Perfect Sax (5 page)

See, here is where I think parents really need to get their own life. But that was me. I steered the conversation back to the bidding. “It was such a generous winning bid, Zenya.”

“Oh, Bill can afford it,” she said, laughing. “My husband collects art, cars, vintage rock guitars. Over the years, I swear he’s paid a fortune for his Stratocasters and whatnot. And he tells me the prices just keep climbing up. You know collectors. They want something and they have to have it now. You should have seen the way his eyes were gleaming when they were describing that saxophone. Anyway, the money goes to a good cause. We can’t complain.”

I shook my head, wondering what life must be like when
one can spend a hundred grand on a whim. My personal reactions moved back and forth between discomfort at how these people seemed to take wealth for granted and gratitude that they supported worthy institutions. The Woodburn School people provide a number of full scholarships to some of the city’s least-advantaged kids. And they also donate brand-new instruments to our city’s beleaguered public schools. Without the fund-raising work and generosity of supporters such as the Knights, these children would not have such wonderful musical opportunities.

“So you’re leaving, Madeline?”

“By any chance, Zenya, are you driving near Hollywood on your way home?”

“We could. Do you need a ride?”

“Actually—”

Just then there was a commotion at the entrance. A man in a tuxedo, one of the guests, was standing at the main door to the Tager Auditorium, yelling.

“What’s that?” I asked, interrupting myself.

“It’s Bill,” Zenya Knight said, her face perplexed. “What’s he going on about?”

“Zenya!” Bill was calling to his wife and rushing down the steps toward us. “It’s the goddamned sax. It’s gone. It’s disappeared. Can you believe that? I bet you that asshole Dave Hutson stole Kirby’s priceless frigging Selmer!”

R
ich guys. There are just not enough bucks out there to convince me to marry one. I get the part about the fabulous home, the fabulous shopping, the fabulous bling-bling. It’s just I also see the huge hunk of her soul a girl has to pay in order to catch a rich guy and keep him. My mom used to tell me it’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich guy as a poor guy…but it really isn’t. Not for me. And judging by my father’s modest teaching income, not for my mom either. So what the hell was she talking about?

“Saddle up!” yelled Bill Knight as he pulled open the trunk hatch, tossing in a heavy gift basket, and jumped onto the driver’s seat of the incredibly large, incredibly white Hummer H1, ready to roll.

“Bill,” called his wife breathlessly, “I told Madeline that we’d be happy to drive her—”

“Get in, y’all!” Bill commanded.

Both Zenya and I trotted around the white behemoth and jumped in.

“Are you sure—”

“Come on!”

I was not quite certain catching a ride home with the enraged Texan and his young wife was such a good idea.

Bill was still fuming. “Can you believe it, Zenya? I am
just betting that Dave Hutson took our sax.” His short, steely-gray hair seemed to bristle as he punched the gas pedal, jerking the gargantuan tank away from the curb with a burst of pent-up horsepower, nearly mowing down the parking attendant, and then slammed on his brakes at the last second. “Jeeesus!” he yelled. “Get that guy out of my frigging way!”

“Oh, dear.” Zenya sighed, mostly to herself.

“If you want to let me off here…?” I had
more
than second thoughts. I was trapped in a mammoth-size luxury vehicle with a madman who had just been robbed of his “precious.” Holy cow.

“We’ll get you home.” Bill Knight’s voice was tight and I could guess he didn’t really want to hear much more from me in the backseat. I pulled on the seat belt and fastened it just as our tank cranked into a torque-frenzied sharp right turn.

Zenya sat quietly in front. “What did they tell you?” she asked, her voice holding just a hint of quiet concern. “Did they really say Dave took our saxophone?”

“No one knows
what
happened, Zenya,” Bill said, frustration and anger making him mock her. “It was just
gone.
”

“But the instrument case…?” she asked.

“The case was there. Lucky I insisted they unlock it and show me the sax. And well, looky there, it was gone. Like they thought I’d hand over a hundred-thousand-dollar check and not even look at my sax? Right.”

In the well-lit, almost vacant avenues of downtown, the extraordinary stainless-steel-clad Disney Concert Hall, with its massive silvery swoops and flips, loomed over us as Bill slowed before he took another turn.

“I’m sure it’ll all get straightened out,” Zenya said.

“Like hell it will. I was ticked off that they let Sebastian play the Selmer. That was bad enough. But now, who knows? Maybe that asshole Hutson is going to wake up his boy
tonight and let him play it. I bought a sax in pristine, mint,
new
condition. Now that sure ain’t what they are delivering, I can tell you.”

“Oh, dear,” Zenya said again.

I could see her face reflected in the side mirror. Despite her husband’s aggressive driving, she remained serene. Zenya Knight was not like the other Woodburn committee women. She was probably only a few years older than me, maybe midthirties, tops. She seemed softer, more passive than some of the Woodburn women I’d dealt with. While the other women were undoubtedly attractive—their beauty was premeditated. These wealthy women had begun to take on an artificial sameness, hair all highlighted to perfection, acrylic nails polished, this body part reduced or that body part enlarged by gifted cosmetic surgeons. Dressed expensively in the same designer labels, they had become more perfect and less individual. In contrast, Zenya had genuinely lovely skin, a naturally youthful face, true beauty. Needless to say, Zenya was a second wife.

“Bill, we need to drop Madeline at her home. She’s in the Hollywood Hills,” Zenya said.

“I really appreciate this lift,” I said, trying to get back to polite small talk.

“Zenya, I’ll be damned!” Bill Knight was yelling again. “Who the hell is that in the silver Escalade up ahead.”

We were just slowing down for a red light, all the more ridiculous as it was almost one in the morning and there were only two other cars on the entire eight lanes of First Street. These cars were slowing to a stop ahead of us, following traffic laws, despite the fact that there was no cross-traffic whatsoever. “Isn’t that Dave Hutson up ahead of that Beemer? I’ll be damned. Dave Hutson thinks he’s making his getaway!”

“What are you going to do?” Zenya asked.

“Maybe I should just run him down. If that frigging BMW wasn’t stopped right between our cars, I think I’d just give it a try. The Hummer could do it, too.”

I gulped.

“Did I tell you, Madeline,” Bill called back as we waited out the light, “that the Hutson boy, Ryan Hutson, can’t play a lick?”

See, I realize Bill Knight is a successful businessman. I get that he’s an old rich guy and used to getting his way. Sure, he’s a little high-strung. I just wished like hell I wasn’t strapped into his car, right about then, as the man envisioned pulling troop maneuvers over another man’s Cadillac.

“You hear me okay back there, Madeline?” Bill called.

“Sure thing.”

“I say, this Hutson kid isn’t really much of a sax player. He got into the jazz band at the Woodburn, but it’s pretty clear he doesn’t belong there. The boy is a fair sight-reader, I’ll give him that. He can read the sheet music a bit. But the thing is, he can’t go off the page. He can’t improvise. He’s got no brain for it. And ear? Hell, that Hutson kid has no damn ear whatsoever, does he, Zenya?”

“Now, Bill. Ryan is a very nice boy,” Zenya said, in her soft way. “He really is.”

“I’m talking about an ear for jazz now, darling. Not whether we should invite the kid over to swim in our pool. But what I’m telling Madeline here is this Ryan is not like our Kirby. Kirby is a gifted individual and he can play the pants off of that Ryan Hutson.”

Mercifully, the light changed. But that was when Bill Knight, fueled by smoking martinis, goaded by the pain of seeing his prize Selmer disappear, and empowered by the heft of a vehicle the likes of which Arnold Schwarzenegger drives, hit the gas.

“Hold on,” Zenya called back to me, grabbing the side rail above the passenger door. I gripped the side of the table that is conveniently placed in the middle of the backseat, just in case anyone was in the mood for a picnic. And then to her husband she asked, “Bill, what are you doing?”

“Watch what you say, Zenya,” he answered. “I’ve gotten rid of better wives than you, darling, for saying less.”

See? Didn’t I tell you the marrying-a-rich-guy thing was wildly overrated? How many vacations in Paris are worth withstanding such contempt? How many Rolexes? How many six-hundred-dollar pairs of heels?

Zenya just laughed a girlish laugh.

Well, perhaps I’m more sensitive than some.

“Here we go!” Bill had managed to shoot out and pass the BMW X5 and gun the Hummer right up behind the Escalade. “Looks like Dave is driving a new car. Let’s say hello.”

The large Hummer H1 closed in on the back of Dave Hutson’s SUV. “They don’t know we’re here,” Bill said, bugged at being ignored. “Can you believe this guy? He’s not even worried about driving off with my saxophone. How do you like…” At that point, the front of the Hummer made contact with the back of the brand-new Cadillac Escalade. Holy shit. “…that?” Bill asked.

The horn blared from the car we’d just struck. Then it pulled into gear and barreled off, turning sharply up a nearly deserted Figueroa.

“Bill…” Zenya’s voice was light, if slightly agitated.

“Drop me off anyplace here, folks.”

“So Hutson believes his Caddy can outrun this cruiser? I don’t think so,” Bill said, and he gunned the engine, pulling across the double yellow lines and right up beside the Cadillac. We were now driving on the wrong side of the street, side by side, as both vehicles shot down the boulevard with
their speeds, as near as I could tell, approaching fifty. Bill Knight pushed the button that rolled the power window down next to Zenya. “Pull over, Dave!”

The tinted window of the Cadillac SUV slid down and a round, red-faced man started yelling. “You’re crazy, Knight. You’re going to pay for the damage to my car.” Connie Hutson, seated beside him, looked as pale as a piece of white bread despite her excess makeup.

“Right. Just subtract it from the hundred thousand dollars you owe me for stealing the goddamned saxophone, moron.”

“Screw you!”

Just then, up about a block ahead, from out of nowhere, a lone Toyota Tercel carefully turned the corner. It found itself smack in our lane, aiming straight at us. Never mind that the small red car was in the proper lane and we weren’t—we were doing nearly sixty miles per hour and we weighed just over seven thousand pounds. Let’s say Mr. Tercel wasn’t too proud to launch his car quickly up on the curb in order to avoid certain annihilation.

“Bill, this is getting dangerous.”

“Not to us, darling. To that bastard Hutson. He could have pulled his car over anytime, but then he’d have to face arrest charges for stealing our property.”

While we were avoiding getting ourselves tangled with the Tercel, Dave Hutson and his shocked wife had made another sharp turn, heading down Ninth Street. Bill cursed. We had already charged through the intersection, missing Ninth, but now Bill put his foot on the break and tried to pull a fast 180-degree turn. Not the H1’s best move. Luckily, there was no traffic here, because the Hummer is a hugely wide, hugely tall, hugely heavy vehicle, one big enough and bad enough to strap a missile launcher to its hood, and I, for one, was thanking God Bill Knight hadn’t ordered that option. But all that torque or G-force or whatever the hell was now
pulling at us hard, swinging us out way too wide. A few seconds of painful tire screeching and we had overshot the street and blasted up on the sidewalk, picking up speed. In a few seconds more I realized we were about to barrel right back into the dazed Tercel, still hanging up on the curb. Hell.

“Excuse me, I hate to be a bother, but…” I was sure I could jump out if he would slow down for just a minute.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Zenya said, waving her hand like you’d dismiss a small indiscretion, like a lunch guest spilling her water glass, “it’s just boys having fun with their toys.”

“You think I’m having fun?” Bill hollered, and swung down onto the street just a few feet before he would have surely plowed into the stuck Tercel.

Zenya smothered a giggle. I smothered a scream. Bill maneuvered the turn onto Ninth.

“Where is he?” yelled Bill, searching the street.

“It seems he’s escaped,” Zenya said, also looking for the Cadillac that got away.

Bill began slowing down and turned to his wife. “You got the Woodburn directory?”

“I think so, but—”

“Give me their address. We’ll surprise the Hutsons at home.”

“Oh, Bill…”

“They live in Pasadena. What’s the street?” Bill demanded.

“Looks like I have just about enough time to hop out,” I said, not waiting for the car to come to a complete halt. I opened the door as Bill said, “Hey, wait. We’ll get you home, sweetheart.” He actually sounded, despite a touch of maniacal road rage, like a pretty sweet guy.

I was down on the sidewalk before Zenya could add her promise that they would take me home right after Bill “got this out of his system.”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured them, and in a roar of exhaust they were off.

Only when I was standing there in my best high heels, in the still of the night on squalid South Broadway, as a breeze blew some litter into the gutter and swallowed the fading roar of the departing Hummer’s engine, did I realize that I’d managed to leave my purse on the cute backseat table. Damn it all. I had no money. I had no cell phone. And I was standing in the middle of a deserted street, in a deserted section of a pretty freaking deserted downtown, way past midnight.