Passenger(9)

Halfway through the second beer, and with my near empty stomach, I am beginning to feel lightheaded from the alcohol. Patrice continues to saddle up beside me with each return trip to the bar. I can smell the flowery scent of her perfume dulled by the stronger, acrid stink of cigarettes on her clothes and breath. She tries hard to look bored, as if she wants to impress upon me that she is overqualified for this job, and she drums her lacquered red nails on the mahogany every once in a while. For the rest of her shift, our communication is relegated to cursory smiles and sidelong glances.

At one point, I rise and locate the bathroom. The men’s room is the door to the right of the dormant jukebox. It is a tight squeeze, a claustrophobic little room, with just enough space for the toilet and the sink. There is no mirror over the sink—just a fist-sized hole in the plaster above the sink where the mirror should be—and I become mesmerized while washing my hands at the sink.

Because something has occurred to me.

Because, while washing my hands, I smear the address off my palm, and in staring at the smear, I realize what it must mean to wake up on a bus with your home address written on the palm of your hand.

It means that I had anticipated the forgetting. It means I knew I would not remember…

I am quick to leave the bathroom, running my wet hands down the length of my jeans. This sudden realization excites me, but worries me, too. I stand, uncertain of what to do next, just outside the men’s room, my eyes roving over the tiny tavern and wincing at the constellation of Christmas lights above my head.

Okay—but now what?

The constricting sense of helplessness grows stronger. Again, I want to collapse in a heap to the floor, as I did on the stairwell of my apartment—and is it even my apartment?—and not move, not think, not breathe. It takes all my strength to fight off that urge. I remain standing, feeling the eyes of everyone slowly turn on me, feeling their pervading stares, and it takes everything in me just to fend off my desire to disappear.

Suddenly, I am standing out. I am noticed. I am called out. I want to collapse, to disappear, to vanish like a ghost.

But I cannot.

So, instead, I play the piano.

The overpowering urge comes from turning my head and actually looking down at the dusty black and white keys. This is not a fancy piano—the keys are muted, lackluster plastic instead of ivory—and some of the high keys, like gaps in a smile, are missing, exposing the green felt beneath. I look at these keys and am suddenly sure of myself. There is a four-legged bench wedged beneath the keyboard. Retrieving it, pulling it out and thudding it along the tavern floor, I sit and stare momentarily down at the keyboard. At my back, I can still feel the eyes of the tavern on me. For one split second, I pray for a brain embolism or for an airplane to come crashing through the roof, annihilating them all. Then, without another thought, I begin to play.

I do not know how I know the way. My mind is absent of memories concerning lessons or concerts or having ever played a piano before in my life. Yet I play, and for whatever reason, my hands know how to position themselves, my fingers know where to fall.

I begin with the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata 14, in C-sharp minor—the haunting Moonlight Sonata. As I play, I rock gently back and forth, back and forth, and at one point—just as I transition from the dark, moody C-sharp familiarity of the piece to the scherzo in D-flat major—I close my eyes. I know this tune—it is personal to me, familiar—yet, at the same time, I have absolutely no memory of it. I may have composed it straight from thought or straight from the air, if not for my knowledge of all things beyond myself—of Beethoven’s compositions and the rest of the tangible world.

Many keys do not play well. Also, the piano is out of tune, creating an overall sour tonality to the composition. Twice, I attempt to strike a key that does not exist, the ring finger of my right hand grazing the smooth bit of exposed green felt.

But I play.

It is wonderful.

When I finish, my eyes still closed, I am aware of a simmering silence. For all I know, the Samjetta’s patrons have all evacuated to the street. There exists not the clinking of beer bottles, the rough, labored breathing, the creaking of wooden chairs. There exists only silence. And the throbbing at the back of my head.

Then they applaud, and I open my eyes. Turn my head. Find them there in the gloom, ridiculous beneath a sky of Christmas lights, these burly lumberjack men and grimy, burlap-faced dockworkers. They clap and some whistle and Patrice the waitress stands beaming while propped against the lip of the bar. Even the bartender looks mildly surprised.

“Oh, hon!” Patrice croons, suddenly clapping along with the patrons, her silver bracelets jangling. “That was brilliant!”

“Do another,” a man at one table shouts.

“Do Hank Williams,” suggests another.

I roll through an up-tempo version of “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and the crowd sings along, getting most of the words wrong. I do not know how I know the song, but I do. They coax me into playing “Crazy Arms” and a surprisingly passable rendition of “Great Balls of Fire,” where I even manage a glissando with my foot, and it leaves the place howling. The men have relocated to the piano; they stand with their beer bellies and barrel chests up against the piano, gripping their beers by the neck in enormous hands, their severe faces softened by their drunken elation.

They buy me beer, too. Lots of beer. A tray of tequila shots makes its way around, too, but I concern myself with a choppy version of “Free Bird,” by unanimous request, which brings down the house.