The Meadow 201 thoughtful. “When you first came, things were not so bad. I could play my horn in the cantina or the plaza at night.” It was the first night, or one of the first nights, she could see it all now. After dinner, walking and there were the notes, those perfect notes and Sandy said that’s good jazz I hear. The old man was on a rickety stool, the saxophone resting on one knee, his head bowed, a shower of white hair crowding his closed eyes and by his foot, a frayed hat holding one silver coin that he tapped gently with the rhythm. “Yes, on a good night I could make a córdoba or two. The sweet melody of free enterprise.” The tone of his voice, which Marina is almost sure she can hear, holds some irony once more. “My little capitalist experiment in the midst of revolution.” Sandy put a dollar in your hat and you nodded and your face filled with a smile. “You used to walk together after dinner, didn’t you?” The man’s voice describes this as if reciting the pieces of a story. Almost every night, she thinks. It was always evening when she got back from work negotiating for food in the barrio, or trying to. On the days when there was enough food to give away. After the soldiers took what they wanted. The past is opening to her now. Then, if the streets were quiet and there was no fighting, Sandy would be waiting in the lobby of the pensión and we would go out and walk. He called those walks his therapy. He always wore sunglasses and this yellow Panama hat he bought at the airport. People stared at him but he never noticed. “They probably thought he was CIA. A gringo in sunglasses. There was a lot of paranoia then.” He really liked your music. She is certain she hears the old man’s tired sigh again. “And I liked him. That first night in the plaza, I could tell he knew something about the jazz sound.”
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