Richard Dansky

Case in point:

There was one lurking in the closet in my home office. As closets go, mind you, it’s not terribly exciting. It’s used for storing books and shipping materials; it’s where the unloved eBay auctions go to die. But today, there was something different..

This morning, I found a case in there, black plastic and metal trim. It’s not mine. I don’t know where it came from, or how it got there. Maybe my wife’s nephew left it behind after his stay and it’s just come to light, maybe it belongs to the writing student who’s living in our guest room. Maybe it came from somewhere else; when enough relatives live nearby and have keys to your house, things magically appear in strange places as a matter of course. Pairs of shorts, for example. Heating trays for party food. Sweaters – Mom won’t always fess up to it, but there have been multiple incidents of drive-by sweatering for me and my wife.

But this doesn’t look like that. It’s tucked away, someplace it shouldn’t have gotten to. Carefully, I take it out and lay it down.

It’s a musical instrument case, I can see that now. I don’t recognize the brand, but that’s not surprising. It’s been a while since I took out my clarinet, ten years and counting. And, of course, there’s no guarantee that it’s a musical instrument. Strange things have moved through this house in strange cases. Magic the Gathering cards. Shotguns. Arsenic ore and Chinese silk, French chocolate in irregular shapes and books a hundred years old. It could be anything in there, anything at all.

So I open it. Inside, there’s a saxophone, an alto. It’s not mine; I have two and they’re both tenors, both accounted for.

Scattered through the case are dried roses and playing cards. I pick a card up. It’s the jack of spades, curved slightly with time or pressure or too close a relationship with the saxophone’s bell. I put it back gently and pick up another card. Another jack, another spade – so it goes for all of them there,

The dried roses? They crumble to the touch.

Carefully, I put the last card back in the case and shut the lid. I sit it gently against the wall, not quite ready to put it back into hiding, and step over to my desk. There’s a notepad there, kept against emergencies of information or inspiration. I pick up a pen – dayglo green, a relic of a long-ago Microsoft party at a long-ago GDC – and write a few words down. Case. Roses. One-eyed jacks. Who wants it? Who left it behind? Why?

The story hides in the spaces between them. I haven’t found it yet. Someday, I’ll go looking. Tonight, I just know where it came from. That’s enough for me.