her that, finally: dissolved.
*
The jazz club is on a rough street, darker even than ours. It is
low down in a cellar. It is long and narrow. The walls are
brick. The tables are small, brown covered with a thick shellac,
heavy and hard, ugly. They are lined up against the brick walls
one right next to the other. You have to buy two drinks. There
is a stage at the end of the long, narrow room. Jazz blares,
live, raw: not the cold jazz, but belted-out jazz, all instruments,
all lips and spit. There is no chatter. There is no show. There
is just the music. The musicians are screaming through metal.
Or there is waiting—glasses, ice, cigarette smoke, subdued
mumbling. The music is loud. No one talks when the musicians
are on stage, even when they stop for a minute. Everyone waits
for the next sound. The smoke is dense but the sounds of the
horns punch through it and push it into the brick. We are
listening to the legendary black musician who according to
some stories turned Billie into a junkie. I am wondering if this
is as awful as it seems on the surface and why it is whispered
in a hushed awe. He is a sloppy musician by now, decades
later. He is bent over, blowing. He is sweating like a pig. His
instrument screams. There is not a hint of delicacy or remorse.
The music rouses you, the volume raises hackles on your skin,
the living, breathing sound makes your blood jump, but the
mind is left bored and dazed. Other musicians on the stage try
to engage that lost faculty: they solo with ideas or moods,
some sadness, some comic riffs. But the legend blares on,
interrupts, superimposes his unending screech. We can only
afford two drinks but the legend makes us desperate for more:
48
to take the edge off the blowing, blowing, blowing, the shrill
scream of the instrument, the tin loudness of his empty spasms.
The set ends. We want to stay for more. It is live music, jazz,
real jazz, we want as much as we can get of it. We cannot
come here often. The two required drinks cost a lot. We are at
a small wooden shellacked table against a brick wall. On one
side is a bohemian couple, dating nonetheless. On the other
side, the direction of the stage, is a man. He is huge. His
shoulders are broad. He is dressed very straight, a suit, a tie, a
clean shirt, polished shoes. He is alone. I hate his face on sight.
It has no lines. It is completely cold and cruel. There is nothing
wrong with it on the surface. His features are even handsome.
His skin is a glistening black, rich, luminous. He is lean but
nevertheless big, broad-shouldered, long, long legs. His legs
can barely fit under the small table. He is solitary and self-
contained. He has been watching N. He offers us drinks. She
accepts. They talk quietly between sets. I can’t hear them, don’t
want to. I can see something awful in him but she is fascinated.
