A Little Night Music Read Free Page A

through the alley skimmed along his knuckles. Jon pulled on a t-shirt and crawled out onto the fire escape to chase more of it. He settled into the rest of the afternoon there, disassembling the trumpet to bathe and oil it, as if his near-obsessive attention to detail could all but eliminate the possibility of another freak vision.
    In his dream Jon had returned to that porch. He found it was a place he didn’t have a complete aversion to—the top-down euphoria had been infectious—but it had marched into his head, unannounced, and stolen his connection to the notes, to the control he prided himself on. That loss of control made the vision taboo.
    Without question, the instrument had been loved. Aside from a tiny ding on the first valve slide—a flaw to which Jon attributed any number of things: a club fight, a missus jealous the owner chose music over her, a tumble out of the sack on a passionate night—Jon had never seen a more exquisite trumpet. Had it really belonged to the father of the prima donna of New Orleans? A woman more pageant queen than dark alley? The old guy at the shop hadn’t said much. In fact, he might as well have spoken a hybrid of Pig Latin and Hebrew for all Jon understood him. But if there was one thing certain in the cluster-fuck of his life of late, it was that no woman—especially not one who smelled like magnolias and rainwater that could swell rivers and drown hearts—would get his instrument.
    He reassembled the trumpet and sampled Nature Boy to open its lower register, thankful the Bywater neighborhood was too underbelly to care. Sun soaking his pores, heat burning his eyelids, he poured every toxic vapor from his soul—every lie his wife told to protect her secret life, every rant she summoned as an excuse to not have children, every night she covered his body with hers and pretended he was everything she wanted—into the solemn voice of his instrument. And when he was nearly finished and had sweated out more than tears ever could have, he glanced around.
    Between the fire escape’s red slats, pink fabric caught his attention. His melody faltered a bit, hesitating on what it was, when a little girl of no more than seven or eight years old twirled into view and busted out the rocking-est swing steps he had ever seen in saddle shoes.
    Her energy thrilled him. His lazy stretch on the trumpet’s full range charged into an up-tempo Sing, Sing, Sing. He fleshed everything he could out of the notes so she wouldn’t stop. Her kinky hair, corralled into dozens of multicolored plastic clips, clicked along to his tune with an abandon he forgot existed. She twisted and turned and busted out a God-given connection to music few possessed. He ended the song, as breathless as the girl, and set down the trumpet to applaud.
    The girl bowed and saluted him on his lofty perch. When he thought she had gone, her pink dress peeked again through the red slats. She climbed three flights of fire escape steps and plunked down beside him, her café-au-lait face glistening with sweat, a cluster of white flowers wedged in her hair.
    “What’s your name?” asked the girl.
    Jon laughed at being ambushed by a girl no bigger than a tuba. “Jon. What’s yours?”
    “Elephant.”
    “Elephant?”
    “Daddy plays a high C like an elephant’s roar. Makes me laugh.”
    “I see. Where is your daddy? You’re a little young to be by yourself.”
    “He plays The Nile sometimes. I know everyone here. Never seen you before.”
    “I’m new.”
    “Why were you playing so sad before, Mr. Jon?”
    At her pointed question, Jon’s heart stumbled away from his all-consuming adoration. He reminded himself of her innocence, the unyielding belief of childhood that what was fair was right and what wasn’t right could be solved with popsicles and a sunshine-colored Crayola.
    “I was sad.”
    “But now you’re not?”
    Jon squinted down the alley, surprised that the knot in his stomach had eased. “No.”
    “You musta