‘Mmmm.’
‘I just want to make sure I still get proper credit for introducing you to your husband. If you hadn’t gone out with the Trent man that night, you’d still just be another Julian groupie.’
Brooke laughed and kissed her friend on the cheek. She fished two twenties out of her wallet and handed them to Nola. ‘I’ve got to run. If I don’t get on the train in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to be late. Talk tomorrow?’ She grabbed her coat and umbrella, offered a quick wave to Luca on the way out, and bolted through the door.
Even after all these years, Brooke shuddered when she thought how close she and Julian came to missing each other. It was June 2001, a mere month after she’d graduated from college, and Brooke was finding it almost impossible to acclimatize to her new sixy-hour workweek, split almost evenly between her nutrition grad coursework, logging internship hours, and a make-ends-meet barista stint at a neighborhood coffee joint. While she’d had no illusions about the difficulty of working twelve hours a day for $22,000 – or so she’d thought – she hadn’t been able to predict the sum strain of long workdays, insufficient salary, too little sleep, and the logistics of sharing a seven-hundred-square-foot Murray Hill one-bedroom with Nola and another of their friends. Which is why, when Nola implored Brooke to join her for live music on a Sunday night, she’d flatly refused.
‘Come on, Brookie, you need to get out of the apartment,’ Nola had argued while pulling on a tight black tank top. ‘There’s some jazz quartet performing and they’re supposed to be really good, and Benny and Simone said they’d save us seats. Five-dollar cover and two-for-one drinks. What can you possibly not like about that?’
‘I’m just too tired.’ Brooke sighed, clicking listlessly through the channels from the girls’ living room futon. ‘I still have to write a paper, and I have to be at work in eleven hours.’
‘Oh, save the drama. You’re twenty-two, for chris-sake. Suck it up and go get dressed. We’re leaving in ten.’
‘It’s pouring outside and—’
‘Ten minutes, not one second longer, or you’re not my friend anymore.’
By the time the girls had made it to Rue B’s in the East Village and tucked themselves into a too-small table with friends from school, Brooke was regretting her weakness. Why did she always cave in to Nola? Why on earth was she packed into a smoky, crowded bar, drinking a watery vodka tonic and waiting to see a jazz quartet she’d never heard of? She didn’t even particularly like jazz. Or, for that matter, any live music, unless it happened to be a Dave Matthews or Bruce Springsteen concert where she could merrily sing along to all the songs. This was clearly not that kind of night. Which is why she felt a mixture of both irritation and relief when the leggy, blonde bartender banged a spoon on a water glass.
‘Hey, guys! Hey, y’all, can I have your attention for a minute?’ She wiped her free hand on her jeans and patiently waited for the crowd to quiet down. ‘I know you’re all excited to hear the Tribesmen tonight, but we just got word that they’re stuck in traffic on the LIE and aren’t going to make it in time.’
Rousing boos and jeers ensued.
‘I know, I know, it sucks. Overturned tractor trailer, complete standstill, blah, blah, blah.’
‘How about a free round as an apology?’ called out a middle-aged man sitting in the back while holding up his drink.
The bartender laughed. ‘Sorry. But if anyone wants to come on up here and entertain us …’ She looked directly at the man, who just shook his head.
‘Seriously, we’ve got a perfectly good piano. Anyone play?’
The room was silent as everyone glanced around at each other.
‘Hey, Brooke, don’t you play?’ Nola whispered loud enough for their table to hear.
Brooke rolled her eyes. ‘I got kicked out of the band in sixth grade because I couldn’t learn to read sheet music. Who gets kicked out of the middle school band?’
The bartender was not giving up easily. ‘Come on, folks! It’s freaking pouring outside, and we’re all in the mood to hear a little music. I’ll cave and throw in free pitchers for the room if someone can entertain us for a few minutes.’
‘I play a little.’
Brooke followed the voice to a scruffy-looking guy sitting alone at the bar. He was in jeans and a plain white T-shirt and a knit hat even though it was summer. She hadn’t noticed him before but decided he might – might – be reasonably cute if he showered, shaved, and lost the hat.
‘By all means …’ the bartender swept her arms toward the piano. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Julian.’
‘Well, Julian, she’s all yours.’ She resumed her position behind the bar as Julian climbed onto the piano bench. He played a few notes, messing around with the timing and rhythm, and the audience lost interest pretty quickly and went back to their conversations. Even when he did quietly play an entire song (something ballad-y she didn’t recognize), the music was more like background noise. But after ten minutes he played the intro notes to ‘Hallelujah,’ and he started to sing the lyrics in a surprisingly clear, strong voice. The room fell silent.
Brooke had heard the song before, having been briefly obsessed with Leonard Cohen, and had loved it, but the full-body chills were brand-new. She scanned the room. Were other people feeling this way? Julian’s hands moved effortlessly across the keys as he somehow infused each word with intense feeling. Only when he’d murmured the final drawn-out ‘hallelujah’ did the crowd react: they clapped, whistled, screamed, and almost uniformly jumped out of their seats. Julian appeared embarrassed, sheepish, and after an almost imperceptible bow, he began to walk back to his bar stool.
‘Damn, he’s good,’ breathed a young girl to her date at the table behind them, her eyes fixed on the piano player.
‘Encore!’ called an attractive woman who clutched her husband’s hand. The husband nodded and echoed her call. Within seconds, the cheering had doubled in volume and the entire room was demanding a second song.
The bartender grabbed Julian’s hand and pulled him back toward the microphone. ‘Pretty amazing, isn’t he, guys?’ she yelled, beaming with pride at her new discovery. ‘What do you say we convince Julian here to play us one more?’
Brooke turned to Nola, feeling more excited than she had in ages. ‘Do you think he’s going to play something else? Would you ever believe that some nobody sitting at a random bar on a random Sunday night – the guy who’s there to hear someone else perform – can sing like that?’
Nola smiled at her and leaned in to make herself heard above the crowd. ‘He is really talented. Too bad he looks like that.’
Brooke felt as though she’d been personally insulted. ‘Looks like what? I like that whole scruffy thing he has going on. And with a voice like that, I think he’s going to be a star one day.’
‘Not a chance. He’s talented, but so are a million other people who are more outgoing and a whole lot better looking.’
‘He’s cute,’ Brooke said a little indignantly.
‘He’s East Village-gig cute. Not international-rock-star cute.’
Before she could leap to Julian’s defense, he returned to the bench and began to play again. This time it was a cover of ‘Let’s Get It On,’ and again, somehow, he managed to sound even better than Marvin Gaye – a deeper, sexier voice, a slightly slower rhythm, and an expression on his face of intense concentration. Brooke was so lost in the experience she barely noticed that her friends had resumed their chitchat as the promised free pitcher of beer made its way around their table. They poured and swallowed and poured some more, but Brooke couldn’t take her eyes off the disheveled guy at the piano. When he walked out of the bar twenty minutes later, bowing his head to his appreciative audience and offering the smallest hint of a smile, Brooke seriously considered following him. She’d never done anything like it in her life, but it felt right.
‘Should I go introduce myself?’ she asked everyone at the table, leaning far enough forward that con
versation couldn’t continue.
‘To whom?’ Nola asked.
‘To Julian!’ This was exasperating. Didn’t anyone else realize he’d already stepped outside and would soon disappear forever?
‘Julian, the piano man?’ Benny asked.
Nola rolled her eyes and took a swig of beer. ‘What are you going to do? Chase him down and tell him that you can overlook his potential homelessness as long as he’ll make sweet love to you atop his piano?’
Benny began to sing. ‘Well it’s nine o’clock on a Sat – Sunday, regular crowd shuffles in …’
‘There’s a scruffy man sitting next to me, making love to our friend Brooke,’ Nola finished, laughing. They clinked beer mugs.
‘You’re both hysterical,’ Brooke said as she stood.
‘No way! You’re not following him, are you? Benny, go with her. Piano Man could be a serial killer,’ Nola said.
‘I’m not following him,’ Brooke said. But she did make her way to the bar and, after digging her nails into her palms and changing her mind five times, she finally worked up the courage to ask the bartender if she knew anything else about the mystery performer.
The woman didn’t look up as she mixed a batch of mojitos. ‘I’ve seen him in here before, usually when we have a blues or classic rock band playing, but he never talks to anyone. Always alone, if that’s what you’re asking …’
‘No, no, I, uh … no, it’s not that at all. Just curious,’ she stammered, feeling like an idiot.
Brooke had turned back toward the table when the bartender called out, ‘Told me he plays a regular gig at a bar on the Upper East Side, a place called Trick’s or Rick’s, something like that. Tuesdays. Hope that helps.’
Brooke could count on one hand the number of times she’d gone to see live acts. She had never tracked down and followed a strange guy; and, with the exception of ten or fifteen minutes waiting for friends or dates to arrive, she didn’t spend a lot of time solo in bars. Yet none of this stopped her from making a half dozen phone calls to find the right place and, after another three weeks working up her nerve, actually getting on the subway one scorching hot Tuesday night in July and walking in the front door of Nick’s Bar and Lounge.
Once she sat down, finding one of the last seats in the very back corner, she knew it had been worthwhile. The bar was one of a hundred just like it lining Second Avenue, but the crowd was surprisingly mixed. Instead of the usual Upper East Side mob of recent college grads who liked downing beer after loosening their brand-new Brooks Brothers ties, the group tonight seemed an almost odd mix of NYU students who’d made the trek uptown, couples in their thirties who sipped martinis and held hands, and hordes of Converse-wearing hipsters rarely seen in such concentrations outside the East Village or Brooklyn. Soon Nick’s was packed beyond capacity, every seat filled and probably another fifty or sixty people standing behind the tables, all there for one and only one reason. It shocked Brooke to realize that the way she’d felt when she heard Julian play a month earlier at Rue B’s wasn’t unique. Dozens of people already knew about him and were willing to travel from all over the city to see him perform.
By the time Julian claimed his seat at the piano and began his checks to make sure the sound was okay, the crowd was buzzing with anticipation. When he began, the room seemed to settle into the rhythm, some people swaying ever so slightly, some with their eyes closed, all with their bodies leaning in toward the stage. Brooke, who had never before understood what it meant to get lost in the music, felt her entire body relax. Whether it was the red wine or the sexy crooning or the completely foreign feeling of being in a crowd of complete strangers, Brooke was addicted.
She went to Nick’s every Tuesday for the rest of the summer. She never invited anyone to join her; when her roommates pressed her on where she went each week, she invented a very believable story about a book club with school friends. Just being there, watching him and hearing the music, she began to feel like she knew him. Up until then, music had been a side note, nothing more than a distraction on the treadmill, a fun dance song at a party, a way to kill time on long drives. But this? This was incredible. Without so much as a hello, Julian’s music could affect her mood and change her mind and make her feel things that were completely outside the realm of her daily routine.
Until those solo nights at Nick’s, her weeks had all looked the same: first work, then the all-too-rare happy hour with the same group of college friends and the same nosy roommates. She was happy enough, but at times it felt suffocating. Now Julian was all hers, and the fact that they never exchanged so much as a glance didn’t bother her in the least. She was perfectly content just to watch him. He made the rounds – a bit reluctantly, it appeared to her – after each performance, shaking hands and modestly accepting the praise everyone lavished on him, but Brooke never once considered approaching him.
It was two weeks after September 11, 2001, when Nola convinced her to go on a blind date with a guy she’d met at a work function. All their friends had either fled NYC to see family or rekindled relationships with exes, and the city was still pinned by acrid smoke and an overwhelming grief. Nola had hunkered down with some new guy, spending nearly every night at his apartment, and Brooke was feeling unsettled and lonely.
‘A blind date? Really?’ Brooke asked, barely looking up from her computer.
‘He’s a sweetheart,’ Nola said one night while they sat side by side on the couch watching SNL. ‘He’s not going to be your future husband, but he’s super nice, and he’s cute enough, and he’ll take you somewhere good. If you stop being such a frigid bitch, he might even hook up with you.’
‘Nola!’
‘I’m just saying. You could use it, you know. And while we’re on the topic, a shower and a manicure wouldn’t kill you either.’
Brooke held out her hands and noticed, for the first time, bitten-down nails and raggedy cuticles. They really did look gross. ‘What is he, one of your discards?’ she asked.
Nola sniffed.
‘He is! You totally hooked up with him and now you’re passing him along to me. That’s vile, no! And I have to say, surprising. Even you’re not usually that bad.’
‘Save it,’ Nola said with a massive roll of her eyes. ‘I met him a couple weeks ago at some work fund-raiser; he was there with one of my colleagues.’
‘So you did hook up with him.’
‘No! I may have hooked up with my colleague—’
Brooke groaned and covered her eyes.
‘—but that’s not important. I remember his friend was cute and single. A med student, I think, but honestly, you’re not really at a point to be discriminatory about such things. So long as he’s breathing …’
‘Thanks, friend.’
‘So you’ll go?’
Brooke grabbed for the clicker back again. ‘If it will make you shut up right now, I’ll consider it,’ she said.
Four days later Brooke found herself sitting at an outdoor Italian café on MacDougal Street. Trent was, as Nola promised, a perfectly sweet guy. Reasonably cute, extremely polite, nicely dressed, and boring as hell. Their conversation was more bland than the linguini with tomato and basil he ordered for them both, and his earnestness left her with the overwhelming desire to plunge a fork into her eyes. Yet for a reason she didn’t understand, when he suggested they move on to a nearby bar, she agreed.
‘Really?’ he asked, sounding every bit as surprised as she felt.
‘Yeah, why not?’ And really, she thought, why not? It’s not like she had any other prospects or even the expectation of watching a movie with Nola later that night. The next day she would have to start outlining a fifteen-page paper that was due in two weeks; besides that, her most exciting plans were the laundry, the gym, and a four-hour shift at the coffee shop. What exactly was she rushing home to?
‘Great, I have just the place in mind.’ Trent sweetly insisted on paying the check and, finally, they were off.
They’d only walked two blocks w
hen Trent crossed in front of her and pulled open the door to a notoriously raucous NYU bar. It was possibly the last place in downtown Manhattan anyone would take a date he wasn’t planning to roofie, but Brooke was pleased they’d be going somewhere loud enough to prevent any real conversation. She’d have a beer, maybe two, listen to some good eighties on the jukebox, and be under her covers by midnight – alone.
It took a couple seconds for her eyes to adjust, though she immediately recognized Julian’s voice. When she finally focused on the front stage, she stared in disbelief: he sat in his familiar pose at the piano, fingers flying and mouth pressed against the microphone, singing her favorite of his originals: The woman sits alone in a room / Alone in a house like a silent tomb / The man counts every jewel in his crown / What can’t be saved is measured in pounds. She wasn’t sure how long she stood rooted in the doorway, instantly and completely absorbed in his performance, but it was long enough for Trent to comment.
‘Pretty great, isn’t he? Come on, I see a couple seats over there.’
He took her arm and Brooke allowed herself to be pulled through the crowd. She arranged herself in the chair Trent pointed to and had barely placed her purse on the table when the song ended and Julian announced he’d be taking a break. She was vaguely aware that Trent was speaking to her, but between the noise of the bar and the vigil she was keeping on Julian’s whereabouts, she didn’t hear what he was saying.
It happened so fast she could barely process it. One second Julian was unhooking his harmonica from its piano-top stand and the next he was standing over their table, smiling. As usual, he was wearing a plain white T-shirt and jeans with a knit cap, this one an eggplant color. There was a light sheen of sweat on his face and forearms.
‘Hey, buddy, glad you could make it,’ Julian said, clapping Trent on the shoulder.
‘Yeah, me too. Looks like we missed the first set.’ Someone had just abandoned a chair at the next table, and Trent pulled it over for Julian. ‘Take a load off.’
Julian hesitated, glanced at Brooke with a small smile, and sat. ‘Julian Alter,’ he said, offering his hand.