Until one day the front-page photo was of only her face, and what the article said was that she had died.
A brain aneurysm in the middle of the night. The authorities said she had gotten the best of care. The authorities said the case was now closed. I put the newspaper into the yellow recycling can on the other side of the tunnel and walked back to my stand and played something or other on my trumpet for the rest of the day.
It wasn’t long after that that I saw the Mother — the Woman now, I guess. She was standing on the bridge, looking east toward Notre-Dame. She was alone, and silent, and thin. Spring had come and gone; it was July. The sun glittered on the river; it was one of those rare days when the water looked almost blue. The faint chatter of the tourists wafted down to me from the bridge. She paid no attention.
I picked up the trombone and began the “Bayrische Polka,” looking straight up at her in the distance, ignoring the crowd of camera-pointing Chinese and sounding the notes as loud as I could. At first, it seemed as if the music didn’t reach her. Then she slowly turned her head toward me and stared motionless for a long time. It was not until the last chorus that she lifted her hand and gave me a gentle wave.
Romeo turned up too, a week or so after that. I didn’t see him at first. He was hanging back in the crowd a bit, as if he were trying to stay out of sight. As I played, I could feel, rather than see, him circling around the watching tourists, coming to rest behind a family of what must have been Americans. A smile was forming on his lips. They had two children, an elementary-school-age boy and a smaller girl. She had blond curly hair and looked like she might have been in kindergarten.
That was enough.
Right in the middle of “Les Rues de Paris,” I put down the trumpet and rose from my stool. I walked through the ranks of astonished tourists, parting them with my hands and breaking through to the back of the crowd. I stood in front of him.
He tried to push by me, but I moved sideways and he stopped, the river on his other side.
I opened my mouth. Breathed in. Made a little cough; breathed again.
“M . . . M . . . Monsieur.” My voice rasped. “I . . . I have some information that I think you need to hear about the little g-girl in the white coat.”
If I had had any doubt, his expression dispelled it.
“I don’t know what you mean.” The tourists were staring at us as intently as if I were playing my trombone from the bell end. I said nothing. Stared at him. He shifted on his feet. “The suspect died in prison. The case is closed.”
I lowered my voice.
“Monsieur, I think it would be better if you heard what I have to say. Better that I tell it to you than . . .”
“All right, what do you want?” No smile now. His arms were folded, his head cocked, but his body was rigid with tension.
“Return tonight, at midnight. I will be here.”
HE CAME NOT across the bridge but from the quay, skulking past the long line of moored houseboats, one behind another, the tables and flowerpots on their decks ghostly in the moonlight. I stood with my back to my instruments.
“I’ve seen men like you before,” I said. “I know what you did.”
“Is it money you want?”
“I want to know the truth.”
“Truth? I don’t know what that is. I loved her. Maybe a little too much — is that what you’re asking? I only wanted to touch her for a second. Nothing bad. But if she’d told her mother . . . Anyway, what will it take for you not to squeal?”
He put his hand into the pocket of the loose jacket he was wearing. As he looked down, I made my move, even before I saw that he was pulling out a knife, not money.
And if someday a body surfaces far downriver from where I still ply my trade, or if the police drag the river for some poor drowned child or missing teenager and turn up the corpse of a young man instead, I hope they notice that the victim is not just another casualty of the muddy waters.
I hope they see on the left side of his head, just above his ear, a deep, slanted wound made with a blow of such force that it sliced, rather than cracked, his skull. A blow struck with the force of love, and pain, and decades of pent-up silence.
I hope whoever finds him will know what went into that blow.
And every day now, the tourists who gather around to see me play and bow and bob can witness the other consequence of that force. My polka renditions are a little tinny, a little off-key. The music just doesn’t sound the same now that the bell end of my trombone is bent so badly.
But the notes that come out are still haunting.
HOT SUGAR BLUES
BY STEVE LISKOW
Bish Underwood hasn’t told the girl on the couch a single lie yet, which is a very good sign. Of course, she’s only been here ten minutes.