Like Dizzy Gillespie's Cheeks

Seventy-one

Seven in the morning brings with it several peculiar rituals that, let's say, eleven in the morning doesn't. Seven brings you loud garbage trucks (must be making triple time on the last day of the century), lots of dogs barking at each other, and the general feeling of low energy and burning, tired eyes. The clock in the living room read 7:05 ... officially the earliest I'd been up since I went fishing with Max four years ago in Canada.

I figured reading the paper might put me back to sleep. At least it seemed better than tossing and turning for another couple of hours.

I opened my door to a major headline on the front page of the Tribune that read: Y2 A OK? It was December 31, 1999. I was a little nervous about the last day of the century, probably a major contributor to my sleeplessness, but I tried to put it all out of my mind. Besides, I had a lot of rehearsing to do. I wanted to be good at the Springer party, so it was to be a very big day. And certainly, a very big night. I glanced over to the Ben tapes, and thought about playing the Ben message again, but convinced myself it might just depress me all over again.

On my way back to the bedroom, I flipped through the paper and found myself in the obituaries for the final time in '99. Why not see who the last person of the century to die was? It turns out the honor went to that of Darrow Bubinski, a long-time morning-drive polka DJ, who had died of a heart attack while bowling. He was 81. Eighty-one, and still working. That amazed me. But what amazed me even more was the fact that polka was still alive and kicking—with a morning drive to boot. Polka is something Howard Stern should think about incorporating into his show. If nothing else, it'd be interesting to see what kind of sex and polka references he would come up with.

I made it back to my bed, turned on the light on my end table, adjusted my pillows to reading height, and lie down. I pulled each section out, placed the ones I wanted to read at my side, and discarded the rest on the floor. As I pulled out the "Tempo" section, a headline caught my eye and stopped my heart. The headline read: Jazzman Ben Webster's Lost Tapes Discovered.

The first thing I thought was, That headline is disturbing. First, referring to Ben as a "Jazzman"? What the hell is a "Jazzman"? He was a musician, an accomplished pianist, arranger, sometime composer ... but a "Jazzman"? The only people who would use the phrase "Jazzman" had nothing to do with jazz. The second thing—the headline was untrue. The tapes were never lost. As a matter of fact, they weren't even found. They were simply revealed ... to me. And who the hell leaked this fucking story?

I was angered. I was pissed. I was stunned. You know that cliché about making your blood boil? It's sort of true—the anger didn't really make me feel like my blood was boiling as much as it felt like I was in a really hot Jacuzzi. I stared at the byline until my eyes hurt, and given I was tired already, that action didn't last too long. It read Lester Joplin—who the fuck was Lester Joplin? And who would name their kid Lester? Lester is the name of a toll-taker or high school math teacher, but not a journalist, unless of course he only reports on high school math, and toll-taking. Actually, the only one who could be named Lester was sax master, Lester Young—And at that, they just called him, the Prez. I had a hunch this Lester might be the fat guy who sat across from Kate but wasn't exactly sure. He certainly looked like a Lester.

Maybe she told him about the tapes ... but why, and why would someone else write the story if she was so intimate with the details? Maybe she was afraid to write the story because she thought I'd go postal on her—and she'd be right about that. Did she just leak it or leave all her notes on her desk for anyone to see and use in a story? Or maybe she actually wrote the story, for when the time was right to release it, tried to save it on her computer, but instead accidentally sent it to Lester by mistake, and he happened to like it so much that he put his name on it and submitted it to the editor?