Drums & Horn (3 of 10 short stories, about a painters life)

It’s about 2 a.m. and I can’t sleep. It’s Wednesday night and I find myself pacing back and forth in my living room. I feel unsettled. There’s a motion welling up inside me and I just can’t shake it. I pick up the phone and call a few friends. No one answers.
I pace some more. Should I call her? I haven’t talked to her since that thing. What the hell, it’s 2 a.m. and I can’t sleep, not like this.

“Hey, it’s me.”
“What’s happening are you ok?”
“Yeah I’m fine.”
“So what’s up?”
“can’t sleep, can I come over?”
“Um..sure.”
“Ok see you in a few.”
“Oh, and bring your horn.”
“Of course.”

I roll a cigarette, grab my horn and plunger mute and head out the door.
She’s sitting on the front porch smoking a menthol cigarette and drinking Bailey’s Irish crème straight from the bottle when I pull up.

“Come on in I got something for you.”

We go into her living room where her drums are set up and she sits down behind them.

“This came to me after the other night, tell me what you think.”

She rolls on the snare and kicks hard on the bass.
I take out my horn and let loose with a long mournful moan.

Her rhythm picks up and there’s a clash on the cymbal. I answer her with a run down the Bb scale, and then pick it up with a high-pitched wail in the upper register. She comes back with the bass and snare. I respond and we fall into a strangely familiar rhythm. It’s one of my favorites. I can never remember it except when I’m playing it with her and even then once the line is done I seem to completely forget it. We go back and forth some more then fall back into that syncopated off beat rhythm that’s nearly impossible to duplicate, but she gets me every time. I’ve tried to play it with other musicians, they just don’t get it and it comes out all wrong. But there she is, perfect. Every time she says something I answer her, we go at it again. I let loose and growl with the plunger mute, a deep and beastly sound, she answers with the snare and then we fall back into that illusive yet familiar rhythm that gyrates and pops and makes me feel alive as though I’ve been in a coma for months and just been revived.

We step out onto the front porch to have a cigarette. The air is heavy like it’s about to rain and in the silence of the night the smoke rises into the sky....