Jaden cast a practiced eye over Colin’s clothes. “Man’s getting his money from somewhere. You got family, young man?”
“I … No. Not really.”
“Seems to me, either you do or you don’t.” He accepted a glass of the single malt, breathed the fumes, nodded approval. “You don’t want me asking questions, say the word. Man’s got a right to keep his secrets. We’ll just hold ourselves to the music.”
Colin took his time answering. There was something in the man’s easy manner, he knew it was mostly show, that down deep probably lurked a risk, a threat. But not to him. He knew it was abductive reasoning on a minimum of data. But he liked and trusted Angelo. And Angelo trusted this newcomer. So …
“I’ve started a couple of times to talk. But these sessions, they mean so much, I didn’t want to disturb anything.”
“Thesesessions, the man says.” Jaden nodded. “The music is important to him, just like you said.”
Angelo remained standing beside his desk. “Why would talking about yourself mess with our sessions?”
“My life, it’s not normal.”
Jaden actually chuckled. He looked at Angelo, said, “I came for the music, I’m staying for the show. Come sit yourself down, old friend. Let’s hear what the man has to say for himself.”
Twenty minutes later, they had still not started with the music.
Jaden was well into his second glass. Taking it in small draughts, savoring it and Angelo’s cigar with the same sense of easy pleasure as he did Colin’s story. “Let me make sure I got this straight. You moved into that genius school at …”
“I was six.”
“And you started UNC Wilmington at …”
“Twelve.”
“Where you studied …”
“Calculus. Other stuff.”
“Math stuff.”
“Until last year. Then I started attending classes at Chapel Hill in music theory and software engineering.”
“And because of what you’ve learned from Angelo here, you’re working on …”
“A mathematical foundation for harmonics and musical development. That will probably become my graduate thesis.”
“Graduatework, now. At fifteen.” Jaden nudged his friend. “You’re trying to find a way to teach a computer to make jazz, is that what you’re saying?”
“No.” Just the same, Jaden’s words teased out another flicker of that distant light. “Well, no … I don’t know what I’m after. It’s been a struggle.”
“Can’t imagine why.” He glanced over. “Can you, old friend?”
“You guys lost me a long while back. I’m lucky if the cash register balances out at the end of my day.”
A few more puffs on the cigar, then, “You ever heard of Bart Howard?”
“No.”
“Bart and my daddy were friends. My daddy, he played clarinet and tenor sax with a number of bands. Bart was retired when they met, my daddy was still climbing the career ladder. But sometimes those things matter a lot less than people like to think. Bart was a songwriter and composer,mostly swing and bossa nova and cabaret, but he put his hand to a lot of different sounds.”
Angelo said, “He wrote almost half of that Johnny Mathis album we played last time you were here.”
“He also wrote ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’” Jaden said. “Kaye Ballard was the first to record it. Then Frank Sinatra, using an arrangement by Quincy Jones. The song went on to become Sinatra’s signature sound. Peggy Lee, Joe Harnell, Julie London, Paul Anka, they all recorded it. My daddy once asked Bart about writing that song. Know what he said? ‘I spent forty years getting ready, so I could write it in twenty minutes.’”
“I don’t want to wait forty years,” Colin replied. “Not for anything.”
