Read Online A Little Night Music by Kathy Hitchens - Free Book Online Page A

hands hidden in a white-toweled surrender as if to say you’re on your own, dude. He obviously knew the guy, which meant the cat was even closer to Elli than Jon previously thought.
    “Well, for a man not from here,” the guy continued. “S’pose you gotta have a little dark in your veins for the real deal.”
    Jon smelled whiskey on the jackoff’s breath. Too bad his carefully composed exterior crumbled the moment he opened his mouth.
    “S’pose so.” Jon downed more water and watched Mongo lift his ample frame off his stool and crash a few keys with his elbow.
    “Which is why you need to stay away from Elli. The real deal, man . Nothing for you here.”
    The dude’s rank body cologne and peacocking hand gestures picked at Jon’s last nerve. The guy had kicked it back from high-society to brother. Jon wondered if Elli knew all men had this—two sides. Jon clenched his glass. Dezi needed one more reason to kick him out—one. This asshole wasn’t going to be it.
    “Hear me, Wonder Bread?”
    A few choice comebacks came to mind, none of them the words of a gentleman. Could Sir Real Deal really be what Elli’s father wanted for her? Elli’s insatiable desire to please her dead father left no doubt in Jon’s mind that those cards were dealt long ago. If this pencil-neck made Elli happy, he was good with it. He wasn’t supposed to care anyway. But it didn’t mean he couldn’t dish back a little.
    Jon stood, pleasantly surprised he had a good four inches on the prick. He thrust his face forwards, silk shirt jumped back as if the floor had got too hot. Jon looked him up and down dismissively. “Your lucky I value my hands more than your face.”
    Break over, Jon wove his way back to his trumpet and lifted it like a King who had won a battle but lost his treasure in the process.
     
     
    The rest of the night passed without a vision. Jon had come to expect them—even mourned when they didn’t come. The flashes were gritty and important, something his other life never delivered. The Seems Like Old Times ensemble had just tiptoed into the night’s final song, I’m A Fool To Want You , a sensual number meant to couple-off the remaining lonely souls. A few drifted on to the tiny dance floor and drunk clung to each other. Jon closed his eyes and thought of Elli.
    Another vision snaked into his awareness. The tingle up his arms was hardly noticeable anymore. He eased into it. Muscle memory in his fingers allowed him to drift. At the far end of a modest room, a glass case came into view, ornate wooden claw feet, soft yellow focus light, old photos and sheet music mounted around a trumpet— his trumpet.
    A sound - weeping.
    The release was primal, intimate. Jon focused on the instrument. He wanted the happiness the visions delivered. Never had there been pain.
    “Mama, please.”
    “Never again child. No one plays it. Ever .”
    The woman’s final word rocked the glass.
    A brass skeleton key tumbled the cabinet’s locks. Slow, authoritative shoe soles clumped away. Cries pierced the room. Jon’s chest heaved too, the beginnings of a sob he extinguished with a hard swallow and an unwavering stare at the trumpet. If he were to look around and see the origin of the tears he would lose himself, like Artie Page.
    He pulled out of it, more from self-preservation than anything. Mongo nodded in quiet approval, as if the raw exposure of grief was what he was trying to get Jon to channel all along. They ended the song together. A quiet smattering of applause punctuated the night. Jon couldn’t see how many people remained. His vision was awash in liquid stage bulbs. Gabe extinguished the table candles and clicked off the house lamps. The only light came from a utility bulb over the bar for cleaning and the neon lotus still buzzing in the window.
    The quiet was a welcome sigh against Jon’s eardrum. Someone in the kitchen turned on an old jazz station. As Time Goes By whispered around the subtle clacking of instruments