Ventriloque
Gary Lutz

Your voice certainly sounds as if it has a huge range compared to mine. Once in a while, after hours of disuse, mine will sputter a little in the soprano register but then abruptly make the drop. I don't know whether I am a bass or a baritone. I haven't sung in about ten years, and the last time was only into a tape recorder. I was singing over wee chords fingered on an electric guitar that wasn't plugged in. With a second recorder, I dubbed in a guitar solo, also unamplified. It was a song of infatuation that I eventually passed along to the infatuatee, who thought that the chorus needed another line to fill it out. One night, months later, I realized with a start that the melody had been cribbed wholesale from Chad or Jeremy, or Peter and Gordon--some duo or another with hazy bangs. The infatuatee was one of those people in love with lovelessness and eventually married badly, had a couple of kids, got a divorce, and developed secretarial ambitions. The last time I saw her was on a Food Lane parking lot. My voice was as flat as it ever gets, and sounded practically ventriloquized.

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