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Nina dropped out and let Abby take four choruses. When she came back she was playing Otis Spann’s hard-driving “Spann’s Stomp.” I wasn’t all that surprised that the other musicians were able to follow her so well. Unlike most rockers, jazz musicians know how to listen to each other. Still, how was she going to get out of this? I wondered. Nina must have had a plan because she said something to Abby, who relayed her message to the bass and drummer. After three more choruses, Abby dropped out with a flourish, followed by the drummer. That left Nina and the bass talking to each other, one taking the lead, then the other, and when Nina nodded, the bass dropped out and she retreated to the Goldberg, ending it with her right hand playing Bach and her left hand pounding out a blues rhythm.
A moment of silence was followed by loud applause. Nina waved at the audience, curtsied elaborately, and waved some more. She crossed the stage, stopping only to shake hands and to hug Abby. DeNucci returned to the stage, took up the microphone, and pointed at her.
“Miss Nina Truhler,” he said, and the audience applauded louder.
“We’ll be right back,” DeNucci added.
Nina shook some more hands while I watched from my spot at the edge of the floor. There was a lump in my stomach that floated up through my chest and lodged in my throat, making speech impossible. It wasn’t a hard lump, but soft and squishy, and it seemed to vibrate, causing my body to hum like a tuning fork. I recognized it for what it was. Pride. I was proud of Nina Truhler.
I continued to watch her. She gave me a half wave and a smile and I grinned in return. After a few moments, she detached herself from her admirers and attempted to make her way along the perimeter of the sunken floor to where I stood. However, before she could reach me, she was stopped by still another fan.
John Allen Barrett offered his hand and Nina shook it casually. Barrett said something and Nina laughed. Nina said something in reply and Barrett laughed. A moment of panic seized me, I don’t know why. The e-mail accused him of being a murderer but it couldn’t possibly be true, so why should I worry that he was chatting with my girl? Nina waved me over and I joined them, hoping none of the trepidation I felt had touched my face.
“Mac,” said Nina, as she slid a hand behind my neck. “Allow me to introduce Governor Barrett. Governor, this is Rushmore McKenzie.”
“I’ve heard that name,” Barrett said. “You’re an old friend of Lindsey’s.”
“I am.”
“There’s a story she told me about your name.” He turned toward Nina as if for confirmation. “He was conceived at a motel in the shadow of the Rushmore Monument when his parents took a vacation through the Badlands.”
She said, “But it could have been worse.”
“It could have been Deadwood,” they both said in unison.
“I definitely need new material,” I told them.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Rushmore.”
“Thank you.”
“Just call him McKenzie,” Nina said. “He doesn’t like Rushmore.”
“Who can blame him?”
Everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time at my expense.
“It is good to meet you,” Barrett said. “Lindsey said you were one of her most trusted friends from the neighborhood.” He took my hand and gazed directly into my eyes, and in that instant I felt as though John Allen Barrett had attended this ridiculous, self-indulgent ball for the sole purpose of meeting me. I couldn’t explain it. Or why I felt a pang of jealousy when he released my hand and directed his attention to Nina.
“What you played reminded me of the blues you’d hear in Chicago,” Barrett said, as if he was continuing a conversation already in progress.
“Some of it was,” Nina said. “Otis Spann and Meade Lux Lewis were from Chicago. Lewis used to play boogie-woogie piano at rent parties when he was a kid and Spann probably did, too. The first bluesman I played, though—Jay McShann—he came out of Kansas City in the thirties. Charlie Parker used to be one of his sidemen.”
“I didn’t know that.” Barrett spoke in a way that made me believe that freely admitting ignorance didn’t faze him a bit. It was a small thing, yet filled with courage, and suddenly Barrett seemed less wealthy, less intimidating, less like the improbable icon I had been researching all afternoon.
“I presume you play professionally,” Barrett told Nina.
“Goodness no,” said Nina.
“Yes,” said I.
“I used to play a bit when I was a kid,” Nina added. “Not so much anymore.”
“What do you do now?” asked Barrett.
“I have my own club.”
“Really? Where?”
“Rickie’s on Cathedral Hill in St. Paul.”
“I’ve been there,” Barrett insisted. “It has two levels, a kind of lounge on the first floor and a restaurant on the second.”
“That’s right,” said Nina. “You should come again. We’ll take good care of you.”
“I have an idea. I have a radio program for an hour on WCCO Friday mornings. I’m going to give you a call—not this week, but the next. We’ll talk about your club on the air.”
“That would be wonderful.”
Barrett smiled at Nina like a doting father praising his child. I watched him smile. His unexpected interest in Nina reminded me of something—a sentence, a phrase, a fragment of words that I had heard or read when I was younger. Except it stayed tantalizingly out of reach and I gave up the struggle for it, and then there it was, a line of Wordsworth from a long-ago English Lit class:
That best portion of a good man’s life; His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love . . .