My brother shaped the note into a word. The note was round and open, then my brother took it to the end. He closed it, and with a gliding passage he rolled into the next. He kept his eyes closed and held himself straight in the dim spotlight through the first bars of the song. He could not have chosen better light for his face, or kinder light. He could not have wrapped his hand around the microphone with greater tenderness. On the microphone, my brother’s fingers looked affectionate. Nicholas appeared to love the microphone, to love the song, each note that he was making, every sound that he produced, and even in his childhood, my brother could not have posed himself to look so like himself.

I may have been the last person in the bar to realize what Nicholas was doing with the song. He was not singing as himself. The voice that came out of him was not his. It was the voice of the famous singer who had made the song her own, her voice, her sound, that was coming from my brother. It came from within his body, from his chest, from his throat, and my brother shaped the singer’s voice, without flaw, with his lips. In the purity of tone, in every stress laid on a lyric, in the tension of a note’s duration and the snap with which the long-held note would break, Nicholas captured the singer’s ways unerringly.

It was too perfect. If I had closed my eyes I would not have known that I was hearing imitation. Nicholas sang without the standard excess of impersonation. He did nothing more or less than sing exactly like the singer.

It was unplayful.

He could have overdone the singer’s ways. He could have given the wink that makes impersonation safe. He had the chance to turn the song to parody, to give relief, and he did not give relief. When he came to the final note, the one that soars, he held it, held it some more, and then he let it fade as it fades in the recorded version of the song.

He had even taught himself to do that.

In my experience, in piano bars, when someone sings outstandingly, he is asked to sing again. But no one wanted more from Nicholas. There was no applause. I am sure he must have known that there would not be.

When he sat down, people were staring at him. Even though I knew that they were not, I felt that they were staring at us both.

I felt stared at.

I thought about the time, the practice, that Nicholas must have gone to, to teach himself to sing so exactly like the singer.

I asked him why he had not sung with his own voice, like himself.

Nicholas gave me a look that told me I had missed something.