Chapter 6

"Hi, Tom, did you have a good time last night?" Lori asked me perkily as I opened the door.

It was ten in the morning, and we had been out until three AM the night before. I had no idea how the hell she seemed so happy to see me; I was badly hung over and crashingly tired. I only woke up to her knocking because I had fallen asleep on a throw rug. She was dressed like she was going out for a run. I was dressed in what I had been wearing the night before.

"It looks like you fell asleep on the floor," she told me. "You have some sort of pattern pressed into the side of your face."

"Mmmm, yeah," was my grumbling response. I was trying to give an impression of being awake, but I have never been good at impressions.

"Anyway, I just wanted to stop by and ask if you’d like to grab some dinner this evening?"

"I’d love the idea," I replied with a tired smile, wondering why she had to ask me now instead of much closer to the time we would eat.

"Great! Come on up around six."

"Mmm-kay."

She walked down the stairs as I closed the door. I wandered across my apartment to the window in order to look at the day. It was bright and sunny again, the sort of day that puts people in a good mood. I, of course, was not in a good mood, but I was in a moderately better mood now that I would be dining with Lori. However, I decided the day would be best served to be happy on its own for a while and I adjourned myself to bed until noon.

#

At six o’clock, I walked upstairs to meet Lori. I knocked on the door a couple of times before I heard feet walking across the floor. Andrew opened it, welcomed me and invited me inside.

"You can feel free to have a seat. Lori’s in the shower," he told me. I sat down on the couch as he walked toward the window and exited onto his own wrought iron porch where he had a cigarette waiting for him.

I stood up and approached the window. "I thought you smoked indoors."

"I’m allowed to smoke inside, yes, but I prefer to smoke outside. It keeps the place from smelling bad."

"I wouldn’t figure you would notice the smell, what with the fact you’re a smoker."

"Despite what you might imagine, I am well aware of the unpleasant odor emitted by cigarettes."

"It seems to work," I acknowledged, "I’ve never really noticed anything the other times I’ve been here."

"Well then, I’m doing something right," he said matter-of-factly.

"Why did you smoke inside every other time I’ve been here?"

"Lori chews me out every time I smoke outdoors."

"Why?" was my confused question.

"She keeps saying this is my apartment too and she doesn’t want to put me out and I should feel free to be comfortable in my own place and so on. Eventually, I just caved to her insisting and now I smoke inside when she’s here and outside when she’s not. It’s nice during the winter, but the rest of the year I’d just as soon do it outside. Uh oh, the water stopped." He stood up and picked up his ashtray as he put the bare remains of his cigarette out into it before stepping inside.

Lori walked out of the shower, wearing, from what I could tell, nothing but a towel wrapped around her. "Oh, hi Tom," she told me on the quick walk between the bathroom and bedroom.

My eyes, of course, were about popping out of my head and my imagination began working overtime. I turned to look at Andrew, who was staring at the area Lori had just vacated as he pulled out another cig. With a look over at me, he put it into his mouth, then rubbed his hands together as he leaned down toward the coffee table where his lighter was sitting. With a raised eyebrow, he told me, "She does that a lot."

"Coming out of the bathroom with nothing but a towel?"

"Mm-hm," he said after a long drag.

I couldn’t do anything but shake my head in disbelief and hope that I would be there for a few more of those trips. Then, in one of those shifts common to the flow of consciousness, I asked, "Didn’t Lori spend the night at Ray’s last night?"

"Yeah. Yeah she did."

"Okay, I thought I remembered her and Ray leaving us sometime during the evening."

"Have a lot to drink last night?"

"You could say that. I thought everybody else did too, but Lori was knocking on my door at ten this morning and she was positively chipper."

"You’re going to find that Lori is pretty energetic; when she’s awake, she’s awake one hundred percent."

The bedroom door opened and Lori, fully dressed, practically bounded out the door with a happy, "Well, that was a little embarrassing."

"What’s that?" I asked her.

"Oh, just crossing over into the bedroom with just the towel," she explained in a way that did not sound the least bit embarrassed. "Are you boys ready to go?"

#

Dinner was at a nearby pub and the return to unseasonable warmth made for a pleasant walk there. Lori and Andrew both seemed to agree on where to go without saying a word, so I figured it must have been a familiar haunt for them.

The place really didn’t have any sort of sign. It wasn’t until a bit later, when I had picked up a menu, that I found out the name of the place was Weddleman’s.

Weddleman’s was sitting on the corner of two streets. What could best be described as glass partition walls were folded back on each outside wall, allowing the warm spring air to permeate the entirely open interior. A polished wooden bar looped a bisecting horseshoe through the large room. The walls of the pub were lined with booths and the floor space was filled with round tables and appropriate chairs. It was what one would hope and expect a neighborhood hangout to be.

The slowly waning early evening lit the place much more effectively than the sparse, hanging lamps within. Two older, grandfatherly types were playing checkers on one of the tables bridging the gap between outside and inside. Nearby were two tables pushed together for seven college-aged kids who were drinking and laughing loudly.

One of the old men playing checkers looked up from the game as we walked past, giving a nod to Andrew and Lori with the amiable familiarity of someone you see all the time but don’t really know. Andrew gave a nod back and Lori gave them a broad smile and a, "Good evening, gentlemen," which made the first man’s opponent turn around and give a little smile and wink to Lori.

The bartender, washing glasses, looked up as soon as he heard Lori speak. He smiled as he announced, "Good to see you, Lori!" She turned her smile to the bartender as she walked up to the bar and sat down.

"How are you today, Dennis?" she asked him.

"Doing pretty good," he replied, "and how about yourself?"

"Fantastic, I went wandering around town today."

"Again?"

"Absolutely. With a nice day like this, I couldn’t resist. Did you do anything exciting today?"

Dennis gave a laugh as he said, "You are looking at my excitement for the day. I started here at noon and that’s all I’ve done," he responded before turning his attention to Andrew. "Hey there, how are you doing Andrew?"

"Doing well, can I get some menus?" Andrew talked in the tone of someone addressing an indifferent acquaintance.

"Sure," he said as he reached under the counter, produced the menus and handed them the Andrew.

Andrew gave a polite, "Thank you," before heading off. I figured I should follow him, but Lori immediately introduced me with, "By the way Dennis, this is Tom, a fine young gentleman I have the honor of sharing an apartment building with after he just moved in about a week ago. Tom, this is Dennis, bartender, drinkmixer, occasionally roving waitstaff and host extraordinaire."

Dennis greeted me in an indifferently amiable way and offered his hand to shake, which I did. We exchanged a couple general pleasantries before he turned his attentions back to Lori. I stood there a bit uncomfortably unsure where to go for a few seconds before turning around to go sit down with Andrew.

He lit another cigarette just as I sat in the chair opposite his. It was a nice location, right next to the sidewalk. The sun was setting behind me and Andrew was wearing a pair of sunglasses to compensate. His menu was lying closed in front of him.

I picked up the menu sitting in front of me and studied it for a little bit. "Anything you recommend here?" was a question not so much for the purpose of making conversation as much as actually finding out what was good.

Andrew looked back at me and said, "If you don’t eat much spicy food, don’t even think about the blackened catfish."

"I see. Just so I know, who do I give my order to?"

"Talk to Dennis at the bar."

"Got it." I started perusing the choices on the menu. "This is quite a menu for a bar," I observed, "At least it is for the bars I’m used to."

"They share a kitchen with the Heidelberg."

"And the Heidelberg would be?"

"The restaurant next door."

"I see. That seems a bit unusual." Being new to this city, for all I knew it could have been normal for a bar and restaurant to share one kitchen.

"It’s very unusual."

"Then how did they end up with that setup?"

"Well, the Heidelberg is a nice restaurant that serves traditional German fare," Andrew began offhandedly. "It’s always been that way, probably always will be. However, a little while back some members of the family that owns it wanted to cook some different dishes. Basically, they wanted to try a more Americanized, eclectic collection of menu items. They also wanted to make a lot of cash, which they weren’t going to do with a traditional German restaurant. I mean really, how often do you think to yourself, ‘I could really go for some schnitzel and sauerkraut’?" he asked me rhetorically. "Anyway," he continued, "the older generation said, ‘nein,’ so they asked the bar next door if they could work out something, which, obviously, they did. Hi Lori, finished catching up with Dennis?"

"Quite," she answered happily.

"And how’s he doing?"

"Fantastic, school’s treating him well."

"What school is he in?" I asked her.

"Columbia Law School."

"No kidding?" was my response. He didn’t look the type, though I have to imagine working behind a bar was a very good way to not look like a prospective lawyer.

"Oh yes, he’s very excited; can’t wait to graduate."

"How long until that happens?"

"Next year."

"So why is he working as a bartender?"

"So he doesn’t have to be poor in the meantime."

"I suppose I should have known that."

"Do you want me to take the requests up?" Andrew interrupted.

"Sure, why not?" Lori replied.

We each gave him our orders, which he summarily walked up to the bar.

"Last night I seem to remember people talking something about Andrew trying out for something, what was that all about?"

"He’s trying out for the New York Philharmonic orchestra again this year."

"He tried out for it before?"

"He has for the last four years."

"Oh yes, I remember you telling me that, now."

Andrew returned to the table right then, whereupon I asked him "So what is this I hear about you trying out for the orchestra?"

Andrew looked at Lori in an admonishingly inquisitive way, to which she returned an impish little grin. "Well," he explained, "about this time every year, as I’m sure our dinner companion has informed you, I provide the New York Philharmonic Orchestra with the opportunity to refuse to allow me into their ranks. Tryouts have, in case you had not guessed, not been too kind."

"Why?" I inquired.

"Apparently I’m not quite up to snuff."

"Oh please," Lori interjected, then turned to me with, "Don’t listen to him, he’s excellent. He’s better than anybody playing in their cello section." She rubbed the back of his arm as she told him, "If they’d had an opening recently, I guarantee you would have been the one to fill it."

"You know as well as I do that they could move me in and move somebody else down," Andrew responded with an affable cynicism.

"Yes, but present administration is big on cohesiveness from year to year. You can’t move ahead of anybody when they aren’t moving anybody out," he replied to her.

"Just so I know, are they something other than the Met?" I asked.

"Yes, the Met is the Metropolitan Opera. Unfortunately, they send invitations to their prospects. I’m not on the list, so I’m out of luck in that direction."

"Which is bad for them because he happens to know their music better than they do," Lori added.

Andrew looked back at her disappointedly before casting his eyes downward and deliberately lighting another cigarette. "It’s getting pretty hard to believe that, you know," he said plainly before giving an uncomfortable smile that fought through something that obviously bothered him a great deal. "I’m still managing to make a living playing the cello, though, so I shouldn’t complain."

"I understand you’re in a string quartet and a… What was it? Chamber orchestra?" I asked him.

"Yes, those two and I occasionally find some work when people are putting together unusual ensembles for specific pieces. Those are a lot of fun, they give me a chance to do some different things."

"And he tries out for those ensembles and gets the spot ahead of anybody currently playing at either the Met or the Orchestra."

"But I have plenty of time to practice the music before tryouts because the other two groups I am with have to play familiar pieces," he told her before explaining to me, "We get the shows we do because that’s what people want to hear, the familiar."

"Where do you play?"

"Mostly at private concerts and society events and that sort of thing. You can pretty well count on making your way around the same scheduled events year-to-year."

"Sounds like you’ve carved out a nice little niche for yourself."

"Yeah, it works; but when you have bigger goals, that niche can seem awfully small," Andrew told us before realizing he was being rather depressing. He brightened, for Andrew, and brushed off the previous conversation, saying, "But, anyway, that’s neither here nor there. Tom, tell me about Kansas City. I’ve passed through there, but I’ve never really been there. What’s it like?"

The food arrived at that point and we sat, talked and generally enjoyed each others’ company until, finally, night fell and we returned home.