bo raze she died on monday. cancer. her name was ka-bo. bob just called her bo. they were married for twenty years. i never really got to know her, but i got to see who she was. she showed me once. i would see her working behind the counter at bob's piano shop. the first keyboard i ever owned was a christmas present from my dad. he bought it from that store when i was eleven. for the next eighteen years, we would stop in once in a while, and i would try out different acoustic and digital pianos and talk with bob. he kind of watched me grow up in increments. one day i asked him what he knew about fender rhodes and wurlitzer electric pianos. this was back when ebay was still a baby and vintage electric pianos were hard to come by. "what do you want to know?" he asked. "i'd like to try and buy one," i said. "come with me." i followed him into a room in the back where he worked on things that were dead or dying. there was a fender rhodes in there. "a guy came in with this a few months ago," bob said. "it needed some work. i took a look, told him what it would cost him, and he hung up on me. he hasn't been back since. he just dumped it here. it's yours if you want it." "are you serious?" "yeah. as long as he never calls me back to claim it. then we might have a problem." the guy never called to take back what was his. twenty years later, that rhodes is still sitting in my house. it didn't come with the amp or sustain pedal. a few of the tines are a little wonky. one key isn't really playable. some of the tolex is torn. it doesn't matter. i think the flaws have made me love it more. bob talked me out of an impulse buy when i wanted to get my first real acoustic piano. he told me to wait a week. he said there were two new yahama U1 uprights coming in. he said i'd be glad i waited. he was right. i spent the better part of two hours playing both of those pianos, working out which one i wanted to spend the rest of my life with. i improvised a strange chord progression that didn't resolve. "that's an interesting question," bob said. "what's the answer?" i didn't know. my grandfather had just died. he went into the hospital with a broken hip. the nurses were so rough with him they made him throw up. they left him lying on his back, covered in his own puke. they let him choke on it. he was dead two days later. aspiration pneumonia. they killed him. they didn't care. he was old. his life wasn't worth anything. the lawyers said the same thing when we looked into filing a medical malpractice lawsuit. someday i won't be worth anything either. i was sure he'd written me out of his will. he pushed away everyone who ever loved him. i lasted longer than most. his gift to me on my twenty-first birthday was a letter. the letter said he was going to send me some money, but because i wouldn't cut my hair and i wouldn't go back to school, he gave the money to someone else's grandson instead. someone he didn't even know. he said this other kid was doing something with his life. i was throwing mine away. he told me i would die alone and destitute. because of my hair. i wrote him a letter back. i told him to go fuck himself. we never spoke again. but he didn't write me out of the will. and the money he left me was enough to pay for my upright piano. almost to the cent. sometimes i think these things aren't accidents. a little over ten years ago, we invited bob over for dinner. we had one of those great conversations you wish would last forever. we talked about love, and life, and music, and everything that mattered. "we always go for looks," bob said, "when we should be looking for hearts and brains." a few months later he invited us over to his place. i brought a bottle of merlot. a california fetzer. bob couldn't believe how good it was for a bottle that didn't even cost twenty bucks. there were six of us: me, my dad, bob, bo, and an older couple who were good friends of theirs. bob played "jasmine" by keith jarrett and charlie haden and "le noise" by neil young on his hi-fi system. neil stomped his foot and shook the room. bo cooked us food that was so good it made us feel high. i can still taste her coffee. bob made racist jokes in front of her at the dinner table. stupid "me love you long time" bullshit. she was chinese. she didn't laugh. no one said anything. we all sat down in the living room after dinner. bob started asking about what happened when those crackheads kicked down our front_door. i thought it was weird after-dinner conversation. i told him anyway. he said he knew how i felt. he said he and bo came back from vacation a few years ago and found their house had been burglarized while they were away. he thought that was the same thing as being home when it happened and having someone tell you they were going to rape and kill you. my dad said it was a good thing the guys who broke in and did that to me were in jail, because if he ever got his hands on them he would fucking kill them, and he would make it last. "i understand how you feel," bob said. "but you're wrong, john." he didn't understand shit. my dad wanted to rip bob's head off. i could feel it. all the air went out of the room. the older couple were so uncomfortable their lips were puckered. two lemon suckers stunned to silence. it was almost funny. i looked at bo. she was trying not to cry. she looked at me like i was her child and said three words, so quiet i almost couldn't hear them. "are you okay?" i don't think the cancer killed her. i think her heart was too big for the house she lived in. 211104 what's it to you? who go blather from