Thermidor - Opening Scene -

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.