It was altogether fitting that Angie Leatherwood should perform as the headliner at Sloppy Joe’s during her brief and infrequent returns to the city of her birth. Troy’s glib tongue had originally talked the owner, a transplanted fifty-year-old New Yorker named Tony Palazzo, into giving her an audition when she was still nineteen. Tony had heard her sing for five minutes and then had exclaimed, punctuating his comments with wild hand gestures, “It’s not enough that you bring me a black girl who’s so beautiful she takes your breath away. No, you bring me one who also sings like a nightingale. Mama mia Life is not fair. My daughter Carla would kill to sound like that.” Tony had become Angie’s biggest fan and had unselfishly promoted her career. Angie never forgot what Tony had done for her and always sang at Sloppy Joe’s when she was in town. She was like that.
Troy’s table was front and center, about ten feet away from the edge of the stage. Nick and Troy were already seated at the small round table and had finished their first drinks when Carol arrived about five minutes before ten-thirty. She apologized and mumbled something about parking in Siberia. As soon as she arrived, Nick pulled out the envelope of images and both men told her that they had found the pictures fascinating. Nick began asking questions about the photographs while Troy summoned a waiter. Nick and Carol were involved in an earnest conversation about the objects in the fissure when the new drinks reached the table. Nick had just mentioned that one of them looked like a modern missile. It was ten thirty-five. The lights flashed off and on to announce that the show was beginning.
Angie Leatherwood was a consummate performer. Like many of the very best entertainers, she never forgot that it was the audience that was the customer, that it was they who both created her image and enhanced her mystique. She began with the title song from her new album, “Memories of Enchanting Nights,” and then sang a medley of Whitney Houston songs, according a tribute to that brilliant songstress whose talent had sparked Angie’s own desire to sing. Next she showed her versatility by blending a quartet of songs with different beats, a Jamaican reggae, a soft ballad from her first album, Love Letters, a nearly perfect Diana Ross imitation from an old Supremes song, “Where Did Our Love Go?” and an emotionally powerful, lilting encomium to her blind father entitled “The Man with Vision.”
Thunderous applause greeted the conclusion of each song. Sloppy Joe’s was sold out, including all the standing room along the hundred-foot bar. Seven different huge video screens scattered throughout the spacious club brought Angie home to those who were not close to the stage. This was her crowd, these were her friends. A couple of times Angie was almost embarrassed because the clapping and the bravos would not stop. At Troy’s table, very little was said during the show. The threesome pointed out songs they particularly liked (Carol’s favorite was the Whitney Houston song, “The Greatest Love of All”), but there was no time for conversation. Angie dedicated her penultimate song, “Let Me Take Care of You, Baby,” to her “dearest friend” (Nick kicked Troy under the table) and then finished with her most popular cut from Love Letters. The audience gave her a standing ovation and hooted noisily for an encore. Nick noticed while he was standing that he was a little woozy from the two strong drinks and was also feeling strangely emotional, possibly because of the subliminal associations created by the love songs that Angie was singing.
Angie returned to the stage. As the noise subsided, her soft and caressing voice could be heard. “You all know that Key West is a very special place for me. It was here that I was raised and went to school. Most of my memories bring me back here.” She paused and her eyes scanned the audience. “There are many songs that bring back memories and the emotions that go with them. But of all of them, my favorite is the theme song from the musical Cats. So, Key West, this is for you.”
There was scattered clapping as the music synthesizers accompanying her played the introduction to “Memories.” The audience remained standing as Angie’s mellifluous voice launched into the beautiful song. As soon as she began, Nick was instantly transported to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in June of 1984, where he was watching a production of Cats with his mother and father. He had finally come home to explain to them why he had been unable to return to Harvard after his spring break in Florida. But try as he might, he could not begin to tell the story to his disappointed father and brokenhearted mother. All he could say was, “It was a woman…” and then he would fall silent.
It had been a sad reunion. While he was visiting his home in Falls Church, the first malignant polyps had been discovered and removed from his father’s colon. The doctors had been optimistic about several more years of life, but they had stressed that colon cancer often recurred and metastasized to other parts of the body. In a long talk with his suddenly frail father, Nick had promised to finish his degree in Miami. But that was little solace to the older man; he had dreamed of seeing his son graduate from Harvard.
The performance of Cats at the Kennedy Center had been only mildly entertaining for Nick. In the middle he had found himself wondering how many people in the audience really knew the author of the source material for the songs, this poet T.S. Eliot, who not only admired and enjoyed feline idiosyncrasies, but also once began a poem by describing the evening “spread out against the sky, like a patient aetherized upon a table.” But when the old female cat walked to center stage, her beauty faded into wrinkles, and began her song of her “days in the sun,” Nick had been moved right along with the entire audience. For reasons he never understood, he had seen Monique singing the song, years in the future. And in Washington he had wept, silent tears hidden quickly from his parents, when the achingly pure soprano voice had reached the climax of the song…
“Touch me… It’s so easy to leave me… all alone with my memories… of my days in the sun… If you touch me… you’ll understand what happiness is…”
Angie’s voice at Sloppy Joe’s was not nearly as piercing as that soprano in Washington But she sang with the same intensity, evoking all the sadness of someone for whom all the joys of life are in the past. The corners of Nick’s eyes filled with tears and one of them brimmed out to run down his cheek.
From where Carol was standing, the lights from the stage reflected off Nick’s cheek. She saw the tear, the window of vulnerability, and was herself moved in return. For the first time she felt a deep stirring, almost an affection for this distant, solitary, but strangely attractive man.
Ah Carol, how different it might have been if, for once in your life, you had not acted impulsively. If you had just let the man have his moment of loneliness or heartbreak or tenderness or whatever he was feeling, then you might have mentioned it later, at a quieter time, to some advantage. The sharing of this moment might even have eventually been part of the bonding between you. But you had to tap Nick on the shoulder, before the song was through, before he even realized himself that he was tearful, and break his precious communion with his inner self. You were an interloper. Worse, as so often happens, he interpreted your smile as derision, not sympathy, and like a frightened turtle withdrew completely from the evening. It was guaranteed that he would reject as insincere any subsequent overtures of friendship.