In which various sets of young people get together
I
McClintic Sphere, whose horn man was soloing, stood by the empty piano, looking off at nothing in particular. He was half listening to the music (touching the keys of his alto now and again, as if by sympathetic magic to make that natural horn develop the idea differently, some way Sphere thought could be better) and half watching the customers at the tables.
This was last set and it'd been a bad week for Sphere. Some of the colleges were let out and the place had been crowded with these types who liked to talk to each other a lot. Every now and again, they'd invite him over to a table between sets and ask him what he thought about other altos. Some of them would go through the old Northern liberal routine: look at me, I'll sit with anybody. Either that or they would say: 'Hey fella, how about Night Train?' Yes, bwana. Yazzuh, boss. Dis darkey, ol' Uncle McClintic, he play you de finest Night Train you evah did hear. An' aftah de set he gwine take dis old alto an' shove it up yo' white Ivy League ass.
The horn wanted to finish off: he'd been tired all week as Sphere. They took fours with the drummer, stated the main theme in unison and left the stand.
The bums stood outside like a receiving line. Spring had hit New York, all warm and aphrodisiac. Sphere found his Triumph in the lot, got in and took off uptown. He needed to relax.
Half an hour later he was in Harlem, in a friendly rooming (and in a sense cat) house run by one Matilda Winthrop, who was little and wizened and looked like any elderly little lady you might see in the street going along with gentle steps in the waning afternoon to look for spleens and greens at the market.
'She's up there,' Matilda said, with a smile for everybody, even musicians with a headful of righteous moss, who were making money and drove sports cars. Sphere shadowboxed with her for a few minutes. She bad better reflexes than he did.
The girl was sitting on the bed, smoking and reading a western. Sphere tossed his coat on a chair. She moved over to make room for him, dogeared a page, put the book on the floor. Soon he was telling her about the week, about the kids with money who used him for background music and the musicians from other bigger groups, also with money, who were cautious and had mixed reactions, and the few who couldn't really afford dollar beers at the V-Note but did or wanted to understand, except that the space they might have occupied was already taken up by the rich kids and musicians. He told it all into the pillow and she rubbed his back with amazingly gentle hands. Her name, she said, was Ruby but he didn't believe that. Soon:
'Do you ever dig what I'm trying to say,' he wondered.
'On the horn I don't,' she answered, honest enough, 'a girl doesn't understand. All she does is feel. I feel what you play, like I feel what you need when you're inside me. Maybe they're the same thing, McClintic, I don't know. You're kind to me, what is it you want?'
'Sorry,' he said. After a while, 'This is a good way to relax.'
'Stay tonight?'
'Sure.'
Slab and Esther, uncomfortable with each other, stood in front of an easel in his place, looking at Cheese Danish # 35. The cheese Danish was a recent obsession of Slab's. He had taken, some time ago, to painting in a frenzy these morning-pastries, in every conceivable style, light and setting. The room was already littered with Cubist Fauve and Surrealist cheese Danishes. 'Monet spent his declining years at his home in Giverny, painting the water lilies in the garden pool,' reasoned Slab. 'He painted all kinds of water lilies. He liked water lilies. These are my declining years. I like cheese danishes, they have kept me alive now for longer than I can remember. Why not.'
The subject of Cheese Danish # 35 occupied only a small area to the lower left of center, where it was pictured impaled on one of the metal steps of a telephone pole. The landscape was an empty street, drastically foreshortened, the only living things in it a tree in the middle distance, on which perched an ornate bird, busily textured with a great many swirls, flourishes and bright-colored patches.
'This,' explained Slab in answer to her question, 'is my revolt against Catatonic Expressionism: the universal symbol I have decided will replace the Cross in western civilization. It is the Partridge in the Pear Tree. You remember the old Christmas song, which is a linguistic joke. Perdrix, pear tree. The beauty is that it works like a machine, yet is animate. The partridge eats pears off the tree, and his droppings in turn nourish the tree which groves higher and higher, every day lifting the partridge up and at the same time assuring him of a continuous supply of food. It is perpetual motion, except for one thing.' He pointed out a gargoyle with sharp fangs near the top of the picture. The point of the largest fang lay on an imaginary line projected parallel to the axis of the tree and drawn through the head of the bird. 'It could as well have been a low-flying airplane or high-tension wire,' Slab said. 'But someday that bird will be impaled on the gargoyle's teeth, just like the poor cheese Danish is already on the phone pole.'
'Why can't he fly away?' Esther said.
'He is too stupid. He used to know how to fly once, but he's forgotten.'
'I detect allegory in all this,' she said.
'No,' said Slab. 'That is on the same intellectual level as doing the Times crossword puzzle on Sunday. Phony. Unworthy of you.'
She'd wandered to the bed. 'No,' he almost yelled.
'Slab, it's so bad. It's a physical pain, here.' She drew her fingers across her abdomen.
'I'm not getting any either,' said Slab. 'I can't help it that Schoenmaker cut you off.'
'Aren't I your friend?'
'No,' said Slab.
'What can I do to show you -'
'Go,' said Slab, 'is what you can do. And let me sleep. In my chaste army cot. Alone.' He crawled to the bed and lay face down. Soon Esther left, forgetting to close the door. Not being the type to slam doors on being
