picking it up

While Stoney Jake was in the other room sorting out his end of the transaction, he left Bob and me in the TV room, with his girlfriend, Jenny, and a couple other women, who had been alternating bong hits and snorts of ketamine, and now reposed in a collective stupor on a couch across the table.

I crept around, a commando on a covert operation, trying to kill enemies quietly from the shadows, and, failing that, running for my virtual life on the video console, while Bob picked up a guitar that had been leaning against the table. By the time I died, he had it tuned. I left the console on the reload screen, which had no soundtrack, and, listening to Bob, eyed Jenny and her friends.

Bob was quietly finger-picking through a progression of chords, bobbing his head, his eyes far away. It sounded nice, mellow, familiar.

One of the girls, the gothic one, who had seemed unconscious, slouched there on the couch between Jenny and the other, nodded her head as Stoney Jake came back into the room holding something under his shirt.

“What is that?” She sat up, staring at Bob’s picking hand, and groped on the table for a pack of cigarettes, “What you’re playing, what song is that?”

Bob smiled at her, and, as he kept playing, he said, “That depends.”

“It could be – ” and, continuing to play while gazing into her eyes, sang,

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out and play?
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day, eh?
The sun is out. The sky is blue. It’s beautiful
And so are you, Dear Prudence –

Then he stopped singing, and, changing the rhythm slightly, said, “Or it could be – ”

A chuva chovendo conversa ribeira.
Das águas de Março o fim da canseira.
O pé, o chão; a marcha estradeira.
Passarinho na mão pedra de atiradeira,

He grinned, muttered “if the singer could sing Portuguese,” then sang the bridge, in English, with different chords,

A truckload of bricks in the soft morning light,
The sound of a shot in the dead of the night.
Um passo, uma ponte, um sapo, uma rã.
Um belo horizonte, uma febre terçã.

Then the bossa nova changed back to the original even picking, and he stopped. We all clapped. Stoney Jake just stared for a moment.

“Ooh! I love that song – um, the second one,” Jenny said, her eyes shining, “Dear Prudence, too, but – da-da-da da-da-dah, da-duh da duh dah!” She hummed the rest of the bridge.

Stoney Jake shook his head, packed the bong and passed it to Bob, then, exclaiming “No way!” got up and left the room.

Bob was exhaling smoke, and his fingers were creeping back to the guitar, when Stoney Jake came back in holding a record cover in each hand.

“I’d never’ve put those two songs together in a million years,” he exclaimed. “Amazing!” He packed the bong and passed it to me. While I operated that device, he continued, gesturing with the albums as he spoke.

“Says here, the Beatles recorded it in 1968 and Jobim in 1973; I wonder if Paul and Antonio know? I’m gonna play them back to back.” But he did not go for the stereo.

Bob was now playing what sounded to me like the song from the GE “Soft White” light bulb commercial. When I whistled the tune, the goth girl looked up and said, “Hey, I know that one too!. That’s Pachelbel’s Canon in D. I had to learn that on piano when I was a kid.” Jenny and Jake nodded, perhaps agreeing with her.

But Bob smiled again, both nodding and shaking his head.

“It’s the famous communist propaganda anthem,” he announced, and sang over my whistle,

Somewhere over the rainbow, somewhere high,
there’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.

He ended with a jangling flourish, and set the guitar aside to more laughter and applause.

“That’s nothing. All music is like that. There are only three or four different songs, structurally, in just about all of pop music.”

He passed Stoney Jake a wad of paper, and picked up the parcel we had come here to acquire, causing it to disappear somewhere about his person. He kept talking while Stoney Jake counted. “Including such ready examples as Babe I’m Gonna Stray Cat Strut You, and (It’s a Wonderful Night for) Riders on the Moondance.” Jenny snickered.

Then he looked at his watch and stood up. “It’s a shame we have to hurry on to the reception, or I’d play you a quick refrain from the classic protest ballad For What It’s Worth, You Can’t Always Get the Wind on the Wild Side to Cry Mary.” We all stared at him.

“Thanks a lot Jake! Jenny; ladies,” he added with another flashing smile, and nodded gravely at Jenny’s inquisitive friend, “It’s always a pleasure.”

I thanked them, too, and we left.