Terrence Glenn and I go way back; I reckon it wouldn’t be a stretch to consider us best friends. Stuck with him even when he was getting all famous and whatnot. Never liked that for him, personally, but I let him go through with it all in the end. Most folk find that saxophone of his soothing, cathartic maybe, but I couldn’t agree less—don’t know if he deserves any of the praise, to be perfectly honest.
I met him in high school. Bit of a chance event; he had friends, ambition, talent: the works. But I found him anyway. We never talked much during the day, but those late nights? They were something else. I used to wander up to his place and knock on the window while he was busy with whatever he had committed himself to that week—used to be the adventurous type, long as the adventure was quiet. He’d reluctantly open the window (though he was always secretly happy to see me, I think) and I’d slink into that dark little room of his. He never liked light much, and neither did I. We’d talk for hours in there; sometimes, I’d beckon him out to the fire escape and we’d stare into the street below, oblivious to—yet obsessed with—the height; watch the people stream along, the cars go by. He never wanted to inconvenience those folk.
I know he practiced in those days—he was too good not to have—but he was never at it when I visited. Reckon it was something to do with his mother. She had a thing about her peace in the evenings and had a habit of getting mean. Real mean. Never in front of people, of course, but when I was with Terry—when she didn’t know—we could almost always hear her yelling at something or another, be it the TV or Terry’s brother, Rodney. Sometimes we’d hear a hefty thunk, followed by his yelp, but that was rare. She mostly kept it verbal. Mostly.
Rodney must’ve eventually gotten real sick of it; he left and never came back. When Terry got home the day Miss Glenn realized he was gone for good, she took it out on his sorry ass. I waited for Terry in his room after that whooping; he didn’t say anything to me, just met my gaze and sobbed quietly. Those tears, they’re worse than when you let everything out. He was huddled against his door, keeping everything in so she couldn’t hear, letting out these pathetic little hisses when his emotion spilled over. After the initial shock passed, his mouth went jabbering away, cursing his ma’ with a mute tongue, drool coating the dark arms which cradled his head. I offered to bring him back out on the fire escape—to get lost in the prospect of that drop—but he wasn’t in the mood. Didn’t have the energy to care. That’s how the whole weekend went, him letting tears dance lines down his face, while I offered sweet proposals he couldn’t find the energy to act on. Sweet ol’ ma’ only came in to drop off dinner.
I didn’t leave his side for a good few days straight after that. Think that was the first of our escapades, the ones where we were joined at the hip. Brought us awful close. Terry started to leave his window open for me—maybe for himself.
A few months after Rodney stopped coming ‘round, Terry came home to a blank envelope under his pillow. Thing was thick. He opened it up and a wad of cash was stuffed inside, alongside a crudely folded letter. Seemed like he didn’t even care about the money at first, the way he dropped the envelope after taking out the latter.
It read:
Terrence,
I ain’t a deadbeat like ma says. I been saving this whole time. Saving for us. Take the money and don’t look back. If she finds it she’s gonna try to keep it for herself and you ain’t never gonna see it again. There’s enough to get you a place for a few months after you graduate. Maybe a year. I know I weren’t around to tell you but you got some serious talent kid. Pay me back by following that shit. I’m sorry I ain’t been around but you know why that is.
Love, Rodney.
Now, Terry felt a lot of things reading that scribbled letter: anxiety, excitement, resentment, relief. He wasn’t sure if he was happy that his brother had extended this favor to him, or if he was upset that he hadn’t just talked to him about it—that he hadn’t talked to him much at all. With these feelings, though, he didn’t want me around as much. I kept knocking at that window, but he had locked it. Didn’t care much for looking down at the street anymore, I guess.
He kept up with that saxophone, true to Rodney’s request, and earned a few scholarships to some truly great schools. Even with those and Rodney’s cash, though, he didn’t have enough to go where he really wanted: somewhere out of state and far from dear ol’ ma’, so he resolved to move down a few pegs on his list and go to one in Greenville—within the state but a good thirty miles south. Now, he didn’t tell Miss Glenn about it—even endured a few more beatings when he’d remain silent during her questioning. But it was all worth it, he told me. Maybe more-so himself.
Terry up and left his life; didn’t tell his friends where he was going, terrified it would somehow get back to his ma’; didn’t tell Rodney, on account of not knowing how. The one person he did tell was his old band director, Mrs. Cleville. He went into her office cautiously; knocked on the door real timid. She had said to him, “Terrence, honey, I’m proud of you, and don’t you ever forget that, but you deserve to be somewhere better. You could get into Oberlin, Berklee, Juilliard… you just gotta try, sweetheart. And I really mean gotta.” Terry must’ve caught a glimmer in her eye, something that indicated that she intended to talk his mother into persuading him, because he started to shake his head slowly; the word “no” escaped from his lips, unwarranted, slithering and disgusting—an inlet to those mouthed curses at dear ol’ ma’. She stared at him, the whites of her eyes growing, then immediately softening.
“You’ve thought this out, hun?”
Terry just nodded, hand held to his mouth, trembling.
She gave him a hug. He graduated. And that was that.
We moved in together shortly after—a shoddy, mold-ridden, one-bedroom apartment that could, indeed, be supported by Rodney’s care-package for a substantial period. We, being roommates and all, spent a lot of time together—another of those periods where we couldn’t be separated. I only left his side when he practiced, which started to become all the damn time. Wouldn’t even bother to clean the instrument after playing because he’d pick it up again an hour or two later. Never got a noise complaint either, only handwritten notes about his curing someone’s insomnia or refining the atmosphere of another’s home. But if Terry was playing, you could be sure I wasn’t around.
He auditioned for one of the jazz ensembles at the school and got in, obviously. He started putting that before everything: education, finding work, friendships (not that he had made any), you name it. Terry would practice those parts and their solos till he couldn’t anymore. Thought his lips would fall right off with how long he’d work away on the mouthpiece. It got to the point where I couldn’t avoid his sessions, so I started to sit in on them. Don’t go thinking thatI liked it, just didn’t really have much of a choice.
I still remember the first time I had joined him and his saxophone. He had been playing this piece a long time—weeks, probably—in preparation for a solo audition. He had blocked everything else out and was always at it, so I had stopped leaving every time he stuck the mouthpiece onto the flaking cork. I was lurking among the wreckage of our room when he came home from the audition. Somehow hadn’t gotten it. He threw his shit down as soon as the door closed, opened the pristine case, and had the monstrosity all set up before I could get up from the bed. I walked into the room as he played the first note. His fingers worked away at the beaten keys, his eyes squeezed tight and his silhouetted form rocking gently in the darkness.
It was like he sensed my presence. He opened his eyes without stopping the movements which had become routine, and met mine. In that moment I was thrown back to the night Miss Glenn beat the shit outta him. I saw the same scared kid, the same helpless tears; I half thought he’d start cursing her on the spot. In a way, he did. He played the piece out, and when it was done, he played it again without pause, each note a vicious retribution against his mother. I sat across from him until his melodies sputtered out; until his articulations bled into each other; until there wasn’t any sound other than the suppressed, hollow echo of metal against metal.
I asked him to go on a walk that night, after he finally put the horn down. I’d like to think he considered it, but he shook his head at me, like he was shaking the thought from his own head, and brusquely walked to our room. I followed him in just as quickly and sat on the bed he had thrown himself upon. I started to ask again, but let his muffled tears silence me. I let the boy be, knowing it wouldn’t be tonight, satisfied that there’d be a real opportunity soon.
Little by little, Terry started to give in to my suggestions, but not how I intended. Failure in the single department he had actually dedicated himself to really did a number on him. Must’ve felt like he let everyone down: Rodney, Mrs. Cleville, the friends he left behind. Maybe Miss Glenn in some dank corner of his mind that he didn’t properly notice. But Terry always had me, offering to walk beneath the moon and the stars and to bask in their light.
Instead, he huddled in our room, which had become overgrown with laundry and dust and darkness, and whittled away at his flesh with a pathetic little pocket-knife. I know he thought he deserved it, but a part of me thinks it was just to drive me away—to create some space. I never left though, not once. Truthfully, I hated the cutting more than his playing. It was like he was twisting my tongue into a contract that he had found a loophole in.
Things went on like that for months, our relationship accruing tension and never releasing. Created a sort of mutual disdain for each other—him acting as if I hadn’t been therethrough everything, as if I wasn’t the one thing he brought with him other than that damn saxophone. As if I didn’t have his best interest in mind. His life was spiraling in front of him and he acted as if it were my fault. Doesn’t that just tickle you fucking silly? MY fault!
Eventually, he realized he wasn’t getting anywhere with his ritual—that he wasn’t going anywhere properly—and gave up. He took my hand when I promised that we could run through the streets, across bridges, into oblivion—wherever he wanted—and that the whole road there would be lit for us. He didn’t have the energy to plan a course like that so he let me do it for us. We went outside and stepped into the night. It enveloped us wholly and immediately. I took his hand and led him down the road. We went slowly, deliberately. The road was indeed illuminated, albeit weakly. As we passed the first streetlamp, it flickered and died out, just like his playing had. The next did the same. And the next. Poor Terry seemed to be cursed.
We walked for a few minutes—made it to the peak of the bridge. I sat on the ledge and offered him the seat beside me. It was just like we were kids again. I mean, he was still a kid in a funny way, him being only nineteen and never having had a job or a relationship or a success of any kind besides getting away from Miss Glenn. We sat up there for hours. I kept my hand on his thigh, my mouth next to his ear; it was his time, we both knew it. But Terry wouldn’t budge. He had always had this obsession with looking over the edge, but never had the stomach to do anything about it. A bit of a coward if you ask me; same thing with that damn cutting—never had the faith in me to dive headlong in, but just enough to test the waters, and all to drive me mad. But here I had him. And then I lost him.
If only we had gone to a different bridge, taken a different highway out of this damned city, I would have had him that night. But he had to hear the unmistakable “wow” of a trumpet-plunger combo. He snapped his head up real quick and turned away from me. Just my luck. There was this old school type jazz club right across the way. I told Terry he was up there in another life, one where he wasn’t beat, where he wasn’t left to fend for himself, where he wasn’t him—thought I still had my hook in the corner of his mouth. But Terry hopped off that ledge and sprinted the way we had come, into the darkness, ‘cept every streetlight he passed flickered back on with an unequivocal brilliance. That damn Terry was blessed.
A few minutes later, I saw him running back down the lane, struggling awkwardly along; he was carrying something, and I already knew what. He burst onto the bridge and slowed. Thought he was gonna make peace with me, maybe leap into oblivion with his most prized possession, but he just looked at the spot he was sitting, and then he was off; he made it to the door before I could say anything. Didn’t even give me a second glance.
I followed Terry in. Walked in uncertainly, and was glad to find it dingy. Place was dimly lit and filled with smoke—thought Terry would simply “blend into the darkness” and follow me back outside after one last delusion of importance. But by the time I entered, he was already up at the stage, raising his saxophone to the trumpeter who had just been playing away, who nodded in approval. I cursed myself for not hurrying; I hadn’t seen him put the thing together so quickly in months. He clambered up with the help of the trumpeter’s hand. The trombonist, who was filling the room with her disgusting licks, smiled from behind the mouthpiece, played the chorus out, and bowed aside for Terry to step in. And then Terry played. It damn near killed me.
The tempo was slow, beating persistently like a heart. Terry reached deep into his soul and found me somewhere in there. He forced me up through his gullet, uttered my name, but not with his voice. I was jammed through his mouthpiece, snaked through the whole of the horn, pieces of me escaping through the various openings on the way down like a steam whistle. When I was finally wormed out of the bell, I just lay there on the stage in a puddle, wallowing in myself.
He kept me and Miss Glenn and Rodney and his audition close at heart for the next couple of minutes, though they felt like a lifetime each. His silent diatribe had finally gained a voice; should’ve known it was never gonna come from Terry’s factory hardware. Hell, he was so passionate he commandeered the whole tune. The monstrous beast whose heart was the tempo had stirred; it was up now, pacing, gathering its momentum into a sprint. Terry was flying and the band had no qualms about following him into the light.
He hammered those weathered keys away, not stopping for anyone or anything; his terrible vibrato peeled through the smoke like headlights; he played a lick, took a second to wink at me while the pianist responded, then continued on in his horrid way. And the place erupted when he had finished. The band played the head once more at this rapid pace and finally came to a triumphant finish, whose chord Terry sat on top of like he would an old, weathered fire escape.
“What’s your name, man?” the trumpeter asked, beaming.
“Terrence Glenn.”
“Man… you a goddamn legend!”
Terry, or Terrence, as he never stopped calling himself from then on, stayed on that stage all night long, until their set was over. In a way, I did too. Then he sat with the band, laughing and smiling alongside them. I left. Had nowhere else to go—nowhere else to be.
Terrence Glenn had his break that night. Never stopped gigging around after that. Even dropped out of school a few months in when a studio executive happened to attend an event he opened for. Kid’s got a good wife, a couple of good kids, a good house, and all the recognition a saxophonist could ask for, and in a way, he’s shared that recognition with me. When he’s playing in those overflowing clubs, and the crowd roars in approval, they cheer for me too, though they don’t know it. Ironically, it seems now I’m only around when he’s blowing into that glimmering mouthpiece; it seems like I don’t know the kid all that well anymore.
Our paths still cross often. He ain’t him without me, and I ain’t me without him. When our eyes meet late at night, he holds my gaze with the tenderness of a child, contemplation sparkling in his eyes. But then he reaches for the sax and suddenly I’m in the heart of the brass beast again. And god, he doesn’t make it easy to get out.