Play it again, Christmas Girl

if you’ve no place to go —

Strings of green and red lights sparkled without irony at the base of a menorah affixed in some magical way to the end of a long polished bar lined with men shouting for pairs of alcoholic drinks while rolling crisp blue or white shirtsleeves to their elbows; this was back in the days when the season of giving began with corporate holiday parties early in December. The band were all fifty or forty or some other age that seemed terribly experienced to me at twenty-one. I was newly New Yorking as a front desk receptionist in a firm which did something with people’s money that made the men that worked there believe I found them attractive. I had eyes only for the band. Seven pieces: drums, keys, sax and horn, guitar and bass and the other guy, all indifferent to the swagger of the shirts that threw money in the bucket and shouted names of tunes their mothers had played while vacuuming and telling them they would grow up to rule the world. The band’s platform was made of metal and covered in cheap carpet and each instrument doubled on vocals and the whole ensemble seemed like the height of class to me.

I had moved to New York from Texas, so I can be forgiven. The seventh in Texas is usually a banjo, a fiddle or a harmonica.

At that time, I carried dreams of discovery and stardom in an otherwise empty wallet which still hadn’t been lifted by the friendly stranger on the clattering 6 train heading uptown. After my indulgent boss heard that I wanted to be a singer, he dropped a fifty into the band’s bucket to let me take the mic.

We are all made of dreams in Manhattan.

The band hadn’t even minded, once I started in. I belted out Let it Snow. Yes, the Holiday Classic. When I handed the heavy mic back to the balding guy on keys, he nodded and smirked and said “not bad, Christmas Girl,” almost as though we were in a movie. It is possible that in his version of this AMC script, he went home with me in the softly falling snow. In reality, I laughed at the nickname, trying to seem aloof and wise, but secretly thrilled by it. I was wearing a thigh-hugging black number that was hard to get into and harder to keep on, with a sprig of holly in my hair and a red ribbon for a choker that proved I still read the fashion magazines at nail salons. He was right to assume that I had check-boxed my way through enough quizzes to be talked into proving almost anything.

But I had no room in my head for sultry romance that night. The lateness of the hour, the magic of dressing up in Manhattan, being seen as an adult, here, in the land of theat-ahh and dahh-lings, this magic swirled up to the vaulted ceiling with booze and noise — shaken not stirred — and in a Cinderella moment, my impromptu performance was actually seen by the jaded owner of the place. He slowly nodded, his chin protruding in a rehearsed mimicry of some DiNiro film, and told my boss that if I wanted a spot singing for him regulah-like, I could come and audition anytime. My boss wasted no time in relaying this information, while handing me a celebratory cocktail. It is possible that he had secret dreams of being a casting director or film agent. It is possible that the cocktail was a double, or a triple. I wasn’t counting, I was toasting my success.

I was all business. After all, I had an audition!

Did you assume it was just a compliment? You have to have starry eyes and an open heart. You have to be raised on movies where the star is discovered, not made. I was shaped by miracles and promises — I believed this was my big break. I was ready to throw myself back on that stage, wow the owner, impress the band and start a career of weekend gigs at SoHo’s most popular jazz night spot.

Twenty-two is old and young at once. Old, because I had brought that boisterous party to an awed standstill. It was an experience other performers would die for. Young, because I prepared a song and showed up the following weekend, eager, and wearing a slinky, sparkly dress, false eyelashes and hot-rollered hair, assuming that my stage presence plus voice plus body (which were good) would make up for my lack of repertoire (which was bad).

It never occurred to me to learn more repertoire.

The weather had turned bitter in that week. The steps down to the bar were icy. A wiser person might have taken it as a sign. But the holiday lights still sparkled red and green against the mirror ball, and the season of giving wasn’t close to over. It was now mid-December, and Christmas was still a week away. The owner of the club didn’t recognize me when I re-entered his establishment without the surrounding scent of the free-flowing cash of the financial firm.

The band was on the dais, surrounded by a sea of straightened hair in party dresses. It was late enough that long bare legs were draped over the quivering thighs of older men who couldn’t believe their luck. The band remembered me.

“Hey, if it isn’t Christmas girl,” the lead singer said, and they all laughed. The drummer scratched his ear with one of his sticks, while the horn had a stoned gaze that landed on my curves and stayed there. The band nodded in agreement when the owner asked, baffled, whether they wanted to let me play a set.

A set. My stomach dropped. I smiled brightly when they asked if I had sheet music and said no, I knew my song by heart.

“Go ahead,” said the keys, “Give it up.”

When I said I’d prepared Winter Wonderland, the lead trumpet, who had introduced himself as something-Rosenberg, said no, he was sick of Christmas carols. “What else you got, kid.”

The demotion from Christmas girl to kid felt like someone walking over my Hollywood star without looking down. My mind raced to the songs I had practiced in the shower. I knew no standards, just audition songs from musicals and Christmas Carols, camp songs and things I had sung in high school choir.

“Funny Valentine?” I asked. Could there have been a wince that traveled through the band? If it was there, it was as swift and hidden as a predatory cat. The guy on the bass muttered something about having to guess at the chords. I was unaware, other than that some kind of secret pall had fallen over my audition, that my entire singing career was in peril. The owner had cut a cigar and was masticating the end in his teeth. He wasn’t looking at me.

There was another awkward moment when I didn’t know what key was “mine,” but they started in on the intro, familiar from Muzak at dentist offices and creepy hotel lounges, and some of the older men looked up with smiles, recognizing the tune. None of the women stopped combing their fingers through their prospective dates’ credit score. The owner had taken his drink to the far end of the bar and was in conversation with a guy in a hat who had come in out of the cold and was blowing on his fingers.

My voice is good. I have a clear soprano. Excellent intonation and great stage presence. I am able to enthrall a room, and this I did. The song is sweet and appropriate to a twenty-one year old in a sparkly dress and preposterously shiny makeup. I sang through the first stanza and then it happened.

I had learned the melody wrong. Or the bass player had messed up. Something happened that night on that stage and people winced. Not just the owner, but the women looking for a sugar daddy and the various married men that were watching my hips and not my lips, all of them had noticed. It was the kind of wrong note that causes pity: the fall off a balance beam, the forgotten line in a well-known play, the missed basket at the crucial point of the Knicks game that you had bet on. The sea of eyes went soft and sad; I diminished in their eyes. When the song was over, I didn’t ask for another, I thanked the band and they, too, looked sorry for me. I thanked the owner as well and he offered me a drink on the house but I couldn’t imagine where I would sit to drink it, so I said no thanks, picked up my cheap coat and went out into the street to cry it off.

Years later, I had left singing far behind, and I stumbled across the joint as I walked with my husband in the rain, looking for a place to have a late-night drink.

“Wanna grab one here?” he said, closing our black umbrella, “Looks pretty empty.”

“Sure,” I replied and stood taller. I hoped the owner had sold to someone else. I hoped the band had moved on or died. I hoped that no one would remember me and my terrible, shameful naïveté.

NYC can forgive anything but innocence.

I laid my hand on my husband’s sleeve to stop him from opening the door.

I had shed most of my innocence in the intervening years. Once I went in, this terrifying club might reveal itself to be nothing more than a dusty little hole-in-the-wall where aging musicians could pick up a few bucks between playing Broadway and teaching jazz at the New School. The stage could look small. The clientele could be trashy. The last of my shame might fall away and the memory crumble into meaningless fragments.

“Know what?” I told him. “I think I’ve been here before. We should go someplace new.” And agreeably, he put up the umbrella to shield me from the late November rain.