Hard Bop

The evening began like any other Tuesday after ten: rain drumming against the windows of the Moulin Bleu, smoke creeping along the ceiling like a wayward shroud, Blake nursing his first bourbon to the right of the stage, keeping an eye on the wise guys and riffraff. But when the band took the stage and Mace stepped to his mic a subtle shift changed the tone of the room — the man’s face was a grimy gray, as if he’d seen his own ghost.

The combo wasted no time: Sid assaulting his skins as if they badmouthed his mother, Donny comping keys with a tilt toward the 9ths, and Chester walking lines to the border and back. Mace looked rough but still delivered good tone and technique, tilting the curves of his Selmer like a partner’s hips.

Three songs along and Blake noticed a woman walk in. Hard not to notice, since she might have owned the place — a sleek knockout in a deep red sheath of a dress and a way of moving that made her seem to float just off the floor. Smooth as warm oil, she settled into a spot at the packed bar that somehow opened as she approached, then turned her eyes over the tables to Mace. She might have been forty, maybe a millionaire’s wife or recent widow, maybe the bait in some byzantine confidence racket. She had a timeless quality, like a daguerreotype tinted with blood.

Blake saw that Mace saw her gaze: their eyes locked for a few bars before the solo. Neither reacted in any way — no sign of recognition — but it seemed that they somehow knew each other. Then Mace reached the solo and the room went silent. Truly silent after five seconds: no jibes or asides, no coughs or glass clatter. His improvisation started out as a whisper, but gained strength as it marched across thirty-two, sixty-four, ninety-six bars: scattered clouds gathering to form a indoor storm, complete with zig-zagging bolts and thunder. His horn started speaking in tongues, cadence after cadence, wailing of love and loss and rarely glimpsed corners of the heart. Mace, eyes clenched and beginning to weep, played like he was trying to shout a way into heaven. The lady in red never took her eyes off him.

She stood up and walked straight from the bar to the stage. Mace's eyes were still closed, sweat pouring from his face, the horn pulling sounds from another dimension. When she reached the riser his knees buckled. The Selmer made a shriek as it dropped to the floor and Mace went down with it, body slack enough to land with a dull, solid thud. By the time Blake made it to him, he was already gone. When he turned around for the woman, she had vanished.

Once the ambulance arrived they bent and lifted, peered and poked, and soberly declared it a heart attack. Blake had seen a heart attack once, at close range. This wasn’t that.

••• Let me tell you how it actually went down, because everyone’s been carrying on about Mace being some kind of genius. Sure, the guy could play … that ain’t the point. But you want to know the truth? He was a glorified hack. A slick, shallow hack who never paid any dues.

I've been plying this trade for nearly thirty years. Started out aping Max Roach right down to his facial expressions, then worked my way up from dive bars to snooty joints like the Bleu, scoring session gigs whenever I could. Mastered every pattern and style from bebop to post-bop to that conservatory avant-garde free jazz shit. I can swing a shuffle, lock in a Latin groove, or break time like Elvin goddam Jones. So how is it that some trifler — a cat who could barely fit a reed — shows up, gets whipped and disappears with a whimper, then three weeks later he’s back here with a satisfied smirk, strutting and blowing like Bird? At least that’s the comparison folks were making … prodigy this and virtuoso that.

Anyway, this last night, he stumbles in late as usual, looking like death with a trilby and five o’clock shadow. Maybe hung over, maybe strung out, sleep deprived — whichever, doesn’t matter, and whatever it was wouldn't be the first time. Victor never fussed because Mace would pack the house, but you know, some of us hold to standards. Check this out: this here’s Brooks Brothers, dammit, made-to-measure and pressed every week.

So, halfway through the first set this weathered old bag walks in — swear she had to be pushing sixty — wearing a tacky-ass Woolworth’s cocktail dress like she's barely twenty-five. Paws her way to the bar, hoists her ass on a stool, and starts making goo-goo eyes at Mace like she's his long-lost step-mother or something. It was embarrassing.

Understand, it was already a rough night: I’d started out with a nice ride cymbal line for All Blues, laying down a loose, flowing 6/8 feel. But Mace starts showboating, playing these weird modal runs that ran sideways to the pattern. I'm comping perfectly on the hi-hat, giving him some space between the eighth notes, but he's too busy showing off to respond. So I try for stronger structure with polyrhythmic blocks — dropping bombs on the bass drum while keeping that swing on the ride, throwing in cross-stick work on the snare. But all Mace does is play a little louder.

By the time we’re into Pork Pie he’s completely off the rails. I’m talking totally self-indulgent squawks, like Albert Ayler dropping rancid acid. That old lady is totally into it though, swaying side-to-side like she’s having a religious experience.

That last solo — don't even get me started. I'm keeping dead-on true time, working the whole kit at that point, building tension with subtle press rolls and cymbal work, even teasing some paired tom patterns. But Mace just goes off into outer space, riffing on some alien base-23 counting system.

Then he collapses, and suddenly everyone’s carrying on like we just lost Malcolm. Give me a break. Guy probably had a coronary from all the chemical assistance he was getting. Not that anyone will investigate — Victor's too worried about the joint’s reputation.

You want to know what really kills me? Tomorrow, they'll be talking about this “last performance” as if God had a hand, instead of sticking to the obvious truth of the thing — a second-rate player finally ran out of luck. Meanwhile, there won’t be word one about how I kept time tight through the whole crazy train wreck, even when he was so far outside the changes that it could have been another zip code.

••• Anyone claims an insight into Tuesday night, they’re either kidding themselves or the rube who’s listening. It’s been running as the Moulin Bleu for twenty-six years now, and I’ve spent every night in there — save Christmas Eve — for the duration. Never had a death on the premises, neither by natural cause nor misadventure, although I can’t kid myself that it ain’t been but luck. Never saw a fella drop dead where his stood, still breathing, and I hope never to behold such again.

Pushing Mace into that lineup was the best move I ever made for the place. Kid walks in a little more than seven years back, asks for a sit-in and try-out with the crew we had, and is whipped down the street by the time I get back from haggling with a stubborn distributor. Sid’s there laughing like a jackass and waving me off. I think nothing of it … they’re a leathery crew with serious standards, which I respect, and which helps enforce the tone of the place. Less than a month later he shows up again and for maybe ten seconds I don’t even catch on that it’s the kid who got singed and shame. For starters, he didn’t look like such a kid any more. Carried himself like a few years older and stood straighter and looked you dead in the eye when he spoke. Like he was his own older brother.

Anyway, this time I loitered while Sid and Donny and Chester went at him again. Maybe twelve minutes later I cut in to offer a spot. Business doubled inside a month and by the next month he’s the frontman. We’d get tourists stopping in for the ambience, but then they’d linger longer than they meant, would keep drinking and tipping, and then they’d come back in a week with a couple of friends, just for the sake of hearing more from Mace.

The night started normal, so far as I could see. Place was packed — Tuesday was always solid for that show. Sid's doing his journeyman’s shtick on the kit, which is fine because nobody comes out for Sid. Then this young thing walks in, couldn't have been more than twenty-four, sewn into this dress — intense red — that barely covered the essentials and probably cost more than my receipts for any given night.

I notice her because she's not my standard clientele. Understand: the Bleu is an upper second-shelf venue, with the focus on the music and competent, uncut drinks. She was more the type you’d see above Winston, the venues with unmarked doors, strict dress codes, twenty-dollar novelty highballs, and paint-by-number hacks on the bandstand. She’s here ordering the best we’ve got, paying with cash so crisp you could cut up a finger, and tips at fifty percent. Absolute class act all the way — except for the hem on that dress.

Mace somehow spots her and something passes between them. Recognition, maybe, though I’d never seen her at the bar before, and I’d absolutely have noticed. Mace starts playing, at that point, like a man with something to prove.

Now, I’ve heard him lay it on a thousand times. Thought I knew what he could do. But that last solo — Jesus, that was something else. People stopped drinking. Stopped breathing, for that matter. Even Sid was looking impressed.

Then the gal in red, she heads to the stage, and she’s moving down there in slow motion, like a scened from a dream. Mace by now is playing stuff I've never heard before, never heard anyone even attempt to play. She gets to the edge as he’s hitting the high arc of a phrase, touches that riser, and his eyes roll back and down he goes.

I called it in, dealt with the ambulance and hospital, handled the paperwork. Couldn’t keep track of the woman during all the commotion, so I don’t know when she cut out. Haven’t seen her since. Don’t imagine I will.

••• I was known for bravura exits: ramping things up as I brought the tune home, letting you think that we’d landed safe and secure, then driving on with more, and still more, and even too much, but earning that excess because it elevated all that came before.

Seven years back I struggled to get through a scale with stable tempo and tone. Didn’t know a ii–V from a tritone. Fact was, I hadn’t touched a saxophone since high school, but I had this hunger, this need to make a loud and lovely noise, to turn heads and lead people to listen. She found me in a dive in East Memphis, after lousing up here and limping on as best I could. She wasn’t dressed quite the same as when she showed at the Bleu — back then it was slacks and a jacket and a slim black briefcase. All business. Said she represented an entity — weird word, I thought at the time — who could make my ambitions come true. I thought she was a talent scout. And of course she was, in a way.

The contract was simple: seven years of supreme virtuosity in exchange for my life and soul. It came off as an edgy come-on, some sort of strange-ass seduction, so I smiled and signed without reading beyond the first sentence, already wondering what we’d have for dessert. I’d never been sold on the existence of souls, at any rate: we’re not here for an eternity, then we are, then we aren’t for another eternity. Split-second specks … like flecks of spittle. There’s a lot more not-ness than here-ness, so we all need to hustle while we can.

Dessert didn’t happen, but I can’t remember why. Can’t remember any of her, actually, after I signed … she essentially blinked out of view. The next morning I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, picked up my horn, and took yet another shot at Cherokee, which had been a bitch at even half the proper tempo. And wouldn’t you know: it poured out with the flow and force of Trane at his pomp, like I’d been running those changes for years. I was singing with my fingers, without hesitation, the notes rolling out as solid sheets — coherent and complete — instead of cherry-picked one-by-one.

Took a shot at Donna Lee and Confirmation. Dead true and naturally swinging. Even Giant Steps unfolded like a nursery rhyme, all the changes organic and inviting. When it was clear the deal was real, I got a one-way ticket on a Greyhound to try again at the venue I wanted. Got steady work and got better each week, but always minded the time: she might, on that night, turn up once again to collect.

There was a change in the weather the day before. Unseasonably cold, with gusts of wind like frosted coughs. Just knew, in my bones, that she was going to show. Couldn’t think of what to do to alter the odds and had no right, in truth, to complain: thanks to her I’d been doing what I loved every night, and it had kept me clothed and fed and even wrinkled my sheets a few nights. On the morning of, I polished my horn and my shoes and ran a lint roller over my suit.

She arrived that evening with red shoes, a red hat, and a chic black dress getting hugged by a red feather boa. Except for the outfit she was just the same as the last time I’d seen her: same face and hair and figure … she hadn't aged a day. Lovely to look at, but in a slightly unnerving way, like those Renaissance paintings of uninvited angels. From the moment I saw her, I wasn’t playing for the crowd, or even myself. I was playing solely for her, trying to show what I’d done with the time. Started pushing the limits of the changes, exploring the outermost edges of harmony. It’d been seven years of making music that mattered in the moment, of touching people, getting inside them with movements of sound. Wanted her to know that every minute was worth it.

I swung the guys into Goodbye Pork Pie Hat. Got a couple of raised eyebrows, but couldn’t resist it: a Mingus meditation on the loss of Lester Young. And it was a comfortable, familiar framework to dance on. Ten minutes in and I was playing in all twelve keys at once, skating around in microtones, hanging curtains of shimmering sound that you could practically see on the walls. Folks heard harmonies they’ve never encountered before, because I invented a few of them there on the spot.

Then she was standing directly in front of me, smiling that Mona Lisa smile she gave me down in Memphis.

The pain hit my neck like the snap of a noose, but there was still air in my lungs so I kept going. Had to finish the phrase, had to close out the chorus, since there was a logic to the line that wouldn’t click until the end. To be honest, I’m not sure they heard the very last bar. But even so, it completed my side of the deal. Ended on b-flat, and that note is still stuck in my ears.

••• People are predictable. They want their wasted lives to amount to something, but that something is never more than a party trick — succeed at the ball park or swindle the market, win a spelling bee, a lottery, a ribbon at the county fair. Detritus and dross, if they gave it any thought. No one bargains to see more of the color spectrum, smell the root of a rose, become fluent in four hundred languages. Mace, to his credit, did not demand to be a star, only to create without the slightest impediment. Of course I simply sold him what already owned: I relieved him of doubt, of the sabotage of second-guessing. Subtractive, not additive … a competent hypnotist could have handled the matter. To his credit, he kept working at his craft for those seven years, treating each night’s performance as if it might be the last and building on what he learned from the nights before. Most of them squander their time and turn lazy, then bored, then morose within two months. Not Mace. I’ll give him that.

I wear red because it flatters and because my role should have a signature color. Women will meet another woman or a man, but men only ever see a woman. Of course. All the other attributes are in the eyes of the observer. Blake saw a moneyed and mysterious dame because he’s an aging romantic. Sid saw a hideous skank because he hates and fears women. Donny and Chester and Victor saw an object of desire because they are nothing more than their hungers: for heroin, sex, easy money.

Mace? He saw a sort of an angel.

The boss doesn't often let me handle collections. Says there’s a risk of entanglement, of drifting into sympathy and jeopardizing the deal. But I argued to return for this one. After seven years of watching him play, seeing what he built from the sheer nothing we sold as gold, it felt right to reappear in the form he chose. A small kindness. Plus art at that level enlarges the world: it sends ripples across dimensions.

His final solo was astonishing. It was a fiery alchemy of brass and reed, forging a music they try for at times in heaven, but can never quite find. Serenity is fatal to jazz improvisation.

When he hit the stage the saxophone mouthpiece fell away and his face had a hint of a smile. No begging, no bargaining, no tiresome appeals to a higher power. Simple acceptance. You know how rare that is in this line of work?

I led him toward the back door and we watched for a while: the commotion, the consternation, a few attempts at first aid and revival. The ambulance crew, once they made it, didn’t bother with much. I noticed a that point that his gaze had settled on the Selmer, forgotten at the side of the riser. I made sure it wasn’t left behind.

It took Blake a month to put it all together. The way Mace turned up again from exile in Memphis, with impossible embouchure and chops. The way everyone made reference to a woman in red, but obviously not the same one.

He kept asking questions, then asked additional, different questions to every discovered connection. Investigation is often that simple: all it takes is glum persistence. He found an old bartender in Memphis who remembered Mace well, since Mace couldn’t pay him when he first came in. Said he needed a trim to get a gig, at which point he could pay, and that if he didn’t get the gig he’d sell his sax to make good the next day. When he returned he seemed slightly altered: stood a little straighter and held his head higher, and looked the man straight in the eye.

Blake found a waitress who said she'd seen a middle-aged someone talking to Mace at midnight in the middle of that week. The red hatband and tie made the memory stick, and the fact that his face stayed shadowed when he looked up to order. Nothing for him, came the voice, but the steak special for his young friend. He’d like it rare, with Worcestershire.

Victor was angry that the Selmer went missing and approached Blake about tracking it down. He wanted to put it on display in a case behind the bar, but some bastard must have swiped it from the stage during all the drama. Thieving goddamn rats — snatching a tropy while the body’s still warm.

A few months later, Blake heard that a hokey rumor was taking hold: that after hours, some nights, when the place had thinned out and just the lead barman and a couple of stragglers were left, you could hear a tenor saxophone soft and low — sad but not too sad, slow but not too slow — blowing tunes both familiar and strange.