Via Dolorosa(23)

As if unconsciously, Nick moved his way down the wall toward the front of the stage. There were a few elderly couples dancing here, too; he avoided them agilely, almost respectfully, while holding his half-empty glass of scotch above his head. Cigarette sticking from his mouth, he claimed the empty seat beside Isabella Rosales.

“Well, hello, Nicholas D’Nofrio,” she said, but she did not look at him; she would not take her eyes away from the stage, from Goat-Man Claxton. In fact, he did not even know how she had recognized it was him. “Hello, hello, hello…”

“I want to buy you a drink,” Nick said quickly.

“Then do it.”

“Well,” he said, instituting a slight pause, “I’m still considering.”

“Considering what?”

He said, “Never mind. I don’t know.” He looked around.

“Raise your hand,” she said.

“What?”

“Raise your hand, Nicky, and the waiter will come over to take your drink order.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t call you what?”

“Nicky,” he said. “Don’t call me Nicky.”

“Isn’t that what your wife calls you?” And still, she hadn’t looked at him yet.

“I don’t like it,” he said simply.

“Stop,” Isabella said from nowhere. “Stop, Nicholas. Watch. This is it. This is the moment.”

Delicately, Claxton lifted one booted foot just an inch off the bandstand. He kept it there, hovering, defying gravity. Saxophone poised away from his body, the gooseneck crook of the mouthpiece remaining firm between Claxton’s strong, brown, determined lips, Nick watched as the jazzman elicited a single soaring note from the horn, held it…let it simmer like boiling water evaporating in the air. Behind him, the backup band faded out until they died completely away. Claxton held the note—babied it, secured its voice, added strength to it until it became the loudest and strongest thing in the world.

“That’s—” Nick began, but Isabella quickly shushed him.

Just as the single note seemed to crescendo, a second note, a few steps higher in pitch, emanated from the smooth, golden bell of the saxophone. Together, the dual notes hung in the air, sustained, distinct yet blended, harmonizing until the sound was very much like the hum of electricity through a live circuit.

A tight roll on the snare drum, from fade to zenith in just three seconds, brought the entire band back into the game, and Claxton spilled his dual note hold into a waterfall cascade of staccato blasts and wailing scales. The audience erupted with applause. People shouted, crooned, whistled, stomped their feet.

“Holy crap,” Nick managed, watching the band.

“Polytonal saxophonist,” Isabella said. She had to speak louder now, over the brassy shake of the band. “This is Claxton’s signature song, by the way. It is called ‘Go, Man, Go,’ and it is out of this world.”

It was a raucous, locomotive arrangement. For a full seven minutes, Claxton’s saxophone did not sit still. Stage lights reflecting off the instrument’s bell were nearly blinding. The backup musicians, too, did not sit still. The piece’s title phrase, when shouted in chorus by the three elderly accompanists, resulted in a quick-speak jumble of words which, Nick had no doubt, suggested the origin of the jazzman’s peculiar but suddenly comprehensible moniker.

“Go, man,” Nick said. He had to shout loudly now across the table to be heard. “I get it. Goat-Man, go…”

“Genius,” Isabella said. Nick could feel the vibration of her knee thumping against the underside of the table in rhythm with the music. He was unsure if she was referring to Claxton’s genius or Nick sarcastically. “He is an apocalyptic genius,” she continued, clarifying. “It is nearly frightening. You Americans have given the world jazz, and even if that is the only good thing you have contributed to the world—and many will probably agree that it is—it is good enough for me.”

“Isabella,” he began, “I don’t—”

“Shhhh,” she said.

A steely bleat from Claxton’s horn…

The fermented triad chorused, in unison, “Go, man, go!”

A second raking, brilliant spark of sound from Claxton’s saxophone…

“Go, man, go!”

A third…

“Go, man, go!”

A fourth…and this time, Claxton let it bleed into the chorus, held it, let it bleed a second time, a third, bleeding out like a suicide…

“Go, man, go!”

“He’s great!” Nick shouted across the table.

“Yes, he is!” Isabella, still watching the band, shouted back.

“He’s so young!”

“Wait for the end,” she said. “Can you hear? Wait for it…wait for it…”

“I can hear…”

“Wait for the end,” she said again. “Wait for it. The whole thing is eighteen carat, man! He is too much!” The bebop slang sounded funny coming from her, spoken in her faint Spanish accent.

“What?” he shouted back.

“He is too much!” she yelled back, not taking her eyes off the stage. “Much-much-much-much-much!”