“Well,” he said, “what can I do for you, Andy?”
“My father sent me down,” Andy said, his voice cracking.
“Oh,” Bud said, still not understanding.
“He works in your father’s office. Your father told him you needed a trumpet player.”
“Oh, yes,” Bud said, abruptly remembering. He’d told his father about needing a trumpet player one night at supper. His father had mentioned the kid to him a few days ago, telling him the kid had been playing trumpet for close to eight years. Bud had given his father the address of the club and told him to send the kid down. He looked at Andy Silvera now, figuring him for no more than sixteen and wondering about the truth of that “eight years” business. He got off the bench, walked to him, and extended his hand. Andy shifted the umbrella from his right hand and then reached out abruptly, awkwardly, like someone who is not used to the convention of handshaking. From the corner of his eye Bud could see Reen regarding them with wry amusement. Reen was the one who’d called Tony “Bundler Banner” the first time he’d seen Tony in his mackinaw. As far as Reen was concerned, you either wore mackinaws when you were twelve years old or when you were up in the North Woods. He’d explained this to Tony, whose mother had bought him the bulky red-and-blue plaid job, but Tony — for some obscure reason — couldn’t see any humor in it. Reen observed the orange-and-black socks on Andy Silvera’s feet now, and then his eyes took in the rolled green trousers, and Bud saw his heavy eyebrows quirk upward like individual shaggy grinning mouths.
“Come on in,” Bud said to the kid. “Come meet the boys.”
Andy nodded self-consciously, then smiled self-consciously, and then followed Bud like an uncertain ghost, the black umbrella in one hand dripping a watery trail onto the floor, the trumpet case in the other. Bud led him over to Tony and said, “This is Tony Banner, the leader of the band.”
Tony stuck out his hand, and the kid fumbled awkwardly with the umbrella, shifting it to the hand that held the trumpet case and then taking Tony’s hand. Tony smiled and gave him his special weight-lifter, bear-crusher, bone-cracker, knuckle-gnarler handshake, and the kid just nodded with a pained, shocked look on his smooth, peach-fuzz face. When Tony released his hand, the kid shifted the umbrella back again, looked quickly at the hand that had suffered Tony’s treatment, and then raised his eyes just as quickly, a little guiltily. He had a nice-enough-looking face, Bud thought, with high cheekbones and a good wide mouth, weak still, the way a mouth will be when it hasn’t matured yet. He had ears that hugged his head, and his eyebrows and sideburns were a sandy brown, and his eyes were deep brown, almost black, flecked with chips of amber. His eyes looked intelligent, but they were stabbed with this fear now, and the fear made it impossible to tell anything about them or from them. He had a good nose, cleanly sweeping down from the arch of his brows, unbroken, with wide flaring nostrils that somehow intensified the frightened-animal look about him. His hands looked surprisingly mature for a kid’s hands — wide, with square fingers and well-pared nails, the backs of the fingers curling with blond-bronze hair.
Bud introduced him to all the boys, and the umbrella shift occurred just before each handshake, like a football team going into action after the signal for the snapback has been given. Frank sat at his drums with a curious smirk on his face, and he looked down at the kid from his superior perch, and Bud hoped he wouldn’t hop on him the way he’d hopped on Vic just a little while ago.
Frank acknowledged the introduction without reaching down to shake hands, and then he said, “You play trumpet, huh?”
“Yes,” Andy said. “Yes, I do.” He looked up at Frank as though he were having trouble focusing him properly. He wet his lips, and Bud noticed for the first time the pink, almost white ring of muscle smack in the center of his upper lip, the coat of arms of the trumpet player. It looked like a miniature smoke ring that had slipped out of his mouth and somehow got glued to his lip, hanging there in the bow of his mouth.
Frank, enjoying his elevated position on the cushioned box, enjoying the superiority of advanced age, enjoying just being a bastard, asked, “How long you been playing, kid?”
“Seven years. Well, almost eight years.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” Andy said.
“How old are you, kid?” Frank asked, the smirk still on his mouth.
“Fifteen,” Andy said. He didn’t say it with embarrassment, the way a fifteen-year-old will when he wants to be sixteen or seventeen. He said it matter-of-factly, the direct answer to a direct question, and Bud realized he was not yet conscious of the vast difference between fifteen and sixteen.
“And you’ve been playing eight years?” Frank asked, his eyebrows raised in skepticism.
“Yes, almost,” Andy said.
“You ever play with a band before?”
“At... in school,” Andy said.
“Which school?”
“Boys’ High.”
“You go to Boys’ High?”
“Yes.”
“You know a guy named Goldstein? Allan Goldstein?”
“No,” Andy said.
“What term are you in?”
“Fourth.”
“Goldstein plays trumpet. You sure you don’t know him?”
“No,” Andy said. “No, I... I never heard of him. Is he... does he play in the band there?”
“Sure,” Frank said.
“Well, I don’t know him,” Andy answered. “I’m sorry.”
Tony was listening to all this, slightly bored by the conversation. Frank shrugged and retightened the nut on one of his cymbals, dismissing the kid, and Tony said, “You want to warm up over there in the corner, Andy? We’ll run through a number and then you can sit in after that, okay?”
“All right,” Andy said. He looked around, seemingly confused, and then walked over to where Reen was sitting.
“Take off your coat and hat, kid,” Reen said. “You’ll catch peenumonia.”
“Thanks,” Andy said, unsmiling. He made a big production of putting down first the umbrella, then the trumpet case, then taking off the hat, then the raincoat. Reen winced when he saw the kid was wearing a faded red sweater with the green trousers. Andy hung his coat on the rack, unsnapped his trumpet case, and tenderly lifted his horn from its velvet bed. From one of the pockets in the case, he took out a chamois cloth and wiped the horn slowly and gently, passing the cloth over the gleaming surface. He reached into his pocket then and pulled out a mouthpiece in a leather holster. He unsnapped the holster and fitted the mouthpiece to the horn instantly. He put the horn to his mouth, prbb-prbb-ing his lips against the mouthpiece, and then opened the spit valve on the bend of the brass and blew effortlessly, a dribbling of moisture hitting the floor. He closed the spit valve and then worked his fingers over the valves for a few minutes, shaking the cold out of them, and then he began to blow some prolonged warm-up notes, nothing fancy, just long low notes, very softly, to take the stiffness out of his lip. He didn’t sound like much. To Bud’s ears, Vic sounded better when he warmed up. He turned his attention away from the kid and back to Tony.