I am wondering if any of you would consider reviewing the book. It will be released on Amazon/Kindle on October 18th. I need reviews from regular folks posted to amazon on the release day, if possible. You get a FREE pdf, word.doc or .mobi (Kindle ebook file) copy and plenty of time between now and mid-October to read it. Let me know, friends!
I'm really proud of my writing in chapter 16. What transpires helps Kate to begin unlocking the solution to her problems at work--and it all happens due to the power of music! Of course, many of you know that I am a professional musician, a composer, actually, and that wordsmithing is a new outlet for me.
I also enjoyed delving again into the wonderful relationship between Kate and Aria. They truly are best friends on so many levels. Even with the fairly serious things going on here I did show off Aria's wacky sense of humor with this little tidbit:
"How about that Fritz Kreisler piece—what’s it called?”
“Oh, this one?” Aria put her violin to her chin, and her agile bowstrokes began spilling out the bold leaping double-stopped notes of the opening phrase, exaggerating the craggy descending hemiolas. “The Liebesfreud—that’s what you want? The one that sounds like horny mountain goats prancing proudly about with their enormous erections?”
“No, no, no! Jesus, Aria, goat erections? Are you ever truly serious? The other one—the companion piece. You know, the sad one. I love that tune.”
“You sure you want sad tonight, Kate? I could play you a polka and cheer you up. Or a pirate song?”
“No, play the Liebesleid. Love’s Sorrow, right? It’s so beautiful. I don’t care if it’s sad.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Liebesleid
“Why the sour face, Kate? I know you’re working hard, but right now you really look like shit.”
“Thanks for the encouragement,” Kate grumbled. “Oh wait, Aria, sorry. I’m being an ass. Keep playing. The music is wonderful. I’m sitting here hitting a total dead end at this work. I’ve only got three days until I’m supposed to tell my boss I’ve solved everything.”
“Including world peace?”
“Yes, including world peace, and whirled peas. And I’m supposed to teach Americans when and when not to use apostrophes,” Kate said, finally smiling a little.
“Have some more wine, Kate. Wine solves everything, right?” Aria put down her violin, grabbed the bottle of malbec they’d been sampling, and poured a little more in Kate’s glass.
“Wine just makes you sleepy. You pass out and you forget your problems.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Aria asked. She picked her instrument back up and absentmindedly began to pluck random notes, then tuned up her E string. “Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask you—what’s that book there and what the hell happened to it? It looks like it got run over by a truck.”
“Well, literally it was. This weird sci-fi book and this notebook full of doodles were the two things Enzo Saltieri had with him the night he was run over and killed. The police brought it over to the lab a week ago. Apparently my boss wasn’t in the mood to go in and claim Enzo’s possessions. Mike doesn’t want to face Enzo’s death at all.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Not a problem. I never knew the guy. I’m just trying to sort things out. The police released these two items to me and I’ve been plowing through both of them looking for clues.”
“So what’s the book about?”
“It’s called Startide Rising by David Brin. I guess he was a hotshot sci-fi author in the 1980s. The cover’s half-torn off from the accident and it was covered with mud. I’ve cleaned it up as best I could. Here, take a look.” If Aria can figure this out, Kate thought, I’ll give her a month or two of my salary.
“Hmm, dudes and dolphins? What are they up to? Battling Klingons?”
“No. There’s an original overlord species in space that comes and gives humans advanced brains and then dolphins and chimps get to be smart, too.”
“Hallelujah for the chimps!” Aria yelled.
“Yeah, right. Weird. Anyway, when someone gives you this gift, they say you’ve been ‘uplifted.’ Of course there’s the usual sci-fi techno-babble and battles and stuff. I don’t get what Saltieri saw in this book. He apparently liked diving headfirst into its watery weirdness. He seemed to obsess about water toward the end.”
“So what’s in those chapters with all the yellow Hi-Liter?” Aria asked, sizing up the book. “Geez, this thing is falling apart. Hang on… let me skim this for a sec.”
“Sure, no problem, I’m not going anywhere.” Kate laid her weary head on the table, defeated.
“Wait, so the dudes are underwater with the dolphins?”
“Yeah. The humans learn how to breathe water. It’s actually a pretty cool description about how scared you would be to do it for the first time. They don’t quite breathe it directly, though. And anyway, what the hell would that have to do with our research? I don’t get it.” Kate sighed.
“Did you see this page toward the end? Something about a psi-attack? It’s a torturous thing or sound that gets inside your brain. And then look at his scribble, ‘like my Alzheimer’s—terrifying voices won’t go away. Pain.’”
“Sad, huh? Yes, Aria, I read that. When he was lucid he was aware how much the Alzheimer’s was taking its toll. Can you imagine how frightening it would be to know that your mind is literally being taken away from you, piece by piece, day after day?”
“It’s terrible, Kate. And the notebook? Hand it to me.”
“Sure, let’s see you figure this out.”
“Hmm yeah, Doodletown, USA, that’s for sure. And numbers—3.9 Celsius. Then 4.2. Then 3.9 again, but he goes and crosses that out? Epic amounts of indecision, right? And what are these in Fahrenheit? I’ve forgotten how to convert that.”
“About forty degrees Fahrenheit, Aria. We don’t do anything at that kind of temperature. Nothing. But he looks like he’s obsessed by these numbers.”
“And here,” Aria pointed, “more obsession, but temporary I guess. Two whole pages with O2 and O4 written all over, and then he crosses that all out violently.”
“Those are types of oxygen molecules, Aria. Common oxygen is O2. O4 doesn’t exist like he would have been thinking. And anyway, I don’t know why he’d be all worked up about it.”
“And here’s another page with those first numbers—the 3.9 C and 4.2 stuff. Wait, this guy has like zero art skills, Kate. Is this supposed to be an armadillo next to those numbers? Or maybe a turtle—what the fuck?” Aria handed the book back to Kate, apparently giving up on making any real sense of it. She grabbed her little hunk of black rosin and began tending to her violin bow.
“I don’t know. Probably a turtle. From what I’m told by a few coworkers, he seemed to be obsessing the last two weeks he was alive about all things water. He was dumping chemicals into fish tanks, talking about turtles, and then the damn dolphins from the book. Also, a few days before he was killed he had a run-in with the same cop who wound up being the first responder to the crash scene. Saltieri was at the YMCA pool telling little kids that he could breathe underwater.”
“What? That’s messed up.”
“Yeah, and he told them they could do it too if they weren’t afraid. A parent heard him, freaked out, and called the police. That cop kicked him out of the building.”
“Kate, have you ever been around someone with advanced Alzheimer’s? I have—my great-aunt had it. I helped take care of her for a while. It was tough. They can get far beyond the early-stage forgetfulness that most people associate with the term Alzheimer’s. The late-stage is really bad—hallucinations, severe paranoia—nasty stuff.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s it. I keep wishing that something will click in my brain, that the seemingly random crazy shit here in front of me means something, and somehow it can go from his addled brain into my supposedly healthy one, and I can proceed to use it.”
“Well, Kate, you should take a breather. You’re pretty blocked, right? Here, have some more wine and I’ll play for you. I’m taking requests and not even putting out the tip jar, okay? What will cheer you up? Maybe a Bach gigue? Some Telemann? Prokofiev? Some hoedown fiddle music? You name it.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now. Meh. You’re right, I can’t even think straight. I’m screwed. I should resign.”
“Jesus, just relax, okay? Take a deep breath and think of a song you like,” Aria said, yanking some loose hairs off of her bow.
“Okay, let me think. Oh hey, sure, I’ve got one. How about that Fritz Kreisler piece—what’s it called?”
“Oh, this one?” Aria put her violin to her chin, and her agile bowstrokes began spilling out the bold leaping double-stopped notes of the opening phrase, exaggerating the craggy descending hemiolas. “The Liebesfreud—that’s what you want? The one that sounds like horny mountain goats prancing proudly about with their enormous erections?”
“No, no, no! Jesus, Aria, goat erections? Are you ever truly serious? The other one—the companion piece. You know, the sad one. I love that tune.”
“You sure you want sad tonight, Kate? I could play you a polka and cheer you up. Or a pirate song?”
“No, play the Liebesleid. Love’s Sorrow, right? It’s so beautiful. I don’t care if it’s sad.”
“Okay, but this is the last tune for the night—I gotta put my baby back in its womb with the case humidifier. You run the AC so much my instruments are all drying out.”
“Sorry. I sure as heck couldn’t live in Florida.”
“Oh, I could. Florida or Costa Rica, somewhere warm like that. Anyway, here’s your little tune, sweetie.” Aria’s smile waned as she closed her eyes; she was entering the zone of silence out of which the great mystery of music emerges. She gently laid her bow on the D string and began simply, slowly—coaxing each note along so it joined with the next to make a phrase, then a little sentence. Limpid notes slid into each other here and there. The sentences grew by sequence into a story, a wordless story of love lost, the violin’s wistful soul echoing the secrets of the heart. Subtle shifts from major to minor were like tiny daggers, gently piercing the heart, yet for some reason there was no pain. Scars had been built to protect the one no longer loved, the abandoned one. A quicker tempo, a moment of hope in the middle section. Aria’s body swayed as she played louder, more vehemently. The violin was alive, singing sweetly, encouraging, pleading for love to return. But Kate already knew how the song ended; sadness returned, love indeed was lost, and yet somehow through this grief Aria’s sage two-hundred-year-old instrument arrived at the central vibration of truth—the pearl inside the shell, despair crystallized into strange beauty: the scarred heart was, miraculously, still beating. Aria released the last tiny note into the air and finally opened her eyes. She saw Kate hunched over the table, sobbing silently. Tears rolled down her cheeks, their saltiness touching her lips, spilling onto her paperwork, onto the torn and tortured copy of Startide Rising. Kate tried to wipe her tears away, but they kept coming in waves. Aria gently laid her magical violin in its case, walked back over behind Kate, and leaned over her, enfolding her. She held Kate for what seemed like an eternity.
Kate finally picked up her head and tried to swipe her matted hair away from her face, still very damp from all the tears. Aria moved back to the other side of the table, facing Kate.
“You okay now?” Aria asked.
A smile gradually blossomed across Kate’s face. She wiped the final tears away. She sighed, closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them, still smiling, looking deeply into Aria’s eyes. “Aria, I think I’ve got it. It just came to me. It was all there waiting for me to stop trying so hard.”
“What? You solved it? What Dr. Saltieri was trying to do? The crazy scribbles and walking out on a lake and then getting hit by a truck?”
“Yes, I think so. Ever put two and two together?”
“Of course. I think we did that in kindygarten, Kate. I’m going to get you a washcloth for your face. Keep talking. You’re sure you’re all right now?”
“Yes, completely. I owe you, girlfriend. You knocked down the wall. Anyway, Aria, I just put it together.”
“See? Two plus two, right? Who needs algebra and trig?”
“Exactly.”
“So come on, spill the beans. What’s it all about?”
“I still have to dig in, check stuff out. I’m pulling an all-nighter, wanna help?”
“Sure. But tell me something at least. You’re killing me here.”
“Okay. Dr. Saltieri was trying to cure his cancer himself. Nothing else was working. He was trying to find some kind of water-based cure.”
“What do you mean?”
“Eh, gotta research it more. But you helped, too.”
“Yeah? But I made you cry with that damn piece.”
“Yes, you did. And I tasted my tears, like it was the first time ever. That was the beginning of the epiphany. I tasted them and they were so salty and so wet. It was like I was inside my tears there for a moment, like I was inside a primordial sea. I was overwhelmed. And look at the book cover, some of my tears fell on it and I looked down and saw them—my tears on the people and the dolphins—and I thought of the people breathing under water in that weird chapter. It’s all about water, saline water. Stuff you can dissolve into water, too. Like Saltieri’s ‘solutions.’ Also, there’s a molecule he diagrammed in his scribbles that looked crazy to me. Never seen anything like it. I’m thinking now that it’s some weird water-soluble cancer drug. Something not approved in the US, perhaps? He had been to Mexico, but no one knows why he went. Anyway, then you added another clue.”
“What else did I do beside make you cry?”
“You said you wanted to put your violin, your baby, back in its womb. Keep it safe—keep it moist. The womb, the water, safety, all that and more. When you hugged me I could feel your heartbeat like I was in that womb and you were my mother. Aria, I think I can make Mike’s deadline. I’ve got three days. Do you really want to help me pull an all-nighter like I said?”
“For sure.”
“Okay, ready?”
“Yup. Kate, sweetie, do you remember when you were about to interview for this job and I was joking about third-eye cows?”
“Pretty hard to forget. Of course I do, Aria.”
“I think you just used your third-eye to get inside of all this. Cool, huh?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, let me bring my laptop out here. We’re gonna go ‘Gangnam Style’ on this, right, sistuh? What do you want me to Wikipedia first, Oh Enlightened One?”
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