The Last Gig Ke Astor Played (standard:drama, 4579 words)
Author: Bobby Zaman	Added: Jun 20 2002	Views/Reads: 3657/2853	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Done with the trumpet, on to a woman.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

“Wrong one,” the figure chuckled and in a flash drew back his hand and 
thrust it out again.  This time Ke thought he’d taken a woman’s hand.  
“I reserve this one for the sensitive type.”  Ke heard the dash of 
mockery and wanted to swing a fist in its direction. 

“Don’t be so stubborn,” the figure huffed.  “It doesn’t become a good
musician.” 

Ke used the figure’s arm to stand and pulled out his hand from its
persistent clutch. 

“How do you intend to play the best gig of your life with such defiance
in your blood?” the figure insisted.  “In this state even I could blow 
you away.  Hah! No pun intended.” 

Ke’s father also had a dreadful sense of humor.  He thought Ke was
playing an April fool’s gag the day Ke trickled silently into the 
living, backpack drooping from shoulders and trumpet hooked on a 
finger, and revealed his plans to seek melody, fame, and livelihood up 
north.  While Reverend Astor guffawed and slapped his thighs, Ke leaned 
over, kissed his mother, reminded his father it was the middle of June 
and walked out.  He missed the dumbfounded look on his father’s face, 
or his mother scuttling across the living room to comfort her husband. 

“You can act like a child and ruin your career, or you can be an adult,
a man, and go out there.  What’ll it be?” the figure reprimanded, and, 
if Ke could see him, stood with fists locked at his hips in a stance 
that wanted only those answers that would satisfy it. 

Ke searched for a face but his defeated pupils allowed nothing more than
blur and darkness.  Electricity had been permanently cut off after his 
delinquent bill lay on the bedside table for four months. 

“You, gone,” Ke whispered. 

The figure snickered.  “That’s not happening.” 

“I’m tired.  Leave me alone.” 

The figure let out an irritable grunt.  “You are a child! Whimper,
whine, and complain, that’s all you people know how to do! Sickening! 
You should think of such matters before wasting others’ time.  
Inconsiderate is what you all are! I’m ecstatic that I belong to no 
part of it.” 

The figure darted back to the ledge and sat down. 

“No part of it?” Ke squinted hard to try to make out a shape or form,
anything.  “You are part of it, whether you like it or not.  I don’t 
care how invincible and untouchable you think you are.  You’re part of 
everything.” 

“This conversation ends here.  I’ll meet you downstairs in five minutes.
Don’t be late.” 

Ke heard a swish followed moments later by two heavy clops on the
pavement outside. 

“You could easily not exist as far as I’m concerned,” Ke said.  The
figure snickered. 

“Oh just because you believe there’s nothing up there, you think there’s
nothing here or underneath either.  Wrong! You can sing and play to the 
sky all you want, boy, all you’ll get is rain and bird shit, if you’re 
lucky.  See what you got from below.  Life itself!” 

Ke imagined his father having this dialogue with the figure. 

“What do you hide from? Why don’t you come around during the day,” Ke
asked, his trumpet hanging from one hand and the other dug in his 
pocket.  He could feel the figure next to him.  “You’re so goddamn 
confident and running your mouth all the time.” 

“People, they’re stupid, the whole lot of them.  And they bother the
life out of me with their trivialities.  Moaning and complaining and 
groaning about every little thing.  That’s exactly what I hide from.” 

“That’s your excuse?” 

“You are an adamant, insolent human being!” 

The stage lights were low at the Moonshine Lounge.  It was a change Ke
didn’t mind.  A few doe-eyed couples were holding hands and murmuring 
in the booths, and the single men kept the barstools warm. 

Angel was working.  Ke looked for her as soon as he walked in.  He knew
her corner and found her with stressed out eyes and puffing on a 
cigarette. 

“Not tonight Astor,” Angel exhaled a mist and dropped the cigarette to
the ground and crushed it with her heel. 

“I didn’t say anything,” Ke pleaded. 

“That’s just the way I like it.”  She hoisted her tray above her head
with one hand and made her way across the room. 

Ke took his usual seat at the farthest booth from the entrance and
quickly downed three bourbons.  He felt the figure slide in across from 
him. 

“Pursuit of the fairer sex not your thing either,” the figure taunted. 
“No shame.  I knew that from the beginning.  You didn’t seem like the 
type that could hold a woman’s attention, especially with your 
horrendous eyesight.  Women can’t stand it when men don’t look at them 
and insist that they are.” 

Angel walked by.  Her scent lingered.  She went to her corner and lit
another cigarette and read out her next round of orders to the 
bartender in a monotone. 

“Kills you to know you can’t ever have her, huh?” the figure nudged Ke
in the shin.  “You know what kills me?” 

“I’m not interested.” 

“I don’t care.  What kills me is to see what pathetic pieces of gutter
waste a man makes of himself over women.  It shouldn’t kill me, not in 
the literal or for that matter in the ascetic sense either.  You see 
how it’s distracting you from even acknowledging the fact that someone 
sitting across from you is speaking directly to you.” 

“You’re giving me a headache.  I have to set up.”  Ke got another
bourbon and joined the orchestra. 

The first half went well, uneventful. 

The winds chugged along blaring out a good number of unified crescendos.
 One piano solo tinkled in between, a rendition of a Gershwin aria, and 
a single clash-banging percussion accompaniment, a change from previous 
ones that lasted up to ten minutes and left eardrums throbbing up and 
down the booths. 

Ke felt good about his playing and for the duration forgot about the
figure.  He thought of Angel during his solos.  He made up his mind to 
dedicate a piece to her someday.  If she took offence, so be it.  If 
she accepted it with nothing but contempt and sarcasm, that would only 
be normal, and if she liked it, well, that wasn’t likely to happen. 

“Astor, you go on like this every week,” Angel placed beer bottles on
her tray and blew smoke at Ke.  “I told you a million times, you’re not 
getting any from me.  You’re nowhere near my type.  You’re bald and 
you’re shorter than me.” 

Ke sipped a new bourbon on the rocks and said, “That’s not what I want. 
I want to write something for you and then play it in a set.” 

“Real flattering, Astor.  Besides, that’s what they all say before
reaching for my ass.  I wouldn’t go near a musician with a ten foot 
pole.” 

The figure appeared behind the bar and faced Ke. 

“You amaze me,” the figure whispered, “Two years you’ve been after this
wench and all you get is blatant rejection, not to mention utter 
disrespect, yet you come drooling like a dog week after week.” 

“None a your business.” 

“It is my business.  I can’t have you falling apart over some
liquor-toting harlot.  There’s a lot to be done yet.” 

“What if I said there isn’t a goddamn thing left between us?” 

The figure laughed and drew Ke’s attention to his trumpet.  “You see
that beautiful, golden instrument which you so adore? Poof! It will be 
no more if you think of propagating any chic designs in that idle skull 
of yours.” 

“Quit with the big words, it’s annoying and you sound like an idiot.” 

The figure grumbled and didn’t say anything to Ke. 

“I’ll just get another one,” Ke declared jabbing a finger where he
thought the figure was standing. 

“Not that easy.  They’ll all disappear as soon as you touch them.  And
spite won’t help things either, I guarantee you.” 

“You don’t scare me,” Ke retorted. 

Angel wandered back and set down her tray, and lighting a cigarette
said: 

“Why do guys have to be so weird?” 

This was the echo in Ke Astor’s head: “I wouldn’t go near a musician
with a ten foot pole.”  Great title for a song.  Even better as a move 
to make...just to be with her? Not a bad reason. 

It wasn’t naiveté or starry-eyed succor to be the likes of Dizzy
Gillespie that had propelled Ke toward the larger cities of the north 
that were accepting to genres of music otherwise scoffed at and called 
names in mainstream southern life, once upon a time.  No.  It was that 
ever-elusive seducer of mortals: adventure.  Ke fell headfirst into 
that old whirlwind, that search for perpetual newness in everything, 
and music, music was the conduit, the slam-bang rat-tat toot-tootin’ 
ditty after ditty that kept his feet hopping and skipping, heart 
bouncing and throbbing out the door and into a different whirlwind, 
that, wait a minute, had also run its course! Music was never supposed 
to go away.  Well, so aren’t parents. 

Give it all up for a woman? 

Of course. 

Empires have fallen to the same cause. 

Ke couldn’t think of a better reason to give up playing.  The figure
whipped up in front of him.  It knew what Ke had thought and summoned 
his mind to do.  It wasn’t happy. 

“For that tart!” the figure sneered.  “For that tart! Losing all your
marbles at the time, boy, aren’t you!” 

Ke turned, and walking back to the orchestra said over his shoulder,
“Show me a better tart and I’ll do it for her too.” 

He heard breaking and shattering behind the bar and saw the confused
bartender search with incredulous eyes at what made a glass jump off 
the bar top, fall to the floor and burst to pieces.  The figure stood 
in the center while the bartender made circles around it.  Ke shook his 
head and picked up his trumpet. 

Twenty years from the time that he left Biloxi following pipe-dreams of
musical fame and fortune, turning his back to his preacher father’s 
dropped jaw and blind mother’s adoration of her preacher-husband, Ke 
Astor made this decision and executed it solemnly at the Moonshine 
Lounge.  No, seas didn’t part, the sky didn’t crack, but it was 
decision that made him smile with more contentment than that summer day 
that he boarded a northbound Greyhound and said goodbye to Biloxi, MS. 

The second set was different than usual, still uneventful.  They played
slower numbers and Ke, for a change, belted out more unexpected solos.  
He felt the figure lurking and hovering all around, dipping and ducking 
between dancing couples, zigzagging fiendishly within the orchestra, Ke 
felt the figure sitting on the piano with eyes burning into the back of 
his neck, and with blazing irritation knew it was continuously hounding 
Angel all over the club. 

“I don’t understand what you see in her,” the figure settled next to Ke
at the bar after the set.  “And to give up your craft for her.  She’s 
ordinary, always smells of smoke, talks nothing like a lady, and has 
bad teeth.  Ah, yes, then again, you’re blind as a bat.” 

Ke’s face assumed a puzzled frown. 

“I know,” the figure snapped.  “I know very well what ludicrous plans
you’ve made.  I’m ten steps ahead of you at all times.” 

“I don’t want to play anymore,” Ke poured bourbon down his throat,
chewed on the ice, and mumbled.  The figure bolted to its feet and 
grabbed Ke’s shoulder. 

“Don’t be stupid,” the figure hissed.  “You have to play!” 

“I don’t have to do anything.” 

“You’ve completely lost your imbecile mind! Joking and talking like some
beatnik poet is one thing, stupidity is quite another! It’s 
unacceptable.” 

“No more playing.  You can have the trumpet.” 

“I have more than that.” 

“Not my problem you picked a man that doesn’t care about a thing.” 

The figure wheezed.  Hot air streamed out of his nostrils.  Ke hadn’t
felt this relaxed in a while. 

“Now you tell me!” the figure growled like a spurned lover.  “After all
this time.  After all the effort I’ve put into you.” 

“I didn’t invite you, pal, you found me, came to me, whatever the hell
you wanna say.  I was doing fine on my own.” 

“And I was going to make sure you had the talent to do that for a long
time.  You betrayed me.  Doing fine on your own! I don’t remember you 
getting a single gig till I showed up.  Of course not! You were too 
drunk all the time and couldn’t get in to any clubs.  I didn’t get what 
I wanted, and I’ve done everything that’s expected of me so far.” 

Ke rubbed his eyes and stared blankly, a boyish smirk unmoved along his
lips.  “You trusted a musician, and you never shut up.” 

Angel walked up to her corner cursing and sputtering and brushing the
palm-sized blotch on the front of her skirt.  She called to the 
bartender for napkins. While she waited she lit a cigarette. 

“What happened?” Ke asked handing her napkins. 

“This place is full of jerks is what happened!  Billy, I need more
napkins! Brand new fucking skirt!” 

“Call it a night.  I’ll walk you home,” Ke offered. 

Angel clutched a few crumpled bills and waved them at no one in
particular.  “Lousy twenty-dollars in tips and a ruined skirt! I call 
it a night and I don’t eat this week.” 

The whole world seemed to be reading Ke Astor’s mind.  Angel’s palm
sprang up like a catapult before Ke made a sound. 

“Don’t,” she said, “Last thing I need is for you to offer me money.” 

Ke let Angel breathe for a few moments before speaking. 

“I won’t offer you a thing,” Ke softly chimed, trying to be as
comforting as possible; the bourbon had added a faint slur to his 
words, but he held ground and got the sentences out.  “All I want is to 
go along with you.” 

“No you won’t,” the figure interjected.  “We have a lot of talking to
do.  This is not something you just blow off and walk out on, and that 
too with some disrespectful, foul-breathed harlot!” 

“I’m not going home with you, Astor,” Angel insisted, “Get that through
that trumpet-honking brain a yours.” 

“You see, even she agrees” the figure noted. 

“Not my home.  I’ll walk you to yours,” Ke said. 

“I live on the other end of town, it’s more than a walk,” Angel replied
putting out her cigarette. 

“Fine.  A train ride will do me good.” 

She looked suspiciously at Ke.  “You’re gonna take a train ride all the
way across town ‘cause it’ll do you good?” 

“Well, the company won’t be a bad thing either.” 

“I can take care a myself.” 

“I know.  See it as a favor to me.  You’re letting me walk with you.” 

Angel shuffled through her purse for her lighter, another cigarette
promptly having made it to and dangling loosely between her lips.  Her 
hand found what it was searching.  Out came a shiny, silver – or maybe 
chrome-plated – Zippo, and she began puffing. 

She said: “You try anything funny and I got enough mace to blind you for
life.”  Ke squinted at the irony. 

He felt the figure prancing around like a restless child during the walk
to the train station.  Inside the train, he knew the figure was equally 
fidgety moving from seat to seat, standing, hanging from the handrails, 
pacing up and down the aisle, and glaring at Ke at every stop.  At 
Angel’s station the figure sprang out and got in Ke’s face. 

“I don’t care if you can’t see me! About time you got out,” the figure
cried. “Couldn’t take the stench of urine much longer.  Now hurry up 
and get the princess home so we can talk.” 

Fire touched the end of a fresh cigarette and Angel looked at Ke, for
the first time in two years, with curiosity. 

“You yap a lot at the bar.  Why so quiet now?” Angel asked. 

“I’ve made a decision,” Ke answered.  “No more playing for me.” 

The figure shook with rage and Ke felt the steam flowing out of the
figure’s nose and ears. 

“Why not?” said Angel. 

“Don’t care for it anymore.  Been doing it all my life.  Time to do
something new.” 

The figure snarled: “You’re old, you’re tired, and you’re goddamn blind!
Nothing new is going to work for you! And you’re a cheater and a liar!” 


Angel lived on a street with no more than ten houses.  No lights were on
in any of the homes, except hers, which was at the end of the row from 
which point began fields that went on for miles. 

“Damnit,” Angel exclaimed, “I hate when I leave the lights on all day.” 

“Good safety measure,” Ke added, “Looks like someone’s home.” 

“There won’t be for long if I can’t pay the light bill.”  Then, suddenly
remembering her unkind shift, “Twenty lousy dollars! The hell am I 
gonna do with that?” 

They walked up to the her house and Ke, sticking to the condition, and
knowing very well that Angel would follow through and unload a whole 
can of mace in his face, stood at the bottom of the four steps that led 
up to her front door.  Angel took out her keys and turned around. 

“Are you for real, Astor?” Angel asked in almost a melody.  “ ‘Cause if
this is just a routine, then you’re doing a heck of a job with the 
bullshit.” 

Ke leaned against the railing and looked at the ground.  He had known
about three kinds of women in his life.  There was his mother, who 
would take a bullet for her man.  Then there were cocktail waitresses, 
dancers, singers, and strippers, and on those occasions when he played 
the high-dollar clubs in Vegas or Miami, the kind that got into 
limousines with men that put bullets in other men’s skulls and adorned 
themselves and their women in Armanis and minks. 

“Two years of bullshit is a lot, don’t you think?” Ke replied bringing
his face up. 

Angel stared at the pitch-dark expanse of fields. 

“I used to love running through here,” she said pointing down an
imaginary path aligned with her finger.  “For hours at a time.  No 
cares what’s going on.  Drove mom nuts but it was the best time.  
Nothing to do at home, you know.  Only child.” 

“Me too.” 

Angel turned to Ke, surprised.  “I’d think you had a litter of brothers
and sisters.  The way you talk, so confident.  You had to have grown up 
in a house with people always talking.” 

“I did.  But mostly it was my old man.  He was a preacher, and loved the
sound of his own voice.” 

“Your mom?” 

“Loved the sound of his voice too.” 

Angel giggled.  It was the first time in two years that something Ke
said had made her respond with something other than outright dismissal. 


“I wanted to get the hell away from it,” Ke mused looking in the
direction where Angel had pointed.  “And I did.  Don’t know what I ran 
away to.  But not bad for a backwoods hillbilly to be playing all over 
the country with the best in the business.” 

Angel looked Ke in the eyes.  He couldn’t reciprocate. 

“You’re really not gonna play the trumpet anymore,” she said. 

“Never again.” 

“Why not?” 

“I want to do something different while I still have time.” 

“You’re a young guy, Astor, you got lots of time.” 

“Not forever, though.  I don’t have forever.” 

Angel noticed something.  “You left your trumpet at the club?” 

Ke realized the instrument wasn’t dangling from his finger as it always
did to and from gigs.  He had always been quick to get paranoid about 
forgetting the trumpet anywhere, and would curse himself silly until he 
had his hand on it again.  Tonight he hadn’t missed it.  Hadn’t noticed 
that for the first time in twenty years, he had been separated from the 
trumpet for more than twenty minutes, and it didn’t bother him anymore 
than an itch on his scalp. 

“Looks like I did,” said Ke, smiling and looking at his hands.  “Not
gonna be using it anyway.” 

The figure went kicking, fuming, and flailing arms and legs up and down
the street.  For a quick moment Ke’s vision cleared as if someone had 
turned a knob or wiped layers of dirt off his eyes, and he got a clear 
look at Angel at the top of the steps. 

“I told you not to think nothing funny,” Angel warned when she saw Ke
staring hard at her. 

Again, Ke’s eyes went blurry and Angel meshed into the haze.  He nodded
obediently and waved goodbye.  Starting along the street and bound once 
more for the train station and the long ride home, Ke felt a rush next 
to him, and the figure was back. 

Angel’s voice called out.  The figure dashed to the other side of the
street. 

“Astor,” Angel called, “No music? Ever again?” 

Ke faced her and put up his palms in surrender. 

He said: “As long as I live.” 

He could make out that she was still at the top of the steps.  The door
was open now and light poured out from inside the house and draped her, 
which to his blurred sight had the appearance of a full-body halo. 

“Come to the club next week anyway,” Angel smiled, “We’ll talk.”  She
walked in and shut the door before Ke could speak. 

“Talk.  Hot air.  Bad breath,” the figure grumbled standing over Ke with
arms stretched and pressed against the window of the train compartment 
and fingers drumming urgently, impatiently.  “I knew there was a reason 
I despised that wench.  You’ll regret this.  So now you’ll go with the 
silent treatment? Ignoring doesn’t mean I’m not here.  Stubborn, 
insolent, mush-brained child is what you are! Here!” 

The train came to jerking halt.  Ke felt the figure leave and something
heavy descend on his chest.  It didn’t suffocate him; quite the 
contrary.  He felt light, breathed easier; he felt new and refreshed. 

The PA cackled and a high-pitched voice announced that the train would
be delayed due to technical problems.  The doors opened.  Ke stepped 
out.  He passed the front of the train where a group of mechanics was 
scratching their heads and searching the tracks.  The nose of the train 
had a triangular inward dent and the front shield was smacked with a 
crack that had spread out like a cobweb.  Ke heard the train operator 
swear to the mechanics: “Someone, something got in the way and I hit 
it, I’m telling the truth.”  The mechanics went about scratching and 
searching, ignoring her. 

A bug-eyed, pimple-faced youth that hung around the Moonshine and helped
the orchestra wrap up after sets, picked up Ke’s trumpet and asked whom 
it belonged to. 

No one knew. 

The youth asked again and again, until the bartender yelled at him and
told him to take the damn thing and beat it; exactly what the youth was 
trying to prompt.  He sneaked out the back door and hurried to the end 
of the block.  Under a flickering streetlight he held the gleaming 
trumpet in front of him and looked admiringly at it.  He pressed it to 
his lips and puffed.  A quick bray flew out of the mouth of the 
instrument.  The youth felt a series of taps on his shoulder and 
whipped around.  As far as his eyes could see the street was draped in 
uncompromising darkness.  All the streetlights were out, apartment 
buildings loomed like sleepy-eyed giants, and cars evaporated from the 
middle of the road. 

“Don’t be startled,” said the figure.  “Nice trumpet.  Give me a
shoulder, will you? Just hit the life out of my knee.  Darn city trains 
these days, no respect for anyone getting in or out.” 


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