The city was a mess. It looked glum and depressing and every single drop of rain that hit the windshield of the car scratched against the surface of my hangover. "Tall, blonde, I don't give a damn!" this was Ken, two hours ago. "She has to know the fucking songs". Christ, this city could do five o'clock hangovers like no other place in the world, and mine was compounded by the fact that I was driving through the ankle-deep mud of East Village in search of a girl.
Time was flirting with me in a cruel, cold manner. Each time I looked at my watch, it showed eight o'clock. Which of course it did not. Because if it did, I would not be driving that car looking for a girl. I would be out on the streets and without a job.
The pavements of East Village were buzzing, despite the rain. Flutes, keyboards, guitars, all muffled by the dreary, dreadful percussion of rain. I had to find a violin. I had to find a good one, too, in the sea of scarves and rain and noise and general ineptitude. I had to find a Scarlet Rivera who could do the "Hurricane" of her life. I had to find a girl The Town Hall could not resist, but all I could currently see was a mess of seamless silhouettes of daydreamers unfit for an Irish pub in Bronx.
I got the car window lowered to the point where the wind began to ruffle the sweat of my hair. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe this could cure my hangover.
Six-fifteen, and Ken wanted to know who I had picked. "What do you mean, no girl? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you know what Malcolm will do to you? And me?" I switched off and wondered how in God’s name it had come to this. Of all the whims that Malcolm had thrown upon us (sea bass forty minutes before a Dallas show, water served in carafes, etc.), this was the cruelest of all. Who did he think he was? Bob Dylan? And it was all my fault. Last night, as I was about to play him a couple of my own songs, he waved me to stop. I knew the gesture, I had to listen. "We need someone like you. An amateur. Maybe a girl from the street, East Village or something. I want a violin in the Town Hall tomorrow".
Perhaps I should have let it lie. After all, it was a very late party and six hours later, after the blackest coffee of New York, Malcolm was supposed to feel like that millionaire in the Chaplin movie. But I was still a few months in the job, I was naive. I mentioned the conversation to Ken, and Ken said we had to do it. In fact, he was foolish enough to mention the whole thing to Malcolm who either remembered or just said he did. So that now, several hours later, East Village was flying past me at the speed of my watch.
The girl was in 14th Street, standing on one leg like some legendary English flautist. She was not just playing the violin, she was teasing it with her chin, her arms and her gently quivering lips. There was a white scarf. There was a blue dress. There was confidence. And there was a small crowd of people in front of her, seemingly transfixed, tucked in beneath their umbrellas.
"Excuse me!" I screamed, jumping out of the car, much to the annoyance of everyone in that part of the street. "Excuse me, but this is exceptional!"
She must have thought I was another madman hollering abuse, but after seeing the suit and the car she stopped playing. In fact, everything stopped - including the rain. Or else, everyone moved on with their shopping and their homecoming and their dog-walking and their dating. But the girl stopped. The girl and some faceless guy who was doing the barely audible fingerpicking next to her. The guy was invisible, like someone lost in a daydream.
"Let me explain", I was breathing heavily. Oh she was pretty, she would fit right in. "I work for Mal Clifford'.
"Mal Clifford?" she asked. "The Mal Clifford?'
"Listen, can you please come with me? Mal Clifford needs you tonight. Honestly, we have no time. My car is over there".
'Mal Clifford! Tom, you hear that?" she turned to the guy, who chuckled nervously to his bruised and beaten acoustic guitar.
I searched myself, trying to find something, anything, that would prove I worked for Mal Clifford. However, all that I had was an expensive Dreyfuss & Co watch that Malcolm had given me back in Stockholm, during one of those drunken hotel parties. Oddly, he never asked it back, possibly an indictment on that super-sized monstrosity with a million tiny faces that showed you the latitude and measured your pulse. Currently, the watch showed seven-thirty.
"Look, I have his posters in the car. Come, please".
The girl looked bemused, which I thought was a good sign.
"Mal is playing Town Hall tonight, and he would like you to be his violinist. You can play his stuff, right?"
"Are you joking?" She looked at her drowsy boyfriend. "Can Tom come along?"
'''Fraid not".
"Let me think".
"You've got about five seconds".
Minutes later, Connie was in my car, wondering if the frayed blue dress she was wearing would look good in a legendary New York venue. Her disbelief was gone now that she could see I really did work for Mal Clifford and the poster I gave her was all about The Town Hall tonight. Suddenly, she looked vulnerable and insecure, which I found moving following the confidence of her playing on 14th Street that kept reverberating in my mind. Still, there is not a problem in the world you could not solve with a gesture, as Malcolm liked to say, and I put my hand on her shoulder.
Connie smiled, and told me about how she had been stuck on 14th Street for years and this was the lucky break that would make it all happen. I mentioned Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden and Connie mentioned Tom and how he was the reason she was stuck in East Village in the middle of nowhere. "He can write", she said, "but that doesn’t make you a songwriter". At which point I got a phone call from Ken who told me that Malcolm was getting 'concerned' about the whole arrangement and threatened to cancel the show if the girl was not there in ten minutes.
"Why do you do this job?" she asked, noticing my frustration.
"Oh I hate it. But this is about my career. I've got songs, you see, hundreds of them. Mal Clifford is a start".
"Oh. Good luck with that. Do you think it was silly of me to agree so quickly?"
"It was the best decision you've ever made", I said, and she smiled again.
As the concert was about to begin, I was standing at the back of the stage, unable to sit still and hoping she would not crumble under pressure like so many great musicians did on the same stage with the great Mal Clifford. Ken told me that Malcolm had praised my work and I wondered if that was actually true. "Of course, we will have to see how this goes". I was nervous, and felt the grip of a different hangover fingering my mouth and my throat. After all, they barely had any time to rehearse and the typically grumpy Malcolm spent most of the time tinkering with the setlist and complaining about the blue dress.
Once on stage, however, Connie was full of confidence. She smirked at me as the band was about to break into the first song, and I knew how much of my future, her future, our future, depended on this performance, and closed my eyes the moment the music started. I kept them shut until the first song was over and the audience clapped. And then I opened my eyes. I saw New York City in the rain. I saw a small crowd of people, cheering. And I saw Connie playing next to me, the way she always did. In East Village, on 14th Street. It was a glum, depressing day, and it felt like all we ever needed was a stroke of luck coming our way.
