“I just asked.”
“Well, don’t.”
“Then what is it with Helen?”
“Jesus, I don’t know what you want me to say!”
“Is it because of... her and me?”
“Partly, I guess.”
“Man, you know the percentage of women who are pure when they get married?”
“No,” Bud said.
“Well, it’s damn slim. You ever write to Helen?”
“No.”
“When’d you see her last?”
“When I was in on V-J Day.”
“And you never called her again?”
“I went overseas. Even if I had wanted to call her, I couldn’t have. And, besides, I didn’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“Look, can we drop this? If you don’t mind, I’d like to drop it.”
“All right, all right,” Andy said placatingly. “Hey, you mind if I sit in with these guys?”
“No, go right ahead.”
“You want to try your hand?”
“At bop? You’re kidding, Andy.”
“Got to learn it if you expect to pick up where you left off.”
“I don’t expect to,” Bud said.
“What do you mean?”
“Just that I’m not planning on being a musician. The piano is a lot of fun but... well, I’m going to college.”
“Man,” Andy said, “the only thing to be is a musician.”
“Well, I don’t feel that way. Frank doesn’t, either. We’re both enrolling at City College next week.”
“All the way up there?”
“It’s a good engineering school. Frank wants engineering. Besides, I may take my own apartment.”
“Tony’s continuing with his music,” Andy said defensively.
“Yes, I know.”
“Have you seen him yet?”
“I stopped by this afternoon. He’s still got his Florida tan.”
“He’s nowhere, you know that, don’t you? As a musician, I mean. No ideas. He’s the corniest bastard in the world.”
“Well,” Bud said noncommittally.
“I think he’s registered at Juilliard. How they ever took a crumb like him is beyond me.”
“I thought you liked Tony.”
“Who said I didn’t? What’s that got to do with the way he blows his horn. Tony thinks all there is to being a musician is knowing how to read music. Man, you’ve got to achieve, you’ve got to express. If you don’t express with your music, you might as well be dead.”
“He’s not so bad.”
“He’s the world’s worst,” Andy said. “I’m gonna sit in.”
“Go ahead.”
Andy shoved back his chair and walked past the redhead’s table and then to the bandstand. The tenor man’s face lit up when he saw Andy. He stepped down from the stand and took his hand and shook it heartily, and Andy clapped him on the shoulder and said something, and they both laughed. Then Andy gestured toward the trumpet chair, and the tenor man nodded his head happily, and the trumpet man came down and shook hands with Andy. He handed Andy his horn, and Andy took the holstered mouthpiece from his jacket pocket, unsnapped the holster and then fitted the mouthpiece to the horn. The trumpet man wandered off toward the bar, and Andy clambered up to his chair, and the tenor man called off the beat, and they went into “Body and Soul.”
Andy’s playing had changed considerably, in keeping with the new style. The old forcefulness of his horn was gone now, replaced by a quietly intricate playfulness, a tour de force of his chord knowledge. The same grasping quality was there, though, a restless searching feeling, as if he were groping for the answers to life through his music. It was a peculiar sound to listen to, a lonely sound somehow, and yet a sound that demanded empathy, a sound you wanted to help, a sound that forced you to identify with it, as if Andy’s struggle were your own struggle and the struggle transcended the mere medium of music. Bud listened to it, admiring as always Andy’s artistry and feeling this peculiar mounting, reaching sensation within himself, so that he wished he could help Andy somehow, wished he could get up there with him and help him push the notes through the horn, help him battle his way out of the maze and climb up above the obfuscating clouds to where everything was very clean and very blue, up there to where you could breathe deeply and wash out your lungs. But you couldn’t get there. You fought with it, and you willed it, but it was always out of your grasp, you were chained to earth, and there was always this despairing disappointment when Andy stopped blowing, this feeling of almost, almost having touched it, and yet within this disappointment there was a compensating factor of almost-achievement, just a little way to go now, just a little farther and you would be there, if only you could stick with it, if only you could blow away the mist and find what you were looking for, this knowledge that here was promise and it was...
Better to have...
Even... even a promise... because most have...
Nothing at all.
His music drained you. It left you washed out and tired, but it also left you happy in a strangely sad way.
The boys played through a set, and then Andy came back to the table with the tenor man.
“Bud,” he said, “like you to meet Eddie Cann, one of the best tenor men in the business. Eddie, meet my boy, Bud.”
Eddie extended his hand and Bud took it. “Pleased to know you, man,” Eddie said.
“Same here,” Bud answered.
“My boy won’t approve of this,” Andy said, “but who’s the carrot-top at the next table, Eddie?”
Eddie glanced over his shoulder. His eyes were very white in his brown face, and a sheen of sweat clung to his forehead. He grinned broadly and then said, “Iris, man. You dig her?”
“I dig her,” Andy said.
“She a real music-lover,” Eddie said. “What I mean, a real one.”
“I’m hip,” Andy said. “How about an intro?”
“Gone, man. Come on over.”
“Come on, Bud,” Andy said.
“I want to get home,” Bud said.
“What for?”
“I’ve got a lot of clothes to buy tomorrow.”
“My boy’s up for readjustment exercises on the morrow,” Andy said to Eddie. “Look, Bud, stick around a while longer.”
“No, I’ve got to go.”
“You don’t mind, do you? I mean, my sticking around like this. That chick has eyes that are the biggest, you know that, don’t you?”
“I kind of figured.”
“Yeah, well... anyway, you’re home for good now, so what’s the rush?”