Holiday with sax
It was just about the turn of THAT century, when all the computers would shut down because of a year 2000 problem.
The time wasn’t that important. And only some computers would shut down.
My brain was shutting down at a bad time. I can’t remember the girl’s name. I’m usually only in a bar on business.
This Friday night, the outdoor gig was rained out at the last minute. Playing music, if you want to call that a business. Writing and reviewing records and performances, if you want to call that… a business. The types of things which found me in bars and sometimes getting comped.
I was already 40 miles from home so when the bass player said, let’s go to a nice darts bar, I was meh but willing. Being in a bar as a customer would be good experience.
But there was no ability on my end, to join a conversation in the middle of two girls talking. Small talk doesn't come easy for some folks.
Mid-range hearing loss caused me to miss all but the punch line. There’s five pennies down on a table and the joke line was, “It’s a pussy but you ain’t gonna get it for five cents.”
My sax from the rained-out gig was in the car, alongside my brain it seems. The girl grabs my hand, twists my wedding ring, reads my t-shirt. “Slim’s San Francisco.” Loud in my ear.
Barefoot Miller was on stage, I hadn’t seen him in a few years, since I gave up playing blues for Top 40 and jazz. Those blues chords turn up in all kinds of music, like me turning up in this darts bar in Oak Lawn.
I finally noticed the two girls are handcuffed together. An interesting detail, particularly since neither of them can find the key. Maybe it’s a joke between them. They do seem to separate somehow and one girl says, “I have a sax at home. I was taking lessons, but I lost my time slot to one of my teacher’s high school students.”
Being usually on stage with a sax, I’ve talked many times with people who used to play sax.
“It’s a Selmer Pro Model. I won it in a secret wish contest on K-LUV.”
Oh man K-LUV. Yes, that's what that radio station sounds like with a signal that blows away all the good radio stations. Her name comes to me—- Marilyn. A popular name probably when she was born.
“I entered the contest, where you tell them what you want. I told my mother, we’re listening to nothing but K-LUV from now on, because I’m going to win a saxophone.”
I guess it was the sax talk which got me to focus. She was real cute and used her free newly un-cuffed hand to move her fingers on me.
I told my bass player friend, “I don’t need the aggravation.”
Weighing the ingredients of this recipe for disaster.
“I think she really has a Selmer,” he said. “I just have this feeling.”
“I don’t live far from here. I really want to hear someone play my horn. Will you play it for me?”
Marilyn had finally caught my attention. I told her about lending out my sax once, even for one song.
“I would be careful who you let play your Selmer. You just met me. But since you met a person who wants to play it, let’s go to your house then.”
We all piled into my Oldsmobile station wagon, a relic whose transmission only shifted when it felt like it. The girls were talking about crotches and whatever. I told Marilyn basically my rules I had just made up on the spot. I get to play the sax. She doesn’t get to play me.
“That’s it,” she starts yelling to her friend. “I’m not having any part of this. Nobody talks to me like that. What’s this guy’s name again? Forget it.” She fumbled for her house keys.
The case looked like a case with a Selmer Super 80 in it. I wouldn’t go in the house and she wouldn’t open it in the driveway. A pretty girl full of sour notes carrying a sax that could turn them sweet. I knew as soon as I put that thing in my mouth she would forget my prude vibe. I’d get to play a sax I would probably never be able to afford. My own sax was in the back, a beat up Buescher 156 which had a nice sound alright. But it was no Selmer.
This Super 80 did purr like a cat and growled like a tiger. I took it inside the bar in case there was a chance to sit in with the band.
With the sax as a prop, I kind of waited politely to be asked up to join the band for a song or two. I figured one of the guys might recognize me.
“You gotta wait to be called up, that’s how it works,” I told Marilyn. Her patience wore thin. “I want to hear my sax,” she said as she stumbled onto the stage and tried to dance while the band was playing. Kinda drunk but still good looking. The singer, James Buck, helped her back to where I was.
I’m re-thinking her story about winning the sax on the radio. I tend to think to much and that's when my imagination goes wild. It’s a very cool story but I think the guys in the band know not just the girl but the sax. Which I am holding. They may even know the true owner of the sax. Whatever. All kinds of things go through the mind while holding someone else's sax. The same thing happened to me once when Pete Fountain let me hold his clarinet. I thought I was him for a minute.
“Tony broke my heart tonight,” she said out of nowhere. And, “they’re ignoring you, they don’t want you to go up and play.”
“Don’t sweat it,” “I said. You’re making too much out of this. It’s just another night.” I was 40 miles from home and in this big city there were sax players better than me playing on street corners.
“No it isn’t,” she mumbled. And louder, “You should have heard the things Tony was saying about you.”
“I doubt it.” Karen alert.
“I want to hear my horn.”
“Let’s go out in the lot, I’ll play you a private concert.”
“I’m leaving. Outta here. Where’s my keys. I can’t find my keys. I think I left them in your car. Take me to get my keys. I can walk home. It’s not that far.”
Maybe the sax wasn’t hers. I drove her home the three blocks and the old song “I want to hear my horn” fell off the charts while the new #1 was “Tony broke my heart tonight.”
If she's drinking the night away maybe I better too. But that would make two of us.
Or maybe she and Tony will laugh about this tomorrow.
I followed her to her front door and waited while she fumbled for the keys, which seemed now to be always how she found her keys.
Rick Dees was playing on the TV. The sofa looked like somebody’s bed some of the time. The kitchen was piled with dirty dishes and smelled like dog food. Some negligee on a drying rack.
“You wanna beer,” as she gets us each one.
Marilyn had been thinking as she pointed out. “I’m really into friendship,” she said. “I do a lot for my friends, and I expect a lot from them to me. If you don’t have friends, you have nothing.”
Her voice trailed off on the word "nothing."
“Tony really, really, broke my heart tonight. We’re very good friends.”
She sat down on the sofa and patted the space next to her. “Sit here. No commitments.”
“So, you said, or your friend said, Marilyn, you’re a nurse?”
“A baby nurse.”
“A pediatric nurse?”
“No, different. We decide if the babies are born with deformities and things. We’re very good at what we do.”
Marilyn has a very demanding job and Tony broke her heart tonight.
“I have a headache,” she says. I say let me get you an aspirin before you go to bed.
The nurse’s eyes droop and blink with the audacity of me trying to find an aspirin in this ash heap of humanity. Bathroom probably.
“I don’t think work is ever going to come tomorrow.”
A nurse can have Friday off sometimes.
“I gotta go,” I said to someone who was just about asleep on the sofa. It wouldn’t be the first time I talked a girl into dreamland. On the way out, I pull her keys out of the outside front door lock.
“Lock your door from the inside. Don’t forget the aspirin.”
I went back to the bar to see how my bass player pal was doing with Marilyn’s friend with the handcuffs.
Walking in and hearing a sax. “Honky Tonk ( Part II)” from 1956, just like Clifford Scott played it.
That Tony can play.
