Chapter 36
The next week Colin went in for his regular haircut, and Angelo invited him back for another evening session. He had scarcely settled into his seat when there was a knock on the outside door.
“Stay right there.” Angelo left in a cloud of cigar smoke, and returned with a sleek African American gentleman, dapper in starched striped shirt and vest and trousers to a gaberdine suit.
Pearl and gold cuff links. Diamond pinkie ring.
Hair that shone in the overhead light. “Colin, meet Jaden Barrett. Another jazz addict.”
“How do, Colin. How do.”
Colin wasn’t sure how he felt, having an interloper join them. “Nice to meet you.”
“Jaden and I play poker once or twice each month. We and his missus all like the horses.”
“Try and make it to Charlottesville for the Foxfield, Camden for the Colonial,” Jaden told him. “We take in the Derby or Preakness every year or so.”
“Get out to Vegas now and then.” Angelo pulled in another chair. “Take the big one, Jaden. Make yourself comfortable.”
He settled into Angelo’s office chair. “You like to gamble, Colin?”
He hesitated, then settled on a simple, “No.”
Angelo held the cigar box open to Jaden. “Other than he’s got a fine ear, I don’t know hardly anything about this kid.”
Jaden cast a practiced eye over Colin’s clothes. “Man’s getting his money from somewhere. You got family, young man?”
“I … No. Not really.”
“Seems to me, either you do or you don’t.” He accepted a glass of the single malt, breathed the fumes, nodded approval. “You don’t want me asking questions, say the word. Man’s got a right to keep his secrets. We’ll just hold ourselves to the music.”
Colin took his time answering. There was something in the man’s easy manner, he knew it was mostly show, that down deep probably lurked a risk, a threat. But not to him. He knew it was abductive reasoning on a minimum of data. But he liked and trusted Angelo. And Angelo trusted this newcomer. So …
“I’ve started a couple of times to talk. But these sessions, they mean so much, I didn’t want to disturb anything.”
“These sessions, the man says.” Jaden nodded. “The music is important to him, just like you said.”
Angelo remained standing beside his desk. “Why would talking about yourself mess with our sessions?”
“My life, it’s not normal.”
Jaden actually chuckled. He looked at Angelo, said, “I came for the music, I’m staying for the show. Come sit yourself down, old friend. Let’s hear what the man has to say for himself.”
Twenty minutes later, they had still not started with the music.
Jaden was well into his second glass. Taking it in small draughts, savoring it and Angelo’s cigar with the same sense of easy pleasure as he did Colin’s story. “Let me make sure I got this straight. You moved into that genius school at …”
“I was six.”
“And you started UNC Wilmington at …”
“Twelve.”
“Where you studied …”
“Calculus. Other stuff.”
“Math stuff.”
“Until last year. Then I started attending classes at Chapel Hill in music theory and software engineering.”
“And because of what you’ve learned from Angelo here, you’re working on …”
“A mathematical foundation for harmonics and musical development. That will probably become my graduate thesis.”
“Graduate work, now. At fifteen.” Jaden nudged his friend. “You’re trying to find a way to teach a computer to make jazz, is that what you’re saying?”
“No.” Just the same, Jaden’s words teased out another flicker of that distant light. “Well, no … I don’t know what I’m after. It’s been a struggle.”
“Can’t imagine why.” He glanced over. “Can you, old friend?”
“You guys lost me a long while back. I’m lucky if the cash register balances out at the end of my day.”
A few more puffs on the cigar, then, “You ever heard of Bart Howard?”
“No.”
“Bart and my daddy were friends. My daddy, he played clarinet and tenor sax with a number of bands. Bart was retired when they met, my daddy was still climbing the career ladder. But sometimes those things matter a lot less than people like to think. Bart was a songwriter and composer, mostly swing and bossa nova and cabaret, but he put his hand to a lot of different sounds.”
Angelo said, “He wrote almost half of that Johnny Mathis album we played last time you were here.”
“He also wrote ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’” Jaden said.
“Kaye Ballard was the first to record it. Then Frank Sinatra, using an arrangement by Quincy Jones. The song went on to become Sinatra’s signature sound.
Peggy Lee, Joe Harnell, Julie London, Paul Anka, they all recorded it.
My daddy once asked Bart about writing that song.
Know what he said? ‘I spent forty years getting ready, so I could write it in twenty minutes.’”
“I don’t want to wait forty years,” Colin replied. “Not for anything.”
“You’re a man in a hurry, sure enough. But sometimes you get where you’re aiming when the time is right.
Not when you want.” Jaden tapped his cigar on the ashtray.
“My advice to you, young man, is enjoy the ride. Now enough of this talk. I don’t know about you, but I came here to hear some good music. ”
“Before we start, there’s one more thing.” Angelo lifted a printed sheet off his desk. “Just got off the computer before you showed up. Fifth of August. Mark your calendar. Third row center.”
“So where’s mine?”
Angelo pulled the page away from Jaden’s outstretched hand. “Soon as I see your two hundred and fifty bucks.”
As Jaden reached for his billfold, he told Colin, “We’re joining Chick Corea at the Live Oak Bank Pavilion.”
He felt his heart surge. “Can I come?” He caught Angelo’s hesitation and added, “I can pay my way.”
Angelo said, “I’d be happy to have you join us, but that’s a lot of money, especially for someone your—”
“I’ve made almost eight hundred thousand dollars. It’s just sitting in a money market account.”
He felt Jaden’s chair begin to make little jerking motions, and realized the man was laughing.
Angelo said, “Run that news item past us again.”
“Naw, we know all we need to for the moment. Get back on your computer and see if there’s another ticket. Once that’s done, we got all night to hear how the man here made his fortune.”
It was well after midnight when they finally called it quits.
Jaden offered to drop Colin at the academy, claimed it was almost on his way home.
Jaden’s ride was a slate grey BMW 740i, and their talk was about Corea and his music.
When Jaden pulled into the academy’s semicircular drive, he cut the motor and said, “You do that gentleman a world of good.”
“He’s been great, introducing me to jazz.”
“Angelo lost his wife to cancer, oh, must be close to a dozen years ago. They couldn’t have kids.
Since then he’s spent too much time on his own.
My wife and I tried and tried to get him to go out, see lady friends who’d love to share his autumn years.
He always says the same thing. Once you know heaven, it’s hard to come down to earth. ”
“I can’t imagine what that must be like,” Colin said.
The space between them was flavored by cigars and whiskey and the echoes of good music. Jaden asked, “You didn’t have much of a home life?”
“My mother died when I was four. My father … I don’t like talking about him.”
Jaden’s only response was to puff out his cheeks, blow softly, then, “You need to find yourself a role model. People who can show you the other side of the coin. What it means to love. Be fulfilled by a good relationship.”
Colin thought of Arnold and Sandrine. Roland and Regina. Ethan and Alexi. Even Mira and Lucas, on their good days. “I have that.”
“So the next time the shadows start gnawing at your nights, you take a good long look at what they have. What keeps them alive and in love and in sync.”
It was the first time Colin had ever heard an adult talk about shadows like that. “Thanks for letting me come to the concert. It means a lot.”
Jaden’s teeth flashed in the night. “Little man, Arnold and I, we wouldn’t have it any other way.”