Nathan's eyes sting. Sweat runs off his brow. At some point he has risen and-knees cold and weak-sat back down. Through the glass of the french doors, through his own reflection, he sees his neighbor, armed with his shovel, glaring away. Woozily, Nathan gets back on his feet. He digs his hands in his soaked pockets in a heroic attempt to appear nonchalant. But it is all in vain. He lurches forward, shattering the image he hoped to convey, a kind of lawyerly majesty, peering out his windows, taking in the view, plotting his next point of order. Objection, objection! Barton scowls, and Nathan's eyes rendezvous with his neighbor's at Baron's latest deposit, a steamy green log set artfully atop a small mound freshly snowed, like a cairn showing the way. Across the little yard Nathan offers up an expression of profound surprise. Again, he drifts-
"Who's the kid?" Isabel had asked last night.
At the end of the New Haven's bar slouched a tow-headed youth of sixteen or seventeen. His body was a pubescent collection of lines and angles, his white hair as fine and feathery as a child's. Nathan noted the saxophone case between his knees.
Nearing the end of "Cherokee," Eddie Young pulled up short. He twisted off Parker's finish with a riff of his own, then ceased mid-run, his saxophone in a pose, his quivering lips receding off the mouthpiece, teeth bared like a whinnying horse. Then Young nodded at the blond kid, who, without ceremony, took his case across his knees and assembled the saxophone with the trained, passionless calm of a sniper snapping together his weapon. He gave it a neck and a mouthpiece and hung it with its strap and, sucking on a reed, took three strides toward the band. Tedium and indifference had long ago veiled Isabel's cherub face. Really, was all she'd replied, unenthralled, when Nathan told her he used to play the saxophone. After that he ignored her. She, like the others, couldn't understand. Claire was the only one who cared about all that, who understood the perils of an abandoned dream. Why had he given up? Why is the sky blue? Why was it so hard to attempt, so simple to stumble, so terrifying to risk all that polluting ambition? Claire was the only one who urged him to play in the privacy of their apartment. To play, to do, to be anything, to keep playing and playing and playing-
Nathan watches, watched, as Eddie Young brought the microphone up to the boy's saxophone, then bent to talk into it. "Here's a young man I'd like you all to know, ladies and gentlemen. This morning he won a contest at the Conservatory. I had the honor of being the judge of this contest and also the grand prize. The award was to come down here tonight and share this late gig before youall." He paused, then, extending an arm toward the boy: "Mr. Ernest Filch. Ladies and gentlemen. Ernie Filch."
Sparse applause. The band picked at their shirts. Eddie Young led the way into an old standard. When the bridge came to an end the drummer and keyboardist backed down, settling their pitch. The youth's hands snapped to life like a ma'orette's. In one fluid motion the mouthpiece neared, the teeth struck. No one was prepared. The entire club was overcome, as though everyone a eaten the same thing at once. The boy was terrifying, working the changes fluidly, as though he'd begun practicing his finger movements on the spindles of his crib. Nathan pictured his own saxophone in dissembled pieces, the neck wrapped in the chamois cloth, the strap rolled away, the reeds tucked in their paper sleeves, all of it entombed beneath clothes and tennis racquets in a back closet at Claire's. He reminded himself that he still burned with the flames that everyone-the great New York lawyers, his instructors at the Manhattan School of Music, the audition jury at Juilliard-once spoke of as a kind of genius. When Claire used to whisper: How fine you were, how wonderfully you played. Together-what a team!-they were wonderful.
They were wonderful. How fine.
And where did it go? Where did the music go? Where did Claire go? Then it was years later and Nathan hadn't picked up the saxophone, and when he did one day on a whim the instrument was a small strange animal stiff and lifeless in his hands, and he put it down, his affections for it like old teenage love, leftovers from the first great meal of his life left too long.
Nathan has changed out of his suit. He stands before the french doors as before, though now in a blue blazer and light gray turtleneck, garnished with a nautical motif. A burgundy leather portmanteau hangs from one hand, his attache case from the other. After the New Haven he had fully intended to bring Isabel back here for a nightcap and then out to East Hampton. Schreck could have handled the arraignments, Ruth the pleas. Somewhere he changed his mind. Somewhere he wanted to show her where Milton used to take him. Coney Island, capital of night. Somewhere it went wrong. She sobbed loudly. A car door slammed, but whose? Her flight along the boardwalk, her heels catching between the slats-
Outside now Barton has gone. Snow crosses the blue security light in the garden, a single beam of frost drawn through the night, daring Nathan to cross or stay. He is conscious, here and there, of new aches.
"Baron, come."
But outside on the stoop, Nathan and dog both are stopped by the sight of Oliver Schreck standing across the street. Snow has collected on his shoulders, salted the toboggan hat on his head, dusted away his tracks as if he has been there always, like a stanchion pile-driven into the sidewalk. Though Nathan believes he's caught Schreck clapping shut a cellular phone.
He leads Baron toward his car. Schreck, his feet ripping free of the snow, heads him off: "Nathan."
Baron begins to growl.
"Oliver, what are you doing here?"
"Good dog, good."
"How did you know about the apartment?"
"What are you talking about? Nathan, what the hell happened?"
Nathan's arm, as if of its own accord, waves behind him. The apartment, it seems to say, will explain it all. "This address-"
Schreck eyes Baron warily. "I've been here before what do you mean? I was-you invited me, Nathan. You let me, you know, use it. Once or twice. You don't remember?"
With a glance toward Schreck, Nathan feels a peculiar embarrassment, that sense, almost, of indecency that he has been Schreck's partner, his confederate in forgotten adventures. In the snow, wrapped and hatted like a child, the prick looks so vulnerable and friendly. "Oliver, I'm in a hurry."
"Where to?"
"Rikers Island. We talked about this."
"Don't go.”
"Not to see Johnny. It's Amparo-"
"Don't. Nathan, it's Isabel, didn't you hear?"
"Hear?"
"They found her, buddy boy," he says mournfully. "She's dead."
Nathan can't read him. Did Schreck think he was breaking the news, or just confirming the obvious? His own face a mask, Nathan considers him as something he might buy, a display of clothing in a window. But he can't afford it. "I don't know what you're talking about," he says, letting Baron in the car.
Schreck cocks his head. "Why are you lying?"
A cab pulls up and Ruth emerges and settles in the snow beside Schreck, her bulk swaddled in red wool. They stand together, a mismatched pair sending off their child to college, or the prom. They exchange a glance that registers strangely with Nathan: is it worry or pride? Ruth and Schreck have exchanged only venom and vitriol, nothing remotely civil since law school. Not until now. Or so he thought.
"And then there's this matter of Krivit," Schreck says. His voice has lowered an octave, matured. As though one of the Oliver Schrecks is an act. This Schreck, that Schreck. "Are you working on the brief?" he says flatly.
How does he know? Why does he know? Why does he care? Who is Oliver Schreck? These thoughts pass through Nathan's mind like little grace notes. "I told you, I didn't take the job," he says.