A Love Note
Derik Fettig
Our arrangement was simple enough. I was with Gloria the first and third weekends of the month; Ollie and Gloria were together the second and fourth weekends. Weeknights were infrequent and scheduled ad hoc. Gloria and I had regular dates at a few bars, with an occasional wedding when called upon. Ollie and Gloria mainly frequented American Legion halls and maybe some family gatherings, as far as I knew. Nothing fancy, but enough to keep us all interested.
We settled into our routine with a regularity that made it difficult to remember our previous, more independent, lives. Of course, there were bumps in the road: Ollie occasionally wanted Gloria on one of my weekends or we had a conflict around a holiday, but not often, and we always navigated any obstacles smoothly. It seemed as if we could go on like this forever.
It probably helped that Ollie and I had been longtime friends before Gloria came on the scene. We had known each other practically our whole lives, growing up in a small town in North Dakota. We ate barely edible school lunches together and had sleepovers in elementary school. We navigated the complexities of middle school at each other’s sides. We even sat next to each other in the high school band, with Ollie on the tenor sax and me on trumpet, our instruments mirroring our stature in the class photo. We lost touch for a time after high school, but we never stopped being friends.
Now, many years later, after separately moving to Minneapolis, we had become reacquainted through the small world of gig musicians. Our friendship picked up where we left off, easy-going and without drama, close in the sense of men who have no desire to talk to each other of difficult things. We maintained our connection by watching sports on television, or by drinking cheap beers around a bar while talking about sports we had watched on television. True to form, we did not discuss details of our time with Gloria or really anything related to Gloria, other than changes to our schedule.
All of which led to my confusion at lunch one day when Ollie asked, “Don’t you think it’s time one of us moved on from Gloria?”
The question hit like a gut punch, made worse by his breezy inflection that implied, in his mind at least, the matter already had been settled and I’d be the one moving on.
“What do ya mean? End it . . . just like that? I don’t under—”
“I don’t think there’s a formal process for this sort of thing.”
“That’s not what I . . . I mean, how do we decide who ‘moves on?’”
Ollie did not respond, so I filled the silence: “Anyway, I like sharing. That way we can both look after her.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Ollie said. “I just think it’s time for a change, that’s all . . . it’s not like we’ll stop being friends if we don’t share Gloria.”
That was it. I jerked our conversation to more comfortable ground. First, baseball—“Do you think the Twins will make a move at the trade deadline?”—and then, music—“Have you seen any jazz at the Dakota lately?”—talking rapidly and more than usual, afraid of what Ollie might say to fill any gaps in the conversation.
As is often the case, the end of this whole affair was not immediate. Gloria and I had a number of beautiful weekends together. I remember one night at a German American bar where it seemed we could do no wrong. We swayed in harmony on the dance floor to the Snow Waltz, kicked up our feet a bit to the Tipsy Polka, and even tried a tango. The night seemed to last forever and pass in an instant, as only the most memorable times do. Of course, Ollie had his time with Gloria too. And, of course, I continued to remain in the dark about where they went together.
Everything seemed back to normal, yet I could not shake the feeling that we were all on borrowed time together. Toward the end, I found myself holding Gloria more tightly, moving together for an extra song or two, under the harsh glare of the overhead lights and the occasional wary glances from staff as they scrubbed the glassware and did a cursory wipe of the bar and tables at closing time.
Of course, I regret my inaction in the moment. Looking back, I had plenty of opportunities to avoid the disaster that ensued. I should have been proactive. I should have fought for Gloria like a true literary hero. I am not one to blaze my own path, though, and there are not many love stories involving our triangle of two musicians and an instrument. You see, Gloria is not a woman; she was—she still is—an accordion.
It is possible this revelation may mitigate your empathy for my tale of heartbreak. If that is your reaction, I feel nothing but pity for you. On the contrary, as only the lucky souls who have held an accordion can attest, it makes my account more profound.
Unless you have played your own accordion—actually hugged one to your chest as you felt her breath move in and out, matching the rhythm of your heartbeat—I can’t expect you to understand the relationship an accordionist has with his instrument. The way other instruments are played—the pursed-lip kiss of a trombone, the soggy taste of a saxophone, the plunking of cold piano keys, the violent banging of a drum—make them simply inanimate objects in your hand.
An accordion, on the other hand, comes alive as you gently massage her keys, warmed by your own hands during an hours-long embrace in which she continuously changes form, gracefully expanding and contracting. Like any desirable woman, an accordion is both welcoming and independent, granting you the opportunity to join your voice with her melodic tones or to simply enjoy her sweet music.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I remember my first time with Gloria as vividly as I remember my “first time.” When I first held her, I knew we were made for each other and that her music would be the sweetest I could ever hope to play. When I looped in Ollie to help pay for Gloria, I assumed he would feel the same way. I guess I cannot expect most people to understand the connection that I felt with Gloria, but Ollie, he should have known. We were a part of a small but vibrant community of accordion players enjoying a renaissance of sorts—at least in our small part of the world—driven by the improbable convergence of the elderly yearning for tradition and young people embracing the retro irony of a good polka or waltz.
Perhaps none of that matters now. What does matter is that I called Ollie one Friday morning to arrange a time to pick up Gloria. I asked when I could stop by, and I was answered by a long pause. Finally, Ollie said the five words that always presage doom: “You had better sit down.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t have the accordion.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t have Gloria. I haven’t seen her since yesterday.”
“Yesterday? When were you planning to tell me?”
“I was hoping to find it.”
It. A subtle, yet significant, shift in terminology, like switching to the past tense when discussing a person who is chronically ill or gone missing.
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so Ollie continued, “I had the accordion in my car when I stopped by the grocery store, and when I got home it wasn’t in there. I must have taken it out of the trunk to make room for my grocery bags and forgot to put it back in.”
I was stunned. I couldn’t process my life without Gloria. I knew that I could scrape together enough money to buy another used accordion, as I eventually did, but it was Gloria I wanted. Anyway, what was she doing in the trunk? And dammit, she’s not an “it.”
With no idea how to respond, I started peppering Ollie with obvious suggestions. “Did you go back to the store parking lot? Did you check inside the store to see if anyone turned it in? Did you ask any of the other customers?”
We did our due diligence, of course. Ollie and I returned to the store together, and at least in my case separately on numerous occasions, to see if anyone had turned in Gloria. I walked through the parking lot nearly every day, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gloria next to a parked car. The store employees grew to know me, although the recognition that showed on their faces as I approached the customer service counter gradually evolved from welcoming to exasperated as the days passed. After a time, I started shopping at another grocery store to avoid reminders of Gloria’s absence in my life.
We even stopped by the local police station for help, where we were politely informed that, based on the facts, the accordion was considered abandoned, such that there was “no potential violation of the criminal code requiring investigative action.” When I took it upon myself to seek surveillance video from the parking lot a city official efficiently closed the bureaucratic loop by requiring a search warrant to view any footage.
While pursuing the dead end of police assistance, we sought help from our community. We took refuge in the new town square and posted notices on Facebook and our neighborhood social networking site next to announcements of lost pets, yard sales, and complaints about neighbors not picking up after their dogs. We tweeted about our plight and scoured Craigslist multiple times a day for a post listing our beloved Gloria for sale, presumably at much-too-low of an asking price.
Leaving no stone unturned, and having no success with our online posts, we appealed to our actual town square. We tacked up handwritten signs around our neighborhood anywhere we could, including a Starbucks, a bookstore, a diner, a liquor store, and the grocery store where Ollie last had Gloria:
LOST ACCORDION!!!
Reward for Return!! Two free performances of your choosing!!
Last seen Thursday afternoon in the Lunds parking lot.
The accordion was in a soft backpack case, root beer brown color, torn on one edge.
If found, please call Ollie (612-xxx-xxxx) or Pete (612-xxx-xxxx)
No Questions Asked! Just a Reward!!!
Even as we went to all this effort, we knew none of this would work. We had a sense of obligation, but never a feeling of hope. It was obvious, at least to me, that Gloria was gone forever; anyone lucky enough to have her now would be a fool to give her up. Knowing that, I moved on eventually, at least in the way that we all convince ourselves to go forward after suffering a loss. I suppose I even stopped thinking about her as much, although it was harder when I played at some of our old spots.
Around this time, after I had remade my life without Gloria, I was on a long winter walk one evening and ducked into a small corner bar to warm up and have a whiskey. I heard her before I saw her. Her sound was unmistakably pure. I looked past the bar muddled with aging regulars sitting next to young hipsters and saw Gloria in the hands of another musician. He was about my age, and he was seated comfortably on a small stage in the corner of the room. My first impulse was to rush toward her and wrestle her away from the man holding her, but something about the music made me stop. I had never heard such lyrical sounds from her or from any accordion for that matter. I sat near the door and listened transfixed.
When the set finally ended, I approached the other musician warily. “You sound great,” I said, cringing at the sound of my rising inflection. “I play as well . . . I really enjoyed your music.”
“Thanks,” he answered. He was sipping on a bottle of Grain Belt, his other arm draped over Gloria as she rested on his lap. “Oh, I’m Bill.”
“Pete,” I said with a nod. I longed to reach out and touch Gloria. Bill set his beer down on a side table and we shook hands. “That’s a beautiful accordion. Where did you get her?”
“I bought it a few weeks ago . . . at that music shop on Lake Street. It was used but had clearly been well cared for.”
“I don’t—”
A group of young women brushed past me, each holding a rum and coke that was clearly not their first of the evening. They crowded around Bill and Gloria for a selfie. Bill shrugged his shoulders as they retreated to their table to post their photo.
“I was going to say . . . I don’t think I’ve seen you playing before.”
“Probably not. I just moved here from Wisconsin a few months back. I’m substitute teaching now . . . but I’m trying to get a full-time music job at one of the elementary schools. Since substitute’s pay is for crap, I decided to supplement my income by playing some accordion again. I haven’t played in a while, but it’s helping pay the rent for me and my boy.” He looked down. “Times have been leaner since my wife left us.”
I paused. I thought about telling him the whole story and demanding that he return Gloria, perhaps selling my own accordion to pay him off or working out some sort of trade. But then I remembered the beautiful music Gloria made as I listened to her that evening. It was clear that he needed Gloria more than I did, and perhaps, she needed him to reach her full potential. As if by Divine Providence, at that moment I heard Sting singing over the bar’s speakers, “If you love someone, set them free . . . Free, free, set them free . . . .” Dammit. Sting was right.
I pulled out a five-dollar bill and stuffed it into Bill’s tip jar. “From one musician to another.” He tipped his beer in my direction as thanks. “Good luck landing that teaching job. And take care of that beautiful instrument, will ya?”
With that, I took a last look at Gloria. I impulsively reached out my hand to feel her smooth wood case before I turned and quickly walked out of the bar. As I stepped outside to walk home, I paused to breathe in the crisp winter air, my mind as peaceful as the night sky filled with falling snow.
Derik Fettig is a former federal prosecutor, law professor, and trombone player. He is working on his debut novel. He lives in Minnesota with his wife, three children, two cats, and one mini poodle. “A Love Note” is his first published story.