Read Online Found Objects by Michael Boehm - Free Book Online Page B

son," his mother said to him from the passenger seat.   "This levee is coming apart."
    Charlie looked over at his mother, sitting proudly in her seat.   A slight smile played across her lips.   "Sure thing, momma," he said as he eased the vehicle onto the bridge and headed north.  
     
     

 
     
     
    MAESTRO
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    The city was shattered.   Tumbledown buildings leaned together like drunkards, whispering secrets from vacant office to moldering apartment.   Lonely breezes slipped down streets, choked with the charred corpses of automobiles.  
    The Maestro carried his duffel bag down one street, weaving his way among piles of crumbled masonry.   He arrived at last at the symphony hall, its squat marble architecture largely intact, save for the shattered windows and ripped façade.   He withdrew a key ring from his pocket and unlocked the side door, as he had every Sunday at noon for the past eight months.   Before that, he entered by the performers' entrance in back, but the sight of the bodies had driven him to the side entrance since then.
    By touch and memory he wound his way through dark passages to the concert hall.   He pulled the curtain aside and stepped onto the orchestra's stage.   It was lit only by the pale sunbeam filtering in through the rent in the roof, but it was enough.  
    He unzipped his duffel bag, withdrew the portable stereo, and placed it on the stage.   It was an old model, battered but serviceable.   He breathed a silent prayer it would last through one more performance, and then withdrew a sheaf of music from the duffel bag.   He placed the music on the stand, stood in his position on the podium, took up the baton on the music stand, raised it high, closed his eyes, and waited.  
    When he was ready, he slipped his free hand into his pocket, withdrew the remote, studded the Play button, and slid it back into his ripped tuxedo trousers.  
    After a few delicious moments of anticipation, Mozart's Quintet in E-flat for piano and winds, K.452 began to roll forth from the speakers.   The Maestro swooped and bobbed his hands in accompaniment to the extended largo opening of the piece.   He particularly enjoy ed this performance , recorded at the Boston Symphony Hall in 1956.   The piano was strongly in charge, but in an open and insistent, rather than forceful, manner.   He metronomed his baton back and forth with the gentle and textured larghetto that followed.   The woodwinds finally asserted themselves, as he knew they would.   His chest swelled with the beautiful symmetry of the piece.  
    Far back in his mind, the small portion of his consciousness that was not swept up in the piece took note of the presence of t he Wolf.   He stirred , somewhere in the balcony terrace, sta ge left.   The Maestro heard his hob-nailed boots scraping and thudding against the dirty floor of the balcony.   He paid the Wolf no heed, however, as Mozart's allegretto finale swelled. He extended his baton towards the appropriate quarters of the orchestra for each instrument's cadenza passages.   It finished with a flourish, and the Maestro added his own with a flick of his wrist. .  
    The music ceased, but the Maestro kept his eyes shut, hands lowered, breathing steadily.   He could no lon ger ignore the Wolf.   The man in the balcony pulled open a long zipper .   He had never seen him, but the Mastro felt that he knew the man.   The Wolf had lived in the balcony for a very long time now, and the Maestro wondered when he would tire of the Sunday music.   When he did, the Wolf would probably kill him.   It mattered not to the Maestro.   The music was his life, his soul, the only thing worth living for in this wasted place. Without it, he would rather be dead.
    The next piece flood ed out of the speakers:   Dvořák's No.9 in E minor .   The Maestro swept his arms out and around in a strong gesture, and the Wolf was gone from his mind again.   He gesticulated aggressively,