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TWO
Despite
certain traumatic memories, baseball maintains a solid second place among my
passions, and during my recent travels I have even become something of a ball
magnet. At Wrigley Field, Brian McRae
nearly took my head off with a foul drive to the lower box seats. At Camden Yards, Geronimo Berroa lifted a
pop-up to the upper deck railing, where an unprepared patron had the courtesy
to fumble it neatly into my hands twenty feet below (and visited us the next
inning to retrieve his sunglasses, which also took the plunge). Finally, in Kansas City, I played a Terry
Steinbach ricochet with the forward thinking of an all-star shortstop, watching
patiently as the mob two rows behind me fumbled the ball forward then
crab-stepping along the row to pluck it out as it rolled under the seats.
The day
after Rosina, I walked out of the Elliott Bay Bookstore and wandered south
through the fine old brick buildings of Pioneer Square. I rounded a corner and was pleasantly
surprised by the ugly concrete carcass of the Seattle Kingdome, a pre-game fan
congregation around the ticket lines, and those beer company Clydesdales
trotting around the back of the stadium.
Looked like an invitation to me.
My seat was
five rows back in the right field bleachers, so I felt fairly safe, but I
should have known better, and it sure would have been nice to have had a
glove. I was squeezed next to a tunnel
leading into the concessions area, and when the Orioles’ Brady Anderson came up
in the top of the eleventh inning he hit a screaming drive right at me. I hung onto the railing with my right hand
and leaned out across the mouth of that tunnel, but found that my left hand,
unadorned by leather, was about as useful as a big, wet tuna. The ball struck my palm and continued barely
abated into the tunnel, followed by a wild, echoing scramble of prepubescent
footsteps.
Still,
glorious failure was glorious nonetheless (as Custer might have said), and I
had to hide my odd, excited glow as I picked my way through a mob of pissed-off
hometown fans. I stopped briefly under a
streetlight to study the red half moon across my homer-blessed palm, searching
in vain for signs of baseball stigmata – stitchmarks, perhaps even the
signature of the American League president.
It was a nice little wound, but believe me, it could have been worse.
I hurried
back toward the downtown area, hoping to pick out some sports bar where I could
watch a television replay (I would surely be highly visible, stretched out
across the tunnel for my unsuccessful grope).
The only spot I could find, however, was a dive bar called Maisey’s,
smelling of well-earned, multi-ethnic B.O.
A sign over the taps listed a dozen house rules, beginning with “No
drugs allowed on premises” and “Absolutely NO weapons!” I bolted the first
one-dollar beer I’d possibly ever purchased, trying hard not to look too white
or too educated, then continued back to the Sheraton.
The game
had run pretty late, and by the time I got back to my room all the news shows
were done, so it appeared I’d miss the media commemoration of my public
flogging. Worse, however, was waking up
the next morning to find my left hand completely flesh-colored, bearing not a
single trace of the previous evening’s trauma.
There was
only one appropriate response to this larceny of memory, and that was
caffeine. I showered and headed east for
Cafe Trademark. Along the way I spotted
a hair salon, reminding me of other recent profound events, and found myself
whistling bits of the “Barber” overture as I entered the cafe. A tall girl at the counter gave me the side
of her eyes, then faced front with a full customer-service smile.
“Bongiorno,
signore. What’ll ya have?”
“Un
espresso con panna,” I half-sang, raising a handful of backward fingers to get
just the right inflection.
“Little
cioccolata on top?”
“Mille
grazie.” I clinked my change into the tip jar and retired to a far corner, then
realized immediately that the heat produced by the coffee machines had settled
there like an inversion layer. I moved
to a spot near the front windows instead and opened a copy of The Stranger to
the personals, amusing myself with the many exotic variations and acronyms,
feeling all the while like I was forgetting something. Or something was forgetting me. Or that the strips of pockmarked hardwood at
my feet were sending me coded signals and I had left my decryption device in
the car.
A couple of
gloriously gay Broadway Avenue boys came in just then, attacking the girl at
the counter with a ballet of high-toned repartee and loose-limbed
gestures. She laughed, shaking the ring
of shoulder-length red hair that framed her face.
I realized
I was staring and shook myself out of it, checking out the astrology page under
Capricorn. “I don’t know about you,
Cap….”
V-shaped
chin, slightly upturned nose…
“You’ve
been getting signals as big as the Goodyear….”
Large, expressive
mouth, high cheekbones…
“Blimp and
yet you keep cruising down the interstate like a….”
Wide, ripe,
lips, a slight crease in the top…
“trucker on
intravenous No-Doz. You’d better.…”
Cat-like
face... and...
“Pull into
the next station for some nachos before you….”
I checked
the whipped cream on my espresso and found a sprinkling of chocolate
like... freckles! Then looked to the counter and found my final
confirmation. The tall girl glanced at
something in my direction with eyes the color of walnut shells, then one of the
Broadway boys told her a joke and she rolled them upward in the universal
expression of teenage girldom.
With my
eyes I played a little game of dress-up, taking away her shock of red and
replacing it with a mane of long, thick umber, and there she was, my diva. The mere sight of her brought back entire
passages of music.
The grasp
of her identity made me suddenly wary of looking her way at all. I forced my eyes out the window and found
myself staring at a zaftig woman in a blue plaid shirt reading an Isaac Asimov
novel. When she, in turn, found me
looking at her and smiled back, I locked my gaze instead on the paper I was no
longer reading. My innocent instruments
of sight had suddenly become politically charged projectiles, and after two
minutes and a few fully comprehended words, I decided that this was getting
really ridiculous. Clearly, I would have
to face the idea that keeping my sweet little Italian ward a non-speaking,
ever-singing fantasy stage figure was something no longer in the realm of
possibilities. I gave myself a mental
slap on the cheek and headed toward the counter, where she stood fully prepared
to continue our previous conversation.
“Bongiorno,
signore! You’ve come back.”
“Si,
signorina. I wish to...”
“You want
seconds?”
“Er, no,
I...”
“You want a
muffin, perhaps. Or a peanut butter
cookie.”
“Please,
no, really, I...”
I found
myself completely abandoned by the English language, and as my stammering
silence drew itself out I could see a fringe of suspicion working its way over
Gabriella’s shoulder like a shadow. I
picked up a napkin from the counter, folded it in half and said, “Una voce poco
fa, qui nel cor mi risuonò.”
Gabriella
looked at me with all the glowing affection of an IRS auditor. “Uh-huh,” she said.
“You
are... Rosina?”
“Sometimes.”
“Of
course,” I said. “Gabriella. I’m Bill, Bill Harness.” I extended a hand
over the counter; she shook it insincerely.
“I’m
sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to bother
you, but I saw you perform the other night, and you have an incredible voice.”
“Mille
grazie,” she said, then squinted her eyes as if she were developing a
headache. “Look. Bill.
I’m sorry if I seem less than delighted at the recognition, but I have
sort of a Clark Kent complex around here.
Otherwise I tend to attract middle-aged men with diva fantasies.”
“Could I
talk to you later? I want to talk about your voice.”
Her squint
got narrower. “You didn’t hear me, did
you, Bill?”
“Hmm?”
“What I
said before. Just now.”
We were
interrupted by a young Indian couple who ordered a couple of iced
cappuccinos. I slipped a dollar in the
express refill bucket and poured myself a house decaf as I decided whether to
be offended by Gabriella’s last comment.
I came to the conclusion that Gabriella Compton could be the meanest,
evilest she-bitch in the Northern Hemisphere and I wouldn’t care less. As long as she was the gatekeeper to that
glorious instrument of hers, I would tear my way through any abuse she could
dish out.
She handed
the Indian couple their drinks and turned to the back sink, pretending to wash
something as she avoided my gaze.
Finally she turned back around and looked me over with folded arms and
pursed lips.
“Still
here, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Need
anything? Carrot juice? Double mocha? Almond biscotti?”
I saluted
her with my decaf and smiled.
“Nope. I’m fine.”
She leaned
over the counter and clicked her nails across the surface like horse’s
hooves. “So. You want to talk. What about?”
“Your
voice, as I said. Your acting. And opera.
About the second ‘ma’ you threw into ‘Io sono docile.’ About those
bell-like staccatos you throw around like ping-pong balls, and the way your
mezzo voce reminds me of Montserrat Caballe with its clean, easy grace, and
that three-pulse trill you stole from Tebaldi.”
Gabriella
was working hard to maintain her untrusting squint, but I could tell I had at
least caught her attention. She waved a
dismissing hand in front of her face.
“I’m sure
you could have picked all that up from books, or album sleeves, or maybe one of
the regulars at the opera.”
“Maybe.”
Her eyes
went to the door. “Oh. Hold on a minute.” She walked to the end of
the counter and motioned the dairy delivery guy to the swinging doors of the
kitchen. He pulled in a crateful of Half
‘n’ Half and set it down next to the cooler.
Then she came back to me. Her
eyes were a little more open now, but she was still running up the numbers in
her head. She took a sourdough bagel
from a pile on the counter and loaded it into a small steel cylinder. Then she took a smaller cylinder, this one
armed at one end with a sharp triangular blade, and positioned it inside the
larger cylinder. And then she looked at
me.
“Name a
French opera that takes place in Seville.”
“Carmen,” I
said. Gabriella slammed down on the
cylinder, and out the other end popped the bagel, neatly sliced in two. She loaded up another.
“Name the
tenor smuggler from that opera.”
“Le
Remendado.”
Again she
slammed the cylinder. Again the bagel
came out the other end, neatly bisected.
She loaded in another.
“A singer’s
primary range is known as a...”
“Tessitura.”
Slam! This
time, a poppyseed.
“The
original name of Rigoletto was...”
“Triboletto.”
Slam! Oat
bran.
“Cast me in
a major role.”
“Lucia di
Lammermoor.”
“Or?”
“Susanna in
‘Figaro.’ Maybe Gilda.”
“How about
Cio-cio-san?”
“You’re not
ready.”
Slam!
French onion.
“The
trouser role in ‘Der Rosenkavalier.’“
“Octavian.”
Slam!
“You’re
writing a new opera. Where do you take
it?”
“Houston.”
Slam!
“Pronounce
‘Eugene Onegin’ in Russian.”
“Yev-GHEN-nee
Oh-NYAY-ghin.”
Slam!
Gabriella
paused, a bit winded, to study her remaining bagels. “God, you’re tough,” she mumbled, then loaded
in a cinnamon raisin. “Okay, how about
this. ‘Die Zauberflöte’ and ‘Fidelio’
are both examples of...”
“Singspiels.”
“Which
are?”
“Austro-German
operas in which musical scenes are divided by passages of spoken dialogue.”
Slam!
“Okay. You’re casting for a studio recording of
‘Tosca.’ Callas or Tebaldi?”
“Tebaldi.”
Slam!
By now it
was clear that I had already passed Gabriella’s test. Down to one last blueberry bagel, however,
she was determined to stump me at least once.
She flipped her final victim ring-toss-style onto her index finger, slid
it into the cylinder, leveled her eyes at me like she had me for sure and said,
“The name... of Tebaldi’s... poodle!”
I took the
last sip from my decaf and set it on the counter. “New First,” I answered.
Gabriella
meant to welcome her blueberry bagel to the guillotine with a frustrated sotto
voce gasp of “Shit!” but instead the word took on concert wings and flew from
her larynx on a bright A-sharp, fluttering around the room and alarming the
customers before it escaped out the front door.
Its owner flashed me an embarrassed grin.
“Whuh-oops!
Don’t you hate it when that happens?”
“Never
happens to me.”
“Didn’t
think so. Look. I’m convinced. You are really into this shit. Tell you what. I’ve got a meeting with the music director
this afternoon on Bainbridge. There’s a
coffeehouse called Pegasus, on the waterfront, two blocks down from the
theater. Meet me there at six, and we’ll
talk about my voice.” She aimed a finger at my nose. “Just don’t turn into a creep, okay?”
“Wouldn’t
think of it.”
“Good. Now get outta here, wouldja? I’m liable to
let out another note and scare all these fine folks away.”
I was
already on my heels, turning for the door.
“Addio, Gabriella,” I said, and made my way to Broadway for a sandwich.
* * *
The day
felt extraordinary, so I sought to make it more so. After donning my tidiest leisure clothes, I
took the ferry to Winslow and, heading straight for the docks, found a nice
seafood place called the Madrona. I sat
beneath a royal blue umbrella on the back deck, ordered a martini straight up
(two olives), a bowl of cream-of-mushroom soup,
and a plate of steamed mussels.
I directed my gaze out over the silver-plated water.
One
directionless hour later, I migrated the few yards next door to the Pegasus, a
comfortable-looking brick building with a side patio bordering on a
construction site. Not exactly
picturesque, but I needed that shorefront breeze to keep me cool.
Gabriella
arrived an hour later, giving off charged ions from her meeting. Our conversation began something like Carmen
feeling for the sore spots in Don José, only what she seemed to be looking for
in me was not blind devotion but a certain set of opera aesthetics. For an even half an hour we discussed the
major sopranos of the 20th century, and I learned to watch for the pointed
dagger of her opinions. After having a
couple of my favored singers labeled “shouters and screamers,” I opted for a
more passive approach, sitting back while Gabriella gave her opinions first,
then wedging mine in alongside, wherever they might fit. (After all, I might have my paltry opinions
and my well-trained ear, but I didn’t have her voice.)
After
dispensing with the prima donnas (a mere ten percent of whom met Gabriella’s
standards), we ran through a long menu of operatic debates: musicality versus
theatricality, verismo versus bel canto, German versus Italian (she fell
strongly in the Italian camp), the viability of placing classic operas in
modernized settings (a practice she was strongly against), and the eternal
struggle between conductors and singers.
An hour later, I finally got to my point.
“So, no
offense to the State Ferry Opera Company, Gabriella, but what are you doing
here?”
Gabriella
gave me that squinty-eyed stare again (this was obviously her trademark gesture);
after an hour and a half of carefully paced confiding I had nevertheless
managed to trip a switch. She broke off
a chunk of raspberry scone and placed it in her mouth, chewing it slowly while
she added up my motives.
“Why would
you ask me that?”
I ran a
finger across my sunglasses on the table.
“Because your voice... and I’m
sorry, I don’t know how to say this without gushing, and I swear I am not a man
who gushes. Your voice is an immaculate
instrument, divinely played. You do
things on a stage I’ve never seen or heard before. Your performance contains all the adrenaline
and vigor of your youth, and yet you seem to approach the score with all the
craft and forethought of a singer ten, fifteen years older. Talent like that appears out of place at the
State Ferry Opera Company, no matter how noble their ambitions.”
“Well,” she
said. “I will tell you. But it’s not a simple answer.” She crossed
her legs and leaned back in her chair, eyeing a French cabaret poster above my
head. “Reason One: sheer numbers. Sopranos are a lira a dozen in this bidness,
and Lord knows you’d better get used to the burn of the branding iron before
you throw yourself into the herd. Reason
Two: politics. In case you hadn’t
noticed, I use some old-fashioned coloratura techniques that don’t always fly
these days.”
“Yes. I wondered about that. Where did that come from?”
“Maestro.”
“Maestro?”
“Giuseppe
Umbra, my teacher. We call him
Maestro. He is ninety-three years old
going on twenty-four, and he used to work with Puccini.”
I thought I
had missed something there. My eyes
began to blink without my permission.
“You mean... he specializes in
Puccini.”
“No,” she
said. “He worked as an assistant to
Puccini during his last years at his summer home in Torre del Lago. Puccini was working on ‘Turandot’ at the time
– and dying of lung cancer. Isn’t that
hideous? It was cigars that did it. I have nightmares about that.”
“No doubt.”
“Yes. And singers were flocking there from all over
to learn Puccini’s vocal methods. He
could no longer demonstrate his vocal lines for his students, so he used
Maestro’s voice instead.”
I ran a
hand through my hair. “So let me get
this straight. Your training basically
comes directly from Puccini, and yet the folks at the operas don’t like the way
you sing.”
Gabriella
put a hand flat to the table and fixed on me with wide eyes. “I have scores that I work with, that have
notations written in the margins by Puccini himself. And nobody likes my voice.”
“Well I
certainly do.”
“Grazie. But the big companies, they want
belters. And shouters. They want rock stars, they want big jumbo-jet
sopranos who can stop traffic, cause sonic booms and fill up stadiums.”
“That’s
stupid.”
“Yes. And that’s why I’m here. Maestro has his studio here on Bainbridge,
and he’s the artistic director of the company.
I’m here to learn roles, and get better and better, and maybe return a
little bel canto to the big opera houses.”
“Excuse me
a minute,” I said. “I’ve been here for
three hours and four drinks, and I need to.…”
“See a man
about a horse?”
“Yeah,
that’s right,” I said with a broad smile.
When I
returned, Gabriella was scanning a book I’d picked up about Pacific Northwest
history. Without looking up from the
page she asked, “So what are you doing here?”
I had
neglected to think of an answer ahead of time, so the one I gave sounded very
hollow and left a gummy film on my teeth.
“I’m visiting some friends in town.”
“And where
are you visiting from?”
“Back
east.”
“Where?
Korea?”
I watched
her until she set down the book and granted me her eyes. “Can we go back to opera trivia?” I asked.
“Well
that’s a hell of an attitude. Here I am
pouring out my little coloratura heart for you, and you can’t name me a state
of origin?”
“Try
something else.”
“Okay.” She
held an arm up by the elbow and tapped a finger against her cheek. “What do...
or did, you do for a living?”
“I’m an
umpire.”
“Pardon?”
“An
umpire. Baseball? Balls and strikes?”
“Yeah,
right. And I’m Sam Ramey.”
“Care to
try another?”
Gabriella
turned to look inside at the clock above the kitchen, hiding her face behind a
letter-size sheet of red hair.
“Actually, I have to get going.
The next ferry leaves in fifteen minutes.”
“Can I come
with you?”
“I don’t
know. Are you becoming a creep yet?”
I ran a
hand over my mouth and jawline. “I don’t
seem to be sprouting fangs. And my
facial hair appears to be growing at a normal rate.”
“Are you a
tenor?”
“I am but a
weak baritone.”
“Okay. A baritone I can trust. And an umpire, to boot.” Gabriella let out a
“Die Fledermaus” stage laugh and headed into the cafe, leaving me trailing in
her wake.
* * *
Standing on
the top deck, I was pleased to find that Gabriella shared my maritime
tendencies. I joined her at the railing,
where she stood with her face toward Seattle, her eyes narrowed pleasurably
against the stiff Puget breeze.
“You look
like the Flying Dutchwoman.”
“Der
Fliegende Hollandfrau. I lo-ove this
wind. Maestro tells me to ride down
below and protect my throat, but how can I when it feels like... this?”
“Well put,”
I said with a smile.
Gabriella
turned away from the wind to study me, blinking her eyes in some sort of
self-generated brain teaser, then just as suddenly reached out to jab a finger into
my chest.
“You! It’s
you!”
“Me? What?”
And tried not to think, “The woman who sang Rosina two nights ago is jabbing
her finger into my chest.”
“That
thousand-dollar check they found in the fishbowl this weekend. That was you!”
I was
determined to steer clear of this particular subject. I fixed her with an even stare and said, “I
don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gabriella
wasn’t buying it. “Oh, Bill Harness, you
are a piece of work, aren’t you? The nobleman parades amongst the commoners disguised
as a poor student. ‘Bongiorno,
signorina. My name is Lindoro. My name is Gualtier Maldè. How’s it hangin’?’ And the question I have to
ask now is, are you in fact the good and sweet Count Almaviva, or are you
perhaps the evil, two-timing, well-dressed Duke of Mantua?”
I held up
my hands, collecting the wind.
“Neither. I swear. I’m a baritone, Rosina, maybe I am Figaro,
Largo al factotum, and I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you more than that.”
She gave me
yet one more well-aimed squint, then turned without a word to the emptiest
portion of the horizon, where the sound crooks a northwest finger past Port
Townsend toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
“It’s so
dark out there,” she said, speaking not necessarily to me but to the
water. “I want to gather up all that
darkness, swallow it down piece by piece, and then sing it.”
I was
content to let the moment settle, but Gabriella was not. She gave a linebacker’s slap to my shoulder
and said, “Come on, let’s go up front and watch the skyscrapers sprout.”
I followed
Gabriella into the wind, and the blossoming aurora over the steering house, but
not before I stole a starboard glance at her singable darkness. I was either in heaven or in hell, but I felt
remarkably alive.
Photo by MJV
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