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David is weary from the grind of marking final papers, and
oppressed by the weather, which has returned to its winter grays. These are the
days that he thinks of Larry – how cheated he feels, having to deal with a
world that does not contain him and his reassuring wit. He decides to run by
the ice cream shop, where Elena is closing.
“Hello,
darling one.”
“Hi,” she
says, and returns to her mopping.
“Everything
okay?”
“Pretty
slow. No surprises.”
“Well. We
can certainly count on things picking
up.”
“Yes. That’s
what I’m afraid of.”
“Afraid of?
In case you weren’t aware, dear one, we’re broke. We gotta pack this place all
summer just to dig ourselves out.”
Elena’s
mopping grows vigorous; her ample rear-end follows the back-and-forth, lending
a waddling effect to her advance. She stabs her mop into the bucket and assumes
a minuteman posture.
“I want to
quit.”
A
connoisseur of his wife’s tonal inflections, David realizes at once that she’s
not joking.
“That’s
ridiculous. Tourist season is a game of rushes, honey. It’s gotta be the both
of us, or the lines back up and we lose customers. And right now, we can’t lose
a dollar.”
“I don’t
care! I need to get away from here.”
David
recalls all the times he’s bragged to friends that he has the calmest, most
rational wife in creation. Which is why he feels so puzzled. And annoyed.
“I’m sorry.
Are we pretending that I’ve been off on some vacation? Because if you would like to teach a bunch of
hormone-riddled townie bumpkins the finer points of Manifest Destiny, please!
Be my guest.”
Elena jabs a
finger into his chest.
“Son of a
bitch! I know your plan. You’re going
to get Derek into college, and then… and then you’re going to leave with the
one-armed bimbo. Because nobody wants a fat wife!”
The last two
words sink into her face as if someone else had said them. She melts into sobs
and runs to the back room. David finds her hunched over the sink, quaking.
“You saw the
poem? And someone saw me with Abbey?”
“Y-yes. It
was…”
“It doesn’t
matter. Abbey’s my friend. Do not ask
me to give up another friend. But she’s also Derek’s teacher. I was trying to
figure out what to do about the poem.”
Elena wipes
her face and stands. “Have you ever had flying dreams, David? They’re the best
dreams of all. But in my dreams I fly over mountains of ice cream, and
sprinkles, marshmallow cream and hot fudge. Derek’s right; I’m a monster, and
I’ve done it all to myself. I don’t want you to just make love to me, I want
you to want to make love to me. But I
am horribly weak. I know I’m asking too much, but please get me away from this shop!”
David hugs
his wife next to the dishwashing machine and makes promises, not really certain
if he can keep them.
His Friday is packed with action: a
teachers’ meeting, final assembly, commencement on the big field. He nearly
weeps at the appearance of the valedictorian, Ekaterina Djoravic. He shan’t see
the likes of her paper on Adams’ Alien and Sedition Act again. She is off to
Brown, and he harbors similar wishes for his second-born. Get the hell away
from here, dude. Fly.
After chats
with several parents, he’s off to the hotel, his car loaded with phantoms:
small Peavey amplifier, high-quality Shur microphone, a boom stand with more
adjustables than a telescope. Remnants of Larry.
Abbey’s list
of requirements is precise and quirky. They are not to introduce Billy, or even
to acknowledge his presence. They are to play their usual set, as if no singer
is expected. Billy will sing when the moment feels right – unless the moment
never arrives, in which case he won’t sing.
“Jesus,”
says Isaiah. “The next time we negotiate with Ralph, let’s send Abbey. She’s
nuts!”
David skips
his usual pretend smoke-break, opting for some shuteye in a corner booth.
Hoping for a few neutral minutes, he receives visions of hell, tomorrow’s debut
as sole operator of Elena’s Ice Cream Shoppe. He is much relieved when Isaiah’s
playing turns classical, a Chopin prelude that serves as a cue to his bassist.
The begin
with the usual kicker, “The In Crowd” by Ramsey Lewis. David slips into the
groove like he’s putting on an old jacket – just the release he’s been looking
for. He spots a cardinal ascending the back steps, followed by a rust-colored
beard, a purple corduroy jacket – lately seen on the shoulders of Abbey
Sparling – and the usual denim underbase. David feels suddenly nervous, like a
man on a blind date.
Perhaps
homeless people are mythic fragments, temporal personalities that only coalesce
once we figure out that they can spin straw into gold. Red Man, Shadow Man,
Rumpelstiltskin, the man who played right field, who sang “’Round Midnight” on
the Point Brown jetty. And now that David has gained the power to see him, he’s
supposed to pretend that he doesn’t.
Billy perches on a stool at the far end of the bar, listening intently –
waiting, apparently, for the right moment.
In order to
stick to their set list, Isaiah and David have taken the unprecedented step of
making one. The entries are old friends, but they couldn’t resist front-loading
it with catchy swing tunes, the better to hook a reluctant crooner. “All of Me”
brings None of Billy. “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” gets them nowhere. “Fly
Me to the Moon” is a big fat zero (is the man made of stone?). David is
beginning to question the sanity of the whole arrangement (and wondering, for
that matter, wherefore art Abbey) when Isaiah teases the opening of “It Had to
Be You.”
The cardinal
stirs. He works his way along the bar, hedges across the dance floor and
arrives at Larry’s comfy corner as Isaiah nears the end of the bridge. Billy
slides onto the stool, waggles his shoulders under the purple jacket, then
swings the boom stand till the microphone touches his lips.
The time of
pretended ignoring is over. Isaiah kicks up an eight-bar intro. He has a way
with these, setups played so perfectly that Larry used to call them “breakfast
in bed.” He also has an excellent cue-face, which he deploys in cases where the
singer has seemingly gone comatose. In this case, it’s a moot point. Shadow Man
has closed his eyes, and answers the downbeat thusly:
“It…”
Beautiful note
– but that’s all, one note. Fortunately, Isaiah has dealt with screwy singers
before (see Larry, post-divorce) and
has a Plan B at the ready. He rolls into a two-measure vamp on the home chord;
Red Man can hit the onramp any time he likes. Here’s the downbeat:
“It…”
The process
is beginning to resemble two guys trying to start an old car on a winter
morning. Five times. It occurs to both players that the new singer might be
fucking with them. On go-round number six he opens his shocking blue eyes and raises
a hand to conduct. His fingers rise on beats six and seven, open wide on eight
and close to a fist on one. The players cut, leaving the room stunningly quiet.
Billy takes it in as if he is sniffing a fine cigar, then casually approaches
the mic and pulls his tune from the stillness.
“It had to
be you…”
Three hours
later, Abbey’s in the corner booth, chewing on shrimp cocktail, sipping
champagne. The Jorgensens, as always, are dancing. The rest of the crowd – an
even split of celebrating parents and early tourists – are intent on the
homeless dude behind the mic, who shows no sign that he will ever issue a bad
note or square phrase. He now delivers the only spoken words of his
performance.
“’Round
Midnight?”
Isaiah nods
and proceeds to the introduction – eery, funereal, like the prelude to a
Hitchcock film. Listening to the intensity of Billy’s reading, David decides
that the performance on the jetty was coincidence. He wasn’t singing it for
Larry; it obviously carries a personal meaning.
Their standard
approach would be a vocal all the way through the song, a piano solo following
the same chord changes as the vocal, then a return to the bridge for a vocal
finish. For Billy, however, once is enough. He brings the final note to a
ghostly rumble, then descends from the stool, wiping a hand across his eyes. He
pauses before David and places a hand over his heart, taps two fingers to the
side of Isaiah’s upright and departs across the dance floor. The patrons – who
have remained late in remarkable numbers – begin an applause that grows and
grows. The singer steps outside, gives a tug to the brim of his cap, and
descends. Isaiah keeps playing until he can pull into the station, sending a
smattering of notes into the Thelonius fog.
Post-loadup,
David and Isaiah are enjoying their free beers when Abbey breezes in, wearing
the purple jacket.
“Hang onto
that,” says Isaiah. “Music history and all.”
She sits at
their table and grins like a leprechaun.
“So you
liked him?”
“Well duh!”
says David. “If only for that ‘Mona Lisa.’”
“For knowing
the lyrics to ‘Take Five,’” says Isaiah.
“That wild
scat on ‘Too Close for Comfort.’”
“Can we keep
him?” says Isaiah. “Can we, huh?”
Abbey breaks
up. “Boys! Boys! Yes. Billy says he had a great time. In fact, he says you are
two of the best he’s ever sung with, and he’s sorry for screwing with your
heads. And as long as he can stick with his quirky requirements, he’d love to
come back next week.”
“Awesome!”
says David.
Abbey
smiles. “And now you can give me his money.”
David laughs
and hands her a fold of bills. “One-armed bandit.”
Isaiah’s
eyes grow wide with consternation.
“Uh-oh,”
says David. “We have freaked out the piano player.”
Abbey
laughs. “It’s a bit! A running joke. How do you people say it? A schtick?”
Isaiah
feigns offense and points a long finger.
“Anti-Semite!”
Photo by MJV
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