Ghost Music Read online

  “Hey, be fair. Debussy and Delius didn’t have to pitch their music to Jerry Bruckheimer.”

  Kate laughed, and even when she had finished laughing, her eyes were filled with that same shared intimacy that I had seen on the steps outside. She didn’t look away, she didn’t blink. Instead, she stared at me as if she wanted to remember forever how I looked this afternoon.

  “Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”

  “Thirty-one,” I told her. “I know I look older. My hair started going gray when I was twenty-six. It’s hereditary.”

  “I like it. It makes you look as if I can trust you.”

  “You think so? I guess that kind of depends.”

  She didn’t ask me what I meant. I think both of us knew that she didn’t really have to. She continued looking at me for another long moment, and then she turned toward the painted wall clock next to the mirror, with its frantically swinging pendulum, and she glanced at her wristwatch, too. “I have to be going, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re cooking dinner?”

  “Oh, no. It’s too late for that, too.”

  “You could always get takeout. They do a great arroz con pollo at Little Havana. The chef will give you free tostones if you flutter your eyelashes at him.”

  Either she wasn’t listening or else she didn’t like Cuban food,or maybe she was a vegetarian, because she stood up without saying a word.

  “Do you work?” I asked her. “Or are you usually free during the day?”

  “I’m a magazine designer. I do fashion layouts for Harper’s. Well, I used to. Not anymore.”

  “So—at the moment—you’re free?”

  “It depends on your definition of ‘free.’”

  “Well . . . if I said to you, come up again tomorrow around twelve, and I’ll make you some lunch, and play you some more of my almost-beautiful music, there wouldn’t be anything to stop you?”

  Kate said nothing, but continued to stare at me. Her stare was so penetrating that I began to feel light-headed, as if I had drunk too many tequila slammers. But Malkin started to scrabble at the tassels that hung from one of the spoon-back chairs, and I turned and called, “Hey, kitty! Cut it out, will you!” and that broke the spell.

  Malkin trotted across to Kate like a scolded kid, and Kate knelt down to pick her up.

  I said, “Listen . . . I understand you’re married and everything. All I’m asking you to do is come up and eat some salad. Working on my own all day . . . it almost turns me into a gibbering loony sometimes.”

  “Okay,” she said. She held up her hand so that I could help her back up onto her feet. Once she was standing, though, she didn’t let go. “You shouldn’t worry about Victor. Victor is a very strong character who believes that he owns the world. He wouldn’t imagine for a single moment that I would betray him.”

  I was very tempted to ask, would you betray him? More to the point, would you betray him with me? But it was a little too soon to be asking questions like that. I definitely felt that Kate found me interesting; but maybe she was bored, and she was teasing me for her own amusement. Every minute that went by, I noticed things about her that were increasingly attractive: the tilt of her nose, the way the sunlight shone on the upward curve of her lips, the faint blue veins in her wrists. But she had a guarded side to her, a prickly defensiveness, and I suspected that she was capable of putting down any man she didn’t like—in public, too.

  “Right,” I said, releasing her hand. “If you don’t think that I should worry about Victor, I won’t worry about Victor. How do you like tuna, with Chinese cabbage salad?”

  “Sounds delicious. I’m sure that Malkin would adore it, too. I’d better not bring her, in case she’s a nuisance.”

  I saw her to the door. Before she left, she turned and reached up, touching my hair just behind my ear, like a conjuror pretending to find a nickel. Then she kissed me very lightly on the cheek.

  I watched her go back downstairs. Once she had gone, I quietly closed the door and went back into the living room.

  I stared at myself in the gilt-framed mirror, trying to see what she was seeing, when she looked at me. I always thought that I looked more like a second-rank tennis player than a musical composer. Six foot one, rangy, with kind of disconnected arms and legs, and the long, angular face of my Finnish grandfather Luukas, and the same ice-blue eyes. Same gray hair, too, when it came to that. But I like to think that I’m reasonably good-looking, in a Nordic Kris Kristofferson kind of a way, although Margot used to accuse me of looking morose for no reason.

  I picked up my guitar again and started to play the theme music to Magician, but I stopped in mid-chord, halfway through.

  “Kate Solway,” I whispered, just to feel her name come out of my mouth.

  Three

  Shortly before eleven o’clock that evening, I was working on the incidental music for The Billy Wagner Show when I heard car doors slamming in the street outside, and laughter.

  I hesitated, with my fingers poised over the keyboard of my Roland electronic piano. I heard more laughter, a woman, and a man’s voice saying, “You’re crazy. You know that? You’re totally crazy.”

  I knew I was being nosy, but I stood up and walked barefoot through the living room and looked out of the open window. I saw a red-haired woman in a green satin dress climbing the front steps, unsteadily, as if she had been drinking. Close behind her came Victor Solway, in a white dress shirt with his bow tie dangling loose, and a maroon tuxedo slung over his arm. Maroon, yet.

  He was deeply tanned, Victor Solway, with two white wings on either side of his jet-black hair. He looked like George Hamilton’s shorter and bulkier brother. He made a playful grab for the woman’s bottom as she reached the top of the steps, and she screamed and flapped her pocketbook at him.

  “My friend Daisy warned me about you! She told me you couldn’t be trusted to keep your hands to yourself!”

  “You’re blaming me? It’s all your fault, you temptress! You shouldn’t go waggling your tush like that! What do you think I’m made of? Granite?”

  At this, the red-haired woman collapsed with laughter, her hand held over her eyes and her white breasts wobbling. Victor Solway took out his key and opened the front door, and the two of them staggered inside.

  I heard the front door slam, and then Victor Solway’s door. After a while, I heard the muffled sound of Tony Bennett singing “Cold, Cold Heart.”

  Shit and double-shit. I could tolerate almost any composer in the world except John Williams. I mean, Star Wars, do me a favor. And I could tolerate almost any singer except Tony Bennett.

  I went back to my keyboard. I had been scoring a link for Billy Wagner to accompany his interview with an eccentric family in Bakersfield who insisted on dressing in turn-of-the-century costumes, 365 days of the year. The mother and her two daughters even wore whalebone corsets. But I had totally lost the mood now. How could I write tinkly 1890s piano music with Tony Bennett droning through my floorboards?

  “Another love before my time made your heart sad and blue—”

  Jesus. Couldn’t they play something halfway cheerful? Apart from that, what the hell was going on down there? I heard more hysterical laughter, and banging around. I couldn’t believe that Kate was joining in. She had seemed far too aloof for a threesome with Victor and a tipsy redhead in a bulging green satin frock.

  I played a few bars of Magician, and then I switched the keyboard off. I went through to the kitchenette, opened the fridge and poured myself a large glass of zinfandel. Grow up, I told myself. Stop being such a stuffed shirt. Kate could do whatever she wanted, couldn’t she? It’s none of your business. If she wants to have a drunken orgy, that’s entirely her affair. She can take the whole cast of Spamalot to bed with her if she wants to.

  But this afternoon she had seemed so distracted, and so fey. I simply couldn’t imagine her rolling around in bed, screaming and laughing. And—rightly or wrongly—I had felt that she had been asking for my help or my pr
otection or somebody to confide in, at the very least.

  I went to the front door, and opened it a little way. Tony Bennett was singing, “Why do you run and hide from life? To try it just ain’t smart.”

  I was still listening when Malkin, Kate’s fluffy white cat, came up the stairs. She sat on the opposite side of the landing, giving me a baleful stare.

  “Hey, puss,” I coaxed her. “What’s your mistress up to? Come on! Just for once, stop pretending that you don’t know how to talk. All cats can talk, don’t try to deny it.”

  Malkin continued to glower at me, saying nothing, but purring like a clapped out air-conditioning unit.

  “You want to come in? How about a saucer of milk? I’m sorry, I don’t have any Wild Kitty in the fridge, but I might be able to stretch to a can of anchovy fillets.”

  I opened the door a little wider and stepped back. “Come on, puss. What is it, you don’t like milk? You’d rather have a shot of El Tesoro? That can be arranged.”

  My phone started to play “Hang On, Sloopy” and I briefly turned around. When I turned back, however, Malkin had disappeared, like one of Magician’s conjuring tricks. Vanished, evaporated, without even the sound of her paws pattering down the stairs.

  I closed the door and went to answer the phone. It was Margot. She sounded as if she were calling me from somebody’s party. A girl in the background was calling out, “Margot! Margot! Come here, will you? Michael has something so-o-o wild to show you!”

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “Sure, I’m terrific. I’m at Lydia’s birthday party. I just wanted to know if you were okay.”

  “Of course I’m okay. I’ve been working, that’s all. At least I was working, until they started having an orgy downstairs.”

  “An orgy? Your well-heeled neighbors? How about that! Maybe you moved into the right apartment after all!”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. They’re playing Tony Bennett records.”

  “Oh, God. Better than Barry Manilow, I suppose.”

  “Listen . . . did you call me for any special reason? I really need to get some sleep now, so long as all this orgasmic screaming doesn’t keep me awake.”

  “I did, yes. I was worried about you. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay.”

  “Of course I’m okay. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “We did this fortune-telling tonight, with real Tibetan beads. They’re so accurate, it’s scary. They even knew that my sister was sick.”

  “Okay . . . but why are you calling me?”

  “Because I asked the fortune-teller if you would be happy in your new home. And he kept coming up with two beads, which means ‘raven,’ and that means bad luck. He said you would suffer pain, and broken bones, and burning in a fire. Most of all, he said you had to stay well away from a woman who had nobody walking beside her.”

  “So what the hell does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. I asked him myself, but he kept on saying the same thing, again and again. And the other thing he said was, ‘a white memory is watching you . . . so keep your door locked.’”

  “‘A white memory’? What’s ‘a white memory’ when it’s at home?”

  “I have no idea, Lalo. Don’t shoot the messenger. I simply thought you ought to know how your divination turned out, so that you can take the necessary precautions. As it is, I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Thank you, Margot,” I said, tiredly.

  “That’s all right. I love you, Lalo, and I don’t want you coming to a sticky end. Ever.”

  I put down the phone. Downstairs, the Tony Bennett song had ended, although I could still hear voices and bumping sounds. What the hell were they doing—rearranging the goddamned furniture? I felt like putting on my hiking boots and doing a thunderous Cossack dance all around the living room. But then I thought—no, that would be childish. I was going to have to live with the Solways for the next few years, I would just have to get used to their little soirées. They wouldn’t have an orgy every night. At least I hoped not.

  I took a long, hot shower, until the plumbing began to rumble, and then I toweled myself off and went to bed in my N.Y. Mets boxer shorts. I could see a three-quarters moon through the bedroom window, until it disappeared behind the Franks Building. The night was much quieter now, except for the echo of sirens and the rumbling of traffic. At least Tony Bennett had put a sock in it.

  I wondered what was going on downstairs—whether the three of them were lying in an octopus-like tangle on their bed, passing a joint from one to the other.

  To my annoyance, I found myself murmuring, under my breath, “Another love before my time made your heart sad and blue . . .”

  Four

  I was coming down the stairs the next morning when the front door to the Solways’ apartment opened and Victor Solway stepped out. He was wearing a dark brown linen sport coat, almost the same color as his deeply tanned face, and tasseled brown loafers.

  “Hey, the new neighbor,” he said. He smelled very strongly of Armani aftershave, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “Victor Solway. Welcome to the madhouse.”

  “Gideon Lake. Hi. Doesn’t seem too mad so far.”

  “Oh-ho. You obviously haven’t met Pearl.”

  “No. I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  Victor Solway put his arm around my shoulders as if he had known me for years, and said, in a confidential tone, “Jonathan Lugard used to live upstairs from you. Jonathan Lugard the artist? Pearl was his model.”

  “I never heard of Jonathan Lugard, sorry.”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I hadn’t either, before we moved here. But apparently they revered him in art circles. He died about five years ago, and when he died, Pearl inherited everything. The third-floor apartment and all of his paintings. She’s worth millions. The trouble is, she’s going doolally, and she keeps forgetting that Lugard has shuffled off to Buffalo. She wanders around wearing nothing but this old pink bathrobe, expecting him to come back at any moment and ask her to pose for him.”

  “Wow,” I said, for want of anything better to say. Victor’s breath smelled of hexachlorophene mouthwash, but there was an underlying odor of stale shiraz, and I prayed that he would take his arm off my shoulders and give me some personal space.

  But Victor gripped me even tighter, and glanced behind him as if he were making sure that nobody else could hear what he was saying. “I’m giving you a friendly warning, that’s all. If Pearl sees you coming up the stairs, she’s very likely to think that it’s her long-lost Lugard, and she’ll drop that bathrobe before you have time to scream.”

  He laughed, three sharp barks like a German shepherd, right in my face, but then he let me go. I tugged at my shirtsleeves to straighten them, and tried to smile.

  “But honestly, you’ll love living here,” Victor told me. “And from the investment point of view, you couldn’t have made a better choice. I should know. Victor Solway International Realty, Inc.—that’s me. Top-class property, all over the world. You keep this apartment for five years, you’ll get at least two-point-five when you sell it. Maybe three. In fact, I’ll sell it for you, myself, personally, with cut-price commission. Two-point-five million, plus, and I kid you not.”

  “Wow,” I repeated. I wished that I would stop saying “wow.”

  Victor said, “I hear that you write music for the movies. Well, I was told that you were a musician, and I made a point of checking, before you moved in. I didn’t want a heavy metal band living upstairs. Ha!”

  “No, no,” I assured him. “I’ve scored some movies, yes. But I mainly write TV commercials, that kind of thing.”

  “Obviously you’re very successful at it. Written anything I should know?”

  “I doubt it.” I wasn’t going to sing the Thom’s Tomato Soup song, not again, especially if Victor had never heard it either.

  “Well, muchacho . . . I guess we’ll be bumping into each other, from time to time. Come on down for a drink, w
hy don’t you? How about Saturday morning, around eleven thirty?”

  “Sure. Sounds good. Thank you.”

  Victor leaned very close to me again, and I found myself tilting backward.

  “By the way,” he said. “I invite some of my friends back, now and again. If it ever gets a little too boisterous for you, don’t hesitate to knock on the floor. One knock for keep it down, two knocks for shut the fuck up.”

  He let out three more barks and slapped my shoulder.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m sure I won’t have to. Knock, I mean.”

  I was just about to tell Victor that I had met Kate yesterday afternoon, and that she was supposed to be having lunch with me today, but for some reason I decided not to. I didn’t exactly know why, but I thought that maybe I should wait until I knew a little more about Victor and Kate’s relationship.

  Victor opened the front door, and the morning sunlight flooded in. “I’ll see you Saturday, okay, if I don’t see you before?”

  He bounded down the steps and hailed a passing cab. I stood in the porch for a few moments, watching his cab until it reached the end of St. Luke’s Place and turned right into Hudson Street. When it had disappeared, I felt strangely relieved.

  I looked across the street toward the park. Behind the high wire fencing, three small children were running around and around, their arms outspread, trying to make themselves giddy. Two men were perched on the back of a bench, with their feet on the seat, talking and smoking. And there, half-hidden behind one of the trees, stood a young woman with a baby stroller. It was Kate.

  I shaded my eyes with my hand. Maybe it was somebody who just looked like Kate. But, no—it was definitely her, wearing a charcoal gray coat and a light gray woolly hat. In the bright sunlight, her face looked very pale, almost blurred. The baby in the stroller looked about five or six months old. I guessed he was a boy: he was wearing a blue knitted bonnet with ear-flaps, and a little dark blue duffel-coat. He was twisting around to catch Kate’s attention, but she seemed to be ignoring him.