A Taste of Candor

Chapter 6

~Tahlia.

Around noon the next day, the Paige mansion emptied itself of all but our various service staff. My parents departed together to speak with the organizers of the musicians' guild, while all my brothers banded together to spend a few hours at the arcade. As for myself, I met up with Keene to visit a new park he'd found, which he said had excellent hiking trails around a beautiful lake.

We presently shifted to one side of the dirt trail to allow a biker to zoom past. The reckless teenager pedaled so fast I was forced to shield my face from the dust he'd kicked up. I could surmise that people like him were the reason signs had been erected throughout the park to forbid biking.

"Anyway," I said, easing myself back into the conversation Keene and I had been having before the interruption, "you really should have been there. He had the dreamiest sound one could ask for."

Keene shifted his fishing pole to rest against his other shoulder. "It sounds like this was quite a remarkable player. Too bad you neglected to ask his name."

I sighed. "It totally slipped my mind in the moment. Now, I can only hope I happen upon him again."

"Where was it you said you heard him, again?"

"It was at that new coffee shop downtown, Brewer's."

Keene smiled and wiped beads of sweat off his forehead. "Perhaps an iced coffee after our walk? Who knows, maybe we'll get lucky and find your dreamy saxophonist there again."

"Oh, stop it." I laughed while purposefully walking into him, throwing him slightly off balance for a moment. "When you hear him, you'll be saying the same."

"Maybe so. Or maybe not."

"Only time will tell." I said in a mocking tone, beating Keene to one of his favorite sayings. "Oh, and by the way, if we're going there, I should like you to keep an eye on the boy at the register. He said some ... untoward things to me yesterday."

"Alright, I will. What specifically did he say?"

"Well, more was implied than said, but when I told him my name, he said 'that sounds like a mother's name'."

Keene threw back his head in laughter. He nearly ran into a branch jutting out into the path, but recovered just in time and ducked. When he glanced over at me, his eyes glistened with mirth.

"Can a boy have any less subtlety, I wonder..." he muttered, "I can only assume he waited for your father to be out of earshot to say such a thing."

"Indeed. The very moment he left, that's when the rascal started in."

Keene didn't quite reply to this; he simply shook his head and chuckled some more. I happily joined in, for the boy's lack of subtlety was more amusing to me than anything else.

* * * * *

In about half an hour, Keene and I reached the end of the trail we'd been traveling, after which we made our way to the lake shore and he fished for the same length of time. He caught two large fish ... I frankly couldn't recall which variety he claimed they were, and he hadn't seemed all too sure himself. But at any rate, he put his catches in an ice chest he'd brought along, and then we headed back to his car.

Before long, Keene parked outside Brewer's, and we casually made entry. My ears were immediately hit with the unpleasant tones of a poor clarinet player improvising over piano, bass, and guitar accompaniment. What I found most painful about the sound was that I hardly heard the instrument at all unless it made one of its shrill squeaks, which was often. The player also clearly had poor technique, for the notes coming at my ears were fumbling all over the place like a toddler attempting an intricate dance.