MAEVE: A jazz coda by Janice Slater

 Maeve was warm and sunny on the inside. Hard exterior when she had to be.

Maeve's beauty was not her destination. Not a face that would entertain Playboy's editors or gather dust in doctors' antechambers. Her face spelled out the proverbial eye in the beholder. Round and unpretentious without makeup.

Maeve was not looking for the middle way. Life more than not took her into danger. She drove a red deluxe taxi. When she did her face up for late-night rides into dives where jazz musos laid down what was below the belt and pulsed the mathematics of jazz, Maeve's beauty was in-your-face intelligence.

The first woman tenor jazz player to kick ass at the Conservatorium of Music.

Paid her dues playing scales on the saxophone. Long hot afternoons on a rented terrace in Newtown. Two socialite sisters owned this row of tenacious Victorian tenements.

Maeve shared this jewel in the crown of bindi-eyed Newtown with two other jazz musicians. One played his horn in a padded cell to save the rest of the house from an accumulation of spittle and short repetitious riffs. 

Logarithmic logic and lean limbs belied an underlying sexiness; dark eyes and unwashed black curls accented his intelligence and wit.

The other, who played electric bass, was adroit of wit with lean fingers. He had a simple-minded Afghan hound, which replicated his aquiline profile. Maeve and he sparked electric, but the Afghan created a barrier between them whenever they attempted a tête-à-tête.

...and then there was the late arrival. Em, the would-be jazz singer.

Taut and tied. Laying in wait for Cage, consumerism, kids, chaotic like comets, collisions of kites beyond clouds. Back-to-back boogaloo, bells, and neolu. Scrapers strikers linga sho. Chilorekore n'toum.

© Janice Slater 2021