Although the evening air was whipping cold all around him, he was warm. Underneath his overcoat were no less than four layers of tailored clothing: blazer, vest, shirt, undershirt, and between the layers were enough heated air to keep him comfortable for at least twenty more minutes. Even if the distance he were traveling had been twice that, he had warmth in reserve in his eager smile, which he hid from the light as he bowed reverently into the wind. Only two blocks to go.
Others passed by, none of them noticing that he maintained a course as straight as the flight of an arrow while they were gently shunted aside, separating and rejoining behind him like the wind itself. A ragged, half-blind man looked up from his seat in the shelter of a storefront doorway, and saw him only as a steady shadow, an iceberg slowly drifting by against the tide.
He was almost there. His eyes met the garish flickering sign, which declared to the entire street that this was Le Jazzzzz Spot. It protruded into the street, seeming to overrule all the similar signs. If he had closed his eyes as he walked – and he almost wished he could, considering the thin, frozen tears that the wind was pinching out of the corners – he could have found the way without any kind of aid. It was the only possible destination for him in the universe, as if he were being guided true by something completely outside the realm of this sodium-arc and neon world.
Before he knew it, he was stepping out of the path of the wind, into the club’s outer vestibule. He raised his head, no longer needing to worry about losing his hat, and saw the condensation hanging like a stranded fog on the ancient glass of the door. His bare had came out of his pocket and touched the icy metal of the door handle, shocking his system back into full awareness. Only now did he realize how tense and hunched he had been in the face of the wind, and straightened, rolling his shoulders to relax them. He pulled hard, forcing the door open and allowing him access.
The first thing he felt was the warmth of the air in the small lobby. Actually, the wind outside had been so aggressive that all he felt, for a few euphoric moments, was glorious lack of cold. The lobby was little more than a place to sand while the coat check girl assigned a number to articles of clothing, but now a dozen men and women stood around, smoking furtively, as if the act were prohibited inside the club. Already he could feel that familiar clarity in the air, as if a prayer or benediction were being given in a nearby room. They could sense that special quality too, he was sure, and had gathered here in uncertainty rather than go to it, unwilling to commit their ears to anything. He understood their hesitancy, remembering his own intimidation the first time he had heard the sound. He tilted his head. Hints of his true destination came from elsewhere, one that was not a place, but a melody, produced by a voice that ran like a quiet riptide under the silken fabric of the air.
He moved among them noiselessly, like a ghost, the only revelation of his presence being the residue of autumn air shearing off his overcoat, which he removed as he passed by. He glided to the coat check counter, passed the loose pile of col fabric across to the woman inside. He cold see that the smile she greeted him with was a reflection of his won.
Turning to the padded swinging doors at the far end of the lobby, he was treated to a fleeting preview of the night’s entertainment as a couple pushed their way in ahead of him. The voice came drifting out of the gap, luring him in as it meshed with the piano and double bass. It was clear, low, and pure as melted spring ice.
His hand pressed against the padded red vinyl of the door, which was studded with jewel-headed upholstery nails. For a brief second, he thought he saw a flash of light through the single, porthole-sized window cut into the center of it, light reflected from countless blue sequins under stage lights. He lowered his head again, the brim of his hat eclipsing the sight from his view. He didn’t want to see her through glass or any other indirect way. He wanted the light that reached his eyes to be straight from her hair, her skin, with nothing in between.
The sound of the jazz trio washed around him as he stepped into the club, bubbling like a gin fizz. What struck him most, every time he came to see her perform, was the number of people in the room. If he had closed his eyes as he entered, he would have guessed that there were no more than a handful of people sitting at the small round tables around the room, not the two hundred that were actually there. The second thing that he always noticed was how little they moved. He had been here many other night, when many other people had taken the stage. People would talk continuously in small pocket throughout the set, or at least punctuate the music with the addition of the ice clinking in their glasses as they lifted it to their lips. On nights like this, however, when she performed, no one moved. It felt as if no one breathed, either. Her presence caused the room to undertake that elusive transition from a bar with background music to a concert hall that served drinks.
He removed his hat now that he was inside the club, turning his head to the light and letting her fall directly into his eyes. She stood front and center on the slightly elevated stage, her hands precisely wrapped in a provocative fashion around the microphone stand, swaying hypnotically as she sang a song of dancing with one special man, the one that made the grace of dancing as effortless as breathing. He moved around the perimeter of the nightclub as she continued to sing, filling every piece of air with the strumming lilt of her voice.
As always, she was absolutely breathtaking. Her beauty was subversive, rising from a combination of her looks and her voice combined; he couldn’t imagine experiencing one without the other. Her dress was deep blue and sequined just the right amount, blue flecks assaulting his peripheral vision as his eyes centered on her mouth, that mouth that shaped phrases with seemingly no effort at all, conjuring emotions inside his chest out of nothing but spun breath, drifting pure out across the room, cutting through the smoke and aromatically evaporating liquor.
Her lips were painted a uniform, traditional red color, offsetting the blue of her dress and the stage lighting to focus all attention on them. She seemed to welcome this attention to the most vulnerable part of her, rewarding the close observer with a slight twist of smirk between lines, sometimes revealing the hint of an involuntary down-turning of the corners during a sad ballad. Her mouth alone was worth coming to see.
Her eyes were dark, almost as dark a blue as the dress (he knew, he had studied them for hours), and deeper than they had any right to be. She had a way of making every person in her audience believe that she was looking at them, and only at them, through the entire set. Above those eyes arched perfectly defined eyebrows, curious and sinuously arched. Her hair framed he features in a straight, smooth cascade of black, given flares of red and blue highlights by the colored stage lights that hit her from dozens of angles.
He moved through the crowd as silently as possible, finally reaching his table. The jacket thrown across the back of the bent-wood chair and burning cigarette in the ashtray had marked his territory hours before she had taken the stage. He never forgot to come and place them there.
Only inches above him, she led the band into a somber coda accompanied by a tightening of the spotlight, revealing in her last few lines of lyric that the thoughts she had of dancing with her lover were nothing more than dreams of long ago, before the war, letting the song wind down into a painfully beautiful melancholy. From out of the corner of her eye, she caught him as he sat down, and in preparation for the final roll of the last chord, turned toward her piano player, who sat slightly behind her.
It appeared that she did so to enjoy the final notes more fully, but he knew the real reason. On the back of her head, comfortably nestled in the black waves of her hair, was a small jeweled clip, one of a black cat with tiny rhinestone eyes that flashed pure white out of that dazzle of blackish-purple hair. He had given her that clip for their anniversary, and by turning away she had acknowledged his gift, and him as well. He settled back in the chair as the crowd erupted into cheers, loosening his tie and waiting for her to begin the next song.
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