The Last Piano Player By DHMcCarty

“Sensitive people care when the world doesn't because we understand waiting to be rescued and no one shows up. We have rescued ourselves, so many times that we have become self-taught in the art of compassion for those forgotten.”― Shannon L. Alder

Antonio took a long draw off his Chesterfield.   He used to let them burn after a puff or two.  These days he would stub them out and relight before each draw.  He had considered rolling his own but found it too awkward between songs.   He kept an end table to his left so that he never had an ashtray on the instrument.I

t was a Tuesday night. The businessmen were up in their rooms preparing sales proposals.   Cheaters sat at the far end of the bar blowing smoke rings and sucking the last drops of Canadian Club from the rocks in his glass.   Xavier looked his way and chuckled. Cheater's coke bottle glasses were reflecting CNN off the 21" Motorola.  

They were interrupted by a breaking News report, a church shooting in Tulsa.

"Hey, X-Man.  Check and see if the Phillies or Mets are on.  I don't want to hear about no more shootings.  These people thinking their lives matter can't keep it in their pant's no more."

"You getting numb Cheaters?"

"I'm working on it but the CC ain't flowing tonight."

It was a recurring joke between Xavier and Cheaters.   Cheaters took early retirement from the railroad after failing a vision test.  He brought $8.00 with him each night when he came to the bar. That worked out to two CC's.  He left the .50 cent on the counter.

Xavier didn't mind. Cheaters was good company.

Ed and Teresa Dombrowski sat at the last deuce before the restroom passage.  Ed came to the bar to order.  Teresa didn't drink and was not pleased that Ed did.  Ed owned a plumbing supply company and Teresa had majored in Passive Aggression at Temple.  She would accompany him to the bar and sit across from him in her mink stole circa 1955, her hands folded and headscarf in place.Not a word was spoken between them.  

Ed would have two Chivas and leave a $20.00 bill  on the table.  Teresa and Ed would stand and head to the door.  Teresa with eyes straight ahead and Ed with a tip of his hat to Xavier.

With Cheaters at his limit and Ed out the door, Xavier was giving 'Tonio' the 'Hey, man what you think',  look.

Antonio was lost in 'I Still Remember Her Face'.  It was a song that had never been copywritten, never published.  He wrote it when he called himself Tony Vite' and played keyboards for Bobby Darin.  

Darin vetoed it immediately.  

He wanted a big Vegas sound in those days.   Darin was too dense to pick up on the hidden meaning.  Tony doubted he ever read the lyrics.

Darin was a womanizer.  

He had a regular relationship with his main backup Moreta Bronkowski.  She had a powerhouse voice and Bobby always gave her recognition when she would solo. On stage, she was known as Mo Braun.  She brought a lot to the show and Bobby knew it.  He promised her the world and then polished the back seat of his Coupe de Ville with every radio promo and hat check girl in Vegas.

So Tuesday after Thursday, after Sunday, Mo would sit with her crimson wrap snug around her beaded cocktail cleavage and sip rose'.  She sat at the table closest to Tony and talked about her childhood in Scranton,  her sister, and her two nieces, as Tony played 'I Still Remember Her Face'.  

"Tony, what does the song mean.  It's such a beautiful haunting tune?"

"About a man who falls for another man's woman,  a very powerful man.  A man should know better,"

But  Tony Vite fell fast, and head first, somersaulting over all rational explanation or common sense.  Word on the street was Darin was connected.  He was a favorite of the Boys.Don't ever fall in love with the girlfriend of the Made Guy.  You can't play the piano with broken fingers.  

Tony fell in love anyway.  He just never told her.

A woman can only refresh her lipstick and look the other way so many times.

Soon after Mo disappeared, Tony headed southeast,  first Memphis, then Nashville and finally playing studio jobs around Muscle Shoals.  Pianists were as plentiful as crawdads in Muscle Shoals.  Jobs were few and far between.  Tony had a sister in Phillie that offered a bed until he got his feet back under him.  He was there 2 weeks when he got a call from Skeeter in Muscle Shoals. His cousin, the pianist from the Scranton Holiday Inn had died of a heart attack.  It was a steady 5
day a week gig,

“Think about it.”

. . . . . . .

“The job pays $225.00 a week plus tips. We got a few regulars from the neighborhood and a few local street girls that drop in for snits and giggles. They mind their manners and some of the business crowd expect them to be here.”

Mack shifted his weight between his right and left feet.

“Weekends it’s just locals so we stick to the jukebox.  What’s on your menu?”

Mack had an ongoing battle between his pot belly and his belt line.  The belt line had long since given in to defeat.  Mack started wearing suspenders and had yet to grow accustomed.  His thumbs hooked the elastic and snapped it against his belly

.“Old standards for the most part.  Sinatra, Torme, a little Peggy Lee.  I’m not really up on the newer stuff other than a little Aretha Franklin.

”“Well Antonio, we got a Sinatra/Torme crowd.  You can skip the Aretha, this ain’t Detroit.  These guys sell rebar and office supplies.  They want a little class while they negotiate the working girls.  This is Scranton, not New York City.  You’ll be fine.  If you smoke, keep your ashtray off the Steinway.  Mr. Abruzzi moved that in here after his Father-in-Law died.  He doesn’t want no cigarette burns on the veneers.

”Mack’s last name was Busconti. All the regulars called him Biscotti.  Go figure.

On Antonio’s first day he introduced himself to the bartender, Louis Campo, and his bar back Xavier Mendoza.  He settled in on the Steinway bench, moved the tips jar to the outside edge and played the first few notes of ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin.’  

Louis stopped polishing snifters, Xavier paused between stacking glassware and two or three of the working girls forgot about their cigarettes, as ash grew to perilous lengths,

Antonio’s timing was perfect, a metronome ticked at the back of his skull.  

The rest of the crowd, busy negotiating short-term love or the future memory of a hellacious hangover, paid him no mind.

People came to hear him play.  People from Phillie would show up  2-3 times a month. Allentown, Easton, the outer  Boroughs.  .  .  .they knew his name.  Some of the old Vegas community that had elected to settle back East kept track of who was where, and they put out the word.  They supported their own.  

Once a week or so someone would show with a weathered stand-up bass and a buddy toting a couple of snares.  It was considered a live practice.  No money exchanged hands.  Later they would remind associates that they had played with Tony Vite’.

There were numerous weeks that the tip jar exceeded $500.00.  Record people recruiting  a prospective client would drop in  $50.00 as a show of respect.  Tony would drop a peep on the microphone so the crowd would be aware that there were dignitaries present.  The entertainment industry runs on grease.

So it went for the first 4 or 5 years.  But change comes fast in  Pennsylvania.  American steel was dying, no longer able to compete with German and Japanese steel.  When the US Govt. implemented the Marshall Plan in Germany and Japan, they utilized the newest technology and virtually drove the last nail in the coffin of the United States Steel Industry.  US Steelmakers were still utilizing Bessemer furnaces built before the turn of the century.  What affects Pittsburg, affects Pennsylvania.  

Downtown Scranton evolved into a Rust Belt ghost town.  With no money flowing, there was no reason for a new business to move there. And so the slow decline of the Holiday Inn.  Salesmen went to New York or Philadelphia.  

Louis Campo retired to Florida and took a part-time job tending bar at a Boutique Hotel in South Beach to keep out of the house. South Beach was hopping.  

Xavier was promoted to the bartender but continued to act as his own back.

A few of the working girls would show up with holes in their net hose, scuffs on their stripper heels and dark circles under their eyes.  The classier girls had moved on.  There were no more mopes with expense accounts that would tolerate a $200.00 tip.  

There were more and more empty seats.  Mack took out the extra deuces and chairs that he had brought in as Tony’s fan base had grown.  People were going to rock bars, gay bars, country bars, blues bars, soul bars but they had lost their taste for piano bars.  There was a sports bar near the mall that had 30 tvs and not a single Mel Torme song in the jukebox.

It wasn’t just Scranton.  The unemployment figures for piano lounge players had surpassed  Depression Era rates nationwide and whistled around the next bend in Hard Times Blvd. without a glance at the speedo.

Antonio couldn’t afford to stay and he couldn’t afford to leave.  He was staying in three tiny rooms above ‘Gianni’s TV Repair’.  

Gianni wasn’t going out for lunch these days.  He debated closing shop and heading to Tucson.  

Gianni was empathetic.  He blew a baritone sax once upon.

Antonio debated his future.  It was the cheapest rent in town.

Mo Braun was headed to the parking lot and her baby blue Beetle.  She was staying at the Shangri-la on the edge of Vegas.  $89.00 a week without maid service.  She was hoping to call her sister Margaret in Wilkes Barre before she went to bed.  

Margaret was a homebody that invested her time in her two girls. There was a 3 hour time difference. Mo knew that Margaret juggled Girl Scouts, ballet and PTA and often went to bed by 9:00 pm.  Mo smiled to herself.  Margaret thought Mo's life was so glamorous yet Mo envied Margaret's down home life with Amanda and Angela.

Mo was pulling her opera gloves off as she ducked through the back door of the Tropicana and into the employee parking lot.  She was parked in the back row of the lot.  

Backup singers got back row spaces.  

She checked her watch as she passed by Bobby's cherry red Coupe De Ville.  Bobby was in the back seat.Bobby had his arms draped over the back of the seat, his eyes closed and his pants to his knees.  There was a mop of teased and bleached blonde hair nestled in his mid section.  Mo kept walking.

"If you see me walking down the street                                                                                                                     And I start to cry each time we meet                                                                                                                             Walk on by, walk on by                                                                                                                                                            Make believe that you don't see the tears                                                                                                                       Just let me grieve                                                                                                                                                                           In private 'cause each time I see you                                                                                                                                  I break down and cry.Walk on by."          by Dionne Warwick

Mo made up her mind before she reached the Shangri-la.  She called her sister as she was pulling out suitcases.  Her closet was cluttered with a half-dozen spangled and beaded dresses so tight she had to shimmy to work her way into them.  She gathered them in her arms and headed for the dumpster.  

She smiled as she imagined a dinner of Macaroni and cheese and fried chicken.  She would top it off with a slice of cheesecake.   Make that two slices smothered in whipped cream.

It was a 2400 mile trip to Wilkes Barre.  Mo pulled into a Sinclair and while the young man was filling her tank she borrowed the key to the restroom.  She scrubbed all the makeup off and worked her comb through her teased hair.  She glanced up at the mirror.

"Mo huh?  How about 'No Mo'? Moreta suits me just fine."

The little Beetle was chugging at 75.  With all the windows down and the sunroof folded back, the wind was whipping her hair. Tears creased her cheeks.  She noticed a billboard with a big picture of a covered wagon,

'Sleep like a baby at the Conestoga Motor Inn.'  

She smiled and brushed away a tear that was perched on the end of her nose.  

The lost, the dispossessed, runaways, the loveless.  All the sad souls that made the cross-country trip in the last 200 years.  Running to or running away from.  What did it matter?  A new start?  A new life.  

She sorted through her purse looking for her pack of Salems.  

Damn!  She had left them at the Shangri-la.

"Just one more sign Moreta.  No more smokey Casinos, no more lying, two timing crooners.  Pay attention girl before you get smacked in the face.  That little bleachy blonde can have Mr. Stubby."

Moreta ditched her bra in the back seat the first night.  Who was going to see her?  She didn't care if they did.  For a girl of Moreta's stature, that was definitely playing loose and fancy-free.  The young man at the  North Platte Stuckey had gone all tongue-tied to the point that the manager, Mrs. Louella Barnes had to finish the transaction.

"Ma'am, you're going to have to cover up with a jacket or something.  That sort of thing just doesn't fly in Nebraska."

Moreta chuckled and glanced over her shoulders as she headed for the door, shaking' her can and wobbling' her tomaters' for all she was worth.

"Good thing I ain't from Nebraska."

(to be continued)