“What happened to it?”
“No idea.”
“Well, this is great news. Documentation might make the Markses go away forever,” Kim said.
That night, Ray called Aunt Joyce. He seemed to remember that she was the keeper of family documents and that his mom had called her the family historian. When she answered, he said, “I don’t want to bug you too much, but I need a favor.”
Canned TV laughter roared in the background and then grew muted. She must have turned down the volume. “Is everything okay? What do you need?”
“I’m trying to track down any letters or any documents about PopPop and the fiddle. Do you have anything?”
“I don’t think so,” she said slowly. “I have Mama’s and Daddy’s birth certificates and some letters and papers, I think. I don’t think I have anything about PopPop. I can look, though. What do you need it for?”
“It’s really important. Anything you can find will help me. I think I saw an envelope when I was in Grandma’s attic—I gave it to her and didn’t see it again. It had the name Leon Marks written on it.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll look. Is everything okay?”
“These crazy people are threatening to sue me for the violin. They’re saying that PopPop stole it from their family. And that it really belongs to them.”
“What? You have got to be kidding me.”
“Yeah, so I need any type of documentation that proves it belongs to us.”
“Wait. You’re telling me the slave owners’ family are saying that PopPop stole the violin from them?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”
“That is totally fucked up,” Aunt Joyce said firmly. “Typical crazy white folks. I’ll see what I can dig up. Mama used to keep a bunch of old papers in boxes. I haven’t even opened them since she passed. I’ll find you something.”
A few minutes later Ray hung up, feeling optimistic for the first time in days. His family, as defective and maladjusted as they were, was behind him. He was not alone.
His mood continued to improve throughout that day and the next, so the following afternoon, when Kristoff told him he needed “a costume,” Ray just went with it.
“A costume? Like what, a clown?” By now he could keep a completely straight face, so Kristoff never knew he was kidding—he just thought Ray was stupid, and Ray found that to be even funnier.
“No, not a clown.” Kristoff sniffed. “I would not imagine that you would understand this. But you need people to look at you more.”
“They’re already looking at me.”
“A cape,” Kristoff said. “Black on the outside, and dark red velvet inside. Very dramatic.”
“Yeah, for Dracula, maybe,” Ray said. “Or for somebody who’s ninety. Not for me, though.”
They spent the next few days going around and around with costuming possibilities before deciding on black sequins for the tuxedo lapel and a colored tuxedo shirt instead of a white one. （Kristoff had tried to put Ray in ruffles, but that was seriously not happening.）
“You’d look good in brighter colors,” Kristoff said. Was it a compliment? “How about your wearing a red tuxedo shirt?”
“If I were playing Carmen and I was the bull, maybe,” Ray said.
“Yellow then. Yellow would set off your skin color nicely.”
Ray tried on a yellow tuxedo shirt, decided he looked like a pineapple.
Eventually they settled on Ray’s suggestion of a pale pink to match the rose that he now handed to an audience member each night before the performance. Kristoff thought the color was simply to match the rose. In truth, Ray’s choice of color was a nod to Grandma Nora’s housecoat, a private moment that only he appreciated: it was as if he were performing with her every night.
Kristoff’s staginess was paying off. The crowds were huge; most of the shows were selling out. Despite the crazy Marks family and his own family’s general greediness, everything seemed to be getting better and better.
And then he flew to Baton Rouge.
Chapter 19
Baton Rouge
6 Months Ago
In mid-November he was booked to play a recital at Louisiana State University. He flew in and was enjoying the drive in his rented Toyota on a late-autumn afternoon, down a lazy southern highway. He blasted Eric B. & Rakim on high. He had an hour before he had to be there, and the GPS showed him only twenty minutes away. It was a Sunday evening and the roads were pretty empty.