One Night at Zelda's

“One more there…” Ruth points, “….and that should do it!” She passes me the pen. I sign Samantha Hilliard with a feeling of triumph: after months of haggling, No. 53 Persimmon Street is mine.

           “I’ll email you a PDF of the signed copies for your records,” Ruth continues, “Do you want the keys now or later?”

           “Now, please,” I say, holding out my hand.

           “I thought so,” she smiles and hands me the keys. “If you ever have any questions about the property, don’t hesitate to ask.”

           “Thanks, Ruth,” I say, shaking her hand. “It’s been a pleasure.” She replies in kind and moves towards the door.

           “You’re not coming?” she asks when I don’t do the same.

           “Not yet,” I say. “I’m going to stay a little while. This place is going to need some serious work…. and the sooner I start the sooner I’m done!” Serious, indeed: the work required was the only reason I could it. Derelict old buildings were surprisingly expensive.

“Alright. Good luck, Samantha.” She hesitates. “Be careful after dark.”

           I almost laugh. Ruth is a motherly sort of person – I’d sneezed at our first meeting and she’d immediately offered me Kleenex and an antihistamine – but I was a grown woman and I’d lived in the city for years. And while gentrification hadn’t fully overtaken the warehouse district, it was hardly what it had been a decade ago. Ruth looks genuinely concerned, though, so I smile and assure her that I’ll take all the necessary precautions. 

           Mollified, she waves goodbye and heads to her car. The door has barely closed behind her before I let out a squeal of excitement. Finally! No. 53 is finally mine. I finally have a place of my own. A project of my own. I’d worked as an interior decorator for the better part of my adult life, and the strain of holding my tongue as yet another client asked for all-neutral everything had finally gotten to me. So I’d taken a sabbatical from the design firm – partnership had some perks – and elected to spend the next year pursuing my dream of owning my own nightclub. Something cool and retro, of course… all that was old was new again, and an old-style boîte would be a good addition to the otherwise trendy nightlife of the city. The Persimmon Street listing was a little rough around the edges, but who cared? It had good bones, under the dirt and chipped paint and occasional rodent nest. According to Ruth, it had even been a bar at one point so my remodeling wouldn’t have to start completely from scratch.

What a destination it would be! “Welcome to Sam’s,” I’d say to patrons as they entered, toasting them with a sidecar, “where the sixties are still swinging.”

           Happily, I begin to dream.

°

It happens three nights later. It’s 2:30 AM and I should’ve gone home hours ago, but for once in my life I feel inspired to clean, and after two days of filling trash bags the end is in sight. I’m even humming to myself – Chicago, I think – a sure sign of high spirits.

“Allll thaaaaat jaaaaazzzzzzz…” I warble, twirling my broom like a dance partner. They’re the only words I know, so I switch to vocalizations. “Do do dooo do do do…” Such an atmospheric song… I can practically hear the tinkle of ice in glasses, the shuffle of Oxfords on a polished floor, the sultry vocalizations of a lounge singer over an out-of-tune upright….

But then I do hear it: the soft, syncopated progression of an old-timey piano. I freeze, my sweeping forgotten.

I listen intently, but the music is gone. Silence, but for the creak of the building as it settles against the wind. Silence, but for the call of a distant siren, shrieking its way to an emergency. I shake myself. I must be imagining things. I haven’t slept much the past few days; sleep deprivation must be getting to me. That or paint stripper fumes.

Cautiously, I return to my sweeping, alert for any strange sound or motion. But soon the rhythm of the bristles against the floor – a gorgeous genuine hardwood, though the finish cracked and cloudy – work their soothing magic and I calm. It was just your imagination….

I am halfway across the room when I hear it again. Piano music, faint and… wistful? The same little melody, over and over and over… like a record skipping. I wonder, briefly, if my neighbors are playing some sort of a joke. I discard this explanation almost immediately: they’re two of the sweetest but most unimaginative people I’ve ever met. They wouldn’t dream of pranking someone, simply because it wouldn’t occur to them. Ruth wouldn’t do such a thing, either, and none of my friends know that I’ve bought the place. Actually, I realize with sudden dread, no one knows I’m here.

A rush of wind rasps a branch against a window. The screech is deafening, and I jump. The music, too, pauses, as if startled, then resumes. A new pattern of notes, now, nothing I’ve heard before but unaccountably familiar. The sound comes from a pile of junk at the other end of the room, heaped haphazardly on a raised bit of flooring. I’d barely glanced at it: just boxes and crates and cast-off remnants of the building’s previous lives. Or so I’d thought.

Swallowing nervously, I grip my broom tightly and start to inch across the floor. I realize, for the first time, just how quiet it is here at night: the boards creak loudly with every step. At least I’d hear someone coming up behind me… The broom feels suddenly flimsy in my hands. I set it aside and snatch up my design binder instead. Between the glossy photos and fabric swatches and paint chips it weighs eight pounds, easy. Getting hit with that wouldn’t feel good.

I reach the platform. The music is louder, now, trickling mournfully from the bottom of the pile. Gingerly, I push boxes and broken bits of furniture aside to reveal a hulking…something…shrouded in dirty canvas. I pause to listen: much to my dismay, the music emanates from beneath it. Wondering why I don’t have the good sense to walk away and go home, I set down my binder and take hold of the canvas with both hands.

I fling it off in a billow of dust. My laugh of relief dissolves into a fit of coughing. It’s a piano. An old and poorly-maintained piano, to be sure – the keys are cobwebbed and cracked with age – but just a piano. The platform must’ve been a stage, once upon a time…

         The music stops suddenly. Curiously, I inspect the piano for some sort of playback device or remote. Nothing. It’s not a player piano, either. A pity, I’d always wanted to see one in person. Just an ordinary piano. Perplexed, I turn and…

“You’re dressed funny,” she says.

I find my voice hiding somewhere deep in my esophagus. “Well, so are you,” I manage, though her fringed dress is far more appropriate for a nightclub than my paint-splattered overalls. At least it would be if I couldn’t see through it. Couldn’t see through her.

She takes her cigarette holder from her mouth and gestures at the piano. “Do you play?”

“No,” I say, carefully fixing my eyes on a point over her shoulder. “I never learned.”

“That’s too bad. I did for a while but I was never very good,” she draws on her cigarette. “And now I don’t remember much. Do you dance, then?”

“Dance?”

“You know,” She Charlestons hopefully. “Dance.”

“Er… no,” I repeat. “Never learned.”

“Oh,” she says, a little sadly. I manage to look at her directly, then, and am surprised by her youth, visible even beneath the bluntly-bobbed hair, sooty eyes, and blood-dark lips. And the whole… ghost thing.

“Then what are you doing here?” she asks, twirling so her dress flares around her. “If you don’t dance and you don’t play?”

“I’m cleaning.” I say.

“You do look a bit like a cleaner.”

     “I’m not,” I say, indignation easing my nerves. “Well, not really. I’m cleaning, but I’m not a cleaner. I own this place.”

           “You do?” She squeals with excitement. “Oh, there’ll be people again! Finally! It’s been so lonely.” She pirouettes past me to sit on top the piano. “You really ought to get the piano tuned. It needs it. I don’t even like to practice on it anymore, it sounds so bad.”

           “I was planning to have a jukebox, actually,” I say cautiously.

           “A jukebox?” She asks, rolling the word across her tongue. “What’s that?”

           “It’s a… It’s a machine that plays music.”

           “A machine? How boring. What about a band?”

           “A band’s too expensive. I’ve sunk so much…” Her attention has shifted to her fingernails, which she’s buffing against the bodice of her dress. I abandon my explanation and watch her for a few moments. My night can’t get any stranger, so at length I decide to risk it. “Forgive me if this is insensitive,” I say eventually, “but how long have you been….er…dead?”

           She shrugs, unfazed. “Since 1923.”

           “That’s… a long time,” I say, nonplussed. “Have you always been here?”

           “Yes,” she crosses and uncrosses her legs, adjusting the beaded hem of her dress. “It wasn’t bad at first. It was still Squarejaw Jimmy’s place – there was music and dancing and people every night! Like old times… But then he got raided and the place closed down. Everybody left.” She couldn’t have been more than nineteen when she died, and sounds like any other forlorn teenager.

“And you couldn’t? Leave, that is?”

“I’ve never tried. I suppose I could, but… where would I go?” Her shoulders lift in attempted insouciance, then sag. I try to imagine myself as an eternal nineteen-year-old, lingering in a favored haunt while everything and everyone I knew turned to dust. Not an enjoyable afterlife.

“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say. “Er… do you want to see what I’ve got planned for the place?”

         “Sure,” she says, perking up. I reach for my binder, but instead of leafing through my extant plans I take out a blank sheet of paper and a pencil.

           “So what was it like, when… er… Squarejaw Jimmy owned the place? What was he like?” I ask as my pencil moves over the paper.

           “Well,” she brightens. “He had the best band in town. And the best gin. He was with the mob, of course, but he was so sweet. And funny! I remember when he…” She chatters away as I keep drawing. It isn’t hard to imagine: I sketch in a long bar, round tables with shaded lamps, a stage with a piano…

           “There,” I say eventually. “What do you think?” I can’t hand her the drawing; she leans over me – through me – and a chill runs down my spine. “Do you think people would enjoy a place like that?”

           “Oh, yes,” she says eagerly, “It’s the bee’s knees! And you’ve left plenty of space for dancing… What are you going to call it?” She asks, pointing to the sign over the bar – a sign I’ve deliberately left blank.

           “Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it. What’s your name, by the way?”

           “Zelda,” she says, dimpling. “What’s yours?”

           “Sam,” I say.

           “It’s nice to meet you, Sam,” she says, extending a hand. I take it, the cold smoke of her memory passing over my fingers.

           “It’s nice to meet you, too,” I say. I make a final flourish with the pencil. “There. What do you think?”

“Zelda’s,” she reads. “Oh! After me?”

“Sure,” I say. “You’re the expert. And, besides, it looks much better than Sam on a sign.”

“I like it,” she says shyly.

“Me too,” I say. “But I think there’s something missing.” I sketch a girl in a beaded dress in the middle of the dance floor. “There, that’s better. What do you say, Zelda? Zelda?”

I look up. Early morning light stripes the floor: my companion is gone. With a sigh of relief, I slump back against the piano. I’ve never been happier to see the sunrise. I sit like that for a while, until the edge of the piano digging into my back forces me to my feet. I sit on the bench instead, the drawing still clutched in my hand. I smooth it against my lap, tracing the tiny figure at its center with a fingertip.

“Welcome to Zelda’s,” I whisper, “where the twenties are still roaring…” I raise an imagined glass and toast the dawn.