Nocturnes_ Five Stories of Music and Nightfall - Kazuo Ishiguro [51]
“Lindy Gardner’s next door?”
“Look, I can’t go through that again. I’ve just been in there, it was all I could do to stay as long as I did. And now she’s saying we have to play with her Meg Ryan chess set …”
“Steve, you’re telling me Lindy Gardner’s next door? You spent time with her?”
“She put on her husband’s record! Fuck it, I think she’s playing another one right now. This is what I’ve come to. This is my level now.”
“Steve, hold it, let’s go over this again. Steve, just shut the fuck up, then explain it to me. Explain to me how you get to be with Lindy Gardner.”
I did calm down then for a while, and I gave a brief account of how Lindy had asked me over, and the way things had gone.
“So you weren’t rude to her?” he asked as soon as I was through.
“No, I wasn’t rude to her. I kept it all held in. But I’m not going back in there. I need to change hotels.”
“Steve, you’re not going to change hotels. Lindy Gardner? She’s in bandages, you’re in bandages. She’s right next door. Steve, this is a golden opportunity.”
“It’s nothing of the sort, Bradley. It’s inner-circle hell. Her Meg Ryan chess set for God’s sake!”
“Meg Ryan chess set? How does that work? Every piece looks like Meg?”
“And she wants to hear my playing! She’s insisting next time I take in CDs!”
“She wants to … Jesus, Steve, you haven’t even got the bandages off and everything’s going your way. She wants to hear you play?”
“I’m asking you to deal with this, Bradley. Okay, I’m in deep, I’ve had the surgery, you talked me into it, because I was fool enough to believe what you said. But I don’t have to put up with this. I don’t have to spend the next two weeks with Lindy Gardner. I’m asking you to get me moved pronto!”
“I’m not getting you moved anywhere. Do you realise how important a person Lindy Gardner is? You know the kind of people she’s pals with? What she could do for you with one phone call? Okay, she’s divorced from Tony Gardner now. That doesn’t change a thing. Get her on your team, get your new face, doors will open. It’ll be big league, five seconds flat.”
“It won’t be big-league anything, Bradley, because I’m not going over there again, and I don’t want any doors opening for me other than ones that open because of my music. And I don’t believe what you said before, I don’t believe this crap about a scheme …”
“I don’t think you should be expressing yourself so emphatically. I’m very concerned about those stitches …”
“Bradley, very soon you won’t have to be concerned about my stitches at all, because you know what? I’m going to pull off this mummy mask and I’m going to put my fingers into the corners of my mouth and yank my face into every kind of stretchy combination possible! Do you hear me, Bradley?”
I heard him sigh. Then he said: “Okay, calm down. Just calm down. You’ve been under a lot of stress lately. It’s understandable. If you don’t want to see Lindy right now, if you want to let gold go floating by, okay, I understand your position. But be polite, okay? Make a good excuse. Don’t burn any bridges.”
I FELT A LOT better after this talk with Bradley, and had a reasonably contented evening, watching half a movie, then listening to Bill Evans. The next morning after breakfast, Dr. Boris came in with two nurses, seemed satisfied and left. A little later, around eleven, I had a visitor—a drummer called Lee who I’d played with in a house band in San Diego a few years ago. Bradley, who’s also Lee’s manager, had suggested he come by.
Lee’s okay and I was pleased to see him. He stayed for an hour or so, and we swapped news of mutual friends, who was in which band, who’d packed their bags and gone to Canada or to Europe.
“It’s too bad how so many of the old team aren’t around any more,” he said. “You have great times together, next thing you don’t know where they are.”
He told me about his recent gigs, and we laughed over some memories from our San Diego days. Then towards the end of his visit, he said:
“And what about Jake Marvell? What do you make