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Chapter 7.0.1 (Draft)

COMING OF AGE I was having a hard time seeing myself the beneficiary of such a convoluted set of circumstance. Like I said it, it seemed like some kind of a grift. Too good to be true. Just plain bizarre. Why didn't the English attorney feel comfortable spelling things out for me over the phone?  I like to fix things and this whole story seemed somehow broken. Well, now with nothing more pressing and a new knee to boot, the game was afoot so to speak. You get a change in perspective from living in the Villages. It sneaks-up on you. Living among older people, even very active ones, you kind of forget about the youthful energy that is the essential machinery of the world. I couldn't help but overhear the excited conversation around me on the plane. People talking about new schools, visiting relatives , the hippest nightclubs they hoped to experience. nightclubs. Ikind of remember days like that. But for me, even though I had traveled extensively, it always seemed to that those th...
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Chapter 6.0.1 (Draft)

WATER TABLE I know this is sort of morbid. But, I was curious about how she died. On the phone I said: "So can you tell me what happened to her, how she died?" The stern sounding London Solicitor, Ms. Aldridge definitely didn't have had a voice like butter. Well maybe butter just taken from the freezer to soften. "Really? You don't know? ‘No idea,’ I said. "Apparently, she died at sea…" In other words, I needed to do a little detective work on my own if I wanted to understand what had happened to put me in this position. Angie had made her way to London as she hope she could. She found herself in various positions with orchestras and larger ensembles at times touring other parts with her cello. But, eventually she found herself back in the UK, teaching once again. Ironically, it was her teaching that became an unlikely vehicle propelling her into an unexpected course in life. She never anticipated that her journey would lead her to Mike Beauchamp, a man...
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Chapter 5 pt.2 (Draft)

‘It makes things bigger, the world, the universe.’ she said, buzzed but serious about her insight. ‘I feel confined sometimes and when I am playing music, playing the bass, I break out and I am in the rest of the world for a while. Music comes back to me just when I absolutely need it. Just like you!.’ And then, out of the blue, through the haze of time I get a letter. Angie had died. She was dead and she had left me her stuff, her house in England because I had done what I think most people would and it turned to more. Timing is everything. I guess I could sell the house, or rent it, or (was I serious?) actually live there. It still sounded crazy when I said it out loud. It made me feel odd like I was losing something. Something I couldn't put my finger on. Should I have felt that deep connection all that time like she must have? Time with Angie felt more like a dream than a memory. Well, at least for now I wasn't moving. Not much at all after the knee surgery. I have found ...
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Chapter 5 pt.1 (Draft)

SILENT NIGHTS By January, she was excited the prospect of getting a position over there. Around the same time my friend's wife, Helen, was thinking about pursuing a PhD. So, just like I had told Helen to "go for it" if she really wanted to, life is too short, etc. Seemed like the supportive thing to say. This time that message was delivered via text. It doesn't take too much thinking to read into the fact that I was not suggesting I was considering going with her. The thought of pursuing this move signaled the beginning of the end of our relationship. "Well that makes it clearer. Thanks for helping me decide." she texted back. The affair, that is how I thought of it at the time and shortly after, had been brief but intense. Like most of my romantic experiences this was quick and painful. February and March are dreary anyway. I often forget how dark a period that was for me. Obviously, to start, no more bass lessons. My interest in the instrument faded quic...
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Chapter 4 pt.4 (Draft)

She was feeling entirely unable to cope with things. A feeling I know more now than I did then. She was struggling with teaching, wondering if she was in the wrong career. She had planned to be an Orchestral Muscian and had not focused on the reality many of her peers and even her heros faced: Being a professional musician in the late 20th Century was not a full-time job. I told her every classical musician felt like that. At one point she mentioned England. London tourism was really taking off and she’d heard that with the growth came a new bunch of orchestra managers and music promoters over there looking for singers and musicians. I think I was falling. Her allure was the sense of suspense and mystery that followed her wherever and with whomever.  Whatever she thought of herself, she was a very good teacher. I admired her as a musician, too. She was soulful and natural at music. "I feel like I know something that I can't put my finger on. It is something that needs to be ex...
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Chapter 4 pt.3 (Draft)

Anyway, early on, one evening close to the Christmas holidays I had scheduled a lesson. She was adding tinsel in a complicated pattern to an already (in my opinion) overly decorated tree. ‘Oh, don’t do that,’ I said, intrusively, as though she was the pupil rather my teacher. The cat will see that and soon the cat and the tree will be on the floor. 'Oops! Oh. I’m sorry, I got carried away.’ I said. After a week of flying around dealing with client and staff problems. I was in issue avoidance mode. ‘Please, don’t be,’ she said, looking at me and squeezing a smile out of a lemon pucker of a frown. ‘Are you doing OK?’ I asked? I have been known to be too busy and not to get to my practice material during the week. Well, her mood wasn't about my lesson tonight. I could tell. I hadn't seen her in a couple weeks. But something that was not an issue the last time I saw her was an issue tonight. She was having a crisis. For so many people, including me some years, Christmas can be ...
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Chapter 4 pt.2 (Draft)

 SOLOIST I must admit in the course of our whirlwind romance I didn’t get to know her as well as I imagined. I remember her as a very beautiful and shy young woman, with an air of glamour, which was a rarer quality back in 1999 than it is now. She was slight with very light hair and a sweet sweet smile. She reminded me of the actress Britt Ekland, but with an paler and even more flawless complexion. It always struck me as a beautiful contradiction, her lithe form partnered with that giant of the stringed instrument family. Her father had emigrated from Germany as a young man just after the war. First to London where he met her Mother and then together to the US. Apparently she had never been to Germany. But she seemed to epitomize a modern European, sophistication to my provincial Mid-Atlantic bull-in-a-china-shop. She once told me she missed the food she had known growing up, her English Mom's version of her Father's favorite German dishes. Still, she seemed to flourish with ...
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