"Oh! We over shot my block! How'd we do that?"
I would have directed her, if I'd known what our anticipated path was. I wasn't even sure of the specifics of our destination. I was walking her home after an entertaining evening at the open mic. She lived across town, and I had offered to protect her on the way home. She'd laughed at that, but still let me walk with her.
You can do a lot of talking a cross-town walk. Not that we did.
"Great show," I eventually said into the space.
"Yeah," she agreed.
That was it. I'd planned all my lines, all the things I wanted to talk about, to share, but that was hours and miles ago. It had all evaporated or been lost. Luckily, she came to the rescue.
"That was a really cool song, 'The Jester'," she said.
"What?" I was lost somewhere else, in the street, watching couples pass by this late night.
"'The Jester.' Lach's song, in the middle."
"Right. Oh, absolutely," I nodded. I'd heard it before, and liked it from the first. It was one of his regular songs.
"You know," I said, "He says he wrote that song after he discovered Brenda Kahn played trumpet."
"Hm?"
"The line, 'She played the trumpet, and the walls turned into fish'?"
"Pretty psychedelic, huh?"
"Yeah, but based in truth. Well, not the fish part -- I hope not -- but the trumpet."
"Really?"
"Yeah, definitely. He said that one of the first times I saw him play."
"Oh."
The conversation was far from sparkling. We were only blocks away from her place, and I hadn't wowed her with my intellect and charm. Unless she could hide her astonishment well. Very well.
"It's kind of cool," I went on, "It's one of my favorite songs, because of that fact. It's so rife with potential: I can entirely imagine what the scene was."
"Really?" she said, her voice and mind somewhere else entirely.
"Yeah," I forded ahead, "I figure after some open mic -- like tonight -- they walked back to her downtown loft or something, and, after a bunch of meaningless conversation, she pulls out this trumpet, and they talk about it."
We'd approached the west side, and I knew this was where she lived. The flavor of the neighborhood was entirely different over here. Not so young, not so couply. There were less people around us.
"So, eventually, she kicks him out, and Lach, thinking how cool it is that this fellow musician is working on a new instrument, goes off, with this idea in his head. He goes into some diner somewhere, orders a coffee or three, and jots down all these schizophrenic images in the song."
"Why a diner?"
"Where else do you write in the middle of the night after an Antihoot?"
Diner's are cool. They're like the most romantic places in the world to go alone and think your deep thoughts and embarrassing meanderings. Hopper knew it; Lach probably knew it too.
"He spends most of the early morning there, just him and bums, writing the song on napkins as he soaks up coffee, tea, soda, whatever. He spends the whole night in the diner, writing, composing, coming up with the song.
"Lach makes a point to invite her to the next Antihoot, cuz he has this song all about her that he wants to share, and when the show begins, she's not there. He doesn't play it right off, but then, later in the evening, she comes in, with one of the other antifolk regulars, say Paleface or someone."
"I dunno about Paleface," she said.
"Me either," I replied, but full-steamed ahead with my imagination, "He gets up on stage, takes someone else's spot, and plays 'The Jester'." I smiled, and sang, in my very bad voice, the chorus:
"And I've always loved the girl
Who lives in her private world;
And I become the Jester, just to get her
To smile at me..."
She laughed at my questionable ability to carry a tune, "Not bad."
"Not just bad," I agreed, "bad and beyond. So he plays the song, and when he gets a chance, he comes up to her and Paleface, but they're in the back corner somewhere, and he didn't notice before that they were sorta... involved in their conversation."
"Meaning?"
"Lach talks to her, and Brenda says, 'Cool song. I didn't hear too much of it. Isn't Paleface cute?'"
"Oh, man," she said, shaking her head in sympathetic pain for these imaginary character's imaginary events, "You think he really fell for her?"
"Who wouldn't? Lach, who's got nothing against Paleface, agrees with her, says he's happy for them, says nothing about the song, and leaves them to make out in the back of the club."
We just had one block to go to reach her loft.
"He slumps away, never successfully letting her know they way he feels, kind of like the character in the song. And he writes another song that night, that no one ever knows about."
"Any of this true?" she asked with a smile, her face looking direct into mine.
"Could be. I think Brenda Kahn had a loft, and I know the whole scene was pretty incestuous in those days."
"Hm," she responded, "Lot of dating within the artistic community, eh?"
"I guess," I shrugged.
We fell silent again.
"You've really got an active imagination," she said.
"Thanks. I think. So," I said, as we reached her door, "What're you doing tomor-row? You want to catch some music, maybe have dinner?"
"Ah, that'd be fun," She fumbled for her keys, "But, I've got plans."
Oh. "Hanging out with --"
"Yeah... we haven't seen each other all weekend and..."
"I gotcha," I said, "Well, maybe some other time."
"Oh, sure," she said. "Hey, thanks for the walk home, it was really nice of you."
"My pleasure," I said.
We looked at each other for a minute, saying nothing, waiting for some kind of official closure. Her slight lips had said no to me, but her incredible eyes had said nothing that I could read whatsoever. Finally, she turned to open her door. "Bye."
"Bye," I repeated, and watched her get safely into her building. It was late, but I had time.
When the elevator took her upstairs, I began to trudge away.
I needed to find a diner somewhere.
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