Ghost Music Read online

  “I’m really not sure.”

  “Why? I’ve told you I’ll cover all of your expenses.”

  “Well . . . I have to admit to you, Kate, I’m not the most sociable guy in the world. I can’t sit down at the breakfast table in the morning and have meaningful conversations over the Cheerios, especially with people I’ve never met before. As it is, I don’t usually utter a sound until noon, and then it’s a strangled growl.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll have our own private suite, with a four-poster bed and our own bathroom and our own living room. If we want to keep to ourselves, I promise you, nobody will mind at all.”

  I had to admit that the offer did seem attractive. I hadn’t had a real vacation in over three and a half years, and I hadn’t had a woman in my bed since Milka—apart from one-night stands with a red-haired flight attendant called Genna and a backing vocalist for P Diddy called Lateesh. Nobody as poised and as magical as Kate. Even if she was another man’s wife.

  “So, ah—where are we talking about?” I asked her.

  “I’ll give you a clue. You’ll need your coat, and your gloves, and a scarf, maybe.”

  “Oh. Someplace chilly. Someplace chilly with a view of the harbor. Seattle, maybe?”

  “Farther east,” she smiled. “Much farther east. Stockholm.”

  “Stockholm, South Dakota? No, there’s no harbor there. You mean Stockholm, Sweden?”

  “You got it. In the old town, close to the Royal Palace, looking right out over the harbor. You won’t believe how beautiful it is, especially at this time of the year.”

  “Sounds amazing. I mean it. Sounds really amazing. But who are these people you want me to meet?”

  Kate sipped her wine. “They’re a family of four. He’s a doctor, the mother works as a physiotherapist. They have two daughters.”

  “And can I ask why you want me to meet them?”

  “I can’t explain, but it’s important. And you have to admit that Stockholm in late September—it’s different. Different from Palm Springs, anyway.”

  “Do you think I need a doctor?”

  “Of course not.” she smiled. “In any case, he’s a gynecologist.”

  “I’m baffled. We only just met, we went to bed together just once, and now you want me to come away with you for two weeks to meet a Swedish gynecologist and his family. Do you want their approval? Am I being vetted or something?”

  “No, Gideon. It’s nothing like that, I promise you. I just want you to come to Stockholm and see things differently.”

  I didn’t know what to think, but I stood up again, and went over to my desk. I leafed through my calendar and said, “Yes . . . well, I guess I could manage it. I have to finish one more link for Billy Wagner, but I should have that all wrapped up by tomorrow. So long as I’m back by the fourteenth. I have a meeting with DDB about a Diet Pepsi commercial.”

  “Oh, yes. You’ll be back by then, I promise you.”

  Nine

  Just after nine o’clock, Kate finished her glass of wine and said she ought to think about leaving.

  “Do you have to?” I asked her. It was much warmer now, because I had lit tall white church candles all around the living room, and the walls were alive with shadows, like dancing witches. “Have one more drink before you go.”

  “All right. You’ve persuaded me.”

  “Is Victor home tonight?” I asked her, as ten o’clock struck.

  “He might be, later. But Thursday night is his squash night, and sometimes he stays at his club.”

  “Doesn’t he miss you, when you stay out all night? Doesn’t he ask you where you’ve been?”

  “Victor never misses me.”

  “Well, I have a confession to make. I missed you today. I really felt like I wanted to hold you.”

  Kate turned her eyes toward me, her chin resting in the palm of her hand, and for some reason she looked wistful. Sad, even. “Ah well,” she said. “We can’t always have everything we want, can we? At least, I can’t.”

  “You don’t think so? I don’t agree with you. If you want something badly enough, what’s to stop you? Victor?”

  Again, there was one of those long pauses, during which it became increasingly obvious that she wasn’t going to explain herself.

  At last, I said, “I don’t understand you and Victor. I mean, I’ve met swingers before. I’ve met couples who have open marriages, and sleep with anybody who takes their fancy. But what’s going on with you two? It’s almost like you’re not really married at all.”

  She gave an almost-imperceptible shrug. I guessed that meant she didn’t want to talk about it. I got up and changed the CD, from Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds to plinky-plonky piano studies by Debussy. The music sounded as wistful as Kate.

  I sat down close to her. “I can’t help the way I feel about you. It’s just you. Your face, your voice, the way you kiss me. I feel like I knew you even before I ever met you.”

  She pressed her forehead against my cheek, as if she were trying to tell me telepathically that she felt the same way, but didn’t want to commit herself by saying it out loud.

  I stroked her hair for a while, and then I said, “This family we’re going to be staying with in Stockholm? What are they like?”

  “The Westerlunds. You’ll like them. Dr. Axel Westerlund and his wife Tilda, and their two daughters Elsa and Felicia. I’ll write their address down for you.”

  “Why do you need to do that?”

  “Because you and I won’t be traveling to Sweden on the same flight. You’ll have to find your own way there. You can do that, can’t you?”

  “Because of Victor? Is that it? You don’t want Victor to find out that we’ve gone on vacation together? What does it matter, if he never misses you?”

  “It’s better if he doesn’t find out about you, that’s all. He has a very bad temper.”

  “I’m not scared of him, Kate.”

  “No? Then you should be. Victor . . . well, Victor’s not like ordinary men. He’s not even like ordinary bad-tempered men.”

  * * *

  I lit candles in the bedroom, too, and we went to bed together, with Debussy playing in the background. Our lovemaking was slo-mo, almost balletic. I loved the transparency of her skin, and the pale shine of her lips, and the flowery smell of perfume in her hair.

  As she came close to her climax, she closed her eyes and opened her mouth wide, as if she were silently singing. There was a bottle of Armani aftershave on the windowsill, and it started to rattle. It rattled more and more furiously until her hips began to spasm, and she clung to me, and pressed her face against my shoulder, and then it abruptly stopped.

  “Has that always happened?” I asked her, with a grin. “Or is it just when you make love to me?”

  With one fingertip, she traced the outline of my lips. “It never used to happen at all. Not when I was making love. Not when I was singing. Never.”

  “So what do you think it is? It’s like one of those Memorex commercials, when they used to make a wineglass shatter.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s ecstasy.”

  She kept on touching my lips, and it was then that I knew that I was going to Stockholm next week, for sure.

  Ten

  On Saturday morning it was raining hard, and my apartment was very dark. I rolled out of bed with my hair sticking up like a scarecrow and shuffled into the kitchenette to make myself some very strong coffee. I hadn’t been drinking the night before, but for some reason I felt thickheaded, as if I had a hangover. Maybe it was the thought of winter approaching.

  I went into the living room and drew back the drapes. St. Luke’s Place was slate gray and glistening wet and almost deserted. As I walked back toward the kitchenette, I saw a white envelope peeking under my front door. I bent down and picked it up. It was addressed in blue ink to Mr. Gideon Lake, Apt 2. I shook it, and I could feel some weighty objects inside it.

  I tore it open. Inside, there was an SAS air ticket, flig
ht 904 to Stockholm Arlanda on Tuesday, returning on Tuesday the following week. Business class, costing $2,882. There was also a sheet of heavy white writing paper, with the name Dr. Axel Westerlund on it, and the address Skeppsbron 44, 111 30 Stockholm.

  I turned the envelope upside down and two decorative brass keys dropped out into the palm of my hand. Not only had Kate given me the Westerlunds’ address, she had given me access to their apartment, too.

  I made myself a strong cup of espresso and sat by the window drinking it, while the raindrops slowly shuddered down the glass. I juggled the two keys in the palm of my hand. If Kate and I weren’t going to be flying together, and the Westerlunds were going to be out at work when I arrived, I guess it made sense that I should be able to let myself in. But it seemed unusually trusting to give me their keys. The Westerlunds didn’t know me from Adam, after all. And apart from two or three oblique conversations, and going to bed with me twice, Kate didn’t really know me either—any better than I knew her.

  I took a shower, and pulled on some loose-fit jeans and a blue-and-white-striped shirt, and played around on my keyboard. I was scoring the moment when Billy Wagner climbs into a horse-drawn carriage and the Bakersfield family gather around him to say good-bye, tossing up their hats and waving their handkerchiefs. I based the melody on an old British Boer War song “Good-bye, Dolly Gray.”

  “Good-bye, Dolly, I must leave you . . . though it breaks my heart to have to go . . .”

  I couldn’t think why, but the music just flowed out of me, as easily as if I had written it already. Before I composed that score, it usually took me hours to write only half a dozen bars. Hours? Days, sometimes, and still I wasn’t satisfied. I was my own pickiest critic, to the point where I really annoyed myself. But this morning I felt inspired. Uplifted, even. In fact I was enjoying myself so much that I had almost finished the entire score when my wall clock struck twelve and I remembered that Victor Solway had invited me downstairs for a drink at half-eleven. Shit. I brushed my hair, smacked on some Hugo Boss aftershave, and stepped into my loafers.

  When I opened my front door, I found Malkin sitting right outside, so close that I nearly tripped over her. She looked up at me and gave me that thick, rattling purr.

  “What do you want, puss? Are you checking up on me?”

  Malkin retreated to the far side of the landing, but she didn’t take her eyes off me.

  “Where’s your mistress?” I asked her. “Sorry, I’m right out of tuna. But next time I go to Carmine Street, I’ll bring you back some nice stinky swordfish, how about that? Stinky-winky swordfish?” You have to talk to cats in a language they understand.

  Malkin closed her eyes disdainfully. I left her there, on the landing, and went downstairs. I could hear voices and laughter coming from the Solways’ apartment. Tony Bennett, too, singing “Are You Havin’ Any Fun?” I think if I ever feel like hanging myself, that will be the track I put on the CD player before I step off the kitchen chair.

  I hesitated, thinking, do I really want to do this? But then I thought: come on, you’re always too antisocial. You have to learn to get along with people. Even people who admire Tony Bennett. So I knocked.

  Victor opened the door so quickly I could have believed that he was standing on the other side waiting for me. He was wearing a pink checkered shirt and red jeans that were much too tight for him, so that his penis looked like a picnic-size polony.

  “Gideon! You made it! I thought you might have forgot the address!”

  He barked with laughter, and ushered me in.

  “Jack—Sadie—this is our new opstairsikeh! Gideon—meet Jack Friendly. And this is the lovely Sadie!”

  Jack and Sadie were sitting in the living room. Jack got up and shook my hand. He might have been Friendly by name but he didn’t look particularly friendly by nature. He was fortyish, not as tall as I was, but underneath his black designer coat and his black turtleneck sweater I could tell that he was very fit and well-muscled. The kind of guy who could hit you very hard, if he wanted to.

  He had greased-back hair, and an almond-shaped face, as if he had Asian blood in him. His nose was pointed, but very flat, like a falcon’s beak. He was wearing three or four silver chains around his neck, with various pendants hanging from them: a heavy silver cross, a bunch of four or five silver dollars, and a hunched-up creature that looked like a baboon, with red crystals for eyes.

  “Victor says you write music,” Jack challenged me. He had a hoarse, strained voice, with a distinctive accent that I couldn’t quite place. Philadelphia, maybe. “Anything I might have heard?”

  “Thom’s Tomato Soup?” I suggested. “Mother MacReady’s Self-Raising Muffin Mix?”

  Jack stared at me and his eyes were like polished gray stones. “What are those? Like, jingles?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I know that Thom’s Tomato Soup one!” said Sadie. “‘Come on home, come on ho-o-ome . . . to your family and your friends!’”

  Jack turned around. Although he didn’t actually say “shut the fuck up” out loud, the expression on his face said it for him.

  Sadie said, “I think it’s beautiful, that song! It always makes me feel like calling my mom!”

  “What would be the point? Your mom’s a vegetable.”

  “So we have a one-sided conversation? It still makes me feel like calling her.”

  Sadie must have been about my age, but she looked at least five years older. She had bleached-blonde hair with dark brunette roots, pinned up with sparkly zircon barrettes. She was quite pretty, in a bruised, cheap way, with a fake tan and blotchy mascara and a bright scarlet pout.

  She was wearing a low-cut sweater in strident blue, and jeans that were even tighter than Victor’s. Her breasts were enormous, squashed together in her sweater like two orange party balloons, and spattered with dozens of tiny moles.

  Victor said, “What’s your poison, Gideon? Hey—I have some Thai whiskey if you’re interested. One of my customers gave me a whole case of it. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. Hey—at least I can ‘Thai’ one on—get it?”

  “White wine will be fine, thanks,” I told him. I was tempted to retaliate by calling him “Vic.”

  He went over to an antique-style sideboard and opened one of the doors to reveal a minibar. The whole living room was furnished with reproductions, although some of them were very high-quality ones, and must have cost almost as much as the originals. There was a huge Empire-style daybed, on which Sadie was sitting cross-legged, and three hefty armchairs and a carved oak chest that served as a table. Everything was upholstered in dark crimson brocade, and even the walls were dark red, with gilt-framed oil paintings of sailing boats and racehorses and early explorers in the West Virginia wilderness.

  I tried to imagine Kate in here, but somehow I couldn’t. She was so feminine, and yet this room had no woman’s touches at all. The only flowers were dried red chrysanthemums, under a glass dome on the mantelpiece, and there was no smell of perfume in the air or potpourri or even room freshener.

  “You must make a pretty good living, then, writing these jingle things?” asked Jack. “Apartments like this, you don’t get them for peanuts.”

  “I struck it lucky, I guess.”

  “Like Victor here? Victor struck it real lucky, didn’t you, Victor?”

  Victor was opening a bottle of Stag’s Leap chardonnay with one of those carbon dioxide gadgets. He stopped long enough to point his index finger at Jack, almost as if he were aiming a pistol at him, and the look on his face was so malevolent that I thought at first that he wasn’t joking.

  But Jack let out a hoarse, unconvincing laugh, and changed the subject straightaway. “Do you play the horses?” he asked me. “There’s a great nag running at Belmont Park this afternoon. Move the Cat, in the three twenty, fifteen to one.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve only bet on the horses three times in the whole of my life. The first one threw its jockey, the second one ran around t
he wrong way, and the third one broke its leg and had to be put down, right there on the track.”

  “Move the Cat,” Jack repeated, as if he hadn’t been listening.

  Victor handed me a large cut-crystal wine goblet with too much wine in it. Then he took hold of my elbow and said, “Come and take the tour. You should see what I’ve done in the bedroom.”

  He ushered me out of the living room and along the corridor. On either side there were framed photographs of Victor with various singers and TV stars. Victor shaking hands with the Fonz. Victor with his arm around a stooped, gray-haired man in glasses who looked suspiciously like Perry Como. Victor standing next to Mickey Rooney, trying to look as if he were an old friend of his.

  He opened the door to the main bedroom. It had been decorated as ornately as the living room, with a massive four-poster bed with twisty pillars, and heavy drapes in chocolate-colored velvet, and a large oil painting of a fat nude woman inexplicably milking a goat.

  “This is what I always wanted,” said Victor. “Classic, you know? Ornate. I don’t have any time for that minimalist stuff. I had enough of minimalist when I was a kid. One couch, one broken chair. Three of us boys in one bed.”

  He sniffed loudly, and looked around. “Opulence, you know? That’s what I go for. Luxury. A feeling of pomp.”

  “It’s pompous,” I agreed. “I have to give you that.”

  Victor put his arm around my shoulders and gripped me tight. I was looking around for photographs of Kate, but I couldn’t see a single one, which was strange, since there were so many photographs of Victor.

  Victor said, “When I started out in real estate, I used to visit all of these uptown apartments, you know, and some of them, they were so luxurious, you only had to walk inside and your suit felt cheap and your shoes felt cheap and you felt cheap. I remember standing in this entrance hall on the Upper East Side, waiting for my client to show. It had brown marble floors and brown marble pillars, and I remember looking at this marble table and thinking, my whole year’s salary wouldn’t buy me that table. That one fucking table. And here was this apartment, this entire apartment, with a view over Central Park, and it was crammed with tables. Not only tables, but chairs and couches and bookcases and beds and paintings and statues and Christ alone knew what else.”