Legend Of *Lady Jo - 1. Chapter 1

They called her Lady Jo.

And it fared only as a romance of spirit, with our juncture occurring at her age of 70 when I was a great deal younger and a student volunteering free time to help manage the recital hall in college.

Those I hold as halcyon days, forged by moments such as in the music
department hallway one early afternoon, when Mr. C. was a-gust with a
bustle through the door of his office, or at least his head was: "There you are. Did you know that Johana Harris-Heggie is going to be one of the judges for next week's piano competition? '

"Who's Johana Harris-Heggie? "

"Guess you've never heard of her?"

"Can't say I have."

"You know who Roy Harris was, right?"

"Yeah."

"Lady Jo's his widow - great little piano player. Of course, don't tell anybody I ever said this, but Roy really was just a hick from down in Oklahoma," Mr. C. chuckled. "Actually, Roy Harris was one of the finest composers America's ever had, better than that Aaron guy. Copland, you know, spent too much time at the rodeo."

"Fell off a bronco one time too many, is that what you're saying?" I
asked.

Mr. C. peered up and down the hall, cupped hand to mouth and lowered
his voice: "What I'm saying has more to do with his Appalachian
ancestry."

"I thought Copland came from New York," I countered.

"Don't get so complicated, you know, before New York!" - Mr. C's.
eyes spilled merriment.

"Oh, yeah, before New York! Well, at least somebody's finally
explained what was wrong with him," I said.

"Come, now, Copland wasn't such a bad sort. Wha'dya have against
him?"

"For one thing, it's like he couldn't write notes adjacent to one
another scale-wise. They're always jumping around like a lot of yaks.
Bernstein composed "The Age of Anxiety"; all of Copland's stuff
should be called "The Millennium of Psychosis" or "Dance of the Pogo
Sticks," I critiqued. "Do you like him?"

"Only part of the time. Say, speaking of time, I have a private
student due for a piano lesson any minute now - does better if she's
tickling the ivories with one hand and drinking coffee with the
other. I don't have time to get her a cup of it from the dean's
office. Would you mind getting it for me? - well, not for me, I never
touch the stuff. I think they're charging twenty-five cents a cup for their
varnish remover these days," and Mr. C. dug a quarter out of his
pocket. "Put this in the little money can and pour the coffee with
your back to the secretary. If it's supposed to be more than 25
cents, take the coffee and run for the border -Mexico's that
way," and he pointed in the vaguely right direction. "I can't afford
more than 25 cents."

"So, you don't buy coffee for all your students?"

"Not unless they're nervous - and talented. You don't count. Now,
does my pupil get her coffee or not?"

"Jeez, impatience will get you everything!" I grinned, turning toward
the dean's office as Mr. C. withdrew into his with another chuckle.

He was a pill, always had been, while I didn't do so bad myself. I
had my own brand of tongue-sauce with which to help spice our sallies
of wit. Partaking thereof without a counter-potion of some kind
would've been a self-destructive addiction: Affection for him lurked
like a sand trap.

Thankfully, I made it past the secretary to get a cup of coffee, not having to high-tail it to the border. A frail-looking blonde in her late-teens sat at Mr. C's. Steinway, stroking a sweet brand of Schumann from it when I knocked on the door and entered his studio. I stopped to listen. If that's what she could do by tickling the ivories with one hand, Mr. C. was right: I howled at the moon like a mangy mongrel in the dog-patch of comparative talent. And provided she did as well while drinking coffee with the other hand, she rated as a miracle.

Meanwhile, Mr. C. looked around his office, spotting a campus
newspaper he laid on the piano to his student's right: "There.
Julia's a good girl, never spills anything. But go ahead and put the
coffee on the newspaper for good measure. If she happens to get
carried away with enthusiasm, it won't hurt if hard vibrations slop
coffee out on the campus news…"

"… because there isn't any," I chipped in, setting the cup where Mr.
C. had said.

"The news is, there is no news," - embers of mischief never left his
Italian-olive eyes, "That is, except the piano competition. I'm
excited. This is the 1st. time the music teachers' association has
held it at our rinky-dink school in seven years. And Ms. Kaitlin's asking
for you to be the student coordinator. Pierce Lambert's helping her
organize the affair and they want you hanging around to make sure
everything goes okay. There's a special contestants' category for
Community Adults, and you never know when some little old lady from
downtown will want you to hold her poodle for her while she wins first
prize for sleeping at the piano."

"Mr. C.!" - Julia's protest was satiny, lightly punctuated by a thin
smile despite her looking too congenitally exhausted for the effort;
how she even considered playing the piano tweaked my mystery-solving
lusts.

Mr. C. laughed, looked at his student, then me: "Run along, now;
Julia needs to finish her date with my piano and a cup of coffee."

By then I'd forgotten the post-hyphen last name of the "hick's"
widow: "Only if you point out Johana what's-her-name to me when she
gets here," I said.

"They call her Lady Jo, a designation of honor, and you'll know her
as soon as you see her, trust me - can't miss her. Now, get out of
here."

One -or -two-handed, the silken soul Julia hypnotized from the piano
seemed to angel-wing its way through the door I closed behind me,
almost colliding with another college kid who was short, dog-patch thin and
looking wasted by late-adolescent ennui while advertising his
existence with spiked hair and punk clothes as he slogged down the
hall in over-sized sandals.

"Nice hat," he observed, peering upward with watery eyes before
continuing through the outside door.

"No way he's a music major," I thought - otherwise, he'd have been accustomed to the bohemian infamy of my style-confused wardrobe: Berets and other hats, along with army boots as the incongruous foundation for
ensembles entailing suit trousers of various colors and patterns quarreling with the patterns and colors of suit jackets. Bed and the shower were the only places my beret didn't go, while it wasn't often that jeans or shoes, instead of boots, tried unraveling the confusion of my satorial decor- much as normality rarely sweetened the notoriety of my experimental music. I majored in composition and theory, indulging avante garde mischief in sound.

The highlight of that had come some months earlier during a Tuesday
afternoon recital given by students, when I'd performed my "Nocturne"
using the amplified sound of water cascading into glass jugs. I
thought I'd been thorough with a sound-check beforehand, in an empty
auditorium, however. The presence of an audience debauched the
auditorium acoustics, as well as the "Nocturne" into something… well,
something vividly described by Amanda's desperate, screeching dashes
to the ladies' room, two of them in somewhat less than five minutes.

A darker blonde than Julia, Amanda majored in flute performance and
was the second-chair flautist in the univeristy's concert band, though I'm wary of blonde having anything to do with the effects of my watery rendering that
afternoon. Almost by telepathy, it seemed, the same idea as hers had
possessed everyone in the audience at the same time, just less
devoutly. I found that gratifying; I'd at least touched my listeners.

How my get-up might have muted or intensified my creativity I can't
say. But my beret fell foul, in the department hallway, the day after
I heard about Lady Jo.

"There you are," Ms. Kaitlin echoed her colleague while coming out of
her office. "Did Mr C. mention that Lambert and I need you to keep an
eye on the piano competition next week?"

"Yeah, yesterday."

"Good. We're not expecting anything strenuous; you don't have to be
on-hand all the time, just make sure to circulate through the
upstairs classroom area every fifteen minutes or so. The main thing is
that some of the music association members will be giving afternoon
workshops. They might need little things, like music stands taken
from one classroom to another. Okay?"

"When's Lady Jo getting here?" I asked.

"She'll probably come in early next Tuesday afternoon. She's giving a
guest piano recital next Sun. afternoon, you know. And next Sat.
morning, the teachers' association is sponsoring a banquet brunch.
You're invited, for free as student coordinator, if you don't wear
your hat. All right?"

I stared at her. A disarmingly jittery chain smoker, she'd never before done or said anything like that, to my knowledge. Aghast, my wits temporarily vanished into a distant archipelago of my brain: "Wel-l, o-okay," - the words
stumbled out and into an infant but immediate uprising in the same region.

"Good" - Ms. Kaitlin looked lost as she groped the insides of her
pants pocket: "Say, do you happen to have a lighter?"

I fumbled mine out and under the cigarette dangling from her lips.

"Thanks. Are we straight on everything?" she asked.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Good. I'll talk to you later," - and she disappeared into her piano studio.

That'd have been far from the 1st. time I'd worn my hat to department
functions. And regret over agreement to her demand did little to
acupuncture the numbness I felt as I went to my next class. I'd never
known Ms. Kaitlin's over-stimulation by nicotine to be Victorian;
she was popular with the department kids on a par with Mr. C.

It'd have been one thing had she asked me not to wear my beret as personal favor I'd have been happy to oblige. Instead, her approach rankled as quite another - like a censorious ultimatum needling my consciousness like a 7-year itch compressed into a 24-hour inflammation, especially since we were involved with an alleged citadel of free expression. Besides, I took pride in upholding a proud tradition: My granddad had been an atheist, and my great-granddad even more rabidly so. On a less-grandiose scale, I held freedom of head-gear to be sacred at all times.

Still, an uneasy feeling broke ranks with inner rebellion until the
compass needle of instinct swung toward Pierce Lambert - Pierce, the
rumored-to-be- gay member of the department's piano faculty… not that
I qualified as one of "his boys" as we students sometimes joked about
his "stable" of cute piano students.

However, that wasn't the problem, as pinpointed by Riley, another student, after we'd walked out of Lambert's harmony class one morning the previous fall.

"Man, was he ever mad in there!" Riley laughed.

"What are you talking about?"

"Can't you tell Lambert's jealous of you? You've never noticed the
sulky look he gets on his face when you come up with the answers to
harmony problems before anybody else? He doesn't like that - at all -
because he wants to figure them out 1st., unless one of us other kids
does - anybody but you. He's jealous, man."

"Interesting. Guess I never noticed," I said.

"Watch him, you'll see," - and Riley headed off to a guitar lesson.

I'd henceforth put Lambert under observation, noticing another carbuncle of rancor: He fancied himself a composer, and was, of sorts. In fact, he'd once done a set of short modern pieces I rather liked. Otherwise, his work mocked the auditory taste-buds like watery, half-cooked egg-drop soup on a menu of post-Wagnerian potboilers. My stuff at least had a reeking whiff of originality - watering Lambert's eyes even more like onions.

And thinking about all that laid emotional fire to a low simmer rising to a high boil that had me trawling the department hallway until I saw Mr. C. opening his door for departure of another student.

"What's roasting your Thanksgiving turkey a month early?" he merrily
asked, seeing the storm on my face.

I told him, then continued, "That wasn't Ms. Kaitlin talking - bet you anything Lambert put her up to it. He doesn't like me all that much."

"No, that wasn't her. And, no, Lambert's not overflowing with love
for you. But this is a college campus, for crissake. Kids nowadays
wear all sorts of crap, and some of them wouldn't wear anything if
they didn't have to. So, yeah, she wouldn't have done that if left to
her. Unfortunately, I'm afraid she succumbed to Lambert pressuring
her to do his dirty work for him. He really ought to know better."

"Maybe I'll write a letter of protest to the editor of the newspaper," I ventured.

"The school newspaper?"

"Yeah."

"Do. That'd make good reading for Lambert and - finally - give this
campus some news," - Mr. C. was impishly seditious.

"Think I just might do that," I told him. "See you around."

"Would that be before, during or after sooner or later?" and Mr. C.
gave out with another chuckle as he turned into his office.

If I'd only shot my wounded horse of social conscience and put it out
of its misery. The muscles of the soul can get sore right quickly
when you try slogging upstream against the authoritarian rapids - a
primary point of muscle strain being that I didn't want Ms. Kaitlin's
feelings hurt though she had allowed herself to serve up the slop of
Lambert's bile. Beyond that, what if he wreaked some kind of devious
revenge? That counted as a consideration. Other than the direction
his bed-springs might've bounced in private, there always were gray
rings around the collar of his reputation that faded but never quite
disappeared in the wash of things.

There'd been the affair of Joel, Amanda and the end-of-term test in
Music Form And Analysis he'd given us two semesters earlier. It'd
included music recognition, and Lambert had given us a three weeks to
acquaint ourselves with the compositions on the test list. However,
Joel wanted me to help him cheat when Pierce temporarily left the
room during the exam - Joel therefore being indicted with the
judgment of a re-do test, nothing more.

I found that odd. By contrast Amanda hadn't finished the test to begin with, having left the classroom early because of an emergency. One problem: Before the re-do and without telling either, Lambert changed some of the pieces on the music recognition list, not allowing Amanda or Joel a chance to
listen to them. Both failed the retake - justice for Joel, but why Amanda? The whispered answer to that hovered around their difference in sexual equipment.

I had a particular distaste for Lambert's unfairness toward Amanda,
while the matter hadn't directly ensnared me in his nefarious web.

Still, it'd have been a mistake to forget Louise, a blue-haired after-hours pupil in her 60's - the only female pet among Lambert's students. Her favored status seemed a matter of his groveling for Louise to worship his very fingerprints along the primrose pathway of the keyboard. Pierce had a dainty passion for dainty music, mirroring her daintily subversive pleas for attention. She perpetually carried a dainty attitude of injured sensibilities commandeering sympathy by flashing a black and pale-blue badge of needy but petty despair. Her hair hinted of blue and her ego seemed continually bruised - in a dainty blue-lace and frills sort of way.

And I'd been in the recital hall, getting ready for a night-time concert one afternoon the previous spring, when Louise had walked on-stage with her sister, Alma.

Alma had never seen me before, though took one look and said, "So,
you're the infamous stagehand!"

I doubted Louise as fertile enough to have whelped that sentiment on
her own; the situational inflection seemed clear: Pierce some time
earlier had vented upon her about me, and she vicariously was miming
her master through her sister. I wasn't paranoid, simply startled
enough to take that as a compliment, having been so deviant - after
all -as to inspire Amanda's trips to the bathroom with the suggestive
seduction of falling water.

Be that as it may, drippings from the fattening calf of vengeance
hardly served as oil on turbulent seas of indecision. They stormed
inside me until after I'd finished homework the evening after I'd
talked to Mr. C. and decided to assail the school newspaper with my
travails.

Fixation, however, is the soul's handcuffs. Homework done, I sat, sat,
and ignored that week's episode of " Scarecrow And Mrs. King",
brooded - and finally had an altruistic epiphany. I realized that
Lambert had actually disrespected Ms. Kaitlin by having her deliver
the non-papal pure bull of his hat edict - and the battery acid of indignation finally brought peace beside, if not directly on troubled waters.

I wrote a concise, classily irate letter, delivering it to the campus
newspaper office the next morning. I'm not sure it qualified as news
but it did appear in the next afternoon's edition of the week.

What Lambert thought of it I didn't know, not seeing him before
leaving campus that day. Besides, circumstance tends to have the
meandering infidelity of an unrepentant Prodigal; distraction came
late the next Mon. morning with a small stampede of sales
representatives from music-oriented companies setting up vendor's
stalls in the lobby in advance of the piano competition.

What enthralled me most was the big platter of doughnuts and 3-gallon
pot of coffee kept filled by a hostess whom the music teachers' association, or M. T. A., had supplied to help corrupt customers-presumpti ves on behalf of the vendors. For me, coffee in hand was as omnipresent - and more omnipotent, it
seemed - than my beret. Once I'd disseminated Alma's aphorism, the joke around the music department had always been: "Want to find the infamous stagehand? - follow his trail of coffee!" - since my hands had the seismic grace of an earthquake rendering me a mongrel moon-howler of talent on the piano.

I'm nonetheless sure there were doughnuts and coffee left for the arrival of M.T.A. worthies beginning the next afternoon…

… and I then saw a short, elderly woman, with long, almost-white hair in a ponytail, wearing an off-white sweater, bright-pink sweatpants and house-
slippers. I lacked the sense and courage to lasso her with instant recognition since I first noticed her browsing the vending booths like a swap meet
aficionado. I thought she was a local who'd come out to eye-savor the
wares.

I again was rescued by Riley, sneaking up so quietly behind me that I started when - right over my shoulder - he said, "That's Lady Jo."

"Uh-h! Jeez! Whad'ya doing scaring me like that? Christ! - but
just how do you know that's her?"

"Chill, man!" Riley exclaimed. " Sounds like you need some of Pierce's beta blockers!" he went on, referring to the potentially addictive prescription relaxants that rumor had Lambert illegally giving some of his pupils.

"Hold on. How do you know that's Lady Jo?" I challenged.

"Mr. C. showed me her picture in "Piano Quarterly". She was the youngest person ever to teach post-graduate courses at Julliard, when she was only fifteen, can you believe that?"

"Are you sure that's Lady Jo?"

"Yup. Like her dress code?" Riley wanted to know.

"Well, yeah, positively. But you're not pulling my leg? That's really
Lady Jo?" I pursued the question.

Riley declined a psychological ruffling: "Yup - awesome pianist. And
did you know she's 45 years older than her second husband? - one of her
former students."

"Good lord!"

"He's around somewhere. And she has a biographer following her everywhere she goes. In fact, that's her," - and he pointed at a tall, middle-aged, brown-haired woman standing next to her target of enshrinement. "Yup, a real character, that Lady Jo."

"Yeah, looks like."

"Are you coming to her recital?"

"Well, yeah, sure. You?" I inquired.

"Wouldn't miss it, even if I have to play hooky from work, which is
where I should be going, five minutes ago, that is. See you around," - and it appeared that we department folk shared some of the same lingo by mental osmosis.

"Would that be before, during or after sooner or later?" I quoted
Mr. C. to Riley's back as he disappeared through the crowd milling
about in consumer lust.

He, nonetheless, had fulfilled his function like John the Baptist unto Jesus; I decided it was my duty to worship Lady Jo - from afar. Riley had scarcely left when my attention was distracted. And she'd disappeared like Jesus into the throng by the time she reentered my consciousness and I started trying to search her out.

Vaguely, I began wondering if I might have to walk on water to meet her... while having somewhat more than twenty-four hours to start wondering if the scope of things didn't have the ghostly soul of a mirage, with a ghoul's tricks in clear view and treats only glimmering on the horizon of Halloween four days away.

Because of the unseasonably chilly temperature, however, I went to
school the next morning with a black overcoat and a plaid fedora
instead of my beret.

Lady Jo was nowhere in sight. Without her, it seemed the nondescript day would self-strangulate before the competition ceremonially opened with that night's recital. The M.T.A. had commissioned a suite of modern piano pieces from a regional composer. And their minister of rendering was the nondescript anonymity of a woman pianist in her late-20's or early-30's whom I distinctly remember as distinctly worthy of anonymity.

All I recall of Lady Jo as I glimpsed her entering the hall, however,
was a visual transubstantiation, a renaissance with little
resemblance to the urban peasant-style I'd seen the day before -
while her magnificent head and somberly serene face were inescapable
even across the distance.

And strangulation by monotony had apparently waited for the music on that recital - an inquisitional yet comatose experience, like a vapid expanse of pure slush evolutionarily backsliding beyond the Ice Age into an abyss of complete void. What was titled "The Brooding Buddha" would've been exponentially more enlightening - to say nothing of stimulating - as an hour-and-fifteen- minute intermission. I had to make several smoking trips to the lobby simply to remain conscious.

I nonetheless found the courage to approach Lady Jo after the creeping inquisition had finally mortified itself into suffocated silence. I met her in the lobby, where she immediately and devoutly lit a cigarette. I felt sure she desperately was trying to relieve a fake imitation of tension promising to serve as an antidote to emotional asphyxiation.

I empathized, completely.

"What did you think of those compositions? " I asked.

"You tell me."

"Well, you might want to keep this to yourself, but I could've dreamed up something better in my sleep. Now, your turn."

Raising the electric midnight of her eyes to meet mine, Lady Jo quizzically smiled, (**a) "They were so-o-o imitative - but of what?" - and with that she glided away to mingle with other concert-goers, an unforgettably sweet enigma of nuance etching her exquisite face.

I was smitten with her as I locked the hall after everyone was gone,
then left, my overcoat draped over my shoulders since it was still
warm following a day that'd grown hot. I directed my footsteps
homeward, into a twisted mirage-mask of reality: People apparently
thought I was doing my own Phantom of the Opera to get a jump on
Halloween - or maybe they'd simply come from a fifth dimension of
jealousy over my sense of style.

(**b) First came a black, 40's Packard, time-embalmed in perfect condition, ghoulishly suggestive of a hearse, filled with teenagers dressed to the 9's in their finest and silently gawking as they slowly drove past, up and down, up and down the avenue. They finally vanished, giving way to a modern car full of ogling college kids. I wasn't entirely sure why but had suddenly become popular. Next, a woman yelled an obscenity at me through the open front passenger's window of a passing vehicle, a populist benediction indeed. The policeman subsequently sidling up beside me on four wheels was ghostly silent ,by contrast, as he shadowed me halfway across the bridge with a barnaclesque devotion hinting that I should be awarded a lengthy period of respite in the state mental house. Then replacing the cop was an elderly red pick-up truck - with old-fashioned running boards but modern, dark-tinted windows - escorting me the rest of the way over the bridge in a manner as silent and stately as the cop… until its driver suddenly jammed the pedal to the metal and gunned off into the night in a flash of intermittently malfunctioning taillights.

(**b) If that wasn't enough, the syntax of surrealism seemed to require climactic punctuation. I next saw a teen-aged blonde girl, in military fatigues and an army coat, using the payphone at a gas station as I walked past.

(**b) "Wanna' fuck?" she yelled at me. The offer had a macabre husk of siren in it, while I decided it'd be the truly valorous part of survival to keep moving: The proposition felt creepy and I had no way of knowing if the girl might have a knife or gun under her coat.

Besides, that decision kept me alive with even more to laugh myself
to sleep about, after I'd safely arrived home. Perhaps oddly, I
neither had nightmares nor dreamed up something better than
a "brooding Buddha."

Nonetheless, Mr. C. was suitably entertained by my story about the
previous night, and I poked my head into the recital hall at 9;30 the
next morning, with the competition at full tilt. Lady Jo sat among the other judges like a female frog-to-prince in reverse. I felt a sense of vernacular satisfaction to notice that she'd gone back to hair in a pony-tail while wearing the same sweater and bright-pink sweatpants - likely with feet snuggled in house-slippers, as I saw when I came back at four. I'd decided to attend Cramer Hamilton's piano workshop after the day's segment of the competition was over.

Hamilton, another competition judge, was a piano professor from one of the "big schools" up north, leaking a lurking pomposity threatening to overwhelm everyone like the negative pole-region of a magnetic radiation-storm.

And his magnetism seemed Pied Piper to almost everyone making lemming-like use of the right-hand steps leading onstage, with his invitation for the audience to come up and sit around the piano while various students strutted their stuff under his cannery-row eyebrows.

Lady Jo and I crossed paths on the way, and she exclaimed, "People
are such sheep, doing what everybody else does! Look, they're all
using the steps on the right side! Come on, let's be contrary and go
up the ones on the left!"

We did, and Barry Stockwell - one of Lambert's "boys" - went first as
sacrificial lamb under Cramer's knife. Barry played from the piano part of "Rhapsody in Blue" - his fingers with the unfaltering voodoo prowess of a cat
on an alley ledge, his inspiration and interpretation quite betraying the magic of New Orleans alley-blues.

Imperiously, Hamilton finally flagged him to a halt: "Thanks, that'll be enough. Any thoughts from the audience?" - and he looked at me: "How about you?"

I cleared my throat: "Well, I'm not a jazz expert. But I believe jazz
is supposed to be a study in contrast between brittle, percussive
execution in some places, and a murky but not muddy legato, like
cigarette smoke in a bar, at other places."

I sensed an assault upon Hamilton's pride by crisp analysis, for
while his façade remained monolithic, I saw his eyes reeling backward
in startlement. But he rallied, drilling me with a sternly
condescending look: "Wel-l, now, anybody else?"

I turned toward Lady Jo and saw her looking at me with a small, tight-lipped smile as I slipped out of the workshop. It didn't take much to see that she had more personality in the nail of her little finger than Cramer Hamilton in his entire body.

But then, the centerpiece of my social protest finally loomed in sight; the Saturday morning brunch was a flat-liner much as my beret was limp while hanging forlornly on the hatrack outside the student center banquet room. I didn't have a chance to speak with Lady Jo, and the affair's only redemption was Mr. C. and I cracking jokes while eating at the same table.

Meal over, I retrieved my hat, once more wending my way toward the recital hall. I wondered if Roland would be there - the piano tuner whose body reached skyward like the greenery in "Jack And The Beanstalk". I was one of the few people who called him "Rol". And a good chance lay in him giving the concert Steinway a look-over prior to a final tuning for Lady Jo's recital. No Rol - while even more, I hoped she'd put in an appearance to practice. She didn't, though I vicariously met her in spirit since she'd earlier come and gone,
leaving a note on the piano:

Slam-dunk Rolly,

''Could you please do something with E-flat
1? It sounds notoriously like a country western
singer with a cold nasalizing Gregorian chant through a hole a
in a tin can - or you could just shoot it and put it out of its
misery!

''Whatever option you choose, I'd appreciate you doing something
to render it more mellifluous - and keep on slam-dunking! ''

Thanx,
Johana Harris-Heggy

The evidence pointed toward someone having told her about my nickname
for Roland, while I didn't know when or whom. But I was amused and
surprised that she knew the basketball term "slam-dunking" she'd used in terms of Rolly's height.

I slam-dunked E-flat 1, hearing that it indeed had a nasal twang - then looked stealthily around and put her note in my pocket as a memento. I next phoned "Slam-dunk", who promised he'd be at the hall to "take the hick-twang out of E-flat 1" at 7:30 the next morning.

He'd nonetheless already come, fixed the "country and western
nasalizer", tuned the piano and left by the time I arrived around
11:30. Being late, I apologized to Lady Jo, whom Ms. Kaitlin had let
in, and who - having undergone another transmigration from lady frog
to glowing princess - was making the scales scurry up and down the
piano. I wasn't sure I was as classy in army boots, plaid trousers, a
plaid jacket and reprobate beret. But I fancied we made quite a
pair, in the isolation of those moments; she marshaling major and
minor scales along the keyboard, and I on a stepladder making
adjustments in the overhead spots for better lighting.

I finally asked, "Will it be okay if I leave the ladder here while I
go out for lunch and come back in about an hour?"

(**c) "Oh, sure. If you come back and find me hanging upside down
from the ladder like a monkey, you'll know I'm having fun!" - and she
gave me another unforgettably Sphinx-like smile.

"Okay," I chuckled, and left.

There was no hanging Lady Jo when I returned; she too had left for
lunch. And all I had to do was adjust a few more lights, stash the
ladder in the backroom and put some finishing touches on the curtain
angles. Never had the stage been more perfectly arranged by time for
the recital to begin.

I peeked into the auditorium, failing to notice Riley, but saw Kathrin
Wittlenberg sitting two seats over in the same row as Roland, with Lambert sitting behind him and one seat over in the opposite direction. Kathrin was a friend like Roland, and it appeared that the camp of the friendlies had been infiltrated by the enemy.

Not that I gave it much thought; my folding chair in the right wing
was on a direct line of sight with the piano and I saw Lady Jo off
onstage to take an introductory bow and her place at the piano.

She began playing - and oh my, was that tiny bundle of 70-year-old
womanhood a soothing balm for weary ears! - such a one as I swore
could make a hick-twanging ukulele sound like a harp on the golden
streets up yonder!

While the tones she created were full, they were bright and crisp
when needed, and bleeding with a darker, burgundy-richness when
called for. Every note in its place made perfect sense. Most
astonishing was the feathery caress of even her softest passages,
seducing and conquering every farthest corner of the hall.

Except for a restless child here and there, the audience sat in rapt silence. From the very first note, Lady Jo had them in the palm of velvet-steel glove.

Though barely tall enough, she occasionally looked over the piano
into my eyes with small, mysterious smiles, then abruptly returned to
the inner focus of a monk prevailing with god on behalf of a chaotic
world. It was hypnotic, in a quietly stirring way.

Through the first part of the program, she walked the secret passages
and gardens of our souls. She then stood, and the audience - completely taken off-guard - had hardly started clapping by the time she'd disappeared offstage.

She stopped beside me: "I saw you sitting back here. I like that.
This is the first time a stagehand's ever listened to one of my
concerts!" - and she then vanished down the hall to the ladies' room.

"Is anything wrong?" I asked her biographer, who replied, "Oh, no,
she just decided it was time for a break," - and she handed Lady Jo a
glass of water when she returned from the restroom.

Lady Jo sat down; out came cigarettes for both of us, and we talked
as though the recital hall occupied another world. I told her how
much I appreciated her "use of rubato in order for the music to make
sense, even in the Baroque pieces."

"Well, you know, there's technique - and then there's music," and it
was time for her to resume where she'd left off.

"Break a leg," I said.

(**d) "Maybe I'll burn the third leg off the piano!" Lady Jo gently
retorted, with a smile more impish than anything.

Having said that, she retook the stage - in her impishness it being
little surprise that she availed herself of a second intermission
somewhere in the vicinity of the first one's originally designated
place.

(**e) Otherwise, she thoroughly mixed it up - following the printed program with some works, seeming to forget others and substituting yet other pieces nowhere on the musical bill as though she'd quietly gone mad. In fact, she knew exactly what she was doing, being mischievously "contrary" through the rest of a performance as ravishingly scintillating as the original third had been.

The magic finally ended; Lady Jo moved front and center for three resounding curtain calls. Suddenly, (*f) she then walked over, took my hand and led me onstage - in my army boots, plaid trousers, plaid jacket and beret.

It, of course, was a reference to Johana's younger husband - while "Slam-dunk" heard Kathrin opining: "Oh, no, she's after another one!"

And it'd have been a happy juxtaposition if Mr. C., and especially Ms. Kaitlin, had been close enough to hear, though it perhaps was just as sweet that I missed a trifling satisfaction: From the other side of Rol came Lambert's declaration of surrender: "Well, you know, Lady Jo always has the last word!"

At the moment, however, he could've said anything; any number of Packards full of gawking teenagers, modern cars filled with staring college kids, obscenity-screaming women, policemen and old trucks could've driven past while blondes made macabre propositions - for none of it mattered: I was onstage taking a bow with The Lady...

... and I then was quietly smitten with a joyous realization: I hadn't had my revenge, Lady Jo had had it for me.

____________ _________ _________ _________

* a slight fictionalization of a actual event when Johana Harris-Heggy, `Lady Jo', served as a judge for a university piano competition at the age of 70 while professor of piano at UCLA. Her first husband was Roy Harris, born in Oklahoma, and one of America's foremost classical composers during the same general period as Aaron Copland, Howard Hanson and Samuel Barber. Lady Jo - now deceased - was the youngest person ever to be on the faculty at the Julliard School of Music, at 17.