Piano

Trouble at the ol' jazz club

    The lights are beating down on me again. I've always hated that about this. The bags under my eyes are elongated by the shadows and I look more troubled than I am. A real pro cooks himself under lights like these at home to practice working with the pressure. His practice space looks like an operating table. I never got the lights. People don't come to a place like this to look at the lines on our faces, they come to forget that people have lines on their faces. I never got used to the heat. The venue is always cool at sound check, then up three degrees when the first couple wanders in off the street. You want the room full, but god the heat. Even if the floor was filled with corpses sitting at the tables on strings the machinery that animated them would be putting out some heat. And without the machinery to pull the strings how would they clap? That's why we’re all here, really. To be applauded. To be there for something worth applauding. A most human desire, really. There's no sarcasm to be heard in applause unless you're the busboy who just dropped a stack of plates.

    I missed that same change again. My hands fumble to catch up but I'm a chord behind and I have to jump ahead to meet them. Tonic, three chromatic notes up to the five and I'm back in on the downbeat. Nobody even looks over out of the corner of their eye. That's the game. Pretend you know.

    I look out into the crowd and I can hear what they're saying if I look at their mouths. Isolating their conversations one by one. She’s got a boss with bad ideas about a group project. He went camping and had a wild time. I'm not one of them. I'm asleep while they live their lives, they're drunk while I live mine.

    My solo arrives and I grab my gin and soda from atop the piano with my left hand and play a fractured semblance of the melody up high with my right. I raise the glass to Mitch the bartender and he smiles and nods. The room applauds Mitch. I take a sip and set down the drink and get to it. I've got two times through the form to say something, anything. I don't love this tune, but I can always get by. I make it out alright and applause ripples through the place.

    Every year the music schools drop a new litter of kids on us, and every year these kids set out to work the clubs like their ancestors did. They don't all stick around in this scene, and the ones that do spend more time worrying about money than their artistic conception. It's just the way it is. This kid on tenor taking his solo now knows what he’s doing on his horn, but can he take the boredom? The endless hours spent waiting to play? A line of work that has you drinking coffee at midnight and leaves you with nobody but bartenders and strippers to commiserate with? I hope so. We need everyone we can get.

    The drummer takes his solo and I pound on the top of the piano in time. It looks like I've got the Holy Ghost, but I'm just trying to get rid of a rattle I keep hearing above the treble strings. It's worked in the past. I count the beats in my head but there’s no need. There’s always a pause before the solos change hands in this song.

    My friend Fizz starts in with his bass solo but I'm distracted. There’s something happening across the room. By the window a college age guy in a red shirt is impelling where he shouldn't. His target goes from tangible discomfort to fake amiability and back again. It's a tactic to defuse his hostility. I squint and focus and the whole room goes quiet except for their discussion. He really thinks she should go back to his place with him. She wonders where her friends went. He tells her his New Year's resolution is to stop taking no for an answer. She looks around and nobody meets her gaze. His hand grips her arm and his knuckles are white.

    I come in after Fizz’s solo and we all play the melody one more time. Fizz is looking over at me because I didn't back him up like I usually do during his solo. I smile and shrug and ham it up for the big finish. The crowd applauds and I try to enjoy it, but my mind is elsewhere. I'm not there at all. I'm watching Renee on the couch in our apartment. She has work in the morning, school teacher. She tries to stay awake until I get home but she never makes it. She feels safe. She drifts off and her book slips from her hands. Benny Goodman wraps it up on the turntable and the needle finds the terminus groove near the label. The record will still be spinning when I get home. This is my Shangri-La.

    This image frays something within me. Red Shirt twists something within me. My hands clench and unclench. My ears ring. I look across the room again and he’s doubled down on his new year’s resolution . His target’s head slowly lolls forward before she jerks it back up to meet his gaze. And again. Heavy eyelids. GBH. Red Shirt sees that his prescription has taken effect and he grabs her by the arm and leads her towards the door. She stumbles and I see her ankle give. It looks like a kid trying to walk in high heels for the first time. She glances over her shoulder one last time but her eyes are barely open.

    I stand and whisper in Fuzz’s ear that I have to sit the next number out. Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker formed a pianoless quartet in the 50s. I walk behind the bar and ask Mitch if he has any tape. Sure he does. He directs me to the green room behind the stage where I find a roll of gaffer tape. Good. Much better than painter’s. Have to move quick. I locate my briefcase next to the couch and dig through the lost and found in the utility closet for something to hide my face. A black beanie, perfect. A black handkerchief, less perfect. I'll worry about who hacked up what into it later. I tie the handkerchief around my face, covering it from the bridge of my nose down. I put on the hat and try to convince myself there’s nothing festering in it. I catch a glance of myself in the cracked Coors Light mirror hanging above the couch. Between the hat and the bandana I'm pretty well covered. I tear off a seven inch piece of tape and stick it to my jacket. I tear of another and put it sticky side out in the palm of my right hand, folding the last inch backwards so it stays stuck to my fingertips. I toss the rest of the roll in my briefcase. I feel for my pocket knife. It's there. A gift from Dad. On the way out the door a set of pink fuzzy handcuffs on a shelf catch my eye. They were used in a burlesque show here a couple weeks back that I played at. I had to brush up on my stride piano technique for that one. Into the jacket pocket they go.

    I burst out the side door of the club and I can hear her protests. No one else out on the street. They're around the corner and six doors down. As I stalk them my mind drifts to the subject of my mobility. I'm still wearing my suit: black pants, jacket, tie and dress shoes, white shirt and socks. Better to tear the jacket than succumb to my instincts to preserve it.

   Red Shirt drags her towards his car and fumbles for his keys. I hear the boys inside kick off “Oh, Lady Be Good” and it's time. I toss my briefcase to his left and he he jerks his head towards it. I approach from behind him on the right and smash the length of gaffer tape over his eyes. I feel his nose crunch under my hand and his arms go flailing for me. I've got six inches and thirty pounds on the kid and he puts up almost no fight at all. He's used to getting what he wants. He's working with clumsy lust. I get him in a full Nelson and press his face into the hood of his car. He screams as his crushed nose makes contact with with the cold metal. I hear something behind me, but when I look over my shoulder there’s no one there but the girl. The kid asks what I want, but he can't give me what I want. I have to take it. I release my left arm and his and pull the strip of tape from my jacket. I place it over his mouth but the blood from his nose is keeping it from sticking completely. That's ok, the muffling effect it has is enough for now. He swings his free arm in my direction but physiology is not on his side. I lower him onto the ground face down and press my knee into his back. I cuff him with the pink fuzzies. My briefcase is two feet away and my jacket tears at the shoulder as I reach for it. I open the case, grab the tape, wrap the kid’s head with it. I didn't have to do his hair, but what the hell. From the front of the car I hear the girl, silent until now, groggily suggesting I give him a way to breathe. Yeah,  that’s fine. I've never used the corkscrew on my pocket knife anyway. With two nostril holes punched through the tape a vintage red flows forth. He can breathe I think. I grab his keys from where he dropped them and drag him to his feet. He’s viciously sucking in and expelling air through his nose, but he's not trying to fight me off anymore. I squeeze his arm until my knuckles are white as I lead him to the trunk.

    She nods off as I'm driving her home. I tune Red Shirt’s radio to KCSM and they're playing some fusion I don't recognize. That rattle on the trumpet, it must be Miles. We pull up in front of her building and I watch her slink up the stairs and dig around in her purse for her keys. She fishes them out, holds them up and smiles wearily back at me. She gets inside. Red Shirt is kicking the sides of his trunk in protest. His prey has escaped.

    I turn the radio up and head towards the freeway. We’re going for a ride, Red Shirt and me. I take him down the 101 and pull into a biotech company’s lot. Permit parking only. Tow away. I park the car in a handicap space and call up Fizz for a favor. He agrees, and half an hour later his headlights illuminate me as I’m sitting atop the big cement logo at the lot’s entrance humming “Oh, Lady Be Good!”. It's been stuck in my head all night. Fizz drives a small car and plays a big instrument, and the three of us barely fit. We’ve done this many times before. We take the on ramp and speed onto the freeway and I see Red Shirt’s car in the parking lot with all the lights on. Just like I left it. I smile a little and casually drop his keys out the window onto the asphalt that’s racing by beneath us. I wonder if the GHB I found in his shirt pocket and packed his left nostril with is kicking in yet. Fizz and I talk about the gig and he gives me my cut. He never asks about what I did with the rest of my night.

    Shangri-La is as I imagined it. It’s Glenn Miller is on the turntable instead of Benny, but he still spins. I lay on the couch and rest my head on Renee’s hip. She stirs but doesn't wake. Against the smell of home I realize I reek of Red Shirt’s cologne and the cigarettes he smoked in his car. The car he no doubt received on his sixteenth birthday. The car he’s been driving with the ‘check engine’ light on for god knows how long. The car that’s serving as his lodging for the night.