Goodbye Without Leaving by Laurie Colwin Read Free Book Online Page A

and copying facilities. My wife works here, as does my daughter.”
    He stopped again and was silent. Oh, well, I said to myself, when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.
    â€œReverend Willhall,” I said, “is there a job here?”
    He sat back for a moment without speaking. “We need someone to catalogue female blues singers of the twenties and thirties.”
    â€œI want it,” I said.
    Reverend Willhall peered at me over his glasses. It occurred to me that I was a tiny bit overexcited.
    â€œI mean, I love female blues singers of the twenties and thirties,” I said. “I’ve studied them. I used to … um … sing myself.”
    â€œYes,” said the Reverend Willhall. “I understand that you were in popular music.”
    â€œI was.”
    â€œWe don’t have that here,” Reverend Willhall said.
    â€œI understand.”
    â€œWe operate on a shoestring. The pay is minimal.”
    â€œI understand.”
    â€œI cannot give you any guarantees that once you have done this job there will be another project here for you.”
    â€œI understand.”
    â€œWe have no benefits of any kind.”
    â€œI understand.”
    â€œAnd we need you only three days a week.”
    â€œI understand.”
    â€œCome with me and I’ll show you around,” said the Reverend Willhall. “You can start tomorrow.”

13
    I could not believe my enormous good luck! I felt like dancing down the street, until it occurred to me that now I had a job and I had promised to get married when I got one. Fortunately, this job caused another round of squealing and disapproval. My socially conscious and enlightened sweetheart did not feel it was safe for me to walk around in a black neighborhood.
    â€œI’m invisible,” I said. “On the tour they used to call me Casper the Friendly Ghost.”
    â€œI don’t like it.”
    â€œTough,” I said. “It’s my job.”
    â€œYour parents are going to freak,” Johnny said.
    I looked at my beloved in a way that made him nervous.
    â€œBut you haven’t even looked around,” Johnny said.
    â€œThis is the opportunity of a lifetime, buddy,” I said. “You go off and do your law work and let me do my thing. ‘ Where do you highbrows find the kind of love that satisfies ?’” I sang. “‘ Underneath the Harlem moon .’”
    The next day I began my tasks. I sat in a large room on the second floor and began to go through a mountain of cartons containing 78 rpm records and taped interviews with old singers, the children of old singers, the musicians who had worked with these old singers. I found handbills, sheet music, handwritten songs, photographs and other artifacts. All these had to be catalogued and filed. I sat at a console wearing a pair of headphones and listened to old records. Through the scratching and static came the pure strong voices of Bessie Smith, Gertrude Perkins, Mrs. Eartha Parks and dozens of others. Above my desk was a reproduction of a poster (the foundation had the original) of Bessie Smith and Clara Smith (no relation). It said: MY , BUT THESE GIRLS DO SING BLUEFULLY .
    The old records, lent to us by a network of collectors, were processed, through the miracle of modern science, into almost perfect recordings. The foundation covered its costs by leasing these to record companies and clearing the rights with the singers or their survivors.
    I sat alone in an office while across the hall the sound engineer, the pop-eyed, silent but hyper James Hill, worked behind a heavy wooden door lined with what looked like foam-rubber waffles.
    On the third floor worked two young women called Maryanne Thomson and Ava Brent, who ran the audio library and print room.
    Downstairs was the domain of the Willhall family. Mrs. Willhall, whose first name was Queenie, answered the telephone and bossed around the porter, an old soul saved by