Nancy closed the compact with a precise snap. “You know you only perform it to punish yourself,” she said. “The audience is laughing up a storm while you’re singing ‘in disbelief, some call it grief, I call it Beef Lo Mein.’ And you’re dying inside with a pretend grin on your face, thinking about your child who never got to grow up. It’s a way to keep your own grief fresh each night, isn’t it?”

“No, Jack asked me to do the song because he thinks it helps the set, and I want to help Jack,” I said. “I’d feel the same way whether I sang it or not.”

“Ray, you’re in some strange place right now, I can tell. Maybe I can help you with it. You’re still my friend and the first man I really loved.”

How could I tell her that there was so much more to this than she could possibly begin to realize? The tragic part was that my good news, about Linney having a half-sister, wasn’t going to be her good news. Only mine. It would give nothing to Nancy. It might even wound her further, if such a thing was possible. I could never share this with her. I’d hoped our lunch might in some way confirm my soaring hopes, but it had only made me feel more distant than ever from Nancy and from the life we had shared.

Chapter 37

37

Surprise Symphony

I went to Lake Merritt the next afternoon, on my own (I know, a little pathetic, but it was a beautiful day and I had to get out of the Claremont). I called RC Copying from a coin phone and Gilbert Rice confirmed with his endearing “Yeah” and his heartwarming click that the music parts for Swing were ready to be picked up.

I’d not realized how close the lake was to the waterfront. In less than ten minutes, I was watching Professor Haffner put the last touches on the drummer’s part. These were the most difficult pages for him to copy, since as a classical composer he was not used to writing for a drum kit, what we called “traps.”

“Almost done. Sit, I have some questions.” He indicated an empty chair next to his desk. You could have framed his handiwork and enjoyed it, whether you read music or not.

“Beautiful, Maestro,” I said, using the term without the slightest trace of levity.

“I concur wholeheartedly,” he said, autographing the lower right-hand corner of the drum part as if it were a lithograph. I told him that the composer would be very thrilled to see her work so admirably rendered, and he muttered that this was one orchestration that would be better enjoyed by the deaf than by the blind. I wasn’t as amused as he was by this.