Crimson

The night Jimmy "The Stag" Silver played the last jazz concert of his career, there were twenty-five in the room.

Tipping his favorite crimson fedora, Jimmy blinked into the spotlight's dusty gaze and raised his tarnished trumpet to his lips.  Then he played.

Forty years ago, to the casual jazz music hepcat, Jimmy Silver was a trumpet genius, working his way into the heart of a corps of underground fans - the type of fans who championed Silver's '65 masterpiece, Sonnets After Seven, into a near Grammy nomination.

The nomination never came and Silver went from legendary jazz musician to legendary recluse, popping up in various neighborhood bars and back alley venues to croon his brassy lullabies, but never again enjoying the pinnacle seat in jazz lore.  He played a show on a street corner in Lyons to an elderly man in a pinstriped suit, then politely refused the man's tip.  Someone said they saw him join the throng of a high school marching band in St. Paul, Minnesota on New Year's Day.  Tonight, he was balanced on a rusty bar stool in a watering hole in Havana Cuba, in front of twenty-five bar customers who probably didn't know his name or his music.

The first notes of Jimmy's opening piece broke into a hushed angry argument between a middle-aged wife and husband.  The husband stuttered, his concentration broken, and he never found the time to return to his previous biting remark.  Something about the way his wife's hair got brighter in the reflection of Jimmy's trumpet bell shut him up for good.

Two Cuban businessmen paused from a frank discussion on ethics in global fiscal policy to listen to a specific tremolo.

Near the bar, a young man in a cotton dress shirt that sorely needed ironing found the courage to ask the girl next to him to dance and the two clasped arms in a melancholy slow dance.

An old man in the corner just closed his eyes and laughed for the first time in nineteen years, hee hee hee.  The bartender smiled and poured him another whisky, on the house.

In between songs, a disheveled loafer with matted hair and a matted suit asked the busboy in English if he could use the phone and the busboy, a native Spanish speaker, understood.

A group of five American tourists in the back of the room suddenly found new energy in their conversation.  The one with the rosiest cheeks slapped his friend's back and made a generic comment about that good New York music and no one disagreed.

And a single, sad-eyed young girl with an unfinished glass of wine in front of her simply sat and listened, as if she were the only person in the room.