Smooth Jazz

I picketed Yanni’s palatial house on Lake Washington with signs reading “A Whale Is Not An Instrument!” and “Hitler Liked Smooth Jazz.” Although disappointed that the neighbors didn’t rally behind these placards, I persisted for five drizzle-filled days until informed that the house was empty. Clever Yanni was on tour.

When Yanni returned, pulling into his driveway one overcast Tuesday afternoon in a sleek white SUV, I was ready. I watched as he and his muse, silver-haired TV beauty Linda Evans, went inside. After several hours they reappeared. I followed as they drove back across the 520 bridge into downtown to the Genial Asparagus, a vegetarian restaurant at which they obviously intended to dine. It was getting dark, and the rain shone on First Street like a closely trimmed mustache, or a black snake that squeezes the world in its soul-crushing coils.

I followed them inside, pausing in the foyer while Yanni and Linda took a table in the back. From my vantage point behind a hanging fern I could see the entire restaurant. The stucco walls were covered with macramé and plants; the clientele all snotty types affecting a bohemian air by eating tofu and wearing North Face windbreakers. They were all gibbering gaily with seaweed and barley stuck in their teeth.

Yanni and Linda Evans signed a couple of autographs and then concentrated on their menus. A cold feeling of destiny pounded through my body. I reached into my duffel bag and prepared for the final confrontation.

I had dressed a blow-up sex doll in my brother’s clothes, complete with Mariners baseball cap, tennis shoes, and gloves. Then I had glued a picture of his face to a Donald Trump Halloween mask, which I strapped onto the doll’s plastic, lamprey-like head. Although the arms and legs flapped at the ends, the posture and complexion were pure Randy.
Under the shirt of this effigy I had taped a cassette recorder. I pressed the play button and the poignant strains of “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” the Neil Diamond version, wafted out.

I broke past the startled maître d’, and, holding the homage above my head, ran toward my nemesis. People screamed, Neil Diamond sang, and Randy flew like some avenging angel out of the Old Testament.

Then the unexpected happened. Yanni kicked my ass. He’s a hot-tempered fellow, and I hadn’t even started to recite my Smooth Jazz Manifesto when he lunged forward and started to pummel me about the face and neck. I went down hard. Linda Evans and some of the waitstaff kicked me in the small of the back and Yanni yelled, “You want a piece of Yanni?” or something like that, while he performed a vicious flying elbow drop on my neck.

I barely made it out of the Genial Asparagus with my life. I jumped in my car and floored it. Randy was losing air fast and I was bleeding and calling my lesbian friends Joyce and Darla from my cellphone when I jumped the curb, hit a telephone pole, and crashed into this Starbucks.

And then you found me, officer. Now you are looking at a man who has failed in all his best efforts, who battled evil and lost, whose belief system has foundered and collapsed in front of his very eyes.

How can you stand there and tell me that Yanni is New Age, not smooth jazz?