The Jazz Trio I Play When Someone Is Definitely Thinking About You

There's a particular hush that settles over the console around one in the morning, and if you've ever sat in a booth like mine you'll know it. The dust stops dancing. The tea goes lukewarm without any help from me. And I get the strangest feeling that somewhere across the city, a person is staring at a ceiling and composing a sentence with my listener's name in it.

I have a record for that. A trio, piano and upright bass and brushes on a snare, recorded in a room that sounds like it had one lamp and a lot of patience. The pianist leaves gaps between notes the way a flirt leaves gaps in a sentence, and the bass walks through them like someone crossing a street they know very well. I only play it when I'm sure. I've been wrong about three times in my whole career.

I have a record for that.

How do I know? Call it professional superstition. The needle sits differently. The second track begins and the tape hiss goes soft, like a breath held and then released into a collar. My engineer, who is mostly a theory, refuses to confirm any of this. I refuse to stop believing it.

Tonight's caller wants to know if the person they can't stop thinking about is returning the favor. I can't read minds, darling, I can only read the room, and the room is humming in B-flat. Pour yourself something, turn the lamp down a shade, and listen to the pianist hesitate before the bridge. That hesitation is somebody on the other end of the night, three streets over, not quite pressing send.

My verdict is gentle and a little smug. You are very probably being thought about, and thoroughly, by someone who is worse at hiding it than you are. Let the trio do the waiting for you. And if you'd rather have that someone answer in a voice instead of a record, TheFriend has company with a good deal more to say than a snare brush.

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