laughed. “Of course I’m free. Slavery is no longer in, you know.”

“I mean—” he stammered, “free to go out. With me.” He hesitated, then blurted out, “For money, I mean.”

“To go out—with you—for money?” she repeated, as if working out a puzzle. “Oh—I—see,” she said, spacing the words, and then she threw back her head and laughed. She moved close to him and brushed her hips against his, sliding her hand over his buttocks. “I’m Donna,” she murmured. “Tell Donna just exactly what it is you have in mind, honey.”

“To eat your honey,” he purred back. “For the rest of the night.”

“At what eatery?” she asked.

“A hotel,” he said. “Any hotel. I’m from out of town.”

“I don’t like hotels,” she answered. “And after midnight, hotels don’t like girls like me either.” She gave him a long look. “What do you do for a living, boy?” she asked, intoning again.

“I study writing,” he said, “in California.” Then, for fear she might leave him at that news, he added, “But I have enough money,” and he reached into his pocket.

She stopped his hand. “I know you do. You already bought Paul and me champagne tonight.”

Touched by his sincerity, she stared at him for a moment with a gentle smile on her lips. “How about going to play at my place?” she asked.

“Where is it?” he asked, afraid she might say Harlem.

“Carnegie Hall,” she whispered.

“Carnegie Hall?
The
Carnegie Hall?” He thought she was joking.

“You heard me.” Her hand played now with his thigh.

“They let you work out of Carnegie Hall?” he asked, watching her intently.

“I prefer to work in. I use an artist’s studio there,” she explained. “Didn’t you know, boy, there are over a hundred of them living there?”

“Who’s the artist?” he asked, afraid she might be setting a trap for him.

“A pianist. From Juilliard.”

“And where is the pianist now?” he asked.

“On a date with a stranger. That’s why you and I can play there. Don’t worry.” She convinced him she was safe and, arm in arm, the two of them left the Goddard Beat.

In a taxi, driving down Broadway he tried to kiss her, but she wouldn’t let him. “Later,” she whispered. “Give us time, boy!” At Carnegie Hall, he followed her to the side entrance. A night porter scrutinized him as they got into the elevator.

She opened the door of the studio, turned on the lights, then dimmed them instantly. A large piano dominated the room. The rest of the furnishings consisted of a large double bed, a desk covered with musical scores, a bookshelf, a radio-phonograph console, and several objects of African art—tribal masks, fetish figures, and beaded bags.

“What sort of music does your friend play?” asked Osten, amused to be going through his first experience with a whore in the modest Carnegie Hall studio of a Juilliard music student.

“Guess.”

“Is your friend—black?”

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Then—is it jazz piano?” he asked.

“Jazz? Now what ever made you think of that?” she said, teasing him. “No—my black friend doesn’t play jazz! Guess again!”

“I give up!” he answered with a straight face.

“How about you? Do you play anything else but that?” she asked, touching his groin.

“A little,” he said and sat down at the piano. It was open, and almost involuntarily his hands fell on the keys. Unwilling to entertain her with a rock tune she was bound to know, he struck a few chords, then, to impress her, he awkwardly played a short passage.

She stood next to him, and when he finished he put his arm around her thighs and tipped her onto his lap.
Aroused by her nearness, he started to kiss her neck and nuzzle her shoulder.

“Schubert’s Quartet number fourteen. Right?” she asked. “Also known as
Death and the Maiden.”

Astonished, he slowly pulled back. “I don’t believe it! How did you know that?” he asked.

She got up and straightened her jump suit. “Black magic. What else?” she said, pointing at the fetishes.

It occurred to him that she could have heard the passage played by the Juilliard student. He started to play another piece.

“Debussy.
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,”
she said, and he stopped. “You play it well, boy!”

He stood up and closed the piano, suddenly glad that throughout the evening he had spoken to her only in his altered voice, for her musical ear might have unmasked him.

“Where did you learn music?” he asked.

Speaking in a southern drawl again, she replied, “Why? Ain’t it right for a little ol’ black girl to know what the white folks play?”

“You told me you were—”

“I told you the pianist who lives here is out on a date with a stranger,” she said in a firm voice. “Well, you’re the stranger. And this is where I play.” She sat down at the piano and began to play, then stopped as suddenly as she had begun.

“Chopin’s
Barcarole,”
he said, reciting like a music student in front of his teacher. “A tender nocturne with two main phrases that render the piece two-souled, like a dialogue of lovers. The modulation to C-sharp major evokes their kissing, petting, and lovemaking. The gently rocking rhythm of the bass solo suggests they may be making it in a boat—a gondola, perhaps.” He smiled. “You should have played at least up to bar 78, when they get it off together …”

She looked at him with unmitigated surprise. “Now how come you know all that, boy?”

“Now how come you can play like you do, doll?” he said, imitating her.

“I learned it at Juilliard.”

“And I at home.”

She walked over to him, and pressing her breasts against his chest, steered him slowly toward the bed. When he felt his legs touch the edge, he tried to pull her down but she resisted.

“What was a boy who knows Schubert, Debussy, and Chopin doing at the Goddard Beat?”

“Looking for his barcarole,” he said. “What was a classical pianist doing there?”

“Meeting a faun,” she said. “Paul, the guy you saw me with, is a music agent, and I guess I’m a prelude lie might take out some afternoon to meet music publishers and shop for a label.”

“Don’t waste your faun’s afternoons anymore,” said Osten. “My father owns Etude Classics.”

Music was thus the springboard of Osten’s initial infatuation with Donna. He saw her as his redeemer, the first person with whom he could be himself—without feeling severed from the other side of his being, where, as Goddard, he existed alone, hidden from view.

She was also the first black person he had known intimately. Everything about her—from the shape and color of her body to her middle-class South Bronx background to her spontaneous love of music—seemed exotic to him.

Soon after their first meeting he took Donna to a black-tie reception in his father’s Manhattan apartment. It was an annual event and that year it was to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Etude Classics.

There were about eighty people there, including the Etude executives, many of the composers and performers published on the Etude label, and assorted music critics. The appearance of Donna in a low-cut gold lamé gown with a slit skirt left the staid, distinguished company gasping.

Because this event was so important to his father, Osten had attended it every year since boyhood, and as
the only child of the company’s founder and president, he was known to most of those present. It was at one of these parties that, as a teenager, he had first met Goddard Lieberson and Boris Pregel, the two men whose views on life and art were to influence him long after both men were dead. As a rule, however, most of the guests were boring—doubly so, inasmuch as they were on their best behavior. Osten took a special delight in passing among them with Donna—the only black woman at the party—on his arm.

Introducing Donna to his father, he was amused to see the old man’s obvious consternation at the sight of her breasts bared to the nipples by the low-cut gown. Then he took her on a round of the other guests, noticing with pleasure their unsuccessful attempts to hide their shock.

As he and Donna moved through the crowd, Osten saw Patrick Domostroy, a man he had met several times at his father’s parties. Domostroy’s music, as well as his concerts, had once been highly successful, but some years ago the man had stopped composing and now he lived in obscurity, surfacing only from time to time.

Middle-aged, skinny, wrinkled, and balding, Domostroy moved through the room like a starved vulture. His voice had a hint of some foreign accent, and everything else about the man seemed foreign as well—his gestures, his quick glances and frenetic way of talking, his clothes forcefully sporty, his manner overly at ease. He was accompanied by a blue-eyed, puffy blonde much younger than he. When Domostroy saw Donna, he stared at her with such intense curiosity that Osten spontaneously stepped in front of her, as if to shield her from the man’s sight.

As for Domostroy, he had met Jimmy Osten on two or three occasions—always in the presence of Gerhard Osten and his guests and associates—and although they’d never exchanged more than a few words, Domostroy had found Osten’s remarks about his father’s company, and about music in general, uniformly naive. He also found the young man’s stare annoying and his manner wishy-washy and ineffectual. The kid was a boring wimp. Mentally Domostroy called him the Lukewarm Noodle. He
would have certainly avoided him now, had it not been for the young woman Osten was with. The black woman was unusually beautiful and statuesque; she was also self-possessed, graceful, and her patrician air made Domostroy wonder whether he might not have misjudged Jimmy Osten, or at least nicknamed him incorrectly.

When Osten and Donna passed nearby, Domostroy seized the opportunity to meet her. Osten made the introduction reluctantly, and when Donna recognized Domostroy’s name and thanked the composer for the pleasure his music had given her, Osten regretted the encounter even more.

Domostroy made no effort to hide the impression Donna had made on him. Ignoring Osten, he looked into her eyes and said, “Had I known you would like my music, I would have written twice as much.”

“You still can,” she said, flirting.

“I’m flattered,” said Domostroy, “and surprised. I wouldn’t expect you to like my music.”

“Because I’m black?” asked Donna.

“Yes—and I’m white,” said Domostroy, frankly staring at her. “It’s a matter of different rhythmic intensity.”

Osten felt the blood rushing to his face. “This is idiotic,” he said, turning to Domostroy and lowering his voice in anger. “Are you also going to talk to Donna about the Negroid natural rhythm?” He could barely restrain himself. “Come on, Donna, let’s go.” He took her arm, but she resisted.

“Wait a minute, Jimmy,” she said, lifting her arm from his grasp. “Mr. Domostroy is right. To me, rhythm is not a musical exercise inhibited by bar lines, but an impulse—my body’s own natural percussion. My ancestors were African slaves who communicated from one slave ship to another with Atumpan and Ashanti talking drums. And even though my father was a jazz pianist, the first musical instrument he taught me to play, when I was still a child, was an mbira, a thumb piano with simple metal reeds and a gourd resonator—”

“—discovered in South Africa by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century,” interjected Domostroy, “and misnamed
by them the Kaffir.” He paused. “Could you, by any chance, be the daughter of Henry Lee Downes?” he asked her.

“Yes, I am,” she replied. “I was a late child. My father died when I was fourteen. Did you know him?”

“I heard your father play,” said Domostroy. “He was a great jazz virtuoso. He could make the piano sound like a bell or a horn.”

Donna gave him an amused look. “It’s kind of you to say that, Mr. Domostroy, but what to you is probably just black history,” she said, “is to me a living rhythm—a music like no other.” She turned to Osten and said playfully, “When Mr. Domostroy listens to his past, I’ll bet he hears Elizabethan madrigals. I’m sure a Steinway was the first musical instrument he saw at home as a boy.”