Three Page 15

  • ONE •

  “Pretending. He was addicted to it.

  He could pretend whenever and whatever.”

  The man in the shiny blue tights stood at the edge of the cliff, his feet curling over its lip, and slowly leaned forward over the six-thousand-foot drop. Carol stood just behind him. It seemed like all of Switzerland was laid out below them. It was too late now for the man to change his mind and scramble back onto the cliff. He began to fall downward and downward as though he were being sucked into the vastness of the scenery. The sunset light flared for a moment off his tights, and, then, he pulled the release on his parachute and coasted on the warm wind toward the glittering lakes below

  Pretend you’re him,” said Mathew. Carol leaned back hard against the chair and gripped its arms. She looked down at the floor. “It’s terrifying,” she whispered.

  “Of course, it is,” he said. “You’ve got to let go.” He looked over at her tense and frightened face. “Keep remembering: it’s only pretend.”

  “I know, I know.” She relaxed a little and tried to pretend. Now she, too, was stepping off the edge of the cliff as though she were a second skydiver--launching into the middle of nothing far above this mountain valley. She plummeted downward faster and faster as the ground rushed up at her---until Mathew reached over and lifted off her 3-D glasses.

  Like a snuffed candle the illusion was gone. She was back in the movie theater watching an over-size movie screen. “You jerk,” she said. “I was just getting into it.”

  Pretending. It was their favorite thing to do, and they were pretty good at it. Particularly Mathew. Maybe too good. Sometimes she worried that some day he’d take them some place far away in their imaginations, and they wouldn’t be able to get back. Wow, was that possible? The idea made her nervous, but it also made pretending even more exciting.

  A lot more exciting than the tedious rehearsal for the Claremont Senior High School dance show they were doing now. Their class had begun another run-through in the gym of the opening dance number. This time the principal, Mr. Gosling, had come by to watch.

  “My God, it’s loud,” he said. He turned to the music teacher and smiled. “But I know that’s what they like,” he said. He watched two girls do double backflips in front of two lines of seniors clapping and singing behind them. The three-piece band by the piano struck an ending chord, and the rehearsal was over.

  He stepped forward clapping slowly. “You kids were great,” he said. “They’re going to love it.” He was referring to the parents who would be coming to the show next Friday from all over the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “That’s quite a catchy tune,” he said to the music teacher.

  “Carol Pindler over there arranged if for us,” he said.

  “The one playing the piano?” said the Principal. “Carol,” he called out. A girl with impossibly long and bright blonde hair spun around on the piano bench to face him. She looked shy and self-conscious, not quite as knock-em-dead pretty as he expected with hair as dramatic as that---but pretty enough and obviously bright. She got up as he walked over to congratulate her.

  “That tune’s a winner,” he said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Gosling,” she said smiling, trying to be offhand about it. When he had turned away, she made a face at Mathew, who’d been sitting next to the piano playing the drums.

  “He’s right. It’s great. I didn’t know you wrote it.”

  “I didn’t,” she said.

  He looked surprised. “But you let him think you did.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She made another face and began scooping the music sheets off the piano. “I didn’t think he’d believe me if I told him the truth.”

  “How come?”

  “It’s by Mozart.”

  “Mozart? You’ve got to be kidding. He’s that old dead guy. He lived way long ago, right? Couple hundred years at least.”

  “So?”

  “Well, how could he write stuff like that—you know, cool stuff like we play today? I’ve listened to classical music. It doesn’t cut it. All those squeaky violins. There’s no rhythm to it. It’s all diddly-diddly-diddly.”

  “You mean there’re no drums.” She was laughing at him as she began quietly to play a couple of bars on the piano of Mozart’s version of the hip dance piece they were playing a few moments ago.

  Why did she like this guy? she asked herself. She loved music. He loved science. They were complete opposites. She did like him, though. And, then, there was his appearance. His wiry hair stuck straight out all over his head like cotton candy, and he always wore that grubby T-shirt. She kept asking him to wash it. But, oh, no.

  “I like it this way---it smells like me,” he’d told her.

  “You see? That’s what I mean,” he said. “It’s too slow. Where’s the beat?”

  She sped it up and added some syncopation.

  “That’s better. “Then, a look of genuine surprise came over his face. “Hey, wait up. Isn’t that what me and the band were playing out there?”

  “Yup.”

  “It sounds so different now. Play some more.” She obliged with another bar of the dance piece.

  “No, I mean the old stuff,” he said.

  So she did it. He shook his head. “It’s like I can smell the incense burning.” He listened some more. “It is nice in a funny kind of way—but it sounds like it’s coming out of a tomb. Weird and weepy.”

  “It’s supposed to be sad. It’s a requiem---a song for somebody who died. Some people say Mozart’s Requiem is one of the best things he ever wrote. What’s really sad is he didn’t finish it.”

  “How come?”

  “He didn’t make it.”

  “You mean he croaked?”

  “They caught all kinds of diseases in those days—and they didn’t have medicines like we have today. They gashed your arm and drained off your blood. Dad says they thought that brought the fever down. A lot of times it killed them. It probably killed Mozart.”

  “That’s crazy. Today he could’ve gotten a shot. Cure it like--.”

  He snapped his fingers.

  “Pretty likely.”

  Then, maybe he could’ve finished his Reckie. Play it again.”

  “Don’t call it that. You’re making it sound hokey. Undignified. This guy had class.”

  “Come on, I’ll bet he wasn’t so dignified.” He sat down next to her on the piano bench while she played the theme from the Requiem more slowly.

  “I like it better speeded up---but it’s not so bad slow,” he said.

  “Poor SOB, one shot in his butt, and he could’ve signed off on it.”

  “Or he could’ve popped a pill,” said Carol.

  “What a bummer. Even I could’ve saved him. I’ve got a bunch of antibiotics in my bathroom--pills I didn’t take for that strep.”

  “You dummy. You’re supposed to do the whole cycle.”

  “Well, I didn’t take any of them. I got well anyway. I was about to toss them out. Poor old Motzie. He might’ve gone on to write three hundred symphonies and a zillion croquettes.”

  “Quartets, lame brain. Except you can’t do anything about it now.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I could toss them into his grave. Bring him back.”

  “Are you kidding? Anyway, no one knows where he’s buried.”

  “I’ll find out.”

  “How you going to do that?”

  “Mental telepathy.”

  “You are such a bull artist, Mathew.”

  “You like me anyway.

  “Like fun.” She whacked him with a rolled up sheet of music and pushed him off the seat. He reached out to stop himself from hitting the floor.

  “You’re lucky I like you back.”

  “Yeah,” she scoffed. “I’m so lucky. How you going to mental telepathize? Huh? Huh?”

  “Simple. I’ve got ways.”

&nb
sp; She wondered if he did. She knew how addicted he was to daydreaming. Pretending, even though he kept saying it was against physics. He could pretend whenever and whatever. Like he was the drummer for the Snow Men—the heart throb rock band everybody was talking about---instead of being only the drummer for the 8th grade Moonrock band at Claremont. Or other things---like dreaming about being the lead striker for the state champion Gophers or being the first astronaut to step out on Saturn.

  She liked to pretend, too. Pretend with him. Pretend anything—like they were outlaws hiding in holes in trees from a sheriff’s posse in Olde England or scuba divers lassoing crocodiles in the Red Sea or skydiving over the Alps like they did at that movie---or else she’d pretend she was a dazzling virtuoso chasing Rachmaninoff up and down the keys—a composer she couldn’t begin to play yet—with the crowd jumping to its feet before she’d even finished the coda. Mozart was about all she could play right now besides hip hop, but she could do a pretty good job on one of his sonatas.

  “So how you going to do it, smartie?”

  “I’m doing it already.” He put one hand dramatically over his eyes and tilted his head back. “I can see him standing by his bed.

  Mozart, I mean. His wife comes in. What’s her name?”

  “Constanze. Something like that.”

  “And he’s Wolfgang, right?” He made his voice sound high like a girl’s—as though Constanze was calling to Mozart. “Wolfgang, get back into bed. You’re sick.”

  Then, in his normal voice: “Uh, uh, she’d call him Wolfie. Okay, back to being Constanze: ‘Have you finished writing that thing yet, Wolfie? We need the money.’’’

  “I guess I’m Mozart.” She lowered her voice to