11. Leo Makes a Hit.

Oct 11, 2020

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Room 708

Leo Zann was a grotesque little man with a scowl permanently etched into his face and thinning black hair that hung like a horse’s mane down to his hunched shoulders. He plucked a cube from the metal ice bucket, which was emblazoned with a P, and plunked it into his glass of scotch. He retrieved a second, then a third, and dropped them in as well.

He dipped his raw, sinewy pinkie into the scotch and swirled the cubes as he hummed to himself. He licked his pinkie to taste the faint traces of alcohol, and it stung the micro-cut on the side of his tongue. He winced with delight.

Soft violin music floated in from the open window.

Leo stood from the desk and walked to the window. He peered out to examine the courtyard, and while he couldn’t locate the musician, he picked out the direction from where it was coming. Northwest, into the setting sun.

He deeply inhaled in preparation, then spoke his mind.

“Shut up!” he shrieked into the courtyard. “Shut the fuck up! You fucking loser! You piece of shit!”

The violin strings screeched to a halt. After a moment, they began again with a hesitant strum.

“Yes, I mean you!” Leo screamed. “What gives you the right to subject us to your bullshit! You louse! You incompetent bore!”

The strings scratched again and never came back.

Leo toasted to his own reflection in the window, then downed the rest of his scotch. It was time for work.

Leo had checked into the Palmer three weeks ago because he needed to make a hit.

He was at the tail end of his contract with Victory Records, the label that’d signed him after the success of Foggy Forest. That was his debut record. Before the major label took an interest, he’d been tinkering at it in fits and starts for a full decade. He’d jot down an idea here, befriend an underpaid talent who’d play for their dinner there, all the while putting away a few dimes at a time into his production fund. When those pieces were in place, he’d recorded it all in a week.

It became an unlikely hit, and soon all the record labels were ringing him up. Most wanted a deal to re-release Foggy and then produce his next couple albums, but Victory wanted Foggy and his next five, so that was the end of negotiations.

The first two records post-Foggy were fine, but failed to live up to the breakout buzz that had preceded them. The two after that were met with accusations that Leo had phoned them in, and they weren’t wrong. But the more pressing problem was that the sales numbers had reflected a lack of enthusiasm by the listening public as well. This fifth album, then, was Leo’s last guaranteed paycheck before he became a free agent again. And who knew if anyone would want to take the risk.

Over the weeks at the Palmer, Leo’s routine had cohered into a regular schedule. He’d wake up with a nasty hangover, down a pint of orange juice, and then, barring regular pauses for thrice-daily room service, he’d work. Unfortunately, “work” for Leo had come to mean “staring at the wall” or “writing random notes and then spending the night burning them up in his trash can” or “yelling out the window at annoying strangers.”

Leo sipped from his glass in the quiet simmer of the city twilight. As the sun fell completely into moonlit evening, he finally walked over to the piano that he’d convinced Victory to cover the cost of installation. He hadn’t played it once yet.

He rested his fingers on the keys but didn’t dare press them. No, not yet. He closed his eyes and a strange calm washed over him. As if a condensation was dissipating from his clouded view. As if now he could see the rows of pine trees in the forest behind the house where he grew up, swaying in a gentle breeze, making that rustling dulcet.

A baby began to cry.

Leo Zann’s eyes shot open.

He examined the building façade across from him. Soon, he found the silhouette of a young woman, a scarf draped over her head. She held a baby swaddled in cloth that’d frayed at the ends. Leo could hear her cooing sweet nothings, gently rocking her baby as it wailed.

Leo leaned out the window into the hotel courtyard.

“Shut up!” he shouted. “Some people are trying to work! It’s not my problem you can’t take care of your whining, sniveling little brat!”

The woman looked up, but didn’t seem to see Leo in the darkened wall of windows. The baby’s cry hesitated, then stopped entirely.

“You’re welcome!” Leo screamed, slamming the window shut.

He went back to the piano and rested his fingers on the keys for another hour. Then another. Then one more.

He thought about his father, the organ grinder. He’d spend hours on the street corner, twisting that crank handle for tips, watching the children dance and cheer him on. The trick, his dad had told him, was watching these kids. They were the audience, the ones directing how quickly or slowly he should be cranking.

Leo slowly opened his eyes and stood from the piano bench. He left his room and took the elevator downstairs.

The lobby was empty. The old grandfather clock ticked in concert with loud snores coming from behind the desk. These belonged to Red, a thin man with a freckled complexion and trimmed auburn hair parted down the middle. Leo lightly coughed into his fist, and Red twitched and nearly fell back off his chair before righting himself.

“Uh,” Red said.

“Do you have a large room or something here?” Leo asked. “Something that holds a lot of people?”

“We have the Tabor Hall, sir,” Red said, groggily standing up. “Best ballroom in the city, management told me to say.”

“Splendid,” Leo said.

Red led him back into the first floor hallway. They turned left and walked past the bank of elevators for the South tower to a set of double doors. Red pulled one open to reveal a cavernous room with a ceiling that rose two stories high. It was lit only by a single bulb in the distance, near the bottom of the stage.

“This work?” Red asked.

Leo’s brightening face told him that it did.

Leo’s footsteps rapped on the slatted hardwood, echoing through the spacious room. Red flipped on a light switch, and the new brightness revealed the room in its entirety. A second-floor balcony with rows of velvet-lined theater seats wrapped around and loomed over the dance floor. In the room’s center hung a massive, sparkling chandelier. Leo was overjoyed.

But then, in this new harsh light, he saw the faded colors of the walls. The dust and grime that had accumulated everywhere. Specks of confetti that still littered the floor’s corners from some previous celebration. He shut his eyes and grimaced.

“Off!” he shouted. “Turn them off!”

Red flipped the lights off.

“You can now leave,” Leo said, and Red went back to doze in the lobby.

Leo placed one hand to his chest and curved the other out in front of him, as if cradling a dance partner. He began to sway awkwardly. His knees didn’t work like they used to, his muscles more constricted with every passing year. He began to hum, out of tune.

“And we danced,” he mumbled, trying to force the syllables into a melody. “We can never stop dancing. We can never stop. Dancy dance dance.”

He stopped and nearly retched at the atrocious sounds he’d made. His guttural gagging echoed against the ballroom walls.

“You piece of shit!” he yelled to no one, to himself. “Get it together you talentless hack!”

He took a breath, shut his eyes, and began to move again. Smoother now, finding some sort of vague rhythm.

Leo Zann imagined that he was moving through a crowd of people. They spun around him in a loose sequence. These would be the dancers, the ones he was really writing the music for. His audience.

Leo’s knees loosened and his heels tapped out a staccato rhythm.

“And we danced, we danced,” he quietly sang.

He pictured the dancers again, and he swore that he could feel their body heat surrounding him. He imagined the women in their long dresses, pearl strands clasped around their necks. The men in suits with slicked-back hair, holding their partners. He thought about those populating the ballroom’s upper balcony, where secrets were told, where couples cemented relationships, where rivalries were born.

This, Leo thought, is what the job was. Not making money for Victory Records, but creating the atmosphere where these moments took place.

His eyes still shut, Leo picked up his pace. He felt a new presence nearby.

She was a few inches shorter than he, with long brown hair. She wore a red dress in a style that he couldn’t quite place. She danced alone, her steps in perfect rhythm, her arms swaying around her body. As she moved, the crowd parted to give her space, as if she was in command of their motions as well.

Somehow, Leo Zann knew that if he opened his eyes, this woman would disappear forever.

Now, he was certain that the crowd was real, was really there. Not just fictions that he’d conjured up, but presences with flesh and bones and sweat. They encircled him, swaying to the music that he hummed. Their conversations sounded near and far all at once, like his ears were popping. One fretted about a conflict with a neighbor, another was happy about a raise at work.

There was that woman in the red dress again. She turned to Leo and he saw her eyes, an alluring aqua blue.

She took his hands and he felt her warmth. The two began to dance in sync—but she was decidedly in control. Any discomfort that he’d had in his joints was gone. His hunched shoulders had straightened up, his scowl had smoothed out. She leaned forward to whisper in his ear, but he couldn’t hear; the music was too loud.

“What!” Leo shouted.

She spoke again, but her voice was again drowned out by the music. It was a four-on-the-floor beat with a crescendo that peaked around the third note.

“I can’t hear you!” he shouted. “Because of the damn music!”

The music.

His eyes shot open.

The woman in red stood there with a faint smile—but only for a moment, before she faded away.

Leo was left all alone in the darkened ballroom. He searched his pockets for paper and a pen to capture what he’d heard. When it came up empty, he hustled out through the double doors, then up the elevator and back into his room. He ran to the piano and began to play.

Back downstairs in the hotel ballroom, those that Leo had left behind continued their anticipatory linger, waiting for the day that his music would return.

Artwork by Tiffany Silver Braun.