“He sure is. I’ve sung there myself, a couple of times. You must be good. Vin’s tough to please.”

But he ran out of excuses to talk music with her, and she had her sister on her mind. He stopped bothering her.

Coming off-duty after thirty-six hours, aching for sleep, he sat on his bed and played the guitar, forcing himself to practice music in a way he had not done for a number of years.

He needed a piano.

That afternoon after a nap he took the elevated into Roxbury and got off at the Dudley Street station where a lot of colored people got off and walked down Washington Street until he came to the kind of place he was looking for, a sleazy ghetto joint with the windows painted red and black, the dead neon sign showing a poker hand and the name of the club in white tube glass, the Ace High. Night club was too grand a word, it was a cheap colored saloon, but in a corner was an upright.

He ordered a scotch-and-milk he didn’t want and carried it to the piano. The scratched Baldwin was out of tune but when he began to play, it was balm music. He forgot all about what Uncle Calvin would say when his boy came dragging home and told him he couldn’t make it like white folks. He even forgot about the dead Irish lady and her riddles.

In a little while the bartender came over. “Can I get you something else, friend?” he asked, glancing at the drink on the piano, which Spurgeon had barely touched.

“Yuh, I’ll have another.”

“You play real good, but we already got a piano player. Fella named Speed Nightingale.”

“I’m not auditioning.”

He brought the second drink and Spur paid a dollar-eighty. After that the bartender left him alone. At the end of the afternoon he walked away from the piano and sat on one of the stools at the bar and ordered another.

The bartender’s eyes flicked to the two glasses still on the piano, only one of them empty.

“You don’t have to order just to talk to me. Want to ask me something?”

“I’m a doctor over at the county hospital. I can’t keep a piano in my room. I’d like to come here and play a couple of afternoons a week, like I did today.”

The bartender shrugged. “No skin off me, I don’t give a damn.”

But it turned out that he did. He was especially fond of Debussy, which he appreciated with scotch-and-milk in lieu of applause. Spurgeon tried to pay for the drink but gave up gracefully; a professional never insults a music-lover.