The music coming from my trumpet was sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek.  It had been ever since Sheila, the woman I’d been dating for seven years, had ended our relationship by mailing me a two-line letter from Kissimmee that said:

“Sometimes silence is also an answer…I am, after all, very Lutheran and very agonized…Sheila.”

I recalled her Shell of Seeming Indifference, the nightmares she used to talk about at the breakfast table, her love of black Renault sedans, bialys, frog’s legs, Wild Turkey and cheap motels.

And nobody could interpret nonverbal communication better than Sheila.

“Eyebrows lie,” she once told me. “So do upper lips and cheeks.
Chins and earlobes are pretty much straight-shooters.”

As I emptied the spit valve on my horn, the phone rang.

It was Sheila calling from Kissimmee.

“You know I’ve been badly damaged by the world and that I’m a woman
of excess and failure,” she said.

“Join the club,” I said.

“Always a cigarette in one hand and a glass of bourbon in the other…
and I’m an ergophobe.”

“A what?”

“I have a fear of work.”

“I’m aware of that.”

Long pause.

“Anyway,” she said. “Chin up.”

“Chin up?”

“You’ll be alright.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be alright, too.  Just gotta stay away from drama and decadence, you know what I mean, jellybean?”

“No.”

“Me neither.  But I can front with the best of ‘em.  Toodaloo, bugaboo!”

“Wait a minute-”

“Gotta go, man.  Gonna donate some of my eggs.”

“What?”

“This fertility clinic.  They’re payin’ like 2 g’s for eggs.  Mama’s got rent to pay.”

“Don’t do that. I can loan you… whatever you need…”

“Dominus vobiscum, Chico!”

“Whaaa?”

“Gotta go!”

“Sheila?!”

Click.

Dial tone.

I went back into the bathroom to take a leak.

After zipping up, I peered into the mirror.

“I don’t love Sheila.  I don’t love Sheila.  I don’t love Sheila.”

My eyebrows appeared noncommittal, however, my cheeks and upper lip seemed to be in denial.

I picked up my horn and played taps, this time with very little rancor.