Page 62 of How NOT to Seduce a Rockstar
I stared at the stage, trying to picture it. “Wow,” I said. “That’s… tragic, poetic, intense.”
Tess nodded gravely.
“And super hydrating,” I added. “Can you imagine his skin after soaking in gin all night? The man probably died with the cleanest pores in Manhattan.”
Tess shot me a look like I’d just blasphemed in church. “Bea, please. We’re talking about a jazz legend, not a spa treatment.”
Then, after a beat, she muttered under her breath: “Although yes… his skin was probably like silk.”
The bass and drums cut out, leaving the stage to the sax player. A stocky man, his curly hair more gray than black, shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, blew into the horn like he was trying to jump–start a dead engine. The sound came out warm, raspy, frayed at the edges—as if only half the roughness was intentional.
It took me a few beats to recognize the melody:Like a Virginby Madonna, slowed and twisted until it sounded like a tropical funeral dirge.
Tess froze, her eyes wide. “Oh my God…” she whispered. “This is it.”
“Who, Madonna?”
“No, Bea… Lev Mirov reborn.”
35
The waiter dropped off two cloudy glasses of something the menu stubbornly insisted on calling atropical mojito. Mine tasted like dried mint and regret, Tess’s like watered-down rum dusted with powdered sugar.
Onstage, the saxophonist kept butcheringLike a Virginwith all the finesse of a butcher breaking down a carcass. Each note stumbled after the next without ever quite catching it. The drummer—a rail-thin kid who looked sixteen and already in debt—tried to follow along with the resigned air of someone who knew he’d never see a paycheck.
Tess was entranced, leaning forward like a fortune-teller peering into a cracked crystal ball. I, meanwhile, was still trying to figure out if the sax was out of tune—or just the man playing it.
When the piece finally staggered to an end, a timid ripple of applause followed, the kind you give a child in a school play. The saxophonist bowed, wiped his forehead with his collar, and poured halfa warm beer straight down his throat.
Tess turned to me, eyes shining as if she’d just witnessed a miracle. “Bea… that’s not a man. That’s a soul.”
“A soul?” I repeated, watching him fumble with the sax mouthpiece like he was fixing a leaky faucet.
She leaned back, a sly smile tugging at her lips. “Bea, look at him. The sweaty curls, the open shirt, that poet-gone-to-seed belly… HeisLev. It’s him. Just… a little more weathered.”
I studied him. He looked like a man who’d rung in too many New Year’s in the same bar, and whose breath had never turned down a free shot. “Tess, that man is not Lev Mirov. That man is the reason Lev Mirov invented jazz—to make sure no one had to sound likethat.”
She ignored me. “See how he holds the sax? That’s not technique, it’s an embrace. He doesn’t blow into the instrument, Bea—he whispers secrets to it. He’s a cursed artist, I can feel it. The manual says the prey has to sense the risk of losing something rare, something unrepeatable. And I’ve just found my ally.”
I stared at him. “Rare and unrepeatable, sure,” I muttered. “Like a unicorn with liver disease.”
The set ended with one last, agonized wail from the sax, as if its owner had decided to strangle the thing into silence. The moment the drummer laid down his sticks, the man waddled offstage with thegait of a sick penguin and planted himself at the bar.
Tess swept toward him with the feline stride of a nineteenth-century seductress. I followed—not out of moral support, but because there was no way I was missing the show.
“Hi,” Tess said, tilting her head just so, flashing the smile that—at least in theory—should disarm any cursed musician.
The man grunted. Not a “hi,” not even an “eh?”—just a low, mechanical rumble, like a fridge about to die.
She pressed on. “Your solo… haunting.”
Another grunt, this time paired with a slow blink.
She brushed his arm lightly. “You know, the way you hold the sax… almost sensual.”
Grunt. He sipped his gin as if her words were nothing but background noise.
Tess straightened, shot me a look—I knew she was recalibrating. She leaned across the bar, ordered him another gin, and slid it into his hand.
