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I listened to the music with intuition as well as with new training. Too deep-structured to be baroque, not combed a'nd formal enough to be classical, not crinkly enough to be modern. Romantic, lyric, light . . .
"Neoclassical," I guessed. "Feels like a major composer, but he's having fun with this one. Written, I'd say-1923?"
I was convinced Leslie knew epoch, date, composer, work, movement, orchestra, conductor, concertmaster. Once she had heard a piece of music, she knew it; she sang along with every one of the thousand performances she had collected. Stravinsky, as unpredictable to me as a rodeo bronc, she hummed, hardly aware she did.
"Good guess!" she said. "Close! Composer?"
"Definitely not German." It wasn't heavy enough; it didn't have enough wheels on the road to be German. Playful, so it wasn't Russian. Nor did it taste French nor feel Italian nor look British. It wasn't colored like Austria, not
enough gold in it. Homey, I could hum it myself, but not American homey. It was dancing.
"Polish? Sounds to me like it was written in the fields east of Warsaw."
"Nice try! Not Polish. Little bit farther east. It's Russian." She was pleased with me.
The Bantha didn't slow; green lights were Leslie's servants.
"Russian? Where's the yearning? Where's the pathos? Russian! My goodness!"
"Not so quick with generalities, wookie," she said. "You haven't heard any happy Russian music, till now. You're right. This one, he's playful."
"Who is it?"
"Prokofiev."
"What do you know!" I said. "Rus . . ."
"GODDAMN IDIOT!" Brakes shrieked, the Bantha swerved wildly, missed the black-lightning streak of sudden truck by a yard. "Did you see that son of a bitch? Straight through the light! He nearly killed . . . what the HELL does he think ..."
She had reflexed like a racing driver to miss the thing and now it was gone, a quarter-mile down Crenshaw Boulevard. What stunned me was not the truck but her language.
She looked at me, frowning still, saw my face, looked again, puzzled, struggled to suppress a smile, failed.
"Richard! I've shocked you! Did I shock you with Goddamn Hell?" She smothered her mirth with immense effort. "Oh, my poor baby! I cursed in front of it! I'm sorry!"
I half-raged, half-laughed at myself.
"All right, Leslie Parrish, this is it! You enjoy this moment because this is the last time you wil
l ever see me shocked over goddamn hell!"
Even as I said the last words, they sounded strange in my mouth, awkward syllables. Like a nondrinker saying martini; a nonuser saying cigarette or joint or any of the jargon that comes easy to addicts. No matter the word, if we never use it, it sounds awkward. Even fuselage sounds funny, coming from one who doesn't like airplanes. But a word is a word is a sound in the air and there is no reason why I shouldn't be able to say any word I want without feeling like a goat.
I didn't talk for a few seconds, while she twinkled at me.
How does one practice swearing? To the melody of Prokofiev, still on the radio, I practiced, quietly. "Oh . . . damn, damn hell, damn-damn-hellllll/damn-danm-hell-oh damn-damn-hell, DAMN-DAMN HELLLLLL/Oh, dam-dam-hel-hel-dam-dam-hell-oh-dam-dam-hel-hel dammtnn; Oh dammmmmmn. . . . HELL!"
When she heard what I was singing, and the earnest determination with which I sang, she dissolved against the wheel in merriment.
"Laugh if you want, damn it hell, wookie," I said. "I'm going to learn this damn stuff right! Hell! What's the name of the damn music?"
"Oh, Richard," she gasped, wiping tears. "It's Romeo and Juliet ..."
I went on with my song regardless, and sure enough, after a few stanzas the words lost their meaning altogether. Another few verses and I'd be damning and helling with the worst of them! And other words beyond, to conquer! Why hadn't I thought of curse-practice thirty years ago?
She got me to curb my profanity by the time we entered the symphony hall.
It wasn't till we were back in the car after an evening of front-row Tchaikovsky and Samuel Barber, Zubin Mehta conducting Itzhak Perlman and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, that I could express my feelings.
