Confess, Fletch

Flynn shrugged. “Jesus told him to. Or so he said.”

“But where did he get all the Astro gasoline containers?”

“He’d been saving up.”

Elizabeth was tuning his cello.

“Now, let’s see what this is all about.”

Leaving his cup drained behind him, Flynn sat behind his music stand.

“Elsbeth usually joins us at the piano,” he explained to Fletch, “but Beethoven didn’t consider her today.”

She came over to the divan and took her tea. The children were behind their music stands. The youngest, Winny, was the page-turner. “Remember to turn me first,” his father said. “I’ve got a memory like a bear’s mouth.”

They all straightened their backs, like flowers rising their stems in the morning sun.

“Con brio!” their father shouted, in a voice of pleasant threat.

They were off, bows indicating two dimensions in their coming and going, eyes intent upon the sheet music, Randy’s violin gracefully indicating, belatedly, a few notes Jenny skipped, her blue eyes getting more huge as, they traveled down the page, a few times losing her place altogether (when she had nothing to play, she sighed; then her tongue would sneak out and touch the tip of her nose), Winny back and forth behind them like a waiter, following his father’s score, turning his page first, then Jenny’s on perfect time (frequently a help to her finding her place and a cause of renewed, more confident playing), then Todd’s, then Randy’s, every five or six minutes a jet screeching by just five hundred meters above the house, deafening the players (drowned out, they sawed away apparently soundlessly), making them adjust their paces to each other once they could hear each other again, ever and always Flynn’s cello playing along, leading from behind (“Molto! Molto!” he shouted over the shrieking of a jet during the third section; he was enormous, delicate over his instrument), keeping the pace, somewhat, the tone, as well as it could be kept, Elizabeth sitting in the divan beside Fletch, ankles crossed, hands her lap, loving them all with her eyes.

Upstairs, a baby mewed.

They sat rigid in their slight curve, shoulders straight, chins tucked, the boys’ blue denim stretched over their slim thighs, sneakers angled on the floor like frogs’ feet, the sky through the windows behind them going down the scale of gray through dusk to dark, more lights coming on at the airport across the reflecting surface of the harbor. During the fourth section, Jenny was tired and not as practiced. Sighs became more frequent. The tongue crept out to the tip of her nose even when she should have been playing. Even Randy’s and Todd’s faces shone with perspiration.

Their hair matted on their foreheads identically. For a moment, Fletch looked at the chessmen set up on a board to his right. A game was in progress.

Jenny was vigorous in the last bars, practiced, allegro, and, finished a little before the others. She looked momentarily confused.

It was a wonderful forty minutes.

“Bravo!” Elizabeth said while she and Fletch applauded.

“Pretty good, Jenny,” Randy said, standing up. Without comment Flynn closed his sheet music and stood to lean his cello in the curve of the piano again.

“Da‘?” Todd said. “That should never have been in anything other than F major.”

“We all make mistakes,” said Flynn. “Even Beethoven. We all have our temporary madnesses.”

Elizabeth was hugging Jenny and complimenting Winny on his page-turning.

It was five-twenty.

“I expect we could find a drink for you, before supper,” Flynn said. “Elsbeth drinks sherry, and I suppose there’s some other stuff in the house.”

“I have to get to the airport,” Fletch said.

“Oh?” said Flynn. “Skipping town, finally?”

Conversation was suspended while a jet thundered overhead.

The room reeked with accomplishment as the kids moved about with their instruments. They bounced on the balls of their sneakered feet as only happy, accomplished children do.

“Andy’s arriving,” Fletch said finally. “Six-thirty.”

“Is she now? That’s nice.”

“You’ll stay for supper?” Elizabeth said, coming back to where Fletch was now standing.

“He’s picking up his girlfriend,” rolled Flynn. “At the airport. That will alarm your police escort, I’m sure. I’d better warn them you don’t mean to take flight, or they will tackle you at the information counter. They’ll watch you, all the same.”

“Bring her back with you,” Elizabeth said.

Fletch shook hands respectfully with the children.

“I like you,” Elizabeth said. “Frannie, this is no murderer.”

“That’s what all the women say,” Flynn said. “I haven’t convinced him yet, either.”

“His face was good while he listened.”

“As long as, he didn’t hum along,” Flynn said. “Tap his toes.”

They all laughed at Flynn as a jet whined in a holding pattern over their heads.

“Bring your girl back with you,” shouted Elizabeth. “We’ll wait supper for you!”

“Thanks anyway, said Fletch. ”Really, this has been a wonderful time for me.“

Flynn said, “We’d be glad to have you, Fletch.”

Fletch said, “I’d be glad to stay. May I come back sometime?”

“What’s your instrument?” Winny asked.

“The typewriter.”

“Percussion,” said Flynn.

“Well,” said Elizabeth, “Leroy Anderson wrote for the typewriter.”

“You come back any time,” said Flynn. “Any time you’re free, that is.”

In the cold vestibule, Flynn said, “I guess you didn’t have the conversation with me this afternoon you wanted to.”

“No,” said Fletch. “This was much better.”

“I thought you’d think so.”

“May I see you in your office tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

“What’s a good time?”

“Five o’clock. Any policeman with good sense is in his office at that time. The traffic is terrible.”

“Okay. Where are you?”

“Ninety-nine Craigie Lane. If you get lost, ask the plainclothesmen following you.”

They said good night.

Outside, the air was damp and cold.

Fletch stood on the top step off the porch for a moment, adjusting his eyes to the dark, feeling the house’s warmth at his back, hearing a bit of early Beethoven scraping in his memory’s ears, thinking of the two blue doll’s eyes under a doll’s mop of tossed, curly blond hair.

Across the street, under a streetlight, he clearly saw the faces of the two plainclothesmen waiting for him. It seemed to him their eyes were filled with hatred.

One of them picked up the car phone, as Fletch started down the steps. Flynn would be telling them Fletcher was going to the airport, and they shouldn’t panic…but to make sure he didn’t get on a plane.

“Jesus Christ,” Fletch said.

The scrape of his chin on his shirt collar made him realize he should have shaved.

Thirty

“Fletch!”