Saints+Sinners

by Saints

  “Not as pathetic as listening to it with your great-aunts like I did.”

  “Wow, that is pathetic,” she said. “But I can top that. I used to sing along.” She took another sip of beer. “There was one song I loved to sing above all others. Guess what it was. Hint: you mentioned it earlier.”

  “My family anthem, as sung by Cher,” I said. “My grandfather would love you, Josie. But he’d love you anyway. You’re female. He’s way into females.”

  “Is he now.”

  “Funny,” I said. “Back in the day, at the old Industrial Zone—the real Industrial Zone—you had to say a passphrase to get in. The first line of a Cher song. Guess which one.” I sighed. “I first whispered that passphrase before half these people were born.”

  “Tell me about it.” She finished her beer. “I’m going to the ladies’ room,” she said. “Wanna come with?”

  The new Industrial Zone had a ladies’ room. “I’ll pass,” I said. Texas state law says no girls like me in the ladies’ room. There is no knife sharper than the gimlet eye of a bachelorette at a bathroom mirror and nobody dials 911 faster than a gentrifier.

  Josie got my drift. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just…you’re always a woman to me.” She was just being gracious. “I’ll be back, honey. Don’t leave home without me.”

  “I won’t leave without you. But it’s not home anymore.”

  She squeezed my hand. “I’m with you, honey,” she said. “I’m with you.”

  And then she wasn’t with me. I was alone, drifting in a sea of straight people, fair game for bachelorettes with eyes like infrared scopes. I tried to distract myself from myself by focusing on the movements of guys in shirts that said Staff around the piano in the corner—but my head was starting to swim. I’d barely touched my locally-sourced cornbread at dinner. It tasted like it’d been sourced from a box of Corn-Kits. I was on the precipice of inebriation, on the cusp of stupid. I do stupid things when I drink.

  * * *

  Marx said that history repeats itself: first as tragedy, next as farce. Karl Marx would have loved “Allentown.”

  Josie hadn’t been back at our two-top ten seconds before a voice came over the PA. “Denton, we have a problem,” it said. “[Tonight’s featured performer] is running late. We’ll keep y’all updated.” Groans arose from the bachelorette section and the room got uneasy. Five minutes later the voice came back over the PA. “Update,” it said. “[Tonight’s musical guest] is stuck in traffic.” Bachelorettes started booing and I noticed a migration of men (both straight and gay) towards the opposite side of the room. The ciswomen started chanting We Want Music, We Want Music and from the corner of my eye I saw guys with shirts that said Staff securing glassware. The voice on the PA returned. It sounded afraid. “Question,” it said. “Anyone here know how to play the piano?”

  “She does! She does! She does!” It was Josie, screaming and waving her arms like a GI flagging down an incoming chopper. “She plays the piano! She plays the piano! She plays the piano!” She started jumping up and down and she’s six feet tall so this is saying something. “Over here! Over here! Over here!” The woman is a forty-year-old Episcopal priest, for fuck’s sake.

  My heart dropped into my Converse. “Don’t do this to me,” I said.

  “Come on, honey! This will be fun.”

  The crowd parted and a guy with a beard approached us. Gayness unclear. “Who’s the musician?” he asked. He was the voice on the PA.

  “She is! She is! She is!”

  “Inside voice, Josie,” I said. “He’s standing right here.” I turned to the guy. “I believe my companion’s mistaken. I’m not a musician.”

  “She worked in a piano bar.”

  “Like I said: I am not a musician.” He eyed me. “What bar?”

  “Ike’s Ivory Bar across the street from the Austin Convention Center.” The woman has a memory like a steel trap.

  He stroked his beard and nodded his head in approval. “Been there,” he said. “Good times.” He leaned in. “So, I just need you to help me keep things at a low boil until the talent arrives,” he said. “I can’t afford another bachelorette riot. Last one cost me five grand in glassware.” He was the new Francine. “Can you sing?” he asked me.

  Thank God: my opening. Or rather: my closing. “Can’t sing worth shit,” I said.

  “But I can.” Josie put on a pleading face. “Please, Mister Manager. Please let me sing.” He eyed her like she’d tackle him if he said no. She was big enough, for certain.

  “Fine,” he said. “You can sing.”

  “But I’m not going to play,” I said.

  “There’s a hundred bucks in it for you.”

  “I’ll play.”

  “Thank God,” said the owner. “Follow me, girls.” The crowd parted again as he led us to the piano. He took the mike. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “While we wait for [whoever it was] to arrive, please welcome…” He turned to Josie and asked, “What’s your name?”

  She leaned toward the microphone. “Cherubina.”

  “Please welcome Cherubina.” He put the mike on a stand. “Don’t fuck this up,” he muttered. “If there’s a riot, you girls don’t get paid.”

  I surveyed the crowd: gay and straight guys in the front, bachelorettes in the back—and crickets. Absolute crickets. I took my seat, lifted the key cover—and blanked. I forgot why the black keys were black and I couldn’t find A. I wasn’t going to kill. I was going to be killed.

  But Josie.

  She gripped the mike stand, adjusted it…then started to sway, her skirt softly swishing, her armies assembling, her mojo rising. She took the mike off the stand. “You came here tonight to see someone else,” she said. “And I came here tonight to make you forget they ever existed.” She turned to me. “GT&T,” she whispered. That song starts on an A. I found A. She turned back to the audience. “This is a song,” she said, “about a gal in trouble.”

  This is the same woman whose property it is to knit baby cardigans: She didn’t sing that song. She died to it. She died a forty-year-old priest from Connecticut in a sensible skirt and Keds and was born again as a barefoot sixteen-year-old Southern girl in a low-cut dress with a night job and a bun in the oven. She drove that song like a freight train, all forward motion, barreling through every bar, rising to every high note, sinking to every low. She didn’t sing that song like she’d sung it before. She sang that song like she’d lived it. Like she was living it.

  I might have been playing. I can’t remember. All I remember: is falling in love.

  I wasn’t the only one. The front of the room erupted. “Thank you,” Josie said. She turned to me. “What next?” she whispered.

  “You choose. You’re the star.”

  “What can you play?”

  Something arose in me: the desire to demonstrate mastery. “Baby,” I said, “I can play anything.”

  She grinned. “That’s good,” she said. “Because honey…I can sing everything.”

  We were right. The crowd wasn’t just into Cher. They were into Chaka Khan, too (Josie’s pitch-perfect rendition of “I’m Every Woman” just slayed) and when she sang Adele’s “Hello,” there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. (Except for the bachelorettes’ eyes.) There was a dry throat, though. Josie asked for something to drink and no fewer than ten men ran to the bar where they almost came to blows competing over who would get to carry her water but then they made up and they all carried it, presenting it to her on bended knee like she was the queen of The Industrial Zone. Which she was. Then we played Queen. “Don’t Stop Me Now” brought the house down and Burton would’ve loved it. He likes Queen. He’d love Cherubina. He’s way into females.

  The Queen was gracious. “Want to pick the next song?” she asked me.

  “You choose. You’re the star.”

  “No, you pick.”

  I pondered this. The song list at Ike’s Ivory Bar was heavy on the Elton John. My second-most-requested song (after t
he dreaded PM) was “Rocket Man”—but I’m more into Sir Elton’s slow, sad songs like “Harmony” and we’d already done slow and sad. “Bennie and the Jets” would have been a good way to start the show but we’d already started the show and guys with shirts that said Staff were starting to roll equipment into the room. It was time to end the show. I wanted Cherubina to go out on a high note—literally.

  “Josie, you said you can sing everything.”

  “I did.”

  “But can you sing ‘Greatest Love of All’?”

  She took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I can.”

  Yes, she could—and yes, she did—and yes, by the second verse the entire room was singing with her. (Minus the bachelorettes.) Even I was singing and I can’t sing worth shit. We sang that song like it was the national anthem. Our national anthem. Our family anthem. We were family. A holy spirit descended from where holy spirits descend if you’re into that stuff and a love filled the room, a love that felt like it would explode through the walls of The Industrial Zone and expand to encompass the universe. I hadn’t felt such universal love since Burton and I went to the victory parade after the Dallas Cowboys won Super Bowl XXVII.

  That parade ended in a riot.

  The Queen was gracious. “I sounded so much better once you guys started singing with me,” she told the room. She took the mike off the stand and stepped into the audience. “Sorry to disappoint you,” she said, “but I don’t do this for a living. I’m a priest. That song says it’s important to love yourself. And it is. Each and every one of us is worthy of love. But this is the greatest love of all: the love of God. We do achieve it. Each and every one of us. Friends, you are loved. God loves you. Just the way you are.”

  The queen bee, the bride-to-be, spoke up or shouted: “Shut up and sing, lady!”

  “Funny. That’s what my congregation says.” It was funny. The front of the room agreed. Josie looked at her watch. “Ten o’clock,” she said. “Past my bedtime. If you like what you heard tonight—either what I said or what I sang—you’re in luck. I appear every Sunday at All Saints’ Episcopal Church at 1519 West Broadway in Caledonia. You’ll have to wake up early—show starts at nine-thirty—but there’s no cover and the wine is free.” She had that room so wrapped around her finger, they laughed at a joke about the Eucharist.

  The queen bee hadn’t drunk the Kool-Aid. She’d probably been drinking jello shots instead. “If you’re not gonna sing,” she yelled, “then shut up and let’s hear from your boyfriend.”

  The Queen was not amused. “That’s not nice,” Josie said. “Apologize. Now.”

  She’s so sweet. She holds my hand while I cry and she defends me in public. But I was sick of being defended. Lauren told me I had to defend myself. She said I had it in me. “Thanks, Little Angel,” I whispered, “but I got this.” I leaned into the mike on the piano. “Bride-to-be, do you have a request?” I asked.

  She yelled, “Ladies…what do we wanna hear?”

  They rose, as one, and screamed at the top of their lungs: “‘PIANO MAN!’”

  Then I did something stupid. I do stupid things when I drink.

  The song list at Ike’s was heavy on the Elton John. The tenth-most-requested song was “The Bitch is Back.” It was popular with women celebrating divorces. It seemed like an appropriate substitute for “Piano Man” tonight but the guitar riff at the start of “The Bitch is Back” is a bitch to play on the piano. It requires loose fingers. And…I don’t know, something Josie said in her sermonette stuck with me: the title of a song, another Billy Joel song, a song about a love unconditional, a love unceasing, a love that required no changing. And Josie had that room eating out of the palm of her hand tonight. She connected. “Allentown” was the last straw for Ike. It wasn’t the first. He said I lacked a connection with the audience—but I had nothing in common with tech bros and conventioneers. I didn’t want to connect. Excuse me. I wanted to connect exactly once: with the contingent of smoking-hot females in glasses who wandered into Ike’s from a librarians’ convention back in 1998. We connected. They asked nicely if I’d play them a song. The name of that song was “Piano Man.” I played them that song and I played it and played it. I’ll do anything a female in glasses tells me to do.

  Josie wears glasses. “Be nice, sweetie,” she whispered. She called me sweetie? She’d always called me honey.

  “Being nice.” I leaned into the mike. “One ‘Piano Man’ coming right up.”

  “Wait.” It was the bride-to-be. “We got another request.”

  “Thank God.” Right?

  “Ladies,” she yelled, “what do we want to see?” The bachelorettes had already risen. “HIS DICK!”

  There was something in how Josie had handled her heckler: with aboveness, with humor, with grace. The grace of God, if you’re into that stuff. She did not do unto others as was done unto her. She went high when others went low.

  I ain’t Josie.

  Lauren always said I had it in me. “Bless your heart,” I said. “If I showed you my dick, you’d cancel the wedding.” Even Josie thought this was funny. She tried to not show it. She failed. “I’ll play you a song, you ex-wife-to-be,” I said. “But it ain’t gonna be ‘Piano Man.’ See, I had this gig in a piano bar back in college. Played covers. Requests. I played ‘Piano Man’ at least ten times a night. I’m almost as sick of that song as I am of Disney princesses like you and your brat pack invading our territory and blocking the bar.”

  “Amens” and hoots of approval. I’d connected with the audience. Most of it, at least.

  “I’ll play you a song,” I said. “No. I’ll play us a song. This song is for us. For those of us who remember when you people wouldn’t get caught dead in places like this.” More “amens.” “This song,” I said, “is for those of us who remember when places like this were the only places we could be ourselves without getting killed.” Even more “amens.” “This song,” I said, “is for those of us who listened to people like you and hid our true selves from ourselves and the world. This song,” I said, “is for those of us who’ve had enough of being told who to fuck, who to marry, and where to go to the bathroom.” I stretched my fingers. That song requires loose fingers. “I once was lost,” I said. “But when I walked into The Industrial Zone twenty-one years ago…I was found. But then I lost myself again. But now I’m found again. And bitch, I ain’t ever going back.” I cracked my knuckles. “Speaking of bitches and back: the name of this song is ‘The Bitch Is Back.’ Please rise for our national anthem.”

  But the room had already risen.

  It wasn’t the size of my hands. It’s what I did with them.

  I played them that riff and I played it and played it. The room didn’t wait for the second verse to start singing along. The whole room. The bachelorettes were singing the loudest. Then some of them jumped on top of the bar. They started kicking glassware. That’s got to hurt in strappy sandals. Guys in shirts that said Staff started trying to pull girls off the bar. The girls didn’t like that. They started kicking faces. That’s got to hurt in strappy sandals. It’s not a bachelorette party till the cops arrive. The cops arrived. It wasn’t a bachelorette party. It was a bachelorette riot. We didn’t get paid. I was banned from The Industrial Zone for life. Cherubina was asked to come back next week.

  * * *

  The Queen was gracious. “Of course I’d never go back without you,” she told me as we walked back to my peach-colored Beetle. “I sounded so much better when you were playing with me.” She took my hand. “We had something good going tonight,” she said. “Something great. My nipples were hard. Honestly, it felt like sex. I feel like I need a cigarette.”

  “Funny.”

  “I’m not joking. Be so kind as to spot a girl a cigarette, would you?”

  Again: Episcopal priest. “Josie, you can’t smoke,” I said. “You have a reputation to uphold. Someone might see you. You’d be inciting others to sin. It’d be scandal.” Also, I had only two More mentho
ls left.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “It would be scandal.”

  I stopped walking. “You know what else would be scandal?”

  She bit her lip and smiled. “Tell me.”

  I smiled back. “I’ll show you instead.” I tiptoed, took her face in my hands, and we opened each other’s lips like cottage doors on a snowy evening, our tongues like little girls with new puppies at Christmas. It wasn’t protest. It was passion. It was pointless. I have to go back to Austin tomorrow…but we often do things that are pointless…and I do stupid things when I drink. Things like journaling in a moving car. Things like letting Josie drive. And things like falling in love.

  Washington’s Retreat

  Stephen Greco

  Joey brought the tofu just as Anthony was unloading the cart at the checkout counter.

  “Oh, that’s the firm, Joey, see?” said Anthony, looking at the package his little brother was proffering.

  “Isn’t that the kind we usually get?” said Joey.

  “We get extra-firm because I thought you liked it. But we can get this, if you want.”

  “No, I want extra-firm. I’ll get it.” Package in hand, Joey headed back toward the refrigerated case where they kept the tofu.

  The girl at the checkout counter, tattooed and pierced with a mess of blond and blue hair, smiled wanly as she continued to tally the items Anthony was pulling out of the cart: Cans of chick peas and black beans, bags of jasmine rice and faro penne, bunches of carrots, celery, kale, and leeks, a jar of half-sour pickles. Fresh Fantastic didn’t carry meat—despite the store’s promise to “expand your horizons, enhance your palette, and explore the limitless potentials of food, so that you, too, can find your edible love”—so they’d have to pick up the steaks they’d been talking about over at Fleisher’s in Park Slope, maybe the next day.