The Final Note

Cameron slumped down on the bench in front of the Club Midnight in Yokosuka.  He gripped hold of the mouthpiece and neck of the saxophone and groaned. Damn! He was the featured soloist in the last number of the quartet’s first set. He had worked it all out in his head how he would play the tune. Duke Ellington’s Solitude. He gave it what he called a Billie Holiday interpretation. The reaction from the audience disappointed him. The few that applauded clapped as if responding to Pavlovian stimuli. Only one woman showed signs of sincere appreciation.

The Club Midnight was nearly empty when the Quartet got ready to play their first set. Customers sat at tables scattered around the room exchanging conversations accentuated by laughter. At the bar, a man in a three-piece blue suit humped over a foamy draft beer. He was letting loose a stream of complaints about the unfairness of life. The bartender was listening with a wary expression. 

“People are still scared of the COVID,” the owner explained apologetically looking at the still empty tables. “They’ll come. You wait and see. They’ll come.”  He was a tall, heavyset man who resembled in Cameron’s imagination a trimmed down sumo wrestler in a tuxedo.

Cameron understood the owner’s anxious words. The club only recently opened up after the government had eased restrictions preventing people from gathering in large numbers. To stay open, it needed cash paying customers. And understanding musicians. The guarantee Hideki, the pianist and business manager, secured was almost half of what the group got before the pandemic hit. Better half than no gig, Cameron agreed. 

The band started off the first set with an upbeat version of Harold Arlen’s My Shining Hour. Cameron scanned the audience. The customers seemed reluctant to break away from their conversations, though one college-aged kid with unruly black hair turned his chair to face the stage. The man at the bar had shifted from complaining to ranting punctuated by emphatic words. The bartender kept his eyes on the man as he lifted a cocktail shaker into the air and shook it with determination. 

Cameron closed his eyes. Got to focus on the here and now. On the here and now. The band worked down the setlist to the bluesier standards. The closer to his featured solo, the faster his heart picked up in tempo. When he opened his eyes between numbers, he saw more customers filling up the empty chairs. Good! Good! An audience to listen to a tune he cared about. An audience to hear him play his heart and soul out. An audience to share the heartache of a shattered marriage.

Next up was Hideki’s featured solo. Hideki started playing Misty accompanied by the bass and percussionist. Cameron’s attention was drawn to a woman walking to the table closest to the stage. Something strange about her. No, not the dangling earrings that hung like temple bells from her ears. Nor not the red beret accentuating her black hair that flowed over the shoulders of her gray artist smock shirt. What was it?

Hideki nodded toward him. Closing his eyes, he blew a fervent sax improvisation of the stanza his ex-wife loved to sing along with.

🎶Can't you see that you're  leading me on, But it's just what I want you to do, Don’t you notice how hopelessly I'm lost, That's why I'm following you.

He opened his eyes and the bassist took over on the improvs. The woman was sipping from a glass of something bubbly, all the while she was staring intently at him. The eyes. Yes, the eyes. They seemed to be examining him. She opened the sketch pad on the table in front of her and moved her black pen over the page. Ah, an artist. Her eyes! Wide open! They never seemed to blink.

Hideki closed the tune with lush tremolo chords, his tribute to Erroll Garner. The applause was animated but drowned out by the crash of a tray of dishes dropped by a clumsy server. Customers rubbernecked to get a view of the server scrapping up the broken pieces. The woman stayed focused on her sketching. She looked up at Cameron as if waiting for him to get on now with his featured solo. He was ready. At least one person will be listening. 

Hideki started off with the piano intro. Cameron slid into the rhythm and melody as wistfully as he remembered his ex-wife’s smiles.

🎶 In my solitude/ You haunt me /With reveries of days gone by. In my solitude /You taunt me/ With memories that never die. 

“Nan da yo!” The man at the bar was turning into an angry drunk. “Sonna baka na!

“Urusei yo!” A angry customer yelled from across the room. 

The owner and bartender escorted the angry drunk into another room and closed the door.

Cameron ignored the fracas. The woman, too, hardly had taken her eyes off him. She moved her pen with brash strokes over the sketch pad. He felt as if she was staring directly into his mind. She understood him.  She sensed his pain through the music he blew into the mouthpiece of his horn.

🎶 I sit in my chair / Filled with despair /There’s no one could be so sad/ With gloom everywhere/ I sit and I stare /I know that’ll I’ll soon go mad. In my solitude I’m praying Dear Lord above /Send me back my love.

During the break between sets, he rested outside on the bench, disappointed bordering on glumness. He had expected a more enthusiastic appreciation for the solo he worked on for nearly a week. Had it not been for the artist, his mood might have sunk even lower.  She had looked up from her sketching when he finished playing, slightly bewildered. Then she smiled and nodded her head. Her eyes wide open and peering into his soul. A heartfelt interpretation, he imagined her saying.You touched my heart.

He checked his watch. Almost time for the second set. One thing for certain, he would play for her. Forget the other customers! 

He headed for the club entrance when the club owner came out. The artist followed behind him.  “Cameron-san, I’d like you meet a good friend of mine, Mariko. She’d like to do a portrait of you.”

“Mariko. So happy to meet you. A portrait. Of me? Wow. I’m honored.”

“She can’t understand you, Cameron-san.”

“She doesn’t speak English?”

“No, she’s deaf.”

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Misty composed by Erroll Garner with lyrics by Johnny Burke

Solitude composed by Duke Ellington with lyrics by Eddie DeLange and Irving Mills