Passenger(10)

Once I finish—once my back is sore from the patting and clapping and friendly punches and my fingers are swelling with blisters—I am sweating within my canvas coat. I shrug the coat off and happen to glance at the palm of my left hand. A number of black, smeary streaks intersect at the center of my palm.

“That was fantastic, hon,” Patrice says, pulling up a stool beside the piano bench. She sits higher than me and has to look down to meet my eyes. “Where’d you learn to play like that?”

I say I do not know.

“Because you’re wonderful.”

“Thanks.”

“Your hands—your fingers—move so fast.” She winks at me. It makes her look younger. “You’re full of secrets, aren’t you, Mozart?”

“I guess you’ve found me a name.”

“I guess I have.” She smiles prettily. “But come on,” she continues, the tone of her voice dropping. We are conspirators now. “What’s your real name?”

I roll my shoulders. “I don’t know. Honestly.”

Her eyes linger on me, examining me. There are faint creases around their corners and her lashes are long and thick, crusted black with mascara. But she has pretty eyes and I am content to stare at them for as long as she will let me.

Then she says, “Tease.” She says, “You sneaky tease.” Says, “Mozart the mystery man. What a tease.”

Eventually the place clears out. I have lost all track of time and I haven’t moved from the piano bench, though I no longer play. With the last of the customers out the door, Patrice shuts and bolts the door and saunters over to the staggered assortment of tables. She wipes the spilled beer and dried gunk from the tabletops and carries on a brief conversation with the bartender, who is closing out the cash register.

The house lights come on, revealing the true ugliness of the place. I wince.

“Hey,” the bartender says, ambling over to me while pulling on a leather jacket. “You wanna come back on Monday, man? Like, for a gig?”

“A gig?”

“Yeah. Like, I’ll pay you to play for a few hours. You know?”

“I guess.”

“Don’t wanna bend your arm or nothing, man…”

“No,” I say, “I’ll come back.” Because I don’t even know if I have a job. “What time?”

“Be here for five,” says the bartender. “Happy hour.”

“All right. Thanks.”

“Yeah. Sounded good, man. Right on.”

And he slips out a door that seems to spontaneously appear behind the bar.

“Impressive,” Patrice says from across the empty room. She is still wiping down the tables, but her pace has slowed and she has lost all interest in working. “I’ve been bugging Tony to hire another waitress for over a year now and he says we can’t afford one. Then you come along, play some boogie-woogie and whatnot, and he practically gives you tenure. Nice.”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, I’m just busting your balls. You want another drink?”

I am already drunk. “No, thanks.”

“Mind if I have one?”

“Not at all. Go ahead.”

She disappears behind the bar and, when she returns, she is nursing from a bottle of Heineken. She pauses against the bar, examining me from over the bottle, her coiffed auburn hair curling down her forehead. Her eyes shift around the room and I can tell she is thinking of something.

An impulse overtakes me and I turn and begin playing the low, resonant keys. I run a scale in A-minor. Unlike all the other songs, I do not recognize this one. Yet I play it with inexplicable confidence, with the genetic instinct of a migratory bird. It is a possessing, melancholic melody, furiously simple yet, at the same time, breathtaking in its complexity. It is nothing like the barroom, barrelhouse piano I played earlier.

“That’s so sad,” Patrice says from across the room once I’ve finished playing. The final note still resonates, underscoring her voice.

“I think it’s supposed to be a love song.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.”

“I can’t get you anything?” she asks after too much silence passes between us. She is still holding her beer, still halfway across the barroom floor. “Anything at all?”

“A pen,” I say, glancing down at the inky smears on my palm.

Patrice seems confused. “A—pen, did you say?”

“Please…”

She scrounges around behind the bar and manages, after a time, to locate one in the vicinity of the cash register. Tapping it against the air, she stalks across the bar toward me like a predatory creature. Along the warped tavern floor, her shadow is multiplied by the countless Christmas lights above her head. She is playful when handing me the pen—extends it, jerks it away, prods me gently in the center of the forehead.

“Before I give you this,” she says, shifting her weight from foot to foot, “I want you to answer one question.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Why?”

“I don’t remember much.”

“Much of what?”

“Of anything.”