Brass / stories / 2005 / George

And it was there with those eyes that George knew he made his mistake. Looking around with all these strangers, he could only grasp his memory by mere threads. How did he get here? Where were his friends? Where was he?

So many people bristled at his presence in that old rusted house, the muffled music made him confused on whether he should be happy or sad. People stopped briefly in the hallway to dispense somewhat honest conversations. Over and over George traced the events of the night, perhaps wanting to grasp a realization or perhaps a faint memory that might lead to an explanation, a story, a song, a muse, a glistening, anything that might explain his current hallway-drenched spite.

The music poured into his skull. George could taste a hint of tobacco from the outside air. His body and shoulders propped up against what must have been century-old wood. He wore purple-tinted sunglasses that hid is pupils. The thought occurred to him that he could have used his large-eyed pupils as cup saucers if he could only slice them out without that hurting part.

How did he get here? Who are these people? Poor, poor George. A certain pit of disdain circled within his belly. George thought that perhaps he had swallowed a small animal in his earlier adventures that night, perhaps a dog, and it was somehow having some fun in his belly. Perhaps it was finding a place to sit down for a while.

Perhaps it was time to rest, to find peace in this throttling, bristling environment. The dog felt it too. It was trying to rest. It was trying to sleep. Anything to be at peace, yet again. To feel that familiar presence of calm, like a kid fully clothed before the next day of school.

Yes, George thought that it was there: the peace was to be found among the assured chaos of the pounding morbid bass, the wicked sweat dripping from the edge of his lined shadowed nose. He knew the music called out to him and wrestled with the peace he so desperately needed friends with.

“If only the music understood me,” George rationed. It occurred to him that he needed to make amends with the music. Some diplomacy was required, he reasoned. A strategy formulated in his mind.

“These beautiful people will help me.” He felt. Yes, these beautiful people. These beautifully high people with their beautifully high praises and beautifully high songs and beautifully high dancing and beautifully high pupils and beautifully high chattering teeth and beautifully high sweaty clefs would all help George score his much-needed diplomacy with the music. The music is within them too, isn’t it? They will know how to knead the music with their fingers and songs. They will understand the precious science and instruments that are necessary to make it understand, without patience and worry, without harshness and stinging undertones. They will help George.

But George couldn’t figure it out. The wall that had faithfully supported him for the last hour threw him forward, into the light of the hallway. It had been as if George had been reborn into life, as if he had been thrown into the great mystery at the end of the tunnel that waits for every mortal. A slight smile ratcheted at the right corner of George’s mouth. He knew that the next adventure had begun. Now if only he knew where he had just come from…