Living the Blues

*

Tori thought the staging in Aida was tacky.

"Did you expect Radames to ride in on a real elephant? " I asked

"They didn't even have a horse for the triumphal march."

"It's a recession," I said, "they save money on the staging."

"But with Aida the sets are are the main thing," Francoise added.

A specular trio (mezzo, tenor, soprano) finale made me forget everything else about Aida. For me the music is always what it's about, but I wasn't going to argue - it was Francoise's night. After 20 years, she finally owned her medallion; 20 years of driving cabs five or six nights a week to raise three kids on her own; 20 years with no vacations; 20 years of worrying every month about the rent. No, I wasn't going to argue. I raised my bottle of beer.

"To Francoise," I said toasting her.

Tori and Barry,  Francoise's daughter and her boyfriend whose names I never caught joined in, clicking bottles and glasses.

"To Francoise!"

She clicked her glass with us and tossed back a warm, lovely, impish smile.

Yes, I was drinking my beer from a bottle. Inappropriate for a discussion of Aida, perhaps, but perfect for the dumpy, half-empty, blues bar we were sitting in.

It was a pickup night and an old black man standing next to his wheel chair was singing Otis Reddings' Dock of the Bay backed by two aging white guys, a young Asian and a middle-aged Samoan playing  guitars; a half-blind Mexican on a toy piano and a young, blond woman blowing wonderfully on a harmonica. You tell that they either were (or had been) professionals but they were a little out of sync. When the piece ended, a couple of guitars introduced themselves to each other.

As the night went on they got better and better as our conversation grew warmer and friendlier.

We were a good match for each other, the band and us. We were all a little beat up and maybe had seen better days.

Tori, Francoise and I could all have lost 30 pounds without noticing it and Barry always wore a hat to cover his bald spot. Tori and Francoise were artists, Barry a cameraman and I try to write but we all earn our living driving cabs. Probably always will.

We been lied to, we'd been cheated, we'd been robbed, we'd been mistreated.

But, at that moment, as a bass guitar played a duet with the gravel-voiced singer and the harmonica jabbed beautifully over the top, as we rocked in time to the soulful beat, as I noticed Francoise's daughter smiling with adoration at her mother, I wouldn't have lived it any other way.