At the Salal Cafe meeting Jerry felt like he was back in seminary and its esoteric debates. Only instead of debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, the discussion was about two-ply versus one-ply toilet paper and bacon versus soy bacon.
Cynthia, wearing a faded smock and lemon colored tights, led the meeting.
“OK. Who’s here for the waiter positions?”
Jerry raised his hand.
“Have you waited tables before?”
“Oh sure,” Jerry lied.
“I’m good. Let’s take a vote.”
A few mumbles.
“You’re hired.”
“When do I start?” Jerry asked.
“How’s tomorrow?”
The following evening Jerry arrived promptly, clean yet rumpled. He really needed to stop living out of his car.
A party of ten assembled around one of the community tables. It was the owner of the building, and he was entertaining his blended family. Jerry scrambled up some menus and passed them around.
He nodded at the litany of orders, yet when he returned to the kitchen he stared at his indecipherable scrawlings. He looked up; April gaped at him.
“You,” she said.
“You,” he said.
“What are you doing here?”
“I work here.”
“I work here.”
“It’s my first day. I’ve never done this before, and I’m blanking on my first table.”
“No, wait a minute. What are you doing here?”
“Oh, you mean here here.”
“Yes.”
“I moved here.”
She frowned.
“Bring out some oysters for everyone, on the house, and ask again in a charming way. Just be honest, let them know this is your first day but you’re aim is to give them the best service they’ve ever gotten. Then do just that. Keep their water glasses full.” Grabbing some steaming dinner plates she moved on.
When the evening was over, April was gone before he could thank her. Henry, another waiter, taught him how to roll a cigarette using Drum tobacco. He savored the smoke and quaffed a beer in no rush to leave. He was not looking forward to another night in his car.
Across the street, the Town Tavern was in full swing. Jerry decided to check it out. Inside, a beautifully honed mahogany bar ran up one side with barstools in front. Behind the bar reigned an equally long mural of a bare breasted, zaftig woman draped over a divan. Underneath her was a long mirror, in front of which stood an impressive display of liquor in three tiers. A nose pierced woman bartender offered him three beers on tap, Guinness, Anchor Steam and Miller. Jerry chose Guinness.
The floor was beer soaked and covered with peanut shells. Toward the back, a band worked its chops. The dance floor was filled. Jerry ambled in that direction. In the middle of it all was April, all sweat and hair.
This wasn’t just dancing; this was a tribal blowout; not couples, but the entire floor dancing together in one orgy of movement. Men had their shirts stripped off; skin shimmered. Jerry dove in and within minutes fell into the hypnotic trance of the quaking beat, now at a fever pitch.
He steered towards April just in time for a slow number. When it ended, they disentangled.
“Come here often?” Jerry asked.
“You gotta stop following me,” she said with a smile. “Well, I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around. Great dancing with you.” She drifted towards a group of friends.
“Right,” Jerry said, and he headed towards the door.
To find his car.
The next day while walking towards the Salal he spotted a For Rent sign. When he arrived at work he called the number. A wobbly voice answered.
“Be right back,” Jerry shouted to Henry as he whizzed out the front door.
Jerry sprinted full tilt back up the hill. He rang the doorbell and just when he wondered if it worked, a hunched over woman cracked open the door.
“You must be Jerry,” she said.
“That be me.”
She opened the door wide and eyed him up and down. “I need first and last month’s rent and a $250 deposit.”
Jerry wrote the check and handed it to her. He thanked her, received the key and then raced back down to the restaurant.
“Jerry, where the hell you been? We gotta rush going on,” Henry sniped.
“Owe you.”
When he finished his shift, he dashed over to his new place. The house clung to the edge of the Uptown bluff, a two-story Victorian home painted gray with forest green gingerbread siding. The street itself had no curbs or sidewalks. Cars roosted haphazardly along gravel shoulders.
Grappling with his duffle bag, he thrust the key into the side door lock. He shouldered the door open and ascended the stairs to his apartment. Another took up the ground floor.
He crossed the living room and made a beeline through its French doors out to the balcony. Leaning on the white filigreed railing, his nostrils vacuumed up the pristine air; his body slowed to a standstill. A ferry boat churned out of its dock leaving a tail of foam behind. A flock of seagulls followed. In the water’s current, he lost himself in thought.
Port Townsend was different from anything he had ever known. It was like he had broken through some membrane into a parallel universe, one that had always existed but he just hadn’t been privy too. Could the world be this beautiful, this unfettered, this quiet?
He breathed in deep.
And the women were different, like April. No make-up. Long hair. Natural curves. Loose fitting clothes, like drawstring cotton pants and thick wool sweaters.
He turned to check out his new digs. Worn beige carpet covered the living room floor; knotty pine paneled the walls. A white tile bathroom harbored a claw foot tub. A tired kitchen had a mottled brown linoleum floor and double sash windows, the kind that stayed open with a propped cook book. Vapors of grandma, Vicks VapoRub and Ben-Gay, lingered. To Jerry, this apartment fit like a seasoned pair of jeans.
Once he unpacked his stereo, he christened his new home with George Winston’s Autumn. He first heard Winston in a Sacramento ice cream store. His simple piano improvisations captivated Jerry. Unlike the high flying acrobatics of Keith Jarrett, whose style was emblematic of New York City, rushed and anxious, Winston’s music, like Port Townsend, was unhurried, earthbound, with a touch of melancholy.
At dusk, Jerry strolled down his new street. Just a block away stood a small Presbyterian church, nothing like Westminster. The plain, white clapboard structure held a modest bell tower atop its sloped roof. Next to it stood another building in the same style. Probably fellowship hall, he thought. He tried its doorknob, and the door popped open. In the empty darkness, he made out an upright piano pushed up against the wall. He entered and slid onto the piano bench, flipped open the keyboard cover and began to play. It was the first time since he had quit his lessons in middle school.
As he lost himself in a Winston inspired improvisation, Jerry rocked back and forth. A crescendo of raw emotion coursed through his fingertips. With so much longing and pain, he grunted and growled. His cellar door burst open, releasing phantom fears of so many years. Tears streamed down his face.
A presence moved behind him, like a sea breeze. He didn’t look up, locked into his musical confession. All his childhood training was still intact, only instead of memorized notes, these were inchoate feelings he couldn’t even put into words.
He held a final chord, allowing it to soar into the rafters and beyond.
Arms wrapped around him in a fervent embrace. He gasped, then recognized her smell.
“Keep doing that,” April whispered in his ear, then took off.