MARTIN

In a rental car barreling up the Adirondack Northway with a painter Martin didn’t know and a poet he and Haze knew only slightly, the conversation turned to what each of them planned to teach the next day. They were to perform that night at Skidmore College, followed by two days of master classes.

“It’s a prestige thing,” Haze had said, when Martin balked.

Martin watched the suburbs open up into rolling fields. Smoky plumes rose above the skylines of distant industrial cities: Albany, Amsterdam, Schenectady. He wished he’d stayed in New York. He fidgeted with the map. The painter was driving. The poet had insisted on sitting in the back seat with Haze—a little too close to Haze, according to Martin’s periodic glimpses in the rearview mirror.

“I’m going to concentrate on technique,” Haze said. He turned to the poet. “And you?”

“I’ll send them out to find an object and have them write about it,” the poet said, softly. “It’s a righteous exercise in associative free verse. Gets their juices flowing.”

The painter took his turn.

“Kids these days think paint only exists prepackaged in jars and tubes. I’ve brought ingredients to make gouache and tempera.”

“I thought I smelled rotten egg,” the poet said. “Or is that something else?” He sniffed the air.

The painter turned to Martin.

“Very funny. We’ve got a comedian in the backseat.”

Martin wished he’d keep his eyes on the road.

“And you, Martin?” Haze said. “What are you going to do dearie?”

Martin hated that: the way Haze used the queer dear when they were in public.

“I’m going to read from my music,” Martin said.

“How the hell are you going to do that?”

Martin’s jaw tightened. “I’m going to read it metaphorically. Or perhaps, if they’re really astute, theoretically.”

Everyone except Haze cracked up at that, especially the poet who used the laughter as an excuse to shinny even closer to Haze.

The chanting and running around in the dark Friday night after they performed was the poet’s idea. He had built a fire and brewed tea out of some roots he brought. The tea was slightly sweet and earthy. It left a peculiar taste in Martin’s mouth. The poet had brought cups. He poured, and Haze passed tea out to the girls who hung around after the performance. Most of the students snuck out before it was over.

The next day, when Martin set up a folding chair in the middle of the lawn, the girls rushed to sit cross-legged at his feet; he didn’t know whether to laugh or tell them to fuck off. His intention was to talk music theory, show pages from one of his scores, but he figured, what the hell, he’d see just how far he could push them. He read from a book he brought instead: Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest.

Mushrooms excited Martin the way music never had. From the time he was a boy the notes crawled through his head like ants on parade, black dots waving pointed flags. The look of them intrigued him as much as the sounds they made.

Music had chosen him. He had chosen mushrooms. He stalked them, gathered them, and cooked them. He belonged to mushroom societies, and collected books about them. Foraging was his relaxation. And if he was to be truthful, they were his distraction. By the time he discovered them, he was pretty sure Haze had already begun to stray.

Martin didn’t have the energy to do much more than read. For two days, the college girls sat at his feet with rapt expressions, as he droned on from his book about the characteristics of the West Coast species. All except one: a small, mousy girl dressed in a brown sweatshirt and tattered blue jeans. She looked as pissed off as he was.