“From the top.”
I found jazz on a morning drive to the office when the sun shone so brightly and dewdrops were still glistening on the grass blades. You could smell the childhood rain wafting through the little space of my car. My car filled with trinkets and old burger wrappers from whatever place I decided to eat out at. Sparkling in my own kind of way. Jazz was the type of friend you become close with after a sour first impression. It was the dawn of autumn, with bright bold leaves scattered on every inch of the world outside my car.
A place no longer new with a now familiar door with its chipped red paint. It’s what I find myself coming to on an occasional Tuesday evening right down the street from the company. Racks of CDs of every kind, though it’s mainly jazz, with the heights creating uneven staircases on each shelf. The scent of old owners and their love for music. Worn-out labels and cracks in the plastic. The air makes me remember my grandparents in the countryside: their woven sandals and woven bags. The red door took me to a feeling too close to childhood, where the world still seemed so small yet never-ending. Like the night sky filled with stars watching me swinging my little legs over the edge of the decking. And it’s warm. It was warm.
He was the one who recommended me the bar. Him with his boring blue vest. They all wore one, but he looked the best in it. Hair as rich as the copper coins in my pocket; its length that fell below his shoulders. It glowed as bright as my favourite citrus fruit in the sunlight.
“You know,” he had started. He waved the scanner back-and-forth across the last barcode a couple of times before it let out a beep. “The Burnt Blossoms ain’t such a shabby place if this is the stuff you’re into. The setlist on Thursdays is pretty good for the band that plays there.”
Wallet resting in my grasp, standing still in the air that smells like home. I can all of a sudden feel the smoothness of the leather and the way my thumb glides across it with ease. Slippery like those grass blades, slipping like the words caught in my throat. Ringing of excitement bouncing on through my eardrums and ricocheting through my veins. Catching my eye counting the constellations on his face with his own night sky. My face can’t help but give out a small smile, and I don’t want him to see it, so I let my head turn towards the floor. Give it a good couple of seconds and it finds its way back, glued to his face. He’s still bagging the CDs up when his eyes rest on mine. I wonder if he sees stars in my night sky too.
#
“Let’s go with eight counts.”
It’s the evening of the same Thursday and I find myself sitting in a small couch in a small corner of this small bar. It’s dark but it’s not so bad, the lights are bright enough to make out the sculptures and dents in each person in here. The band playing in the opposite corner of mine is made up of a saxophone, cello and piano. You can hear notes that are warm, tangy, and sour. Notes that the masses would hate: the ones with the black keys in them. The ones that sound weird on its own. But I don’t hate them. Clinking glasses and co-workers catching up, alcohol sliding down with the gulps of throats that aren’t new to the burn. Snaps of fingers following the beat of what seems to be a song with no rhythm. But it has swing. Not like the swings of baseball bats on a field or the ones that let children soar through the sky. It has lines and curves and grace. The earth tones that paint the wall and everything in the room seem to dance with the groove. Moody like me without my morning coffee. Warm and still like the sediment resting in a still mountain stream. The ringing of the microphone seems to echo off my ears and onto the crowd with shakes of heads and more snapping of fingers.
On the piano, it’s that same blue vested man from the shop. But this time he has no blue vest, and his star-filled sky is too far away for me to gaze at. His personal spotlight burns bright against his skin, but it shines with him. Soft on the keys and his bundled-up hair. He doesn’t see me clap after every piece finishes. He doesn’t see me when him and his mates pick up and start packing an hour past midnight. He only sees me walk out the door with the jingle of the bell bouncing off the wooden frames holding the warmth together. It’s the last thing he hears of me from that night.
#
“One, two, three four—”
My ears are ringing again. The adrenaline races through my blood as the sweat forming on my brow falls with the rising hands. Every other Thursday I found myself not in the crowd but facing them instead. On my own little stage in his burning spotlight. The zest-filled notes started to settle into the fingers that struck out chords and the jazz started to grow in the ones that sat in the front my neck.
Melodies would sneak out unnoticed during the morning drives to the office. I found myself practicing my own little hymns every other Sunday, like my mother who knelt for the church. Nobody would hear the strained voices that weren’t like my own except for the reflection in my bathroom mirror. And once again, every other Thursday my ears would ring with the same excitement as the one that filled my chest the first night I was there. Now the ringing bounces off through my voice, through the room and eventually, through the roof.
#
“Five, six, seven, eight.”
My eyelids droop and the voice counts upwards, but you could almost miss it. I had sunk down with the anaesthesia before the voice reached ten. It didn’t really matter to me; jazz had no rules either. Before I knew it, I was sitting in a chair with a couple pieces of paper and a face full of pity. The man in the white coat is talking but his voice is behind a closed door. It’s too far away. The ringing doesn’t help. Staring at his hands palmed in each other, my eyes follow the wrinkles that wrap his knuckles all the way to the sleeves on his arms and then to the buttons that line his coat. He had given my hand a soft but firm shake, but his skin was cold, and he may have gestured towards the door with an intentional warmth, but I couldn’t feel it. The ringing grew.
Tomorrow came, and I hadn’t left the house. The swirls of my brain found empty with only noticing the small glow creeping in through that crack in the blinds. Shining as bright as it could, it could never compete to that burning spotlight. There were cracks in the star-less night sky of the person in the mirror. Cracks and lines that scored every inch of skin. Cracks in their ears. Cracks in their veins. And cracks in their orange.
The next month came, and I hadn’t stepped through that red door once. I could no longer see the scent of home and feel the earthly jazz anymore. And it was only up until that one Thursday night that a microphone had been thrown across the already familiar stage. Quiet as it may have been I didn’t need to be told. You could see the stillness in the air, in the crowd, in their faces. In his face. In the way their bodies stood; careful and still to not wake up the child in me. As still as the small metallic pieces resting on the timber boards of the bar. I was out and bolting to my car before I knew it, leaving what remained of that microphone. Fragments of what you could say was a heart-filled score; whose stage light only hid reality sitting in the crowd behind its bright light. Hidden in plain sight.
#
“That’s a wrap”
I can feel the buzzing across the counter and pick up the phone. I answer it but nothing comes. My whole world in this moment is this one phone call with no caller. It says that it’s him, but he’s not there. Staring at the still half empty mug of coffee on the counter, grown cold from rushing out my front door this morning, I listen. And I wait. But nothing comes. I wonder what he’s saying. After a couple seconds too long, I press the bold red button and I know for sure that he's no longer there. I’m suddenly back in my kitchen, not noticing the whistling kettle wanting its mug and the phone yet again ringing across the counter.
Those old pieces of music from that place that felt like home were not on my shelf but strewn across my floor. The only source of light being the lamp, had brought the scattered little pieces of glass to life. It reminded me of my car and its trinkets that sparkled in its own kind of way. By the time night fell, the pieces had found its way to the bottom of my bin.
#
Tap, tap, tap.
It’s yet another Thursday. But I’m not at home. I don’t know how it happened, but I found myself back at The Burnt Blossoms, sitting on one of the uneven bar stools that you can’t help but rock back and forth on every now and then. It reminds me of me. I’m in that same small corner of the same small bar in the same small town. Once more I stare at him on the piano; the spotlight burning as bright and beautiful as I remembered from the first time I came here. I can almost hear the swings of sounds and follow the once felt citrus that rushed through my veins. Once more do I imagine the snapping of fingers and the humming of strangers, and it’s only now that I mourn the loss of those warm, tangy, and sour notes that I had loved so much.
Admiring the wooden frames that held the warmth together, I say goodbye to the close friend of mine that I had met in the dawn of autumn. I imagine it waving back to me with a soft smile as the bell behind me bounces against the door closing shut, locking the warmth in.
It’s the last thing he sees of me.
