Requiem for a Realtor by Ralph McInerny Read Free Book Online

meantime he took a job as pianist in an orchestra that toured the provinces, playing at proms when kids still danced like human beings. All that collapsed in the late sixties, with everything else, and by then any thought of a career as a concert pianist had floated away on clouds of grass and coke. His agent found him work playing in bars for drunks and illicit couples. Nonetheless, at the piano, Willie gave it all he had. Finally, Wanda had heard him and their agents arranged a deal and he became the invisible partner in her performance.
    â€œMusic” was popular music to Wanda. She sang from memory rather than by reading the notes, and when they practiced it was a joy to develop the right arrangement for her. When he had it, she knew, and that was that. No need to explain to her the technicalities, which she wouldn’t have understood anyway. Wanda was in her early thirties when they teamed up; she might have been his daughter, but Willie made love to her on his keyboard while she entranced the clientele with her voice. He was invisible to the listeners, there at the piano, and he was invisible to Wanda as well. As often as not, she forgot to ask for a hand for her accompanist, and when she did, Willie had no illusions that his artistry was appreciated. He didn’t care. Wanda sang to the world at large, but Willie played only for her.
    On breaks, Willie went to the bar where he drank in anonymity. It was enough that Joe Perzel, the bartender, recognized who he was and put the tumbler of bourbon before him, one of the perks of playing. Wanda just disappeared. After they got booked into the Rendezvous, after they became a permanent fixture there, she got a dressing room where she could rest between sets.
    Everyone fell in love with her; that went without saying. For women, she was the torch singer they had dreamt of being, for men she was the woman of her songs, tragically in love, filled with longing, pleading for their response. Willie understood this. It was his own reaction to her singing. Wanda was an earth mother, eager to take you in her embrace. At least while she sang. It seemed to have no carryover once the lights went up, the applause swelled, and she was off to her dressing room. She might have been a nun, so far as Willie could see.
    They practiced twice a week, at the Frosinone Hotel where he lived, not wanting to go stale, polishing up the songs that worked, adding others from time to time. Those morning sessions, when only his hands seemed sober, were golden times for Willie. He and Wanda were a team.
    â€œWillie, without you I would be nothing.”
    â€œYou could sing a cappella and hold the room.”
    â€œBefore we got together I was on my way to being a has-been.”
    â€œHey, you’re talking to one.”
    â€œYou’re so damned good, Willie. How did you end up like this?”
    â€œGood luck.”
    She kissed him on the forehead. He could have been a customer. If he had the gift of gab, he would have told her that he would rather play for her than give a concert in Carnegie Hall. That had once seemed a possibility, but to hell with it. He wouldn’t trade playing to a paid audience in evening clothes for sitting in the smoky dark, backing up Wanda as she took her listeners by the heart and gave at least a passing meaning to the basic sadness of life.
    â€œIs it the junk, Willie? You could kick it.”
    â€œEasily,” he lied. “Growing up consists of outliving the dreams of youth.”
    â€œWho said that?”
    â€œAren’t we alone?”
    Another kiss on the forehead.
    He did get off the hard stuff, settling for grass, half expecting her to notice and applaud. But he, like his piano, was an instrument, a means, background. Wanda was the star and Willie gloried in her borrowed light. And then along came Stanley Collins.
    If he had designed the kind of bastard he hoped Wanda would avoid, he couldn’t have come closer than Stanley Collins.