Peril

ABE

He knew only that her name was Samantha, that she lived in a Brooklyn hotel, and that from the moment she’d begun to sing he’d felt the old, forgotten stirring, felt again what a song can be, along with something more, something extra, a small, barely detectable charge.

He looked over to where Jake stood at the bar, slicing a lime. “That singer who came in last night, how old you think she is?” he asked.

“Thirties,” Jake said.

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” In his mind he saw her standing by the piano, heard her voice again. “She sings older though.”

“You wish she was older,” Susanne piped in with a laugh. “You wish she was older but still looked like a chick.”

“Chick?” Abe asked. “I thought that was sexist, that word.”

“No, just sexy,” Susanne returned. “At least for old guys.”

“Upbeat would be good,” Jake said absently. “Lucille was always singing those downers.”

“Lucille was a torch singer,” Abe reminded him.

Jake dropped the slices into a white dish. “Used to sing ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’ remember? Like it was bullshit. Like nobody could do that for nobody else.” He shook his head. “Fucking depressing, the way she sung it.” The knife suddenly stopped. “So, you’re going to hire this broad?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, sure you are,” Susanne said with a laugh. “I could see she was getting to you.”

Getting to you? Abe asked himself. Was that the small charge he’d felt as the woman sang?

A sudden agitation seized him, the sense of something broken loose and rolling about inside him.

Getting to you.

He walked out of the bar and stood on the street and tried to forget that a woman named Samantha had come into the place the night before, sung a song, and somehow shaken something loose.

Getting to you.

If that were true, he had to stop it, and so, at that instant, he decided not to call her, just let her find a gig somewhere else and leave his life alone. That would be the safest thing, he thought, just to leave things where they were, Jake slicing limes and Susanne straightening tables and Jorge in the back, stacking cases of beer, and himself standing alone on the street or sitting at the piano, his fingers resting without movement on the ever-yellowing keys.