Joss Bixby would ABSOLUTELY play the piano, and you can quote fight me on that.
Imagine, if you will, a party thrown at the mansion on the lake.
Everyone is wandering around the house, having a good time. In one room is a dance floor like the one we saw in “Ride”. In another, paintings. (Real? Fake? Who can say?)And another room is a parlor, complete with couches and card tables.
Walk into that parlor on many a party night and you’ll find revelers that have stepped out of the fray for a moment to give themselves a break from the noise, to step into the light after such a long time spent dancing in a darkened room.
Now and again, someone will absently tap out a tune on the grand piano by the windows, then will get up and wander off, leaving their drink atop the lid.
Some inexpertly plink out melodies, others boredly draw forth cold, clinical recital pieces that are doubtlessly gleaned from a childhood of expensive lessons.
When one night, Bixby strolls, hands in pockets, into the parlor, he is greeted with usual chorus of “Bix!”, and “Joss, how lovely to see you”–maybe a few smirked rounds of “Well, if it isn’t the man himself”.
And Bix smiles, accepts claps on the back and light-as-air kisses on the cheek, grins and schmoozes, because he is the man himself, and, after all, what sort of host would he be if he refused to make friends?
Wandering in until called away to the telephone, listening lazily to the butchered or perfect songs that come from someone seated at the bench across the room; this is the way things go for Joss party after party, Friday after Friday, until one night, the elegantly bejewelled young wife of someone-or-other, drink raised to carmine-painted lips, asks him, “Do you play?”
“A little bit,” he responds, crooking a smile and raising a hand to waver from side-to-side in the air, a so-so gesture that suddenly turns to magic as the hand produces a gold gambling chip from nowhere.
“Show us something, then!”
“Well,–” he makes a show of protest, waiting until the woman’s friend takes up the cry.
And soon half the room is pressing gently on the shoulder of this young god, this unknown tycoon who relaxes, smiling on an ivory upholstered chaise.
He finally rises, rolling his eyes and laughing, and makes his way toward the instrument.
He’s careful as he pulls the bench out across the rug, careful as he politely asks someone to hold his drink for him.
And the way he sets his fingers is delicate, and he glances up at the people surrounding him.
A slow flourish of the keys, a showy lifting of the wrists…
James P. Johnson’s Charleston jumps from his hands and fills the room.
The cigarette between his teeth, the strand of hair across his forehead, and the roguish grin on his handsome face make him seem for all the world like a piano player in a back-street pub somewhere in the seedy underbelly of a 1920s dream.
The joint is jumping, the liquor is flowing, pull-up-a-chair-and-I’ll-show-you-how-it’s-done.
The music gets faster, dies down to a stop, picks up again.
He trills the keys, looks up, still grinning, at his audience, exhales cheekily, and finishes with a flourish.
He likes to keep it this way.
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Might post to ao3, not really sure. Give me a shout in the comments, though.
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