AS SOON AS he saw the interior of Maya Winger’s garage, Ram knew he’d be grateful to finish the day broke. She clearly knew she wasn’t just selling her father’s old junk; she offered something else: the man’s actual thoughts, his genius. That was going to cost Ram.
Climate-controlled and brightly lit, the garage was swept clean of dust, its concrete floor smooth as a Steinway’s surface. In addition to neatly stacked boxes, Ram spotted a leather recliner that likely enfolded Dr. Hank Winger, Ph.D., during the last year of the man’s life. Three archtop guitars, glistening on stands, leaned towards a drum kit and a standup bass as if the instruments waited for a jazz trio to find them. The smells of wood, metal, and polish mixed with the odor of mowed grass from outside.
He moved to the guitars. He counted off a Gibson L5, a D’Angelico New Yorker, and a Benedetto. He couldn’t be around a guitar without his fingers twitching, and the urge to play was stronger than usual, given that his best guitar was in hock at a pawn shop off Eighth Avenue.
“Are these for sale?”
“All my dad’s stuff is for sale,” Maya said, “but what you came for, Mr. Patel, has gotten the most interest by far.”
She looked out past the garage entrance. “How did you get here?”
“I took the commuter bus from the train station.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “In this heat? That bus stop’s more than a mile from here.”
Ram pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. A sour smell prompted him to press his arms against his sides.
“Are you planning to carry them all in that?” She gestured at an oversized roller suitcase he’d left just outside the garage.
“Will they fit?”
“Barely. Did you bring the money?”
“Well, I wanted to talk about the price.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. The price was in the listing.”
He pulled an envelope from his pocket. “I brought cash.”
She took the envelope and counted. It didn’t take long. “Why did you come all this way if you were short?”
“I’ll pay the rest.”
“How?”
“I’ve booked extra gigs, and my streaming channel’s monetized. It’ll just take a few weeks.”
“You don’t have a day job?”
“I’m a full-time musician and content creator.”
“Right. My dad was a full-time musician. Every second of every day, but it didn’t keep him from making a living.”
“I can get it.”
“In a few weeks.” Lines deepened around Maya’s mouth. “You know how many great jazz guitarists have reached out to me?”
“I figure most of them. But they aren’t here now, are they?”
“No. Because they have better things to do than waste my time. Anyway, those folks wouldn’t have come walking.”
“I sold my car.” Then, because this admission probably wasn’t a good negotiation tactic, he added, “I don’t really need one in New York.”
She handed him back the envelope. “I don’t think so. Sorry.”
He wiped his brow again. The handkerchief was sodden now.
“Jesus, you look overheated,” Maya said. “Even if I’m going to send you home empty handed, I ought to get you a bottle of water so you don’t die on my street.”
“Thanks. Look, can I at least see them before I leave? I came all this way.”
She sighed. “For a minute. Then I think you better go.”
“Okay. I promise.”
She adjusted a scarf tied around her hair before walking to a corner and sliding some framed diplomas and watercolors out of the way of plastic crates. She set a crate at his feet. It was full of black binders, like the kind Ram had used to store sheet music when he was at The New School.
She stopped after taking a few steps towards an interior door. “Don’t think about slipping anything in your pockets. My dad numbered every page.”
Since Ram, in fact, had been wondering what he might pilfer under his clothes, he had no right to take offense.
Once she passed through the door to the house, he lifted a binder.
Between colored tabs he encountered the same pattern. First, he found printed sheet music of a jazz standard, protected in a plastic sleeve. Additional sleeves held tablature charts, depicting a guitar fret board, on which Hank Winger had drawn fingerings and scribbled notes for how to improvise each song.
Comments like “mute the A string” and “don’t shift — stretch the four finger” offered answers to questions that had tormented serious jazz box players for years.
The thing was, nobody agreed on how Winger got the sounds he did. Commenters in chatrooms and subreddits argued about his technique. Folks had travelled from around the world to watch him play his weekly gigs at The Flat Seventh, a grimy, sticky-floored jazz club in Baltimore’s Fell’s Point. But after leaving, jazz aficionados, who’d spent hours staring at Winger’s fingers, bickered about what they’d seen and heard. It didn’t help that Winger only played on a few albums, and live recordings of him were rare.
Ram had tried everything that might bring out Winger’s sound. Tuning his strings slightly sharp or flat, playing every combination of inverted chords he knew, fiddling with the reverb on different amps, and sending off for expensive strings from Austria. None of it got him there.
What Ram couldn’t understand was how someone who sounded as special as Winger, who could make a guitar shriek and rasp on one number, and trill and warble with lovely, soft vibrato on another, had limited himself to uncredited session slots and local bar gigs. Some one with ambition, with guts, could’ve taken that tone anywhere. Ram had ambition. He had guts.
That’s how he got to Maya Winger’s door before anyone one else. That’s why he was going to get her to sell to him.
She returned with a bottle of water. Ram took a long guzzle and wiped his mouth on his wrist.
“How come your dad didn’t play somewhere like New York or New Orleans?”
“His life was here.”
“He could’ve done physics anywhere. Didn’t Einstein work at Princeton?”
“Dad didn’t want to play jazz in tourist traps. Besides, living here he avoided guys like you bothering him.”
He placed the binder in her outstretched hand. “If you’ll save them for me, I can pay the rest. Just don’t give them to anyone else. Please.”
“They mean that much to you?”
“Yeah. I mean it. I’ll get the money.”
She held up her other hand. “I’ll let you have the binders for what you brought. Dad would want them to go to a gigging musician. Someone young. Someone struggling. And that is obviously you.”
“Thank you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t thank me. I’m taking your money because you’ve got cash, and I’ve got two kids in college and an ex who’s stuck them with tuition payments and a lifetime of therapy. Besides, some of the people who’ve contacted me are creeping me out.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Me too. I got a text while I was in the house that has me thinking about calling the cops. The sooner those binders are gone the better.”
“This means the world to me.”
“That’s the only thing that worries me about selling to you. Think of these binders as a memento. As merch from somebody you looked up to. Nothing more.”
“Why?”
“Because I checked you out before you came down. You’re what my dad used to call a moth.”
“A what?”
“Moth. Somebody chasing the spotlight at the expense of the music.”
“That’s not me.”
“Sure it is. All those videos you post about ranking the top fifty guitar solos, and offering to make kids into the next Clapton. If you think my dad’s secrets will give you a leg up in the music biz, you’re going to be disappointed.”
“How could they not help?”
“Nobody but my dad really understood his playing, but it had more to do with the mind than the fingers.”
Ram felt his mouth widen into a grin. He was leaving with the binders. And despite what Maya might think, he knew something about what she was getting at. “You mean the way he brought physics into his music? I saw a video about that.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t the first. I mean, Pythagoras figured out that scales come from math, right?”
“My dad was a little more advanced than that.”
“Oh yeah. Of course. But I mean, Coltrane put asymmetric phrasing in ‘Giant Steps.’ And before him, Slonimsky used permutations to make his scale patterns. That was like using math formulas.”
“You’ve played through Slonimsky?”
He nodded.
She shrugged. “Well, you’re more serious than I thought. Still, my dad took it further than anyone. To him, physics, jazz, the universe — it was all connected.”
“I get it.”
“I doubt it, but maybe the notebooks will make some sense to you after all.”
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”
“We’ll see. I have a feeling we’ll talk again.”
#
It didn’t take long for Ram to realize Maya was right. The binders were less helpful than he’d expected.
Every day, he sat on a wobbly stool in his grimy little apartment, plugged his practice guitar into his mini-amp, and worked through Winger’s fingerings. Every day, he put the guitar back on its stand in time to get ready for his nightly gig. And the next day, he picked the guitar up again and realized he’d made no progress, that everything from the day before was gone.
The problem wasn’t technical. Sure, Winger used some chords that stretched five frets, and the tempo of his runs in “I Got Rhythm” qualified as speed metal. But Ram had loosened the ligaments in his left hand enough to form any chord. He’d practiced tempos faster than metronome markings even indicated. Something else was in the way.
Either he was delusional, or Hank Winger was messing with him from the grave.
Ram asked the best guitarist he knew for help.
He gestured Bill Snow towards his rumpled couch, and pretended not to notice the older man had added a fifth earing to his right ear. If Snow still wore a ponytail and piercings into his 60s, he wasn’t going to stop because a nerdy kid who played jazz in tucked-in dress shirts told him he looked undignified.
“How was the trip to Nashville?” Ram asked.
“Miserable as predicted. Every time I got into a solo, the producer cut me off and told me they didn’t have time for ‘real’ playing. They even made me wear a bolo tie for a promo picture.”
“Then why’d you go?”
“Because Sonny Boy Junior’s a good friend, and before he wrote redneck ballads for soccer moms, I promised I’d play on all his records.”
“At least it was a paying gig.”
Snow shrugged. “Speaking of which, I got a line for you. I’m supposed to find a session player for a jingle recording.”
“Are you for real?”
“If you’re willing to whore yourself for a few hours, it should open some doors.”
“What’s the product?”
“Does it matter?”
“I mean it might.”
Snow looked at the ceiling and exhaled. “The number’s called ‘Here’s the Story, of our Suppository.’ It’s a blues riff on the Brady Bunch Theme. So you already know the melody.”
“No.”
“What do you mean no?”
“I can’t do that.”
“Fine. Don’t get on record. Don’t make money doing what you love.”
“I mean thank you.”
“That’s what I thought. Now what’s bothering you so much?”
Ram pointed at a binder on his music stand. “Remember that riff I showed you before you left?”
“Yeah. You made me repeat it a hundred times.”
“What do you remember?”
“A basic two-five-one progression. I don’t get what you found so interesting about it.”
“You’ll see in a second. What do you remember about how Winger said to play the melody over the chords?”
“I quote, ‘make sure the A common tone rings through the chord change.’”
“Anything else?”
“I think Winger put a little note in there about how gently he wanted the finger coming off the E string.”
Ram nodded. “Okay. Look at the binder and tell me whether I’m crazy.”
Snow followed Ram and leaned over his music stand. At first, Snow didn’t react. Next came a small, quiet cough. Then he turned pages back and forth.
Ram pointed. “See. Now it tells you to do a pull-off. It’s percussive. Not gentle.”
“I can read a chart.”
Ram took a step backwards to give Snow room to think.
“It’s not the same page,” Snow finally said.
“It is. Remember how I had you mark the page in pencil with your initials. This has been happening with every song in those books. I learn to play a number like Winger said, and the next time I come to it, his notes say something different.”
“Not possible.”
“Yeah, but there it is.”
“Are you messing with me?”
“I don’t joke about my playing.”
Snow returned to the couch. “Gimme a minute.”
“Take your time. But I’m telling you: there are thirty-two different songs in these binders, and he broke each one down exactly once. And every single one of those songs has changed on me.”
“There’s something we’re missing,” Snow said.
“I’ve been thinking about this for days. There’s no explanation.”
Snow rubbed his chin, stared into space for a minute, sighed, and stared ahead for another.
“Okay. I see.”
“What?”
“You copied my initials. Winger’s handwriting too, I guess.”
“Why would I do that?”
Snow waved a hand. “Oh, that’s easy. You paid everything you had for those books, and you let me go through them. But now you’ve got second thoughts. You want to keep everything in them for yourself. Maybe sell Winger’s ideas in those videos you make.”
“You think I made this all up?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Hey, man, there was a guy in my conservatory who used to say the same thing about slipping razor blades between the keys of practice pianos.”
“You know me better than that.”
“This industry makes you do crazy shit. Hell, I once stopped a solo mid-stream just so the audience would hear how out of time the rhythm player was. You’ll outgrow this kind of thing.”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“Of course it is. My offer for the jingle slot stands, but you gotta come clean.”
“I have.”
“Ram, if you really believe what you’re saying, you need help.”
“I’m not crazy.”
Snow stood. “Okay. But then I need to leave you with a warning.”
“What?”
“The only way forward in this business is trust. If you lose mine, you’ll be lucky to play the kind of dive bars Winger settled for.”
#
Ram sat on his practice stool and ran through a blues scale melody for the 50th time. He was playing it slowly, his metronome clicking at 60 beats per minute. Even at this pace, he muffed notes. He was rattled, and his playing was worsening daily as a result.
He’d noticed a trend in how the changes in Winger’s instructions worked: they pushed him further. Every revision forced Ram to splay his fingers wider, demanded that he either slip more notes into measures, or else left him holding single notes longer, exposing flaws in his tone like a cracked bell.
Last night, he’d called in sick for a gig rather than embarrass himself on stage. He hadn’t missed a show in more than a year, so he had some goodwill there, but that wouldn’t last long, especially if Snow sabotaged him.
The front door chime pinged his phone. He answered.
“Mr. Ramesh Patel?”
“Yes sir.” The voice on the line was the kind you said “sir” to.
“I’m Agent Bryant. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions related to Hank Winger.”
“What kind of questions?”
“You recently bought some of his effects. The U.S. government has reason to believe Dr. Winger might have taken sensitive work home from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.”
“I didn’t buy anything like that.”
“If we can just verify that, we’ll be out of your hair. Can we come up? Or do we need to get a warrant?”
Ram looked around as if inspiration for how to respond was somewhere in his kitchenette. But nothing about dried-up Ramen noodles in a pot or capsized dishes in his sink suggested a way out.
He hit his phone’s pound key to unlock the building’s entrance.
Almost immediately, there was a knock, suggesting the call had come from his hallway and not out on the street. Ram opened his door to a tall man with a neat afro and a woman who barely cleared the man’s elbow. But something about the way she held her shoulders straight and the narrowness of her gaze suggested that, between the two, she was the one Ram didn’t want to piss off.
The pair shook his hand and introduced themselves. The woman called herself Agent Ritter. They studied his apartment, moving through the kitchen and into his living area.
“What can I help you with?”
Bryant stared at Ram’s blonde Godin 5th Avenue, rescued from hock and hanging in its place on the wall. “I want a pretty guitar like that one. I have an old Fender. It plays fine, but it’s got more scrapes and dents than I do.” Ram noticed a long scar running down Bryant’s cheek and a cauliflower ear.
“What did you buy from Winger’s daughter?” Ritter asked.
“Just music stuff.”
“Can we see this music stuff?”
“If I can see some ID.”
“Good man,” Ritter said. The two of them handed over credentials.
“What’s the Critical Research Recovery Task Force?”
“New agency,” Bryant said. “We don’t have a web page, so don’t bother looking. Now please, show us whatever Winger’s daughter sold you.”
Ram gestured toward binders stacked beside his couch.
“Please be careful. They’re valuable.”
“We know how valuable they are to you,” Ritter said. “We know you emptied your bank account and sold a thirty-year-old Honda Civic, and still didn’t have enough to cover the price. What we can’t figure out is why Maya Winger let you have them for so much less than others would’ve paid.”
“You could ask her.”
“I’m asking you.”
“I think it’s because I’m a musician.”
Bryant shrugged. “Lot of musicians out there.”
“Maybe there’s something else in play here besides music,” Ritter said.
“Something like what?”
The pair of officers, if that’s what they were, shared a look.
“There wasn’t anything else.”
“You have any interest in Doctor Winger’s work?” she asked.
“No. Why? Did somebody get hold of something dangerous from his lab?”
“We’re not at liberty to say.” Ritter crossed her arms against her chest.
“Ok, but whatever Winger did for a living’s got nothing to do with me. I’m just a struggling musician.” He remembered Maya Winger calling him that.
“Actually, you’re a failing musician,” Ritter said. “You missed your show last night. Plus, your student loans are in forbearance.”
“Why go somewhere you couldn’t afford?” Bryant asked. “I never get why people do that.”
“I thought my parents would pay off my New School tuition once I started to make it in music. But they won’t do it unless I go back to school for engineering.”
“Sounds like a fair deal,” Bryant said.
“I’m a musician.”
Bryant grinned at Ritter. “I told you I had this guy made. He’s a straight up blue flamer. Ambitious.” He shifted his gaze back to Ram. “You’re going to show everybody, right? All the way back to that middle school teacher who cut you from jazz band because you didn’t look the part.”
“How could you know--” Ram stopped himself. Answering questions about his life now felt like a bad idea. “I don’t think I can help you.”
“Then just stand right there,” Ritter said. She and Bryant rifled through the binders.
After a few minutes, Ritter looked at Ram. “The thing about music notation is that it’s like a code, right? Little dots and dashes, and out of it you get ‘Ode to Joy.’ Or maybe something else? Something more interesting.”
Ram considered telling them what he’d observed with the binders. But how could he explain it? Wouldn’t they think he was crazy, or lying? Would they detain him?
“Those aren’t codes. They’re just notes on how to play.”
“But if Winger did hide codes in here, you wouldn’t know, would you? I thought you said you don’t know anything about his work.”
“I don’t.”
She turned to Bryant. “You think these are it?”
He shook his head. “Nah. Unless our friends at Defense are onto something, these are just doodlings Winger made when he wasn’t blowing reality apart in his head.”
“And if the DOD nerds are right?”
Bryant didn’t respond out loud. He lifted one hand and spread his fingers apart, simulating a puff of smoke.
“We should report back,” she said.
Ritter stopped at the door. “There are plenty of others who’d like to get a look at what you have, just because of who it came from. Those other folks aren’t as polite as we are.”
“Tell anyone who asks that you tossed them out,” Bryant said. He closed a binder as gently as if it were a hymnal and handed it to Ram. A business card displaying a single phone number lay tucked under his thumb. “My cell’s on there, in case you want to talk later.”
“Best of luck to you, Mr. Patel.” Ritter said.
They left the door open on their way out, as if to remind him how easily they’d come and gone.
#
Maya Winger met Ram at her front entrance. She didn’t speak for a few seconds. “Are you okay?” she finally asked.
“I could use something to drink. It’s been a long trip. Again.” A cool river of sweat ran down the back of his neck. Like the last time he’d come, the walk from the bus stop hadn’t offered shade.
She ushered him into a sparse living room and handed him a glass of water. A lime wedge circled in it.
The room lacked an overhead fixture, and the only light came from a few lamps and a large picture window offering a view of a neighboring home under a late afternoon sky.
“Would you like something stronger to drink?” He followed her gaze to his shaking hand.
He shook his head. “I could use some aspirin, though.”
She nodded, stepped out of the room and returned with two white tablets.
After she settled into a chair opposite his, she told him, “If you’ve come to ask for your money back, I’m afraid the binders are non-refundable.”
He held the cold glass of water to his aching forehead after washing down the pills. “I figured. Why didn’t you tell me about them?”
“Tell you what?”
By the time he got here, Ram had considered what he would say to her for four hours. He still didn’t know how to go about it, so he changed the subject. “I saw the ‘for sale’ sign out front.”
“We just listed two days ago. We’ll see what the open house brings.” She looked around the room. “Pretty much every trace of my dad is gone from here now.”
“You sold the guitars?”
“His guitars. Albums. Lots of musicians were interested in old photos.”
“What about work-related stuff?”
“What about it?”
“Have you found anything like that?”
“The government came and seized some papers from the basement. Not sure why they took what they did.”
“They came to see me.”
“Did they let you keep Dad’s notes?”
“Yeah, but I’m thinking that’s what they’re really looking for and they just don’t know it. Or don’t want to admit it.”
She leaned forward. “How’s it been? Playing my father’s music.”
“Weird.”
“Just weird?”
“Uncanny.”
“I like that word.” She nodded and smiled, as if recalling a memory.
“Your father’s markings won’t stay settled on the page.”
“What? They float in the air?”
“No. They change. From one day to the next.” He described his experiences.
“You’ll get used to it,” she said when he finished.
“I’ll get used to not being able to believe my own eyes?”
“Used to a reality that shifts.”
“Does your reality shift?”
“Everyone’s does.”
“Not mine. At least not until you gave me those books.”
“Oh, Ram. You’re wrong. Everything is always in flux.” She pivoted in her chair and pointed. “Will you do me a favor? Go look out that window.”
He sighed, but did as she asked.
“Okay, can you see outside?”
“Of course.”
“But can you also see your reflection?”
He shifted his focus, and his own image, transparent and spectral, appeared.
“Yeah.”
“That’s because some of the light particles tunnel through the window, and some bounce back to your eyes.”
“Okay.”
“But you couldn’t know in advance which would be which. And if you tried an experiment to figure it out, you’d just change the answer.”
He turned and leaned a shoulder against the window. “Yeah, we talked about that in high school physics. And I know about the guy with the cat that isn’t actually dead or alive until you look inside a box it’s in to find out. What does any of that stuff have to do with the binders?”
“Because those concepts aren’t mind tricks. They’re not riddles. Deep down, that’s how reality works. How music works.”
“You mean, when I pick up my guitar, I could play any notes, but I end up picking certain ones?”
“That’s part of it.”
“Fine. But that doesn’t explain why your father’s notes are rewriting themselves.”
“They are not rewriting themselves.” Ram sensed an eagerness, maybe a loneliness, coming from her. If he let her continue, would he end up equally isolated?
“They look like it to me.”
“Only because your perspective’s limited.”
“How?”
“By only experiencing time in one direction. Mathematically, there’s no reason why time has to move just one way. It can go back and forth. Or branch out.”
“Mathematically.” The headache surged against his temples. “Please don’t tell me your dad was working on a time machine.”
“Of course he wasn’t. For one thing, there’s no machine. Dad liked to say that the universe already plays jazz. And since the lab wouldn’t fund his experiments on a large scale, he focused his work on his greatest passion.”
“Music.”
She nodded.
“You mean the notebooks go back and forth in time. They come back different?”
“Have you seen those binders go anywhere?”
He thought about different popular science books he’d read. He thought about what music, what everything he experienced, really was. “You mean the information in them changes.”
“That’s probably the best way for human language to explain it.”
He let out a slow breath. “I know something about this. Stephen Hawking lost a bet because he had to admit information can escape black holes.”
“My dad was part of that bet. But he never claimed credit for winning.”
“Here’s the thing. If your dad, or something, changes information outside space and time, how is that not a ghost, or a god?”
Maya shrugged. “Dad didn’t trust words, those words especially. But if they help you feel better, I won’t tell you they’re wrong.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
She shrugged. “If I were you, I’d practice more.”
#
Ram set a binder on his music stand. His amplifier hummed, its hisses and pops echoing off the apartment walls. He licked a finger and opened the binder to a melody that had given him trouble yesterday. The fingerings on the page, as he expected, were brand new to him.
The markings suggested a chord he wouldn’t have expected to work. He knew before playing that it would slot into place and launch him into an inspired solo. Already, he could hear the notes in his mind. Wherever, whatever Hank Winger was these days, the man still knew his stuff.
Ram wasn’t catching breaks anywhere else. The gig he’d missed cost him after all, and the club cancelled his upcoming bookings. Snow hadn’t contacted him about the jingle gig. Subscribers and views on his YouTube channel were way down since some handsome guy, with a Scottish brogue and a custom Jazzmaster, started posting content similar to Ram’s.
Sometime soon, he’d have to talk to his parents about going back to school, or else look for a job and a cheaper place. Today, though, it might be enough to focus on whatever Winger had for him.
He took a breath, and played.
— PAUL R. WELLONS
Paul R. Wellons lives and writes in Maryland. His fiction has appeared in several literary
journals, including The Baltimore Review, The MacGuffin, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Roanoke Review, and others. His stories have received multiple nominations for Pushcart Prizes.