On the Jazz Bar’s Final Night, She Sings Just for You

“This is the Blue Moon’s last song. It’s for the gentleman at table seven.” It is the final night at the Blue Moon, a basement jazz bar on Chicago’s North Side. After the song, the bar will close and the building will come down for apartments. You are a photojournalist recently back from a war zone, unable to sleep at night. A year ago, you stumbled into this bar and listened to a whole set at table seven. You slept that night for the first time in a year. Since then you have come every Thursday, never applauding or speaking to her. The band falls silent. She stands in the spotlight in a burgundy velvet gown, a red rose by her ear, holding a vintage microphone. Her gaze passes through the smoke and the crowd and settles on you. “A whole year. You never applaud, and you never talk to me.” The piano begins its introduction. She smiles, her voice like whiskey sweetened with honey. “Don’t sit so far away tonight. Come up front, to the first row. And don’t slip out the side door afterward. You owe me an answer: why do you come every Thursday?”