The Blue Guitar Read online

  “I’m not drinking tonight,” Toby announces when Larry and Armand try to ply him with beer.

  “Come on, man, you’re celebrating a near-death experience.”

  If he starts drinking, he won’t want to stop. Coldness sucks at his entrails, a thirsty creature.

  “I saw his hand,” Lucy says, settling in across the table. “It was poking out of the water, very creepy, then it disappeared. So I snatched what turned out to be hair and pulled like crazy.”

  Toby reaches up to touch his scalp, which is still tender.

  “Such an episode underlines how meaningless this competition is,” she says, her voice seeking to be heard over The Chieftains soundtrack. “Who bloody cares about music when tragedy beckons?”

  Toby stares at his fingertips, still crinkly from river water. This isn’t what any of them want to hear. The competition must matter more than anything. Once they stop believing that, their performances will wilt.

  He wants a drink. Now.

  It’s Armand who makes a point of switching topic. He’s tired of Toby grabbing the attention, and he leans into the rim of the table, forearms planted on its sticky surface. “The man is amazing.”

  “Who?” someone asks.

  “Williams.”

  He’s referring to John Williams, the British guitar god.

  “And I don’t mean just technically,” Armand adds.

  “Too amazing by half,” Larry says, pouring himself a pint from the pitcher. “I swear he never plays at more than sixty percent. He doesn’t have to.”

  Growing more animated, Armand says, “In master class in Frankfurt he remarks that my playing reminds him of Fisk.”

  Eliot Fisk, that is, American guitar whiz, said to be a carrier of the Segovia torch. This boasting is routine, especially for a man who didn’t make it past the preliminary round.

  “Give me the wild guys, like Käppel or Barrueco,” Larry says, hoisting his beer in salute to those who aren’t present. “They take risks.”

  “I know a guy who had a tendon removed,” Armand says, holding up his fretting hand, touching the web of skin between his third and fourth fingers. “So now these fingers move independently.”

  Everyone winces.

  “That’s crazy,” Toby says, but he’s impressed.

  The waitress brings a mountain of nachos and a platter of fried clams. Ever since he played in the semi, Toby’s been hungry in a way he recognizes as being adolescent. Lucy rises from her seat and heads off in search of the washroom.

  “Did you check out that girl’s instrument?” Larry asks, sour cream oozing out the side of his mouth. He means Trace, daughter of a schoolteacher and a tugboat driver, too young to join them at the bar. “Perfect copy of a vintage Smallman, for fuck’s sake. I’d give my right testicle for one of those.”

  Smallman is the Australian luthier favoured by John Williams and other top-flight players.

  “Who’d she have to fuck to get that?” Armand asks, but his heart isn’t in it. Just thinking about the girl possibly going on to the final round makes him sick.

  “I hate my instrument,” Larry says, his voice rising over the Irish music. “Piece of shit, late Hernandez.”

  “What model?” Hiro asks.

  Larry tells him.

  “They are crap for thirty years,” says Hiro, his head bobbing out of an oversized collar. He plays an instrument fashioned by an obscure Belgian maker.

  Larry looks glum. “You got an extra twenty grand?”

  “If I win …” Toby says, grabbing a pint of ale from the cluster of glasses in the middle of the table. This after swearing off until the end of the competition. “I’ll track down a Fleta ’65, or maybe an early 1970s José Romanillos.”

  “And for this you offer one testicle or two?” Armand asks.

  Toby knocks back half the beer, and his body jolts. This is what counts, the camaraderie and guitar talk; this is what he lives for, what he’s been missing too damn long.

  “You hear Trace play in semifinal?” Hiro asks.

  “Missed it,” Toby confesses.

  “She is dangerous, my friend.”

  Toby keeps a game smile on his face. “She’s just a kid.”

  So was he, back in the day.

  “One fucking amazing kid,” Hiro adds. He’s picked up their way of talking.

  “Who does she study with on her island?”

  “Some guy no one’s heard of.”

  They all stare into the table with its botched plates, worrying about this girl who is too young to drink with them. The poster of James Joyce with his bad eyes glares down: just when you think you’re safe again and happy, the old enemy, fear, creeps in.

  Lucy returns from the washroom, wiping her hands on her slacks — the dryer was on the fritz. When she sits down, she inserts herself next to Toby, so that he has no choice but to slide over the banquette and press next to Hiro. He feels the young man stiffen. This is probably a social horror in his country, to mash next to someone you barely know.

  Hiro fixes his eyes on the TV monitor, Yankees versus Red Sox.

  “How’s the nail holding up?” Toby asks. He feels Lucy staring at him, searching for symptoms of delayed trauma.

  Without changing the direction of his gaze, Hiro splays his mended hand on the tabletop. “You are excellent craftsman.” Before Toby has a chance to examine the perfectly glued seam, he lifts the hand and indicates the screen. “See that?” he cries, pointing. “Fantastic Japanese guy!”

  The pinstriped player, Hideki Okuda, slides into third base, then rises, grabbing his batting helmet off the dirt. Yankee Stadium erupts as two men cross home plate.

  Hiro is delighted. “Okuda is big star in Japan. My college is named after him. Every kid wants to be Okuda.”

  “My ideal job?” Larry says from the other end of the table. “Grad students pop into my office two days a week, summers off for touring.”

  “I teach part-time,” Armand says. “Frankfurt college, adult education. They promote me last year, for I am respected for pedagogical skills. So, my friends, you see that not always the most fantastic musician makes the best teacher.”

  Hiro drops back into his seat. “I will not teach,” he says. “If I cannot make employment as solo performer, then I give up guitar forever.”

  His statement silences the group, and Hiro never takes his eyes off the television monitor.

  Seventeen

  How many generations of students have worn down the furniture in the lobby of the Fine Arts Building? Trace heaves herself onto one of the sturdy tables, hitches her pants, and sits cross-legged, so lithe and flexible that one can only remember what it was like to have a body without joints. The box office is closed for the day — no performance tonight. The girl who runs the café is swabbing down the counter, switching off the espresso machine, all animation sucked from her face after an eight-hour shift. Trace thinks, I’ll never have to do a job like that. She watches the staircase at the north end of the lobby. She is waiting for someone and trying to look as if this isn’t so, running a hand over her bristly head. With her long neck and fine features, she manages to appear both street urchin and feminine.

  There is the sound of a door shutting on the floor above, and she jerks to attention, hearing a pause followed by the clip-clop of shoes while a man hums to himself. She recognizes the tune: “Amor de mis amores” by Veracruz composer Agustín Lara. There’s the snap of a briefcase closing, then Manuel Juerta appears at the top of the staircase. He’s wearing a Cuban shirt, the kind you don’t tuck in, and he dances down the stairs.

  Of course, Manuel sees her sitting there; he may be tired, but he isn’t blind. The empty foyer belongs to a world that will return to its clamour in a few hours, before there’s a chance for a proper airing out. He notes Trace, her naked head vulnerable as a newborn’s, her scruffy feet jammed into flip-flops.

  “You,” Juerta says, pointing with a hand clutching a can of beer. He glides like a skater across the tile fl
oor.

  Trace pretends to look surprised.

  “Where are your colleagues?” Juerta asks.

  “At some bar.”

  He nods sympathetically, then heads for the front door, hesitates, and turns around. “So you are alone.”

  She doesn’t reply. He’s working it out.

  “Come,” he beckons.

  She dangles one foot.

  “Come here.”

  She slips off the table, shrugging, as if she might or might not obey, then traipses toward him, aggressively tomboy, so attractive in a natural beauty. He slings an arm over her shoulder and directs her outside into the Montreal night. Juerta doesn’t give a damn who sees them. There are implied rules about fraternizing with competitors, but rules are meant to be broken, and this little girl was waiting for him.

  “We will go and visit my good friend Ernesto,” Juerta says, guiding Trace toward the intersection. “You know Ernesto?”

  Trace doesn’t.

  “Then you will have an adventure.” His arm droops from her shoulder, and they canter across the busy street. Trace wonders if Ernesto is a famous guitarist who lives in Montreal. This city is pandemonium compared to her quiet island village — horns toot, tires squeal, everyone trying to run you down. She peers into open doorways and sees the press of people and cigarette smoke, hears throaty laughter and thudding bass beats. Trace tells herself she’ll find a way to move here or to some other big city. Not a chance she’ll turn into one of those island women growing organic vegetables, selling handcrafted yoga mat sleeves at the fall fair.

  Juerta flags a taxi, they jump into the back seat, and Trace thinks, I have no idea where we’re going. The idea excites her. As the cab darts in and out of traffic, Juerta touches her cheek with the back of his hand.

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen,” she lies.

  Ninety minutes later Trace yawns, glances at the wall clock, and yawns again. There’s no water left in the cooler — she checked — and she’s studied the framed anatomy chart a dozen times and flipped through copies of Body Mind Magazine with its weird articles on animals as healers and liquid fasts. She gets up, bottom sucking away from the vinyl chair, and walks over yet again to the closed door and listens, ear pressed to the wood. She hears a soft moaning inside followed by a whimper, then another moan. In the background shimmers a soundtrack of fake rain forest, electronic howler monkeys, and digital squawking parrots. She wonders if she should leave, that maybe it’s what he expects. Could be he’s forgotten all about her as he sinks into his treatment.

  A burst of laughter erupts from the room, and she pulls back from the door, stuffing hands in her pockets. Should she call him Manuel or Mr. Juerta or even Señor Juerta? Some of the other competitors call him Maestro, a term that thrills her, but she can’t imagine uttering the word.

  Are they going to head out to dinner once this is over? Will he pay? She checks her wallet — twenty bucks and it has to last through tomorrow. Maybe he expects her to pony up, he being from a third world country. Don’t think too hard about the naked man on the other side of the door getting his puffy ass kneaded by the muscular Ernesto. What if something creepier is going on in there? Maybe this clinical setting is a front, part of an international operation where they pull in naive girls and it’s the last you hear of them. Trace paces the waiting room pausing only to gaze out the window, fourteen floors above busy St. Catherine Street. This office building must be empty so late in the day. Even if she let out a scream, would anyone hear above the street noise? What if they drop a black hood over her head? She’d hate that.

  By the time Juerta pushes open the door, patting his bits of hair down and buttoning his shirt, Trace is in a full-blown panic.

  “Señorita,” he says, ignoring her nervous state, “the mighty Ernesto has rearranged my anatomy and now we must eat. Have you had supper?”

  How could she have? She’s been hanging out here all this time. Without waiting for a reply, he picks up his briefcase and leads the way down the gloomy corridor toward the elevator. Once inside, he rests his cheek against her shoulder.

  “We have survived another day,” he says, and she feels the weight of his head as the elevator lurches down to the lobby.

  Dinner is in a Mexican restaurant run by a woman from Durango who keeps bringing on courses of spicy food. No one asks what Trace might like. Juerta helps himself, then urges her to do the same. “In my country it is not easy to eat this well.”

  All she knows about Cuba is that Castro is on the brink of death. Maybe he’s dead already. She’d like to ask but doesn’t want to appear stupid. Don’t they drive old cars down there while ancient men sing on street corners and play marimbas?

  Manuel seems to be having the time of his life chattering in Spanish to the waitress. The decor of the tiny restaurant consists of a three-dimensional scorpion gripping the stucco wall, its deadly tail pronged upward.

  “Do you know what we are talking about?” Manuel asks suddenly.

  She reddens. “Not a clue.”

  “We are discussing how Lucia, my wife, who is perhaps no longer my wife, says I should stay in this country. Defect.”

  “Well you should,” says Trace.

  He laughs too heartily, the way people do when something is the opposite of funny.

  “Only if you want to,” Trace adds quickly.

  The laughter stops, and he leans forward, seizing her hands. “Tell me, young Canadian friend, why I should eliminate my life, my friends, my family, in order to wash onto these shores like a piece of driftwood.”

  “You wouldn’t be driftwood,” she protests. “Just about anyone here would hire you to play concerts or teach or —”

  He squeezes her hands once, still holding on. “This is very interesting. Tell me more.”

  Is he making fun of her? “You could write your own ticket.”

  Abruptly he lets go. “A one-way ticket.”

  The waitress hovers, lowering a basket of hot tortillas wrapped in a checkered napkin. Manuel says something, and the waitress replies in a way that sounds as if she’s reciting from a poem or a song.

  Trace picks at the tube of squash filled with some kind of white cheese. When is he going to say something about her playing? She knows she’s good. She won the Kiwanis Festival, regional division, last year and played at the lieutenant governor’s New Year’s levee. Certain people understand music from first breath; she could sing before she could talk.

  The waitress reappears to set down jumbo-sized margaritas on the table, and no one asks if Trace is old enough. After running her finger around the rim of the glass and licking her salty fingertip, she takes a generous sip. Tart lime and tequila pucker her mouth into a gasp of pleasure: her first cocktail. Back home it’s straight rye or gin, stolen from some parent’s stash.

  “If I don’t return on the date of my visa, maybe I can never go home again,” Manuel says. “Tell me what I should do.”

  Trace says, “It would be amazing if you moved here.”

  He waits a beat, hops off his chair, and slips in beside her on the banquette, then starts stroking her fuzzy scalp. He’s wanted to do this all evening.

  “I could do this all night,” he says.

  Staring straight ahead, Trace says, “Prove it.”

  The hand stops moving, and he tips her chin to study her face. “You mean this?”

  For a moment she wavers, then says, “Sure.”

  Trace slouches on the bed in Manuel’s room at the fancy hotel where he insists on being put up, disdaining the cheaper B and Bs where other judges stay. He moves about the space restlessly and pours Trace a glass of water, then one for himself.

  “Are you drunk?” he asks.

  “No,” she says, though she is a little.

  “Too much alcohol since I arrived in this country,” he says, loosening his collar.

  He’s wearing a gold chain, like baseball players or rappers. He paces and drums his thigh as if girding himself to sa
y or do something. That’s his guitar case propped in the corner, loaded with airline stickers from all over the world. You’d never guess by the banged-up container what lies inside, the succulent rosewood-and-cedar instrument, chaffed honey-brown by decades of performing. She wonders if he’ll bring it out and play a private recital for her. She decides she will be calm, and that this will be the most amazing night of her life. The buzzing in her head is new. She’s not much of a drinker, not like some of the kids back on the island.

  “Water is good?” he asks.

  She lifts her glass in salute. “Primo.”

  Then he stands before her, knees pressing against hers. “Such a long day, yes?” he says.

  Trace smiles, not understanding that he hopes she will go now. She has followed him around all evening and now she’s in this man’s room, the same man everyone watches as he struts down the hallway or huddles in conference with the other judges: Manuel says this, Maestro says that. While other contestants prowl around downtown Montreal, she’s been spending hours solo with Manuel Juerta.

  “This is a dangerous place for you, young lady,” he says.

  “Yes?”

  “Alone in a hotel room with a man you barely know.”

  She shrugs, pretending to be unimpressed.

  “You should be back in your own room practising.”

  She sucks in a breath. He wouldn’t say this if she hadn’t been chosen to head into the finals. No need to practise if she were to be sent packing. Maybe he’ll tell her she’s a rare talent; that’s what people say after they hear her play.

  But Manuel’s plump face sags with weariness. Dampness soaks through the cotton shirt that sticks to his muscled back. On his island, buildings never have windows sealed shut. Back home, fragrant sea air follows you everywhere.

  He takes her head and squeezes it into his chest.

  This is it, she thinks, this is how it begins.

  “I am going to telephone a taxi and send you back to the dormitorio,” he says.

  But he doesn’t push her away. Instead, his hand lowers to her shoulder blade, and she feels him shift, some adjustment being made.