Re: [Jukebox - Sparrow & Open]
When he was young, Andrew didn't like old things much at all. They made an impact the way anything does when your parents play it around you, Nat King Cole records droning in the parlor. It was total rubbish to him then. He wanted what was harsh, fast, and loud, not a crooner from a generation before.
Later, he appreciated the music that had come before he was born and created the landscape he wrote his songs in. His craving for the new and unique never really faded, though. New experiences, new people. Owning a business wasn't new to him, but owning a bar was. Burlesque was brand new - he had certainly been on a stage with his face painted, but never part of a show like the one he was putting on tonight. The shimmering dancers in from the city would give people in this town something to talk about for the near future even if he didn't open the doors to this place ever again.
Her soft smile and round hips didn't remind him of anyone he'd met recently, which he always liked. People were more unique than they were given credit for. When he first began his odd little odyssey, he expected to become jaded by other humans, to see the patterns in their lives, to tire of hedonism, go the way of an unfortunate Oscar Wilde character. He did, a bit, and he was a little, but there was always someone new to meet who wasn't the same as anybody else. This girl; her white shift, thoughtless and unaffected choice of song, her bold appraisal and her warmth? She was new. He liked her lack of irony. Too much of that these days. And he was very much a sucker for a woman who knew precisely what she wanted, and that she was. Or that he thought she was.
"One of my mother's favorites," he said. He turned to face her, hitching his hip against the edge of the jukebox, mirroring her stance. He crossed his arms. He was thin, and his hair was a little too long, in bad need of a cut. "I see your face in every flower, eyes in stars above." It was something like that. "Deathly romantic," he added. His mother liked to pull the turntable into her little studio in the laundry room and play Billy Holiday while she painted. As for why the girl chose it, he wasn't sure, but he had an inkling. It was a song about pining, wasn't it? Love that consumed, and seeing that person everywhere you looked.
"Good guess," he said. He smiled when she told him where his accent came from. "Only movies? Then you need to visit. You're a Briton's dream." Soft, blonde, and easy to talk to. Boys would be lined up two deep in the pubs to chat her up - not that Americans didn't also appreciate those qualities.
He slid off the jukebox and closed the short distance between them. He was a bit taller than her, though not by too much. The suit he wore onstage was already pulled apart - open at the collar, bowtie gone, white streaks rimming his collarbone where he missed a spot of paint. His cuffs were still closed with nubby little blister pearl cufflinks. "You're much prettier than a nice accent," he said. "So I wonder. Why are you here with Billy Holiday on your own?"