“Which record?” he asked, eyes never wavering from The New York Times.
“Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova,” I said.
He laid down his paper, took off his thin, metal-framed reading glasses, and slowly turned to face me. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”
I did. The man said nothing, and took another sip of coffee. He shook his head slightly. “There’s no such record.”
“Of course,” I said.
“If you’d like Perry Como Sings Jimi Hendrix, we have that in stock.”
“Perry Como Sings—” I got that far before I realized he was joking, even though he did so with a straight face. “But I really did see it,” I insisted. “I was sure it was produced as a joke, I mean.”
“You saw that record here?”
“Yesterday afternoon. Right here.” I described the record, the jacket and songs on it. How it had been priced at $35.
“There’s gotta be some mistake. We’ve never had that kind of record. I do all the purchasing and pricing of jazz records myself, and if a record like that had crossed my desk, I would definitely have remembered it. Whether I wanted to or not.”
He shook his head and put his reading glasses back on. He went back to reading the sports section, but then, as if he’d had second thoughts, he removed his glasses, smiled, and gazed steadily at me. “But if you ever do get hold of that record,” he said, “let me listen to it, okay?”
—
There’s one more thing that came later on.
This happened a long time after that incident (in fact, quite recently). One night I had a dream about Charlie Parker. In the dream, he performed “Corcovado” just for me—for me alone. Solo alto sax, no rhythm section.
Sunlight was shining in from some gap somewhere, and Parker was standing by himself in a spot lit up by the long, vertical beam. Morning light, I assumed. Fresh, honest light that was still free of any superfluous meaning. Bird’s face, facing me, was hidden in deep shadow, but I could somehow make out the dark double-breasted suit, white shirt, and brightly colored tie. And the alto sax he had, which was absurdly filthy, covered in dirt and rust. There was one bent key he’d barely kept in place by taping the handle of a spoon to it. When I saw that, I was puzzled. Even Bird wouldn’t be able to get a decent sound out of that poor excuse for an instrument.
Suddenly, right then, my nose detected an amazingly fragrant aroma of coffee. What an entrancing smell. The aroma of hot, strong black coffee. My nostrils twitched with pleasure. For all the temptations of that smell, I never took my eyes off Bird. If I did, even for a second, he might vanish from sight.
I’m not sure why, but I knew then it was a dream. That I was seeing Bird in a dream. That happens sometimes. When I’m dreaming I know for certain—This is a dream. And I was strangely impressed that in the midst of a dream I could catch, so very clearly, the enticing smell of coffee.
Bird finally put lips to the mouthpiece and carefully blew one subdued sound, as if checking the condition of the reed. And once that sound had faded away over time, he quietly lined up a few more notes the same way. The notes floated there for a time, then gently fell to the ground. They fell to the ground, one and all, and once they were swallowed up by the silence, Bird sent out a series of deeper, more resilient notes into the air. That’s how “Corcovado” started.
How to describe that music? Looking back on it, this music Bird played just for me in my dream felt less like a stream of sound than like a momentary, total irradiation. I can vividly remember the music being there. But I can’t reproduce it. With time, it’s faded away, like the inability to describe the design of a mandala. What I can say is that it was music that reached to the deep recesses of my soul, all the way down to the very core. I was certain that kind of music existed in the world—music that made you feel like something in the very structure of your body had been reconfigured, ever so slightly, now that you’d experienced it.
—
“I was only thirty-four when I died,” Bird said to me. “Thirty-four!” At least I think he was saying it to me. Since we were the only two people in the room.
I didn’t know how to respond. It’s hard in dreams to do the right thing. So I stayed silent, waiting for him to go on.
“Think about it—what it is to die at thirty-four,” Bird went on.
I thought about how I’d feel if I’d died at thirty-four. When I’d only just begun so many things in life.
“That’s right. I’d only begun things myself,” Bird said. “Only begun to live my life. But then I looked around me and it was all over.” He silently shook his head. His entire face was still hidden in shadow, so I couldn’t see his expression. His dirty, battered saxophone hung from the strap around his neck.
“Death always comes on suddenly,” Bird said. “But it also takes its time. Like the beautiful phrases that come into your head. It lasts an instant, yet those instants can draw out forever. As long as from the East Coast to the West Coast—or to infinity, even. The concept of time is lost there. In that sense, I might have been dead even as I lived out my life. But actual death is a crushing. What’s existed until then suddenly and completely vanishes. Returns to nothingness. In my case, that existence was me.”
He looked down for a time, staring
