Franklin Announced My Sale Between The Soup And The Bread

Franklin told me he had sold my music while I was fishing a bay leaf out of my soup.

"All twelve reels," he said. "One hundred eighty thousand dollars. You ought to thank me."

I set the leaf on my plate.

"What did you sell?"

"The recordings, Odessa. Try to keep up."

We had invited our neighbor, June, to supper. Franklin smiled at her as if I had missed a joke.

I was a small Black woman of seventy-two, with brown skin, silver twists, and thick glasses that slipped down my nose. Before I retired, I had played the organ at the Lantern Wheel rink in New London. I could make a row of tired parents turn toward the floor with four notes.

Now my hands hurt when I opened a jar.

Franklin was a tall Black man of seventy-four, with a neat gray mustache and soft brown hands he kept folded over his vest.

Those hands reached across the table to cut my bread.

"You'll have six hundred dollars a month," he said. "Your own little allowance."

"From my one hundred eighty thousand?"

"There are expenses."

June put down her spoon.

"Odessa used to draw a line clear around the block," she said.

"Different days," Franklin replied.

"The same woman," June said.

He patted my wrist. It looked tender from across the table. His thumb pressed against the joint I had asked him not to touch.

I moved my hand into my lap. He went on smiling, and June watched me instead of him.

Outside our apartment, a ferry horn rolled across the Thames River. I tapped my cane twice against the floor, paused, then tapped once more.

Long ago, that was my cue for the floor guard to slow the skaters. Two taps, a rest, one tap. Make room for someone who needed it.

"Who bought them?" I asked.

"Weir Archive Media. They restore old music. Wonderful people."

"I'd like the agreement."

"I'll explain it when you're rested."

He asked June whether she wanted more soup. She said no.

After she left, he stopped smiling.

"Don't pick at this," he said. "I got thirty thousand at signing. The balance comes when the reels are delivered."

"They're not here."

"I know where they are."

That troubled me more than the sale.

I had made those tapes between 1974 and 1984, before Franklin entered my life. My own tunes, written for wooden wheels and birthday crowds. We had recorded after closing, with the rink lights low and the snack counter humming.

Eli's bass came through the floorboards. Celia played brushes against a snare. Nessa's clarinet lifted the melody over my left-hand chords.

Franklin had booked my later jobs. He had also sorted the mail, filed our taxes, and told people my hands were getting too bad for business.

Bit by bit, I had let him.

"Ruth still has the masters," I said.

"Ruth closed her studio years ago."

"Closing a room doesn't burn its papers."

He scraped the plates too hard.

I remembered a page with blue carbon underneath it. Ruth had made me read the ownership clause aloud. I had laughed at her fussing.

She had not laughed back.

"You're the artist," she had said. "That doesn't mean you have to be the easiest person to rob."

Franklin took my bowl.

"You didn't worry about any of this when I drove you to your appointments."

"I appreciated the rides."

"I have carried this household for forty years."

I looked at the envelope beside his plate. A white corner showed beneath the electric bill. At the top was a name I had never seen: Bell Lantern Holdings LLC.

"What's that company?"

He put the envelope inside his vest.

"A sensible way to handle things."

In bed, he fell asleep with one hand over the pocket of his pajamas. His phone was in it. I lay awake until the ferry horns stopped.

I wasn't thinking about court. I was thinking about how many times he had said there was no point calling someone.

Eli had died, he had told me. Celia had moved somewhere out west. Nessa's daughter had taken her in, with no address left behind.

My world had become our apartment, the clinic, and whichever story Franklin chose to bring home.

Before breakfast, I found my old address book behind the piano bench. Ruth's number was written under STUDIO, because I had never been good at putting friends into neat little boxes.

I called while Franklin went downstairs for the mail.

"Ruth? It's Odessa Bell."

"About time," she said. "Did you finally decide my coffee wasn't a crime?"

I almost cried at the sound of her.

"Franklin sold the tapes."

The line went quiet.

Then Ruth said, "No, honey. He signed something. That's different."

I heard a drawer slide open.

"Tell me where to meet you," she said. "I'm bringing the original."