Part 6 (2/2)

”It is calm. I can drive to the river and watch the sun set. I think you would like it there. You seem like a deep, thoughtful kind of person.”

I am.

”I like that in people. I like that very much.”

He glanced down at his feet as though he couldn't think of anything else to say.

I wanted to ask him to stay, but my mother would be home soon.

”I work at home,” he finally said, ”in case you ever want to drop by.”

I spent the whole week with my ear pressed against the wall, listening to him rehea.r.s.e. He rehea.r.s.ed day and night, sometimes twelve to ten hours without stopping. Sometimes at night, the saxophone was like a soothing lullaby.

One afternoon, he came by with a ham-and-cheese sandwich to thank me for letting him use the phone. He sat across from me in the living room while I ate very slowly.

”What are you going to study in college?” he asked.

”I think I am going to be a doctor.”

”You think? Is this something you like?”

”I suppose so,” I said.

”You have to have a pa.s.sion for what you do.”

”My mother says it's important for us to have a doctor in the family.”

”What if you don't want to be a doctor?”

”There's a difference between what a person wants and what's good for them.”

”You sound like you are quoting someone,” he said.

”My mother.”

”What would Sophie like to do?” he asked.

That was the problem. Sophie really wasn't sure. I had never really dared to dream on my own.

”You're not sure, are you?”

He even understood my silences.

”It is okay not to have your future on a map,” he said. ”That way you can flow wherever life takes you.”

”That is not Haitian,” I said. ”That's very American.”

”What is?”

”Being a wanderer. The very idea.”

”I am not American,” he said. ”I am African-American.”

”What is the difference?”

”The African. It means that you and I, we are already part of each other.”

I think I blushed. At least I nearly choked on my sandwich. He walked over and tapped my back.

”Are you all right?”

”I am fine,” I said, still short of breath.

”I think you are a fine woman,” he said.

I started choking again.

I knew what my mother would think of my going over there during the day. A good girl would never be alone with a man, an older one at that. I wasn't thinking straight. It was nice waking up in the morning knowing I had someone to talk to.

I started going next door every day. The living room was bare except for a couch and a few boxes packed in a corner near his synthesizer and loud speakers.

At first I would sit on the linoleum and listen to him play. Then slowly, I moved closer until sometimes he would let me touch the keyboard, guiding my fingers with his hand on top of mine.

Between strokes, I learned the story of his life. He was from a middle-cla.s.s New Orleans family. His parents died when he was young. He was on his own by the time he was fifteen. He went to college in Providence but by his soph.o.m.ore year left school and bought a house there. He was lucky he had been left enough money to pursue his dream of being a musician. He liked to play slave songs, Negro spirituals, both on his saxophone and his piano, slowing them down or speeding them up at different tempos. One day, he would move back to Providence for good, and write his own songs.

I told him about Croix-des-Rosets, the Augustins, and Tante Atie. They would make a great song, he said. He had been to Jamaica, Cuba, and Brazil several times, trying to find links between the Negro spirituals and Latin and island music.

We went to a Haitian record store on Nostrand Avenue. He bought a few alb.u.ms and we ate lunch every day listening to the drum and conch sh.e.l.l beats.

”I am going to marry you,” he said at lunch one day. ”Even though I already know the problems that will arise. Your mother will pa.s.s a watermelon over it, because I am so old.”

Ever since we had become friends, I'd stopped thinking of him as old. He talked young and acted young. As far as I was concerned he could have been my age, but with more nurtured kindness, as Tante Atie liked to say.

”You are not very old,” I told him.

”Not very old, huh?”

”Age doesn't matter.”

”Only the young can say that. I am not sure your mother will agree.”

”We won't have to tell her.”

”She can tell I'm old just by looking at me.”

”How old are you?”

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