Re: [Jukebox - Sparrow & Open]
It wasn't an audition, but he was fond of hearing her sing. She had the kind of voice his mother, the lover of Billy Holiday, would have liked. He liked it also.
"You wouldn't sing in a place like this, would you?" he asked. He didn't know if she knew who he was. It didn't seem likely, which made her bursting into song impromptu all the more appealing. When you had been famous for the better part of forty years in one guise or another, the strange became the commonplace. Beyond the extranormal side of his life, there were human behaviors that formed a long, bizarre thread. Impromptu performances, apropos of nothing, were one of them. So many people seemed to think that a few bars sung for someone successful could make them successful by osmosis. And, funny thing was, it did work, every once in a blue moon, if he took a liking to them. Almost never, though.
This woman sang with a good, rich voice for no one but her. That was why he liked it. "You don't sing like someone who doesn't know it," he said. He didn't believe that romance was a foreign concept to her. She felt the words too much.
"The queen," he said, without hesitation. "I read something recently that said most English people still have the odd dream about Victoria. I'd kill to have staying power like that." But she was so sincere - she wanted to know, and not about a study.
"Britons dream of a better world. I don't think we're set too far apart from other nations in that way. But our better worlds are all different. One man's is a world where his football club wins over someone else's, while another wants the world where everyone can hear him sing." He smiled a little. "I can't break down for the whole country in a sentence. Every person dreams differently from the next one. But you're everyone's dream, darling."
He had a way of looking through a person, and it had gotten him into trouble with friends and spouses more than once. He didn't shower compliments for politeness, but there was no question he believed them when he said them. She was warm and beautiful, sweet and sang without expecting anything. Everyone dreamed of a woman like that.
When she curtsied, he offered her a half-bow, politely inclining his head and straightening with a grin. "Billie's a generous woman. I'll have to thank her for refusing to let you leave."
He leaned across, brushing shoulders with her as he looked over the jukebox. Instead of bothering with the modern one, he dropped his quarter into the one she'd been playing, and queued up another song. Call him sentimental - he was an old man.