The Night Singers Read Free Page B

art teacher. I can’t decide if it’s too kitschy, you know?”
    â€œNice card,” asserted Paul. His eyes were drawn to the sad woman in the rocker, who had struck up a conversation with the young family.
    â€œSee you around,” Thaddeus said reluctantly.
    â€œYes, see you!” Paul aimed for a low-key geniality.
    He heard a long sigh run through the guy’s diaphragm. Well, other people’s fantasies weren’t his responsibility. That’s what his outrageous diva friend Marco had advised. Paul reminded himself he was a stranger in this little town and he’d be passing through in six weeks.
    Last fall, he’d been perplexed, yet thrilled, by an out-of-the-blue invitation to the prestigious Chester Composers’ Festival in Southern Vermont. The artistic director admired three of his CDs. Simple as that. Paul’s life was not simple, had never been simple, so he actually thought they were phoning the wrong Paul Timmins.
    Born in New York, raised across the Hudson in urban New Jersey, he took the unlikely major of music at a nearby state college and then—what was even more improbable—he won a full graduate fellowship to Northwestern. Since then, he’d belonged to the plains and the prairies. The Chester Festival Residency was his first extended visit to the East Coast in 20 years.
    Long ago, his father, a devoted, but practical man, asked, “They pay you a wage to write music? Music without words?” Mr Timmins was proud of his college-educated children who would not follow him into the ranks of night cleaners. He hadn’t asked such questions of Paul’s sister, the lawyer, or their accountant brother.
    â€œAbsolutely, Dad,” he said with the unsure sure-ness of youth. “They’ll be performing my work at Carnegie Hall in no time.”
    The small, fit man shrugged and smiled, “OK, I’ll by a fancy new tie to wear on opening night.”
    Opening night! Maybe he thought Paul would write Broadway musicals. But who was he to tell his Manhattan bred father that West 57th Street was a world apart from the theatre district?
    As yet, Dad hadn’t had the occasion for a fancy tie because Paul’s muse drew him to “new music” played in alternative venues, especially on the West Coast. And he was grateful to find a job—even if it took him to South Dakota and a small, formerly Lutheran school which prided itself on intense student-teacher collaboration and lots of “community building” via campus social events. The dean who hired him for his classy degree expected Paul to write music in his “spare time.”
    When he left Clarksdale this year at the end of finals’ week, the snow was still four inches thick in his back yard. Arriving in his pretty colonial town, he found the air was crisp, the lilac and crab apple were budding.
    He should have called Muriel to say good-bye. He still valued her friendship. She and Marco were the only people he could hang with in Clarksdale. Odd that they were both nurses at County Hospital. How could Muriel be so content in South Dakota? Clearly, they weren’t meant to be partners.
    Now an elderly man hobbled in—tall, gaunt, hawk nosed, the sort of guy who’d be called Zeke or Booth or Nathaniel on a TV docudrama about New England history.
    â€œYou’re the fellow!” He actually shook his brass-tipped cane.
    Paul didn’t know whether to cower or grin.
    â€œMy mother taught piano in this village for forty years. I still go to sleep hearing the scales.” He was leaning heavily on the cane now. “She would have hated your concert, would have had run you out of town by Uncle Clement, the magistrate, for musical obscenity!”
    Paul’s blue eyes widened. People in South Dakota didn’t have such strong feelings about music. Perhaps Lutherans were just too nice to criticise.
    The other studio visitors fell silent.
    The woman in