The dog then recounted the time when she first heard the Montevideo Symphony play “Ameriques.” It had come to her on a portable radio at the beach. This experience, like hearing the country song, had changed her life’s direction. Moments such as these were why she was onstage. After this lightning-strike moment of listening, she bought the score to the great orchestral piece and vowed she would figure out a way to sing it by herself. An impossible task. We have to start somewhere impossible, she said.

“My music comes down to the question ‘Can I be multiple?’”

And then she began to sing.

After the concert, Alfonzo and Vivi had strolled back to their apartment, stopping a few times to nuzzle necks. They were drunk and happy. The sidewalks were still wet from rain that had fallen during the show. It was the beautiful turning of summer into fall.

Outside their apartment Alfonzo smoked a last cigarette. When they entered their dark living room, the phone began ringing. It was his father, and Alfonzo could hear the tears.

“Where are you?” Alfonzo asked.

“Maimonides Hospital.” His father’s voice was labored and husky with phlegm. From just the inflection and blockage, Alfonzo knew.

When Alfonzo and Vivi had entered the experimental-music venue, his mother had been alive—sick, but alive. Alfonzo had known her death would come; he’d been bracing for impact. But all the clenching was useless. It was impossible to stay always on guard.

His and Vivi’s apartment was quiet and dark; neither of them flipped on the light in their haste to get the ringing phone. Vivi stood frozen and watchful. There it was, the night his mother died. The blow wasn’t a hard one, as he’d expected. Grief came over him like an enveloping mist. It wrapped around his neck and entered his lungs. He found himself drenched with sweat and sobbing.

His mother had just collapsed and died in his childhood home, and when it happened he was unaware at a concert. Alfonzo would never forgive himself for this. Vivi entreated him to be kind to himself. But he could not.

When Alfonzo got back from Ozone Park he called Mitchell to say he needed to get wildly drunk that night.

“Did you just have a Luis breakfast?” Mitchell knew the score.

Alfonzo groaned.

“You’re in luck, my friend, because it happens to be the birthday of our dear colleague Dawn Delamarche.”

“I was hoping for more of an anonymous hole-in-the-wall-based bender.”

“You’re coming.”

“Well, where is this celebration?”

“The Ruby Fang.”

“Dear dog, that’s the opposite of what I want.”

“Ten, you antisocial fleabag.”

“No need to name-call.”

“See you.”

9.