Escape Route by Elan Barnehama

Author:Elan Barnehama
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Published: 2021-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

After school, I couldn’t wait to call Samm and invite her to Tony’s. She and I had been hanging out a bunch. Just the two of us. Really, anytime I could get to Manhattan, I did. On Saturdays, I’d meet Samm and go with her to Washington Square where she played her cello. But she didn’t play for the donations, though she did collect quite a bit of loose change. She said playing like that in public helped her stay focused on the music and not what was going on all around her.

I would meet her at the West 4th Street subway and we’d walk to the park where she picked her spot to set up and play. The first time, I kind of felt like a bodyguard, keeping an eye on her cello case with the money. But I wasn’t. Samm had been doing this on her own before she met me. So I was only there to watch and listen. It was indeed something to see. With her cello comfortably between her legs, she rested its scroll against her cheek as if inviting the instrument to be part of her.

Mostly, Samm played the classics. She taught me names like Dvorak and Schubert and Bach. But every so often she broke out a Dylan or a Led Zeppelin cover and that brought the crowd and the coins. I don’t know if it was because they recognized a true musician in a park with too many posers, or if they liked hearing a classical instrument being used to produce some rock and roll. Like the way everyone loves a convert or a prodigal son.

When Samm was finished playing, Freddie, a homeless guy she knew by name, came over.

She had met Freddie the first time she played at the park. He had come up to her right after she’d finished playing Bach’s Suite No. 1 and started talking to her. At first, she didn’t listen because she was thinking about her next piece, and, frankly, because of the way he looked and smelled. He wandered away, but later that night, while she was packing up, Freddie came over again and offered some feedback about the cello and the Suite, and Samm understood quickly that he knew more than she did about both.

The next time she played at the park, Samm left the Suite for last and watched as Freddie, eyes closed, seemed to accompany her by moving an imaginary bow across an imaginary cello while his fingers moved precisely up and down imaginary strings. Freddie came over and talked cello with her as she packed up, and Samm offered him the money she had collected in her case.

Freddie took it, but then he made Samm take some of it back. “You don’t live around here,” he insisted. “You’ll need it to get back home,” he added.

From then on, Samm divided the cello money with Freddie as if they were in it together.

Sam told me that Suite No. 1 connected Freddie to his old life.

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