circulation dwindled. I approached the front desk and a pink-nailed receptionist
wearing a plaid skirt, belt, and pantyhose guided me toward an elevator with an old-fashioned brass grate. It was a creaky,
uncertain ascent to the fourteenth floor. When I stepped off the elevator onto the worn carpet, I was relieved to see a band
of light extending from Breeze’s open door. I walked to the threshold and paused there. He had his leather jacket on and hunched
close to a keyboard. Hearing my knock, he turned, the light from the dangling unsheathed bulb glinting off his round glasses.
The rotation brought down his long gray fringe of hair. It was like a curtain he was constantlyemerging from and retreating behind. He opened it with a casual flick of his hand.
“The ventilation in this place is wretched,” Breeze said. “I’m trying to get a space heater up here. They tell me I might
get the managing editor’s. The old guy can’t be trusted with a heater anymore—he leaned too close to it and his tweed coat
caught on fire!” Breeze laughed nervously. “You should have seen him flapping around alight. I haven’t run into you at the
opera lately, Norberg.”
“True. I hear Molly is still singing though.”
“Hmm?” Breeze fumbled for a pencil and began chewing on it.
“I hear Molly is still singing.” I passed Breeze a copy of his column, with the acrostic circled in red pen.
His hands trembled slightly as he inspected it. “Huh!” he said. He thought a moment. “You know, I have much less control over
my column than you might think,” he said. “When I was first hired here I had my youthful pretensions, but now I realize greater
forces are at work. Take this building,” he said. “Do you think it would be possible for a liberal paper to be housed in such
a gloriously conservative building?” He pulled his collar up around his neck and shrank inside the leather jacket, looking
pale and frosty in the blue light of his computer. “I am allowing larger forces to work through me. Anyone could do the job.”
He caught me with a significant eye before tossing back his hair. “Someone else with an average intelligence, vocabulary,
and grasp of fundamental music theory and opera history could do the job equally well. You could do the job equally well,
Norberg. That is what I realize now. I am a vassal. That is to say, a vessel. I am a body through which the language passes.”
“So you had nothing to do with this acrostic.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Breeze said, reaching for one of the paper clips that filled his ashtray. It occurred to me that this
was the first time I’d spoken to Breeze without a buffet between us. “You know me—I try to follow the plots. Sometimes it’s
not easy. Now, was the printed version of the Ariel Perloff article essentially my words, my thoughts? Yes. The gist was,
Ariel Perloff is an embarrassment to our otherwise surprisingly decent opera company. Was the final column an exact, verbatim
transcript of my words? I don’t know. Let’s face it, I’m not writing poetry here. Did I embed some sort of message about your
wife in the article, which would rely on an exact knowledge of how the article would be typeset, not to mention a lot of inside
knowledge about your wife, which nobody seems to have, not even the police?”
“So you’re saying that the arts editor …”
“No,” said Breeze. “I’m saying that I was a bit player in this. A cipher, a scribe, a channel for language at best. Do you
really think that I’m the kind of guy to play all sorts of fancy word games?”
I sighed and sank back against the armchair cushions, which did not yield. “I had to read your column to find out what she
was thinking.”
“You mean that interview?” Breeze unbent a paper clip. “That was a full week before she unfortunately—”
“Yes,” I said, “we weren’t speaking all that much at the end.”
11
W HILE K YLE
wearing a plaid skirt, belt, and pantyhose guided me toward an elevator with an old-fashioned brass grate. It was a creaky,
uncertain ascent to the fourteenth floor. When I stepped off the elevator onto the worn carpet, I was relieved to see a band
of light extending from Breeze’s open door. I walked to the threshold and paused there. He had his leather jacket on and hunched
close to a keyboard. Hearing my knock, he turned, the light from the dangling unsheathed bulb glinting off his round glasses.
The rotation brought down his long gray fringe of hair. It was like a curtain he was constantlyemerging from and retreating behind. He opened it with a casual flick of his hand.
“The ventilation in this place is wretched,” Breeze said. “I’m trying to get a space heater up here. They tell me I might
get the managing editor’s. The old guy can’t be trusted with a heater anymore—he leaned too close to it and his tweed coat
caught on fire!” Breeze laughed nervously. “You should have seen him flapping around alight. I haven’t run into you at the
opera lately, Norberg.”
“True. I hear Molly is still singing though.”
“Hmm?” Breeze fumbled for a pencil and began chewing on it.
“I hear Molly is still singing.” I passed Breeze a copy of his column, with the acrostic circled in red pen.
His hands trembled slightly as he inspected it. “Huh!” he said. He thought a moment. “You know, I have much less control over
my column than you might think,” he said. “When I was first hired here I had my youthful pretensions, but now I realize greater
forces are at work. Take this building,” he said. “Do you think it would be possible for a liberal paper to be housed in such
a gloriously conservative building?” He pulled his collar up around his neck and shrank inside the leather jacket, looking
pale and frosty in the blue light of his computer. “I am allowing larger forces to work through me. Anyone could do the job.”
He caught me with a significant eye before tossing back his hair. “Someone else with an average intelligence, vocabulary,
and grasp of fundamental music theory and opera history could do the job equally well. You could do the job equally well,
Norberg. That is what I realize now. I am a vassal. That is to say, a vessel. I am a body through which the language passes.”
“So you had nothing to do with this acrostic.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Breeze said, reaching for one of the paper clips that filled his ashtray. It occurred to me that this
was the first time I’d spoken to Breeze without a buffet between us. “You know me—I try to follow the plots. Sometimes it’s
not easy. Now, was the printed version of the Ariel Perloff article essentially my words, my thoughts? Yes. The gist was,
Ariel Perloff is an embarrassment to our otherwise surprisingly decent opera company. Was the final column an exact, verbatim
transcript of my words? I don’t know. Let’s face it, I’m not writing poetry here. Did I embed some sort of message about your
wife in the article, which would rely on an exact knowledge of how the article would be typeset, not to mention a lot of inside
knowledge about your wife, which nobody seems to have, not even the police?”
“So you’re saying that the arts editor …”
“No,” said Breeze. “I’m saying that I was a bit player in this. A cipher, a scribe, a channel for language at best. Do you
really think that I’m the kind of guy to play all sorts of fancy word games?”
I sighed and sank back against the armchair cushions, which did not yield. “I had to read your column to find out what she
was thinking.”
“You mean that interview?” Breeze unbent a paper clip. “That was a full week before she unfortunately—”
“Yes,” I said, “we weren’t speaking all that much at the end.”
11
W HILE K YLE
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