The Songbook of Benny Lament - Amy Harmon Page 0,151

the municipal building with a fake flower and a receipt for a couple of wedding pictures on the courthouse steps. Then we grabbed a sandwich and arrived at the Regal just after noon.

Sound check was miserable. I hadn’t slept, my mouth was too sore to eat, and I couldn’t make it through a full show with one hand. My mitts had always been the size of ham hocks, but I’d grown into them over a span of years. The thick bandages on my left hand made it twice the size, and I had only hours until showtime. I made Esther cut off all her careful wrapping and put a single piece of tape over the stitches.

“It’s going to hurt,” she protested.

“I can play without one finger, but I can’t play without five,” I explained. “Not for an entire show, and not at the tempo we’re going to have to keep.”

The pain was biting, but the adjustment was worse. I kept trying to use a finger that wasn’t there, and it threw off my rhythm. My hands couldn’t do what my head said they could. I resorted to playing with three fingers on my left hand, keeping my stump and my pointer finger elevated above the others and just playing chords. I simplified every song, and Money picked up my slack, riffing where there was a hole and backing me up on my solos. It wasn’t going to be my best performance—hell, it might be my worst—but I was determined to get through it.

I wore a pair of black glasses to hide my eyes, a hat to shadow my face, and a thick layer of stage makeup to cover my bruises. The makeup made me sweat and it stung my eyes, making it hard to see the keys. It was probably better that way. The trick to not panicking was to not look at my hands and ignore the crowd.

It didn’t help that Sal sat in the front row, Theresa beside him, with the Tonys like mismatched salt and pepper shakers on either side. Theresa’s brother, Mike, and his wife were in attendance too, sitting with a whole line of mob guys and their big-busted girlfriends in the row behind Sal. Half of them had seen her perform the night before, and they were smitten. When we sang “Beware” Esther wagged her finger at them in warning, and they all laughed like they suddenly preferred lithe singers with perfect curls and very high heels. I was just grateful she couldn’t touch their hair.

“And how are you tonight, Benny Lament?” she asked, her hip popped in the glittery black dress she’d married me in only hours before.

“It’s a little hot in here, Esther,” I answered.

“It sure is, Benny.” She fanned herself like she was the reason.

“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” I asked, using one of our standard transitions.

“Well, I don’t know. What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking about something cold.”

“Your heart?” Esther asked, deadpan.

“Nah.”

“Your kisses?”

The audience hooted at her audacity.

“Now how would you know anything about my kisses?” I said, and Lee Otis played a little ba DUM DUM on his drums, underscoring the fact that it was a joke.

We launched into “Cold” like we’d done it a thousand times. “You’re cold. So cold, and I’m standing here all alone. Wishing that you’d come home. But you’re cold.”

I wasn’t cold. I was roasting. One song after another, I did my best to keep up, but it was Esther who carried us. Again. I was woozy by the end, heart pounding, hands sweating, eyes stinging, but as much as I wanted to finish, I was dreading the final song.

I didn’t want her to sing it.

Maybe it was Sal in the front row or the fact that Bo Johnson was alive and well and I was not, but when the spotlight dropped on Esther for “The Bomb,” I almost stood and pulled her back, the way I’d done the night we’d met, standing beneath the streetlight at the edge of Central Park.

“Before we go, I want to tell you a story,” she began. “The story of my father and my mother and me.”

Esther told the tale and sang the first verse while conducting the sighs and swells in the audience with her outstretched arms. I thought we had made it when we rounded the final chorus, and I held my breath through the last lines. When the spotlight suddenly shimmied away like a spooked cat, the audience gasped and my sweating hands slipped, glancing off