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The baby grand piano stage-left in the picturesque jazz club off the Chicago Loop had a chipped D-flat/C-sharp key. In all her years of professional jazz piano, Angela Montague had never seen anything like it. The jagged and strange black key looked as though it had been chewed to bits along the base. Her index finger toyed along the sharp edges as the rest of her jazz band set up across the rest of the stage. This was it— their highest-paying gig of the entire year.
It was New Year’s Eve.
Her husband of twenty-two years, Felix Montague, was renowned as the top alto-saxophonist in the jazz-heavy Chicago area. He and Angie had begun this very jazz band twelve years before and had amassed critical success. None of them in the group was a millionaire, but none went hungry, either. It was a marvel to say that you made your living playing music. Each time the transfer came into Angie and Felix’s joint bank account, Angie wanted to call her father to say, “Take that.” He’d demanded that she major in something more sensible. Armed with only her love of music— and then, concurrently, her dramatic love of Felix— Angie had resisted.
And miraculously, she’d made it work.
Felix still had it at forty-seven years old. He had a strong, captivating face— a nose that curved to a point, thick eyebrows, and pointed cheekbones. Ordinarily, and also tonight, his cheeks and chin sported a thick scruff. He wore all black, as was his signature. When his blue eyes found hers across the glow of the baby grand, Angie’s stomach flipped backward.
The rest of the group was made up of a drummer, Eugene, who’d been with Angie and Felix from the start, along with a bassist, Autumn, who’d joined three years previous, plus a trumpet player, Tyler, and a trombonist, Jenny. Together, they were called the Lake City Rollers, a play on the band from the sixties and seventies, the Bay City Rollers.'
Felix, their leader, counted them off just before eleven p.m. After a flick of his finger, the six-piece jazz combo burst into a traditional jazz piece— “Mack the Knife,” made famous by Ella Fitzgerald. Angie’s wrists whisked up and down the keys; her fingers were loose and articulate as she plinked her way through the joyous tune. Already, she sensed that the audience adored them. Probably many of them had seen the Lake City Rollers in the past. People who liked jazz tended to seek out the same groups and lurk in jazz clubs such as this one. People often liked to hear variations of the same thing over and over again, if only to unwind and feel safe.
Angie didn’t mind that. She could understand it, even. She’d loved Felix Montague for twenty-three years and counting. Together, they’d shared the same rent-controlled apartment in Hyde Park since their marriage. They’d even raised their daughter, twenty-year-old Hannah, there.
It had been Angie’s dream to bring Hannah into the jazz ensemble after her graduation from music school. She’d been the most promising trumpet player in her graduating class and had excelled beyond all freshman and sophomores at the University of Chicago. Her abrupt departure from the university the previous autumn had cast a rift between Angie, Felix, and Hannah.
It wasn’t something Angie liked to think about often. It was just difficult, especially now, mere days after Christmas and the night before the New Year. Most other New Year’s Eve celebrations, Hannah had been stationed at the table nearest to Angie as she’d played in the ensemble. She liked to say that she wanted to have the best view of her mother’s fingers. “You have the most intricate parts,” Hannah had said. “I want to make sure I catch them.”
Angie allowed the music to fold over her, flow through her. As they played through “Stella by Starlight” and “Honeysuckle Rose,” she frequently forgot herself, closing her eyes to the swell of the music. When Felix announced that they would now have a countdown to midnight in the microphone, Angie nearly leaped with surprise. Had an hour passed by already?
“Ladies and gentleman, it’s nearly that time again.” Felix’s voice was almost like a crooner’s. He brought his arm out to the right of him, extending it toward the rest of the ensemble. The drummer placed the brush-drumsticks on the snare drum and shook them expectantly as Felix counted down. “Ten. Nine. Eight.” The rest of the crowd joined along with him. Angie’s heart shuddered in her ribcage.
Were they ready for another year? Could they do it? Even if Hannah never spoke to them again?
But suddenly, it was time. It was now midnight. Just as they had every other year, the Lake City Rollers burst into their version of “Auld Lang Syne” as the guests in the jazz club struggled to sing along. Over the years, people had really lost their grip on the lyrics.
They sang:
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?”
Angie mouthed through the words as tears welled in her eyes. When they finished the tune, she lifted her eyes expectantly toward Felix. Just like every other year, Felix jumped up from his chair and headed for her, ready for their New Year’s kiss. He stopped at the edge of the piano, dropped his head low, and said, “Happy New Year, Kid,” which was what he always said.
But when he leaned in to kiss her, something very strange happened.
His lips grazed across her cheek.
Her cheek.
Not her lips. Not his wife’s lips, a wife he’d loved for twenty-three years.
For New Year’s, a husband had given his wife a kiss on the cheek.
Angie shivered with the horror of it. She half-expected him to rear back, then correct himself with a kiss that rattled through her. But instead, he lifted up, turned back to the crowd, and delivered that glorious, shining grin of his. He lifted his arms on either side of him as the crowd roared joyously, most of them only just now coming up for air from their New Year’s kisses, the kisses that supposedly set the mood for the next three-hundred and sixty-five days.
Her husband had given her a kiss on the cheek.
The Lake City Rollers were paid to play until one-thirty in the morning, at which time the jazz enthusiasts of the city packed themselves into cabs and got themselves home.
As the audience dispersed, their drummer, Eugene, performed a little drumroll and then howled, “We did it, gang! Another year finished and to be logged in the books.”
Felix headed for Eugene. The two men high-fived joyously. Autumn removed her bass from her shoulders and rubbed the space where the strap had been. “I need a drink,” she said simply.
“I think we all do,” Tyler, the trumpeter, added.
“Hey, Billy! Can we get a round of champagne up here?” Felix called down to the bartender.
Moments later, Billy uncorked the champagne bottle and poured portions into flute glasses. Angie realized she hadn’t eaten anything since noon; the champagne would go straight to her head. Maybe she wanted that. When the group clanked their glasses together, Felix seemed to make eye contact with everyone in the ensemble except her, his wife.
What was going on?
“We did it again, huh?” Jenny smiled wide toward Angie, whose face probably looked shadowed and strange. “You killed it again, Angie. That solo in ‘Time for a Change’ blew me away.”
“She played it at home until my ears bled,” Felix informed Jenny.
Angie’s stomach dropped lower.
“You too good for practice time these days, Felix?” Eugene teased. Nobody seemed to notice that Felix had completely soured to Angie. They assumed he was only joking. It was Felix’s way.
“Who wants a cocktail?” Autumn asked excitedly as she whipped down the steps from the stage to the bar. “I’d kill for an Old Fashioned.”
“Me too,” Eugene called.
“Felix?” Autumn asked.
“Sure thing,” Felix replied.
Angie sipped her champagne and gathered up her piano music, most of which she no longer needed after so many years of practicing the same tracks. She placed her piano folders in her backpack and then walked down the steps, heading for the back closet. Once there, she spotted the package of cigarettes on top of Eugene’s drumstick case. Angie had never been a full-time smoker, but being in the music biz meant that she’d stolen a few here and there back in the old days. Just now, as stress made her heart beat skittishly, she yearned to reach for that pack and bring one to her lips.
What was it she’d told Hannah when she had caught her out back smoking? “You have to be responsible for your health. You’re the only one who has any say in how you live. And I want you to live a long time.”
A headache clouded Angie’s mind. She fell back against the wall and sipped the rest of her champagne flute. The sound of Jenny and Eugene celebrating curled down the hallway. This was her closest group of friends in the world. They practiced three times per week, for four hours each time, on top of two performances per week. Her social life lived and died with the jazz ensemble. She’d hardly lived a Friday or Saturday night off the stage in her entire adult life.
This meant that she had absolutely no one to speak to about her marriage— about the fact that this cheek-kiss seemed in line with several other strange factors in her recent relationship. Had it all begun when Hannah had dropped out of university and stopped taking their calls? When was the last time she and Felix had slept together? When was the last time they’d had a real conversation that had nothing to do with their musical careers? When was the last time she’d allowed herself to cry in front of him?
It was January 1st, which was meant to be a time of adventure, of new beginnings, of a fresh swell of energy. By contrast, Angie’s insides felt half-dead.
“Angie!” Jenny called from down the hall. “Get back down here! We need you.”
Angie puffed out her cheeks and returned to the party. Felix and Angie had been friends with the jazz club owner since the early nineties, which meant that they were allowed to stick around all night if they wanted to. The owner himself would be there with his wife and their dearest friends. The party would probably rage till dawn, maybe as some sort of promise to themselves that they never had to grow old, not really, as long as they pretended to be youthful.
Angie sat with Jenny, Eugene, Autumn, and Tyler as Felix spoke with the jazz club owner. Autumn crossed one slender leg over the other and pinged her thumbs over her phone screen, texting someone. Autumn was a bit younger than the rest of them, mid-to-late thirties or thereabouts, and usually gave the air that she wanted to be somewhere else. Angie wanted to scream at her, “Okay! Go wherever it is you want to be!” But naturally, she held it all in.
“I have to run to the ladies’ room,” Autumn announced as she jumped to her feet. She then sauntered away, curving her butt this way, then that as she went.
“It was a good performance,” Eugene said, slurring his words a bit.
“Yeah? You seemed to be having fun,” Jenny chided. “Picking up the tempo so fast on ‘So Blue.’ I was like, where is his head at?”
Eugene rolled his eyes. “I did not.”
“Did so.”
“Felix would have said something if I had,” Eugene returned.
“Felix is busy right now, but I’m pretty sure he’s headed back to this table to put you in your place,” Jenny said. “He’s done it before.”
Angie poured herself another glass of champagne and tried to drum up the courage to speak. She fell into conversation with both Jenny and Eugene about Jenny’s newfound love for dating apps and her assurance that “Really, you can find great dates after forty!” Eugene scoffed and said that he’d sworn off love a long time ago. Angie tipped the rest of her champagne down her throat and then shuddered to her feet. She really should have eaten something.
Jenny and Eugene were in the midst of an argument about the fool’s game of dating and hardly noticed Angie’s departure. She staggered toward the hallway and paused in the shadows. She’d heard something, something strange and sinister; a part of her knew not to get closer to the source of that sound. A part of her, maybe, already knew the truth.
“You don’t understand.” Felix’s hiss curled out through the crack in the doorway of the men’s bathroom. He no longer sounded like the crooner on-stage. Rather, he sounded panicked, like an animal backed into a corner.
“What don’t I understand?” The voice was Autumn’s. It was unmistakable.
“We have a good thing going here,” Felix continued. “The jazz ensemble has made more money in the past twelve months than ever before. We can’t just...”
“Come on, Felix. We both know this is your ensemble, not hers. There are other pianists out there.”
“That’s bad press, Autumn, and you know it.”
“Bad press? That a couple in the music business got divorced? Grow up, Felix. That story happens all the time. You know what you want. It’s right in front of you. Grow a pair and leave her. Let’s do what we always said we would. I love you. You know that I love you. Why would you give up on us? Why would you—”
But Autumn couldn’t say all there was to be said. Instead, Felix seemed to rush toward her. There was the sound of bodies pressed against the brick wall of the bathroom; there was the sound of kissing, real kissing— the kind of kissing that meant a new year had begun.
And Angie, her heart shattering into a million little pieces, could only make her way to her coat in defeat, grab her keys, and depart.
Apparently, her marriage was over. Felix just hadn’t told her yet.