Free Big Brother by Lionel Shriver

air—though I think that’s a wild rumor myself.”
    “Tanner’s right,” I said. “There’s plenty to do in Iowa, you East Coast snob.” That said, I’d never been keen on activities for their own sake. I preferred work to play—a temperament I’d recognized on meeting Fletcher Feuerbach. I’d been catering a July Fourth cookout for Monsanto when a quirky, taciturn seed salesman fled the corporate chitchat to mind the grill. He helped clear and pack up, leaving me in no doubt that tying off trash bags and arranging leftover deviled eggs in plastic containers was his idea of a good time. Little wonder I brought him home, where he washed every single serving platter before he kissed me. For both of us, work was play.
    “You can always practice,” I added. “Cody doesn’t monopolize the piano more than an hour a day.”
    “Whoa, busman’s holiday!”
    It wasn’t the response I’d expected. “I could show you Baby Monotonous.”
    “Cool,” said Edison noncommittally, stabbing his gooey stack. “But I been working my ass off. Gigs, sessions, practice; until recently, booking the club. Keeping current with the scene, burning the candle at both ends. I’m pretty whacked. Don’t mind doing jack for a while. I was just glad a gap in my schedule made it possible to fit in a visit. Catch up, get reacquainted. Finally get to know these kids a little.”
    Edison’s hectic version of his life jarred with Slack’s forewarning that my brother seemed dispirited, but I now interpreted that caution as concerning Edison’s girth. Besides, I was accustomed to finding my brother’s life opaque. I had no idea how one went about arranging a European tour. I didn’t know anything about all those names he threw around, Dizzy and Sonny and Elvin, and I’d learned the hard way not to ask “Who’s this?” when Edison played a track; he always took my head off because I could never remember whether “Trane” played the saxophone or the trumpet. Aside from courteously listening to his own recordings—once—before sliding their cases into the section of our music collection that gathered dust, I didn’t listen to jazz, and I didn’t fathom who did go to those clubs when the pianist wasn’t their brother.
    “What’s your schedule?” I asked. “I mean, coming up.”
    “This tour of Spain and Portugal. Three solid weeks on the road. Takes more out of me than it used to. Haven’t taken a sabbatical since I hit New York in 1980. Truth is, Iowa could be the ticket—if that’s okay with you. Somewhere I got a legit excuse to beg off more gigs in the Village: a fifteen-hundred-mile commute. Recharge the batteries. Smell the coffee.”
    With lots and lots of half-and-half.
    “Now, when’s the Spain and Portugal tour again?” I asked neutrally.
    “Early December.” His answer was muffled with pancake.
    That was in just over two months. If I was understanding Edison’s concept of a sabbatical correctly, and he intended to stay with us until heading off on this tour, that would make for an awfully long “visit,” but it was also not an ellipsis. We just had to go the distance without everyone in this family gaining fifty pounds.
    “You’re not maintaining an apartment at the moment, I gather.” I was diffident. “So where’s all your stuff? Your piano?”
    “In storage.” This answer, too, was thick with chocolate chip. “I got your classic cash-flow crisis, dig? Royalties from SteepleChase in the pipeline. And plenty work on the horizon, of course. So I, uh.” He wiped maple syrup from his mouth. “You know. Appreciated the little loaner.”
    “Oh, no problem!” That had been hard for him to say. “And if you need . . .”
    “Well, yeah, now that you mention it—a little, you know, pocket change . . .”
    “Sure, just tell me . . .” The kids were on their computers, but they were listening. I didn’t want to embarrass him. “Later today.”
    However happy to slip him whatever he needed