“You a musician?”<\/p>\n
I looked up. I\u2019d been drumming on the table, in time with the churning washing machines, as I read yesterday\u2019s paper. Across from me I saw an older man, slim and rugged in a denim shirt and faded jeans.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, I guess. Among other things.”<\/p>\n
“Look at these hands.” The man spoke quickly in a gruff urban accent. His eyes were large and bright, his features chiseled. I saw that his hands were huge. “An octave and a half. I play piano. Live right up the hill. What about you?”<\/p>\n
“I write mostly, play whatever. Sing. I guess guitar\u2019s my main thing.”<\/p>\n
“Play by ear, huh? We\u2019re the lucky ones. First thing I teach is to listen. That\u2019s what Duchamp taught me. Marcel? My name\u2019s Gershwin. George.”<\/p>\n
I shook his hand, took him in. Big nose, big ears. Looked early-to-mid fifties.<\/p>\n
“No way. Gershwin\u2019s dead.”<\/p>\n
George smiled. “Fact is, he came to me in a dream. Ten years ago. Said I should take up the name. A vocation. Before that I was CIA. Strictly underground. You wouldn\u2019t believe it, but to this day I pass them on the street all the time, here in the city. KGB, British Intelligence, hand signals, winks, just like gradeschool.”<\/p>\n
I felt stumped. My dryerload had stopped and I began to fold.<\/p>\n
“How old do you think I am?”<\/p>\n
“Fifty,” I said.<\/p>\n
“Sixty-eight. My wife\u2019s twenty-four. Met her at a march in LA. You should meet her some time. Sings those old labor songs.”<\/p>\n
Gershwin heard his own dryer stop and went to empty it into a patched canvas bag. The other denizens of the laundromat, Latino women and their daughters, looked up shyly from the benches along the window. George passed me on his way to the door. “Here\u2019s my card. Call me.” And he was gone.<\/p>\n
I stood puzzling over a neat, elegantly embossed business card bearing the name John Christy, Piano: Concerts & Lessons.<\/p>\n
From <\/em>Loft of Dreams: True Stories\u00a0by Max Carmichael<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “You a musician?” I looked up. I\u2019d been drumming on the table, in time with the churning washing machines, as I read yesterday\u2019s paper. Across from me I saw an older man, slim and rugged in a denim shirt and faded jeans. “Yeah, I guess. Among other things.” “Look at these hands.” The man spoke […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-characters","category-stories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":528,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions\/528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}