“No, that’s okay,” I tell her. “You’ve been a big help, Cynthia. Please give my regards to the lieutenant. Er, I mean Bill.”
“I certainly will,” she says. “Oh, and by the way, I couldn’t help but notice that the first two gentlemen you inquired about, Mr. Markowitz and Mr. Kaplan, are members of a band here in town. They’re called Dark Dreidel. Strange name, right? That’s what I thought, too. Well, it turns out that a dreidel is a little top—you spin it—and Jews, I guess, play some kind of gambling game with them during Hanukkah.”
“Really?” I say. “How very peculiar.”
And then before she hangs up, she gives me the dates and places the band will be playing this month, just in case I’d like to see what they sound like.
I jot them down on a yellow legal pad in front of the phone, along with the name CYNTHIA in big block letters.
Omar has a serious date with Lourdes the night I want to go check out the band, so I end up sitting alone in a corner, nursing a cardboard cup of scalding hot and barely drinkable coffee at a white-linen-table at the Jewish Community Center on Olympic. I’ve been here before, it seems to me, although it doesn’t matter, and it could easily have been a dozen other places like this. I glance around at all the shiny faces. Tonight’s event is Simcha Torah, the annual celebration of the Torah, and even though it’s early, the bright lights are bearing down overhead, and the social hall is already starting to feel crowded. A few gray old men in ill-fitting suits are bending over, setting up metal folding chairs around the perimeter, and ladies of a certain age are toting trays of gefilte fish and challah and cheap red wine in little plastic shot glasses to some prearranged locations. Near the entrance there’s a table with store-bought cookies and fruit for the kids, some of whom have already started to zero in on it. The wine disappears behind a golden curtain, which is a good thing, in my opinion. Because you’d have to drink several bottles’ worth to do any damage, and it’s so tasteless, who the hell would want to? The room is full of happy families with young cherubic children wandering around under their parents’ watchful eyes. I notice several hand-knit, multicolored yarmulkes and a few dazzling and irreverent prayer shawls that would have caused my grandparents from the Old Country to frown. That was then, I think; this is now. There is a parquet dance floor in front of a slightly raised stage, and six aging musicians in black vests and Greek sailor hats are tuning up and arranging their charts. There’s also an elegant, rakish woman with hollow eyes in her fifties. She’s wearing a long flowery dress and darts around very quickly, like a hummingbird. I watch her operate for a few minutes. She seems to know almost everybody. One by one she’s pulling her lady friends and their reluctant husbands off to the side, organizing them into straight lines and showing them the basics of Israeli dance, which is not that hard, but still you have to have some idea which foot goes where. I can’t tell if she is being paid to do this, but she is very determined and focused, almost militant in her commands. She doesn’t want to overlook anyone who might be willing to try their hand as soon as the music begins.
Which it does, with a sudden crash and roll from Dave Markowitz on the drums. The dance instructor looks up. Her face says it all: No, no, no, she wasn’t ready yet, this is not the way it was supposed to happen. But, apparently, she is the only one feeling that way. The audience applauds, the well-formed lines dissolve, and all at once people are dancing—or not dancing, but giving themselves up to wild, untutored movement of arms and legs. It’s a fast tune they’re playing—an upbeat version of “Oy Mame, Bin Ich Far Lieb” (“Oh Mama, Am I in Love”). Which is something the Barry Sisters made famous when my parents were courting. I close my eyes and listen. Whatever it’s called, I heard it a million times growing up. It’s in the blood.
They follow this with a slower, more mournful piece where the violins take charge, then a medley of freylachs—zippy dance stuff from Romania and Bulgaria and Poland that leaves the audience in one big collective pool of sweat. There’s nobody who doesn’t respond to a freylach. I find myself tapping my foot to each one. I probably couldn’t give you a single title, but if I hum a few bars I’m suddenly ten years old again in my parents’ living room, and it all comes roaring back to me.
An hour later the rabbi takes the mic and shepherds the crowd toward the tables laden with food and wine on the far side of the room. The band members sit back in their chairs. They’re all perspiring. Someone has brought them bottled water from the fridge. Somebody else mumbles something about a cigarette, and five of them stand up and head slowly toward the open metal doors on the side. Only Art Kaplan remains seated with his violin. Which is fine with me. He’s the one I wanted to talk to, anyway.
“You guys are pretty tight,” I say as I approach and offer my hand.
He nods.
“I mean, a lot of those tunes could use a singer. They’ve all got lyrics, right? A shame you don’t have someone who could belt them out in Yiddish.”
“You wanna sit in with us?”
“No thanks,” I say. “I’m just a critic. And whoever built a monument to a critic, right? Nobody.”
“Actually,” he says, “we do have a singer. Only she—she just couldn’t be here tonight.”
“She any good?”
His shoulders go up and down. “She’s all right, I guess. Not the best torch I’ve ever played behind, but I’m not complaining, far from it. We’ve been lucky to get as many gigs as we have.”
“I hear you,” I tell him. “I used to be a musician myself. We did standards mostly. Cole Porter. Sonny Rollins. Monk. I can’t tell you how many bars I dragged my sorry ass out of at 3 a.m. Had to stop when I got married. Get a real job, that’s what my wife said.”
“I know what you mean,” says Kaplan. “But this klezmer stuff is pretty specialized. And LA’s a good town. If you get yourself a good manager you can work three, four nights a week. Bar mitzvahs, weddings, all the Jewish holidays….”
“Except Yom Kippur,” I say. “Not much to cheer about then.”
“Okay, forget Yom Kippur. But you get my point.”
“So when’s your crooner coming back? I’d like to catch the whole group in action.”
Kaplan pulls out a rag from his back pocket and starts wiping down his violin. “That’s a good question. The truth is, she’s kind of vanished.”
“Vanished? Really? As in nobody knows where she is?”
“Nobody I know, brother.” He leans in closer. His voice drops. “And between you and me, I’d be just as happy if she didn’t return. We were a good solid crew before she came along, and she doesn’t add that much. Okay, she’s prettier than anyone on this stage, but how much is that really worth, I ask you?”
“Why’d you let her join, then?”
Kaplan frowns. “I’m not in charge of this band, buddy. Our manager is. He gets the gigs, he pays us, and he’s the one who told us to. What are you going to do? She auditioned. Afterward a couple of guys made some noise, said she really wasn’t up to snuff.”
“And?”
“And nothing came of it. Pinky—that’s our manager—he told us point-blank, she’s in the band. We can take it or leave it.”
“So you’re telling me I shouldn’t make a special trip to see you guys again when she’s in front of the mic?”
Just