It’s always a good day when an envelope falls onto the mat, the telephone rings (both of those events increasingly rare) or an email pings into my Inbox, asking me if I would like to contribute a short story to a forthcoming collection. This especially if it means my work will be published alongside that of other writers whose work I admire and if the person doing the asking as an editor or publisher who ranks high in my estimation. Oh, and mention of a small fee is always a bonus.
One such message arrived earlier this year from the esteemed Maxim Jakubowski – a man, who by his own admission, has been responsible for over a hundred anthologies over the years. But in the world of writing and publishing, all good things (as I well know) approach an end, and, according to Maxim, the volume of all-new crime stories he is currently putting together – provisionally titled Invisible Blood – will be his last. Could he, he asks, convince me to contribute a story? Could he stop me?
It was Maxim who first persuaded me to write a short story – a form I had spent a good many years avoiding – the result being “Now’s the Time”, which, title borrowed from Charlie Parker, first appeared in the collection, London Noir, in 1994.
This is how it begins …
“They’re all dying, Charlie.”
They had been in the kitchen, burnished tones of Clifford Brown’s trumpet, soft like smoke from down the hall. Dark rye bread sliced and ready, coffee bubbling, Resnick had tilted the omelette pan and let the whisked eggs swirl around before forking the green beans and chopped red pepper into their midst. The smell of garlic and butter permeated the room.
Ed Silver stood watching, trying to ignore the cats that nudged, variously, around his feet. Through wisps of grey hair, a fresh scab showed clearly among the lattice-work of scars. The hand which held the glass was swollen at the knuckles and it shook.
“S’pose you think I owe you one, Charlie? That it?”
Earlier that evening, Resnick had talked Silver out of swinging a butcher’s cleaver through his own bare foot. “What I thought, Charlie, start at the bottom and work your way up, eh?” Resnick had bundled him into a cab and brought him home, stuck a beer in his hand and set to making them both something to eat. He hadn’t seen Ed Silver in ten years or more, a drinking club in Carlton whose owner liked his jazz; Silver had set out his stall early, two choruses of “I’ve Got Rhythm” solo, breakneck tempo, bass and drums both dropping our and the pianist grinning, open-mouthed. The speed of thought: those fingers then.
Resnick divided the omelette on to two plates. “You want to bring that bread,” he said. “We’ll eat in the other room.”
The boldest of the cats, Dizzy, followed them hopefully through. The Clifford Brown Memorial album was still playing. “Theme of No Repeat”.
“They’re all dying, Charlie.”
“Who?”
“Every bugger!”
And now it was true.
The story I’m going to write for Maxim’s last anthology, it had better be a Resnick story, I think. One that involves him in some significant way, at least. Resnick in retirement, kicking his heels a bit. Harking back. Thinking of Ed Silver, perhaps …
SILVER Edward Victor. Suddenly at home, on February 16, 1993. Acclaimed jazz musician of the be-bop era. Funeral service and memorial meeting, Friday, February 19 at Golders Green Crematorium at 11.45 am.
A story that begins, perhaps, with the line …
“They’re all dying, Charlie.”
Get to Resnick’s age and they’re starting to fall like ninepins.
If anyone wants to read (or re-read) “Now’s the Time”, it’s included in the Arrow paperback of the same name, along with ten other Resnick short stories.
Some Days You Do ... 