A Certain Mr. Takahashi. Ann Ireland
Jean kneels to read the enclosed clipping. She slips the tea cup under the table onto the little shelf.
“THE IRREPRESSIBLE SAMANTHA KRAUSS”
This headline is strung over a smudged photo of Sam, their mother, who is perched on a low stone wall. A striped sailor shirt stretches across her ample bosom. Her features are blurred but recognizable.
Between teaching sessions, Victoria’s pre-eminent vocal teacher, Samantha Krauss—or Sam Hopper-as she is known to intimates, is very much a family woman.
“In my next life I’m going to be the world’s best housewife!” she declares, and passes her guest a potent Bloody Caesar. We are sitting on the patio of her delightful new home, designed by renowned Vancouver architect, Derek Arthur. Very much on Miss Krauss’s mind these days is the gala celebration she and her husband, Martin Hopper, plan to commemorate their move into the new home. After twenty years in Toronto they made their Western odyssey last year.
Mr. Hopper, raised in London, is a former student of the Viennese cellist Leopold Auer, and plays cello in the Styles-Hopper Quartet, in addition to his duties as Acting Dean of the Faculty of Music—
Etcetera. Jean settles into a loose half-lotus and skims on:
“This party serves a dual purpose,” Miss Krauss explains. “Besides being a celebration of Mr. Arthur’s magnificent achievement, my husband has a very special announcement to make.” This statement is accompanied by a mischievous smile. “We are about to start a new chapter in our lives … ”
Jean’s eyes glaze over. It’s the first she’s heard of any announcement. She squirms and flexes her toes, trying to bring some life to them. She feels faintly disappointed that her name wasn’t mentioned—“arriving from New York City is daughter Jean …”
“Please promise you will be there,” writes Colette, natural as can be. Damn sure she’s pulled it off.
It was exactly six weeks ago. Jean’s twenty-second birthday.
“Let me take you to an off-Broadway show,” her friend Reuben had insisted. The show was only so-so, but afterwards they strolled through the crowded streets laughing, trying to remember the songs, cooking up new, sillier lyrics.
“Where do you want to go now?” he asked.
“CBGB’S,” said Jean instantly.
The cab dropped them at the entrance on Bowery, which was pulsing with loud music and a mob of underage teenagers fighting to get in.
“Sure?” asked Reuben. His hand slid to his pocket.
“Yes.”
The sign on the front screamed in foot-high letters: “MAX
ROMEO AND THE WILD SINS OF MEXICO.“
“Okay, let’s go in.” Reuben pushed the door open.
A fat man perched on a stool slid a hand out.
“Five bucks, kids.”
Reuben paid up, and they pushed their way through the mass of twitching bodies toward the stage area.
The band was pounding a syncopated Latin rhythm as Max Romeo, dressed in baggy white ducks and a Hawaiian shirt, belted into a hand-held mike. Sweat poured from his hair onto his hands. Jean watched, transfixed, almost missing Reuben’s urgent gesture.
“I see two chairs!” he mouthed into the racket.
An elbow dug into her ribs, and she bounced off a glassyeyed girl who was shaking green sparkles out of her hair.
Reuben had clamped his hands over the back of a couple of folding chairs.
Jean bopped over to him, tipping side to side with her hips, sliding her sneakers over the wet floor.
Just for an instant she worried, “Will this destroy my ears?” Then, to hell with it, she cakewalked into his arms, forcing him to dance with her. His paint-stained fingers meshed with hers as he allowed a quick vamp around the table. Then he shouted near her ear, “I’ll get beer!”
She nodded.
As he disappeared into the crowd she hung tight, watching the band and keeping an arm hooked through the chairs.
Max Romeo was beautiful—all sharp lines and slippery skin, his pelvis a Mexican jumping bean trotting all over the stage. She scanned the audience that pressed near him, bruising the lip of the stage with their hips and sweat. There was no room to actually dance. Instead, people hopped in place, except for a group of cool loners who leaned to one side, smoking and sipping tepid beer.
Suddenly Jean’s eyes riveted on the spot directly beneath Max Romeo. The stage lights had picked out two shapes from the others. The couple had their backs to her at first, but soon spun so their profiles jutted into the smoky haze.
The man was older than the woman, his thick hair sprinkled with grey.
The floor began to shift under Jean’s feet.
“It can’t be,” she whispered, the dense air hugging her nostrils.
He was dressed all in black. Small and wiry, he moved in neat, quick snapshots. The woman was thin, taller, and danced with self-conscious gestures — an arm lashing toward the ceiling, her neck whipping back and forth like a snake.
Jean felt a soft pressure on her elbow. Reuben. Without looking, she groped for the cold beer.
Reuben followed her stare.
“Isn’t that the famous pianist... ?”
“Yes!” she snapped, before he could fill in the words, the name.
There was an explosion as the drummer thrashed his high-hat, his teeth clenched around a wad of gum, and Max Romeo bent and squirmed and finally shrieked into the mike, sending the room into a frenzy of vibration.
The couple was hidden in the activity, lost in the wave of bodies that rushed the stage. Frantically ducking the sea of elbows and shoulders, Jean backed against the wall.
With a final cymbal cheer, the song was over.
The room gasped for breath.
Then Jean saw them again. A flash of black and red as the young woman fell exhausted into the man’s arms. Laughing, he held her there, rubbing the small of her back and, at the end, lifting her head so he could reach her lips.
Jean felt the beer toss out of her hand onto the front of her jeans. A welcome splash of cold.
“Are you okay?” Reuben was right there.
“No,” she said. “We must go.”
Six weeks ago. Jean forces herself to run the scene through yet again, a government agent studying the moment of connection, the passing of secret information.
First there is the thatch of black hair falling over the broad moon face, the collar open and loose, the arm reaching up to Colette’s neck, touching—no, caressing—her skin. The tenderest laugh imaginable.
Could she have been mistaken in the dim light, the murky air of a bar on a hot evening?
She’d know his profile anywhere, and Colette’s—two in the world she’d never mistake. The light stamped them into a grey cut-out on the wall.
It was a crazy ride, Colette. There’s still a breeze in the air; you can’t deny it.
He landed in our neighbourhood like a gymnast from an Elysian trapeze, carrying the smell of jasmine, green tea, and five years of our lives.
The windows were wide open. It was late October, and the streets were littered with fiery maple leaves and remnants of the Sunday paper. Beethoven’s