Greetings from Asbury Park by Daniel H. Turtel

Author:Daniel H. Turtel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2022-02-10T18:57:30+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Greetings from Asbury Park

It was late afternoon, almost evening, but in the dark room of the Saint bar on Main Street, the daylight outside made no difference. Gabrielle sat down at a little round table. She and the band had finished going through their set while the manager of the Saint had worked on the stage lights, but the show he’d been working on seemed to have nothing to do with the music and it had kept them at an arm’s length from their own performance, had kept the rehearsal from being really satisfying. There was a feeling in the space now of something half-boiled; Liam put away his cymbals, the pianist sat at his bench, his fingers going through motions as if practicing on a phantom instrument but failing to come down on the keys. His eyes watched as the manager went around turning on lights, and then both he and Liam watched as the manager came and tried to speak with Gabrielle. He was always trying to speak with Gabrielle and always while he spoke with her they watched him.

“I always say that this place is like the opposite of Vegas,” he said, nodding toward the wall of glass cubes that did deceivingly little to let in the daylight. He was holding a coil of extension cord wrapped around his forearm and with his other hand pulled out the seat opposite of Gabrielle. He did not sit down but she looked up at him. “In Vegas they’ve got ceilings that look like sky, so you never know that it isn’t daytime. There they keep out the night. Here it’s just like the opposite of that.”

Gabrielle looked at the glass bricks but did not look up at the manager and still he did not sit down.

“Did I ever tell you that I was in Vegas? I worked on a show there. Everybody came there. I saw Keith Richards one time, up close. I saw Celine Dion, too.”

Gabrielle finally looked up at him, but only with her eyes—nothing else of her moved.

“But I always say that this place is like the opposite of Vegas,” he said again. He lifted his hand from the back of the chair.

“You mean that it’s dark,” said Liam, coming over with his cymbals in his hand. “You mean that it’s a dark room. That’s profound.”

Liam sat in the chair that the manager had pulled out. There was bad tension in the room and it wasn’t really the fault of the clumsy lights or of the manager who had produced them, but he was the easiest target now for their bitterness and he absorbed it all. He went out through the back and still the space remained constricted, wound tight like a steel string inside the chest of a piano.

As soon as the door closed, the pianist began to play. It was easier to play than to talk, and they all felt the necessity of keeping out the silence. Gabrielle watched what was visible of the pianist: his feet on the pedals beneath the piano and his shoulders and face above it.

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