10

LEONARD STAYS ANOTHER WEEK, and is relieved to do so. He is not well enough for travel yet. What at first he has presumed to be jet lag and then mistaken as a cold has left him coughing, sneezing, and itching. His eyes are red and weepy. His lips are dry and sore. The lotion Nadia offers him gives no relief. “Welcome to Austin, the City of Sniffs and Tears,” Maxie says, by way of explanation. “What you have gotten is either the last of this summer’s dander fever or the first of this winter’s cedar fever. Allergy planet. We live with it.” Don’t make a fuss, in other words.

Maxim and Leon, or Comrades Gorky and Trotsky, as Nadia refers to them, spend their days—while she is at the college teaching class—training for AmBush, largely at Leonard’s expense, in the Four T’s. As its name implies (Newsweek has judged that Austin ticks all the T’s for “a creative city”—tolerance, technology, talent, taste), it is a bar intended and designed as a watering hole for the neighborhood’s new yuppies, the aspirant professionals, the opinionators and tenure slaves who, since the advance guard of students, gays, and artists softened up and bleached that quarter of the neighborhood, have already started moving in their businesses, their offices, their yard art, and their families. It is here, on the afternoon of his fourth day in Austin, that Leonard unpacks his saxophone. The first time in America.

It’s always a comfort to lift his instrument free from its nesting case, to check and finger its glinting, complex engineering, the key stacks mounted on their axle rods, the pillars, needle springs, hinges, and leverages, the tooling and the soldering, which against all seeming logic unite and conspire to make this “singing tube” the most harmonic of the reeds, and the one most like a human voice, capable of everything from murmuring to oratory. As a child with a “good ear,” Leonard was captivated by the saxophone rather than his parents’ preferred clarinet or oboe, not despite but because of its fussy, varicose technology, the way its fittings and its moving parts dripped and melted from the tube like hardened candle wax. “It’s easy, man, it’s like puffing a cigar. You breathe through it, not into it. Just don’t put the wrong end in your mouth,” he was told when, as a teenager and on an impulse, he bought his first cheap saxophone, the only affordable left-hander in the shop. The salesman was not being entirely frank about how easy playing it would be, but there was some truth in what he said. Despite its size and visual complexity, Leonard found his instrument less complicated to cope with than he feared. As a single-note instrument, its fingering system was relatively simple, and its generous bore and extended octave range flattered even the beginner. Leonard took to it speedily, keen to prove his parents wrong—the clarinet and oboe seemed docile by comparison—but not so keen to let them know how effortless and satisfying his progress was, or how music felt as personal and clandestine as sex. When they were out, he practiced in front of the long mirror in their bedroom, sometimes naked even, serenading his own reflection and never quite forgetting that salesman’s sensuous advice that he should play it like a cigar: the long dense tube that’s held between the fingers, fits between the lips, and puffs out melodies as pungent and weightless as smoke.

Leonard’s current Capitaine—acquired only weeks ago, with money from his inheritance—is a much grander instrument than that first workhorse. He calls it Mr. Sinister, his southpaw friend. It’s customized: everything from the hand engravings on the cone to the details of the mouthpiece at the business end was designed especially for him by a Belgian atelier. Even his reeds have been modified: they’re longer than the usual heartwoods, favoring clarity and nuance over the brittle brightness of that first cheap instrument—and of too much postwar jazz, in Leonard’s view. Just holding it is comforting. Today he’s keen to show it off.

“I’m all set to puff on my cigar,” he says to Maxie, though Maxie seems determined not to pay him any heed, even as his English houseguest clips Mr. Sinister to his neck strap and blows almost inaudibly across the mouthpiece to excite the air column for the first time in America. Maxie’s jealous, Leonard thinks, wishes he could be this cool. He’ll wish it even more when I start playing.

It has been exhausting, living Maxie’s lazy, energetic life—the late mornings and late nights, the noise, the tricky, ranting, high-revved conversations and the intimidating charm that leave Leonard shaken and unnerved, the couple’s almost unrestricted lovemaking, their arguments, the day-for-night in low-lit bars. Leonard is not bored exactly. In fact, he’s more flattered than perturbed to be paraded in the neighborhood and introduced as Maxie’s British friend, for Maxie is to all appearances a local celebrity, a man that everyone—the Mexican construction workers, the prostitutes, the users and suppliers, the painters and jewelers, the storekeepers, the surviving black families—knows by name and seems to like. To be perceived as Maxie’s friend is “the key to the city,” Nadia has said, quick to exaggerate on her lover’s behalf while her lover sits listening, interrupting only to correct and embellish the details. The sight of him and his great stack of hair seems enough to make even the meanest-looking passersby smile, or wave, or stop to talk. He has the happy knack of flattering the listener while referring mostly to himself, and somehow even when he isn’t talking still remaining the focus of attention.

“Maxie’s everybody’s Everyman. The original twenty-four-carat, emblematic, whacked-out, freethinking American.” (Nadia again, quoting herself.) “He’s been to college and dropped out. He’s been in prison—”

“Yeah, way more than once. Property is theft. Violence is the poor man’s repartee and stuff. Carnage, mayhem, mutiny. I like to shake it up a bit, is all. Tumultuous! I do my thing and then I do my time.”

“And now he’s going straight—”

“I’m on parole.”

“He’s been a junkie. Made it clean. He is an immigrant. His parents brought him here from Vancouver when he was three months old.”

“I’m Russian, man.”

“You’re Russian out of Canada.”

“Canucksmontov. It’s all the same. Both realms of ice and snow.”

“He ran away from home when he was seventeen—”

“Sixteen!”

“Correction, sixteen.”

“Fifteen! Fourteen! What’s the difference?”

“He got radicalized the hard way. On the street and in the county jail. And now he’s fighting landlords in the neighborhood.”

“I’m Robin of the Hood. That’s British, right? Hey, do we have to go through this?”

“He’s kind of a …” She hesitates to use a campus word her lover might feel bound to ridicule, but decides to risk it. “You know, an exemplar? A paradigm?”

“She says she’s gonna write a dissertation on my life, when AmBush is over and we’re done with that. Or shoot a documentary. Hey, you can write the sound track, Leon, and play it on your saxophone. How about that? You can blow that thing, can’t you? Or is it just for bling?”

So now this afternoon, against his better judgment—his lips are swollen still, and his breathing is impaired—Leonard has Mr. Sinister out of the case and ready to play at the Four T’s. He finds Dutch courage in some bottled Pearl, drunk from the longneck at the bar, asks for the cowboy metal on the CD player to be turned off, and, despite Maxie’s careful lack of interest, steps up to the dais in the corner of the room where that evening the Javelina Sisters are scheduled to appear with their accordions. At first he has an audience of six, all men, including Maxie and the bartender. The other four, sitting in a window booth—white site engineers, with their hard hats on the table—eye his horn suspiciously; wrong bar, wrong time, wrong instrument, is what they’re thinking, he suspects. And so—to acknowledge but also to deal with the point, and to test his inflamed lips and lungs as well—he begins with “Midnight at the Lavender,” the Simmy Sullivan number that he played at his graduation concert and that surely is familiar even to Texans. It has the most hospitable of ten-to-ten swing beats. Nothing frightening. No bragging multiphonics—yet. He plays well, despite the handicaps, though he does not attempt any of his usual circular breathing or his signature ram and flutter with the tongue. His lips feel tender on the reed, but this bestows his tenor with an unusually smoky, quavering tone. Even so, the four go back to work, without so much as a nod to Leonard, halfway through the tune, leaving him an audience of two, one of whom, the barman, is watching a television courtroom show with the sound turned down. A few strident phrases might cause the man to turn around and come back to the counter, summoned by the jazz. But no, the louder notes only send him closer to the television set.

Leonard doesn’t allow himself to mind. This isn’t the first unresponsive venue he has played in. There have been worse—everything from highbrow, disapproving conservatories, where free-form jazz is considered feral because no one can allow that any civilized music is beyond scoring, to function rooms where the bridegroom’s mum demands “something dancey” and “Auld Lang Syne” is unavoidable. It has been a blessing on such occasions that the saxophone is to some extent an anonymizing instrument, a sort of mask. The drummers, pianists, and bass players confront the audience with open faces. Their agonies and ecstasies are on display. But the saxman’s face—when he’s playing, anyway; and when he isn’t he can turn away—is mostly shielded by the instrument: his cheeks are puffed, his mouth is crammed, his eyes are often shut. Whatever he is thinking does not show.

What Leonard’s thinking now is that this lunchtime gig could prove to be yet another blunder. Welcome to Austin, the City of Gaffes and Blunders. Embarrassment Planet. Learn to live with it, he tells himself. Don’t make a fuss. Luckily, he has been taught by experience to hold his nerve, even when no one at all is listening. That’s when a jazzman can at least pay true attention to the music and to himself. He can soliloquize. As Marty Johannsen tells it, “Play it for the mirror, even when the house is packed.” But Leonard cannot quite convince himself of that, on this occasion. It’s only Maxie he’s been targeting. He’s planned to wipe the Sniper out with jazz. But Maxie, after watching Leonard for a few minutes, is now leaning on the bar, his back turned to the room, and looking through the adverts in the Daily Texan. He reads out sections to the barman. He evidently does not feel obliged to exaggerate any interest in the music. If only Nadia could be here, at Maxie’s side, shushing him to pay attention, Leonard thinks. She’s heard him play before and she has been admiring. She’s claimed she’s envious of Leonard’s level of artistry. He’s overheard her say the saxophone is a sexy instrument and that “Leonard is more complex than he seems. He has the most beautiful hands.” Such endorsements have raised his hopes with her back home. Yet he has not been able to get even remotely close to her since his arrival in Austin. He hasn’t even dared to congratulate her on her pregnancy. (“Volume, Leon, please!”) Life here is arranged and conducted on Maxie’s terms, and Maxie isn’t even pretending to pay attention to what he himself has asked for and arranged, this impromptu concert in the afternoon, this effort to impress. It is infuriating.

Leonard labors on. He does his best to invigorate the room with notes, begging to be noticed. He follows “Midnight at the Lavender” with the nagging push and pull of “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” and, now that he has established a crepuscular theme, “Night Hawks,” and the bluesy, pensive “set ’em up, Joe” phrases of “One More for the Road,” from which he plans to segue into the blithely happy chorus of “First Light” and back again. He’s keeping it serene, adagio, and laying back on the beat, even though his heart is pounding presto with irritation. That’s something he must conceal. The music can be hot or cool or hip or blue, the four great humors of the form, revealing and iconic words that Leonard loves despite their overuse. Even if the player cannot claim these attributes himself, if he’s never truly hot or cool in private, if he’s never hip or blue in life, he must seem so onstage. Jazz must not display itself as peevish or impatient.

The music is an appeaser, finally. Each note moderates the fury that Leonard feels toward Maxie and the barman, and soon enough he has become almost as pensive and serene as the tunes he is playing. Now they can ignore him all they want, the two men at the bar. He doesn’t care. He’s the barroom king, no matter what they think. He presses on and plays an almost perfect second half to the set, resisting any outbursts of invention, just flattering the room with melody and melancholia. Oh, how he loves the saxophone, the old brass J, his Mr. Sinister, its shiny, rounded generosity. Maxie, Maxim Lermontov? What instrument can Maxie play, other than beating his own drum? What’s Maxie got to boast about? He extemporizes the answers to this final question on Mr. Sinister, with notes: a fan_cy name, a Russ_ian dad / a head of craz_y hair / a time in jail, five years on drugs / no sense of birth con_trol. Leonard feels himself distend. His solar plexus supersedes his brain, so that soon (he knows it’s true) he’s strong and sexy on the dais in the bar, no longer playing bearlike from the shoulders as a chippy trumpet player would, shoving at his notes, but playing cool and catlike from the hips, and cool and catlike from the knees. It’s exhilarating to be at the center of such harmony, even though he’s not the center of attention. When he has finished playing he will be a man renewed. Music reinforces him. The days ahead are clear and welcoming. While the music lasts, he’s man enough to face up to the president.

Leonard’s concentration is splintered by, first, the faces of a few black kids pressed up against the window, their pink palms spread like suckers on the glass, and then by new arrivals in the bar, a woman and two older men in business casual. They have been drinking elsewhere, it would seem. They’re noisy, scraping chairs and talking loudly. The woman stares across the bar at Leonard, pulls a face, and says, “Jesus, what is that?” Maxie answers them. Whatever he has said causes hilarity and high-fives. “Jazz?” she says, as if the word is new. “Can’t dance to that.” Maxie mutters something else. The new arrivals shake their heads and grin. Maxie’s talking and they’re listening. He’s satisfied now, the charming main attraction once again. They’re buying him a drink and clacking bottles in a toast, oblivious to everything except themselves. One of them throws a dime. It catches Mr. Sinister on the bell, playing its own, uninvited note, followed by laughter and finally some applause from the bar.

Leonard stops midphrase, kicks the coin across the room, turns his back, then lifts his instrument to fart a final pair of notes. Eee-nuff! He plays them shoddily, out of key, a raucous road-rage protest, a pay-attention-to-me-now discharge, a squall of petulance. There’s more laughter from the bar, though it’s directionless. No one wants to catch his eye. He packs Mr. Sinister away as crossly as he can. He blows his nose and clears his throat. He has bitten his lower lip so fiercely that he can taste blood. But the cowboy metal album is being played again and Leonard is either forgotten or ignored, even when he bangs his way across the room and leaves the bar without a word. He goes back to the loft alone in what Maxie later describes to Nadia as an “artistic tantrum.” “Has to be the focus of attention,” he says. “Plays that thing like no one s’posed to talk. What’s the deal? Everyone in Austin plays an instrument. That dude is half a bubble outta plumb. Jeez, Nadia. On top of everythin’.”

The everything is not Nadia’s unintended pregnancy, as Leonard first presumes, but an event that Maxie claims is “unnervy.” “Got government spies on my tail,” he says. Boasting almost. That afternoon, abandoned by “my British pal, supposedly,” he was walking back to their apartment alone and more than a little drunk when an older man he recognizes but cannot place rolled down the window of his Jeep and called out “Maximum!” from the far lane of the street.

“Maximum’s his prison name, you know, his tag,” Nadia explains.

“What am I gonna do?” Maxie continues. “I go across. I think I’m gonna know the guy. Some yardbird from the block. But when I duck and look at him, he’s not the species. Perhaps an officer, I think. But then he says, ‘Word to the wise, Mr. Lermontov. Best not turn up for Mrs. Bush. I’m just sayin’, for your long-term benefit.’ He’s achingly polite, you know, trained up. That tells me FBI or Secret Service. A goon. ‘Tend to your own knittin’, pal,’ is what I say. ‘This is a democracy. Did no one tell you that at G-man academy, or were you too busy jerkin’ off to James Bond DVDs?’ But he’s not stoppin’ for the conversation. He’s away. Jeepin’ outta there.”

“What does that imply?” asks Leonard, meaning, What does that imply for AmBush and for me?

“It don’t mean shit, as far as I’m concerned. It’s just a fishin’ trip. They’re trawlin’ through their database, is all, and I’ve popped up. I’m known to them. I’m on the list. No sweat.”

“We going to call it off? They are expecting you. You’ll not get past the police checkpoints.”

“The heck I won’t. This is where the fun begins. They’re lookin’ out for Maximum, but Maximum is goin’ in disguise. That’s what that implies, comrade. That implies we’ve got the edge on them. They only know so much. Now we are advised: what we have here”—he spreads his arms, trying to embrace the pair of them at once—“is two mysterious British Snipers, not on anybody’s list, not yet, one emblematic American in camouflage, and a ticket to the circus each. The president is fucked. He’s gonna get his ears torn off.”

 ON THE EVENING BEFORE Laura Bush’s Saturday appearance at the Book Festival, Leonard—hoping to mend fences after what Maxie describes as his tantrum at the Four T’s—offers by way of thanks for their hospitality and for “the fun” that he is having through the day in Maxie’s company to treat them both to a last supper. He wants their reassurances that all is well and will be well. AmBush frightens him.

“Take him to the barbecue,” Nadia suggests. “Leon, have you ever had a Texan barbecue?” He shakes his head. “Then let’s go there. We don’t have to drive out to Coopers or anything. There’s that funny little down-home place right along the street. We can’t let you go back to England a smoked-meat virgin.”

Gruber’s is not busy at this time in the evening. The street outside is still hectic with commuter traffic and with pedestrians. On the sidewalk, exhaust fumes blend with wood smoke. The smell of motor fuel overwhelms the subtler, deeper smells of oak, mesquite, and pecan from the smoldering hardwood coals of the pitmaster’s open fires out back. “These are not exactly boney-fidey,” Maxie explains. “This is just pretend. If you want a full-on Texas barbecue, you’ll have to drive an hour south. Coopers, same as Nadia says. But that”—he points at the racks of kitchen-cooked meat, the sides and carcasses, the slabs of brisket, the bubbling sausages, which have been laid out on the coals for show, Hill Country style—“now that’s authentic meat. There’s no pretendin’ otherwise.”

One of the Gruber boys, working the coals under woodcut signs that promise LOCAL SPOKEN HERE and SERVING AUSTIN’S ORIGINAL HOT SAUSAGE, wipes himself on his apron and shakes hands with all three of them, using only his fingertips. He recognizes Maxie, of course. “So what’ll it be, sir?” he asks, too shy to use Maxie’s name. He points at the ready meat with his serrated slicing knife.

“A bit of everything, man—beef, cabrito, pork.”

“Some Elgin sausage?” Nadia suggests with a passable Texan accent.

“Clearly a vegetable brochette is out of the question,” says Leonard, more primly than intended. He has not expected this display of unforgiving flesh.

“You do eat meat?” asks Maxie. “Get the man a pail of collard greens.”

The Gruber boy stares first at Leonard and then at Maxie, and then at both of them again, his mouth half open, though it’s not clear whether he is in awe of Maxie or is simply taken by a British accent.

“Just joshing you. I’m not a vegetarian as such,” Leonard says. He doesn’t say, I am a hearty carnivore, slaughter me a hog, bring on the raw and bloody steaks. These days, back home, the only meat he eats with any appetite is chicken, and not so much of that. He does not truly believe that Meat Is Murder, as some vegan diehards claim—though certainly it’s slaughter—but he can’t be certain, so he has trained himself to go for fish and vegetables instead, at least when he is eating in company.

It does smell good at Gruber’s, though, he must admit. He is reminded of his mother and her customary Sunday lunches, with the skewered joint of beef or the cracklinged side of pork and the heirloom carving knife at the center of their table. Those meals were wonderful. This might be too. Anyway, he reasons, Maxie and Nadia are his guests, it is his treat, and he will have to go along with it, wonderful or not. Eating beef in Texas is something unavoidable, he supposes. He won’t cause much of a fuss. “Let’s make no bones about it—bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia,” he says, attempting two jokes that no one even smiles at except himself and, finally, the Gruber’s boy, who says, “I seen that movie. It’s way cool.” But Leonard is feeling slightly nauseous already. This is far too real, and surely not hygienic. “Feelin’ peckish, herbivore?” asks Maxie.

Inside, they collect bottled beers and sides of pinto beans and coleslaw with poppy seeds in polystyrene cups, find a trestle table to themselves in a corner, under a pair of mounted buck deer heads, and wait for the staff behind the counter to call their order number or shout Maxie’s name. Leonard does his best to seem at ease, though he is not at ease. Tomorrow worries him. This evening worries him. And Maxie’s herbivore remark has been infuriating. He must stay calm and cool. No tantrums here. No British petulance. To steady himself, he reads the labels on the easy-squeeze bottles of relishes and mustards. He studies the cloudy murk of a one-gallon jar of Ben E. Keith pickles. He peers inside the plastic bags of bread, hoping for wholemeal but finding only extra-thin white. Bread from the fifties, he thinks. Pickles from the devil’s larder. Hell’s kitchen. Constipation, here we come. But says, not quite waggishly enough and causing Nadia to blare her eyes at him, “Man, I could eat a dead bear’s bum.”

Once the barbecue arrives, wrapped in butcher’s paper, Leonard tugs at the unfeasibly large steaks with his fingers for ten or so minutes as everybody else is doing, but all too quickly has had his fill of meat. Rather than sit back puritanically, too soon, while Maxie and Nadia finish off the cuts, he busies himself with the free-with-every-order jalapeños and dill pickles until his eyes begin to smart.

“This is the real real deal,” says Maxie, relishing that perfect Texan trinity of beer and beef and company. “Cowboy style!”—by which he must mean no finesse. Leonard cannot imagine anything less European. Or customers less European. Everyone is either wearing jeans and gimme caps from cattle-feed companies or they’re done up for two-step dancing with cowboy boots and button shirts, doing their best to seem like red-blooded Texans rather than employees of Motorola or UT. It is now that Nadia pulls her camera from her shoulder bag and asks the charmless Gruber girl to take some pictures of the three of them. “Get in the bottles and the meat,” she says. They are the indoor shots, flash bright, that Leonard takes home to Britain. The only evidence that they have met, that he has eaten barbecue. There they are, posing side by side in Gruber’s hot-meat abattoir, in a bygone, unhygienic age. The room is blue with smoke. The archive date is 10-27-06.

 JUST CHEWING POLITICS,” he says whenever, in the years ahead, he recounts how this Austin evening finished so badly. “Just talk, that’s all.”

Leonard is relieved when finally Nadia and Maxie retire from the fray, defeated by the size of their order. He’s ready to go home and sleep the evening off. But he will have to wait. The eating may be finished, but the drinking has only just begun. An hour later they are still sitting round the detritus of their meal, with a third and fourth order of beer. Leonard is more than a little drunk—but, in his view, not so drunk as to be talking incautiously. He is not being too specific. He has not mentioned the president by name. He has not referred to the Laura Bush event. He has merely said exactly what he feels about the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about the torture camps at Guantánamo. Surely that is reasonable.

But Leonard is chewing politics too loudly now and in an accent that clearly is not Texan. He is showing off, of course, wanting to seem lively and stalwart for both Maxie and Nadia, making up for not enjoying meat and for being fearful of the next day’s plans, for being called the herbivore, for being guilty of a tantrum. The Brit is being antsy, as the saying goes. He is looking round the room as if he is a tourist checking out the artifacts (the rattlesnake skins and diner photographs) in a heritage building staffed by costumed volunteers. He is smiling far too readily. He is making eye contact with strangers, who turn away, or lift their chins at him, or fix him with hard expressions. He leans forward to try to read, out loud, the full text on the T-shirt of an overweight man sitting with his younger wife at the table opposite. It says, “Get Out of Your Rut and Spend Some Time with Us and You Won’t Be Disappointed.” Above is “Bullseye Sportsmans Bar and Grill.” Leonard smiles for the missing apostrophe and catches the wearer’s eye. He grins again, the British protocol. “Nice shirt,” he says. “Get out of your rut, indeed!” But realizing that the closing word is not quite right, too pipingly BBC, he adds, “Indeedy-doo-doowa! That’s jazz.”

“Time to take you home.” Nadia is more uncomfortable than amused.

“Take it easy,” Maxie says, grinning suddenly. “There’s still bottles on the table.”

Three bottles later Leonard stands unsteadily, at Nadia’s prompting, to settle the check, but he diverts off to the restroom first, not only to urinate but also to find some privacy to belch and to wash his hands, rinse away the meat before he handles dollar bills. The men’s room—called Gouchos, although some pedant, some clever frat boy, has already scored out the first o and corrected it with an a—is at the end of a long unlit hall with cinder-block walls. Halfway along, Leonard passes the man with the T-shirt swaying from drink and too wide for the hall. Leonard squeezes to the side as best he can, into the recess of a fire door, but still their shoulders meet. Not a painful clash but an awkward one. Leonard offers his apology.

He is standing and still straining to empty his bladder when the restroom door is opened. Whoever comes in does not step up to the remaining stall at the narrow urinal but waits at Leonard’s back, breathing badly. Leonard does his best to hurry up. But Texan beer is cold and gassy and slow to pass. He turns his head a little and offers a placatory smile, just at the moment when the newcomer reaches forward and shoves him, once, in the middle of his back. He is off-balance anyway. His left hand is holding his open trousers, his shirt front, and his belt away from the urinal; the right hand is directing what remains of his stream. He manages to stay upright but bangs his forehead against the wall in front. The blow is softened only marginally by the decades of chewing gum pressed into the grain of the cinder blocks. Ridiculously, he apologizes again, though how he can have counted it his fault he cannot say. His assailant mutters something. Not an apology, clearly. But more like “Shit” or “Git” or “Shirt.” He shoves Leonard again, this time higher up, in the shoulder, spinning Leonard round. The man steps back, just in time to avoid the final splash, which catches the lower parts of Leonard’s trousers and a shoe. Still, he nods with recognition. It is the T-shirt man again, smiling almost, evidently pleased with what he’s done.

Leonard is not fearful yet; he only feels the victim of a boyish, childish prank. He can almost hear a childhood adversary shouting in his ear, “Leonard’s wet his pants again,” then everybody rushing in to stare and point at him: “Leonard Pissing Lessing! Leonard Pissing Lessing! Get the mop, someone.” This man, though, is saying nothing, just smiling to himself and clenching his fists. Leonard starts to tuck himself away and do up his zipper, his eyes cast down. He knows he ought to speak, make light of it, perhaps. But T-shirt Man is turning now and heading for the hallway.

So it’s like that, thinks Leonard, swiftly sobered. That’s what happens when you bang into a fat man in a hallway, in Texas anyway. You take a shoving. And you take another. And you have to go back to your table and your friends wet around the ankles.

The restroom’s hot-air dryer is not functioning, so Leonard tries to fix himself with toilet paper, but it is the manly, nonabsorbent sort and merely spreads the damp. Fortunately, he now has the Gouchos to himself, and so he has a chance to catch his breath and settle his pounding heart. He’s close to tears and, now that the danger has passed, indulgently angry too. He almost draws blood, biting his lower lip again as he did in the Four T’s. He has to calm himself and get back to the embarrassing safety of the dining room. DAB, Leonard reminds himself. That’s what he’s been taught at music school. When you are waiting in your dressing room with fifteen minutes yet to go before the concert starts and you are shaking like a palsied leaf, then DAB—divert and burn; do something brisk and physical to burn the fear away. Leonard waves his arms around, though that is difficult in such a narrow space. He’d like to kick the restroom door or punch the walls. But he is sensible. Divert, don’t hurt yourself. Indeed, he does feel better almost at once. He pumps his arms to a count of thirty-two and then waits for a moment, more than a moment, washing and drying his hands several times. His hands are shaking anyway, so rubbing them with the thin toilet paper stops the trembling. He counts to sixteen and back again to naught. He’ll give his inexplicably resentful fellow meat-eater time to leave the hallway.

Leonard need not return to the dining room at all. He can easily push through the fire door in the hall and escape directly onto the sidewalk. Wouldn’t that be wisest? Wouldn’t it make sense simply to go back to the apartment alone and at once and let Nadia and Maxie figure it out for themselves? He can say that he was drunk, confused, got lost, misunderstood their plans. Whatever he does, inventing excuses will be easier than facing T-shirt Man again or walking back to the table looking damp and smelling urinous. He’s lost enough face already: the disappointment that Nadia and he will not be partners, the news of her pregnancy, its continuing uncertainty, his timid Englishness, which Texas has made unignorable, the demanding prospects of tomorrow’s AmBush.

The problem is, he has already walked out sulkily on Maxie, at the end of that humiliating performance in the Four T’s. It was a mistake and not one that he should repeat. It wasn’t worth the dime. Besides, he’s said this barbecue will be his treat. If he runs off without picking up the check, they will think he simply doesn’t want to pay his whack. He can guess what Maxie might say. “That British dude is tighter than tree bark. Won’t help us out with, you know, doctor’s fees. Won’t even pay for supper. What do we get for our fine hospitality? A carton of orange juice, is all.”

No, Leonard must face the music, so to speak, and go back to the dining room. He splashes his face with cold water, washing away the taste of meat and lip blood and the sting of pickle. He listens carefully. No sounds close by, just water, distant traffic, and music from the bar next door, a thrashing bass. A deep breath, then, and he will push the restroom door back. He gives it a solid shove, but the door will not open entirely. It sticks halfway. He puts his shoulder up against it and tries again, too soon to realize that what he thought was the toilet cistern refilling is in fact his old assailant’s wheezing lungs. The man’s been waiting—and evidently smoking—in the hallway behind the restroom door. Now he’s even less amused, and has as his excuse the pair of knocks he’s taken from the door handle and the sudden loss of his half-burned cigarette. “Sorry,” Leonard says for the third time, closing the Gouchos door behind him. He says nothing else. His chin is punched, a heavy rising blow, his head banged back against the cinder-block wall with a porous thud. He bites his tongue. Another blow. His nose this time. Another blow.

The punches do not hurt exactly, but they are shocking, shockingly efficient, as if a chiropractor rather than a boxer has carried out some restorative procedure on his face. He’s been straightened out. His skeleton is realigned. Even the impact of his skull on the wall seems soft at first. But, so soon after washing away the taste of meat, Leonard’s mouth is full of blood again, not cooked, not smoked, but fresh and privately familiar. Now T-shirt’s fingers are wrapped round Leonard’s throat and he is hurting, finally. His feet are barely touching the ground. All his weight seems to be hanging from the man’s thick arms. His face is turned against the cold cinder blocks. He feels as weak and helpless as an overcoat being hung up on a hook.

T-shirt is muttering under his breath. Leonard makes out the word Brit, repeated as a curse. “Look,” he says, as best he can, given that his windpipe is so constricted. He means to offer more apologies, an explanation, some recompense perhaps. That seems urgently wise. “I’m sorry if—” His assailant unexpectedly backs away, goes limp in fact, releases his throat hold so that Leonard drops onto his knees and is staring into the man’s rodeo belt and gut. T-shirt hovers for a moment, halves in height, his eye whites, now level with Leonard’s own eyes again, suddenly visible in the low light of the corridor, and then he falls forward onto Leonard’s shoulder, a sudden penitent, exhaling like a punctured cushion.

“Jesus,” Leonard says, flattened almost, fearing/hoping that the man has had a heart attack, a stroke. He’s fat enough. Evidently from the stink of his breath and his fingers he is a heavy smoker too. Leonard is already beset with awkward possibilities. What should he do? What should he tell the monster’s wife? Who’ll take the blame? “Jesus Christ,” he says again, and starts to push against the leaden body pressing down on him.

“Jesus won’t help you,” someone says. T-shirt Man is rolled aside. Leonard is being pulled by his wrist. He does not recognize his savior straightaway. Then he sees the hair. It’s Maxie. Maxim Lermontov. He has blood on the knuckles of his right hand and a short gray-and-black handgun in his left. “So get up off your knees,” he says.

 HE WAS GONNA KICK YOUR ASS.” Maxie is sitting at the window with a tablecloth round his shoulders while Nadia combs out his hair, pushing back the long, loose strands from his forehead, reluctant to begin the conscript cut for his disguise.

“You don’t know that.” Leonard is still angry and embarrassed, but Maxie does not seem to understand his discomfort. “You had a gun. I saw it in your hand.”

“That’s the best place for a gun.”

“Where the hell did that come from?”

“It came from right under my shirt. Like this.” Maxie produces his pistol again and swings it on his forefinger.

“I mean, where did you get it from?”

“Down the street. Go get one yourself. You hand the man the money and he hands you a pistol. This sweetie’s a Taurus 1911. Rock-solid.”

“Why would I ever want a gun? Why would you? Don’t point the thing.”

“They’ve got guns, that’s why. If it’s in their toolbox, then it’s gotta be in yours. That’s how the revolution’s won. That’s how the shitty world is changed. We’re talkin’ Russia 1917, Cuba, Vietnam, um, you know, armed rebellion, the just and mighty barrel of a gun. You shoot first and you don’t get pronounced first. That’s pronounced dead, Leon. Game over. If it wasn’t for the people’s firepower, there’d still be czars … back home.”

“Well, that’s debatable.” There never have been czars in Canada.

“And you know what? If you’d had a sidearm under your belt tonight, in the restroom, you could’ve shot the fat guy’s pecker off. Job done.”

“Why would I do that?”

“That’s what he would’ve done to you. That’s what he’s gonna do next time he catches sight of you.”

“You absolutely don’t know that.” Leonard turns to Nadia for support, but she only raises her eyebrows.

“Oh yes, I do. Abso-fucking-lutely, man. I know his brand—he owns three, four guns, one for each of his bellies. He’s drunk most nights on Shiner Bocks. He don’t forget. He don’t forgive. And the sticker on the fender of his pickup doesn’t say KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD. It says DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS. Yessir, he was always fixin’ to kick your ass as soon as you started speakin’ through it.”

“Why would he want to kick my anything? That’s crap.”

“That’s what he’s kickin’ outta you, my friend. Because you’re British and you’re talkin’ about his president in not so many words and this is Texas U.S.A. and that man’s havin’ dinner with his wife and they’re both patriots, they’re red-state, redneck, red-blooded Americans. And then you’re lookin’ at his tits, like he should lose some weight or what. And then you’re tellin’ him you absolutely love his shirt, indeedy-dee-doowah. Nice work. That’s gonna make you friends round here. Plus that guy was in a meat stupor. That means he’s like a stag in rut. Don’t mess with him. If he wasn’t gonna beat up on you, he was gonna beat up on someone else. He was in the zone for poleaxin’, all three hundred pounds of him. Then you show up, some British guy who’s dumber than a box of hammers, and as good as put your chin up to be clobbered. Go right ahead. Take aim.”

“So you say.”

Maxie laughs, genuinely amused, happy to be arguing. “Believe me, comrade. Even I was tempted to beat you up and I agreed with everythin’ you said, except about the shirt. So.”

“You were tempted to beat me up? That’s nice.”

“Nice I came and hauled you out of there. Nice I know the basic rules of engagement, like kick butt or get butt kicked. One day you’ll look at your big smile in the mirror and know who to thank for havin’ any teeth left. You’d never play that cheesy saxophone again. How’d that be?”

“I don’t think he meant to do me any real harm.” Cheesy?

“You don’t? Now who’s to say? You don’t negotiate with guys like that, is all I know. This is what the world is all about. You always have to stand up to those punks. Or always be a loser. That’s my philosophy.”

“Well, my philosophy is that discussion is always better than concussion. I might’ve calmed him down myself if you hadn’t interfered.”

“You think?”

“I was just explaining to the guy—”

“You’re in the restroom with your zipper down and someone sticks his shoulder in your back. And you explain? And you apologize? That’s not the way we deal with dickheads in America. You should have pissed all over him. Instead, what do you do? Listen to me, Leon. What do you do?” Maxie knows the answer. Leonard pissed down his own leg. Leonard pissed on his own shoe.

“What could I do? You saw the size of him. How many times do I have to repeat myself?” Leonard adopts an American accent, more East Coast than East Austin. “I was gonna speak to him.”

“Jeez, Leon, who are you, Neville Chamberlain?”

“Oh, please.”

“That’s a conversation I’d have liked to hear. You’ve got two fat lips and some guy’s fist halfway down your throat and you want to open a peace conference. Where’s the brains in that?”

“Where’s the brains in sending someone back home or to his wife, well … bleeding? Bleeding and unconscious.”

“He won’t be goin’ home. Not yet. He’ll be needin’ stitches. He’ll be needin’ crutches. He was lucky, point of fact. I could’ve shot him in the knees and he’d be limpin’ till he dies. Fuck him, anyway. And fuck his wife.”

“And you’re supposed to be against the war.”

“Leon, now I’m warnin’ you. Don’t cheapen it. Don’t get confusin’ this or that, because the way I feel, all dandered up, I might be tempted to take a poke at you myself, just in the name of fair play. And parity.”

“What kind of father are you going to make?”

“He’ll be the perfect dad,” Nadia says, interrupting finally, her hands still resting on his full and springy head of hair. “No need to make it personal.”

Maxie stands, stretches out, and takes hold of Leonard’s shoulder, a fifty-fifty grip, loose enough to be mistaken as friendly contact, firm enough—after it is held for far too long—to hurt a little. “Best keep it calm, Leon. Don’t say another word.”

“Maxie, this is all I want to say. You went too far. You frighten me. You’re hurting me. You really hurt that guy.”

“Yes, I did. Oh, boy, I hurt him bad.”

“Congratulations.”

“It’s deserved. We walked all over him.”

“You walked all over him. I didn’t touch the man.”

“Well, yes indeedy-deed. Comrade Leon walks away unscathed.”

Leonard pushes Maxie’s hands away and turns toward his room. “I’m not unscathed. I’m hurt.” He points at the cuts and bruises on his face and flexes his shoulders. “I’m hurt real bad,” he adds. “By both of you.”

“Real bad? You’ve no idea what real bad means. The fat guy knows.”

“Enough.” Eee-nuff!

“See, that’s it, you’re still runnin’ off … Some two-trick circus pony you turned out to be, either runnin’ off or down on your knees—”

“Leave him. Let him go. You guys are ugly drunk. Let’s fix your hair before the evening’s completely spoiled and wasted.” Nadia pushes Maxie back onto his seat and holds up her scissors, clicking the blades. “Sit still and stop talking, unless you want to bleed,” she warns. She lifts the first tress and pulls it clear of his scalp, starting at his widow’s peak. “You’re sure of this?”

“Just cut.”

“Farewell, the lunatic fringe.”

“Amen.”

When Leonard comes back an hour later—he has to show he isn’t in a sulk—his face and nostrils wiped clean of blood, his bruises dressed, his trousers changed, Maxie has become a different man. His black mustache and sparse and adolescent beard have gone. Nadia’s cut has almost reached the top of his head. All the hair around is harvested and cleared. It’s only stubble that remains, black bristles on white, unweathered skin, and two inches of Mohican, standing straight and vulnerable as wheat. He’s nothing but an exclamation mark. A crest. A military plume. But already Maxie is virtually unrecognizable. The familiar piled hair made him unmistakable. Perhaps that’s why so many people greet him on the street. They recognize the hair and think they know the man. The loss of hair has aged and brutalized him—criminalized him, in fact. His lips and nose seem huge. His eyebrows—till she trims them too—hang heavy on his face, like bats. And once the Mohican is gone and Nadia is rubbing Maxie’s scalp with the same tea tree oil that Leonard has rubbed into his bruises, the original Sniper Without Bullets has disappeared entirely. Nadia holds up the mirror. “You clean up good,” she says, though she does not sound impressed; regretful, rather.

“He looks like a skinhead,” suggests Leonard. “Or like a serviceman.”

“What kind of serviceman, Leon? Am I fixin’ TV sets or swimmin’ pools? Or am I fixin’ for Uncle Sam?”

“We’re speaking different languages. In England, servicemen are … army personnel. They don’t fix anything. That’s for sure. You look like a marine.”

“No bull. Just look at me. Back to the bone. Ain’t that a head of hair?”

“Looks more like rawhide than a head of hair.” Leonard disapproves of what he sees, of what the haircut has confirmed.

“Yessir, I’m all spit-shined and polished up. So hats on, ladies. Let’s go greet the president.”