Sam Kates Aspie Sax Player II: Chanson Iconique

Sam Kates Aspie Sax Player II: Chanson Iconique I. Sam Kates suddenly felt alone. He had never felt this before because in order to feel alone you have to already have some sense of separateness from the world--you have to be able to tell where you end and the world begins. Infant Baby Sam, age 38, who was not typically able to tell the difference between the experience of his inner life from the experience of his outer life, suddenly felt alone, disjointed, cut off from his context. This moment glared an unexpected clash of dissonance into his mind as he suddenly (and possibly for the first time) felt alone, and, just as suddenly, felt a subtle but distinctly articulate intimation of who he was. Maybe we should backtrack a little. In a previous story, we learned about how Sam Kates had a miraculous talent for music. We saw him, a pitiful autistic child cut off from the world by Asperger mental blindness and twisted neurosis, reaching out with the only meaningful gift he had--a photographic (audiographic? audiosonic?) memory. He could remember, and parrot back, on the saxophone, anything he heard--anything. Every pitch nuance, every tempo fluctuation, every grace note, every articulation. He could also transpose these memories to any key, gliding over octave displacements with transparent ease, and making the memorized version fit with any small jazz combo he played with. He had made a brief splash on the steps of the jazz temple of fame with his Chicago-based group, the Mellow 4, (later 5, when vocalist Susan Wright joined the group and taught Sam how to make up his own tunes); he made a fair amount of money touring, playing some pretty big metropolitan halls, enough to buy a small house on the north side, and he had sold a lot of records (all this is relative to the basic fact that jazz audiences have always been and will ever be smaller than teen-age rock audiences); but, although his four albums of standards made with Suzy, and a rotating continuum of sidemen, were now often to be found in the music libraries of  jazz connoisseurs in Chicago, New York, and even San Francisco, the fickle public had cooled over time in its enthusiasm for him, just as it cools for most flashes in the pan of music history. He had brought a new voice to the world of swing at a time when swing was still hip (and it was hip for a good long time); he had played with a level of virtuosity and motivic invention not heard since the Bird smacked his way through heaven's gates; but so many jazz innovators had moved so far away from the old forms, the old tunes, that Sam was considered classic before his 20 years were up, and he had, consequently, to accept a lesser place in the pantheon of stars, and a lower income tax bracket as well. He moved back to his old Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night residency at the Moonlight Room on Lakeshore Drive, playing for union scale plus tips, with a new rhythm section (no singer). He might have eked out a little longer career if he had had some creative management, but there was no one willing to handle his business affairs, he was certainly helpless to do so himself, and when Suzy went on to bigger (not better) things in New York, that was pretty much that. Now, all during the years that Sam played the Moonlight Room with the Mellow 4, and even afterwards, when he started making it big, he still remained essentially clueless as to what was physically happening to him; somebody brought him to the gig (until he learned how to get there himself--not too long, a couple of months), he played, he went home. The music was the central substance, the periphery, and the all-encompassing motive for the experience--the audience, the sidemen, and the money might as well have existed on another planet for all the regard Sam gave them. He had no relationship, personal or otherwise with anything but the music. Through Suzy's positive influence he had slowly begun to break out of his introverted shell; he was getting to be able to carry on short, shallow conversations with Suzy and the guys, he could count his own tips, he could order his own egg salad sandwiches, and he was starting to read more of the signs in airport terminals and hotel lobbies; but he still had a long way to go before he could be considered anything even approximately approaching "normal." He took a long time getting to understand that he was making more (a lot more) money, and he had to be shown his picture in scores of newspapers and magazines before he began to get the idea of "reputation." Yes, he liked playing in the big halls because he liked the reverberant sound of the big stages, and he liked playing for attentive audiences, not the casual barroom drinkers on Lakeshore Drive, who only occasionally had ever given him their full attention; but as to the touring, the traveling, the airport, bus, and hotel room service part, he was only able to tolerate it because he knew he was going to get to play soon, and because he was constantly attended (babysat) by Suzy and the guys in the Mellow 4. So, when the touring and recording and radio broadcasting ended, it could be said that he was right back where he started. Right back where he started was fine with Sam, because the music was still his only way of making sense out of the swirling madness of impressions, sounds, sights, and distractions the legion of shopkeepers call the "world." Indeed, the relative quiet of concert performance, as opposed to barroom playing, was its chief attraction: he barely noticed the larger and larger audiences, in terms of the PEOPLE he was playing for, so when he found himself back at the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night gig, he once again learned to filter out the tinkling glass, the laughter, and the smoke, and, once again lost himself (or found himself) in the fantastic astral landscapes that had been his private domain for so long, before the madding crowd had taken him into their brief embrace. He had always played for himself, later for himself and Suzy, but mostly for himself. This brings us back to our opening statement: Sam Kates suddenly felt alone. He was standing on the bandstand, his gaze fixed, as always, on the short stick of the piano. The tune was, you guessed it, Someone to Watch Over Me. He was kind of missing Suzy, in the vague sort of way a dog misses its master after long separation, not really knowing what the feeling is, but sensing an absence, ephemeral in the mind but tangible in the chest; it made him slightly short-winded. But this wasn't the loneliness. Suzy's expert tutelage had brought his creativity along such that he had been able, for longer and longer stretches of time, to create intricate lead lines of his own devising; derivative, to be sure, but what jazz playing isn't? And fast! The guy was a speed demon when he got worked up. And, although he was not always original or inspired, he NEVER played a wrong note. Never. Anyway, Someone to Watch over Me had sort of been Suzy's and his special song, and the missing her had left in him a longing for something that he could not put his finger on, and, suddenly, so suddenly, his fingering faltered and, for a brief moment, he had no idea where he was in the tune. (This, as was just mentioned, was an unheard-of anomaly, and all three sidemen looked up.) But that wasn't the loneliness either: it was that he knew that HE was supposed to come up with something to play, and, out of the blue he flashed on the fact that he had no idea who he was, and had no idea where his notes came from. Suzy had taught him to improvise, instead of quoting ver batim one classic recording after another, but until this moment it had never actually occurred to him that HE was the origin of these notes, not some resonant Akashic record vibrating in the collective Omega Point. He was a babe lost in the woods, and no Virgil, no Charlie, no Coleman was there to point the way. The lapse lasted for a moment only, before he substituted the end of a Lester Young solo he knew, to conclude the phrase. He got back on track, but for the rest of the night that moment of emptiness haunted him, and he slouched out of the hotel distracted and depressed. II. Sam walked home that night. He didn't usually do this; he was a veteran bus-taker, but he knew the route, had hoofed it several times before, and, although he had been fore-warned that if he did this he took a chance on losing his expensive saxophone to any random carload of low-riding punks who happened to drive by, he could not face the confining dull glare of the bus at 1:00 AM. It is no mystery why Chicago is the legitimate birthplace of the blues. There is no loneliness, no emptiness, no archetypal iconicized pain like the groan of human misery that writhes along the streets of downtown Chicago at 1:00 AM. A mild, half-hearted rain had sprinkled little mirrors of light across broken stretches of sidewalk, and the wind, that relentless Lake Michigan wind, rippled over their faces, lending a silent voice to their hysterical groans and guffaws. Sam watched his own downcast face merge periodically with the fantastic images of water and wind, to disappear and reappear in a grotesque rhythm; and, in time to the music, he began to hear the dull internal repetition of a forlorn litany: "Sam. Sam. Sam. Sam." The walk home took hours, but when the concentrated rows of little Jewish lox and bagel shops and carpet stores at last began to thin and give way to the first vestiges of residential neighborhood, he walked on, past his own little 50s house with its 20x30 fenced yard, and slouched deeper into the night: "Sam. Sam. Sam." It was dawn by the time he finally wended his way back, stumbled up the stoop, and collapsed onto the living room floor in a heap. He breathed a final "Sam," into the carpet, and fell asleep. He awoke around noon. Exhaustion creased his face like a tired scar. It was Friday. In eight hours he would have to be back at the Moonlight Room playing standards for rich drunks--again. And suddenly, like the suddenness of the loneliness of the night before, he felt something new, something he had not truly felt since he had laid eyes on his abusive father for the last time, waving him good-bye and good riddance onto the bus to Chicago and Aunt Maxine: real, physical, rooted-deep-in-your-nerves TERROR. He lay frozen on the shag carpet and moaned. How could he ever go back there? How could he face that yawning mystery of Sam ever, ever, ever again? The specter of that short stick on the piano, by turns, threatened and taunted him. He could not imagine himself standing there, he could only imagine himself NOT standing there; and this thought, alone, was his only respite, his only retreat from that binding, panic-stricken fear that held him in its suffocating grip.  Finally, a new sensation seized his gut and he knew he was hungry. It was not a ravenous, desperate hunger, but a kind of dull memory in the back of his head that sort of squeezed its way in between him and the fear, not clamoring, but sort of whining for attention like a spaniel left alone in the house for too long. Sam managed to haul himself up off the floor. He threw a Swanson chicken dinner into the microwave. Waiting, he stripped down and took a bath. As he lay, chin-deep in the warm-lapping comfort, he nursed the hunger, substituting it for the terror whenever it peeked again over the verge of his consciousness. He floated lightly, the water rippling up to his mouth then undulating down his chest. The hunger whispered its name in the gentle laps, and the terror shrank like a diminished chord, dripping onto the floor as he rose to meet eddies of chicken and stuffing. By the time he scraped his way to the bottom of the little pocket of jubilant cherries he was calmed down. The mantric drone of "Sam" had not completely stilled itself in his internal ear, but it was muted to the point that competing pictures were now allowed to form in his mind. For a brief instant, he thought of taking his saxophone (formerly, so formerly, his sole source of comfort and defense against the cruelties of life), out of its case, and realized that the terror, the rushing black, overpowering TERROR dwelt therein. He couldn't even touch it. He actually KICKED it into a corner and threw a blanket over its rectangular protuberance. He then thought about watching TV, but that thought was almost as stifling as the idea of playing music, so he sat on the couch and let other images meander across the proscenium of his inner vision. It was quiet now, and Schumann's Traumerei led him down paths of elves and periwigs to a place of stillness and comfortable fixity. It is difficult to describe the thoughts that go through an aspie's mind, but you can get the idea if you combine algebra with dreaming. The algebraic aspect is subsumed in a characteristically rigid sense of logical sequence; successions of mental pictures progress, step by step, in seamless promenade, from shape to shape, like any other slide show of imminent nostalgia, one picture following another, each linked to the next in perfect symmetry and sympathy. But it is like a dream because the pictures have not only widely varying depths and aspect ratios, but also widely varying weights, densities, and inertias as well; and these variations may appear, to the mind's eye, so extreme, so far beyond the "normal" range of motion, as to imply distortion and irrationality. Of course they are not in the least irrational to the aspie himself-- aspies are nothing if not totally logical-- but the logic occurs in a cognitive environment of heightened limits, atmospheres of exaggerated dimensions. This is what generates in the aspie an emotional life of super-normal intensity. The verbal content is lacking because aspies attach names to things only in the most eccentric and seemingly random ways, but an objective observer (preferably a poet) COULD assign symbolic referential values to them--the pictures. Like dreams, the pictures DO correlate with objective realities, but the inner resonance of the images cannot be contained by literal constraints. You might say that an aspie's cognitive experience oscillates between the mundane and the mythological, constantly, rhythmically, transposing values, transferring the one dimension over to the other and back again; his thoughts might be perceived as delicate Japanese bridges spanning the gap between the physical world and astral gardens. This is not to say that the astral gardens are ALWAYS peopled by sweet Tinker Bells and bonsai trees--sometimes flaming dragons and ravening trolls lurk under the bridges. Thus, an aspie's inner world is consistently more vivid than the one typically available to the circular-thinking "normal" person; it can be exponentially more ecstatic, but it can also be more terrifyingly dangerous. Sam had chosen, early in life, to repress his experience of the dark shores on the far side of these mental canyons (it was the only way he could deal with his father and a whole buttload of other bewildering exigencies he didn't understand), but, it would seem, today, last night, rather, that his expanding world view, catalyzed by Miss Susan Wright, had snaked across the moat to bite him in the ass in a big way. It had taken seven years, but Sam's foray into the world of personal creativity, had finally conjured up, before his mind's eye, a picture of himself; and he didn't recognize it worth shit. III. The Art Institute. The words shaped themselves on his lips with a eureka of inspiration. You may recall that, long ago, Sam's home away from home had become the Chicago Art Institute; he had spent so much time there the security guards let him carry his saxophone inside, and never hassled him no matter how long he stood transfixed in front of this painting or that. They all knew him by name, and had followed his career with interest--many articles about "The Musical Savant of the Moonlight Room" had decorated the pages of the Chicago Sun Times over the years--two or three of the guards even owned some of his albums. The Art Institute had provided Sam with a safe avenue of retreat on more than one occasion, and it was to that lion-studded haven that he fled today. He threw off the blanket and hesitantly grabbed the handle of his saxophone case, heading for the bus stop in a single bound. On the bus, across from him, a six-year-old boy was riding with his mother, or possibly a middle-aged aunt. The boy had those big eyes, full of the city, that spoke wonderingly of the newness of life that is the exclusive province of six-year-olds. He dangled his short legs over the edge of the seat into the aisle and pointed with his finger to the back of the bus. "Why are the seats all lined up like this?" he asked his matronly companion, as if this were a mystery, of cosmic import. Those big eyes. "What? What you say?" (Maybe a little German accent, maybe Russian.) "The seats. Why are the seats -- like that?" His finger is as full of question marks as his eyes. "Shtupid kyid," she explained. (Definitely Russian.) "They're thet way because thet's the way they yar." "Oh." Simple minds appreciate simple truths. His inquiring glance strayed to Sam's face. Sam didn't know to look away. (There's a myth that aspies don't look you in the eye. The fact is that they are just as likely to inappropriately look you in the eye as they are to inappropriately not look you in the eye.) Sam didn't look away, thereby inviting the following awkward exchange: "Hey mister. Hey mister, what's in the box?" Still stuck in those big eyes, Sam clutched his horn to his breast like a baby. "Sassapone." Gravelly voice unclear, guttural,  unaccustomed speech comes slow. "Saxophone. My saxophone." "Like a trumpet?" Interest ignited, the boy leans forward. "No, a saxophone. Has a reed." "What's a reed?" "Little piece of wood." In two deft motions he flips up the snaps and pops open the case. "See?" He holds out the mouthpiece indicating the thin reed ligatured to its black plastic cone. The saxophone glitters in the boy's eyes like yellow diamonds. "Wow! You play it?" "Yeah. Sam plays it. Sam." He playfully gives a little honk on the thing, discrete but audible. Ruptured with hilarity the boy squeals, "Sounds like a duck. Ha, ha, ha!" Sam laughs back, "A duck reed! Ha, ha, ha." Instantly, Aunt Koschlova, turns, and, with a ferocious scowl, hisses, "Shtop talking to thet--myan!" With an unaccounted-for violence she jerks the boy to his feet and drags him down the aisle to a seat further back. "Pyervyert!" She hisses again from a foot above Sam's head. This is why Sam doesn't talk much. IV. Sam got off the bus across the street from the Art Institute and raced up the stone steps, two at a time. With a nod of recognition to the lion on his right, he breezed through the spinning door. Not running, but walking very fast, he made his way up the stairs to his favorite section, the abstract expressionists. Sweating and breathing heavily, he stood before the Jackson Pollock--the Pollock dominating its own solitary outer wall, gateway to the moderns. He put down his case and allowed himself to be absorbed by the tiny black squiggles crusted onto the lap of virgin white. It was minutes before he was able to breathe normally. He didn't know how long he had been standing there when a voice from behind roused him from his meditations. "Hi Sam." It was Sharon, one of the waitresses at the Moonlight Room. She dispelled the fog surrounding Sam's outer perception with a wave, and glided into his field of vision like a unicorn on a merry-go-round, stopping in front of him. She stepped off a nameless streetcar coming to the end of the line, and illuminated the spot with a veiled smile, brilliant behind its mask. She walked through a curtain of enchanted evening and crowded out the Jackson Pollock with a gentle nudge and a giggle. Oh, how that giggle reverberated cooly along the hardwood floors, somehow ivory white, the color of chessmen, somehow liquid like the streets of Venice! Short, blonde, young but not too young, she had been working nights at the hotel for about as long as Sam had been there since his return to Chicago. As you know, aspies have trouble recognizing faces, but Sharon's was familiar to him because it was not like other faces; it had a longish shape to it, deep, twisted dimples at the corners of the small nervous mouth, and there was the faintest hint of a scar right at the hairline above her left eye—her brilliantly blue left eye. It was the scar (and the eyes) that told him who she was. That he knew who she was, was not alone remarkable. That she kept his attention was. Perhaps it was his momentary vulnerability that opened him to her, perhaps it was the feeling of missing Suzy that welcomed this thinly approximate substitution. The point is that, ordinarily, Sam would have bolted whenever a familiar person approached him in public--a March Hare with an important date SOMEWHERE ELSE would have disappeared down a dark hole with no less haste than Sam would have retreated into distant anonymity at the sound of his name. Sam didn't do that. He stood and waited. She approached and he waited. Perhaps he was a deer frozen in Sharon's headlights--we'll never know. One of Sharon's jobs at the Moonlight Room was to watch over the several brandy glass tip cups distributed around the bar; sometimes people were careless and let the dollars spill out onto the floor, sometimes the nouveau drunk would knock one completely over, and Sharon would have to stuff all the bills back in, meanwhile resisting the temptation to slip a buck or two into her own pocket. This she did admirably well. Understand, the musicians depended on the tip cup for that extra under-the-table income that made the difference; the tip cup alone was capable, on a good night, of handling cab fare for a month, even rent; so, when Sharon came around at closing with the night's take, she was always a welcome sight. Sam had progressed so far in his dealings with money as to recognize when they had had a good night and when the clientele was being cheap. It still didn't mean that much to him, but it made him feel good when the guys felt good, so he always felt good about Sharon as the bringer and giver of goodness. "Hi Sam," she said again, and waited. Everybody at the Moonlight Room, (indeed, practically everybody in Chicago), knew that Sam was autistic, and they had been instructed to be especially gentle with him. She waited. "Sam," he said. "It's Sharon," she said. "Sharon," he repeated. "Sharon. I know. The glass girl." [Yes, don't ask why the brandy glass is called a tip cup. Especially don't ask Sam.] "That's right. Sharon. Watcha doin' here?" "Pictures. Sam--I like the pictures." "Me too. You come here often?" "Sam--I come here--a lot. I look at this picture a lot." "This is my very first time." "I come here a lot. I look at this picture a lot." "This one?" She looks down at the far right corner--the placard with the title and painter on it. She looks down at the book she is holding open in her hands. "Jackson Pollock? Greyed Rainbow. I don't know--looks like a bunch of scribbles to me. You like it, huh?" Here, we need a sidebar on Sharon, Sharon the heroine: She's not much to look at. She might be somewhat pretty if you fixed her up--put on makeup, swooped the tangle of bright hair into some pretense of obedience, evened out the shoulders of her blouse, you know, the normal maintenance stuff that most women live for, some women die for, and some women (damn their negligent mothers) never happen to notice. She is almost 30, give or take, but you could mistake her for 40 if you caught her thinking about the past, and for 20 if you momentarily caught in her eye the effervescent exuberance of any of a dozen enthusiasms she hoarded in her bosom against the cold of winter. We have to talk about the scar. She married for love, too young, and, after five years, her incipient, sarcastic asshole of a husband blossomed into a full-fledged, abusive asshole. We don't need a detailed profile of him, the sacrifices she made for him, nor the disappointments that soured him on life; he wasn’t a bad guy at heart, but, over those five years, the pent-up anger of failure after failure began to back up on him, and found its only viable expression in more and more frequent acts of pointless violence; he wasn't that much of drinker either, which is kind of too bad, because if he had had a little more experience with the effects of alcohol, he might have been able to pull his punches the night he put her in the hospital for a week. As you might have guessed, the first fruits of that night’s labor were a suspended sentence, a quick divorce, and, of course, the scar. Starting over at age 25 was hard for Sharon, entering college, part-time, as a freshman when most of the students her age already had masters' degrees. But she had never felt the world owed her a living—she understood the ramifications of her humble origins in low-brow, white trash squalor, accepted the difficulties inherent in any attempt to rise above them, and was proud of her distinction not only as the only member of her extended family who had ever attempted an advanced degree, but as one of a select two or three who had even graduated high school. She wasn't quite sure what she wanted out of life, but she knew there was something more than the trailer park in Kankakee, grimy kids, and blue collar Friday night beer and sex. In short, Sharon was intelligent but ignorant. Ignorant but growing. She had lived on the south side her whole life, in one of the biggest and most cultured cities in the world, and had, so far, never attended a Chicago Symphony concert, never seen a Shakespeare play, never visited the Museum of Science and Industry, and had NEVER set foot inside the Art Institute until today. She was taking an art appreciation class as a 100 level Humanities elective, and she wanted to see firsthand some of the pictures discussed in the book. She was also taking Introduction to Computer Applications 101, but we'll get to that. When she saw Sam standing there, she was instantly drawn to him, not as a compadre or a prop, but merely as anyone, in strange forbidding surroundings, is drawn to anything or anybody familiar. Actually, in her excitement at running into someone she knew, somebody who might help her understand what she was seeing, she momentarily forgot he was autistic, or she might not have gone up to him. It was more or less a reflex, she realized almost instantly, but having committed herself to the interaction, she couldn’t back off. Sharon wasn't a snob; coming from a large family of dumb people, she did not hold it against Sam that he was kind of dumb. She thought—well, she didn't think, she just reached out to him. Thus doth fate ring in the new with startled song. Who knew? "This one? Jackson Pollock? I don't know--looks like a bunch of scribbles to me. You like it, huh?" "I look at it a lot. Long time." "You come here often?" "Many times." "You know the museum pretty well, then, huh? I'm taking a class--want to see some of the pictures in my art appreciation book. Can you show me around?" Sam froze. Four years ago he might have broken down into a blubbering mess, at this suggestion; but today he just froze. Of course he could show her around--here's this painting, here's that painting, the green one, the red one, the old lady one. He knew the whole museum, and had every picture was labeled in his mind in Samspeak. It had never occurred to him to look at the titles on the little placards to see what everybody else called them—it is not absolutely clear that he understood that the paintings HAD names, nor that they were the work of actual real live painters--people. But he put that together, right quick enough, when she said the name Jackson Pollock, and sort of inclined her head toward the sign. Maybe he thought the name of the painting was Jackson Pollock, maybe not, but the idea of naming things started up a chain of epiphanies that would blossom into a major enlightenment experience in the next few minutes. "I don't get this one. Looks like a bunch of scribbles to me. You like it, huh?" Sam nodded. He was good at nodding. "You say you look at it a lot?" "I look at it many--times. Many time." "But what IS it? What do you see?" All she could see was a crowd of black swirls dancing across the field of white like crazy, sludgy sleet. "It makes music in me." The words just slipped out--he had not known they were coming. It was the first time that Sam had ever had that thought, EXPRESSED that thought, but, on the instant, he flashed on the fact that it was true--he did hear music in the picture; the mode of thought, the world he entered into when he looked at the picture was music. The black swirls careened 16th notes in his mind and arpeggios splashed the virgin white with skittering tunes. Maybe that was why he had stood in front of it for hours, for years. For years, indeed, this picture had been making music in Sam, and he had never noticed. Music and thought were inseparable in Sam's mind, so he had never before stopped to distinguish between the WORDS of thought and the SOUNDS of thought--for him they were, and pretty much always had been, the same. Remember, Sam had only recently committed any of his attention whatsoever to the world of verbal communication, and he was still unpracticed at it; moreover, although he was learning how to communicate with other people in words, his sole language of mental communication with HIMSELF was still music, music, only music. He made no inner monologues to himself like the rest of us. He thought in sounds, repeating motives, harmonic sequences, crescendi and decrescendi--hardly any articulate verbal expressions ever violated that abstract cognitive canvas with an intruding, corporeal, referential entity. Music defined the subjective world that was Sam’s safe haven and his prison, while WORDS evoked the outer objective world, separate from Sam, overwhelming, terrifying, and aweful. Words created a schism in Sam, divided his perceptions into ME and THEM, MINE and THEIRS. The tang of Suzy Wright telling him to “Play Sam’s tune,” was fresh in his mouth, exciting, and new, ever after so many years; but the effort involved in creating original musical constructions was still so weighty that, at times, he could simply not bear it, especially without Suzy to cheer him on. The effort of constructing sentences was even worse. Hence, out of laziness, (willful or conditioned, what’s the difference?) Sam’s verbal inner monologue, when such as rarely made their unwelcome appearance, consisted of 99.9999% quotations of things he has heard other people say—inventing his own anomalous literal expressions was still so difficult he needed intense motivation to urge him into the breach. Therefore, imagine his shocked surprise when he realized that the Pollock not only made music in him, but that the music was not Someone to Watch Over Me, or Lover Man, or Georgia, or Foggy Day. This was an astounding thought--he struggled to hold onto it. "I guess the scribbles kind of look like notes. I guess." (Little did she know that Sam couldn’t read music.) "They SOUND like notes. In here." He tapped his head. "Huh." That was deep. Of course it makes music in him, he plays the saxophone. "Let's go look at the Miro." V. Before they knew it, they were strolling through the museum together. Sharon was chatting idly as women do, about this and that, this landscape, that portrait, her job, her part-time college classes, and occasionally Sam's playing. She was leading him away from the moderns toward the Renaissance (she wanted to get it all in). At first, Sam wasn't doing her much good, but she felt kind of comfortable with him. He said practically nothing, a word here and there, and his blank face hardly registered a thing she was saying; but, as they perambulated arm in arm, (surprise, eh what?), she felt a kind of authority in his presence that gave her confidence. There were subtle little tensions and relaxations that quivered through his arm when they came upon some work with which Sam obviously held a deep sympathetic connection, and Sharon actually learned through his touch where the really great masterpieces were. By God, he WAS showing her around! Sam had heard hints of melody when she dragged him past the Miro and the Picasso, but it was a lot of trouble for him to keep up his side of the conversation in his halting pidgin English and hear his internal thoughts at the same time, so he sort of turned that part of his brain off and concentrated on her--until they came to the dark black Rembrandt. Here, he was overwhelmed by a rolling sea of sound. He had seen this self-portrait before (he had seen them all), but, somehow, being with Sharon had awakened an objective self-consciousness in him--her presence motivated him to translate his experience into her language--and he was suddenly AWARE that he was thinking about the painting, reacting to the painting in sound. He said to himself, "Sam--I am HEARING the painting." He meant that the painting was not inherently Sam, but Sam was making it his. The painting and Sam were NOT ONE, but that he was making it so, creating the link in himself between himself and IT. IT was outside coming in. HE WAS DOING THIS. HE WAS WATCHING HIMSELF DO THIS. HE WAS REMEMBERING WATCHING HIMSELF DO THIS. She continued to quote from her art appreciation book, but her voice was lost to him, fading into the ocean boiling up underneath that lightning-struck face. He actually swayed on his  feet like a sailor in a storm. His entranced mouth moved in time to some inner rhythm, and his eyes shot lasers into the sounding dark. Sharon shut up and watched. She said nothing. Good girl. Sam wasn't just reacting to the painting, he was reacting to his reacting to the painting, and this was the new thing, and this made all the difference. We have noted that Sam had a perfect memory for sequences of sounds, but it had never before occurred to him to remember his own thoughts. It occurred to him now, and a perfect four-minute composition churned out of him into his mind, start to finish, and was photographed there in the same medium that all the hundreds of jazz performances he had memorized were photographed. After four minutes, he snapped out of it like a medium at a seance, and Sharon said, "Where did you go?" She didn't say, "Are you okay?" or "What happened to you?" or "That was weird," she said, "Where did you go?" "Where did you go?" "In the painting. Sam was--I was in the painting. The painting was --the painting was-- singing me." "You looked lost. Were you lost?" "At first. In the dark. Then the face. Then I was okay. The face sang and I was okay." "Wow." She felt somehow honored. She felt somehow close to him like somebody feels close to a great idea, or--a great piece of music. But his music had a face, a smile that she had not seen before, and an arm, which she took without further ado. "Let's go find Whistler." "The old lady. I know where." And thus began a beautiful friendship. VI. Sam almost had a good night at the Moonlight Room. The epiphany in front of the Rembrandt was like a purge, a paroxysm, an ejaculation. Afterwards, the peaceful tour of the Art Institute, with Sharon on his arm, (or him on her arm, they couldn't tell), was like a long cigarette break. He floated, balloon-like, down the corridors, dragging Sharon like ballast. He beamed contentment, moseyed peace. It was like Seurat's Sunday Afternoon in the Park, which they enjoyed together on the way to the Whistler. Sam shut off his music-making mind again, occasionally supplying occasional monosyllabic responses to Sharon’s remarks, and they walked together, uneventfully, until closing. They had a quick pizza across the street, then leisurely strolled through the trees in Grant Park, arms still linked in a comfortable fixity, on their way to the Hyatt. They both had to work. Sam felt tired after the exertions of the night before, and the afternoon at the museum. He was drained, blank, expired. He didn't feel strong enough to make anything up, so he spent most of the night recycling old Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker solos. He could do this whenever he wanted; indeed, on many occasions he would go back and forth between personal solos and plagiarized solos, weaving them together like strings of lacy paper dolls; he did this so seamlessly that only the most erudite of jazz aficionados could tell. He played at his usual consistent, competent, sometimes technically brilliant level for three sets. While he was playing, his eyes remained fixed on the short stick, but during breaks they (his eyes) sought out Sharon; he watched her clear tables, take orders, ring up customers, and attend the tip cup. He watched her with interest, as though he had never seen a young woman at work before (maybe he hadn't). He felt there was something important, some mystery, lurking there behind the cash register; and it was with difficulty that he returned to his job cranking out standards for the folks' listening (or non-listening, or sort-of-listening) pleasure. She made eye contact with him, too, confirming the relationship that had been established that afternoon. She smiled at him through the chatter and smoke. She realized she liked him, and, listening, really for the first time, she realized he was a really great saxophonist--she was proud of him. Then the fourth set came. Somebody in the crowd shouted out a request for Someone to Watch Over Me, and Fred the piano player started up on an intro. Reliving last night’s primal scene in a flash, Sam stiffened; the six-note opening motive was like six knives in his heart. With a look of hysterical terror in his eyes, Sam shook off the song like a baseball pitcher shaking off a pitch, and plowed into Paper Moon. But even that didn't dispel the panic that suffused his whole body. He got halfway through the head before falling to his knees, perspiring and wheezing. The people in the front row gave out a unison gasp. The people in the back hardly noticed anything was happening, but Sharon was right there with a tray full of empty glasses, which she promptly dropped back onto the table. She leapt up onto the bandstand and knelt beside Sam. His lungs were heaving, there were tears on his cheeks, and he was doing that rocking back and forth thing that autistic kids and Hassidic Jews do. His mouth was contorted in a grimace of pain, and he looked at Sharon, or through her, rather. "Sam," he moaned. "Sam," he cried. "Sam!" he screamed, and then they were carrying him out through the kitchen. VII. Sam woke up at 8:00 in the morning, on his couch at home. After they got a doctor, (“Seizure,” he said), they had called Aunt Maxine, who insisted it would be worse for him to wake up in a strange hospital room than in familiar surroundings, so they ferried him over to his house on Sullivan Place, left him with a bottle of sedatives, and that's where he came to, with Aunt Maxine and Sharon by his side. Sharon didn't quite know what she was doing there; one afternoon strolling the Art Institute with Sam hardly made him her close friend, much less her responsibility (or did it?), but since she had been the first to come to his aid, the one to take charge, and the one to insist on seeing him home, there she still was, waiting with 80-year-old Aunt Maxine. Aunt Maxine had been Sam’s surrogate mother for nearly eighteen years. He had lived with her when he first came to Chicago, she had set him up in his first gig, his first hotel room, had managed all his money matters, and had made him more egg salad sandwiches than Ronald had Big Macs. She loved him as only blood can love blood, and she worried that after she was gone, he would be helpless. She hated that schmuck of a brother-in-law for dumping Sam on her, but she accepted the responsibility with impunity, indeed with joy, for her own children were grown, and gone, and Sam’s childish ways were like to her a new-born babe she could hold to her shriveled breast, protecting and nurturing; through him, she might revisit the youthful days of motherhood. Make no mistake, there were no flies on Aunt Maxine; she was not one of these pathetic old people—lonely, feeble, clinging, with nothing to do but live vicariously through their children. True, she missed her dead husband once in a while, in the lonesome midnight hours, but, oh no, she had plenty to do, what with volunteering at the homeless shelter, her bridge club, Great Books meetings once a month, recycling center twice a month, even Senior Bowling; she had many friends and many activities that filled her days, and she would not go gentle into that dusty concavity of senility; she refused to limit her activities, she renewed her driver’s license every five years, and WOULD NOT HAVE A CAT. In fact, Sam was the only project she maintained that smacked of anything like old age; and she took care of him aggressively, responsibly, and punctually, just like her commitment at the shelter. And yet she wasn’t blocking reality: she knew she couldn’t keep this up forever, and she worried not about the 40-year-old Sam, but the 50-year-old Sam. “Auntie,” said Sam, raising his head. “Sharon,” he said, falling back. Sam Kates Aspie Sax Player II: Chanson Iconique VIII. After the initial slow rouse, Sam acted very nervous. They got him up and walked him around the living room, circling the couch; Sharon and Auntie supported his arms on either side, Sam was in the middle, stumbling, sagging, and lurching like Ray Bolger’s Scarecrow. The doctor had not told them to do this, it was just that Sam wanted to get up, and it was necessary to control his movements or he would have wound up spinning out the door. Obviously, he woke up agitated; it as if the seven hours since he had passed out were a mere second, and the specter of Someone to Watch Over Me were still snarling at his heels. The faceless Sam, that haunted the nightmare of yestereve, pursued him over the same clammy ground, and his only escape was ring-around-the-rosy with Sharon and Auntie. Otherwise, he might have ended up out on Lake Shore Drive, or worse, the Projects. After about thirty minutes of Yellow Brick Road, they threw him in the bathroom, and closed the door. They heard no singing, but they didn’t hear any moaning either, only running water, so they relaxed and shared a pan of instant coffee. “I wonder what set him off,” said Sharon, tentatively. “Who knows? Could be anything, could be nothin’. Don’t happen very often, but every now and then somethin’ just hits Sam between the ears, and he goes off. At least he’s getting’ so’s he can talk about it now—he’s doin’ good, learnin’ ta talk—but usedta, he’d get to moanin’ and rockin’ and he’d do that for hours, until he just stopped. Nobody knew why, he just stopped. Usedta he’d pick up his saxophone and he’d be all right. This here’s differnt—it seems like the saxophone’s what brought it on. New one.” She called to him. “Sam. Sammy boy. You okay in there?” “Sam,” he called back. “Yeah, he’s gettin’ better at talkin’ ta folks, but he seems ta go up’n down, back’n forth with that skill, too. You hear him say, ‘Sam’? He’s been getting’ better at sayin’ “I,” lately, but he’s too upset right now.” “Yesterday, we had a very pleasant afternoon together,” Sharon interjected. “He spoke in complete sentences about half the time.” “You spent an afternoon with Sam?” Glory be the wonderment! “Yes. We ran into each other at the Art Institute. I’m taking this class--” “You spent the afternoon with Sam, yesterday?!” “Yes.” She can see the astonishment, eyes wide over the brim of the coffee cup frozen at the lips. “What about it?” “Girl, I ain’t ever heard of Sam ‘spending an afternoon’ with anybody since I’ve known him. You say you was at the art museum?” “Yes. I’m taking this class in art appreciation, and Sam--” “I knew he goes to that museum all the time, but--. And you just—uh--walked around that place--together? The two of you?” “Yes, we had pizza later.” “You had DINNER with Sam?! Girl, you went on a DATE with Sam Kates?!?!” Her voice was rising in a crescendo of disbelief to a climax of enthusiasm. “I wouldn’t call it a DATE exactly, we just sort of ran into each other, and one thing led to another, and--” “Now that is truly somethin’. Sam Kates on a DATE--with a G-U-R-L GIRL!” “What are you talking about?” Aunt Maxine got ahold of herself, and remembered that she was standing right outside the bathroom door talking about Sam where he might overhear. She led Sharon, by the arm, gently but firmly into the front room, and, in a tone of secretive confidentiality explained that the only woman Sam had ever had anything to do with besides his mother and herself, was that singer, Susan Wright; and that was always music, nothing else. Nothing else at all. Come to think of it, Sam had never engaged in anything like a SOCIAL event with ANYBODY, male or female, in his entire life--except, maybe, with Aunt Maxine. “Whadj’all talk about at the museum?” “We just walked around; Sam showed me where some of the paintings were, and told me things about them, and--” “Just a minute, now. Sam explained some of the pictures to you?” “Well, not really explained, more like—told me what they meant to him—how they made him feel.” “Extr’ordinary.” She had to sit down. She sipped fanatically. Her brow furrowed this unforeseen news into their folds like toes in thick carpet. She chewed the news like tough jerky. After a moment, Sharon ventured, “You say he’s never been on a date before?” Aunt Maxine gave a sigh. “Girl, I don’t know that he’s swapped three sentences back and forth with anybody in his life.” She continued to think. They had given up on therapists a long ago. Sam wouldn't open up to a stranger. Wouldn't cooperate worth beans. Damn doctors! This was GREAT news. Sam TALKING! Maybe there was hope for Sam with this girl. Maybe the girl was the key. “Hmm,” Sharon added. “You know Sharon, I know you’re not prepared to make much of this, but this is very good news fer me. If Sam is talkin’ to you, it could be the beginnin’ of a new phase for him. I can't stress enough to you that Sam NEVER DOES THAT. "Never does what?" "TALKS TO PEOPLE. ANYBODY! I also think it’s no surprise that he had a true-matic episode jest after he had a social experience, a SEXUAL experience--" "Hmm?" asked Sharon. "I know, you don’t have to tell me nothin’ happened, but it WAS a sexual experience, no matter how low-key. Like I say, it’s no surprise he had an extreme episode just after having a had PERSONAL experience with a woman, a very pretty woman too. Oh, pshaw, don’t go on like as you didn’t know. You got both eyes in the right place, nice female figure, and, you know, you got a nice, what do the men call it? a nice rack. That’s a whole lot more than Sam is used to, I can tell you, and that puts you in a U-neek position in Sam’s world.” “Hmm,” thought Sharon. IX. We don’t need to review the negotiations. Bottom line, in the next half-hour, Aunt Maxine talked Sharon into taking on the responsibility for a kind of tutor/guardianship of Sam. She was to get $800 a week for spending at least 20 hours with him. Something was up with Sam, and, whatever it was, Sharon was a part of it. This might be Aunt Maxine’s last chance to prepare Sam for a future without her, and whatever this mysterious chemistry was, that lay latent between Sam and Sharon, she was determined to manufacture whatever conditions were necessary to bring it out, develop it, spare no expense (it was Sam’s money anyway). Maxine wasn’t matchmaking; she didn’t have any illusions about a possible love relationship between the two of them (that would be too much to ask), but Sam was clearly in some kind of growth spurt, and Sharon was involved either peripherally or centrally, it didn’t matter which. She made it clear that whatever they did, where, when, and why they went, was completely up to Sharon; but, always, the task was to get Sam to socialize, verbalize, and externalize the inner changes that were spontaneously taking place in him. Sharon felt totally unqualified for this job: she didn’t trust Aunt Maxine’s intuition about the magnitude of this unexpected sympathy between herself and Sam, she didn’t trust her own feelings about Sam, which were still in the early stages of becoming, and she couldn’t believe somebody was actually going to pay her to be a—well, a TEACHER. Why her? Why now? They MUST have tried out different therapists on Sam (they had), they MUST have exposed him to other group and educational experiences (they had), they couldn't ALL have failed (they did)? How could a poor white trash girl from the south side succeed where others had not? Nonetheless, with her difficult financial situation the way it was, she couldn’t say no to a good paying part-time job. This extra income could completely replace the money she made at the Moonlight Room and to spare--but Aunt Maxine’s only stipulation was that Sharon stay on at the bar, to keep an eye on Sam at the place where he seemed to be the most vulnerable. Notwithstanding, they both called in sick that night (Saturday) and Fred had to play a piano single. (Nobody minded. It had been perfectly clear from the performance the night before that Sam was —uh —“sick.”) This would give Sharon at least six days to try and get to the bottom of why Sam had freaked out on Friday. They stayed home all day at Sam’s house, with Aunt Maxine explaining over and over to Sam about the new arrangement. After many times through the plan, he was still kind of fuzzy on the point of the Talk-to-Sharon part of it, (he was already talking to Sharon, he LIKED talking to Sharon), but when they told him he didn’t have to go to the Moonlight Room that evening, the look of relief on his face like Aurora-dappled dawn after blackest night, and no other explanations were necessary. When it came time for Maxine to drive back to her own apartment, some distance away, Sam became so agitated that Sharon agreed to stay with him, “just until he calmed down.” This, in itself, was interesting, because Sam rarely objected to being left alone; he preferred it. But not tonight. They sat together on the couch and watched a little TV for awhile, but Sam seemed distracted, and kept looking at the clock. He was obviously unaccustomed to missing his Saturday night gig, no matter how relieved he was to be doing so. Sharon decided to draw Sam away from his preoccupations by getting out her art appreciation book. She had it with her from the night before, and opened it up to where her previous reading had left off. She had to do her homework, and here was a kind of two birds opportunity. She read aloud to Sam about the birth of Humanism, the advent of perspective in Renaissance painting, and the dramatic use of chiaroscuro in the late works of Rembrandt. At this point she turned the book toward him and pointed out the reproduction of that dark self-portrait they had seen together in the museum yesterday. Sam had been listening idly, not taking anything in, but enjoying the sound of Sharon’s voice; but, when he saw, in the dim lamplight, the small reproduction of the painting he knew so well, it triggered a memory in him. For exactly four minutes, he replayed, in his mind, note for note, the composition that had sprung into being the day before. He re-entered the opaque trance state, and did not respond to Sharon’s efforts to rouse him from his reverie. He recalled every nuance of the musical form exactly as he had previously imagined it, but this time details of orchestration registered on his memory as well; it hit him for the first time, consciously, that he was hearing an orchestra in his head, not a saxophone piece. He would hold onto this impression, too. When the four minutes were up, and the light of the face dispelled the dark of the bordering abyss, Sam snapped out of it. “Where did you go?” she said.  X. Thus followed a richly creative time; for hours, Sharon held up plates from the art book, and Sam responded musically to one painting after another. His eyes would flow over the picture's composition detail after detail, and his mind would create musical mirrors of the figures, the colors, the formal oppositions. Sometimes he would trance-out for two minutes, sometimes for ten. When he returned to the couch dimension (as it were), Sharon questioned him closely, making him describe his inner experience in words. Eventually, words became inadequate and Sharon had to allow him to get out his saxophone and play the compositions he had made up. Only briefly did she delve into the process, HOW Sam made the music, and when he showed signs of freaking out again, she backed off. But even the saxophone renditions became inadequate. Sam experienced some kind of release by playing the themes to her, but he expressed dissatisfaction as well. “Not enough,” he said. “It’s not enough.” Nevertheless, they strove with Sam’s muse, together, all through the night, finally collapsing onto the couch, an un-self-conscious heap, gathering the early Sunday morning sun into the creases of their clothes, asleep, comingling dreams of Titian and Turner in a peaceful, sympathetic medley. The next day, they HAD to return to the museum and see the pictures firsthand. Here Sam did something he had never done before: he took out his saxophone and played the compositions in his head RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE PAINTINGS THAT HAD INSPIRED THEM. At first the security guards reacted badly (“Sam, this isn’t frickin’ San Francisco!”), but before the first guard had arrived, Sam had attracted a crowd of twenty to thirty people who, with a single will, strong-armed the guard into letting Sam finish; and when Sharon suggested they all follow them around to the next painting on Sam’s list, everybody cheered and followed. They did this six times, and when they finally got around to the Whistler, there was a crowd of four guards and about a hundred visitors, all crammed together into those narrow corridors listening to Sam’s music with avid attention, and unbridled enthusiasm. Everybody there was aware that something special was happening. Yes, a reporter from the Sun-Times made it just in time to hear Sam’s impression of Symphony in Black (AKA, Whistler’s Mother), and an account of the spontaneous event, along with a photograph snapped over the heads of the crowd, appeared in next Sunday’s Arts supplement. Twice that following week, the guards had to roust a couple of copycat vocalists out on their ears. XI. Clearly, Sam's life had launched itself into a new phase, the parameters of which were still only partially defined, the direction of which was still a mystery. One week off from the Moonlight Room stretched into two, then three. Sharon still went in, so she would still work there when Sam returned; but, for Sam, they had hired several different temporary replacements--some had worked out, some hadn't. There was this one kid from Northwestern who was doing pretty well; although he was no match for Sam on a good night, he was still good enough to play casual background music at a bar. True, Sam had made the Moonlight Room into a sort of shrine, to which not a few jazz devotees made regular pilgrimages, so this step down was a doozy; indeed, the regulars complained bitterly about Sam's absence, and wanted to know when he would be back. However, the prestige and the history all very nicely notwithstanding, the bottom line in booze consumption had not changed significantly, one way or the other--yet. Jim Meyer was still the manager from way before, and he was going to remain loyal to Sam for a few additional weeks; but the more time off Sam took, the more strained that loyalty became. The loss of income was not a serious concern for Sam right now; remember, he was never very good at SPENDING money, and except for the house, and his Selmer Paris Model saxophone, both paid for in cash, Sam had never really BOUGHT anything; his savings had continued to pile up, and his overhead was, and always had been, practically nil. His savings from the heyday of his touring adventure amounted to several hundred thousand dollars--enough to keep him in comfort for years. The interest wasn't QUITE enough to live on, so he would have to return to work at some point; but this was not worrisome to anybody, least of all Sam--his idea of the future was "tomorrow" and, at a stretch, "next week". It was the music he would soon miss, and nobody knew when that would be. He was certainly enjoying his vacation--his sabbatical. Meanwhile, Sharon was pushing him. Anything to stimulate his mind, provoke any kind of articulate reaction to the world outside his head. It was kind of ironic in a way, how they were BOTH suddenly motivated to wake up and smell the world they had been living in for decades. The glamor and excitement of Chicago had heretofore been rendered invisible to both of them: to Sam by virtue of the mental blockages of Asperger's Syndrome, and to Sharon from lack of bus fare. Together, they set out to discover the city like tourists. You would never have guessed, from the innocent enthusiasm with which they savored all the new sights and sounds, that they had spent, cumulatively, over forty years living within minutes of all this virgin territory. First stop: Museum of Science and Industry. At first, Sam wouldn't set foot in that confining little model airplane, but, just like a kid, when he got used to it he went back through it six times, fingering the lights and actually reading the placards (very short sentences and labels). The museum was especially good because so many of the exhibits had those little headphone things; you pushed a button and a canned voice told you all about the wooly mammoth, or the cotton gin, or the suit of armor you were looking at. Now, don't get your hopes up: Sam's perfect photographic memory only applied to music, not words. His memory for words he was just about normal, maybe a tad worse, since he tended not to remember sentences that he didn't understand, and those were many and close between. Nevertheless, these massive doses of new material to which Sharon was subjecting him, were providing a context in which new ideas could ferment and must eventually become full-fledged, operational concepts. They checked out the Sears Tower, Navy Pier, and the Lincoln Park Zoo. They even took in a baseball game at Wrigley Field; Sam responded to baseball with the aspie's typical sympathy for repetitive acts, but after six innings he'd had enough hot dogs and organ music. The Public Library was an important stop. Sharon had not intended to visit there, but it was right on the way home, a few blocks past the Art Institute on Michigan Avenue, and Sam had always wondered about that big building. They made their way down marble corridors to the music room where you could listen to recordings through nice headphones, not those funky ones like at the "airplane place." Sharon randomly chose a Beethoven 5th recording (Bernstein, luckily). Sam listened transfixed. When they got home, Sam took out his sax and played through the entire symphony jumping appropriately from 1st violin to the wind parts. "That's terrific, Sam," said Sharon. "Not enough," Sam said. From this offhand remark, Sharon put together a couple of things about Sam she had not yet completely understood: 1.) Sam, for all his jazz erudition and virtuosity, had not been exposed to ANY classical music since his early childhood watching the PBS broadcasts his mother had turned on; absurd as it sounds, Sam's teachers, Suzy Wright, and before her, Red from the Mellow Four, had only been interested in cultivating his talent for playing with the combo-- it never occurred to either of them (shame on you, Suzy) to expand his horizons with Bach or Mozart; and 2.) Sam was starting to get frustrated with not being able to play ALL THE PARTS. She had heard Sam say, "Not enough." over and over lately, when he was playing his picture music, but she always figured it was some artistic "failure to achieve perfection" kind of comment. Little did she know that aspies live in a world of perfection that challenges the power of human language to detail it. No, Sam's music was perfect in his head, like a diamond, or an anomalous snowflake is perfect; indeed, it was a struggle for Sam to OPEN the door to his unconscious, but, once the door was open, only perfection flowed through it into the mundane world. So why "not enough"? Finally, when she heard him express dissatisfaction with his rendition of Beethoven's 5th, she realized the "not enough" meant that he was not able to play, with one line of saxophone music, everything that was in his head. Every once in awhile, when she dragged out of him those verbal descriptions of his picture pieces, he had mentioned things like, "That shadow is the trombone, that little dog is in the oboe." She finally made the connection. It was a pretty hip connection for a uncultured white trash girl to make, but it could not be denied that she was starting to get it. She made a mental note to start playing him 19th century orchestral music. The solution to "not enough" came sooner than you'd think. A proper discussion of the presence of "accidents" in the warp and weave of destiny is beyond the scope of this narrative, but--enough said. As mentioned above, even with all this sight-seeing, reading (yes, she continued to read to him out of her art appreciation textbook), and talking, Sharon kept on working at the Moonlight Room; she also kept up regular attendance to her college classes. It was a full schedule. The day after their trip to the library and Beethoven, Sam was feeling very clingy and got terribly upset when Sharon told him she had to leave to go to class. He made her go through what four-year-olds make their mothers go through when they have to abandon their children to the care of a babysitter, only Sam had no babysitter. It's not a pretty sight to see a thirty-eight year old man blubbering like an infant. It was worse with Sam: not that four-year-olds don't buckle under the weight of the world, that tender fragility collapsing in desperate shards on the linoleum, great bulbous tears tracking the cheeks in quiet battalions; but Sam's face had a depth of depression, an underplayed suppression of pain that amplified rather than reduced the appearance of despair. Four-year-olds can't express that emotion--they don't have the experience yet to give those tears the salt and fire with which only age and PROLONGED suffering can imbue them. "I have to go to class, Sam." "Sharon!" "Sam, I HAVE to go to my class now!" "Sam!!" "I have to--" "Stay with Sam. Pleeeze." That was new. What to do? She exhaled a decision, inhaling at the same time. "Sam, would you like to come to class with me?" No Irish rainbow can smile so brightly. Noah never saw the end of stormy night like Sharon did in that Chicago kitchen. They went. XII. They got off the bus at Montrose and Austin, and walked the block to the main building of Wilbur Wright College, one of the best (sic) of the Chicago City Colleges. Students were flowing in and out in pressing streams, and Sam held onto Sharon's arm tightly and nervously. Carried through the swinging doors by an irresistible current, they entered the high-ceilinged lobby and saw a mob of backpacks standing all along the wall of elevators. Screw that. They hiked up three flights of stairs, tapping in rhythm to some great drum machine whose contrapuntal ticks and booms resonated up and down the stairwell, swirled at the ground level door like a dust demon, then slipped out of the lobby and off down the street, blowing toward the lake, still tapping. They came out onto a long dimly-lighted corridor, the kind where the waxed floor sends up, into downcast eyes, vague reflections of the feet and legs of the pedestrians, mingled with vestiges of the pale 30-watt fixtures. They passed rows of blonde wooden cell-block doors to stop and stand before Rm. 311, a little black sign with white letters right beneath a tiny square window. This was the door to the front end (the teacher's desk, whiteboard, computer set-up); there was another door at the back of the classroom, fifty feet further down. It wasn't the art appreciation class--it was the Introduction to Computer Applications 101 Class. Sharon didn't know how to handle it, whether to introduce Sam to the instructor as a visitor, or just slip him in at the back of the room. She didn't have to choose. A hurried student exited, and pushed past them, leaving the door standing wide open for a moment. Thanks to the Sun-Times Arts Supplement article, the instructor, (young guy, geeky, black plastic-rimmed glasses, name of Rex Highroad), recognized Sam by sight, and rushed out into the hall to greet them. "Sam Kates, the saxophonist, what a pleasure, an honor, sir," effused Highroad. "Sharon, you didn't tell me you traveled in such distinguished circles." "Sir?" "Hell yes, Sam Kates has been a celebrity in the Chicago music world for many years. That episode at the Art Institute recently was just another chapter in a long story." "Sir?" "Hell yes, Sam Kates broke onto the major league jazz scene back when I was an undergraduate at DeVry. Hell yes. I've got one of his albums." Pause. He holds out his hand. Aspies don't shake hands. "Mr. Kates?" Longer pause. "It's a pleasure." His hand sinks to his side, like that was where it belonged anyway. "Mr.--" "Sam," said Sam, autistically. "Of course," said Rex. . . . Having recovered from his attack of rebuffed celebrity-itis, Rex escorted Sam and Sharon into the room, seating Sharon prominently in the front row, Sam one desk behind, and called the meeting to order. If they had been able to bill the class as "Computers for Dummies" they would have. The idea was to introduce computer illiterate people to as many basic programs as possible in a 10-week quarter, and hope that, by osmosis, the students would at least be able to manage email by the time it was over. Tonight it was "creative arts" applications. In the middle of the room there was a cute little computer station, with several kinds of electronic modules all compactly organized on a combination desk/rack-mount on wheels; with the lights dimmed, Rex projected his computer screen onto a reflective whiteboard at the front of the classroom, his cursor deftly flying from window to window, cramming it all it. He spent 20 minutes on a computer graphics/paint/photoshop program (how many ways can you draw a circle?), 10 minutes on a speech recognition/dictation program (how many ways are there to misspell "generality"?), and then came the LAST program of the evening--you guessed it--a music notation program. Sam had been cowering ever so slightly, trying to hide himself in the complicated metal framework of his desk, at the same time leaning over as close to Sharon as he could get without falling out into the aisle. He accepted the existence of thirty strangers crammed into the sterile, windowless, fluorescent college classroom, but it was weird experiencing their presence at such close quarters; he usually had the edge of the bandstand as a clearly defined boundary between himself and other stationary people; and, of course, he always had his saxophone demarcating a final defensive frontier. Here he was, now, sitting in a room where half a dozen people could reach out and TOUCH him if they wanted to. He was handling his fear pretty well, because Sharon would be mad if he  fretted or moaned, but it was a supreme effort of will to remain silent and still through the torturous minutes of Rex's incomprehensible presentations computer-projected onto the whiteboard. Then the music presentation began. Sam's attention was attracted immediately and fixed on the screen. Here we need a sidebar about Rex Highroad: To his credit, Rex was pretty much of a pinball wizard with this program. Indeed, there are so many computer geeks who dabble in music, it's irritating--it's like track and field 30-yard dash runners pretending to be ballerinas. But Rex was a cut above most of these music dabblers. He got into music late in life, (sixteen), so he was never able to achieve a professional playing level; but he had a natural feel for music, and had applied his expertise in mathematics and computer science to music whenever he could. He was a musical amateur in the best sense of the word--he loved music, and, better yet, he RESPECTED music and musicians. He had been messing around with computer applications and recording for a long time, and had worked with enough garage bands over the years to know the difference between bullshit and the real thing. He knew from his album, "Blue Enough", that Sam Kates was the real thing--it really was exciting to have him in the classroom. It was not surprising that he had recognized Sam, because Rex prided himself on being hip to the musical scene in Chicago. To be sure, Sam was not a household word, but anybody who had kept even casually in touch with the Arts section of the Sun Times over the past several years had read about Sam Kates, Musical Savant. Anyway, Rex was a good guy, working below his level of expertise as adjunct faculty at a junior college, waiting for something to happen. Sam Kates happened, as we shall see. Rex already had the program's output linked to the computer's onboard General MIDI synthesizer, but he also had a cheap musical electronic keyboard, cleverly hidden in a slide-out drawer in the guts of the computer station, to input notes with. He quickly typed in Row Row Row Your Boat and then started a series of copy-and-paste manipulations of the round--assigning different instruments to each of the several staves, changing tempo, articulation, etc. He imported MIDI files and made them change into black dots on the overhead screen, he scanned a page of sheet music and turned that also into black dots (with about as many mistakes as there are misspellings of "generality", but what the hell), and he performed a simple piece on the keyboard (something from the Anna Magdalena Bach Book) to a click track, and THAT was turned into black dots. Sam's interest became more intense with every step. THEN, he took out a guitar with a microphone attached to it and ADDED a track to the Bach keyboard track--the computer transformed it into a simple notated bass part. When Rex played back the two tracks at once, Sam stood up. It was a weird moment. The music finished, this strange man standing rigidly at the front of the class. There was a silent expectation from all concerned, and Rex almost began an introduction of Sam to the rest of the class, but, thank you Jesus, a buzzer sounded faintly but obtrusively, signaling the end of the 50-minute hour, and the trance was broken as the lights came up and waves of students hurriedly crowded out both doors. Sam shouldered past the throng toward the computer. "Show me," he said. "Mr. Kates?" said Rex. "Show me." He fingered the microphone on the guitar--not the guitar, the microphone. "Show you how the program works? I'd love to, but right now I have to--" Sam unclipped the microphone from the bridge of the guitar, and held it up in front of him, the wire dangling. Rex thought he was offering it to him, but he wasn't. "Sassa--saxophone?" His mind was reaching further into the world than it ever had before. "Will it work--saxophone?" "Can you input with a saxophone? Yes, I think so. It works with flutes and clarinets, I don't know why it wouldn't. I've never tried it but--" "Sam wa--I want one." Sam Kates Aspie Sax Player II: Chanson Iconique XIII. Sharon couldn't believe her ears. Sam was approaching a stranger and asking for help with his music! He had never done this--not since he had asked his mother for a saxophone all those years ago. We don’t need to review the negotiations. Rex made a date with Sharon to meet them at Sam's house the next day, with his set-up, to try out the system with Sam playing saxophone. It would have made more sense to meet at Rex's place, so he wouldn't have had to tear apart his system, put it in the van, move it, then put it all together again; but Sharon took Rex aside and explained Sam's social limitations, one of which was that he couldn't work well in a strange environment. Rex had read enough about "Chicago's Musical Savant" over the years to appreciate this problem, and responded to the opportunity, to work with a famous musician, with open-hearted good will. No problem. We won't use the school's rig, I have a better set-up at home anyway. The next day, at 9:00 AM Rex Highroad was hooking together wires every which way in Sam's living room, while Sam was impatiently rehearsing the Rembrandt Self-Portrait piece. Rex had all the equipment laid out in logical sequence on a folding table he had brought in, and he sat before it in a rolling desk chair that happened to be hiding on the back porch. Rex had to make a trip back out to get another extension cord (surge protector, please), but he had the system ready for Sam to start recording by 10:00. The process was stream-lined. Rex knew what he was doing, Sam knew what he was doing. There WAS the problem of the click track--Sam had to try several times to get the first pass down, because if you allow even a slight tempo fluctuation with a computer time clock, the notation gets screwed up and it sounds like garbage. But between Sam adjusting to the constraints of the metronome, and Rex inputting tempo changes at spots where the music must accelerate or decelerate, they got a usable 1st track of the four-minute piece after about an hour. From then on it was eeeezy. Here was the idea: Sam would play a part on his saxophone which the computer turned into notation. At that point Rex assigned that part to an orchestral voice in the synthesizer (he brought a better one to Sam's house than the one he had used for the demo last night), thus transforming what was heard in the room as a saxophone into a violin, or an oboe, or a trumpet. Then Rex played back this new part and Sam added to the composition one layer (one part) at a time. The first part had been a solo saxophone part (well, duh), and then they went all through the orchestral parts one at a time, Rex directing Sam to input them in orchestral score order. It was a little tricky getting the cello parts (which play way lower than the saxophone) and the flute parts (which play way higher than the saxophone), because Sam had to transpose in his head, but that was no trouble for Sam, and all Rex had to do when the track was done was push the transpose button, and, voila, instant cello. It was also something of a hassle for Sam to get used to the headphones pressing on his ears; you wouldn't think that this process, going right into the notation program as they were, would require headphones, but that little mic attached to the saxophone had a bitchy little habit of picking up a slight resonance from the other parts as they played back, especially during rests. But Sam was so into the creative process, he was willing to sacrifice comfort for clarity. There were still places where the mic picked up something extra, or flubbed some intricacy of notation, and without Rex to edit out minor glitches in the transcriptions, Sam would have been lost. But the process worked fine. When the complete score existed in score notation, they went back and re-recorded the original solo sax part in real time into an audio recording program, and there it was--a four-minute piece for solo saxophone and orchestra featuring a perfectly presentable orchestral synthestration and a wonderfully played live saxophone part. Rembrandt's Self-Portrait 1659--Composition for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra by Sam Kates. It took about six hours. Just as they were finishing up, Sharon announced that she had to leave for work. Sam started to fret a little bit, but when she reminded him she was going to the Moonlight Room, he burrowed into the couch and blew a screeching high note on his sax, still strapped around his neck. She laughed and left--anyway, Rex was still there. They listened through the piece again. They listened through the piece again. And again. XIV. Rex was clearly having the time of his life. He felt like Salieri watching Mozart compose, as this miraculous music unfolded before his very eyes. Every layer revealed some new astonishing facet of this complex and ravishing composition; as detail upon detail brought the finished vision more clearly into view, his respect and adoration of Sam was compounded. He felt he was witnessing the birth of a Mozart Symphony, a Bach Cantata, a Messiah. The Holy Child thought reminded him of something--the wise men brought gifts. "Hey, Sam, I forgot something in the van--I'll be right back." Before Sam could protest, Rex had scooted out the door, and before Sam had time to miss him Rex was back--carrying TWO six-packs of Coors. "This calls for a celebration, Sam!" he announced with jubilation and trembling. "Celebration?" "You got any ice?" Most serious beer drinkers would scoff at the idea of ice in their beer, but it was either that or drink it warm (it had been sitting in the car all day), and who ever heard of drinking warm beer? Rex  went to the refrigerator, got the ice, poured out two glasses, and handed one to Sam. Sam had smelled lots of alcohol during his years at the Moonlight Room, but nobody had ever given him any to drink. He never thought he would like it, but he was caught up in Rex's enthusiasm and took the foaming flagon without hesitation. "To Sam Kates, composer extraordinaire, deluxe!" exclaimed Rex, his glass held high. "Sam, extrare ducks!" mimicked Sam. "Damn straight!" said Rex. They drank and listened. Listened and drank. Drank some more, listened some more. It took awhile, but halfway though his third glass Sam noticed a queer, lazy, loosening feeling in his chest. The music sounded a little further off, but somehow more pleasant--it was singing in his body now, not so much his ears, not so much in his mind. You could tell that Rex was feeling it too. "How d'ya you like the beer, Sam?" asked Rex after the tenth play. "Bubbly," said Sam. He held up his glass and admired the active yellow stuff. "Makes Sam--makes me--bubbly!" "Damn straight!" said Rex. The intimacy that comes over partners in booze had begun to spread through the room and draw them into each other. Rex was still sitting, leaning far back now, in the rolling desk chair he had sat in all day, and Sam was still snug in a corner of the couch with his saxophone lying idle on his lap, the neck turned up sideways the way sax players do to keep from chipping the reed. Somehow, they were sitting closer to each other than they had been before. There was still ten feet between them, but somehow their foreheads were touching. The quiet was tacitly agreed on. Out of the silence the solemnity of the celebration came out of Rex in a wondering, wondering question: "How do you do it, Sam?" "How do--I--do it." It wasn't a question. Was it a question? "How do you hold," he groped, "all that music in your head like that? HOW DO YOU DO IT?" Sam knew that something unaccustomed was expected of him, and he retreated a little, but the high, the looseness, brought him back. "Dunno." "C'mon--" Sam ceremoniously unclipped his saxophone from its neck strap, and laid it carefully on the couch. He was stalling. He was searching inside for words. "C'mon--" OK. "The picture--FEELS to me. The music FEELS to me--I put them together." "Yeah." "This color sounds like this, this color sounds like this, the light, the eye--the feel goes to my fingers." "But," Rex starts on the second six-pack. The ice is almost gone, but he put some cans in the freezer about an hour ago. Good boy. "But," as he passes back from the kitchen to his seat, handing Sam his number four, "all those parts, the form, the counterpoints. So perfect. So--right. So--" groping again, "so like that painting, but so new. So CHICAGO!" "Many fingers," Sam sighs. "Many fingers?!" The idea takes a moment to well up into laughter. "Sam's brain has many fingers! HA HA HA!!" "Sam's brain has many fingers! HA HA HA HA!!!" Together they chanted the refrain, "Sam's brain has many fingers! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!" They were still singing and laughing, "Sam's brain has many fingers! HA HA HA!!!" when Sharon arrived home. She took in the scene immediately, and turned on Rex like a mother bear. "You got him DRUNK, YOU STUPID ASSHOLE!" "Sharon, I'm okay. I'm okay!" His look of hilarity calmed the storm somewhat. "Sharon!" He stood up to demonstrate. "Sam's brain has many fingers! Sam's brain has many fingers! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!" Then he ran to the bathroom to throw up. XV. Sharon hustled Rex out of there in a cab--he left all his stuff in the living room, his van outside. Then she went into the bathroom to attend to sick Sam. There was a mess in the toilet bowl, but Sam was lying on the floor smiling. "Sam. Many fingers. Hee hee." She cleaned him up, rinsed out his mouth (yechh), and dragged him off to bed. You've seen this scene before--the arm over the shoulder, sagging legs, Sharon straining to lift him, Sam's silly grin, hee hee heeing, even conducting with his free hand, "Sam's brain. Fingers. La la la." She lowered him onto the bed, him dragging her down with him, his arm still around her neck. She rested a moment. Then he looked into her face an inch away. "Sharon," he whispered, and put his other arm around her. She hesitated, then relaxed into his embrace. They collapsed there on the bed, legs entwined, not purposefully, but accidentally as they fell together. "Sharon. Stay." She stayed. And as sleep overcame them both, a sweet sympathy enveloped the two of them, as natural, as unforced, as unintentional as shadow of night creeps over an infant's eyes, ever so slowly, ever so gently, ever so calmly. Sleep was rest, was peace, was silence, was Sam and Sharon together. She didn't resist as she thought she would, as she thought for only an instant she should; and Sam was unaware of the sex part of it, of the Sharon is a woman part of it, he only knew he felt her next to him, draped over him, and it was warm, and safe, and good. She only made one adjustment--his shirt still smelled slightly of Coors and vomit, so she carefully unbuttoned it and pushed it aside. With her head on his bare chest, Sam's arms around her, their legs still entwined, they slept. . . Rosy-fingered dawn, mixed to purple by the blue curtains, pressed its nose to the window and whispered them awake. Sam first. He looked down at Sharon's head on his chest and smiled. His muscles wanted to move, but he would rather die than have Sharon's bright curls move an inch from their current, exhilaratingly comfortable position. However, his breathing accelerated, and that woke her soon enough. "Good morning Sam," she purred, and yawned. "Sharon," said Sam. He was really working hard here. "Hi Sharon." And this next bit is important because it was the first time Sam had ever used words to maneuver another person to do his will. "Head hurts." His head did hurt a little, to be sure, but that's not why he said it. He desperately wanted her to stay, to stay with him right there, and he somehow intuited the mother instinct in all women. It was a primordial thought motivated by a primordial instinct--and he got it right, thank God. "Poor baby," she said. "That Rex Highroad, what an asshole," she thought, briefly, but then she was glad, glad for all of it. She shifted her weight not away from him, but further up, further on top of him, her breasts pressed against his bare breast. She massaged his temples with long slender fingers, her lips an inch away from his lips. He closed his eyes and sighed for so much melody. His head was in her hands, surrendered fully to her healing hands, and he belonged to her. His arms, still wrapped around her, tightened, bringing her ever closer, and in a moment their lips were touching. Not kissing exactly, more like simply breathing each other into each other. It went on like this for one of those eternal moments, and then her tongue was probing, their mouths shifting and turning onto and into each other. Sam got the idea right away. And he played her mouth like a saxophone, like an impassioned Someone to Watch Over Me, and they were kissing and kissing, closer, closer, with each kiss losing more of themselves in each other, each to each, and then Sharon was unbuttoning her blouse and removing her bra, always kissing, always close, and she was bare-breasted and leading his mouth to her excited, protruding nipple, and he suckled there on the bed for an interminable minute, and then the moaning and the pants, the pants off, off, and she was leading him inside her, and he got the hang of that, too. XVI. This time the sun was aglare, bright yellow reminder that life goes on, and the sweetness of the marriage bed must give way to breakfast. Neither one of them spoke, but as Sam gave her breast one last kiss, they rose together and wended their way, arm in arm, to the kitchen. She started the eggs and Sam looked for something for them to wear. He found a long smock-length tee-shirt for her, and he put on the outfit in his closet marked "Thursday". Today was Thursday. As he returned to the kitchen, he briefly regretted having to cover up that shapely ass turned toward him as she flipped the eggs at the stove, but she looked almost as cute in that long "Mellow 4" tee-shirt, hanging loosely down, just covering the V of her pubic hair, her shapely, nay, Grecian legs alluring, enticing him to press himself one more time against her. It was done. They were a couple. Nobody ask Sharon how this came about. Nobody ask God how the earth moves in its irresistible orbit, or why the seats on the bus are that way—they’re that way because that’s the way they are. It was just done, and there was no going back. She loved him, and that was that. She felt like a fool, for the second time. This would never work. But she loved him, and anyway, why wouldn't it work? Sam wasn't that abusive asshole she met when she was seventeen. "No, he's an idiot savant who can't even write his own name. Okay, I guess he can write his own name, but--shit. Okay, what the fuck, maybe it will work. Anyway, it's done now, and that's that. What will happen has nothing to do with what is happening. I love him. Shit. I love him." "Sharon," he said, the last of the egg gone from his plate. "My piece. Hear my piece." Rex hadn't even powered down the system. All Sam had to do was push the play button. They sat on the couch, his hand on her thigh, and they listened to Rembrandt's Self-Portrait 1659--Composition for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra by Sam Kates. The cello begins a soft rustle of wind and wave, joined by the viola, then the rest of the upper strings. There is a darkness, a tense ripple of unrest as some grotesque sea creature scuttles its way into the bassoon and then the trombone. Then the solo saxophone enters with the main theme, the Rembrandt theme, the hero lost in dark and deep, but striving. Gradually the theme is lost in a hurried variation, as the original cello harmonies mount into an accelerated high wind part. High wind is right, because the tempestuous flute, supported by cymbals and snare, is flashing its way between the saxophone and its goal. The saxophone is turned back again and again as the sea overwhelms its quest for--for what? For arrival, for peace, for some ineffable sign of identity, of who-ness, of Rembrandt. And then there is a breakthrough and the light of the lightning softens in a downward flute arpeggio, and the saxophone finds its nest, its oasis, its haven. The eyes of Rembrandt are softened in shade, and the stern look of the sea is mellowed into placidity. One last burst of wave in the cello yields to the Rembrandt saxophone, resting on its rock, alone, but not alone. "It's beautiful," she says. And she not only loves him, he who lives in this terrifying, lonely, rarefied, heroic world, she adores him, she worships him. She rose and took his hand. "It's beautiful. You are beautiful." He kissed the scar on her forehead, and they went back to bed and worshipped each other for another hour. XVII. Today was Thursday. "I want to play tonight," he said. It was that simple. Rex called around noon. We don’t need to review the negotiations. He would leave his stuff there at the house. Call me tomorrow. It was that simple. He had a more practiced hangover than Sam, and needed a day of dark and science fiction movies anyway. They arrived at the gig arm in arm, and Sam went to the bandstand while Sharon donned her Moonlight Room apron. The kid from Northwestern was there, too, Chuck was his name--nobody had called him to cancel. That was okay, everybody was nervous about what Sam would do, and it seemed like a good idea to have a back-up onstage, ready to take over if--you know--anything happened. Sam was fine. In fact he was better than fine. He let Chuck play lead most of the time, and he followed along with subtle harmony parts, but, when it came time for the the solos Sam played with such authority, such fierce, smoking abandon, he pretty much made Chuck look like shit. There was something in the playing tonight that was like that first time he merged with Suzy Wright, a freshness, and energy that transcended the limits of Moonlight mediocrity. Sam was playing over the top all night, and although his best efforts were directed toward making Chuck look good, he still magnetized the stage with his presence; and even when Chuck was doing the lead, all eyes were drawn to Sam. Chuck rose to the occasion admirably, and, as the night wore on, his playing noticeably improved. Sam was inspiring him to reach, and reach he did. But that wasn't the main thing--it was that Sam was reaching too--reaching INTO Chuck, taking him in, and sharing his vision not on an auditory level, but psychically, as two souls intertwining. Perhaps Sharon had taught him that. They began to read each others' minds, and the music soared out of that bar, out onto Lakeshore Drive, sailing over the traffic and the lights, down the street past the lions, and hovering over Buckingham Fountain. As Rex had observed--(Rex was there, by the way--he felt invested in Sam now, and had to check out his jazz gig just to--you know, just to see.)--Rex had observed that Sam's piece had not only captured the mystery and drama of the Rembrandt painting, it also somehow captured the spirit of Chicago in its driving, seeking lines, impelled toward a place, a bulwark of identity that was not only Sam but everything that Sam touched--including the lights, the lions, and the fountain. By the end of the 4th set, the last set, the place was jammed; it was as though some great beacon were shining out over the city, bringing them in and keeping them there. Sam called up the last tune: Someone to Watch Over Me. The band gasped at this choice, because they knew there was something weird with Sam about that tune. Sharon put her dishes down and waited, holding her breath. Fred started in on his typical intro, and, as the last arpeggio rang into the calm, Sam took a big breath. He played a straightforward, unadorned head, a less-is-more kind of thing. He read through the bridge and into, "I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood, I know I could always be good, to one who'll WATCH over me." At this point something strange began to intrude into the simplicity--he began to play unexpected digressions. They fit the tune, to be sure, but somehow they pushed the tune into another dimension. He kept coming back to the Gershwin melody, but those digressions, the fills, kept leaning toward some more abstract concept. By the time he got to his first solo, Someone to Watch over Me had been totally abandoned for this OTHER thing. Sam started leaving the changes behind. He was playing a lamb lost in the woods, and it was really fucking lost! Fred stammered for a bit, then went with it. Chuck joined in duet, and before long the band was sounding like John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly doing Evolution. Jim Meyer was freaked--he thought he was listening to insanity--but every time he almost pulled the plug, Gershwin would reappear with a twinkle in his eye, and the stability of the music reasserted itself. Only Rex and Sharon knew that Sam was quoting from his Rembrandt piece, making Gershwin do double duty as a head and as a frame for that other more advanced piece. Jim Meyer shouldn't have worried--the crowd went with it, came along into that desperate lonely wood, and gloried in Sam's imploring soul of sound. The interlude lasted more than six minutes, and at the climax, he and Chuck were wailing at the top of their registers. Then there was a unison silence. Sam waved out the rhythm section and played the first phrase a cappella. One at a time they followed in, and at the last phrase, sam took his horn from his mouth, leaned over the mic, and sang, "I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood, I know I could always be good, to one who'll WATCH over me." Cymbal roll, last virtuosic fill, first Chuck then Sam, and the tune ended. Sam turned to Sharon at the bar and threw her a kiss. The audience went wild. XVIII. So, you see, Sam had found himself. Never mind that he found himself in Sharon--to all the romantics in the crowd, they know that's the way it oughta be. There are just a few more bits to tell: Rex Highroad quit his dumb adjunct faculty job at Wilbur Wright College to manage Sam full time. He made a demo of some of Sam's new 3rd stream versions of old standards, and got some investors to buy some time at Uptown Recording Studios. Sam Kates: Outside In got a favorable review in Downbeat Magazine, won a Grammy for best progressive jazz album, and sold 150,000 copies in the first four months. Rex also engineered the MIDI version of the remaining six pieces in Sam Kates' Pictures at an Exhibition, and nagged the management of the Chicago Symphony until they gave it a listen. Guilini wouldn't touch it, but guest conductor Pierre Boulez liked the piece and programmed it about a year later, with Sam as the soloist. The eighth piece, the encore piece was a surprise for Sharon. It was called simply Sharon. When he walked back onstage to play it he spoke to the audience in clear, articulate, grown-up English. "Sharon is me, and I am Sam." Aunt Maxine could now die in peace. Sam would be okay. Glennallen, Ak June 21, 2011 © Copyright 2011 freemant (freemant at Writing.Com). All rights reserved. Writing.Com, its affiliates and syndicates have been granted non-exclusive rights to display this work.