I was walking home from a play, and I heard jazz music. Really good jazz music. I know nothing about jazz, am not crazy for it, do not own a single jazz record…but this music… It was wonderful. Up-tempo, swingin’, yet still cool enough to relax to. To describe it, one word: indescribable.

Maybe it was the night air, a degree of loneliness, a smidge of romanticism, or some other tired cliché, but I decided to locate the source of this enchanting music.

I imagined discovering some smoky studio where jazz musicians, who looked as though they were living in the 1930s, had jam sessions every weekend. I imagined hanging out with these guys, talking to them, maybe even sitting in on the piano or something. I’m not trained, but I could plunk through. It was jazz after all.

I imagined sitting in this dim wonderland, talking to people in berets, sipping espresso. I imagined talking to a very enlightened, erudite, and shapely blonde (wearing a tight dark turtleneck, a short tweed skirt and black rimmed squarish glasses of course) and asking her all the “important questions” and having every one of them answered so beautifully and eloquently that I wouldn’t even mind if she weren’t attracted to me sexually. She’d have given me so much more contentment.

As I came upon a plain, two-story building, the music got louder. I was close. The building could have been owned by the university, but I couldn’t be sure. It was painted white, with arched windows. All of them were dark. In front of me, there were stairs leading to a basement entrance. The light above the door was broken. I went down to the door, and common sense/better judgment/the law all absent from my consciousness, I turned the knob. So entranced was I by these sounds, I was not even surprised to find the door unlocked.

I walked to the end of a fully lit hallway, until I came to an exit on the other side of the building. I realized I had gone too far. The music was slightly quieter. I turned around and walked carefully down the hall, until I found the door.

There was a light rectangle in the middle of the wood of the door, as if a placard had been removed and had been there for quite some time. I pushed the door open and it swung forward and around until I’m sure I heard something break.

What I saw was this: a room filled with books, a desk, and a big red comfy looking chair, in which was curled up a rather impatient looking brunette with a big leather bound volume in her lap.  The chair sat next to an old-timey looking record player, like a Victrola. It could have been the real thing, it could have been manufactured to look old. I didn’t stick around to ask. The girl didn’t look surprised, as I would have, more exhaustedly impatient, and she looked at me as if to say “[sigh…] What?”

She didn’t say that, and all I said was “Sorry, wrong room” and closed the door and began walking down the hall. I guess I said “sorry wrong room,” but in my state of mind, disoriented as my fantasy mercilessly collided with reality, I could have stammered anything.

Towards the end of the hall, I though I’d go back and introduce myself. I’d ask her about the music and what she was reading and what she was doing in there.

I imagined finding my soul mate that night. That she’d be reading Camus or Thurber or Palahniuk. That she’d be listening to a jazz record made by some guys she knew, and would take me down to their cool studio where all the intellectuals hung out. That we’d ask each other everything about one another, that we’d fall in love right there and have great sex and hold each other until the sun came up.

I didn’t do any of that. I bolted out the door, nearly tripped on the steps, walked two blocks over to 7-11, got a Slurpee and a hot dog and went home.