Pete Hamill - Forever

“Hell, Bobby, I can’t play with you guys, no rehearsal, no—”

“Come on. It’s just you, me, and a bass player. Some kid from Juilliard. We’ll play the old stuff. Nothin’ fancy.”

He grabs Cormac’s arm, leaning on him for support.

The place is called the Riff Club and fills an old dining room off the lobby of a small hotel. The operators of the club are experimenting with afternoon concerts on weekends, Simmons says, and about forty people are waiting when they arrive. At the back of the room there’s a bar and a dozen people with cigarettes sending a blue nicotine haze to the ceiling. Cormac smiles. The place is like five hundred other joints where he’s done time since the nights and days of Prohibition. The crowd is mixed. About half white, half black, half young, half old: a 200 percent saloon crowd. Cormac sees a few graying faces from vanished nights at the Vanguard and the Five Spot. Everybody is drinking.

They go into a small room to the side of the bar. The bass player looks at his watch as they enter. He’s dressed in a Brooks Brothers blazer, gray slacks, red tie; Cormac thinks he could easily pass for a banker.

“Cormac, this is Justin Gilbert, great bass player, outta Juilliard, just like Miles,” Simmons says. “Justin, this is Cormac O’Connor, our pianner player for today.”

“Where’s Artie?” the young bass player says.

“Called in wrecked,” Simmons says.

“Fuck,” Justin says, his annoyed face annoying Cormac. He’s twenty-two years old, Cormac thinks, and he acts like he’s Milt Hinton.

“Cormac played with me before,” Simmons says. “Before you were born, Justin. So relax, man.” He grins. “Jazz is the art of improvisation. Don’t they teach you that at Juilliard?”

The bass player sighs. “So what are we gonna play?”

“Duke.”

That’s the rehearsal. They walk out on stage, where Justin’s bass is already leaning against a stool and a boxy grand waits for Cormac. For a moment, Cormac is nervous. He doesn’t care about failing in front of the audience; he just doesn’t want to fail Bobby Simmons. He flexes his fingers. He gazes out at the smoky room and sits down. Then, very slowly, in a blues tempo, he plays an introduction to “Take the ‘A’ Train.” Baaah. Ba, bop, bim, baa bah … Justin waits; Simmons watches and listens. And then the release. Justin’s bass is deep and powerful, as steady as a heartbeat, and here comes Bobby Simmons, attacking the old melody, driving it hard, the notes flying over the piano and the bass, playing the Ellington tune as if nobody has ever played it before, while honoring it as an old New York anthem. The crowd erupts. They yell and stomp feet on the old hotel floor and cheer through the final ride.

Without a break, Cormac moves into “Sophisticated Lady,” slowing the mood into a smoky midnight sound, leaving space for Julian to bow his bass for a long solo, and then drives hard into “C Jam Blues.” Cormac feels released, sweat pouring from him, the past vanished, the morning gone from his brain, his fingers filled with joy.

Then, from the side, a tall black man, even older than Bobby Simmons, comes on stage, his fingers running over a Selmer tenor sax. A few voices shout in recognition from the crowd, and Cormac knows him too: Horse Campbell, an old Texas honker who played with Basie and Jay McShann, old whiskey prince, old lover of all the wrong women. Someone shouts from the dark, “Horse, let’s ride!”

“I heerd you was back,” he shouts to Bobby Simmons, “so I figured I’d come play!”

Simmons grins, Julian looks uneasy, and then Horse starts talking with his horn, challenging Simmons, waiting for the alto man’s reply. Like two men younger than Julian. And the crowd roars as the exchange goes back and forth, call and response, attack and counterattack, Cormac’s left hand synchronizing with Julian’s pounding bass. There’s a huge roar and people standing and even Julian smiles. Then, as if to prove he is no mere Texas honker, Horse starts a hurting, grieving version of “Mood Indigo,” and Bobby Simmons follows, as if saying, That ain’t all, my man, that ain’t all, I been hurtin’ too, a long gah-damned time. The hushed crowd doesn’t clink a glass. They stand again at the end.

Then Cormac plays the first bars of “Perdido” and Horse grins at him, and Simmons grins at Horse, and they go at each other, making fun of old Illinois Jacquet riffs and Flip Phillips riffs, taking the basic riff from twelve different angles, the exhilaration building, the crowd standing, the two old men now younger than anyone in the room.

And then the set is over. Bobby Simmons holds his horn out flat, one hand on the neck, the other on the bell, like a knight presenting a sword to a prince, and he bows to Horse Campbell, who returns the gesture, and then the two men hug. Simmons goes to the microphone.

“Folks, I want to introduce the band,” he says. “On pianner, Cormac O’Connor. Nice to meet you, Cormac. Cormac, this is Horse Campbell; Horse, this is Justin Gilbert. I’m Bobby Simmons…. Oh man, it’s good to be home in New Yawk.”

At the break between sets, Cormac hurries to the telephone and calls Delfina.

“You might want to come down here,” he says. “I’m playing piano in a band.”

“Are you drinking or something?”

“No, I mean it. We play again in twenty minutes.”

He tells her about meeting Bobby Simmons, gives her the address of the Riff Club, hangs up, turns away. He lights a cigarette. Justin Gilbert comes over to him.

“Listen, I’m sorry for acting like an asshole before,” he says. “You got some chops.”

“Thanks,” Cormac says. “I understand. It’s hard, a new guy, doesn’t know the book. I felt bad….”

“How come I never heard of you?”

“Nobody has,” Cormac says.

“Where’d you go to school?”

“Saloons.”

“Same as them,” Justin says, nodding at Simmons and Horse, who are up on stools at the bar, talking to fans, flirting with women.

“There’s worse places to learn things in,” Cormac says.

“I guess.”

They start the second set with “A Night in Tunisia,” and now Simmons and Horse exchange quotes from Bird and Diz, and the two of them step aside to give Justin a solo, which includes an homage to Charlie Mingus, the young man thanking his elders. Horse is soloing on “Gone with the Wind” when Delfina comes in.

Cormac sees her easing around the side of the large room. She’s wearing a black sweater and black slacks, and her skin glows. A few men and women turn to look at her, but only Cormac can see the spirals. He smiles as she sits at a table beside a pole, and her smile looks dazzling in return.

And then Bobby Simmons nods at Cormac to take his solo. He plunges into it, hugging the melody but playing changes on it too, and folding in a quote from “Manhattan” and then from “Oye Como Va” with his eyes on Delfina. She grins. A few people in the audience smile. And then he’s done, and the whole band now moves in a languid, bluesy manner to the end. There is one final tune: “Flying Home,” roaring and honking and blazing, and then the set is over. The room roars for more. The men bow and then hug. Even Justin Gilbert looks happy.

Cormac hurries to Delfina. She rises from her chair and throws her arms around him.

“ Oye, como va yourself,” she says.

They go to Duane Street and make love at dusk and then order Chinese food, and eat, and talk, and make love again. She asks him to play for her. He presents her with a nocturne, as if it were a gift, and then, without singing, he plays the melody of the Fight Song, filling it with small variations on the tune, inserting the years before minstrel shows and ragtime and the twentieth century. She listens intently, curled like a cat in a chair. Finally he gives her his own version of “Oye Como Va,” mixing Tito Puente with Scott Joplin. She gets out of the chair and presses her breasts against his back.