No More Piano Lessons

Muriel Beagle was an awful piano teacher. An abomination! Which is why, Allan Swanson blew a mental gasket when his ex-wife asked if he would shuttle their daughter, Ruthie, to her Thursday afternoon lessons from late April straight through until the end of school. It had been an amicable divorce. Lois, who was newly remarried, seldom bugged Allan when he fell behind with child support payments or his share of their daughter's expenses. The only thing she asked was that he pitched in for the kid's music lesson. Being a professional musician, a saxophonist on the wedding-bar mitzvah circuit, it seemed crass not to oblige. Thirty minutes - that's all Mrs. Beagle allotted per lesson, and most days she started late or was interrupted by one of her bratty kids bursting in unannounced. Lost time was never recouped on the back end of the lesson, and once, the music teacher even took a cell phone call and it wasn't an emergency. So unprofessional!

In the divorce agreement, Allan got shared custody. Ruthie, who turned twelve on the third of the month, visited weekends and slept over straight through to Monday mornings. One afternoon three weeks earlier, she was playing the Love Theme from Doctor Zhivago. Reaching the bridge, her fingers stumbled over an eighth-note run. "You left out a beat."

"No I didn't." The child’s tone was brusque and dismissive. "I played it just fine."

"No, look… When you started the ascending triplets -"

"I've played the tune exactly the same for Mrs. Beagle," Ruthie insisted, "and she never complained. Not once!"

Check. Checkmate. What could he say? The piano teacher gave lessons in a claustrophobically small den just off the kitchen. At the following lesson, Allan sat outside the door in an equally tiny vestibule as Ruthie played through the delicate waltz. When she reached the bridge where the melody modulated down a minor third, Ruthie dropped a whole note. He waited for Mrs. Beagle to cut her off, to point out the musical indiscretion. Nothing! Further along, Ruthie fingered the major seventh on a dominant arpeggio. Allan cringed inwardly. The teacher let the musical mayhem pass without comment. A major seventh in a dominant chord - Allan almost lost his lunch.

"She's coming along nicely don't you think?" The lesson was over and Mrs. Beagle was standing in the door way with her arm draped around his daughter's shoulder.

The artistically-challenged piano teacher was young, in her late thirties with three children. With her close-cropped, dirty brown hair and an overbite Muriel probably hadn't won any beauty contests since elementary school. And, even in the short time that Allen had known the woman, she had begun putting on weight. Fastforward ten years into the future, she would have added a sedentary pound or two annually until her girlish figure was little more than a fleeting memory.

And then there was the matter of Mrs. Beagle's voice. The words came in a nasally monotone that never varied, neither in pitch nor intensity. She talked through her nose in a grating, infuriating, mind-numbing drone that made most everything she said seem utterly irrelevant. There was no variation in the cadence. She didn’t bunch her words together in a rush of exuberance when enthusing over some bit of musical minutia. Drip. Drip. Drip. Twenty-four-seven, the words meandered along like water dripping from a leaky spigot. Chinese water torture!

Saturday afternoon, Allen played a wedding at the Foxhill Country Club. The piano player, Herb Calloway, was something of a musical celebrity having recently come off the road with the Woody Herman big band. “That lick you played on the last two measures of Misty,” Allan was addressing the piano player as they picked their way to the back of the room after finishing the first set. The bridal party and wedding guests had taken their seats as the main meal was being served. At the rear of the function hall a table had been arranged for band.

“The polytonal run?”

Allan laid a cloth napkin over his tuxedo pants and reached for a roll. “I was wondering if you could write it out for me.”

A waiter approached with a bronze pitcher and began filling water glasses. Herb grinned good-naturedly. Heavyset with a mop of curly brown hair, he was far and away the most accomplished musician in the band, having recorded with a number of big name performers. “Sure, before when we start the next set,” he promised. “It’s just a grouping of two-five progressions repeated in various keys." He spread a napkin across the front of his tuxedo pants. "It also works with symmetrical patterns... fourths and whole tones, pentatonics and altered diminished scales.” He took a sip of water and reached for a warm roll.

Allan hadn’t a clue what Herb was talking about. He had heard the piano player finger a tricky run and then, on the final chord of the tune, the same series of notes oddly repeated but in a different tonal center before modulating back to the tonic F major chord. Herb Calloway was the complete package. He had the technical facility to pull off impossible runs and make them seen commonplace. Five minutes earlier in the context of a lush ballad, he had played a string of dissonant inversions, making the mysterious harmonies sound perfectly natural.

Allan could cobble together a respectable solo playing off the existing chord changes, but what Herb was doing – well that was taking things to the next level. Twenty minutes later back on the band stand, the piano player ran a series of broken arpeggios and leaned over. “Here let me show you.” He fingered a block chord in his left hand and ran an inverted pentatonic scale with the right. Dropping down a half tone from G to G-flat he repeated the theme. “Do you see what I’m doing?”

Allan was beginning to understand but only at the most basic level. “Create your own patterns.” He chose another series of melodic notes but this time dropped the chord a minor third away from the original and repeated the theme. “It works every time, because the listener's ear gets drawn away by the thematic material.” Herb kept negotiating his supple hands up and down the piano as he spoke, demonstrating the concept. The drummer, who was the bandleader, sat down at his traps. "The girl from Ipanema, and keep the volume down while they’re still eating.”

The next day, Allan took his car to be inspected. On the way home, he stopped by his ex-wife’s place. “About the piano teacher.”

“Yes,” Lois said anticipating his train of thought. “She’s quite horrid. We won’t be continuing much beyond the end of the school year.” Her response caught Allan off guard. “What with all the interruptions, Muriel never gives Ruthie a full lesson,” she continued, “and I don’t see where the girl has progressed very much in the six months she's been with Mrs. Beagle.”

Allan was pleased that his ex-wife saw the situation for what it was. “That mind-numbing voice!”

“Dear god!” Lois tittered and immediately broke into a zombie-like monotone, mimicking the piano teacher.

“We’re not being very nice are we?” Allan smirked sheepishly. The woman might have been a third-rate piano teacher with a schizoid drawl, but that didn’t make her a bad person.

“Do you remember,” Muriel added more soberly now, “that horrid Christmas recital?”

Mrs. Beagle arranged a piano recital for all her students the second week in December. There were elementary school age children thumping out melodies with one finger. No chords – the left hand was optional as were the other four digits on the right hand! No matter that the budding child prodigies, were in kindergarten or first grade – everyone got a shot at the brass ring! One ham-fisted Hispanic girl slapped at the keys creating a Bartok-like percussive effect that might have been intriguing except for the fact that she was slaughtering a watered-down version of Claude Debussy's Claire de Lune. Still later, in the hands of a manic eight year-old, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star assumed the abstruse unpredictability of a Hindemith, twelve-tone row.

Allan wasn’t being petty or overly harsh in his assessment of the next-generation Van Cliburns and Horrowtiz. He had attended a similar recital put on by a colleague in August. While the children played reasonably well, they too missed notes and pressed down errant keys, which was to be expected. With Mrs. Beagle's protégés the difference - and it was a profound difference - was that the students were completely clueless that anything was amiss. The flubs were not artistic errors, per se, but variations on the composer's original intent. Subject to interpretation, a bright tempo, allegro vivace marking might resemble a funeral dirge. Major chords degenerated into minor, turning the standard classical repertoire into a harmonic comedy of errors. Half the students should never have been allowed to get up on the stage; the rest ought to have been better prepared.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the ever self-aggrandizing Mrs. Beagle charged ten bucks a head for every guest who attended the pitiful performance. Allan footed the bill for both sets of grandparents and Ruthie's god-mother so, by the end of the recital, he had a vicious headache and was out sixty dollars! Now the charade was over. No more piano lessons. Once school was finished, so was Mrs. Beagle.

* * * * *

In early July an unfortunate incident occurred that sent Allan spiraling into a black funk. From early summer, he planned to take Ruthie to the Haxton Field Fourth of July fireworks display, but a nasty sinus infection coupled with a muggy heat wave left him disagreeable and out of sorts. "Maybe we could stay home and rent a movie," Allan suggested.

Ruthie's eyebrows rose halfway to the ceiling. "On the Fourth of July?" The issue was non-negotiable.

"I don't feel so hot."

"You can lie on the blanket and go to sleep." The girl pursed her lips. "We only get to see the fireworks once a year and, anyway, it was your idea."

It was your idea. That was the clincher. Over a month ago, Allan asked to take his daughter. Brandenberg put on one of the best fireworks displays in all of southeastern Massachusetts. If Allan weaseled out - pulled the plug on the festivities without a bona fide excuse - being struck by a bolt of lightning, losing a limb in a freak accident, falling on the third rail at the South Boston MBTA station - his ex-wife and daughter would treat him like a mental defective.

At seven o'clock, Allan collected the bug spray, blanket, a cooler full of soft drinks and munchies and they headed off for Haxton Field. "Do you feeling any better?"

What type of killjoy didn't like fireworks? "Yeah, I'm okay," Allan muttered. He felt rotten but didn't want to play the spoilsport. They were trudging up the street. The entrance to Haxton field was just beyond the senior housing complex. Allan blew his nose and a clot of greenish-yellow mucous lay streaked halfway across the handkerchief.

A busty brunette decked out in a tank top and cut off jeans was approaching from the opposite direction. What was she… sixteen years old? Seventeen, eighteen tops? "Put your goddamn eyeballs back in your head, pervert!" the fleshy girl chided brazenly, as they passed on the narrow sidewalk. A teenage boy who was accompanying her flipped Allen the bird and stuck out his tongue. Then the twosome immediately erupted in a fit of hooting and jeering. It was all over in the blink of an eye. Allan felt a crushing despair. Mercifully, Ruthie, who in her excitement had rushed a dozen paces ahead, never witnessed her father's fall from grace.

It wasn't just the derisive remark from a preternaturally pretty girl that sucked all the joy out of his life. Twenty years earlier when he was their age, Allan felt that same heady rush, that intoxicating exuberance of being on the threshold of some great adventure. But that was before the inguinal hernia, periodontal disease and an anxiety attack in the parking lot of Cooper's Hardware Store the day his wife had him served with divorce papers.

The threshold of a great adventure ... What adventure? Had anything even vaguely resembling a great adventure ever materialized. The girl with the beguiling breasts would go from the Fourth of July fireworks to even more dazzling pyrotechnics. She was a comet streaking through the heavens, more glorious than all the bottle rockets, cherry bombs, sparklers, spinners and jumbo jumping jacks. Like a territorial animal peeing on a bush, she drizzled her insouciant scent everywhere. But Allan, the crusty old geezer with post nasal drip had absolutely no right lusting after the glorious creature. He deserved what he got. Yes, he truly deserved public humiliation.

* * * * *

Thirty years earlier in nineteen fifty-four, the nation was buzzing with the first nuclear powered submarine. The Kellogg's Cereal Company came out with a miniature facsimile that ran on baking powder. Allan was eight years old. He hand delivered a cereal box top and twenty-five cents in an envelope to the post office. Exactly two weeks later the plastic toy arrived in the mail.

His best friend, Morris, was visiting that day. They locked themselves in the bathroom with the metallic gray submarine, the printed directions and a box of Clabber Girl baking powder. Allan filled the raised compartment on the submarine deck with the white powder, inserted the lid and placed it in the sink. The four and a half-inch toy sunk to the bottom coming to rest on the scaly enamel. Then, miraculously as the baking powder reacted with the water, carbon dioxide was produced forcing some of the water out and causing the device to drift back to the surface.

Fizz! Fizz! Fizz! In much the same way that a real submarine rose to the surface by purging its ballast tanks, the toy delivered the goods. What did Allan or Morris know about buoyancy, density, or the production of C02 when sodium bicarbonate mixed with acidic cream of tartar? The toy burped, gurgled and bubble. Over and over again, it rose up and settled back down until the baking powder was exhausted. Then the third graders spooned another heap of mix into the top and did it again. An hour and a half later, only when the box of Clabber Girl baking powder was completely empty, did the bathroom door swing open. Allan's mother wasn’t going shopping until Thursday. For the next few days it was agreed that Allen would bring his toy sub over to Morris' house and they could continue the great fun until that caché of white gold was gone.

Apparently the clever gadget was still popular even today. A slew of baking powder submarines, deep sea divers, frogmen and sea creatures could still be ordered from a toy manufacturer in Sherman Oaks, California. The cost was negligible. He located the supplier over the internet. Thirty-eight year old Allan Swanson gawked at the offerings for a full five minutes before shutting down the computer. Nostalgia was one thing, but, short of a psychotic break, people couldn't travel back in time. A sink full of baking soda submarines couldn't dull the melancholy or fill the void. He shouldn't have gawked at the obscenely pretty girl. He should have made better choices with his stultified life.

• * * * *

The Tuesday before Labor Day, Allan stopped by to collect his daughter. "I could never picture them as a married couple." Muriel tossed the comment out - a total non-sequitur. When she realized that Allan had no idea what she was alluding to, she added, "The Beagles."

"No, they seem like an odd match," Allan added with a self-conscious chuckle. "But then, it's not like I'm the leading authority on marital bliss."

"Speaking of romance, how are you doing these days?" Muriel cocked her head to one side and poked her tongue in the side of her mouth causing the cheek to bulge.

"Okay."

"Seeing anyone?"

Allan flinched. Muriel meant no harm. His former spouse was neither vindictive nor intentionally malicious; it wasn't in her genetic makeup. And she seemed genuinely happy, fulfilled in the new marriage. "Nobody special."

Allan was still ruminating on the mismatched Beagles. The husband, Bruce, was a strikingly handsome outdoorsy type with Robert Redford good looks. One week when he brought Ruthie to her piano lesson, Allan ran into him loading up the Jeep Grand Cherokee with camping equipment and fishing gear. "Going white water rafting in Vermont," the man explained.

'What about the little woman?"

Mr. Beagle cracked a conspiratorial grin. "No women allowed, little or full-size, on this trip." He crammed a pair of waterproofed hiking boots to the left of a propane stove. "We're just a bunch of working stiffs traipsing off to commune with Mother Nature."

His easy-going, if slightly chauvinistic, charm was infectious. Allan certainly couldn't picture the joyless, pokerfaced Muriel Beagle slogging through the underbrush, fighting off mosquitoes as big as raisins and poison ivy for the privilege of sitting on an inflatable raft as it catapulted through roiling water, dodging jagged rocks.

Allan spent a good fifteen minutes talking with the piano teacher's husband while Ruthie finished up her lesson, and the boisterous man never came up for air. As Bruce Beagle explained it, he and a group of buddies from the heating and refrigeration firm that he owned were heading north to tackle class III and IV rapids on the West River. Driving in separate cars, they would rendezvous at the base camp in Stratton Mountain. They had opted out of the full package, which featured an Alpine village with full amenities in favor of tents and sleeping bags. "I prefer going whole hog with the back-to-nature shtick," Bruce noted.

Allan was delighted - flattered even - at the way Bruce took him into his confidence. He could almost picture himself shooting the rapids, camped out later that evening on the banks of a placid lake buried in the New England wilderness, throwing back long neck beers and bullshitting with the guys.

"We put in at Ball Mountain Dam, but the first big water doesn't come until we hit Landslide Rapids."

"How long a stretch?"

"About two miles of continuous churning white water." Bruce unscrewed a water-tight aluminum canister stacked with sulfur-tipped wooden matches. Lips moving silently, he counted the slender sticks before securing the lid back in place. "There're a couple of pretty tricky S-turns that push your paddling skills to the limit, but it's really tons of fun."

Her piano lesson over, Ruthie emerged from the side door. Mrs. Beagle cracked a toothy smile and waved sharply before disappearing back into the music studio. "Seems like you got the best of both worlds," Allan noted, watching his daughter near the porch, playing with a calico kitten. The Beagles had several dogs, three canaries, a painted turtle and indeterminate number of cats.

"How's that?"

"Along with a beautiful family, you still get the privilege to come and go as you please." No sooner had he spoken, Allan wished the words back. It sounded peevish - as though he might envy the handsome man's inordinate capacity for pleasure and personal fulfillment.

Bruce simply smiled and jutted his chin out with a mischievous smirk. Raising his hands, palms splayed to the bright sky, he whispered, "Guilty as charged." Then the robust man winked - a conspiratorial gesture - and turned his attention back to the packing.

* * * * *

Allan took Ruthie to see Toy Story II over the weekend. Afterwards, they went to Ryan's Diner for supper where she ordered a hot dog with curly fries from the children's menu. Allan settled on the brisket. "That Mr. Beagle seems like a swell guy."

"He cracks tons of jokes," Ruthie waved a French fry in the air, "and he's always smooching and hugging his wife." She dabbed the fry in a puddle of ketchup and deposited it in her mouth.
"Mrs. Beagle … you're piano teacher? He's always kissing her?"

"Who else?" Ruthie looked at him queerly. "He can't hardly keep his hands off the woman. It's a bit embarrassing but sort of cute." The waitress returned with a pile of napkins which she centered on the table. "Were you and Mom lovey-dovey like that?"

Allan speared a slice of brisket and jabbed it in the brown gravy. "Yeah, sort of."

"Well, were you or weren't you?"

"At the beginning… for the first few years." He cleared his throat. "I don't think, maybe with the exception of the Beagles, too many people stay that way much beyond the honeymoon."

"Well they ought to."

Allan shook his head up and down just a bit too vigorously. It suddenly occurred to him that, somewhere up in the pristine wilderness of Vermont, Bruce Beagle was probably hunched over a campfire with his buddies sipping black coffee. The good-natured man, who brazenly pawed his wife in front of the piano students, would curl up in a sleeping bag and be lulled to sleep by a symphony of frogs, crickets, owls and assorted night creatures. "You know what I liked best about the movie," he blurted, deflecting the conversation elsewhere.

Allan needed a new life - a hobby, an ardent passion, a raison d’être. He definitely needed a break from the tedium, something a tad more adventuresome than honking on a saxophone at weddings and bar mitzvahs. White water rafting was out of the question. First of all, he had no intention of becoming a Bruce Beagle clone, replicating the man's back-to-nature lifestyle and habits. Secondly, as a swimmer, he hadn’t progressed much beyond the dogpaddle. At one point earlier in the week when they were commiserating, Bruce Beagle wandered into the garage to retrieve an item. "That's one hell of a weapon." Allan gestured at a crossbow hanging from a rack on the far wall.

Bruce lifted the bow free of the wall and ran the palm of his hand over the wooden stock. "It's a, Excalibur Equinox model with a sixteen and a half inch power stroke." He pulled an ominous looking arrow from the bow-mounted quiver. "Velocity’s up around three hundred fifty feet per second, which will bring down a full-grown stag instantly as long as you set the shot up properly." He passed the bow to Allen who lofted it up and down in his hands. The lethal device was remarkably light. "I always try to set my shots up broadside or quartering away."

"And why's that?" Allan had no idea what the man was talking about.

"The razor sharp arrow’s got to penetrate both lungs for a quick kill." He took the crossbow back, repositioning it on the far wall. "You don't want an animal to suffer needlessly."

"No certainly not," Allan agreed.

"I hit a buck last year in Aroostook County, Maine, and the poor son of a bitch ran off into the brush. I had to track him for three miles before the injure critter expired." Bruce wagged his handsome head thoughtfully then tapped the bridge of his nose - once, twice, three times - with a taut index finger. "The nose knows - it's a saying among hunters. An injured animal can smell the fabric conditioner or laundry detergent your well-intentioned spouse used when washing a camouflage jacket, so, with a wounded animal, all you can do is follow the blood trail until you finish the job."

Allan jettisoned Bruce Beagle from his mind. He couldn’t remake himself. The time for midlife crises was passed. He went into the den and pulled out his saxophone. Fitting the mouthpiece on the neck, he blew a series of velvety-soft whole tones. Allan was still working out the melodic inversions that Herb Calloway had shown him. G-minor seven, C seven. He ran a linear riff based on pentatonic scales and passing tones. Simple stuff. Next he transposed the lick up a triton interval to the key of F-sharp. What was it Herb had cautioned? The weird-sounding notes become upward extensions of the original chord. Flatted ninths, raised elevenths … that sort of textured voicing.

The other night at a nightclub south of Boston, Allen blew a new lick he had worked out using Herb’s harmonic substitutions. He muddled through the first flurry of notes only to crash and burn on the backside of the angular, melodic phrase. A customer at the bar looked up from a watery martini with a foul expression.

• * * * * *

A year later Ruthie had a baby brother. Her mother and step-father had decided to start a family of their own. Allan was happy for them, if a bit jealous. Once or twice his ex-wife inquired about Allan's personal life but, since the new arrival, discretely avoided the topic and for that he was thankful. Allan went out on a couple blind dates - fix-ups-mix-ups. In October the band was offered five nights steady in the Marriot Hotel lounge. The money was lousy, and the musicians would be forfeiting more lucrative, 'commercial' gigs on nights that the band was committed to working the lounge, but it was steady work - steady work in a tough economy.

"You know that dame?" They were fifteen minutes into the second set at the Marriot. The bass player was gesturing with his eyes at a woman with a modestly good figure in a strapless, black evening dress.

"Never seen her before," Allan replied. He bent over the bandstand and thumbed through a list of tunes trying to decide on the next selection.

"Strange, because she’s been gawking at you for the past five minutes."

Allan looked again. The darkened lounge was riddled with shadows and a cloud of cigarette smoke obliterated the tables over by the vending machine. Muriel Beagle, his daughter's former piano teacher, was standing near the entrance. He hadn't seen or heard from her since the final lesson. No, that wasn't completely accurate. Muriel had called the house mid-September the week after school resumed to inquire about Ruthie's musical plans. As soon as Allan recognized the grating monotone, his mood soured. "She's taking time off," Allan returned noncommittally.

"Well, Ruthie shouldn't wait too long or her technique will suffer. Learning to play a musical instrument is a cumulative process."

"Yes," Allan brought her up short. "We’ll get back to you as soon as she's ready to resume." The man had never bothered to tell Muriel that he, too, was a professional musician. He just wanted to finesse the insufferable woman off the phone and be rid of her - irrevocably and undeniably finished with Muriel Beagle. But like an apparition from hell, there she was again, and Allan couldn't just ignore the former piano teacher. Resting the saxophone on its stand he descended the stage and crossed the room.

"You never told me you were a musician."

Allan shrugged. "It's nice to see you." She still looked the same - the toothy overbite and languorous expression. Lipstick and eye shadow afforded the woman a certain perky flair, but it wasn't enough to offset the excess baggage. "What brings you here tonight?"

Muriel gestured toward the main function hall across the hallway at a diagonal. "My nephew's wedding."

"How nice!" If they hadn't taken the lounge gig, Allan probably would have found himself fifty feet away on the other side of the partition. He reached out and patted her on a bare arm. "I've got to get back to work."

"Yes, of course. Give my regards to Ruthie."

Why did he touch the woman's arm? Back on the bandstand, Allan adjusted the strap and reached for his instrument. He shouldn't have touched her. It was just a formality, a social amenity, but still... And he had forgotten to ask about Bruce. Was he still shooting the rapids and bagging big game - hitting them broadside or quarter away so as to ravage both lungs with razor sharp arrows? "Let's pick up the tempo," the drummer said. "Green Dolphin Street in E-flat." He counted off the tempo and the rhythm section kicked into overdrive.

Around eleven-thirty, Allan caught sight of Muriel sitting alone at the bar. The wedding had broken up around ten o'clock after the bride threw the bouquet and the wedding cake was served. Shortly thereafter, the guests collected their belongings and filtered out of the function hall. Something clearly was wrong. When the final set ran its course, Allan wandered over to the bar. "How was your nephew's wedding?"

"Great! They're flying to Aruba in the morning." Muriel was totally drunk.

Allan scanned the hallway. "I didn't see Bruce."

"And with good reason." Slurring her words, she almost toppled off the barstool. Allan reached out to steady the woman but she didn't seem to notice. "About eight months ago, Bruce ran off to North Dakota with a twenty-something, back-to-nature bimbo."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't be." Her tone was equal parts flippant and dismissive. "Except for sex, we were never a particularly good match." She paid her tab and stood up on wobbly legs. "That progression you played on the last measure of The Shadow of your Smile was quite clever."

Allan explained that the technique was based on symmetrical patterns." She glanced at her watch. "It is rather late and I should be going." Muriel lurched forward and almost lost her balance a second time.

Allan steered her into a Windsor chair. "Wait here, while I collect my stuff. I can give you a lift home."

"Lucky you!" The bass player tittered when Allan climbed back up on the bandstand.
"Yeah, lucky me," he muttered morosely.

On the ride home, Muriel fell sound asleep, snoring loudly with her right cheek - not a pretty sight - mashed up against the passenger side window. The house was empty. "We are your kids?"

"My mother took them for the night so I could attend the wedding."

"I’ll swing by in the morning and shuttle you back to the hotel to collect your car."

"That's so sweet of you." The music teacher began to cry. She cried quietly, the way children sometimes do without bothering to place her hands over her face, the salty wetness dribbling down her chin.

Allan handed her a napkin. "Why don't I make some coffee?"

The woman in the strapless black evening dress shook her head up and down as she blotted the tears. "I'm not usually like this," she confided with a sheepish smile.

A blob of purple mascara was smeared garishly across her left cheek. “Go in the bathroom and wash your face," Allan suggested while I make the coffee?"

Ten minutes later, Muriel shuffled back into the kitchen. She was wearing a pair of flannel pajamas. Her face had been scrubbed clean, the hair pulled back with a cotton scrunchy. She walked up to Allan and stood so close that he could feel her whiskey-sour breath on his cheek. "There's something you need to hear." Muriel had regained her composure; she wasn't drunk anymore. "I'm a shitty piano teacher - the worst music teacher in the universe."

"This really isn’t nec -"

"No, even if you hate my guts, you're going to hear me out." Three or four inches shorter than Allan, the woman had to crane her neck to make eye contact. "I chose badly. I should have been a construction worker, pastry chef, dentist, mortician, street walker… anything but a goddamn piano teacher."

"Geez, Muriel. For Christ sakes get a grip!"

"But everything's gonna change." She rushed ahead, ignoring his plea. "I'm closing the studio. No more music lessons. My brother-in-law, the one whose son got married today, runs a catering business. I'm gonna work for him arranging functions and preparing meals."

A strong aroma wafted through the room. "I think the coffee's ready."

"Would you like to spend the night?" She was leaning up against him now and, through the fleecy flannel, Allan could sense that Muriel Beagle was not wearing any bra. Her enticing fleshliness notwithstanding, Allan's muddled brain was preoccupied with a different agenda. He detected a subtle inflection - a sense of urgency coupled with restraint - as she spoke. The words rose and fell in rich cadence; earlier Muriel tripped over a troubling phrase then, catching her emotional stride, rushed impetuously ahead. She sounded human, vulnerable, exposed, and utterly human.

"Would you like to spend the night here," she repeated.

"Yes, I would like that very much, but since we went to all the trouble, let's have coffee first."

The sex - it wasn't quite what Allan expected. He had only been with a meager handful of woman before marrying and even fewer since. "Following my second pregnancy, I had my tubes tied,” Muriel Beagle whispered, “so there's no need to worry." With a deep sigh she threw her arms up over her head and gave herself to him. It only took a few minutes. Afterwards, Allan lay on his back in blissful torpor. "I'm going to grab a quick shower, if you don't mind." Muriel slid off the sheets and disappeared into the bathroom. Ten minutes later, a freshly scrubbed Muriel Beagle was snuggling next to him with a hand resting on the small of his back. Her breath smelled of minty Listerine. "I want what you have."

"And what might that be?"

"Since my husband left, I've been crippled by loneliness. I don't feel like a complete person …whole inside."

Yes, there it was again! She spoke in whisper-soft, hushed tones, and yet an oddly expansive sonority had crept to her voice. “I didn't know I was a role model for much of anything." Allan kissed the side of her face then rubbed the moistness away with the heel of his hand. "Let me tell you about my Fourth of July." Allan recounted his dark night of the soul at the hands of the spunky teenager vixen with the amazing chest.

"And you think it's any different for single, middle-aged woman?" Snuggling closer, there was nothing judgmental in her tone. She draped a calf over his leg. Allan could feel Muriel’s pubic hair tickling his crotch. "What do you think?" Her intent was unmistakable.

Slipping an arm around the small of her back, he rolled over. "Yes, I don't see why not."

On the ride home, Allan took stock of things. A Friday afternoon booking had been cancelled on short notice. The groom got cold feet and ran off somewhere. The band got paid whether they played or not, because, in the event of conjugal calamities, ‘no refund beyond a fixed date’ was stipulated in the contract. Allan would take Ruthie out for supper and she could sleep over, freeing up his ex-wife to do as she pleased. Monday afternoon, the band was rehearsing new material - mostly covers of Top-40 material. Allan would have preferred an earlier time slot, but the lead guitar player, who had a thyroid condition and took hormonal supplements made from desiccated pig glands, could never pull himself out of bed much before noon.

There had been another session with Herb Calloway. He showed Allan how to substitute augmented scales over dominant seventh chords to add musical color. The 'trick' - Herb had a thousand-and-one musical tricks up his sleeve - was to approach the dominant seventh as a whole tone scale. "All six notes will hang together," Herb counseled, "because the first three are diatonic to the triad. Next comes the sharp eleventh, augmented fifth and the dominant seventh.” He wrote an example out on a sheet of music paper labeling each tone as either complimentary or an upward extension of the original chord.

Allan made reservations to take Muriel Beagle out to supper at an Indian Restaurant three blocks over from Copley Plaza in downtown Boston. Muriel was partial to curry and had a crock pot recipe for curried chicken basted in white wine sauce, topped with Basmati rice, green onions and pineapple chunks. She thought she might introduce the recipe as an offering with her brother-in-law's catering business, but not until later when she was more settled in the new venture.