Mr. X

Babylon and introducing the Black Death to Europe, your family gotreally awful. They settled in Edgerton, where they practiced voodoo and cheated at cards. They made the Kennedys look like the Reagans!'

    Gleaming with mockery, Laurie's eyes slid to meet mine. 'He actually said that.They made the Kennedys look like the Reagans. It was very impressive.'

    'We always were a little peculiar,' I said.

 •The tiles on the roof of the big house on Blueberry Lane were made of rubberized plastic, and its design mismatched a Tudor manor with a Georgian townhouse. Stewart Hatch had probably fallen in love with the place the moment he had seen it.

    'Who built this house?' I asked Laurie.

    She grimaced. “It's one of Grennie Milton's masterpieces. To feel at home in it, you have to wear a pink blazer and green pants.'

    We went into a vast space in which islands of furniture seemed to float a few inches off a pale carpet. Footsteps clattered on a staircase. Cobbie hurtled around a corner, charged toward us, and wrapped his arms around his mother's legs. A dark-haired young woman in blue jeans and a loose cotton sweater appeared in his wake.

    'Ned, Posy Fairbrother, my savior.'

    Posy gave me a crisp handshake and a smile that would have warmed a corpse. 'The famous Ned Dunstan.' From the mass of hair gathered behind her ears, wisps and tendrils escaped to fall about her face. She was about twenty-four or twenty-five and the sort of woman who wore lipstick only under duress. 'Cobbie's been talking about you all afternoon.' Posy turned to Laurie. 'Feed him in about half an hour?'

    Cobbie let go of his mother and tried to drag me away.

    'After we get him in bed, how about helping mein the kitchen?'

    Posy looked down at Cobbie doing tug-of-war on my hand and smiled at me. 'The price of adoration.' She knelt in front of him. 'Give Ned some time to talk to your mother before asking him to listen to your music.'

     'Ned and I can both listen to the music.' Laurie bent toward her son. 'Cobbie, Ned likes that same Monteverdi piece.'

    Cobbie stepped into the space Posy Fairbrother had vacated. 'You do?' His eyes held no trace of humor.

    ' 'Confitebor tibi,' ' I said. 'Emma Kirkby. I love it.'

    His mouth fell open. I might as well have said that Santa Claus lived on one side of me and the Easter Bunny on the other. He wheeled around and raced toward one of the floating islands.

    Laurie and I sat on an oatmeal-colored sofa as Cobbie loaded a CD into a rank of sound equipment beneath a big, soulful self-portrait by Frida Kahlo. I couldn't take my eyes from it. I looked for the other painting she had inherited from her father, and above the fireplace to our left saw a slightly smaller Tamara de Lempicka of a blond woman at the wheel of a sports car.

    'What astounding paintings,' I said to Laurie.

    Cobbie was exploding with impatience. 'Sorry,' she said. 'We're ready now.' He pushed theplay button.

    Emma Kirkby's shining voice sailed out of invisible speakers, translating the flowing, regular meter into silvery grace. Cobbie sat cross-legged on the carpet, his head lifted, drinking in the music while keeping one eye on me. His whole body went still. The meter slowed down, then surged forward at'Sanctum et terrible nomen eius,' and he braced himself. We reached the 'Gloria patri,' where Emma Kirkby soars into a series of impassioned, out-of-time inventions that always reminds me of an inspired jazz solo. Cobbie fastened his eyes on mine. When the piece came to an end, he said, 'Youdo like it.'

    'You do, too,' I said.

    Cobbie picked himself up from the carpet. 'Now hear the piano one.'

    Laurie said, “I'll mess around in the kitchen for a while,' and disappeared around the corner. Cobbie inserted another CD and pushed buttons until he reached Zoltan Kocsis playing 'Jardins sous la pluie,' the last section of Debussy'sEstampes.

    He closed his eyes and cocked his head in unconscious imitation of almost every musician I have ever met- even I do that when I'm listening hard. I could see the harmonies shiver along his nervous system. 'Jardins sous la pluie' ends with a dramatic little flourish anda high, percussive E. When it had sounded, Cobbie opened his eyes and said 'That's on our piano.' He pointed across the room to a white baby grand angling out from a far wall, raced across the carpet, raised the fallboard, and struck the high E. I don't know what I felt most like doing, giggling in delight or applauding, but I think I did both.

    'See?' He struck it again, percussively, and lifted his finger to cut off the note.

    'Do you remember the big note before that?'

    He spun back to the keyboard and hit the high B. “It's five down and five up,it's funny.'

    The B was a five-step down from the E, so after all the previous harmonic movement, the E came as an almost comic resolution. It was no wonder Cobbie could imitate voices perfectly. He had perfect pitch, or what we call perfect pitch, anyhow—the ability to hear precise relationships between sounds.

    'How did you know where they were?'

    He walked up to me, laid his forearms across my knees, and stared into my eyes, asking himself if I were really that dumb or just pretending. 'Because,' he said, 'one is very, very, veryred. And the big one is very, very, veryblue.'

    'Naturally,' I said.

    'Very, veryblue. Now can we have the funny Frank Sinatra song?'

    'Just what we need,' I said.

    He charged back to the player, inserted the CD ofCome Dance with Me, and called up a crisp drum roll and Billy May's brass figures. Cobbie sank to the floor and crossed his legs, listening to Sinatra's perfectly timed entrance on 'Something's Gotta Give' with the same concentration he had brought to Monteverdi and Debussy. He twinkled at me at the beginning of the bridge and smiled at Sinatra's stretching out of the rhythm after the instrumental break. Because I was listening partially through Cobbie's ears, what I heard gleamed with a loose, confident power. But for some reason, a part of me shrank away—Sinatra's 'Something's Gotta Give' was the last thing I wanted to hear. The track ended with a swaggering downward phrase and an exultantCome on, let's tear it up that made Cobbie laugh out loud.

    He fastened his eyes on mine. 'Again?'

    'Ring-a-ding-ding,' I said.

    The jazzy call to arms from the drummer; urgent shouts from the trumpets and trombones; the saxophone section unfurlinga carpet-smooth lead-in; at the exact center of the exact center of the first beat of the first bar of the first chorus, a lean baritone voice took off in a racing start. Fear slid up my spine, and goose pimples bristled on my arms.

    When the song ended, Posy Fairbrother appeared at the entrance of the room. 'Let's tear up some wild, knocked-out, koo-koo spaghetti, what do you say?'

    Cobbie plunged toward her. At the corner leading to the kitchen, he looked back at me. 'Ned! We're having knocked-out, koo-koo spaghetti!'

    'You and I are having spaghetti, Frank,' Posy told him. 'You can say good night to Ned afterward, and then he's going to have dinner with your mommy.'

    Laurie moved around them, holding a wineglass in each hand. 'You and Posy go in the kitchen. I'll be there in a minute.'

    Cobbie put his hand into Posy's and vanished around the corner. For what seemed an absurdly long time, Laurie and I walked toward each other. When we stood face to face, she leaned forward to kiss me. The kiss lasted longer than I had expected.

    'What did you think? Whatdo you think?'

    'He's incredible, that's what I think. I think he should skip grade school and go straight to Juilliard.'

    Laurie put her forehead on my shoulder. 'Now what do I do?'