“Who’s laughing? Looking.”
“Oh, of course. That’s different.”
I picked out a pack, put down my buck, and got the surprise of my life: she gave me change. As she started to leave, I said “You forgot something, maybe?”
“That’s not necessary.”
“For all this I get, I should pay.”
“All what, sir, for instance?”
“I told you: the beauty that fills my eye.”
“The best things in life are free.”
“On that basis, fair lady, some of them, here, are tops. Would you care to sit down?”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Not allowed. We got rules.”
With that she went out toward the rear somewhere, and I noticed the proprietor again, just a short distance away, and realized he’d been edging in. I called him over and said: “What’s the big idea? I was talking to her.”
“Mister, she’s paid to work.”
“Yeah, she mentioned about rules, but now they got other things too. Four Freedoms, all kinds of stuff. Didn’t anyone ever tell you?”
“I heard of it, yes.”
“You’re Mr Here’s How?”
“Jack Conner, to my friends.”
I took a V from my wallet, folded it, creased it, pushed it toward him. I said: “Jack, little note of introduction I generally carry around. I’d like you to ease these rules. She’s cute, and I crave to buy her a drink.”
He didn’t see any money, and stood for a minute thinking. Then: “Mister, you’re off on the wrong foot. In the first place, she’s not a cigarette girl. Tonight, yes, when the other girl is off. But not regular, no. In the second place, she’s not any chiselly-wink, that orders rye, drinks tea, takes the four bits you slip her, the four I charge for the drink – and is open to propositions. She’s class. She’s used to class – out West, with people that have it, and that brought her East when they came. In the third place she’s a friend, and before I eased any rules I’d have to know more about you, a whole lot more, than this note tells me.
“Pleased to meet you and all that, but as to who you are, Mr Cameron, and what you are, I still don’t know—”
“I’m a musician.”
“Yeah? What instrument?”
“Any of them. Guitar, mainly.”
Which brings me to what I was doing there. I do play the guitar, play it all day long, for the help I get from it, as it gives me certain chords, the big ones that people go for, and heads me off from some others, the fancy ones on the piano, that other musicians go for. I’m an arranger, based in Baltimore, and had driven down on a little tune detecting. The guy who takes most of my work, Art Lomak, the band leader, writes a few tunes himself, and had gone clean off his rocker about one he said had been stolen, or thefted as they call it. It was one he’d been playing a little, to try it and work out faults, with lyric and title to come, soon as the idea hit him. And then he rang me, with screams. It had already gone on the air, as 20 people had told him, from this same little honky-tonk, as part of a 10 o’clock spot on the Washington FM pick-up. He begged me to be here tonight, when the trio started their broadcast, pick up such dope as I could, and tomorrow give him the low-down.
That much was right on the beam, stuff that goes on every day, a routine I knew by heart. But his tune had angles, all of them slightly peculiar. One was, it had already been written, though it was never a hit and was almost forgotten, in the days when states were hot, under the title Nevada. Another was, it had been written even before that, by a gent named Giuseppe Verdi, as part of the Sicilian Vespers, under the title O Tu Palermo. Still another was, Art was really burned, and seemed to have no idea where the thing had come from. They just can’t get it, those big schmalzburgers like him, that what leaks out of their head might, just once, have leaked in. But the twist, the reason I had to come, and couldn’t just play it for laughs, was: Art could have been right. Maybe the lilt was from him, not from the original opera, or from the first theft, Nevada. It’s a natural for a 3/4 beat, and that’s how Art had been playing it. So if that’s how they were doing it here, instead of with Nevada’s 4/4, which followed the Verdi signature, there might still be plenty of work for the lawyers Art had put on it, with screams, same like to me.
Silly, almost.
Spooky.
But maybe, just possibly, right.
So Jack, this boss character, by now had smelled something fishy, and suddenly took a powder, to the stand where the fiddlers were parked, as of course the boys weren’t there yet, and came back with a Spanish guitar. I took it, thanked him, and tuned. To kind of work it around, in the direction of Art’s little problem, and at the same time make like there was nothing at all to conceal, I said I’d come on account of his band, to catch it during the broadcast, as I’d heard it was pretty good. He didn’t react, which left me nowhere, but I thought it well to get going.
I played him Night and Day, no Segovia job, but plenty good, for free. On “Day and Night”, where it really opens up, I knew things to do, and talk suddenly stopped among the scattering of people that were in there. When I finished there was some little clapping, but still he didn’t react, and I gave thought to mayhem. But then a buzzer sounded, and he took another powder, out toward the rear this time, where she had disappeared. I began a little beguine, but he was back. He bowed, picked up his B, bowed again, said: “Mr Cameron, the guitar did it. She heard you, and you’re in.”
“Will you set me up for two?”
“Hold on, there’s a catch.”
He said until midnight, when one of his men would take over, she was checking his orders. “That means she handles the money, and if she’s not there, I could just as well close down. You’re invited back with her, but she can’t come out with you.”
“Oh. Fine.”
“Sir, you asked for it.”
It wasn’t quite the way I’d have picked to do it, but the main thing was the girl, and I followed him through the OUT door, the one his waiters were using, still with my Spanish guitar. But then, all of a sudden, I loved it, and felt even nearer to her.
This was the works of the joint, with a little office at one side, service bar on the other, range rear and centre, the crew in white all around, getting the late stuff ready. But high on a stool, off by herself, on a little railed-in platform where waiters would have to pass, she was waving at me, treating it all as a joke. She called down: “Isn’t this a balcony scene for you? You have to play me some music!”
I rattled into it quickly, and when I told her it was Romeo and Juliet, she said it was just what she’d wanted. By then Jack had a stool he put next to hers, so I could sit beside her, back of her little desk. He introduced us, and it turned out her name was Stark. I climbed up and there we were, out in the middle of the air, and yet in a way private, as the crew played it funny, to the extent they played it at all, but mostly were too busy even to look. I put the guitar on the desk and kept on with the music. By the time I’d done some Showboat she was calling me Bill and to me she was Lydia. I remarked on her eyes, which were green, and showed up bright against her creamy skin and ashy blonde hair. She remarked on mine, which are light, watery blue, and I wished I was something besides tall, thin, and red-haired. But it was kind of cute when she gave a little pinch and nipped one of my freckles, on my hand back of the thumb.