After ten minutes, Bob turned around and walked back down the path. When he reached the sidewalk, the window slapped open.

“Come back next Tuesday, 1:00 o’clock. And don’t be early ‘cause I’ll be havin’ my lunch.” Frank’s furious voice pelted across the scrubby yard toward Bob.

“Great!” Bob yelled. “I’ll be here. Don’t worry!”

Frank’s head was gone again

During his first lesson in Frank’s smelly little room, Bob tried to get Frank to talk about the clarinet. He asked Frank for an assessment of the Artley 58S. He showed Frank the wood, took the mouthpiece off and blew into it. Frank would not hold the clarinet, but looked at closely while Bob tilted it this way and that. “It’s a good instrument.” he said, finally. Bob asked him about the mouthpiece, inquired about appropriate reeds. Frank waited for Bob to finish speaking, and let a long silence elapse. “It’s a good instrument.” he said again. Bob told Frank about the 9,000-year-old flute found in China, still playable, carved from the wing bone of a crane. Frank shook his head, in amazement, retort, reprimand? Bob could not tell.

When Bob plays, Frank looks out the window, wincing occasionally, offering pained correction. After each lesson, Bob shakes Frank’s hand, thanking him for his guidance. Frank looks at a spot above and to the right of Bob’s head while Bob speaks, then gazes at the palm of his released hand for several seconds, as though bemused by a foreign ritual.

Bob has made a discovery. He loves the clarinet. Frank’s indifference, even his contempt, can’t diminish Bob’s enthusiasm for this instrument. He revels in the fruity, round notes, the soft clack of the keys, glimpses the ultimate possibilities, the future of this music.

And Bob believes that he has promise. He feels it. His technique isn’t bad, and it’s getting better. He stands up straight, lifts the clarinet easily with his right hand, places his lips on it with care. His embouchure is firm, but gentle. He no longer squeaks, or not very often. He keeps his head up, his chin down flat, taking Frank’s sighs and pained creaking on the two protuberances at the front of his cranium, the hardest, most resilient part of his skull.

Breathing is Bob’s downfall; his wind is bad, the cumulative effect of 29 years of smoking. He started when he was 13. Nauseated but determined, he worked his way up to a pack a day by 16, then a pack and a half. He has a permanent, deep yellow stain on his right hand. When he started traveling, started taking junk with his crazy brother, Bob didn’t smoke as much. For a few years, he was too stoned, too stupid to smoke without setting himself on fire. When he quit junk, cleaned up, Bob started smoking again. He felt a terrible need. He was grey and ugly anyway. He felt like shit. After a couple of years, he started to cut back. He ritualized, smoked outside, started to box once a week, grew lighter on his feet. But his lungs are permanently damaged.

Now, Bob smokes six cigarettes per day. He smokes his first Player’s Light when he wakes up in the morning at 6:45 a.m. He smokes one after his workout, at 10:30 a.m. He smokes one after lunch, at 12:45 p.m. He smokes one at 3:30 p.m., taking a break from whatever he’s doing at that time, which can be any number of things, getting his dad settled in for a nap after Coronation Street, finishing his practice session at the conservatory, lying on his bed reconstructing the past. He smokes one, of course, after dinner, between 6:30 p.m. and 6:45 p.m., depending on how long it takes his father to painstakingly spoon dinner into his hole. Then he has his final, elegiac smoke at 9:15 p.m. He holds each cigarette tightly between the first fingers of his right hand, pinching the filter to intensify his inhalation. He’d like to eat the stream of smoke flowing into his mouth, devour it as it scalds his tongue and throat. Instead, he has to settle for sucking the goodness out of them, burning them right down to the filters.

If he’s at home, Bob dips his finished butt in the glass of water which he carries outside with him for this purpose. He grips the soggy filter between his thumb and index finger, and flicks the spent joy into a pile of sand to the right of the back steps. Once a month, he clears away the fouled sand, replaces it with fresh. If Bob is out, he’s more careful with his butts, uses an ashtray in a socially anonymous way. In non-smoking venues, he smokes on the sidewalk or in the back alley, and is careful to step on his finished cigarette. Each one is ground slowly under his heel, a contained black whorl on the pavement, flecked with filter stained brown.