And there he was, stepping out of the door behind the bar and making his unobtrusive way through the tables toward the piano. He was thin to the point of scrawniness, twenty-three years old though he looked younger, with the vacant-edged expression of a man who's collected enough kicks to the head that he's basically given up on life.
The great jazz pianist Weldon Sommers. Or rather, the soon-to-be-great jazz pianist Weldon Sommers.
He sat down at the piano, and for a moment his fingers caressed the keys in silence as if he was waiting for the muse to join him on the bench. Then, very softly, he began to play.
It was nothing special at first, just the typical background filler that a thousand other third-rate barroom pianists were pounding out this evening all across the United States. His eyes lifted from the keys as he gradually brought up the volume on the half-melodies and began looking around the room. Here and there his gaze paused momentarily on this table or that, as if sifting through the essence of the person or persons seated there, before moving on.
And then, after a few false starts, I saw his eyes come to rest on a hard-faced brunette seated alone at the bar, her lacquered nails rubbing with silent hopelessness at the smooth curve of her glass. As Weldon stared at her, I heard the meaningless filler he was playing start to change as the tone began to mirror the mix of emotions in her face. The melodies became longer and more elaborate, the harmonies sweeping the minor end of the musical spectrum. It was as if he was capturing the essence of the woman in his music, creating her pain and despair and feeding it back again to her.
And the change wasn't only in the music. As I watched Weldon, I