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“The Fading” was a finalist in our recently concluded 70th Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author.

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photo by Iryna Olar/pexels.com

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The Fading

by Noah Evan Wilson

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Jean

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…..Tonight is the night she invites me in.

…..As we approach the gate of her apartment complex, Sara slows her pace and turns to me, slips her fingertips from three layers of sleeve and pulls down her scarf. Her nose is cherry-red, her lips dry and cracked. Her breath condensates around the words, “Do you want to come up?”

…..For three months we’ve walked the same route home after work, near each other if not together. We were neighbors before we were co-workers, and now we are friends—albeit work friends—on the precipice of becoming more.

…..In the entryway we tap the toes of our boots against the baseboards, knocking off clumps of snow. I unwrap my scarf, pull off my gloves and hat, and self-consciously run a hand through my flattened hair.

…..“Jean, your hand! It’s purple,” she says.

…..“I ought to buy better gloves,” I say, laughing, thrusting my hands into my coat pockets.

…..“Come on,” she says, “you can run them under some warm water upstairs.”

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Henri

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…..Hunched over the kitchen sink, my son unhooked a safety pin and held it over a flame. Then one by one, opened the blisters on his right index and middle fingertips. Then those on his four left fingertips.

…..I couldn’t see his face, only his broad shoulders, relaxed, and his pale hands working, still loose and nimble. I should have suspected that it started when he hauled up his old double bass from the basement, ordered new strings and began practicing every day, late into the evenings again.

…..He played in the high school orchestra twenty years ago. He’d auditioned on cello but didn’t get a seat, so I went down the next day and—had a talk with them—despite his mother’s protests. His older sister was the star singer in the school’s jazz choir, so they made him an offer: that he could play if he switched to bass. And it was a fine compromise. He was tall, my boy—and tall was what they needed to hold up such a large instrument—with big hands too, wider than a wax LP. Big steady hands, like mine, though I didn’t get the musical gene. I am—was—a carpenter. Not by trade. It was just a hobby, until the fading got bad.

…..In fact, I built nearly everything in this apartment: the mahogany counters and table, the swinging doors and C-shaped handles on the cabinets and drawers made to hook an arm under and pull. I still had a few good years after the fading began, and I made the most of them so that I could make the most of this place. For both of us. Just in case.

…..“Son,” I said, reaching a hand toward his back. But I stopped short of laying it there, limp and lifeless. Surely, I had already laid enough on his back.

…..He looked over his shoulder at me, feigning pain. “Bass blisters,” he said.

…..“It’s so nice to hear you play again. Was that some Miles Davis you were working on?”

…..“Yes. Well, Paul Chambers—” he said.

…..“Of course, So What, right? One of the best bass lines of all time,” I said.

…..He paused, set his hand on the countertop leaving four prints, red as wine. “It isn’t a bass line,” he said, “it’s the melody. The only track on the album—most albums—where the trumpet, saxophones, keys—everybody else—steps back to let the bassist play the melody. And it’s the best one on the record.”

…..“So What.” I nodded.

…..“Yeah. So what,” he said.

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Jean

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…..I wait as Sara fusses with her keys. By the sound of it she has many and I wonder how many, and what private spaces they unlock. Suddenly, she thrusts her apartment door open and gestures for me to lead us in.

…..The scene takes me by surprise. Unlike her office it’s cluttered, and colorful. Art lines the walls, but none of it hangs. It leans on tables, chairs, bookshelves, the floor.

…..“Are those yours?” I say.

…..“Are what mine?” she says, stripping her winter layers into a damp pile on the floor.

…..“The art.”

…..“No, it’s mostly my friends’ work. Before getting into graphic design—if you can even call that what we do—”

…..“What you do,” I say, “I don’t design anything. I’m just in sales.” I feel embarrassed: why am I saying this? Of course, she knows what I do. Doesn’t she?

…..“Right. Well, before doing this, I studied photography and most of these pieces were art school assignments that would have otherwise been thrown away.”

…..“So, did you make any?” I say.

…..She pauses, holding my gaze, then disappears through an open door where I hear her start the tap. “Come in,” she says.

…..I find myself in her bathroom. Her towel hangs over the curtain rod, inches from my face. It smells of her coconut shampoo. My chest tightens. Warm blood rushes to my ears.

…..“Here, put your hands under the water,” she says, walking away.

…..While she’s gone, I get a good look at my hands for the first time since we arrived, they are darker than usual and more swollen.

…..She returns and lowers the toilet lid to sit. In her hands, soft and perfect, she holds a leather-bound book.

…..“Those are yours,” I say.

…..“Yes. These are mine.” She pronounced the word mine as if it were someone else’s name.

…..“Before I show you,” she says, “I just want to say that I made these a long time ago and—

…..“Don’t worry. I’m no art critic.”

…..“Okay.” She sighs, then flips to the first page and holds it up for me to see.

…..It’s a portrait of a woman behind a glass wall, her hands pressed against it, and her face so close that her breath and spit have collected there, glistening. The light also reveals handprints of different sizes, suggesting that they belong to others. Others who have been there before, behind this same glass wall. Looking in? Or out?

…..“Wow,” I say, startled by how loud the faucet sounds as I break the relative silence.

…..“Good-wow, or bad-wow?” She says.

…..“Good-wow. Very-good-wow. I’d like to see another.”

…..“Next time then. How are your hands?” she says, closing the book. I look down and find my fingers are nearly back to their normal color and size—they look fine, if not a little pruney—so I close the tap.

…..“Do you still make photographs?” I say. “Like that?”

…..She pauses, looks at the book and says, “Not really, no.”

…..I am about to ask her why but realize that I don’t have to.

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Henri

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…..My son turned back toward the kitchen sink saying, “But my intonation… it may be too late for me to play like Paul Chambers.”

…..“Son,” I said. But I was—have always been—unsure of how to start this conversation, though I have imagined it many times. Never with words, more like a movie montage, with music—maybe a melody played on the bass, low and heavy, its wooden body creaking underneath like this old building we haunt. In the fantasy I have him sit, then pull my chair up and I tell him everything. Everything I’ve been through. That he won’t have to do it alone because I’ll be there. I make him understand that this diagnosis isn’t an end. That we adapt. That I can help him, show him how—

…..But then I remembered receiving my diagnosis. There is a long name for it that I’ve long since forgotten. “It’s too late,” the doctor had said. I can still recall the room, the awful brightness of it. The sterile scent stinging my nose and throat. The doctor with her smothering eye contact and practiced sincerity. And my wife, Diane, squeezing my hand—with so much effort, enough for her to believe I could still feel it too.

…..They would be able to fix my spine but not the nerves. Back then—and for a long time after—I would not have accepted such a movie montage either.

…..Then the doctor added, “but it may not be too late for your children.” I hadn’t considered the possibility that it was genetic. When the doctor said that, I squeezed back, expecting to find Diane’s hand but instead found my own, empty.

…..My daughter Élise didn’t have the condition. She’s a musician too, by trade: a jazz singer. But my son refused to take the test. In many ways I think it would have been easier for his sister to have it—her means of self-expression, and livelihood, have always come from her voice—but if it has to be one of them, I’m glad it’s Jean.

…..If it wasn’t for this fading of fine motor skill, of sensation, I imagine his bass would have remained silently below us.

…..If it wasn’t for this fading—mine and his—I imagine I’d still be living here alone.

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Élise

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…..In another city, further south, where the snow had already melted, or perhaps never fell, Élise sang for a half-empty room of silhouettes. When the drums and bass would cut out for the most intimate moments of her set, she could hear the shadows chatting and chewing, the clumsy percussion of their silverware on imitation porcelain.

…..Lately she had taken to counting the times faces would light up in the darkness above the glow of an incoming text, blue light flickering under busy thumbs. It was a game, a way to pass the time. On this night she counted twenty-three so far, the measure of a good set which was twelve songs in total, meaning less than two audience texts per song. Not bad. This is what she thought about during the third chorus of “Autumn in New York,” singing:

 

…..Dreamers with empty hands
…..They sigh for exotic lands
…..It’s autumn in New York
…..It’s good to live it again*

 

…..There was a time Élise would listen to Ella Fitzgerald sing this song and truly feel the goodness of being alive at autumntime: a cool breeze, the soft, damp leaves at her feet before they the color drained, and leaves decomposed.

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Jean

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…..We’re on Sara’s floor, leaning on pillows. She lights a stick of incense and places it in an ashtray.

…..“Sara,” I say, “why photography? I mean, now that everyone has a high-def camera in their pocket…” I regret asking as soon as the words leave my mouth.

…..“I know. I was in my sophomore year when the first digital cameras came out. We didn’t take them seriously at first. How naive we were.” She laughs. “I made the switch too, a few years after school, learned all the software on my own. You know, the funny thing about it is photography use to be my direct line to the present moment. The practice of it trained my eye, my intuition. Through photography I learned to see, really see. This probably sounds ridiculous.”

…..“No,” I say, glad my question didn’t offend her.

…..“Okay. So, back then a roll of film was twenty-four, maybe thirty-six frames,” she says. “You had to pick your shots carefully. Then you had to spend hours in the dark where a hundred things might go wrong and ruin them before you ever saw them. Now, I think, it’s our camera phones that keep us from the present. We feel as though we have infinite frames and so we hardly even look while we’re using them up. Maybe that’s why I don’t shoot much anymore. I still want to feel like I only have a few shots left so that I keep looking—really looking. Oh God, I’m ranting now.”

…..“Not at all,” I say. “What you said about only having a few shots left, I get it.”

…..She smiles.

…..A moment passes, thick with everything she’s said, everything we aren’t saying.

…..“Music?” she suggests.

…..She takes her time choosing a record from a tall stack of vinyl, then puts on Kind of Blue, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Cannonball, Cobb, Evans, and Paul Chambers.

…..As the bass starts in on the melody, I lean in: a question. She nods, and I nod too which makes her laugh.

…..We kiss.

…..My heart quickens. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. I feel her lips on mine, warm, and cracked, the mint of her lip balm. Her hands find my stomach, soft and still a little cold. I reach for the base of her shirt, for her skin. But I only know that I’ve found her when I can’t reach any further. It is the first time that my hands can’t feel anything.

…..The fading, as my father calls it, has taken hold.

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Henri

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…..“I should get back to practicing,” my son said, then started for the door.

…..“Jean, hold on. Is everything alright? You seem, I don’t know, troubled,” I said.

…..“I’m fine, Dad. Thanks, though.”

…..“What ever happened with that girl from work? Sara, was it? You haven’t mentioned her in weeks,” I said.

…..“Our first… date, I guess you’d call it, didn’t go the way I had hoped,” he said into the sink, “but, I don’t know, I may still have a few shots left.” Then to the door, he said, “I really should get back to practicing.”

…..“You really should let those heal first,” I said, nodding toward his bloodied fingers.

…..“It helps me feel the strings,” he said as the door swung closed behind him.

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Élise

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…..On the outside, Élise appeared to be dreaming, sighing, believing, just like the lyrics of “Autumn in New York,” for the audience at the Westlight—or was it the Night Hawk?—jazz lounge. But that was all muscle memory. She was hardly even listening to her band, to herself.

…..Rather, her mind skipped like a stone, first to a couple in the second row wearing hideous matching sweaters, then to her ex—how she never fully appreciated his style, which may very well have been his best quality—then to her hotel and whether or not it had decent cable and room service. Then to taxes, how she must keep better track of her expenses.

…..Eventually, her mind landed on her father and brother, on how long it had been since they called. How long it had been since she did.

…..There was one moment when she felt as if she had stumbled through some unlocked door to the present. She noticed the heat of the stage lights on her skin, a bead of sweat suspended on her brow. The whole audience seemed to be there too, no blue faces in the dark. The drums and horns cut out and she could hear the audience breathing.

…..All were focused on the dim back corner of the stage where the bassist took a solo, stalking a melody with her fingertips as one stalks a firefly with a glass jar.

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Noah Evan Wilson is a writer and musician based in Brooklyn, New York. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and published in Orca, Chautauqua, Electric Spec, and the anthology, Ten Ways the Animals Will Save Us, from Retreat West Books, among others. He is a graduate of the MFA program at Rutgers University-Newark, where he currently teaches creative writing and jazz literature. His original music can be found on all major streaming platforms.

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Click here to read Noah Wilson’s original flash fiction version of this story, which he has adapted into a comic strip

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*Lyric from “Autumn in New York,” by Vernon Duke

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War. Remembrance. Walls. The High Price of Authoritarianism – by editor/publisher Joe Maita

“The Sound of Becoming,” J.C. Michaels’ winning story in the 70th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest

Click here to read more short fiction published on Jerry Jazz Musician

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