Pinball Page 6

  “Gypsy living. Moonlighting in wild places. Mickey-Mousing.” He laughed and motioned for them to sit down. “True or false?”

  “True,” said Domostroy, sitting. “They keep me fit.”

  Scales pushed some papers aside and leaned forward on the desk. “What can I do for you, Domo?” he asked. “Got a new masterpiece? Another Octaves, by any chance?”

  “Not quite. I am working on something—with another person,” said Domostroy, mustering courage.

  “Be careful! I still recall those press hatchet jobs about your ‘secret’ collaborators and what their headlines did to your reputation. But this time is it really a musical collaboration?” Scales asked with interest.

  “Only of sorts. And no more than were all those others. But this time I need advice. It won’t take long at all,” he said, recalling Scales’s extravagantly high fees in bygone days.

  “I’m all ears,” said Scales.

  “Well … my partner and I are wondering … what are the chances of our tracking down Goddard.”

  Scales raised his eyebrows. “Goddard? The Goddard?”

  “Yes “

  “What for?”

  “For a good reason, believe me,” said Domostroy.

  “Like what? Murder? Can you prove Goddard killed someone?” asked Scales a bit impatiently.

  “No, but—”

  “Because if you can’t, I’d advise you not to waste your time.” He paused and reflected. “In fact, even if you could prove such a thing, finding him still wouldn’t be easy. I once handled a rather famous case involving a prisoner at Leavenworth.” He paused, then opened up to tell Domostroy yet another favorite story. “This man, starting when he was twelve, had spent some twenty-five years in the clink for various crimes, including killing a fellow prisoner and badly wounding another. While he was in prison, invisible to the world, he wrote country and western music and lyrics and he sent the stuff to some music luminaries on the outside. They were convinced that they’d discovered a genius, and they hired me to help them obtain the man’s parole. So at the age of thirty-seven he arrived in Nashville and was welcomed by the country and western establishment as if he were a Johnny Cash clone.

  “Even though his music—at best, mediocre—was gentle his lyrics were not. They expressed contempt for the faceless masses whom he saw as ignorant, cynical and basically evil. The fellow believed that to be a man, you must, to save face, kill anyone who threatens you with force. But once his arrival turned into a rags-to-riches publicity event, everyone hoped that the man to whom violence was music would now be just a music man, a noble savage, a gentle prisoner of the keyboard, with a musical talent that would free his soul. Needless to say, as if on command, in spite of his hateful lyrics, his music received some of the most laudatory front-page reviews country and western had ever seen and—visible as hell—our genius was launched, like no other, into a musical career. However …” Scales slumped back in his chair.

  “However,” he went on, “barely two weeks later, he was in a coffee shop, where he asked to use the washroom. The counter man, a twenty-two-year-old musician—a recently married gentle fellow who worked there part-time—told him that the place didn’t have a public toilet. Actually, it didn’t, but our noble savage chose not to believe the guy, and—possibly to save face in front of two young women who were with him—he knifed the young man to death for lying to him. Then he vanished. He managed to stay clear of the police, write many more songs, and, possibly in collusion with some of his past sponsors, have them published under another name, and sung by some of our best country and western stars, before tipping off the newspapers to who he was. He’s still writing, as far as I know, still at large and invisible again. Nobody has any idea what he looks like these days, whether he has killed anyone else, or who—if anyone—is helping him out. And that man is a publicized murderer! If he can hide and write his music in secret, think of what Goddard, with Nokturn Records behind him, could get away with!” Scales looked sadly up at Domostroy.

  “Do you then think looking for Goddard would be a complete waste?” Domostroy asked.

  “In my opinion, it would,” Scales said. “At least it’s been a complete waste for, I guess, quite a few thousand people so far.”

  “You mean I don’t have the smallest chance of finding him?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “What about Nokturn Records? Surely they deal with him, don’t they? How? How does he get his music to them?”

  “By mail probably. From their very first press conference on Goddard, Nokturn has stuck to the same story: they say that no one in the company has ever met Goddard in person and that no one there knows who or where he is. Therefore, Nokturn could not divulge his secret even if they wanted to.”

  “Do you believe them?” asked Domostroy.

  “Do I have any proof that they are lying?”

  “But what about the government?’ Domostroy was insistent. “Someone in the government must know who Goddard is.”

  “C’mon, Domo,” said Scales gruffly. “What does the government care? Goddard is a rock singer, not the head of a foreign state in disguise or a Soviet or CIA master spy on the loose!”

  “But Goddard gets money from Nokturn, doesn’t he? What about taxes? Doesn’t the government go after his taxes? They certainly went after mine—checking my returns year after year—when I used to compose and record!” Domostroy was feeling more and more frustrated.

  “I know they did,” said Scales softly. “I represented you then.” He straightened in his chair. “As I recall,” he went on with exaggerated calm, “about a year after Goddard’s first big album came out and the first big money started rolling in, a congressional inquiry prompted the IRS to do a scrupulous audit of all of Nokturn’s dealings with Goddard. The IRS found nothing illegal in Nokturn’s handling of their Goddard business. On the contrary, as Oscar Blaystone, Nokturn’s president, revealed, the company paid all Goddard’s royalties to a Swiss bank’s numbered account, but only after all New York state and city taxes and all federal taxes had been withheld. That meant, as an agent of the IRS publicly pointed out, that by remaining incognito, Goddard was voluntarily waiving massive tax deductions he would be entitled to under U.S. tax law as a self-employed artist.” He paused. “It also means that as long as his income is properly taxed to the fullest, Goddard is free of any hassles with revenue agents. And given the extraordinary secrecy the Swiss guarantee people with really big accounts—can you imagine how big Goddard’s account must be!—he can move money from there with the greatest ease to accounts in his own name, or in the name of John Doe, anywhere in the world, without fear of discovery. What else do you want to know, Domo?” he asked, glancing at his desk calendar.

  “Nothing. I guess you’ve said it all.” Domostroy got up. “Do you have any advice for me?” he asked as Scales escorted him to the door.

  “Write music and don’t make new headlines. They don’t do you any good,” said Scales, shaking his hand. “I mean that. Besides, isn’t Etude still your publisher?”

  “Yes,” said Domostroy. “They keep my records in print.”

  “Well, Etude records are distributed by Nokturn. So if you write some more music, you’ll be in the same boat as Goddard! What better way to find him?”

  “But how will I know the other guy in the boat is Goddard?” asked Domostroy.

  “You won’t. And that’s the catch,” said Scales, laughing as he closed the door.

  Listening to Goddard’s music and speculating about his own fate, Domostroy recalled his own better days, when he traveled to give a concert or plug his latest release on a publicity tour. All during the time when his records were selling and his music was at its peak of popularity, he often appeared on TV and radio talk shows and music programs across the country. His fan mail then was so voluminous that Etude would ship to him only the cream of the fan letters, for he could never have read them all. One of the secretaries at Etude Classics did the so
rting out, sending him by express mail only letters from critics, serious listeners, and music students. The straight-into-the-wastebasket stuff, comprised largely of naive assurances of adoration, was answered by the secretary herself with the usual form letter.

  Domostroy’s thoughts wandered to a conversation he had once had with a handsome Hollywood star. The actor had said that most of the letters he received from his countless female fans—even when they contained photographs showing the writers as beautiful and voluptuous women—were so predictable and banal that he had never had any interest in meeting the women.

  “A typical fan letter from a woman,” he had said, “is all about how much she loves me, how much she wants to meet me, how much she would cherish a moment with me, how much she hopes I might go to bed with her! It’s all about her and what she wants. But how about me? Am I here to fuck America’s darlings just because I’m the star they want?

  “If any one of these spoiled cunts ever for a moment thought about me,” he had continued, “she would know that the way to meet me is not to offer to let me lay her—I can get laid by anyone I want—but to show that she understands me in some other way. Has she seen all my films, including the early ones, where I played bit parts? Has she read all that’s been written about me? Has she figured out from my interviews why I’ve said what I’ve said—and whether I’ve told the truth? Why I like some of my films and hate others? Why I’m proud of some of my roles, but not of others? After she’s done all that, let her convince me that she knows what I need and that she can deliver it better than any other woman I could pick up on my own. It would be fun to meet such a fan! But if there is one like that, she certainly hasn’t written to me yet—and so I’ve yet to go on a date with her. How about you, Domostroy? Did you ever have a fan who understood you?”

  “Maybe one,” Domostroy had answered evasively, “and I didn’t understand her.”

  “All the ways I’ve thought of up to now,” said Domostroy to Andrea, “are wrong. They’re wrong because they all go one way—from us to Goddard.”

  “Is there any other way?”

  “Yes. From him to us. We have to make him come out of his hideaway and then unmask him, rather than the other way around.”

  “He probably doesn’t have one hideaway,” she said. “The whole world could be Goddard’s hideaway.”

  “It probably is. So then, what we have to do is compose the right invitation from you to Goddard, send it to him, and hope it intrigues him so much that he shows up here to find you.”

  “And what would attract Goddard to me?”

  “What you say in your letter. You have to trigger in him a longing for you. For your understanding of him. If you can succeed in doing that, he’ll show up to claim you soon enough.”

  “My understanding of him?” she repeated. Then, folding her arms over her breasts, she exclaimed, “You’re a composer, Patrick; you have more understanding of him than I’ll ever have! In one of your old interviews you said that music was ‘the only spiritual accomplishment of your life’! In another, you said, There is anguish that only composers recognize in each other.’ Think of his music, Patrick! His music is his spiritual address. It might tell us who he is!” She halted—excited—then went on. “Why can’t you figure out who influenced him as an artist. Was it a particular composer? A music teacher? Someone who determined his choice of instruments or his arrangements? A particular engineer or sound expert or one of those new electronic music wizards? Can’t you find out who he is from his music?”

  Her enthusiasm and her line of thought were contagious.

  “I could try,” said Domostroy. “Goddard’s melodies and harmonies and rhythms and musical forms probably tell more about him than his handwriting or his astrological charts or the lines in his hand. So do his lyrics.” He paused. “For instance, one of his songs is called ‘Fugue.’ Now, of course, in music, fugue signifies contrapuntal imitations, but in psychiatry it means a state of flight from reality. Such things may indeed tell us much more about Goddard than, say, we would be likely to deduce from his looks.”

  “What do you mean, from his looks?” She rose on the bed and hovered over him.

  “I mean, he is not about to come to you as Goddard. He might be anybody.”

  “What if I have already met him?” she said. “What if that tall creep next door who always says hello to me is Goddard?”

  “If he is, he certainly won’t admit it—even to you. If he’s remained in a state of fugue and secrecy all this time, you don’t expect him to walk in, shake your hand, and introduce himself as Goddard, do you? And I’m sure his everyday voice sounds quite different than his recording one—as is the case with so many other pop singers. A lot of work has gone into Goddard’s staying hidden, and a lot of money comes out of it. He, or the people behind him, are not about to give that up just because of a clever letter from an amorous fan. Even if he likes your letter and is tempted to meet you—in person—he or his associates will probably send someone to check you out, to make sure you’re not trying to set a trap for him.”

  “Send whom, for instance?”

  “Who knows? A man, a woman, even a couple. Anybody—a guy making a pass at you at a cocktail party, a door-to-door saleswoman, even the creep next door! We don’t know who works for him! In fact, if Goddard does fall for you, I’m quite certain he would have to come to see you incognito, as an ordinary man, without ever admitting to the handicap of his success, wealth, and feme—or to any knowledge of your letter. You might make love to Goddard, listen to his heart—or the story of his life—and never know he’s Goddard.”

  “You mean that after my magic letter is sent off, I have to embrace every ordinary slob who makes a pass at me because he might be Goddard?” said Andrea.

  “You might have to, yes. And when you do, try to figure out if he is the one who read your letter.”

  “But I don’t want to share my body with any ordinary slob.”

  “In that case, you might miss altogether the chance of knowing Goddard. What if the sole reason for his invisibility and secrecy—and his success—is that he enjoys being an ordinary slob?”

  She considered the idea in silence. Then she said, “Where do we send the letter?”

  “Care of Nokturn Records,” said Domostroy.

  “Doesn’t Nokturn get hundreds of letters to Goddard every day?”

  “They probably do. There’s no other place to write him. Nokturn even admits that his fan mail amounts to about a thousand letters every week, and they have a special staff to process it. Out of that mass I’m sure they forward him only a small handful of mail.”

  “What would make them forward my letter?”

  “I don’t know yet. Something about it should make it unusual—and convincing.”

  “Keep in mind, Patrick,” said Andrea, “that the letter might not even reach the invisible boy. What if he has better things to do than read fan mail the week our letter arrives? What if he’s traveling? What if…” Her voice trailed off.

  “What if he reads the letter and doesn’t think much of you?”

  “That too,” she said.

  “Then well send several letters,” said Domostroy. “One after another.”

  Domostroy dreaded death—not illness or pain or the humiliation of disability associated with dying, but death itself: the sudden cessation of the self, the end of being, the final, arbitrary dissolution, as it were, of the entire concrete history of Patrick Domostroy.

  The thought of it came to him often, both in the daytime—during a spell of joy or pleasure—and at night, when nightmares about dying would wake him up to conscious fear of it as he lay alone in the dark.

  All men were subject to death at any time, and, he knew, for most men their past—their lived life—was the only reality death could not take from them. Still, whereas death could terminate the existence of Patrick Domostroy as a physical being, it could not terminate the existence of his music, which, being an abstract entity, would ex
tend into the future. His music was a shadow cast before him, and as long as he was composing, Domostroy regarded himself as existing without a history, as creating the means to outlive himself.

  In his composing days Domostroy thought of his music as a key that could open the door to the future. Since many of his admirers were young, they would outlive him and thus become his standard-bearers and messengers in the years ahead. When his music was widely known and he himself famous, he kept the lock and hinges of that door well oiled. He would answer piles of letters from young men and women enthusiastic in their praise of his talent—all of them sincere, a few actually perceptive. Occasionally, for the sake of vanity, but even more for the sake of securing his future, he even encouraged them and went so far as to make an appointment and talk to one or another of these eager fans.

  He recalled one in particular, a college music student from somewhere in Michigan. She had written to say that his music meant so much to her that it would be the high point of her life if she could discuss it with him. She assured him that she would not be a nuisance and that the most she would ask of him would be to autograph her copies of his sheet music and albums. She would come to New York whenever it was convenient for him to see her, if only he would call her—collect—and say when. Enclosed with the imploring letter was a photograph of the girl looking slim and young and pretty. Domostroy telephoned her and named a weekend when he would be in New York. Sounding like an innocent, she thanked him profusely; she was not familiar with the city, she explained, and so they arranged to meet at her hotel.

  He was seated at a table in the hotel bar when she arrived, and she recognized him immediately. Tall and graceful, with wide blue eyes and an oval face framed by auburn hair, she walked over to his table and introduced herself. She wore her simple clothes well—with a sort of stylish slouch—and yet she was obviously shy. She was so flustered when she went to shake his hand that she dropped the armful of scores and albums she was clutching. As she and Domostroy scrambled to retrieve them, their heads colliding under the table, she admitted that she had been terrified he would find her clumsy and dull; surely, now he must think the worst of her.