To Begin With...

But Nicholas was chivalrous, above all else. It was well known, like a birthmark you can’t hide with clothing, or a withered arm. His eyes would betray it, in the dark hours, and he would sit in the darkness and watch the first snow falling outside the latticed study windows. A virtue streaked like a character flaw in his destiny, spoken over dim fires and homemade caves in the secret places, marred like Galahad. In the end, it would be his undoing.


  It was as if the whole world was the back of a clock face on some nights. The moon would set in over the residual night fog, Big Ben in wane, foghorns from the harbor like bass notes and baritone sax from the jazz holes lining the basements of 42nd and South Avenue. Shark-tooth smile nights like these, who could your trust? Hoell made it a simple practice — no one.

 Once, he played the ivory with the best at most of these clubs. Now all he had was the Stetson hat and nicotine stains. Removing your fingers from the keys was like snapping from a deep hypnosis, unsure of what you had revealed, and you take the diluted scotch to cover the disorientation; to keep at bay the bottom of the world falling away.

 His fingers still remembered those spells. They danced on air even now, channeling them to the melody of the waterfront.

 Savannah shuffled from the fog like a lost, sodden teddy-bear; if you could imagine the little girl heartbroken over him. “There’s news about,” Savannah growled preemptively, looking over his shoulder. “They say He has come back. . . .”

 “He isn’t due,” Hoell replied.

 Savannah just shrugged, and Hoell found himself wondering how there could be a topcoat oversized for that frame. His own was cobbled together like a Frankenstein monster, bits and pieces of other coats showing through. His fingers moved in the air. “What else do they say?”

 “The usual. Mentioned your name.”

 Hoell peered. “With Him?”

 “Nah. Whitechapel.”

 Hoell nodded, pushing the fedora back and forth across his scalp. “I see,” he said. Then, as if he had suddenly remembered, he drew a small lozenge tin from his pocket. Savannah snatched it up greedily, but cracked open the lip like an angry cat might be inside and ready to announce the state of its existence.

 He glanced up sharply. “You guarantee it’s real?”

 Hoell nodded. “Miles Davis’s own tooth. I promise.”

 Savannah made the tin disappear into his coat, and passed over something bundled in old newsprint. Hoell took it reverently, and then sidled off into the fog.