Ben Cruz

This is the first chapter of my novel, Thermidor, a family saga and thriller. Part I I hadn’t seen Vanessa in many years, until she appeared at my doorstep with an old vinyl record and this crazy idea of looking for my missing father. That night I was in my house in San Francisco, ironing my shirts in my underwear, when I heard a knock at my door. One glance through the peephole, and I experienced the illusion of time dissolving with years turning into months, months into days, days into hours since I last saw her. I scrambled for a pair of pants and got to the door between the second and third knocks. Suddenly she was there, head tucked down, hand made in a fist, the other holding a leather satchel. I didn't remember her being so tall. If she wore heels, she would have been taller than me. I pronounced her name in the interrogative, as if to confirm she was really there. “Vanessa?” “Nick, my dear, are you happy to see me?” she said peeking over my shoulder, trying to see if I was alone. She sneaked into the foyer, looking like a lost hiker who had suddenly stumbled into a familiar crossroads, gazing at the familiar oil painting over the fireplace and the stained-glass decoration. “I can’t believe it! Same old house! Same old everything!” “Different decade,” I mumbled. As soon as we settled on my couch, she rattled off. In the intervening years, she had moved to LA, become a movie director (that I knew, for I had seen some of her documentaries, investigative reporting was her professional niche), married, bought a big house and a horse just before the Great Recession, divorced, sold the house and the horse, and now lived in a house in Manhattan Beach. Between pauses, she let me know she had meant to call, many times. I didn’t say anything, just listened, all nods and prompting eyebrows. “Do you remember how we used to hang out at Bobby’s garage? My gosh, we must have listened to those Shade Mann Bates records a thousand times! Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t moved to LA. Do you ever wonder about that?” “Vanessa, what are you doing here?” I finally asked. She leaned closer on the sofa until our knees touched. I felt the soft graze of her green eyes. “The thing is, I need a favor.” “Are you’re in trouble?” “I’m filming a documentary about your father and need your help.” I felt a sudden change in air pressure. My ears might have popped. “You see, when it comes to you father, I’ve arrived at one conclusion, we all talked the talk, but no one walked the walk. I mean, no one really looked for him!” My father had disappeared at the peak of his career after recording his most successful album almost thirty years ago. After he went missing, many people wondered why, but not for a long time. That is to say, it was old news. Vanessa must have known this, if nothing else, by the way I was looking at her, stupefied. “Tell me something, how come we never talked to Desmond Bates and Charlie Mann? If we wanted to find out about your dad, shouldn’t we have asked the people who knew him best?” I shook my head, as if to say, ‘I don’t know why,’ and she took it as a sign of acquiescence. “See what I mean!” She made no sense. However solid journalistic push off point this seemed today, talking to my father’s former bandmates when we were in high school would have been farfetched and out of the question. We were seventeen. I looked at Vanessa and imagined her slinking out of bed, sauntering to her kitchen, and standing barefoot on the tile, coffee mug in hand, slapping her forehead, and coming here in a whirlwind. Over the years, I’d become an expert dodger. I never volunteered for anything. As a student and now at work, my hand was kept firmly where it belonged, unraised, by my side. Strategic retreat was a core competency of mine. And yet, this time, I didn’t turn away even when I saw the wrecking ball coming straight at my face. “I found this in a second-hand store,” Vanessa searched a large leather bag and handed over a vinyl record with cover art of a stylized palm tree against a crepuscular sky. The record was by some obscure label called ‘Fiber Glass Sound.’ “Play it.” “Vanessa!” “Humor me.” I took the record and placed it on my turntable. The record began to rotate at a constant speed. “Skip to the third track.” I placed the needle over the second gap in the grooves and the circular motion began to unwind into a linear stream of sound. A jaunty little piece that sounded a bit grainy. Vanessa was listening attentively to the music, her head tilted slightly, until she perked up with avid eyes: “Wait, we’re getting to the good part…right there, that’s him playing.” Then it hit me. The characteristic phrasing. The familiar sound of a trumpet. “Look at the date on the cover.” The record was from 1995, many years after my father had gone missing. My father had gone missing when I was eight years old, and the mental reflux came up acidic. Even though I knew it was impossible this was him, as soon as I heard that trumpet, I felt a void in my stomach and had to excuse myself to throw water on my face. It was the accumulation of all those birthdays and graduations when I still waited for a card in the mail or a fatherly pat on the back that never came. Unsavory memories that the music brought to the forefront and precisely the reason why I had stopped listening to Shade Mann Bates. When I came back to the living room I stopped the music with a scratch, placed the vinyl record inside the cover and handed it back to her: “I stopped playing detective a long time ago. You’re wasting your time.” Vanessa stood up from the couch and came over to me. She placed her hand on my shoulder, her eyes lingering around my neck. “Aren’t you just a bit curious?” “Vanessa, I can’t stop you from doing this,” I said sounding more helpless than intended, “but I’m not going to be part of it. You’re wasting your time.” “But you heard it. You know what this means.” “That record doesn’t mean anything,” I said turning away for her, “…it could be anyone playing. It could be a remix.” “It means your father could be alive!” She was crazy. “I have money. I can pay you!” “I’m not interested in your money, Vanessa, I have a job.” Which I did, although not one I was keen about. For the past ten years, I had worked as a camera operator at a local TV station, a college internship turned into my long-term occupation. “Just imagine, we could be a team again,” she said drawing herself closer to me, “…like old times.” “Sure,…like old times,” I said thinking her recollection of high school might be different than mine. The idea of shooting a documentary about my father was preposterous. But if I was honest, there was something else bothering me, even beyond the absurdity of the project. I had seen Vanessa’s documentaries, and the prospect of unleashing the bloodhounds of investigative reporting on my father’s cold case made me nervous. I didn’t want to become Exhibit A, the proverbial son of the addicted music man involved in a pitiful display of moral introspection, or Exhibit B, the abandoned son of a jazz musician who had been famous back when phones still had cords attached to them and smoking was allowed at your primary physician’s office, trying to reconcile with his past, or Exhibit C, the opportunistic son of a bitch trying to capitalize on his father’s fleeting fame, gratuitously seeking attention thirty years later for no good reason. My involvement and willful contribution to Vanessa’s documentary was a sure bet to make me look pathetic. But that was not the biggest risk. What if she was right? I was truly scared of what she may find. “Nick, I can’t do this alone.” I could see her reframing her thoughts. “No one knows Shade Mann Bates better than you!” And the way she leaned against me gave the impression she was prepared to seduce me to get what she wanted. But then I noticed there were tears in her eyes. “Remember how in high school we were always talking about your father?” she asked introspectively, “I remember being so mad at him for leaving you. I couldn’t understand how he could have left his child behind. What you didn’t know was that Bobby and the other boys were jealous of you because you were unique. Your missing father gave you a depth other kids didn’t have. I don’t think there was a single day in our senior year when I didn’t think about you and your stupid father and the mystery of it all,” Vanessa paused, her gaze shifting downwards, “I know we haven’t talked in a long time, but my father passed away two months ago, and I could say the same thing about him. He never spent a night away from home, but he passed away a mystery. You want to know why? Because living day in and day out in a dreamlike trance, settling into a routine, going over the motions gets you nothing. It gets you nothing, Nick! My father was unwilling to let himself be known, even by his own family, and it made everyone in my house seem unreal. Certainly, less real than people you meet on the street. A few weeks after my father died, I had a beautiful dream. I dreamt I was standing on the side of a mountain with a higher one behind. It was a mountain range that resembled the ones little kids draw on paper that look like ragged teeth. I was there, on the face of this mountain in a state of elation, dizzied by its height, but unafraid. You know how dreams feel how real life should feel? Well, I was there, on this absolute mountain, capturing its essence, exalted by its majesty. I woke up inspired and then forgot about it. Later that morning, I went down to my kitchen and guess what was playing on the radio? Thermidor! The radio was playing Thermidor, Nick! At first, I didn’t understand what this meant. But then everything began to make sense. A few days later I found this record in a second-hand store. Can’t you see? This record means we can still find out what happened to your dad.” That night I promised to help her. As Vanessa left my house, she blew me a kiss and waved goodbye. I stood at the threshold. The front door opened just a sliver. Standing with my face flush against the wood panel, I watched Vanessa disappear into the streets of San Francisco, like I had watched her so many times before when we were young. And that night after I went to bed, I dreamt of a big mountain.

1.Story Statement: Nick sets out to film a documentary about his father, Martin Shade, a famous jazz musician who disappeared when Nick was eight years old. 2. Antagonist: The novel is plotted on three levels. The first level is Nick and his high school girlfriend, Vanessa Gibb, interviewing people who played a crucial role in Martin’s life. The story takes an unexpected turn when Nick and Vanessa discover a secret love affair and the existence of a musical instrument that used to belong to Martin and that everyone covets, which pits Nick against unknown antagonistic forces. The second plot line is Martin Shade playing in a racially-integrated jazz trio in the sixties, in Joe Erskine’s territory. Joe Erskine is the mafia-connected owner of the San Francisco club where Shade Mann Bates, Martin’s trio, plays nine months of the year. Everybody knows Erskine is ruthless in his business dealings and the club is a physical representation of himself, dark and sinister. Erskine is jealous of Martin, but prefers to keep him close by exploiting Martin’s drug addiction to keep him employed and dependent. When Martin’s reliability as a musician deteriorates, Erskine convinces his bandmates to replace him, sending Martin on a downward spiral that brings him face to face with the forces that are set to destroy him. The third sub-plot is a love triangle between Martin Shade, Nick’s mother and Desmond Bates, a brilliant Black pianist and Martin’s bandmate. As the two musicians compete for Marisa’s love, their friendship is tested. Conflict rises and intertwines with the other two plot lines to bring the novel to denouement. 3.Titles: “Thermidor” – Nick grew up listening to his father’s music and in particular to “Thermidor” an album recorded a few weeks before Martin Shade went missing, which became a jazz standard. Growing up, Nick suspected the album was related to his father’s disappearance. “Shade” – born Martin Shrader, Nick’s father changed his name to “Shade” when he moved to San Francisco from the East Bay to become a professional musician. “Glen Park” – the San Francisco neighborhood where the novel takes place and the name of Thermidor’s third track evoking a shared bus ride where Bates and Nick’s mother fell in love. 4.Genre: Thriller Comps: This story will resonate with readers who appreciated “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon for the quest with lively characters in vivid settings and "The Ocean at the End of the Lane," by Neil Gaiman by the way the novel weaves rich stories with imaginative and fantastical elements. Fans of the movie "Green Book" and the HBO series "Tremé" will also find affinities with this novel. 5. Write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound. Nick’s father disappeared thirty years ago after recording Thermidor. Now Nick must find out what happened to him and recover a trumpet that wields special powers. 6. Sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction. Central Conflict. Nick Shade is no stranger to loss. He grew up haunted by his father’s disappearance and stopped enjoying music after his mother died of cancer. When Vanessa Gibb asks for his help filming a documentary about his father, Nick has become complacent and is stuck in a job as a camara operator for a local TV channel. At first, he resists rekindling any hope of finding his father, but is seduced by Vanessa and agrees to help her on condition that they keep his identity secret - he does not want the spotlight on him. As they conduct interviews for the documentary, Nick hides behind the camera, as narrator and witness, the way he has lived his life so far, but progressively gains agency and is forced to take action. Hypothetical: Throughout the novel Nick remains conflicted about finding the truth, as disturbing as it may be, by delving deeper into his parents’ secret history. When he and Vanessa discover a love affair between his mother and Bates, despite his first impulse to deny it, Nick is gnawed by curiosity. Abetted by Vanessa, he breaks into Bates’ house in Bayou St. John in the middle of the night and steals his mother’s diaries. With this information they reconstruct the past and Nick’s struggle begins to distinguish reality from his imagination. Throughout the novel, Nick and Vanessa harbor feelings for each other, share tender moments and even consummate their long-lost love affair. However, Nick finds reality is not what it seems, and that Vanessa is part of a complex web weaved around him. To win, Nick must reconcile with his past and make peace with his lost father. Secondary Conflict Martin Shade and Desmond Bates are friends, bandmates and opposites. Martin is white, Bates is black. Martin is brash and impulsive, Bates is disciplined and thoughtful. They play in a jazz trio in the sixties when the Civil Rights are little more than fresh ink on paper. Hypothetical: While on tour in a town south of the Mason-Dixon a man hurts Bates for using the hotel swimming pool. Martin bludgeons and abducts the man to Bates’ horror who disapproves of violence but who is nonetheless grateful. Bates then repays the favor when Martin gets in trouble with Erskine. Their friendship is constantly tested and affected by social forces, especially when Bates and Marisa are attacked by three robbers who mistake them for an interracial couple when Bates is walking her home. 7. Settings: The first and third parts of the novel take place around San Francisco and New Orleans, present time. The second part of the novel which narrates the story of Martin Shade, takes place in San Francisco in the sixties. Santa Cruz – The novel opens in the coastal highway between San Francisco and Santa Cruz as Vanessa and Nick are traveling to meet with Charlie Mann, the ex-drummer of Shade Mann Bates. The coastal terrain is menacing, with sharp drops, reflecting they are stepping into the unknown. In Half Moon Bay, Vanessa sees herself in a young surfer girl paddling in the ocean. Later on, they visit the Santa Cruz Boardwalk with its throwback Seafair and Nick feels the past insinuating itself as if seeping through a crack in time. New Orleans - next they head to meet with Desmond Bates and arrive at the French Quarter at mid-night in the middle of a thunderstorm. They take refuge in haunted hotel. Bates, who is originally from the South, has moved back home in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Bayou St. John, the French Quarter and the St. Louis Basilica are central to the action, especially when Nick plays his father’s trumpet with a young brass band on Jackson Square. Glen Park – described as the foggy lands west of Twin Peaks, Glen Park is a middle-class neighborhood in San Francisco where Vanessa and Nick grew up and where most of the action takes place. This is also the setting for Martin Shade’s backstory. The Black Hawk - is the San Francisco club owned by Erskine, always dark no matter the time of day with back alleyways where hunched figures lurk while getting a fix.