I said, Man, as for me getting with cutting them dots, that was Old Pro’s department and sometimes he used to call me up to sit with him on the bus as he checked through the score sheets and made sure that all of the Bossman’s latest revisions were in place. That was something he used to do, especially during those long stretches when the landscape was the same old stuff mile after mile after mile and everybody else was nodding and I was awake and happened not to be reading.
And he said, See what I mean, man, that’s precisely the kind of priceless stuff I’m talking about. But hey, look, I better cut this off so you can get back to your homework. Speaking of which, I must tell you this. Man, when Papa Joe States clued me in on your whereabouts these days I could just see you relaxing back in one of those comfortable, heavy-gauged oak New York University classroom chairs with your invisible bass fiddle sound box between your legs like a cello with your pizzicato fingers here and your fretting fingers up here and the ornate tuning pegs and scroll protruding above your head like some kind of regal decoration.
And then he said, Anyway, I just want you to know that I’ve missed you, fellow. As tied up as I’ve been since I came back from that deal in Europe not long after you cut out and also disconnected your answering service. I still kept expecting you to turn up any day. But hell, I guess you can tell I’ve been thinking about you. And oh, by the way, before I hang up I also want you to know that Felix has some loot for you. That movie thing didn’t go through because something so much better turned up for me. But there was something up front for the preliminary work that we did and part of it is yours and we kept expecting to hear from you. So it will be on the way to you tomorrow.
So I really better get off the line now, he said then, but I just had to call and let you know how much I’d like for us to get together the next time I’m in New York. And naturally I’m just dying to meet that fine stone fox of a roommate of yours that Joe States was carrying on so about. He calls her some fine people, which just knocks me out, fellow. Because just leave it to old Papa Joe. Because I don’t know whether he’s riffing on our man James Joyce’s Annalivia or not, but calling her some fine people brings back to this schoolboy’s mind is Plurabelle, which I distinctly remember you yourself using in a conversation we were having about “Sweet Georgia Brown” on the way back to Hollywood from a Central Avenue jam session one night. I kept talking about how those battling tenors kept leapfrogging each other and you said what you said as if any parody of James Joyce or Williams and Walker, or was it Miller and Lyles in a vaudeville skit? Man talking about Annalivia, man, I could tell you something about Annalivia, about the plurabilities of Annalivia Plurabelle! Yeah, man, but what about this? Man, I know that, but let me tell you about the time when. Hey, yeah, man, but listen to this . . . with the rhythm flowing like old James Joyce’s river running all the way back to Eve and Adam.
I often think about how you used to come up with stuff like that, my man, he said then. Who knows? Old Joe States has a set of ears second to none. And a mind like a steel trap. If you ever started signifying about that tune like that anywhere near him he’s subject to pick up on that Plurabelle part right away, and riff it back at you so fast you won’t even recognize that you’re the source. His source, in any case.
Then just before he actually did finally hang up he said, But hey, look. Speaking of Plurabelles and plurabilities, I must confess that there are perhaps some possibly significant reorientations in progress chez your old scene cruising friend Mice these days. But which I’m not going to tell you about until I get to New York before long or maybe even sooner. But definitely as soon as I can make it and that means the next time I call I just might already be there on my next as of now inevitable trip back east.
XVI
Man, what can I say? Roland Beasley said as we crossed Madison Avenue on our way along Fifty-seventh Street to Fifth Avenue and Rizzoli’s Bookstore. We had spent the first part of the afternoon at an exhibition of Jacques Callot drawings, sketches, and etchings that Roland had invited me to come along and see at an upstairs gallery near Park Avenue.
I had told him what I had told him about how I had begun reading about the Commedia dell’Arte during the fall of my freshman year in college. And when he called he had also reminded me that I also said what I had said about Jacques Callot the first time we talked about the reproductions of the Harlequins and Saltimbancs in a book from the Museum of Modern Art about the first fifty years of the paintings of Pablo Picasso.
I had become
