Paris Adieu #featured #Wattys2017

Chapter 9 - Paris Five Years Later

The Gramercy Park Hotel was supposed to be the kind of place where emerging artists get discovered. After I'd been there for three months, a hotel employee pointed out a hotel resident, Paul Shaffer, who was dining alone in the restaurant. He was the band leader on the Late Show with David Letterman. I introduced myself to him as the hotel lounge pianist, to which he grunted unintelligibly then went back to his meal.

My next brush with fame had been one evening about a month later, when a short guy in a hooded sweatshirt and messy, day-old stubble on his chin came up to the piano and requested Send in the Clowns, stuffing a dollar bill into my tip glass. I played it, no one clapped, and the guy continued talking with his lady-friend over in the corner, unmoved by my performance. Later in the restroom, the cocktail waitress asked me if I realized that had been Bob Dylan.

My final celebrity encounter at the hotel had been when the band Kansas came in late one Saturday evening and asked me to sit with them after my set was over. As a child, I'd loved their biggest hit song – one of the most soulful rock tunes of the 1970s. Anticipating being invited to record with them, or at least join their touring band, I was less than thrilled when one of the band members, after downing multiple bourbon shots, asked if I'd give him a blow job. My feelings for the music of Kansas scattered like so much dust in the wind. Sigh.

So when Milton Fine came in a few months after that encounter and asked to speak with me after I finished my first set of the evening, I was receptive. He was old and enormously fat, with hair growing everywhere but on top of his head. This kind of schlubby-looking guy in Manhattan frequently indicates two things – money and power.

I sat down with him, noting he'd hardly touched his drink, a sign he was there on business. He didn't waste any time getting down to it.

"Do you work here every night?" he asked.

"No, three nights a week usually."

"You like it?"

"I guess so –," I answered slowly to let him know that I was open to suggestion.

"You know The Blue Willow at the corner of Broadway and Bleecker Street?" he continued.

"You mean that restaurant with the high ceilings?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

I knew the place. It was exclusive, trendy, housed in a majestic, pre-war building. Its stunning exterior with twelve-foot high plate-glass windows had always intimidated me when I'd walked past. A Zagat review was posted right in the outer doorway.

"Yeah. I know it."

"I'm the owner."

My eyebrows shot up, but I held my tongue. Big deal. Restaurant owners were a dime a dozen in New York City. It was time to talk turkey.

"You want a job playing piano there?"

That was more like it.

"How many nights a week?" I asked, as a warm-up. What I really wanted to know was how much he would pay.

"I don't know. How many would you like?'

"I'd have to think about it."

"You do that."

"I've got to get back to work."

"I'll stay till your next break if you want to talk more."

"Okay," I said, playing it as cool as a cucumber. I'd absolutely love to have a job at a fashionable, super-trendy place like The Blue Willow. But the price needed to be right. I got up and walked away, my back straight as a ramrod. 'Always maintain straight posture at critical moments,' my grandmother had advised. This would be one of them.