We met because Monica blew Bill in the Oval Office and spilled some of the load onto her darling blue dress and hung that unwashed trophy in her closet and told someone who told someone who told someone, which of course led to the DNA test and became the USA’s biggest fucking news story of 1998, just in time for the annual Halloween block party on Cedar Springs Road in Dallas fucking Texas. Most potent inspiration for costumes in the history of that bacchanal! Real women, high-octane drag queens, gay men who didn’t even bother to shave — they all came out in the same shameless stained uniform. Blue Monicas as far as the eye could see. And thousands more gawkers than usual, including us.

We met because it was a slow Saturday night on the local news front — no major murders, no tornadoes — so my jowly boss at the city’s daily paper let me off two hours early. Get out of here, rookie, he said, go have some fun before you croak. So I hurried home, changed into my holiest jeans and SILENCE = DEATH T-shirt, jogged the six blocks to the Strip. Immediately saw a gaggle of Monicas, all squealing and pointing at a guy in a Bill mask who had a supersized fake tool sticking out of his unzipped slacks. One of the gals ran up and went down on it, right there in the middle of the street. He wobbled his legs and flung bubble gum cigars to the crowd, while she pointed to the American flags on her kneepads. Everyone but the cops cheered. You could hardly hear the joyful noise, though; you could hardly hear yourself think above the grinding roar of the loudspeakers, the Raining Men, hallelujah, blah-blah-blah. I Will Survive, thump-thump-thump-thump. Lord, those homo-disco evergreens, burned into a bazillion brains.

We met because I switched my attention to the sidewalks and sideshows. Bare-assed cowboys sashayed, clutching lassos. Pregnant nuns held hands with pregnant priests. And outside the Longhorn Saloon stood a tall, skinny 20-something whose sartorial confusion seized my attention: shiny black gym shorts, white crewneck sweater, black glasses wrapped with duct tape. He was gripping his own pale hands and towering over a troop of middle-aged Boy Scouts. 

Are you their fearless leader? I yelled toward the beanpole’s right ear.

He stared straight ahead, gave his head one quick shake.

Not fearless, or not the leader?

Now he peered down at me and mouthed, Neither one.

That’s good, I hollered. You don’t exactly look the part.

Thanks, he hollered back.

You came for the Bill and Monica show too?

And stayed for the music, he added with a snort.

I angled in front of him, gestured at his shorts. Basketball? I suggested, pretending to dribble.

He grinned, or maybe grimaced. Maintained eye contact for the first time. You owe me a dollar, he said.

What?

I charge a dollar every time someone asks that.

My lucky night, I said.

Been doing it since I topped six feet in middle school.

And now you’re rich?

Filthy rich, yes.

We shared a shiver of amusement. I fished a buck out of my wallet and offered it up. Only then did he release his hands.

Put that away, he said. Then flexed these mile-long fingers, studied them as if they weren’t his own. Began playing an invisible piano, light and effervescent, beaming a cocktail lounge-ish smile at me and the Scouts and the rest of the world, glancing intermittently at the keyboard that wasn’t there. 

Do you need someone to turn your pages? I said after a minute or so.

Someone?

I mean me. 

No, he said, that’s OK. His fingers stopped, laced themselves up again. And suddenly I didn’t know how to keep the banter going.

Do you want me to leave you alone? The question popped out of my mouth with a blunt edge that embarrassed me. I babbled apologies. He turned as pink as a boiled shrimp.

That’s not it, he said. I’m a little bit nervous. Never been to the Strip before.

I’m nervous too, I said. And I’ve been to the bars here plenty of times.

He responded to these confessions by pressing his fingertips together in front of his face.

Maybe you need to play some more?

I need to move, he said. So we started zigzagging through the throng. Soon his hands found their way back to the imaginary ivories. He gradually left the lounge world behind, playing faster and faster, throwing in mad flourishes and contorted pauses. Now the sea of revelers parted for us. Several sneered at his deviance from the deviance. Crazy bitch! somebody hissed.

The party ended in barricades at the first major intersection. He elbowed the walk button, saluted an officer on horseback, clocked me biting my lip. Played through it all. Didn’t quit till we were alone under the floodlit live oaks down by Turtle Creek, five or six blocks away. I mimed ecstatic clapping and raised a fictional glass and said, Long live the death of disco.

He told me not to get carried away. I told him not to worry, then finally introduced myself. Elden, he replied. We both hesitated to shake, then did the deed with a brief, limp formality.

So, Elden, I said, you were planning to be a jazzman for Halloween? But couldn’t decide what to wear? 

It’s not exactly an act, he said. I might be the ghost of Thelonious Monk. Here he winked. Except it’s not a wink if you keep the eye closed and cock your head birdlike toward the other person. 

You’re bleeding, he said. Just a few drops, looks like. 

I licked, tasted iron. Wiped a forearm across my mouth and asked: Were you really performing a song the whole time we were walking? In your head, hearing every note?

A whole Monk medley, he corrected. Just a Gigolo, then Ugly Beauty and I Mean You. He grin-grimaced again and said, Ouch. I didn’t mean …. 

And I laughed and said, I’m not laughing at you.

His playing resumed, slower, less showy. For the first time he hummed along, so I finally knew where we were: a Gigolo reprise. I half-sang along when it came time for my favorite line.

You know it, he shouted, you know it. Nobody knows it anymore.

I know it, I said, and sat down in the crabgrass. He orbited me. For several seconds his fingers ran trills on my shoulders. Holy fuck, I thought, he might be the one. Sometimes, if it’s dark enough, I still feel those electric pulses.

When the piece ended, he squatted in front of me and said, So who are you tonight?

A music lover who can’t carry a tune, I said, holding his gaze and willing myself not to blink. 

That’s no crime, he assured me. 

And — reaching under my T-shirt, pulling out the press badge on its cheap chain — and I’m an obit writer who … but my voice cracked, I swallowed the rest of the thought.

Who what?

Who can’t go home alone again, I whispered.

Around midnight Elden drove me to the old part of Plano, to the smallest brick house I’d ever seen. Nothing in the front room but must and dust and an upright and a bench. No sheet music even. He hammered out a thunderstorm, sometimes using a fist and once using an elbow, while I stood transfixed by the door. Now have a seat, he said, handing me the dirty foam pillow he’d been sitting on, motioning to the scarred hardwood floor behind him. He lowered his face to the keys, coaxed them into a long, long incantatory improv. Eventually my head surrendered to gravity. As I was drifting away he murmured Abide With Me. 

In darkness I woke on that floor, drool on my cheek and chin. Followed a faint glow into the kitchen, drank from the tap, rinsed my face. The window over the sink was half-open — why do I remember this? — was there a smell of rain in the distance? I went on down the hall, toward the light. It came from a tiny lamp in a bedroom no bigger than a McMansion closet. There he lay on top of the covers, gazing at the ceiling, still dressed. Without a word I knelt and untied his high-top sneakers, slipped them off. Then the socks. Massaged his feet until a moan escaped his closed mouth. He lifted his head, saw me staring at the nightstand, the young woman’s face in the heart-shaped frame. He reached over and turned it upside down. Set his glasses on top. I tore off my shoes and shirt, nuzzled my way up his bony calves to the polyester thighs. His fingers played a brief ditty on my scalp. But then, almost tenderly, pushed my face away. Buddy, he said. You see what the story is. I’m really sorry. With wide uncrying eyes he said, We’re engaged. So put your shirt back on, please. And let me drive you home. 

All I remember about the ride is lying across the back seat as we rolled down Central Expressway, saying, over and over, to both of us, but too softly for him to hear, What the fuck is wrong with you? And when we reached my apartment complex, I fished that dollar out again, wadded it up, threw it onto the dashboard. 

Well, that’s where the yarn ended, on the rare occasions when I used to spin it. I can tell a pretty good self-deprecating tale. I never mentioned that when Elden went to the bathroom before we left, I took a business card out of my wallet and wrote on it, with the blue pen I’m still forever carrying in my pants, REMEMBER THE MONICAS. All capitals, like a tabloid headline. Put it under the picture frame. Pathetic, right? But yesterday morning, a quarter-century later, he’s calling my landline here at this godforsaken newspaper, where my friends are long gone but I’m somehow still employed, still writing obits, because the bigwigs haven’t figured out some better way to deal with the problem of people dying — important people, anyway — and right off the bat, right after my generic greeting, he speaks my three old words back to me, though with a question mark in his voice.  

Yes, I say. And this time let myself blink-blink-blink. And think: Breathe. And: Hang up, you idiot, hang up, don’t hang up.

A vast subterranean quiet sinks into the line. 

Are you still there? he wonders aloud.

Yep. I just thought it was your turn to talk.

My name’s Elden, in case you don’t remember.

Oh, I remember that, too. The pianist who played me.

I’m freezing, he says. I’m sweating, I’m sitting here in a hot car with a cold stinking freak-out drop rolling from my armpit down my side. 

Vivid, I say.

Close to shitting myself.

Don’t do that.

Or maybe puking.

Don’t do that either.

OK.

So my Caller ID, I say — feeling a tad bad for the guy now, can’t stop myself from making conversation — it tells me you’re up in the Oklahoma City area these days?

Sort of, he says. 

Meaning?

I’m out of town this week, dropping my daughter off at college. 

OK.

Back home Friday morning. 

To an empty nest. 

Just you and your wife now, huh? 

Just me and the dogs, he says. Then blurts out, So can I cook you dinner Friday night?

What?

You heard me.

I let the quiet sink back in before saying, Let me check with my wife.

Your wife?

Sorry. That was cruel.

Do you mean your husband? Elden asks, trying to regain his balance.

I don’t have one of those either.

So can I? Cook you dinner?

That’s a start, I say. That’s a start.