Short Story
By William Leslie
Following Material for 12/11/16
Added material to first section to address the most serious problem in the piece, the likability of the main character.
New Section on main character: Jules (second paragraph):
Despite an erasable nature, Jules was shy and reticent most of the time. He did not have a pleasing tone of voice, in fact it was down right hostile. All he could say is, he was working on it. Reading into the tape recorder and listening back, he tried to make his voice more soothing. And he did have the ability to lower the tone, when the words flowed out and no one was interrupting him, but that was rarely the case when he was in public and had something urgent to say and his idea of urgency was any time he wanted to make a point, then his voice would rise in volume… and you could sense the hostility and even hatred in the mean bitter edge to his voice, but in his head, all was well.
He had other problems too, tending toward the glum and humorless and generally lacking in charm. Even having lost both his parents when he was young didn’t help his outlook. One would have thought it would, given how many people he has heard complain about their parents, not all people of course, just the sour pusses he tended to hang out with. Being brought up by Uncle Zeller and Aunt Helena, who were kind enough to take him in, clothe and feed him, Jules would insist the regimented life of school and church on Sunday was making him mean and hard. He made excuses for his bad behavior, but he also tried to improve himself. Standing in front of the mirror, introducing himself: “Hi, I’m Jules Johnson. Who are you?” He could be charming and likable, then he would do something nutty just to be entertaining. Out in public, confronted with an endless stream of strangers, who didn’t seem particularly interested in meeting him, he would shy away and his eyes said stay away. However, on most occasions, even if he didn’t feel like it, he was affable and polite.
Added material: After diner with his aunt and uncle, Jules went home to his humble abode:
On his bed, he thought of an idea for an arrangement he was composing, but he couldn’t decide if he should go with a jack hammer, or a single hammer in irregular beats. He decided on the latter, as the sound of a nail being driven into wood would be a better accompaniment to his discordant organ playing.
The phone rang. It was Sandra, his girlfriend, a gorgeous woman, he made every attempt to keep in his camp, but was failing to do so, since he was seeing less of her.
“Come on over, we’ll rent a movie,” he said.
“When are you going to buy me that dress? You promised me over a month ago and it was my birthday.”
“I wrote you that lovely serenade. You said you liked it.”
“Are you going to get me that dress?”
“Are you coming over now? I need you.” He hated to admit any weakness, but there it was. She turned him down.
“When am I going to see you again?” He asked.
“I’m seeing someone… else.”
“Who?”
“Someone with an actual job, that pays the bills.” She said in a huff.
“Oh, yeah, what’s his name, Pseudo Bullshit?” Sandra hung up the phone.
Jules always got angry, before he was able to control it. A bad reaction, he realized a long time ago, one he needed to dispose of; someone told him that was half the battle; he only wished the other half was so easy. And now he justified the anger, thinking she was probably making up the boy friend to squeeze him for another dress. If he started begging her to come back to him, Jules reasoned, he was putting himself at her mercy.
End of first section: Rewrite (After Jules went on a rampage in his own private dwelling)
The next morning, faced with what he had done, Jules realized he made things a lot worse for himself, but he was too despondent to do anything about it. He wondered what brought the police to his door, then thought about the things he was throwing out the window from the third floor apartment and the flying glass shards. “Oh, my God,” he said, “what have I done?” He went to the window and looked out: business as usual. A homeless man picked up one of his books and started reading.
He sat down at the table and noticed the small recorder, then remembered his promise to Aunt Helena and turned the tape over absentmindedly and finished recording the story from where he left off in the book, this time without emphasis or drama, then dropped the tape in an envelope and sent it by US media mail to Helena Zeller’s townhouse near Central Park, she would have her story by the weekend.
Unprepared Piano: Section Two for 12/11/16
When the audio tape from Jules arrived, Aunt Helena, a retired government personal worker, opened the package it came in immediately and decided to listen to her nephew’s recording that very evening. Her husband was going to a “modern jazz recital” as he put it. She feigned interest and asked him, “Who?” His answer made her eyes glaze over. Personally, she did not like modern classical, or avant-garde minimalist, or what ever… She liked country music like Merl Haggard and Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn and when her husband discussed the subject of music she tended not to listen. Now she would hear a story, she has thought about reading for months.
Helena dimmed the chandelier and made herself comfortable on her king size bed, resting her head on pillows leaning up against her black cushion head board and gold satin comforter and pushed play. Jules most soothing voice emanated from the device:
“Motive and Opportunity, by Agatha Christie: ‘Mr. Petherick cleared his throat rather more importantly than usual. “I’m afraid my little problem will seem rather tame to you all,” he said apologetically, “after the sensational stories we have been hearing. There is no bloodshed in mine…” ’ ”
What often happens to Helena, when she’s following a story, she drifts off, thinking about her own story and the “little problem” that changed her life, the day she found out she was pregnant and when she told Dick they agreed to get married. Boy was her father, a practicing Lutheran, angry, as soon as he discovered his daughter was knocked up by this “bullshit college boy” without a job: “Marry her? Damn right you’re going to marry her, or I’ll get my shot gun and make you marry her.” He thought of using the same shot gun to run the fornicating bastard out of town after the wedding, but he wasn’t going to deprive the baby, the privilege of knowing his father. She was definitely showing when it was time to walk her up the isle, and daddy was not pleased about the groom and the prospect of his presence in the child’s life. Eventually, he got over his reservations, once his son in law could afford a fancy town house in Manhattan, writing articles for music magazines. As far the father of the bride was concerned, it was nonsense, but Helena thought her husband’s career was prestigious and her father was wrong about her choice in a husband. Dick would be a good father, and their son turned out fine, obtaining a law degree from Harvard and working for the Legal Defense Fund, because he felt African Americans were given a raw deal in this country.
The story continued playing on tape, and soon, she was napping.
Home from the recital, Dick came into the bedroom and heard a squealing cat, followed by a crashing noise, and then it was as if a rocket took off from the launch pad. It sounded like a turbine engine running backward in the void of space, a baby twirling on it’s own umbilical cord, garbled newscasters talking backwards in a slowed down tape recording, swirls of incomprehensible babble and he thought he heard shattering glass stabbing piano strings. It was incomprehensible.
The critic quickly realized the sounds were coming from his wife’s tape machine beside her on the bed and if the look of consternation on his face was any clue, then he wasn’t at all pleased, and more than a little perplexed, when the machine turned itself off, his wife awoke with a start.
“Oh, you’re home,” she said, glad to see him.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
They kissed.
“How was your evening?” He asked.
“I was just listening to this tape,” she said.
“Yes, I wanted to ask you about that,” he muttered distractedly, taking the tape recorder in hand.
“It’s a recording Jules made-”
“I see…” He really didn’t see, but he thought he understood: this must be another one of Jules compositions. Zeller was still perplexed by what he heard. What was that noise? Perhaps if he listened to the recording on a better sound system, like the one in his living room, maybe then he could understand what was happening. “May I?” Only glancing at his wife, he ejected the tape and handed the machine to her, then left the room abruptly.
“Hey, I’m not done with that.” She called after him from the bed.
The next day, Dick Zeller took a cab to his nephew’s home, where he buzzed the doorbell to his apartment building. Inside his apartment, Jules was burying his face under the bed covers. His place was still a mess, broken glass on the floor, an empty bookcase laying face down.
Dragging his feet through the bits and pieces of glass in his slip on shoes, he made his way over to the call box, his voice sounded belabored, “Hello!”
Calm and soothing, Zeller said through the loud speaker, “Hello Jules, I’m down stairs. Can I see you?”
Jules sighed, what did he want? Not particularly interested in seeing anyone, the young composer sure didn’t want to see the man who had not even had the decency to acknowledge in writing, his latest flop: Introducing Jules Johnson. The least he could have done, is say how it stunk.
“Jules, let me in.”
He pushed the buzzer and Zeller came in through the street door, as Jules noticed the mess in the room and his state of undress. He quickly threw on a pair of pants, then up-righted the bookcase, replacing two books that didn’t make it out the window, then grabbed a broom and started sweeping the hard wood floor. Shards of glass clanked together, as he heard a knock on the door.
A jolt of fear went through him, as if he was caught doing something… wrong, then he realized that was ridiculous. He propped the broom up along the kitchenette wall and noticed the broken mirror draped over the Wassily Chair that Uncle Zeller gave to him as a house warming gift. Picking up the mirror by the frame, it fell apart, leaving him with two frame fragments, one in each hand, strung together by a wire, like a jump rope.
Zeller yelled. “Jules, open the door.”
Deciding to let him in, Jules got his foot caught on the picture wire and he struggled with the frame fragments, before dropping them.
Opening the door, he said overly positive, “Uncle Zeller.”
An intense look in his eyes, Zeller’s focused stare on Jules neglected to see the mess in the room, which was plainly in view.
“What possessed you?” He said gruffly, holding up the tape his nephew made for Helena. “What were you thinking? You know your aunt wants to know what you did to that cat? It sounded like you were strangling it. You didn’t kill a cat to make this tape, did you?”
Standing like a deer caught in the headlights, Jules could only repeat what he heard in startled amazement, “Kill a cat?” And the tape Zeller held was a mystery to him.
“Just tell me how you managed to get that cat to make that horrific noise?”
Jules was trying to make sense of what his uncle was telling him and bewildered as he was, he could only reply lamely that he did no harm to any cat, that the only cat he knew was sleeping in the other room on his bed, completely unharmed.
“Oh, thank God,” Zeller was so relieved, he put his hand to his heart and sighed. “You don’t know what a relief that is.”
“How could you think I would be so cruel as to harm a poor defenseless cat?” It crushed him to think that his dearest relative would even consider the possibility.
“Why, the tape of course,” said Zeller, holding the cassette up once more for him to see.
Intrigued, Jules examined the label, his label, the one he applied to the cassette, which read: “Motive and Opportunity, by Agatha Christie, read by Jules Johnson.” Now he was beginning to suspect that he may have inadvertently recorded his tirade.
“I have to hear this.” He made a bee-line for his tape machine on the small table, going by the broken mirror and a pile of glass on the floor.
However, Zeller either didn’t see it or he ignored it and only came into the room as far as the bed, while Jules put the tape into the cassette player and pushed play. What he heard confirmed his worst suspicion: he had indeed recorded his tirade. He was absolutely livid. How could he be so thoughtless, as to forget… “Oh, Aunt Helena must be really disappointed in me.”
“Never mind that,” Dick was breathless, “this was by far… the most superb audio masterpiece I’ve heard in years.”
“Audio masterpiece?” Jules was stunned and a little confused.
Zeller grabbed his nephew by the shoulders, his eyes beaming, “Yes Jules, it was brilliant,” and to think it was composed by his nephew, whom he formerly considered a hopeless candidate for the avant-garde movement, now his opinion had changed, for he regarded Jules in high esteem. “The most marvelous thing I have heard in a decade, a masterpiece. I especially liked the shattering glass,” he said, as he gestured toward the pile of broken glass and asked, “was that a reference to Kristallnacht?”
Jules hardly knew what to say. He didn’t want to lie to Uncle Zeller and yet telling him the truth would ruin the very moment he always longed for, when the critic would rave about his musical composition and praise it without reservation. So what if it was an accident.
“Well,” Zeller was all smiles, “the sound quality is atrocious; not an attack,” he was quick to add, his hands raised in defense, “I mean, maybe it was your intention to record it that way, if perhaps you were trying to create an old time radio atmosphere, which come to think of it, works with the whole 1940s era.
His grin widened and his sparkling eyes glowed warm. Barely able to contain his excitement, he said, “So, are you going to tell me, what you did to that cat?”
The pressure was on, “Oh, I ah… just scared him a little bit.”
“Excellent! You put the listener right in the middle of the Nazi uprising. The horrors of extremism coming to light, exposing the ugly truth behind the movement. I love it!”
“Thank you,” Jules said, as if he created that moment on purpose, a moment Zeller thought was about Nazi mob mentality, when he was really yelling at disembodied writers, whose books he was busy throwing out the window.
Zeller turned toward the broken mirror that was draped over the torn Wassily chair.
Moving quickly, Jules blocked his uncle’s view of the mirror, saying, “So, Aunt Helena…”
“Oh, your aunt didn’t like it,” Zeller said playfully, but what does she know: butt kiss… butt kiss about Fluxus.” Then Jules made a farting sound in his armpit and they both laughed. For the first time in a long time they were simpatico and Jules had his uncle’s approval, something he longed for since the age of twelve, when he realized people liked his uncle, thought he was a great guy, seemed more than willing to do anything for the pompous ass and Jules thought of that arrangement fondly, as he put an arm on his uncle’s shoulders and turned him away from the pile of broken glass.
“Where did you make this recording, on location, or in the studio?” Zeller asked, turning to look back at what he thought was a broken mirror draped over his house warming gift. Jules guided him to the door.
“Yes, in the studio, of course… This is really exciting news uncle. You’ll be the first to know when my new release is out,” he said, putting aside his vow to never record another album again.
“Well, you must tell me everything about it and leave nothing out.” He was absolutely enthralled for the first time with his nephew’s talent, sincere in his belief, that for once, Jules understood, that he got it, but the only thing Jules understood was: he finally caught a break.
Given the art critics respectability and prominence in the music field, given his millions of readers, when the young composer came out with his latest cd: Unknown Intercourse, Broken Interlude, with the accidental composition on the first track, Dick Zeller gave the album rave reviews: He described Intercourse, Broken Interlude as “the future of the avant-garde movement in music.”
Standing at the local magazine rack, Jules had to laugh. Obviously, this was where avant-garde music scene was headed: a man yelling and throwing plates and silverware at the wall: “In this composition, I hurl the furniture out the window. I call this composition: Frustration, Penetration: Part 1: The Formica Table Top.” He was laughing so hard when he read Zeller’s article, he forgot where he was for a moment, until he saw the other patrons at the magazine stand looking at him.
Grinning stupidly, he raised the magazine to eye level and read: “A term used by Dick Higgins, intermedia, took the view that art is not something seldom seen or commercial; he was committed to blurring the line between reality and art. This is what Jules Johnson has achieved in his title track: Intercourse, Broken Interlude.” He muffled a laugh and suppressed an urge to jump for joy. Then he looked for any further review and realized he didn’t say anything about Unknown, a silent track. Why?
Zeller was sitting at the dining room table with Helena, reading the reviews too, in the midst of telling his wife, “…but I had nothing to say about Unknown. The silent track was fresh when John Cage invented it over seventy years ago. It’s too derivative today.”
The other reviews were just as glowing, since most reporters, who write about the avant-garde music scene follow Zeller’s lead when it came to matters of taste.
Even Aunt Helena was interested in what the critics said about her nephew. She asked him to read what the critic for the New York Times said and Zeller read, “On one track, Jules was banging on a pot with a steal pipe in a monotonous beat, unvarying and relentless” and Helena rolled her eyes and shook her head, while her husband read on, “At last I can drop this hollow pretense, this existential materialism, locked in a world of mediocrity.” She thought that was a little over the top, but Dick thought he made a good point.
“This critic compared his performance to Oko Ono’s avant-guard piece, Fly,” Zeller told his wife, and read The Guardian, “The constant buzzing and banging of irregular beats and the tortured cries of man and beast, the orgy of life and death, commingling and inhabiting a single space best describes Intercourse Broken Interlude, this astounding composition was equal to Cage’s great work, Prepared Piano.”
Aunt Helena didn’t know to be impressed, then realized she should be impressed and put on a smile and agreed that Jules did well for himself.
The success of his album was enormous, 50,000 copies sold in the United States, another 20 thousand across Europe and Japan.
Not bad for a promising new artist…
And yet, it wasn’t enough for Jules. He wanted more…
Next Installment: Jules has his 15 minutes of fame.
