The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [28]
CODRUTA SOON REAPPEARED to announce the commencement of a musical interlude. “We are very fortunate this afternoon to have Daisy de Vicionière, who I have been assured has a talent to match her most youthful beauty—does anyone detect a note of jealousy?—and Lucien Marchand, who in the most neighborly of gestures—and I mean that quite literally—has agreed to sing for us.” Daisy arose from her chair and curtsied before she went to the piano, where she accompanied herself on a pair of popular songs by Gustave Theron. Lucien relaxed the second she opened her mouth, for her notes neither pierced his heart nor hovered like trembling soap bubbles; she did not lack talent, but to hear her gave him nothing beyond a somewhat tedious sense of enjoyment, the way he sometimes felt sitting through a tired production at the St.-Germain.
After Daisy had finished and received a polite round of applause, Lucien’s turn came. He went to the piano, where he delivered Gluck’s “O del mio dolce ardor” followed by Monteverdi’s “Lasciatemi morire.” Although Lucien at fourteen was only a fraction of the singer he hoped to become, it was obvious to all present that his voice already possessed an intrinsic beauty and a natural legato that were the hallmarks of real talent. As his last note hung in the air, even before Codruta approached to embrace him as she whispered “Bravo” into his ear and presented him with a dozen white roses, he knew that he had accomplished exactly what he had hoped. Turning back to her friends, the princess dabbed at her eyes with a napkin and thanked the two young singers for raising the spirits of all present on what otherwise could have been a perfectly drab afternoon.
10
Rembrandt Pussyhorse
NEW YORK CITY, 2001. It was eight o’clock by the time Martin had showered, dressed, left his house, and lunged into a waiting car service. On the West Side Highway, he watched the river glide by under a startlingly clear sky and continued to feel nicely sedated by the aspirin he had taken, at least until the car accelerated out of the Fifty-seventh Street exit heading crosstown and went directly over a crater-size pothole, which launched Martin several inches off of his seat, not once but twice, as both axles traversed the gulley. “Jesus-fucking-christ,” he muttered with a laugh and was reminded of the “brain damage” he had suffered as a child as a result of the vaunted potholes of Western Pennsylvania.
“That’s a Pittsburgh pothole, Marty,” his father, Hank, used to say as he barreled right through on the way to a game or to practice, usually at around eighty miles an hour. “Our tax dollars hard at work.”
“Why didn’t you go around it?” the ten-year-old Martin responded, as he did on such occasions.
“Potholes are like problems.” Hank gripped the steering wheel with his muscular hands. “You gotta meet ’em head-on.”
Usually Martin would have accepted this advice with an affable grin, but on this day—as he now remembered—he was planning a minor insurrection, at least as far as Hank was concerned. “Dad, I want to play goalie,” he declared.
“You mean permanently?” Hank grimaced as the car bucked up and down. “You’re one of the best skaters on the team.”
Martin was prepared for this. “I thought you said goalies have to be good skaters.”
Hank frowned, obviously regretting the adage. “That’s true,” he admitted and rubbed a finger against one of his sideburns. “You also have to be kind of crazy, right?”
“Yeah, so—I’m crazy,” Martin said, trying to joke.
Hank was not amused. As every hockey player knew, goalies were strange, aloof loners who displayed all sorts of freakish behavior, e.g., talking to the goalposts or knitting sweaters between periods in the case of Jacques Plante, probably the best goalie in the history of the