The Smoke Jumper (3 page)

What Ed found most irritating of all was the baseball cap the boy always wore. It was also black and, of course, worn back-to-front and had DEATH ZONE - CREW MEMBER on it as if written by a hemorrhaging spider. Ed was not by nature a violent person, quite the opposite. But sometimes the urge to remove this cap and with it whack young Dexter Rothwell around the ears was almost overpowering.

Since finishing college three years ago, teaching piano was how Ed made enough money to keep on composing. During the winter his only other source of income was from playing every Friday night in a downtown bar, which despite being paid little money and less attention, he still enjoyed. With his teaching, quite unintentionally, he seemed to have cornered the market in the spoiled offspring of the city’s most graceless high-achievers. He had been teaching this particular brat for six months now and not once had the kid smiled or even looked him in the eye.

Ed stared out of the window, trying to detect a trace of Chopin amid the faltering cacophony that filled the Rothwells’ manicured drawing room. The January darkness that had barely lifted a corner all day was closing in again and the rain was still coming down. He watched it making rivulets on the waxed finish of Mrs Rothwell’s black Mercedes convertible that basked in the driveway beside Ed’s rusting Nissan. The boy’s streak-blond, spandex-clad mother was, as usual, working out in the gym across the hallway, wearing one of those headphone radios, presumably to drown the horrors of Dexter Jr at the keyboard. She was a thin, small-boned woman with a pointed face and whenever he caught a glimpse of her through the doorway, pounding away on the jogging machine, Ed was reminded of a demented mouse trapped in a treadmill.

Dexter Rothwell Jr finished and slumped back from the keys.

‘Chopin sucks,’ he said.

‘You think so? Really?’ Ed tried to sound light, amused even.

‘Yeah.’

‘You’ve obviously been too busy to practice since last week.’

The boy grunted and began to pick his nose. They sat for a moment listening to the muted thump-thump-thump of Mrs Mouse clocking up the miles across the hallway. Ed took off his glasses, the old ones with the Scotch-taped hinge, and gave them a polish. It reminded him that he couldn’t afford, literally, to be impulsive here. He took a deep breath and put them back on.

‘Okay. What shall we play, then? Want to try some more Led Zeppelin?’

He wasn’t kidding. In a desperate effort to engage the boy’s interest two weeks ago he’d had him play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and a couple of Rolling Stones numbers. There had been the faintest flicker of interest.

‘That sucks too.’

‘Wow, they all seem to suck. Chopin, Mozart, Led Zeppelin.’

‘Yeah, right.’

Ed let the silence hang for a moment. The boy was glowering out at the rain, still picking his nose. Ed studied the sullen, slack-jawed profile and made a few rapid calculations about the damage he was about to inflict on his already parlous finances. Well, so be it. He stood up, plucked the music from in front of Dexter’s nose and stuffed it into his briefcase. The boy looked up at him.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing, Dexter. And that’s the problem.’

‘We only just started.’

‘Yep and I’m through. I’m out of here.’

He opened the door and came out into the hallway just as the boy’s mother emerged from the gym, toweling her face with care so as not to mess up her lipstick. She frowned.

‘You two done already?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Done and dusted.’

He picked up his coat from the chair by the front door. Dexter stood shiftily in the drawing room doorway, shrugging and mugging at his mother as if the world had gone crazy. Mrs Rothwell looked at her watch.

‘But it’s only—’

‘The thing is, Mrs Rothwell, you’re wasting your money and I’m wasting my time.’

‘Why? Isn’t Dexy making progress?’

Ed looked at the boy. He was standing there, twisting his fists into the belly of his T-shirt and scowling at the floor like a jilted Neanderthal. It was a pathetic sight and for an instant Ed felt an inkling of pity.

‘No, ma’am. He isn’t. In fact, frankly, Dexy sucks.’

 

The elation lasted only until he got home. The heating was still off and water was still dripping into the garbage bin that he’d placed where the piano used to be. He showered in cold water, singing to keep himself from freezing and from thinking too much about what a reckless fool he had been to give the Rothwells the bullet. Then he made himself some hot chocolate, microwaved half a pizza left over from last night and ate it huddled in his overcoat in front of the TV news which chronicled nothing but doom and disaster and though his own paled by comparison, his mood remained resolutely grim.

They liked him to show up at the bar at eight even though the place never got crowded until much later, so around seven-thirty he again braved the rain out to his car and set off across town in one long and gloomy crawl of traffic.

The bar was called Ralff’s, though who Ralff was and why he spelled his name like that, Ed had never been able to discover. It stood near the waterfront on the fringe of a jauntily revamped area that was thronged with tourists in summer but on a winter’s evening such as this seemed like a sad mistake. Apart from Ralff’s the only reason for going there was the movie theater just across the street, which was good for business but bad for parking. Tonight, however, Ed was in luck.

Through the smear of his windshield as he came around the corner, he could see a Jeep pulling out of a space right outside the bar. He signaled right and stopped to let it leave. The car behind honked though it must have been obvious why Ed had stopped. He looked in his mirror and saw a beaten-up white VW bug. It honked again.

Ed shook his head. What a moron. The Jeep vacated the space and Ed moved forward so he could reverse into it. He assumed the VW would either pass him or wait for him, but as he shifted into reverse and turned in his seat he saw it nip sharply into his space. He couldn’t believe it. There was no way he was going to take that kind of asshole behavior from anyone. He switched on his hazard lights and got out.

Two people were getting out of the VW. The driver was a young woman and as Ed stomped toward her, she flashed him a smile of such dazzling innocence that he thought for a moment she must be looking at someone behind him. He looked briefly over his shoulder to check but there was no one there. The woman was wearing a red ski jacket with the hood turned up over a mass of thick, dark hair. The passenger was a man, taller and broader than Ed, a fact that perhaps should have struck him as relevant but didn’t. All Ed noticed, through his rainstreaked glasses, was that the guy was grinning. Which didn’t do much to endear him. The rain was now a monsoon.

‘Excuse me,’ Ed said in as level a voice as possible. ‘That’s my space.’

The woman looked at her car then looked back at him with that same infuriating butter-wouldn’t-melt smile.

‘No. It’s ours.’

She locked the car and zipped up her jacket. Even with steam coming out of his ears, Ed recognized that he was confronting an extraordinarily good-looking woman. She was olive-skinned, with a wide mouth and perfect teeth. Her eyes were big and dark and flashing now with amusement. And because there was no other likely cause for it but himself, this served only to fuel Ed’s rage.

‘Listen, you knew darn well what I was doing. I stopped to let the guy out, I signaled, I pulled forward so I could reverse in and you snuck in behind me. You can’t do that.’

She shrugged. ‘We can. We did.’

‘Damn it, you can’t!’

He was sounding shrill now and to restore an appropriate posture of manly threat he shot a withering look at the woman’s creep of a boyfriend who was still grinning like an ape as he came ambling around the back of the car toward them. Ed could feel the rain soaking though the back and shoulders of his coat. An icy trickle ran down his neck. He could hardly see a thing through his glasses now, but he thought he caught a first faint look of embarrassment on the woman’s face. She turned to the ape boyfriend for support.

‘Please don’t become abusive,’ the ape said.

‘I’m not!’

‘You just said “damn it.”’

‘Jesus—’

‘Nuh-uh, please.’

He held up his hands, palms out, in warning. Then suddenly he smiled and frowned and looked maddeningly sympathetic.

‘Hey, man, I’m sorry. But listen, life’s a jungle. In a few thousand years the only drivers will be those whose ancestors first learned how to nip into other people’s parking spaces. It’s called survival of the fittest. It’s tough but that’s evolution. Now, please excuse us or we’ll be late for the movie.’

And with another smile, he took the woman’s arm and steered her off across the street, leaving Ed standing there, drenched and tonguetied and totally futile.

‘You inconsiderate pair of—’

A car whooshed past, drenching his legs with spray. Another car was honking at him.

‘Hey, man, move your car. You’re blocking the road here.’

‘Oh . . . get lost.’

Ed trudged back to his car and got in and dried his glasses. He had to cruise the area for twenty minutes to find another place to park and during all that time thoughts of revenge swirled darkly in his head. Eventually, he found a space just a few cars along the street from the woman’s VW and as he walked back past it he had the idea. It would be a perfect reciprocal act.

He went into Ralff’s and apologized to Bryan, the manager, for being late. He’d had a bad day, he said. Bryan shrugged and said who hadn’t? The place was almost empty so Ed didn’t feel too bad. He went quickly behind the bar and by the cash register found a piece of paper and a pen.

‘Hey, come on,’ Bryan called. ‘Let’s have some music!’

‘I’ll be two minutes.’

He scrawled something on the paper then found some wrap and carefully sealed it so the rain wouldn’t get to it. He headed for the door, calling to Bryan that he’d be right back.

Outside, the movie theater crowds had disappeared. Apart from the occasional car swooshing by in the rain the street was deserted. Ed went straight to the VW and leaning over the hood carefully disengaged the wipers. They came off easily. He inserted his wrapped note under one of the arms. He stood back with a satisfied smile. Vengeance, he concluded, sticking the wipers into his coat pocket, was a dish best eaten wet. He turned and headed back to the bar.

‘In a few thousand years,’ the note said, ‘the only drivers will be those who learned how to steal the wipers of the parking space thieves. It’s called survival of the fittest.’

 

Despite the dampness of his clothes and the miserable day he’d had, he played well that night. Around ten, the place started to fill. One of the tables applauded every number and it caught on with the others. He racked his brain for songs about rain and they went down well. ‘Stormy Weather’ even got calls for an encore. He didn’t have a great voice but tonight he seemed to be getting a cold so it sounded deeper and, in his opinion anyway, kind of sexy. Leanne, one of the waitresses on whom he’d always had something of a crush, kept bringing him drinks and, maybe it was just his imagination, but she seemed to be looking at him in a totally different way.

Every time the door opened he was gratified to see that it was still raining. It was pathetic, he knew, but he kept imagining the woman coming back to her car and finding the note and he only wished he could be there to see her face. The movie must have finished by now and he wondered if she might show up and what he’d do if she did. But Ralff’s was a drinkers’ place, all low lighting and red velvet banquettes, and though all he knew about her was that she stole parking spaces, he imagined she was more the healthy type, yogurt and yoga classes, and probably wouldn’t be seen dead in a dump like Ralff’s.

But he was wrong.

He had just taken a fifteen-minute break before his last set. He’d gone to the restroom and on the way back been cornered - willingly, enthusiastically cornered - by Leanne, who told him how much she’d enjoyed his playing tonight, especially his new sexy voice. So when he settled back at the piano, Ed was feeling pretty pleased with himself. He sat down and was just taking a drink, when he saw her. It was the red ski jacket he noticed and had he looked a moment later he might not have recognized her, for she was just taking it off. Under it she was wearing a cream-colored sweater. Her boyfriend (who, to be fair, didn’t much resemble an ape after all) was ordering drinks and while he was busy doing that she sat upright on her stool, stretching her back and long neck and looking around the room. Ed watched her.

She stretched her neck and dragged her hands back through her hair in a gesture that presumably had some practical purpose, such as untangling it perhaps, and another woman might have made it look like preening. But with her it seemed entirely without vanity. And one of the sexiest things Ed had ever seen.

Suddenly he realized that she was staring right back at him and a slow smile of recognition spread across her face. And, in what he would later call a moment of pure genius, Ed started to play a number from his last (never performed and doubly rejected) musical. It was a smoochy, late-night love song that ‘owed perhaps a tad too much’ to Tom Waits. It was called ‘Your Place or Mine.’ The chorus went:

He kept his eyes on her while he sang. Her boyfriend didn’t seem to mind. He was enjoying the joke too and when Ed had finished the guy raised his glass in a toast and sent Leanne over with a drink. Ed went on with the set, playing any song he could think of that was vaguely relevant, changing a lyric here and there to make her laugh. He played ‘We’ve Gotta Get (You) Out of This Place’ and ‘Somewhere There’s a Place for (You)’ from
West Side Story
. He felt inspired, empowered. The audience was great, joining in a joke they didn’t even understand. He was playing only for her, the woman whose wipers he still had in his coat pocket. So he was more than a little disappointed when he was just halfway through ‘Lovely Rita, Meter Maid,’ to see her stand up and start putting on her ski jacket. Then he saw they were coming toward him.