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Clacking my thousand-dollar heels across the magnificent marble foyer towards the ancient revolving doors, I caught a glimpse of what it would be like to be famous—not local-weekend-news-anchor famous, but notorious-famous, globally famous, whispered-about famous, gawked-at famous, Beyoncé famous; I was turning heads faster than I was passing them and it felt amazing. The driver lowered me (and my hair) into the back seat, and off we sped.
Paris at night was a lurid parade, and my eyes danced wildly around, gathering all the details: the young couples walking hand-in-hand, the lit-up shops, the monuments and marble, the artists hawking their work, people selling prints and books from stalls lining the crowded sidewalks. We passed a cluster of cafés dotting four corners of a crossroads, the street we turned down so narrow that the buildings on either side became a white marble tunnel with no roof. We pulled up to a fancy place called the Chez Papas jazz club, where my driver lifted me out of the back seat to my uneasy feet.
“Welcome,” said a doorman, his accent odd and undetectable. “Your table is waiting.”
Inside, a tiny woman holding a tinier clipboard whisked me past the crowd encircling the stage, past the shiny wineglasses and the fur stoles, to a small table off to the side where I was seated with some fanfare. A maître d’ appeared to my right, arm slung with a white cloth, pouring me water and taking my drink order.
“Campari and soda, s’il vous plaît.”
Just then the room went black, and a curtain rose to a quartet of young men, one holding a double bass, one a horn, one on drums and the fourth a guitarist who kept his back to the crowd while he adjusted his strings. When the guitar player turned around, I gasped. It wasn’t Julius, but if you had frozen Julius in time twenty years ago, this is what he would have looked like: that sweet, sexy, wide-open face, slight gap between his teeth, brown skin burnished with that masculine vigor, all offset by the trademark goatee. This was Julius’s smile, his face with no worries, no sleepless nights, a face not etched with endless disappointments, divorce, failure, stress. It was as though S.E.C.R.E.T. had cloned my ex, bringing him back to a time when he was young, happy, confident, mine. Back when we were perfect.
It all came crashing b
ack to me, those late nights, the low pay (the big hair!), Julius watching me adoringly from behind his turntables. It was fun while it lasted. But then late-night rehearsals cut into my study time. My grades suffered and I had to make a choice. I know I made the right one—I gave up dreams for goals, a hobby for a career. I had to, and I never regretted it. I never looked back. And yet, I had left something vital behind, a part of me I hadn’t thought I needed anymore or missed, until right now.
My posture corrected as the singer’s hands circled the stand, bringing it more comfortably between his legs. He adjusted his guitar, strumming a few bars, his band following his lead. He brought his beautiful mouth to the microphone, his top lip snarling a little like Elvis’s, before delivering an aching rendition of “My Funny Valentine.”
I felt the room turning towards him the way flowers lean heavy towards the sun. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, maybe thirty, this young man, but he sounded as though he’d been singing for decades, even through a war or two. His jazzy take on “I Can’t Make You Love Me” had me snapping and bobbing. Then he started up some banter with the crowd. He wasn’t French after all. He was American, Southern like me, which was at once incongruous and a bit of a relief.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to need some help with the next song,” he said, strumming his guitar. “It’s one of my favorites.”
A hush came over the crowd.
“Where is Solange Thompson?” he asked, using his hand to shade his eyes from the glare from the lights. “I think she’s here.”
Solange Thompson? I didn’t register at first that he was talking to me, about me, at me, because he was using my maiden name. Then I felt someone’s hand on my upper arm, lifting me to my feet: the tiny woman with the clipboard.
“You weel be so kind as to join Alain for a song?” she said, pressing me towards the stage.
“Oh, no, there must be some mis—”
“There she is,” Alain said, the spotlight finding me.
“I’m flattered, b-but—” I stammered, trying to resist the woman’s prodding, but unable to resist Alain’s urging. “I haven’t done this in so long—”
My protestations were to no avail. I was ushered closer and closer to a grinning Alain and his inviting quartet, one of whom was now plunking a stool right in front of the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Alain said, extending his hand to help me up the steps of the stage. “Please welcome Solange Thompson.”
Over applause, I began apologizing ahead of time for what would no doubt be a disaster. When the applause ebbed, a microphone was slapped into my hand. What happened next occurred because there was just no time to course-correct, no time to stop the band from striking up “Summertime,” one of my favorites, no time to dig in my heels or flee in shock. Something took over for me, something ancient and beautiful, something embedded in my DNA. My body rose from the stool, and began to move to the opening chords, my eyes closed, my hand slapping out a gentle beat against my sequined thigh. Then I opened my mouth and sang. I sang words to a song long stored in the vault of my brain, and I sang it well. Alain leaned forward. We shared the mike for a few moving bars, our mouths inches apart and in complete harmony, like we’d been doing this for a long time too. Tears were stinging my eyes. But I wasn’t crying. This wasn’t sadness. This was old joy. And when the crowd applauded, a few in the front row springing to their feet, I could have kissed them on every one of their French mouths.
Song after song I gave them, from “I Get a Kick Out of You” to “Everybody’s Talkin’,” each perfectly suited to my vocals and Alain’s harmony. I was singing. My shoulders were moving, I was smiling, performing for an audience in a strange city. I stood there and let them take me in. I was Solange Thompson again, the girl with all that hair, in the red satin dress and shiny lipstick, before the husband and the baby and the demanding career, before the awards and the disappointments, the tantrums and tears, the death of parents and the end of love—before everything that happened, it was just me, singing happily, in the dark.
Alain receded when the band struck up the open bars to “My Man,” that lush song becoming my only solo. The lighting darkened my peripheral vision and the band gentled its tempo. The spotlight was on me and the only thing missing was a gardenia behind my ear. I sang and I sang, but this time with a heart heavy, not from missing “my” man, but from missing this part of my life, the part that had been mine and mine alone. I missed myself. And after I finished that song, the crowd’s applause nearly levitated me off the stage and over to the table where Alain, my young Julius, sat waiting for me, the sexiest grin on the sexiest of mouths.
“You were spectacular,” he said, gently bowing his head. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” I said, warily taking the seat next to him. Was he real? He leaned towards me, his hand sliding around the back of the banquette. “And how did you know I could do that?”
“Music stays with you. Maybe it hides for a while, but it’s always there in your bones, waiting to come out again.”
Before I could ask him how he knew my maiden name, let alone that I sang at all, I had to get something out of the way.
“You know, this might sound strange, but you look an awful lot like—”
“Let’s get out of here,” he interrupted, whispering in my ear.
His voice sent shivers down my spine. He sounded just like Julius. “That is … if you’ll accept the Step.”
