TC60

Ariel and Jael Zinter were infidels. They didn’t believe a word of the Bible or the Green Book. But they weren’t ready to disappoint their adoptive father so they gritted their teeth and attended Academy dutifully. They wore their hair in the obligatory bun, and when they ventured outside of Headwater they tried to ignore the comments at the edge of their hearing like, “Hey, there goes another Bunner, look at her hair!”

One Halloween morning Doriel Shybear came to the Academy dressed as a pirate’s wench. She had ripped her dress into long strips so her pinup-model legs could poke out when she walked. When Jael saw that hy felt a sweet electric shock and knew girls weren’t really the disgusting things hyz mates had always assured hym they were.

At the Academy Ariel drew har brother as a lab partner while Dory ended up with her sibling Gabriel. Jael kicked Gabe out of hyz seat with “no offense pally” and sent hym shambling towards Ariel, a slight adjustment in the teacher’s choice that eventually led to hand holding while skating at Lake 13 and much pitching of woo. Dory ordered Ariel to make a report.

Sha said, “Hy feels like a rubber wet suit stretched over a suit of armor, Soft on the surface but with a hard core underneath. I like it.”

Ariel was the darling of the Green Dome Temple Girls Choir. Sha was an expressive mezzo-soprano with a come-hither voice that belied har sixteen years and verged on being too sultry for Sundays. Listeners compared har favorably to Peggy Lee. In band class she started dabbling with the piano and found she also had the chops for playing keyboard.

Gabriel had no inborn talent but no matter, hy attended the B’nei Hannebim Historical Institute. After learning scales hy tried several brass instruments before settling on the saxophone.

Dory played a double-bass standing on an end-pin which she had lengthened to be more comfortable. Sometimes sha set down har bow and plucked the strings pizzicato with meandering bass lines while daydreaming sha was a black cat slinking around at night.

Jael pounded the skins with all the power of the offensive guard hy also happened to be, yet hy ran effortlessly in and around Dory’s rock steady bass and punctuated har licks with improvised drum fills as endlessly unique as snowflakes.

In April word arrived of Lt. Colonel James Doolittle’s bold air raid on Tokyo after months of steady bad news following the attack of the Imperial Japanese Navy on Pearl Harbor. To celebrate, the B’Nei Hannebim Historical Institute held a recital of patriotic John Philip Sousa marches attended by half of the town of Headwater. They opened with “Hands Across the Sea”, played all the best-known standards and wrapped things up with “Fairest of the Fair.”

During the performance Ariel happened to dance near to her brother’s drum kit. Jael said, “I don’t see Mom or Dad out there,” and it was true. Ariel searched all the faces in the audience and she didn’t see them.

For an encore the class tore into a cover of the Duke Ellington standard “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” with Ariel soloing on vocals and Gabriel on sax. It closed the evening on a high note but for the Zinter kids it didn’t mean a thing if their own parents weren’t even there.

The Academy was out on I Street where the pavement on 7th ended, but Headwater was small enough that most of the attendees had just walked to the recital. By 9 PM it was apparent the parents of Ariel and Jael were never going to show up, so they left with their friends.