Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans Read Online Free PDF Page A

the spotlights’ amber glow, the rhythm section kicking a tight groove, the people digging his music and ready to unleash their adulation. It could have been any stage, almost anywhere, and this was the scene that got his juices going. So the moment he’d stepped onto the Blue Note Tokyo’s stage twenty-five minutes ago, it had felt like coming home.
    But now, the pain burrowed so deep it made him dizzy. The sound was still coming out of his trumpet, but it was as if he was standing outside himself, watching his own fingers move, almost admiring their ability to go on while everything else in him wanted to seize up or shut down. With the lightning-quick tempo the drummer had set, he struggled to keep up as the wall of sound—piano, bass, drums, tenor—roared like a train on a downhill track, full speed ahead, with him or without him.
    Another pain buzzed through his jaw, and his embouchure froze. He stopped playing and shook his head while the piano covered him, took up the slack. The room grew hot, airless, as sweat beaded above his lip and his neck tightened. While the pain burned on, the spotlights glared like headlights. Suddenly he felt like some four-legged creature who’d staggered out onto a highway in front of a truck, blinded by the lights and frozen with fear.
    He couldn’t do it. Could not go on. So even though they hadn’t even reached the bridge of the tune, he leaned over to his pianist.
    He whispered hoarsely in his ear. “ Slow . Anything slow. Then we quit.”
    He barely got through the ballad, even though he’d written it himself, and he was the first one off the stage, ducking into the small backstage room reserved for the band.
    Sitting on the sofa, chest pumping hard as he crossed his legs against the cool black leather, Julian Fortier filled his winded lungs with air and exhaled a ragged sigh, then uncrossed his legs, leaned back, and stared up at the pale gray walls.
    One by one the others in the quintet came in, each more deliberately quiet than the next. The pianist gave him a flickering, questioning look, then turned away, and having nothing better to do, pulled out his cell phone and tapped on the keypad. The bass player coughed nervously as he zipped the canvas cover around the rented instrument. The tenor player and drummer, not knowing what else to do after putting horn and drumsticks away, looked at each other, then headed to the table laden with bottles of Perrier and food that the management of the club had graciously supplied.
    No one spoke. The tension in the room was as thick as the fog that had rolled in that morning across Tokyo Bay before settling over the downtown of the city. All the men averted their eyes from each other, waiting for their bandleader to explain.
    But for the moment, the trumpeter sat smoothing the crease in his pinstriped gray silk pantsleg, his horn beside him, trying to make sense out of what went down in front of all those people, imagining the reviews in the Tokyo press. “Celebrated Jazz Trumpeter Bombs in Premature Comeback.” Something like that. Or worse.
    He grabbed his trumpet off the cushion next to him and rapidly fingered the valves. It wasn’t supposed to have happened this way. He’d been OK at the rehearsals. He should have breezed through the set like the pro he was, his jaw sufficiently healed after the accident, his tone rolling sweetly and effortlessly out of his horn, notes flying unconsciously and his mind zooming in a zone where he could do no wrong. Applause should have thundered from the tables, since the Japanese, among the most appreciative of his fans, were the first to hear him after an eleven-month absence from studio and stage. He should have been the hero of the night.
    Instead, the applause had been weak—polite, yet confused. He felt like tucking his tail and running, and that’s exactly what he’d done.
    He cleared his throat and glanced at his bandsmen across the room, who were now piling their plates. His gaze fell