Paris, 1962
Inside Bohemia After Dark, patrons squinted through an ashen haze at the nightclub's featured combo. Stained indigo under mood lighting, a quintet of animated ebony carvings whisper-shouted wordless, haunting languages. Cigarette embers winked; wine glasses clinked; heads nodded with appreciation as notes jitterbugged in a tempo hurricane.
The tenor man dismounted from the rollercoaster rush of a melody he'd ridden thousands of times before. Breaking from the pack, he prepared for a different kind of takeoff: one that transported him from whatever country his body inhabited in a solo cockpit powered by the next burst of spontaneity. His imposing stature swayed and features furrowed according to the whim of private muses; reflected stage beams twinkled in counterpoint from the vintage Buescher's bell.
Thirty-two bars later, when his craft descended to rejoin the familiar riff's formation, the bassist boomed, "Mesdames et messieurs, Dex Hawkins!"
Applause clattered over the final note and swelled with cheers before the wave receded into a conversational sea.
He was unhooking his sax when the fairest of rising suns smiled at him.
"Donna Lee," he heard in a fellow American's accent.
He hadn't expected the dialect to match a bijin in Italian couture.
Dex's porkpie hat bobbed to acknowledge the obvious. The closing number was a bebop chestnut, its title recognizable even by non-English-speaking instrumentalists from Milan to Stockholm to Osaka. His heavy brows slanted as if prompting the sun to introduce herself.
"That is my name," the young woman laughed. "You just played me."
Denise, his classmate from Newark Arts, stormy and sullen after their farewell date, had grumbled those last words. She was hoping for a ring; he was hoping for a stint with Miles or Mingus. Denise's successors nurtured similar aspirations, seeking commitments he couldn't give, something in him that already belonged to the future sounds in his repertoire and how he could shape them, make them his. Make them memorable long after he'd be jamming with Bird and Billie on the other side.
But this mirthful newcomer passed no such judgment. When their gazes interlocked during the second set, he felt drawn by her freshness amid a tableful of living chimneys. He liked the exotic cant of her eyes and the simple summer shift that revealed slender, lotus-pale limbs. He wished he had a clever remark to pull from his pocket and dangle like a bauble to hold her interest.
"Would you like to get some air? After you've had a drink and greeted the rest of your fans, of course. I'll be over at Duke's Place."
Stunned, he stared at her retreating form, a melting candle that burned no less brightly on its way to smoke and darkness. He drained the barmaid's proffered glass in three long gulps, snapped the latches of his case and bid his goodnights.
***
She was waiting outside, streetlamp-gilded and serene. "I'm glad you came."
They strolled toward the Seine, speaking only in smiles. Other women would be strip-mining him into mental exhaustion with questions and banalities. Even in laid-back Europe, where he enjoyed the enthusiasm for his art and ethnicity that was in shorter supply back home, he found the curiosity of his listeners overwhelming at times.
Where had she learned such a profound respect for his need to decompress after giving it all to the performance and the social dues that entailed? Or had her heritage planted the instinct at birth? Like a swimmer learning to float, he embraced this buoyant, shared predawn peace.
A velvet wisp slipped into his hand and nestled there. Side by side, they silently observed the river's wavering Rohrschach light. Her cheek tilted and warmed his sleeve with its trust.
The pair's return route detoured to an elegant double door, where she produced a key and beckoned him inside.
Dex admired the sheathed undulation ascending the stairs. Once he'd packed away the horn for the night, he never lacked opportunities when so inclined. There was the occasional sloe-eyed doxy whose kisses reeked of Gauloises and gin. Neglected wives who sought validation in shopping and serial seduction. The odd sophisticate on a weekend pass, notching socio-political bedposts.
He didn't want to treat this girl like another opportunity. Unlike the rest, she looked at him without presuppositions or measurements. He was the one who wanted to ask, delve into her thoughts, find out more.
Dex's behemoth build dwarfed the cozy apartment; minus her heels, his hostess' loftiest strand of hair barely cleared his diaphragm. He accepted a cocktail and the invitation of her single club chair. Debussy etudes wafted subliminally in the background.
Noticing there was nowhere for her to sit, he parked his drink, but before he could rise, she settled, light as thistledown, onto his lap.
"Do you mind?"
How could he? Her nearness, sweet with soap and wildflowers, brightened his pulse's tempo and filled him with dreams long abandoned for a solitary pursuit. The onyx eyes held lustrous constellations to discover; he wondered if they could show him the rainbow's end she chased.
Gossamer fingers feathered the life-worn cheeks and celebrated when their smile lines deepened. They raked the close-clipped, woolly temples and their hint of an early frost; guided the shadow closer.
Gleaning permission from the simmer in his sable gaze, she tentatively kissed the lips that coaxed magic from metal and cane.
The bewildering reality of her touch undammed the depths of his wish for it. He cradled her fragility and parted his embouchure to welcome the inquiring mouth and nurture it into a desert-flower bloom. Her tongue's gentle incursion sparked a tinderbox where her unsuspecting thigh rested.
Fingertips trilled over his shirt, plucked buttons, reprised glissandos on his skin. Despite their heat, Dex shivered.
Turning, she swept aside skeins of midnight silk and offered him her zipper. Cigar-stout fingers cinched. Peeled. Hesitated at a snowy strap that gated the path leading to her hips.
"Yes, please," she murmured.
His dexterity bared her back and spread like branches against a winter solstice sky. There was abundant clearance for hands to glide forward and gather supple demi-apples sprouting just for them. He could feel their faint lace-imprinted Braille, then more distinct, excited stems nudging his palms.
Emboldened, Dex eased a tactile sprawl over her tummy hollow; left on its own, the other hand rejoiced in gorging on a double feast. She unthreaded her arms from the dress and leaned back, proud of the sugar-and-cinnamon visuals she could offer him.
Under the folded garment, his fingers breached a waistline binding, sifted a downy tuft and toyed with its peeping keyhole curve.
When she whimpered and tried to reach for him, he warned her off with a growl. She'd given him a gift; he insisted on giving her one in return.
Her thighs obeyed his rough whisper and hiked the hemline higher.
Free to explore without resistance, he used the cadence of her sighs as a tracker to show him where to stalk, when to graze and how far to wade. The linen-draped hips churned, anointing his skill with buttery slickness.
After a maddeningly sustained fermata's tease, he burrowed his lips into her neck and flicked at her engorged octave key for uncounted beats.
Her breathing ceased ahead of the storm's landfall. Dex's oaken arm lashed her against his solid mass; the lightning-pale Y writhed as smashing waves threatened to tear her from him. Unintelligible, relief-valve mewls huffed and abated, but his fingers kept up their steady strum. By now a horn-hard voyeur, he guided his willing quarry through repeated releases that erased consciousness and shattered her stamina.
As she spilled over him like cream, he stirred their aftermath with a question from nowhere he knew.
She smiled into his shoulder. "We can be anything we want."
***
For a world-bending while, they were.
They picnicked in the Tuileries, marveled at Rodin and Orsay, soared to the Eiffel's crown. At the steps of Montmartre, he busked for astonished passers-by. They exchanged impressions of all they had seen, pleased at each other's insight and breadth of knowledge, without breaching more personal doors.
They told no one. No bandmates or friends diluted their far-flung moments.
The infrequent interludes in Dex's hectic score delivered less restful but wildly gratifying new meanings. Her hunger ambushed him in the city's random crevasses, where she unbuckled and lapped at his surprise until she could lick up its gushing gratitude. Limned in hedonistic moonglow, she'd frolic barefoot, lift a fountain-drenched dress to reveal her readiness, and let him pin her to the nearest alley wall as flailing heels goaded his ravishment.
On one of Dex's nights off, she had company.
"Remember when I said I needed two of me to handle you? Meet Astrid."
He remembered but had dismissed it as a jest. No novice to threesomes, Dex never imagined such an upgrade from his singular tawdry, drug-fueled experience.
Astrid spoke little English; her refined Scandinavian comeliness did the talking. Undressed, the two women were petite doppelgangers who gamboled like alabaster nymphs atop their pronged, obsidian altar.
Smooth-mounded Astrid straddled the saxophonist's jaw and squeaked with delight at his articulated kisses. Simultaneously, the Asian lily's tongue darted and spiraled his staff, evoking the deep rumble that heralded his pleasure and triggered her own.
The fellatrix, now his impaled equestrienne, bucked his desperation to its bristly hilt; thick licorice digits fluttered at her petals until she clenched him in abandon.
Fingered to a flush by Dex's other hand, Astrid shrieked her ultimate compliment and raised herself to let him view the girls' entwined lips and spider-delicate mutual touches. It was the catalyst that rocketed Dex into a blinding white-heat cosmos: the first of many that night.
***
After the one-off with Astrid, she still appeared sporadically at the club, not enough to let him get used to her.
Or was it she who didn't want to get used to him? Had the flight from whatever routine she'd escaped taken her too high?
There wasn't a goodbye, just an indefinite 'see you sometime' at the end of her courtesy explanation. Brief, affectionate, hopeful.
Then nothing – except for Donna 'Round Midnight, a ballad he composed and performed live but refused to record.
Montreal, 1987
The group's comeback album earned a rave from DownBeat and secured a slot on the summer's most prestigious tour. In the wings, Dex dodged the frantic shuffle and sighed. So many new faces had appeared on the scene since he'd emerged from three decades of self-exile. It was getting harder to keep up with them all.
He still wore his trademark porkpie hat, but a beard salted his chin, and it seemed he was the only object in the arena not imprinted with a corporate logo. Everything was monetized now, including art.
Admonished by some pipsqueak usher to put his lighter away, the big man pivoted and stormed toward the exit door—and a near-collision with a statuesque, violin-wielding mocha goddess.
His apologies crashed into her adoring, "Mr. Hawkins! Thank you for being one of my biggest inspirations," as she passed him.
The canted eyes and strong brows drowned him in dark recognition.
Nicotine withdrawal forgotten, Dex followed the mystery's stride and saw her stop center-stage, where she plucked and slashed with syncopated fearlessness and made the audience hers for life.
With trembling hands, he snatched a program. He had to know.
Naima Fraser, twenty-four... debut album... Daughter of Dr. William S. Fraser III of the Upper Manhattan Medical Group... and renowned pianist Aika Donalie (Montello) Fraser, who recently joined the Tri-State Philharmonic...
One name leaped from the page and drew two from his memory, the most enchanting syllables of a Paris encounter's first words.
Donna Lee.
Crushing disbelief mellowed to acceptance, then forgiveness.
"Mesdames et messieurs, Dex Hawkins!"
The lights dimmed; a bell ride pinged. His indigo-tinted form arched as one with the blue muse, launching into forgetful stratospheres in the arms of his lifelong mistress, thirty-two bars at a time.
