Name: Play Big
Prompt: You are a musician in a sought-after jazz band. Your name is Clarence and you travel with the band for six months of every year playing concert halls and jazz festivals. How old are you? Give the band a name. Choose your instrument. Portray the other band members and the feeling you get when you play together. Eleanor, a high fashion model, is interested in one of you. She has wiles and she uses them. Will the band survive her foxy tricks and secretive smile?
I never liked that Eleanor chick. The Skin-Toned Skivvies didn't need her type hanging around our dive. She was all skin and no soul; all fur and no fire. Our Rufus could do better.
Well. He certainly couldn't have done worse.
And yet there she was, sitting across from me, the only one in the room without an instrument and somehow unaware of how awkward that made everything. Unless the Chinese crested dog counts as an instrument. He certainly thought he did. The yapping beast hadn't shut up the entire time we were playing. Intermission now and, predictably, the feist had finally shut its mouth once it didn't matter anymore. Eleanor and Rufus didn't seem to mind either way. They were chatting in the corner like a pair of gossiping women, Rufus petting that ridiculous dog and Eleanor running her fingers across the fur trim of her designer coat.
"Clarence," Walter whispered, "I can hear your teeth grinding from here."
"My teeth? Naw. Must be a squeak in my trumpet."
Walter snorted. "I've known Louise since the day you bought her, and that trumpet has never squeaked a day in her life." He paused. "You hate her that much?"
"Hate who?"
And that was enough of an answer for Walter. A slow smile spread across his face. "Me too," he confided. He blew a long note on the saxophone, rich and rumbling with just the right amount of texture. "That's what the band should sound like. That's what the Skivvies used to sound like."
I raised a brow indulgently. "And now?"
The saxophone screamed like a cat on fire. The noise ran the gamut of unpleasant sounds, shriek to yodel to flat, dry cough. Nothing like the elegant wail she normally put out. No sexy shiver crawling up my spine from that sound.
I added a discordant note on Louise for good measure, to show him my agreement. It was fun. It was good. It was boys being boys. It was like how the Skivvies used to be, before Rufus started to care about how we sounded and what we did. He liked to cut up just like the rest of us before Eleanor came along. Now it was all about "quality." Whatever that meant. At 78 years old, I think I've finally lost the distinction between "fun" and "quality." So I tickled Louise in all the wrong ways and let out a belching womph of a note. Cathartic. That's what they call it.
The damn dog barked.
"Rufus! They're upsetting Tybalt." Eleanor's perfect complexion was marred by two bright spots of color on her cheeks. We had flustered the empress. Cue tirade.
I would say, "I have never heard a woman so upset about a little bit of fun," but it's been months since Eleanor joined our practice sessions. I've about heard it to death now, I think.
"If the noise upsets Tybalt, then maybe Tybalt should--" Walter began.
"Walter," Rufus warned.
Enough.
I put Louise back in her case. "Too many women in this room, Rufus. If your Eleanor won't leave, my Louise will."
"Rufus! Are you going to let that man talk to me like that?"
Rufe just stared at me with broken eyes. No soul in him anymore, either -- all skin and bones and guts, that was all she left him. 32 years the Skivvies had been playing together. It hurt to see a friend drained dry like that. "You don't mean that, Clarence."
I hope to God he knew how wrong he was when he said those words.
I tipped my weathered cap to the boys, and even to the lady, noxious as she might be. I wished them all a good night, and I turned on my heel like a right gentleman, all elegance and class. If she wouldn't claim her composure, I would certainly show mine.
As I walked out the door, Walter let out a long, low wail on the saxophone. I fancied that said, "Don't leave me."
I left him anyway. The Skin-Toned Skivvies had no place for a gold-digging woman, but Rufus brought her in anyway. Now they've got a nice big place for a trumpet player all vacant and waiting for someone to step in.
Maybe the dog will suffice.
No comments:
Post a Comment