There came a time, and maybe it was about six months after the Jeanie Post thing, when Frank decided Harry Callahan had simply had enough -- of women, of dating -- all of it. He'd turned into a helicopter flying monk and if it didn't have to do with flying -- and CAT, Callahan just wasn't interested.
Cathy had asked him once if he wanted to proceed with the little teahouse and Callahan had thought for a moment, then he'd told her yes.
"I'm just curious, but why?"
"I think," Harry told her, "it might just be a fitting monument to the futility of love."
And it wasn't what he'd said that rattled Cathy, it was the way he said it. Maybe a little self-deprecating -- and why not? -- yet it was the certainty, the finality she felt in him that shook her up. And it dovetailed so nicely with what Frank had described. Callahan didn't look at anyone with any interest at all -- unless they were wearing a flight suit.
When DD announced that she and Doc Watson were engaged, Callahan took them to dinner and couldn't have been happier, but Cathy's keen eye saw right through the searing irony within his spontaneous gaiety -- because she just didn't buy into the whole macho bravado thing anymore.
"It'll happen, Harry. She's out there, just you wait and see."
"She might be, Cathy, but right now I could care less. I'd walk on by and never know."
"Kind of a self-fulfilling deal, don't you think?"
"No, not really," he'd said as he watched DD and the Doc dancing. "I'm comfortable with who I am right now, Cathy. Just me. But I know what you mean. When I think of you or Frank I think of you two as a matched pair, as two people who belong together. Indistinguishable one from the other, ya know?"
"That's what I want for you," Cathy said. "If anyone ever deserved that kind of happiness, it's you."
"You know, of all the things I picked up in Japan I think Karma hit me hardest -- and deepest. There's a real basic truth in that one, Cathy. Maybe 'what goes around comes around' comes close, or even 'you reap what you sow,' but something about Karma seems so resonant to me now."
"You loved Fujiko, didn't you? I mean, really really loved her?"
"I thought so once-upon-a-time, but I'll tell you something weird. You know how people say that the opposite of Love is Hate?"
"Yes, sure."
"I never felt Hate, Cathy. Never once with her. Doesn't that mean something, like I didn't really love her?"
'Or maybe it means you still love her, you dumb-ass!' she thought about saying to him -- but she pulled back from that precipice and had simply smiled at him.
The Doc had grown close to Frank and Cathy after that party, and even a little to Harry, so when he learned of Frank's cancer and remission he took a serious interest in Frank -- from a professional point of view. Not long after, at a dinner party Cathy put on for the newlyweds, Frank got a little toasted and mentioned the whole piano and Callahan thing, and the Doc had, at the time, filed that one away deep inside the Drunken Innuendo filing cabinet.
Then one day the Doc mentioned it in passing to Cathy -- and she had instantly grown cold and distant. "Let me ask you, Cathy?" he tried. "Is it true...what Frank said?"
But Cathy had only a cold, blank stare to offer him, and he'd opted not to press the matter further.
Then one Saturday afternoon he'd been running on the beach and he looked up at one point and saw Callahan on his back porch. What was he up to? Lighting a fire, getting ready to grill some steaks? He found the cut in the rocks that led up to Callahan's house and he ambled over to the grill as Callahan was adding more wood to the fire.
"Getting the fire ready, I see."
"Oh, hey Doc. Out for another run?"
"Yeah, but it's beginning to take a toll on my knees."
"Time to get a bicycle, I reckon."
"Probably true. Say, Cathy tells me you're a helluva pianist. That true?"
"I can make it through chopsticks okay, if that's what you mean. Why?"
"Oh, nothing. Just curious, as I'd never heard anyone mention that before. Do you still play much?"
And Callahan had simply shaken his head. "No, not that much; what about you?"
"I used to play a little, but for some reason, I just quit. Didn't have the time for it anymore. Now I kind of regret that decision."
"So," Callahan sighed, "why don't you go pick up a new one. I can get you a good deal if you're serious."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. For some reason I ended up the sole owner of the Rosenthal Company..."
"That Danish outfit? You? That must be quite a tale. What kind of piano is that up in the house?"
"Oh, it's a Bösendorfer."
"Are you fucking serious? Man, I've never even laid eyes on one of those."
"Cathy designed that one for the house."
"She what?"
"Yeah. Part of a custom program they have. She did the design, and she even shipped some rock and slate they were using inside the house to them. They incorporated everything. Really a work of art."
"Alright, Callahan...you've got to show me this thing!"
They walked up and Watson was impressed enough with the house, then he saw the piano and how Cathy's design for the entire house had started at the piano and worked out from there.
"Dear God, Harry. I've never seen anything like this before in my life," Watson said as he walked over to the instrument. He stood behind the bench and assayed the surroundings, taking in the view of the sea ahead and the rocky cliffs almost directly below. "This view is simply staggering! You can see the surf hit the rocks...everything...!"
"Go ahead, take a seat and let me know what you think of her."
"How do you keep her in tune...with all this humidity?"
"Ducted central dehumidifiers throughout the house. And I have a tuner from the shop come out once a month."
"You really don't mind if I play a little?"
"No, no -- fire away."
Watson sat and positioned himself and began butchering Clair de lune for a few minutes, then he quit, shaking his head as he stood. "As I said, it's been a few years. How often do you play these days...?"
Callahan shrugged. "When I come out here to the house I try to spend some time with her."
"Oh, I'm sorry...you were about to light a fire. Are you cooking out tonight?"
"Thinking about it, yeah," Callahan replied, wondering where this was going.
"You know, I'm sorry. I feel like I've bulled my way in here..."
"Not at all. How's married life treating you?"
Watson shook his head. "She's clairvoyant, you know? Either that or she's the smartest woman alive."
"I figured that one out a few years ago, Doc. She's both."
"She really loves working for you guys, you know?"
"I doubt we'd survive long without her. She's the brains behind the outfit, that's for sure."
"Say, we've got some steaks at the house. Why don't you come down and grab some chow with us?"
Callahan looked outback. "I've already got the fire going. Why don't you go grab DD and come over here? We can make a night of it?"
"Sounds like a plan. Be back in a flash."
Callahan went to the 'fridge and pulled out his steak and some foil-wrapped veggies and carried them down to the grill, then he stoked the charcoal and brushed off the steel cooking grates. He bent down, took a Coke from the little built-in fridge, and popped the top, and then he heard DD and the Doc coming through the yard a few minutes later. And she was carrying bowls of -- he assumed -- salads and fruit, because, of course, she'd already figured out what was going down before either he or the doc had.
And, of course, DD already knew where everything was in Harry's house so she was off like a whirling dervish grabbing plates and silverware and a bottle of sangria she'd placed there for just such an emergency -- et voilà , instant party -- DD style.
And, Watson noticed, Callahan was in desperate need of blowing off steam. He'd been working fires in the wilderness east of Yosemite for two weeks with hardly any time off, and he was a ragged mess emotionally. And starving, too, judging by the time it took Callahan to wolf down a sixteen-ounce ribeye. Even so, Callahan stuck to Coke and managed to eat just about half the salad DD had prepared.
"You know, Harry showed me that piano of his and it got me thinking," the Doc said to Mrs. Doc. "I used to play and I think I want to get back to it. What do you think?"
"Really? Well sure, why not? Harry, what do you think?"
"I told him no problem getting a good price at the shop, so just let me know when you two are going shopping..."
"Oh, well," DD said, "I'd want you there for that, Harry."
"Oh?" the Doc said. "Why's that?"
"Have you not heard him play?"
"No? What has that got to do with...?"
"When you hear him you'll know why."
"Okay, Callahan," the Doc snarled, "what's the deal here? You gonna show me, or do I have to just guess at this...?"
"Well," Harry sighed, "if I play, you get to do the dishes."
"You're on!" the Doc smiled. "Now, would either of you two mind if I finish this sangria?"
They all pitched in and carried the dishes up to the kitchen, leaving Callahan to settle in behind his Bösendorfer. He looked at the keys for a while then went into Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, then, without pause he took them into Clair de lune, drawing out the key passages in shades of exquisite longing, in effect bringing the room to the moonlight...
And when he looked up, when he was finished, both DD and the Doc were in tears.
"Sorry," Harry said, "but that's all you get for doing the dishes."
"I'd simply forgotten music has such power over the imagination," Watson said. "For a moment I felt like I was sitting beside a faun in the sun, not a care in the world, but Harry, I've never, ever heard the Clair de lune played so...evocatively. Why in God's name aren't you playing professionally?"
"You can't love two women at the same time, Doc. And it just so happens that I love flying more than playing."
"Sorry, I can't buy that," Watson said. "You have a gift, and maybe you should consider that the returns on investment are skewing all wrong."
"I don't get you."
"How many lifetimes have you practiced to get where you are, to get where fewer than an infinitesimally small number of pianists ever get. People practice like that, Harry, for a reason. To share not just their talent and devotion, but to share their vision of the music. Debussy never wrote Clair de lune the way you just interpreted it, and as many times as I've heard that piece I've never heard it finessed like this. You turned it into something new, something, well, that needs to be shared, to be experienced, and I hate to say this, but I think your expression of Debussy's music is transformative."
"Yeah? Too bad I like helicopters so much."
Watson nodded. "Yes. It is."
"You know what, Doc. I've said this a thousand times if I've said it once, but piano players are a dime a dozen. I can't tell you how many brilliant pianists I've run across who were literally starving to death, barely earning enough to put a roof over their head..."
"Don't you think I know that?"
"I don't know. Maybe. But I think I'm contributing more doing what I do than sitting in some nightclub banging away night after night, waiting for the last call..."
"Have you ever thought of composing?"
"No."
Watson saw the glacial expression set in and retreated a little. "Am I missing something, Harry?"
