“Hey baby, been a little while, huh?”
“Little while? Boy, you ain’t know da first thang bout treatin a woman right.”
“Hey, girl, you know I been thinking about you all the time”
“Mm-hm? I ain’t got no phone calls. I ain’t seen you fah a month! And now you tryin a come in here like everythang’s OK? I got news fah you, boy!”
“Come on, baby, you know—“
“An don’t you go callin me ‘baby’ like you knows me!”
“I woulda given anything to see you, you know I was busy! I’m here now, at the first chance I could.”
“Yeah, I don think so. You come to da wrong place, boy!”
Conversation over. I reluctantly back away from her irresistible curves, the deepest shade of ebony, and leave the piano store defeated; she, all 88 keys so seductive, indifferent to my exit.
The façade is not imposing, if you weren’t looking for it you would miss the discreet sign, “Gregory’s” next to the front door. Inside is a cramped room, a menagerie of bottles seemingly every shape and color crowding for space behind the bar. The familiar sizzling of cymbals and honking of a saxophone waft down the spiral staircase. Captivated by this sound, I find myself compelled helplessly, mindlessly onward until I awake sitting on a couch in the dark loft, a small classy room, wood floor and ceiling, soft yellow lights on the quartet: bari sax, grand piano, upright bass, drum set. A glass of Chardonnay appears in my right hand.
I’m in Rome but it feels like 1940s Chicago. The lead man--tall, thin, massive bari sax--sits, stands, squints, honks, growls, digs in to bluesy riffs, explodes into a torrent of notes which meets the crowd’s applause like the bow of a ship meeting the sea. I approach him at the break hoping to finagle my way into sitting it for a song or two.
“Scuzzi—I really enjoyed your playing, excellent!”
“Thank you!” A thick accent, he only speaks a handful of English.
“Yeah, I’m an American jazz pianist--”
“American? You wanna jam? Play a couple tunes?”
That was easier than I had anticipated. We finish our conversation and I start back to my seat.
“Well now, you sound like you must be from the West.”
She’s big. And she’s black. Quite comfortably reclined in the front row. Her short hair dyed blond, her lips, bright red. Her laugh is a hoarse cackle. Between her two front teeth is room for another.
“Uh, yeah…I’m from Arizona.”
“Arizona? I was in Phoenix once. I’m from New York.”
She had been a lawyer trying to make it big as a singer in the big apple. With no break in sight, she moved to Rome and has been singing here ever since. The next set opens with her leading the band on vocals. Onstage she is a caricature of the jazz singer—the nasally voice, pained expressions, emotive gestures, melodramatic scoops, bends, wails.
And then I’m on.
He hadn’t even asked my name, a mike is shoved in my face and I awkwardly introduce myself. I sit down at the piano, unsure of how she’ll respond: “Come on, girl, let’s just forget about what happened earlier today, huh?” Hoping for the best, I count off the first tune: “No Greater Love”, bright, uptempo, swingin.
“Woah, now, you movin too fast, boy, you on ya own!” Not what I want to hear. At all. My beloved keys are distant from me, they close off, my insistence creates nothing but an awkward situation. The backgrounds behind the sax I can manage on my own, but when he turns to me to play the melody on the bridge I can only fumble around a bit. A few bars later, my solo quickly becomes a haphazard pastiche of blues riffs as I desperately try to pull myself together.
As quickly as it begins the song is over and suddenly it’s my turn to start the next. I pause, gather the pieces of myself strewn across the floor. Slowly, solemnly I lay down the opening to “Georgia on My Mind”. And finally she yields to my touch. There are no words. The boundary between me and the world begins to slowly unravel. The drums and bass kick in, the blaring sax, and the entire room starts to melt until we’re completely submerged, suspended in space, here a cymbal drifting by, there a saxophone. In words I can only struggle to communicate with these men, but here we are speaking the same language and nothing is lost in translation. And then, suddenly, I don’t feel quite so anonymous, the world doesn’t seem such a strange, foreign place.
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