One More for the Road

The latent lightning shimmered off of the slick black street, flashing the night to day like a reporter’s flashbulbs. The fireworks had lost most of their punch as the midsummer storm moved off into the water to die. This crummy neighborhood needed the purging of the rain to kill the stench that the heat and proximity of humanity had built upon it. Five and six story tenements hunkered down next to various necessary shops that lined both sides of this part of the dingy street. Streetlamps rained down on less than new autos that lined both sides of the normally busy thoroughfare. Now though, the hustle and bustle of daylight was erased by night’s secret shroud and only the most desperate and callous dared posses the darkness here.
All of the businesses save one sat lonely, steel cages covering their fronts like braces on the malformed jaw of a teenager. The single holdout was well lit from within; tiny smoked glass windows gleaming transparently out to the world. Slashes of blood red letters that advertised the dives designation flickered and failed intermittently. The muffled sounds of a four piece ensemble drifted onto the steaming pavement in front. Blocks away the familiar wail of a siren signaled someone’s late night distress as the dogs joined in to harmonize.
The establishment was Patsy’s Pub and Spirits, and most every night of the week you could find said Patsy tending to his patrons, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He was a thick fingered man, his ham fists were stained with the fermented grains that constituted his life’s work. He kept the bar as dim as his wits and the booze as watered down as his intellect.  Men with wills of iron and stone, and names to match sat on wooden stools and wallowed in life’s injustices together. They sat and they smoked and nursed their beers until closing time most nights. Their edifices, as hard as the city that had forged them, were of a dull consistency.
None of them paid any attention to the quartet that occupied the farthest corner of the joint. They had no heed of the music, but their attentions were always fixed on her, even when they appeared to be deep in a story or boast. She could be caterwauling about any number of subjects with not an eye turning her way, but the mere act of crossing her perfect swarthy legs pricked their interests and sent their hearts into arrest.
Her name was Maryanne Mort, or rather that was the name that she had chosen in place of Maria Constellazione. There was no shame for her in her proper surname, but she refused to drag it through the filth of this place each night. She had liked the finality of her chosen proper noun, the sharp death it had on the tongue, unlike the musical ring of her actual moniker. For every time that she took her place on the mahogany throne and placed her perfect fingers to the keys of the worn out Steinway, she didn’t feel like the cluster of stars that was her namesake, but like a spent luminary that had burned brightly for a short while and had then died out into the cold nothingness of space.
That none of them were listening was actually a fallacy, for there at the table just feet from the stage sat a solitary being paying rapt attention. He was wrapped in a black trench coat, and his matching fedora was pulled discreetly down over his features. His aura bristled with repulsion for any interruption, so none bothered him. He had taken that place each night for the last two weeks. He always showed up early, ordered three shots of Crown Royal neat, and moved not a muscle through both sets that the band played. Patsy had been tempted to throw him out since he didn’t like the look of him, or rather couldn’t get a look at him, but the stranger always paid for three shots, tipped him five bucks, and left the booze there on the table behind him. As the sole beneficiary of the squandered potable after last call he wasn’t about to upset a good thing. After silently raising a glass to his benefactor, Patsy was left to shrug and wonder as he swilled down the free alcohol.
The band was in usual form tonight, the faceless rhythm section hammering out perfection in one four time. They might as well have been wind up monkey toys since no one thought of them as human, just pieces of the whole. Maryanne was the show as she played soulfully soft on her borrowed axes, her sultry voice dripping with honey and swathed in sorrow. If you looked real close you could see her child just underneath, and if you listened equally hard it would come out and take your hand, leading you to a place of yesterday when times were simpler. She sang of love lost and regretted, of tougher times and thinner dimes. Her sad psalm wrapped around all within hearing distance, bringing even the most upbeat down into her world of despair.
The last vibrato rolled out of the piano, and the band’s set ended. Immediately the stranger exited stage left. Maryanne and the boys agreed on the success of the performance as they did each night. The boys went to the bar and ordered up their usual post concert libations. The lady refrained from drink as usual. She retrieved her coat from behind the bar, pecked her uncle Patsy lightly on the cheek and made for the exit. Every eye followed her voluptuous form, save her kin who was busy staring down the fawning lot with his visual daggers. “Who could blame them for looking?” Patsy always thought. One must look at a thing of beauty from time to time to accept the mundane. Besides perfection in human form was a gift of God, and no one among them would commit such blasphemy as not to appreciate it.
The boys pounded back their beers and left with her, acting as her personal guard in the dangerous streets beyond. The quartet teased and chortled as they moved noisily down the street toward Maria’s third floor apartment. The drummer walked her to the elevator, kissed her hand, doffed his cap like Errol Flynn and rejoined his band mates outside. The ancient elevator complained of its hard life to her as it levitated her to her abode. The bell dinged three times and slid open to let her out. An ancient wooden door with 302 unceremoniously etched upon it greeted her as she stepped out of the conveyance.
Her keys were in hand and a sharp turn of the lock and a push and she was inside. It was intensely dark within, and out of habit she went for the light switch next to the door. The sudden change in light’s intensity widened her pupils; within two seconds fear would do the same to the chocolate lusciousness of her eyes. Sitting in her favorite oversized chair just a few steps from her was the same being that had occupied the center seat at Patsy’s just a half hour before. Maria’s insides froze, her arms crossing absently across her ample breasts; a subconscious gesture of protection from the violation that she thought was in store for her. Her soul sank to hell as she spied the contrivance that the interloper was fondling in his hands. The glint of the blued steel .357 took her breath from her.
She struggled with herself as she stood naked before her visitor. She could not outrun a bullet, and even though the gun was not yet pointed at her, it would take him but a split second to shoot her dead. The most unnerving part of the whole situation was that the man just continued to sit quietly, the brim of his hat pulled low over his face and the dark collar of his raincoat flipped up around his neck. What looked to be calfskin gloves coated his hands as he continued to caress the weapon lovingly.
“What do you want here?” Maria stammered at him. She received no immediate reply.
“If you want money I don’t have any.  I don’t get paid for another week. As far as anything worth stealing, you be the judge of that and just take it and go,” she squeaked at the mystery man. He again made no sound.
“What do you want here?” she asked again, this time with more gusto.
Her fighting spirit was beginning to return to her now.  In seconds she felt she would be ready for one action or another, either fight or flight. She took a step forward, her decision to fight firmly decided upon. As fast as a hired gun fighter, the gloved hand swung the pistol into firing position; it aimed steadily at her bosom. She decided quickly that inactivity would be the best choice at the present. With his free hand her assailant beckoned her to sit opposite him and she complied.
His free hand went to the breast pocket of his coat and removed a large white envelope which he gently tossed to her. The parcel made a soft thud as it landed at her feet. Her name, her real name, Maria Constellazione was written in neat script across the front. She fumbled to open the envelope, her hands trembling wildly, her mind racing at what the contents could possibly be. Her mouth dropped wide open when she finally gained access to what was inside. Wrapped in a cocoon of paper was a stack of $100 bills. They were collected together by a paper band, actually several paper bands that read $10,000 each. She counted out five of them in all.
“What is this money for?” asked Maria, not really thinking she would receive any kind of answer.
“That is payment for your services,” the man answered in a surprisingly pleasant voice, a voice that tickled Maria’s memory for some reason.
“What kind of services?” Maria thought, but was afraid to ask.
“Please look at the paper that the money was wrapped in,” the man said.
Maria hadn’t even realized that there was anything written on the covering of the currency since her eye had naturally been drawn to it. She picked the paper off the floor where she had abandoned it and read it. Immediately she knew what it was. It was sheet music two pages long. After reading the title her brain began to recall the words to a very old song that she hadn’t played in a long time. Her mind reached back to a time when her stubby little fingers plinked away on her mother’s ancient Baldwin. She had been playing scales for days it seems when her mother had placed the very same sheet music in front of her for her to recite. “One More for the Road” by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer had been typed neatly across the top. Her mother had seen the Fred Astaire performance of it in the movie “The Sky’s the Limit” about a thousand times and she was crazy about the song. Like her mother, she fell in love with the ditty as well. She had played it over and over until it was perfected. Once the piano part had been mastered she had added the soulful lyrics. Every time she played and sang it her mother had cried.
“I want you to play that song for me. I will pay you all of the money that was in the envelope if you do so,” the man informed her.
Maria wasn’t convinced of the bargain. She couldn’t believe that the only thing that this man had wanted from her was a single song that most people had never heard of. She also wasn’t sure if her nerves would calm down enough for her to perform it either. She was still terribly keyed up from the whole experience. But there was another more important reason that she didn’t want to play that particular piece: it had been their song and since her mother had passed so long ago she had vowed never to play it again. It seemed such a strange coincidence that this burglar had chosen the very song that used to belong to mother and daughter.
“I’m not sure that I can,” Maria said, not wanting to be too forceful in her refusal.
“Either you play the song for me now and take the money, or I am going to kill you,” the man said sharply.
He raised the gun to her again and pulled back the hammer. The cold steel click brought back her fear in spades. Was it worth death to keep her promise to not perform the song? It was obvious from the man’s mannerisms that he meant business. Anyway he was offering such a princely sum for her services. It would be enough to take her out of this place, even enough for her to audition for other bands, maybe in the theatre. She had given up such dreams for two hundred bucks a week, but standing before her was her salvation and all that she had to do was play a few verses to get it.
“I will play it for you.  I will need to warm up a bit first, though,” Maria said, trying to buy some time to steady herself.
She edged over to the same Baldwin that she had used for years and had inherited from her mother. She had kept it in good shape and had even learned to tune it herself. She ran through a couple of scales to warm up, as was always her practice before she could start playing in earnest. The Baldwin sang beautifully as her fingers caressed its keys. She tried to vocalize the same notes in the scale, but her voice cracked and she had to start over. On her second try the butterflies were gone and old habits flooded back her and her voice and fingers acted on their own.
“It’s quarter to three, there’s no one in the place ‘cept you and me,” Maria began, her angelic voice dipping into the devil’s range in places. The ebb and flow of the cadence filled the room as her heart opened and the transcendent tune spilled out of her. She was no longer Maryanne Mort, second rate lounge singer; she was little Maria, pride and joy of her momma and she was singing this canticle to her. Tears rolled heavily down her cheeks as each verse eased by, her soul overflowing with loss. Pangs ripped her badly and she wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to finish, but her vocals were unfailing down to the very end.
“But this torch that I found its, gotta be drowned or it soon might explode, so make it one for my baby and one more for the road,” Maria finished, the piano and her voice trailing off into nothing together. She sank down to the floor and buried her head in the carpet over come with grief. She could feel the man standing over her now and stroking her hair gently, but she didn’t care. His touch was light and reassuring and it comforted her enough that she soon stopped crying. She got herself together and the man handed her a tissue. She still couldn’t see his face through the aftermath of her tears. She regained her seat at the piano and he crossed the room to the window.
“Thank you Maria, I have needed that for a long time,” he said.
“I am sorry that this had to happen, but it has come to the end, and this is the way that it had to be done,” the man said, as he jerked the cannon up at her.
Maria held her breath waiting for the explosion. The muzzle of the gun kept swinging right past her until it as nestled under his chin. His eyes remained shrouded as the tendons in his trigger finger tightened and the weapon discharged with a deafening boom. Brains and skull whipped on to the ceiling a split second after the detonation. The man fell to the carpet, his head bouncing slightly as he hit the floor. He laid there face down with the back of the fedora blown to pieces where the bullet had exited his cranium.
Horrified, Maria leaped to his side, rolling him over to check for a pulse. She recoiled with a terrific scream as the hat tumbled from the corpse’s head.  She had known the boy that was now the man that lay dead before her. She and Johnny Viola had been sweethearts so long ago, long before time and unforeseen occurrences took him away. Ten year old Johnny lay there in a pool of his own blood in that shabby apartment in that dirty city. Whatever had driven him to this act of redemption and despair no one would ever know.