key do you sing in?” Ronald asked impatiently.
Olivia looked confused. “I don’t know.”
“Then how can we play it?”
Her eyes pleaded with me for help.
“Can you sing it in the same key that we played it in earlier?” I asked.
“I guess so.”
Dom nodded. “B flat then, Ronald. The lady wants to sing.”
With her coat, hat and that scarf still on, she stepped onto the bandstand with a look of resolution. It took her a moment to figure out how to drop the mike stand to her height, but finally she looked over at Ronald, and with tight lips, nodded.
One of the two visiting pianists was still in the house, half-potted, having an earnest conversation with one of the better female vocalists of the evening, so Ronald made up a totally different intro to the song than the one he’d used earlier, and it really was quite brilliant. Olivia, totally at sea, turned to me with a frightened look, so I smiled and nodded reassuringly, indicating I’d help her come in.
Ronald finished with an arpeggiated chord roll to the upper end of the piano, and I mouthed “two, three, four” to bring her in.
She turned to the audience, shut her eyes and started to sing. “Skylark, have you anything to say to me...”
I had my brushes out, planning to join in for the second verse, and damn near forgot to come in.
The performance of this very odd girl was, to put it mildly, stunning.
There are always people who insist on talking through every song, regardless of the fact that it’s rude, irritating and distracting to those people who want to listen, but especially so to the musicians. By the time Olivia was halfway through the first verse, every eye in the house had turned to the stage. Even the bigmouth at the bar stopped gassing.
It wasn’t so much her voice – although no one could possibly have any complaints in that department. What had every person in that club riveted was Olivia’s delivery. The girl could flat out sell a song like nobody I’d ever heard.
“Skylark” is not a song you can belt out. It must be subtle, wistful, delicate, ingenuous. It’s about a young girl asking where her first love might be found. The performance earlier in the evening, which had been quite good, paled to black and white in comparison to the way Olivia was singing.
We always set up with me facing Ronald and Dom in the middle, since he’s the glue that holds us together musically, so I had a good view of her. Her eyes were shut tight, and she gripped the mike stand with both hands as if it were saving her from drowning, but her body remained supple, swaying gently with the music. Her awkward-looking outerwear suddenly didn’t seem important as the subtle nuance of her melodic shadings washed over us. You could visualize her having run in off the street to tell everyone about her search for love. I felt as if I were hearing this song for the very first time.
The trio rose to the occasion, giving this girl the very best we could – even Ronald. He’ll occasionally get overly busy, especially if he’s bored or put out. His playing in this song was easily the best he’d done in some months, matching Olivia’s understated performance with one of his own. He only took a two-chorus solo before he led her in for the last verse with a gentle nod, and smiled broadly as he ended the song with a gentle whisper of melody high up the keyboard.
For a moment there was silence before everyone remembered to breathe. Then the place just went nuts.
Olivia stood there for a moment with an increasingly fearful expression on her face, then turned, and with everyone cheering, she ran right out of the club as if the devil were at her heels.
“Interesting way to end a performance,” Dom observed as he leaned on his bass. “Damn good vocalist, though.”
Olivia’s singing haunted me the rest of the week. I wished someone had taped it.
The following week, she didn’t show up on Tuesday, and I was sure the girl had either got it all out of her system, or had completely freaked herself out. More than one regular asked if “that interesting singer” was coming back. Even Harry inquired if we were going to hire her.
Wednesday noon found me downtown to get my passport renewed, so I took a walk over to Union Station, to see if she was there. Street people are creatures of habit, staking their turf and guarding it jealously.
No sign of her, so I grabbed lunch in one of the fast food joints in the underground city, that maze of interconnected office buildings stretching from the train station all the way up to Dundas Street.
Back at Union for a last try, I got no glory, but some old guy was hawking one of those street newspapers homeless people sell. I’d seen him there the previous time I’d encountered Olivia.
“I’m looking for a girl—”
“Isn’t everyone?” he interrupted with a broken-toothed grin.
If he was looking to sell a paper, bad comedy wasn’t going to get him there.
“This is a particular girl,” I said patiently, “maybe five-foot-two, pretty, big eyes, long dark hair, wears a navy duffel coat and a black toque. Not your average street person. Know who I’m talking about?”
The guy looked purposefully down at the sheaf of papers under his arm. I got the message and forked over a tooney, twice what the paper was worth.
“She’s here most days. The cops did a sweep of the area, and she skedaddled like all the other panhandlers. Odd one, though. She spooks kind of easy.”
“When is she usually around?”
“You ain’t a cop, are you?”
“Do I look like a cop?”
He cocked an eyebrow at my stupid question.
“No,” I sighed, “I’m not a cop. She’s just someone I met.”
His grin told me he’d imagined a meeting far different from the reality.
“If she shows, it might be around three, maybe three thirty. The evening rush is usually pretty good.”
After that, I felt I’d committed myself to sticking around.
From up above at street level, you can see the open area where Olivia had her spot. In order not to spook her again, I hung out up there, occasionally checking to see if she’d arrived. Luckily, the February weather was a little more moderate that day than it had been, because I had to wait until nearly four o’clock before the black cap and red scarf were directly below me. Her outstretched Tim Hortons cup with two quarters in it jingled loudly when she shook it.
Okay, I’ll admit it. I snuck up on her. It wasn’t hard, since most of the traffic at that time is headed into the station. I forced my way upstream and came at Olivia from her blind side. When I gently touched her shoulder, she flinched as if I’d struck her.
“Hello, Olivia,” I said, smiling to look friendly and harmless.
“What are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your singing last week. We were all hoping you’d show up last night and sing some more.”
“That was a stupid thing for me to do!”
“Why? You were really good.”
“That’s not what I meant. Now leave me alone.”
When I didn’t immediately disappear, she demanded again, “Leave!”
I smiled. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee. You’re shivering.”
“No. I’m busy.”
“How about a coffee and a ten dollar bill, then? In the time it takes to have a coffee, you won’t make that standing