(GK: Garrison Keillor, SS: Sue Scott, TK: Tom Keith, TR: Tim Russell)
(LIGHT ORGAN UNDER)
TR HURRY. FAST FOOTSTEPS
GK: He was late to work. He'd broken up with his girlfriend the night before and it took until four a.m. and he was supposed to be at the department store and in place by nine-thirty and here it was nine-forty-seven. He dashed across the floor past the mannikins in the Easter outfits and up the escalator to the mezzanine and he sat down and he went to work. (PIANO). He was a department store pianist, and he played six hours a day at a baby grand on the mezzanine, next to junior sportswear. Played classics and movie themes and ever so often he'd toss in a Beatles tune for the older set. And ever so often someone would stop and talk to him----
SS (OLD LADY): Where would I find the foundation garments?
TR: Third floor, by the elevator. (MUSIC FADES IN VOLUME FOR DISTANCE PERSPECTIVE)
GK: The music drifted up the escalators in the vast glass atrium to the third and fourth and fifth and sixth floors and wafted up to seven and eight and there on eight, the young woman was starting her first day of work in sporting goods.
SS: (A DEEP SIGH, TEARFULLY) This is the worst day of my life. I mean, really. I am so depressed I could cry.
GK: She was 22 and the week before, her father had said to her:
TR (DAD): That's it. The free ride is over, young lady. I saw your course schedule. Dance Workshop, Introduction to Film, Human Sexuality, and a poetry writing course? No way. Not on my money. Wake up and smell the orange juice, kid. Time to get a job.
SS: You are so --- short sighted! (BRIDGE)
GK: And now she stood in sporting goods, wearing a big smiley button that said Welcome To Williams, My Name Is (SS: Sydney) beside a display of golf clubs.
SS: I don't even know anything about golf!
TK: This your first day?
SS: Yeah.
TK: Great. You're gonna like it.
SS: How long have you worked here?
TK: Me? Thirty-seven years. Thirty-eight in August.
SS: Really----
TK: Yeah. It kind of gets in the blood, I guess.
SS: You've been here in sporting goods for thirty-seven years?
TK: Yeah. Thirty-seven years. Time flies. Let me tell you.
SS: That's a long time.
TK: Yeah. Tried selling men's suits for awhile. Didn't appeal to me. Thirty-seven years up here. Lot of changes in thirty seven years.
SS: Like what?
TK: I'm trying to think. Lot of the old-timers gone. Guys like Herb. Sid. Sid used to stand over there by the basketballs and pick his ears. Georgie. He was here thirty years. Big guy. Thirty years he was here and I never knew his last name. Funny, huh? (PAUSE)
SS: Nice music, huh?
TK: What music?
SS: The pianist downstairs.
TK: I didn't even notice. (PAUSE) Yeah, that's piano all right.
SS: Why aren't there any customers?
TK: There will be. You have to wait.
SS: How long?
TK: Don't think about it.
SS: But what if nobody comes in?
TK (PAUSE): There are days like that.
SS: And you just stand here for eight hours?
TK: You never think about time. That's the secret.
SS: But what do you think about?
TK: Sometimes I imagine that I'm wearing a bearskin hat and holding a rifle and the Queen is right back there behind the door. It helps.
GK: Down on the mezzanine, the pianist sat in his tuxedo and black tie and shiny black shoes, playing pieces he'd played so many times, he didn't even have to think about them anymore.
TR (TO HIMSELF, WHILE PLAYING): I wonder if Mozart ever guessed that someday they'd be playing his music for people buying underwear......Probably not......Hope nobody from school comes along and sees me.....Three years. I thought it was going to be just for a summer. Three years......She was right when she said I'm going nowhere. Absolutely right.......Yeah, lady, it's me, it's not a player piano.......
SS (OLD LADY): Foundation garments aren't either on the third floor.
TR (TO HIMSELF): I used to wonder if I had talent or not. Now, who cares?.....What difference does it make? It's a big joke.... You take your talent and you make something beautiful to make people relax and buy two bras instead of one and buy the more expensive ones.....That's all music is for. It has nothing to do with soul.
TR (OLD MAN): Hey--- where's your sporting goods department?
TR: I don't know. (MUSIC......THEN, TO HIMSELF AGAIN) The whole purpose of music is to be a commodity.....or else to make people think they're important and make them want to upgrade......You walk into a shop and you hear Mozart, you know everything is marked up 100%.
(PAUSE, MUSIC SWELLS, THEN FADES FOR PERSPECTIVE)
SS: So you enjoy selling sporting goods?
TK: It's okay. It sure beats selling men's suits, let me tell you.
SS: How's that?
TK: Suits, you gotta stand there and say, "That looks good on you." I sell a guy a basketball, I don't have to tell him what a great player he is. You know?
SS: I suppose.
TK: And with suits, you gotta deal with the wife. Boy. That's the headache. A guy by himself, you can sell him anything. But he brings the critic along and look out.
SS: Right.
GK: The pianist took his 10:30 break and then resumed, and meanwhile on the twelfth floor, in the corporate offices....
SS (MIDDLE AGED): I talked to Sheila last night. She said the rumors are all true.
TR (MIDDLE AGED): About the store closing?
SS: Yeah. That hot shot management team they brought in is going to announce it on Friday.
TR: When is it going to close?
SS: Thirty days. This one and Chicago and Pittsburgh and Buffalo and four on the West Coast.
TR: Wow.
SS: They're moving into online marketing. Repositioning as a discount designer label. Concentrating on women's sportswear.
TR: Build up the stock price. And then one bright day, bam.
SS: Sheila says the severance package is pretty decent, though.
TR: How much?
SS: At this level, two years of salary.
TR: Wow. That's great.
SS: Plus your pension and your stock options and two years of health care.
TR: Two years' salary and no job---- where do I sign? What do the downstairs people get?
SS: The floor people?
TR: Yeah.
SS: Who knows. Unemployment, I suppose.
TR: I suppose.
(PIANO SHIFTS INTO A MOVIE THEME)
GK: The pianist on the mezzanine bent over the keyboard and played. He hadn't used sheet music for years. He had a repertoire of dozens of department store melodies and he moved from one to the next without even thinking about it.
TR (TO HIMSELF, PLAYING): I don't know why I ever went into music. Any profession with 75 percent unemployment ---- not a good bet.....Four years of music school. Three years postgraduate. And for what? Someone with the name Bob Nelson does not have a future as a concert pianist....So here I am. Providing a soundtrack for people looking for socks. Making them feel good about themselves so they make the jump from cotton to cashmere.
(SWITCH TO MORE DESPAIRING THEME)
GK: Meanwhile on the eighth floor....
SS: (TO HERSELF) Thirty-seven years standing in sporting goods waiting for someone to come in and buy a golf club. I can't live like that.
TK: What'd you say?
SS: Just talking to myself.
TK: Yeah. You gotta watch that. Bad habit.
SS: Sorry.
TK: I knew guys who ---- something just snapped --- they started getting in long conversations with tennis racquets.
SS: Well, I'm only here temporarily until I find something I want to do.
TK: Yeah. That's what I told myself thirty-seven years ago.
SS: Oh my gosh.
TK: I was going to be a poet.
SS: You?
TK: Yeah.
SS: Really?
TK: Why are you surprised?
SS: I've got to get out of here before I go nuts too.
TK: What?
SS: Nothing.
TK: No, you gotta avoid talking to yourself and not look at the clock. Not think about time. And you find the time goes by pretty fast.
SS: Where are the golf balls?
TK: Over there. --- No, you get used to it.
SS: I don't want to.
(PIANO MUSIC)
GK: The president and CEO who was putting the finishing touches on his speech announcing the closing of the store could hear the piano from his office on the 12th floor.
(PIANO CHANGES TO APPASSIONATO)
TK: What the hell is that guy doing?
GK: He went to the door and took an elevator down to eight and leaned over the railing and shouted down into the atrium......
TK (ECHOING): Hey! You at the piano!!!
GK: And he looked up just in time to see a young woman tee up a golf ball on a carpet and---
TK: Wait! No! (BIG PIANO CHORDS ILLUSTRATING ACTION....)
GK: --- she took a big swing (SWING OF CLUB, KONK OF BALL) and the ball bounced off the glass chandelier (GLASS BREAKAGE) and ricocheted down and hit a glass mannikin in women's wear (BREAKAGE) and it hit a bald man on five (DISTANT CRY) and it bounced off the smoked glass Armani sign on four (BREAKAGE) and it bounced off the DKNY sign on three (BWANG) and it rebounded off the piano on the mezzanine (BONK ON OPEN STRINGS) and it flew straight toward a massed pyramid display of Clinique skin cream and (BOINK) hit the bottom row and (AVALANCHE OF TRASH) 1500 bottles of skin cream went bouncing around and into a glass case (BREAKAGE) and the fire alarm went off (KLAXON) and meanwhile the young woman on eight came running down to the piano player on the mezzanine and she said:
SS: Let's get out of here.
TR: Who are you?
SS: I love your music. And I'm in love with you.
TR: But I don't know you.
SS: Yes you do. You know me better than anybody else has ever known me.
TR: But----
SS: Come. Marry me. Let's be happy.
TR: Be with you in just one second.
(BIG PIANO FINALE)
(c) 2000 by Garrison Keillor