In Summertime Saga

Wednesday between fourth and fifth period I went to the music room instead of the cafeteria.

I'd told myself I was going because the composition project was at four and I wanted to confirm the time. That was a lie. I was going because the bass line from Monday was still in my hands two days later and I wanted to hear what she played when nobody was watching.

The door was open. The hallway was empty this far down. Most people turned for the cafeteria or the courtyard at the stairwell and nobody came past the science wing unless they had Okita's class. I stood in the doorway. She was at the piano.

Different piece today. Lower, bluesier, her left hand doing a slow walking line that sounded like a man going home drunk and taking his time about it. Her right hand barely moving, hitting chords that were spare and heavy and sat in the room like furniture. She was in a red top and black pants today, heels on, hair the same. Her eyes were closed.

She opened them when I stepped into the doorway. Looked at me. Didn't stop playing.

Her chin dipped toward the folding chair from Monday. I sat.

She finished the piece. The last chord hung and decayed and the room went quiet.

"You came back," she said.

"You invited me."

"For four o'clock. It's twelve-thirty."

"I was in the neighborhood."

Her mouth pulled to one side. "The neighborhood being the first-floor corridor of the school you attend."

"It's a small town."

She shook her head. She turned on the bench and looked at me with her hands on her knees and the red top pulling at her collarbones.

"Most students don't come back," she said. "They say Wednesday, sure, sounds great. And then the hallway gets them. Their phone goes off, their friend needs them, there's food in the cafeteria. The hallway is loud and the music room is quiet and quiet loses." She tapped her knee. "You skipped lunch."

"I ate during third period."

"In class?"

"Ross doesn't mind food in the art room. She had a granola bar on her easel."

Dewitt made a sound that was almost a laugh. "Barbara Ross would let students set fire to the art room if they called it performance art." She stood up from the piano bench. Walked to the storage cabinet against the wall. Opened a drawer. "You said you don't play."

"I don't."

She pulled out a pair of drumsticks. Light wood, tapered, the tips slightly worn. She tossed them to me underhand.

I caught them. My right hand closed on one and my left almost missed the other and it bounced off my palm and I grabbed it on the second try. The wood was smooth and lighter than it looked.

"Drum kit's in the corner." She pointed. "Sit."

The drum kit was a basic four-piece. Snare, bass, two toms, a hi-hat, a ride cymbal. The stool was adjustable and too low and I cranked it up. The snare was in front of me, head scratched from years of student sticks hitting it at random.

"Hit the snare," Dewitt said. She was standing next to the kit with her arms crossed. "On the two and four. I'll count."

"The two and four."

"The backbeat. One, TWO, three, FOUR. The emphasis beats. Hit on the two and the four and nothing else." She counted with her hand, palm flat, cutting the air on each number. "One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four."

I hit the snare on two. Hit it on four. The stick bounced off the head with a flat crack that was louder than expected and the cymbal next to me vibrated and the sticks felt wrong in my hands. The grip was off. I knew it was off because in my past life I'd held pool cues and tennis rackets and the occasional baseball bat and your hands know when they're holding something wrong, when the weight is distributed badly, when the impact is going through the wrong part of your palm.

"Two. Three. Four." She kept counting. I kept hitting.

My timing was bad. The beat was in my head, the place where the two and four lived, but my hands were arriving late. A fraction of a second each time. In my past life I'd had decent timing. Bar rhythm. The kind of timing that lets you nod along and clap without thinking about it. This body hadn't learned that yet. The dexterity wasn't there. Somrak's training had taught it to punch and block but not to be precise with a stick in each hand. My right hand was worse than my left. The snare crack came a hair behind the count every time.

Dewitt stopped counting. "Hold on."

She came around the kit. Stood behind me. Her hands came down over mine on the drumsticks.

Her fingers were warm and long and they wrapped around my fists and adjusted the angle of the sticks. She tilted my right wrist inward and loosened my left hand and her thumb pressed into the muscle between my thumb and forefinger and held it there.

"You're choking the sticks," she said. Her voice was close. Behind my right ear. The lotion from Monday was there, that faint sweetness that wasn't perfume. "The stick does the work. Your hand is a fulcrum, not a fist. Loose. Here." She squeezed my right hand open and repositioned the stick between my thumb and forefinger. Her palm was warm against the back of my hand. She did the same with the left, slower, pressing my fingers open one at a time. The sticks sat differently when she was done. Lighter. More of the weight forward in the tips.

"Feel the pocket," she said. "The pocket is where the beat lives when it's relaxed. You're chasing it. Don't chase the beat. Let it come to you. The two is going to happen whether you rush it or not. Wait for it."

She let go of my hands. Stepped back. Her fingers had left warm spots on the backs of my hands.

"Again. One. Two. Three. Four."

I hit the snare.

Better. The stick bounced off the head and came back to my hand and the crack was cleaner and the timing was closer. Still late. But less late.

"Again."

I hit. Two. Four. Two. Four. The room was small and the snare was loud and each crack bounced off the walls and came back and I was counting in my head and my hands were doing what she'd told them to do. Loose grip. Let the stick work. Wait for it.

Dewitt walked back to the piano. Sat down. Put her hands on the keys.

"Keep going," she said. "Two and four. Don't stop."

She started playing.

A blues progression, simple, her left hand walking and her right hand filling in chords. The piano came in over my snare hits and the two sounds were in the same room and they were not in the same song. My snare was a fraction behind her piano and the swing was wrong and the volume was wrong and it sounded like someone had put a drum machine on shuffle in the middle of a jazz club.

I kept hitting.

She kept playing.

And for maybe two minutes we made music together in the worst possible sense of the word. The snare cracked on beats that were close to right and the piano rolled underneath and the sounds collided and didn't quite match and the cymbal rattled and the room was full of it.

My arms were getting tired. The sticks were light but the repetitive motion was new and the muscles in my forearms burned in a different way than the gym. I was holding the sticks wrong again, tightening when I should have been loose, and I made myself relax my grip the way she'd shown me. Fulcrum, not fist. The sound changed when I loosened up. Rounder. Less sharp. Still late but less angry about it.

But there were moments. Half a bar where my two landed right and her chord hit at the same time and the room locked into focus for a second before I lost it again. A few beats where the snare and the bass line found each other and the air tightened and I was inside the music instead of chasing it and then my hand slipped and it was gone. Flashes. Like catching a ball you didn't see thrown.

Dewitt's eyes were on the keys. She was smiling.

The bell rang.

I stopped hitting. The last snare crack faded. The piano stopped. The room was suddenly quiet and my hands were buzzing from the sticks and my palms were pink where the wood had pressed into them.

Dewitt closed the piano lid. Turned on the bench.

"Friday?" she said.

"Friday."

She held out her hand. I gave her the sticks. Her fingers closed over them and brushed mine on the transfer and she looked at me and smiled. The real one. The one from Monday. Guard down, crinkled eyes, the uneven teeth.

"You have terrible rhythm," she said.

"I know."

"But you have good ears. You heard when it locked."

"I heard it."

"Most people don't. They hear the mess and they quit. You heard the pocket." She put the sticks back in the drawer. "Four o'clock Friday. I'll have a proper snare set up. And a metronome."

"You're going to make me practice?"

"Sugar, I'm going to make you hate the number four." She closed the drawer. Straightened a music stand that didn't need straightening. "Now go eat lunch. You look like you skipped a meal because you did."

I went to the door. My palms were still pink. The hallway was loud. Kids moving between classes, phones out, backpacks, a group of freshmen blocking the intersection near the stairwell.

"Mr. Arthur."

I stopped. Looked back. She was at the piano again, lid up, her fingers already on the keys.

"You skipped the cafeteria to come here. On a day I told you to come after school." Her mouth had the pulled-to-one-side look from earlier. "That's either very keen or very foolish."

"Can it be both?"

"Usually is." She started playing. I left.

The hallway swallowed me back up. Fifth period in ten minutes. Bissette's tutoring was at four today too. Same day. Same building. Same "after school." I'd figure out the scheduling. Bissette on the third floor, Dewitt on the first, both expecting me on Wednesday afternoons going forward.

Two women, one afternoon, neither knowing about the other. Debbie at home. Jenny tracking my schedule from her bedroom. The kitchen table with more seats.

I went to class. My palms were still buzzing.