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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Character Based
- Published: 12/16/2025
The Cocktail Pianist
Born 1945, M, from Boston/MA, United States.jpeg)
Friday evening after working late I ate dinner at the Mill House Restaurant. In the lounge a cocktail pianist was running through a selection of light dinner music and jazz classics. On the third number, after singing the lyrics following the jazz chorus, the piano player ended the tune drifting seamlessly through a series of block chords that wandered aimlessly outside the original key and yet resolved nicely back where it originally began. “Amazing!” I mused. “Can’t imagine how she negotiated that intricate run.”
I paid the bill, leaving a generous tip, and entered the bar, where the pianist was moving briskly through the bridge of Up Jumper Spring, a jazz waltz. Hunched over the keyboard was a petite, plain-featured woman in her late thirties. The watery hazel eyes and meager, unprepossessing mouth only added to a diffident impression. Not that looks mattered; none of the patrons seemed to be paying much attention. In the far corner of the lounge a portly man with a Vandyke beard was blathering away nonstop, holding court with a captive audience of fellow drinkers. He never came up for air, ignoring the live music, which he probably viewed as an inconvenience, an annoying distraction.
“Excuse me,” I noted when the tune ended, “In the last set you finished the Erroll Garner tune with a rather unusual series of block chords.”
A faintly evanescent smile drifted across the woman's face. “You must be a musician,” she deflected the conversation elsewhere.
“And how would you know that?”
“Only another musician would recognize the composer.”
“I’m a trumpeter and teach music at Brandenburg High School,” I explained, “but your playing is lightyears ahead of my skills.
After a brief pause the woman fingered a group of block chords with her left hand.”
“Yes, that’s what I was wondering about!"
“It’s a deceptive cadence.” She repeated the harmonic passage several times in rapid succession. “In the key of F major you simply move up a minor third, then a series of fourths that leave you hovering on the F-sharp.” She ran through the cadence once again.”
“Which resolves a half tone down to the original key,” I noted.
The cocktail pianist nodded. “Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I conveniently borrowed the lick from the jazz saxophonist, John Coltrane.”
I shook my head in disbelief. The woman made it sound so easy. In all fairness most of my training had been in the classical realm. In college I played in wind symphonies and several baroque brass ensembles, but sophisticated jazz theory was beyond my abilities. The cocktail pianist glanced up at the clock. "I've got to get back to work.”
“Then I won’t hold you.” I rose and dropped a ten dollar bill in the tip jar. “Coming out to dinner tonight, I was in an atrocious mood. A letter arrived from California that pretty much ruined my day, but talking with you has set things right again.”
The woman studied me curiously, trying to decipher my intent. “Who do you know in California?”
“No one. Never even been there.” I waved a hand dismissively in the air. “But you should get back to the ivories, and I have no intention of boring you with the details of my lackluster life. I’m going home and work out that progression on the horn.”
The cocktail pianist stared thoughtfully into the rear of the room where the garrulous egomaniac with the Vandyke beard was still holding court. “A trumpet is a single-line instrument, so you can't sustain block chords in your left hand like a pianist or guitar player. Best to blow through the individual notes using pentatonic scales. That way you can hear the harmonic flow, the direction the music is taking.” “One, flat-three, four, four’” she repeated. The progression works equally well in all keys."
* * * * *
When I reached home the sun had already gone down. I took a quick shower and brewed a cup of coffee. In the den I eased the trumpet from the case and began my warmup drills - a series of melodic flow studies, arpeggios, long tones and intervallic lip slurs. “How utterly clever!” I mused. “The notion of shifting about the standard chords, while reinventing the music.” Root, flatted-third, then up a fourth and still yet another fourth.” “What was it she said before turning back to the keyboard? Pianists and guitar players had a distinct advantage with advanced harmonics; better to use pentatonics when playing a single line instrument.”
Raising the horn to my lips, I started the symmetrical pattern but never survived a meager handful of notes. Grabbing a piece of music paper I scribbled a series of scales - a musical roadmap of sorts - then tried negotiating the harmonic terrain again. “Yes, there it was! Once the angular line shifted to the A-flat, the harmonic tension was palpable and continued unabated until reaching the slightly dissonant F-sharp and quickly resolving back to the original key. Over the next half hour, I wrote out several additional progressions in neighboring keys and worked out the fingerings on the horn before packing the instrument away and scurrying off to bed.
“Who do you know from California?” the cocktail pianist inquired. The letter was from a law firm in San Francisco, notifying me that my wife, who I had neither seen or heard from since she deserted me over a year ago, was filing for divorce. Denise, the fashion plate with the svelte body and gorgeous looks, was a real estate broker with superb business skills but no conscience or moral creed. She lived for one express purpose: to make money. More and more and more money! One day following breakfast shortly after we were married I noticed Denise reading through the obituaries in the local Brandenburg Gazette. “Did someone die?” I asked.
Denise’s impeccable features lit up with a brazen smile. “Sometimes I attend funerals or wakes and hand out business my cards to the bereaved… suggest that they might want to consider selling their house and downsizing to a condominium or rental property.”
A queasy sensation welled up in my stomach. “Is that proper?”
Denise didn’t seem the least bit ruffled by my pointed question. “The strategy pays off,” she countered smugly. “I already sold three houses this year alone from condolence visits and raked in an additional hefty commission after selling a property and relocating the lonely widow to a plush, one-bedroom condo.”
A year and a half into the marriage I came home one day to find my wife’s side of the bedroom closet cleaned out. There was no note by way of explanation. She had packed her belongings and fled to destinations unknown. I called my sister-in-law later that evening. “Denise is gone,” I said in a choked voice.”
“She told me she was leaving you,” she replied in a dry monotone, then the phone fell silent.”
“Do you know where my wife went?”
“Yes, but she told me not to share that information.”
* * * * *
Over the next few months I stopped by the Mill House Restaurant lounge to listen to the cocktail pianist and discuss her unique approach. From an early age the woman amassed a broad collection of substitute chords and voicings that she sprinkled throughout her tunes. “I see a dominant seventh and visualize half-tone whole-tone diminished sevenths, tritones, alt sevenths or even whole-tone scales.”
“But the whole tone scale contains both flatted and raised fifths,” I protested, “which don’t properly belong in a dominant scale.”
“Think of them simply as tensions,” the pianist argued, “upward extensions of the same chord.”
I was having a difficult time wrapping my brain around her unfamiliar logic. “An octave above they become a sharp eleven and flatted thirteenth.”
She cracked a gossamer thin, wispy smile. “Now you’re thinking like a true jazz aficionado!" After a while she tapped me gently on the wrist and whispered, “That’s a sad one at the bar.”
I glanced up at a middle-age woman in a low-cut black sheath dress sipping a martini while bantering with a rotund, balding man. Always arriving alone, she visited the lounge on a regular basis, sat near the draft beer dispenser and left with different men as the establishment neared closing. “There’s nothing smutty or vulgar about her,” the pianist noted. “The lounge lizard simply confuses sex with intimacy.”
“Been there done that,” I admitted not without a hint of mortification.
“Since I was a young girl, I wanted to play piano like Bill Evans, but he was such a one-of-a-kind, musical genius.” “I studied Even’s rhythmic style, voicings… the cascading triplet figures but to no avail.” “In the end I came away with little more than an affinity for his delicate touch.” The pianist played a single chord with the fingers of her left hand, an infinite richness and sonority pervading the sound. “ “That much… nothing else.”
“A major accomplishment in its own right,” I noted.
The lights blinked off and on several times indicating that the lounge would be closing shortly. “The first time you stopped by,” the cocktail pianist said, shifting gears, “you mentioned receiving a letter from someone you never met, who lived in a state you hadn’t visited. ” The comment caught me totally off guard, but I told her in fairly graphic detail about my wife’s abrupt departure. “Did you love the woman?” the piano player inquired.
“Yes, I loved her but in hindsight chose poorly and for all the wrong reasons.” “I’m closer to you than I ever was with her.” I rose to leave. “I’ll see you again next week.”
“I won’t be here.” Once more the pianist’s unremarkable features melted in a feathery-soft, thistledown smile. “They’re refurbishing the bar, adding new light fixtures and a brass railing around the mahogany bar. I’ll be returning a week from Saturday.”
“I’ll see you then.”
I paid the bill, leaving a generous tip, and entered the bar, where the pianist was moving briskly through the bridge of Up Jumper Spring, a jazz waltz. Hunched over the keyboard was a petite, plain-featured woman in her late thirties. The watery hazel eyes and meager, unprepossessing mouth only added to a diffident impression. Not that looks mattered; none of the patrons seemed to be paying much attention. In the far corner of the lounge a portly man with a Vandyke beard was blathering away nonstop, holding court with a captive audience of fellow drinkers. He never came up for air, ignoring the live music, which he probably viewed as an inconvenience, an annoying distraction.
“Excuse me,” I noted when the tune ended, “In the last set you finished the Erroll Garner tune with a rather unusual series of block chords.”
A faintly evanescent smile drifted across the woman's face. “You must be a musician,” she deflected the conversation elsewhere.
“And how would you know that?”
“Only another musician would recognize the composer.”
“I’m a trumpeter and teach music at Brandenburg High School,” I explained, “but your playing is lightyears ahead of my skills.
After a brief pause the woman fingered a group of block chords with her left hand.”
“Yes, that’s what I was wondering about!"
“It’s a deceptive cadence.” She repeated the harmonic passage several times in rapid succession. “In the key of F major you simply move up a minor third, then a series of fourths that leave you hovering on the F-sharp.” She ran through the cadence once again.”
“Which resolves a half tone down to the original key,” I noted.
The cocktail pianist nodded. “Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I conveniently borrowed the lick from the jazz saxophonist, John Coltrane.”
I shook my head in disbelief. The woman made it sound so easy. In all fairness most of my training had been in the classical realm. In college I played in wind symphonies and several baroque brass ensembles, but sophisticated jazz theory was beyond my abilities. The cocktail pianist glanced up at the clock. "I've got to get back to work.”
“Then I won’t hold you.” I rose and dropped a ten dollar bill in the tip jar. “Coming out to dinner tonight, I was in an atrocious mood. A letter arrived from California that pretty much ruined my day, but talking with you has set things right again.”
The woman studied me curiously, trying to decipher my intent. “Who do you know in California?”
“No one. Never even been there.” I waved a hand dismissively in the air. “But you should get back to the ivories, and I have no intention of boring you with the details of my lackluster life. I’m going home and work out that progression on the horn.”
The cocktail pianist stared thoughtfully into the rear of the room where the garrulous egomaniac with the Vandyke beard was still holding court. “A trumpet is a single-line instrument, so you can't sustain block chords in your left hand like a pianist or guitar player. Best to blow through the individual notes using pentatonic scales. That way you can hear the harmonic flow, the direction the music is taking.” “One, flat-three, four, four’” she repeated. The progression works equally well in all keys."
* * * * *
When I reached home the sun had already gone down. I took a quick shower and brewed a cup of coffee. In the den I eased the trumpet from the case and began my warmup drills - a series of melodic flow studies, arpeggios, long tones and intervallic lip slurs. “How utterly clever!” I mused. “The notion of shifting about the standard chords, while reinventing the music.” Root, flatted-third, then up a fourth and still yet another fourth.” “What was it she said before turning back to the keyboard? Pianists and guitar players had a distinct advantage with advanced harmonics; better to use pentatonics when playing a single line instrument.”
Raising the horn to my lips, I started the symmetrical pattern but never survived a meager handful of notes. Grabbing a piece of music paper I scribbled a series of scales - a musical roadmap of sorts - then tried negotiating the harmonic terrain again. “Yes, there it was! Once the angular line shifted to the A-flat, the harmonic tension was palpable and continued unabated until reaching the slightly dissonant F-sharp and quickly resolving back to the original key. Over the next half hour, I wrote out several additional progressions in neighboring keys and worked out the fingerings on the horn before packing the instrument away and scurrying off to bed.
“Who do you know from California?” the cocktail pianist inquired. The letter was from a law firm in San Francisco, notifying me that my wife, who I had neither seen or heard from since she deserted me over a year ago, was filing for divorce. Denise, the fashion plate with the svelte body and gorgeous looks, was a real estate broker with superb business skills but no conscience or moral creed. She lived for one express purpose: to make money. More and more and more money! One day following breakfast shortly after we were married I noticed Denise reading through the obituaries in the local Brandenburg Gazette. “Did someone die?” I asked.
Denise’s impeccable features lit up with a brazen smile. “Sometimes I attend funerals or wakes and hand out business my cards to the bereaved… suggest that they might want to consider selling their house and downsizing to a condominium or rental property.”
A queasy sensation welled up in my stomach. “Is that proper?”
Denise didn’t seem the least bit ruffled by my pointed question. “The strategy pays off,” she countered smugly. “I already sold three houses this year alone from condolence visits and raked in an additional hefty commission after selling a property and relocating the lonely widow to a plush, one-bedroom condo.”
A year and a half into the marriage I came home one day to find my wife’s side of the bedroom closet cleaned out. There was no note by way of explanation. She had packed her belongings and fled to destinations unknown. I called my sister-in-law later that evening. “Denise is gone,” I said in a choked voice.”
“She told me she was leaving you,” she replied in a dry monotone, then the phone fell silent.”
“Do you know where my wife went?”
“Yes, but she told me not to share that information.”
* * * * *
Over the next few months I stopped by the Mill House Restaurant lounge to listen to the cocktail pianist and discuss her unique approach. From an early age the woman amassed a broad collection of substitute chords and voicings that she sprinkled throughout her tunes. “I see a dominant seventh and visualize half-tone whole-tone diminished sevenths, tritones, alt sevenths or even whole-tone scales.”
“But the whole tone scale contains both flatted and raised fifths,” I protested, “which don’t properly belong in a dominant scale.”
“Think of them simply as tensions,” the pianist argued, “upward extensions of the same chord.”
I was having a difficult time wrapping my brain around her unfamiliar logic. “An octave above they become a sharp eleven and flatted thirteenth.”
She cracked a gossamer thin, wispy smile. “Now you’re thinking like a true jazz aficionado!" After a while she tapped me gently on the wrist and whispered, “That’s a sad one at the bar.”
I glanced up at a middle-age woman in a low-cut black sheath dress sipping a martini while bantering with a rotund, balding man. Always arriving alone, she visited the lounge on a regular basis, sat near the draft beer dispenser and left with different men as the establishment neared closing. “There’s nothing smutty or vulgar about her,” the pianist noted. “The lounge lizard simply confuses sex with intimacy.”
“Been there done that,” I admitted not without a hint of mortification.
“Since I was a young girl, I wanted to play piano like Bill Evans, but he was such a one-of-a-kind, musical genius.” “I studied Even’s rhythmic style, voicings… the cascading triplet figures but to no avail.” “In the end I came away with little more than an affinity for his delicate touch.” The pianist played a single chord with the fingers of her left hand, an infinite richness and sonority pervading the sound. “ “That much… nothing else.”
“A major accomplishment in its own right,” I noted.
The lights blinked off and on several times indicating that the lounge would be closing shortly. “The first time you stopped by,” the cocktail pianist said, shifting gears, “you mentioned receiving a letter from someone you never met, who lived in a state you hadn’t visited. ” The comment caught me totally off guard, but I told her in fairly graphic detail about my wife’s abrupt departure. “Did you love the woman?” the piano player inquired.
“Yes, I loved her but in hindsight chose poorly and for all the wrong reasons.” “I’m closer to you than I ever was with her.” I rose to leave. “I’ll see you again next week.”
“I won’t be here.” Once more the pianist’s unremarkable features melted in a feathery-soft, thistledown smile. “They’re refurbishing the bar, adding new light fixtures and a brass railing around the mahogany bar. I’ll be returning a week from Saturday.”
“I’ll see you then.”
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