Eva leaned against the kitchen counter, her phone pressed to her ear. The late summer evening was sticky, the windows open to coax in a breeze that refused to come. The weather in Chicago could be lovely in the summer. It could also be suffocating. On the other end of the line, Sam’s voice eased her spirit, resonant and scratchy, like an old vinyl record.
“You know,” he was saying, “sometimes I think politics is jazz for bureaucrats. New tunes and old, improvised, messy, and half the time, nobody knows what’s going on.”
She laughed, a soft, dry throaty sound that made Sam pause. It was a laugh that puzzled him. “That’s an image,” she said. “Whose fault is that? The new President? The Republican Congress? Cause I don't hear any music so far.”
“Neither” he replied. “That’s the problem. It’s all rhythm section and no melody.”
Eva shook her head, amused. She pictured Sam sprawled on the couch of his small house out in the country, the one he said smelled of pine and new paint. She imagined the overgrown fields outside his window, fireflies blinking like tiny metronomes. He had a kid—a six-year-old boy named Luke, who, according to Sam, had recently mastered the art of building a pillow fort sturdy enough to rival the Pentagon.
“You guys may need that fort in the near future," she had said. "Do you miss Chicago?” she now asked suddenly. The question surprised them both.
Sam exhaled, and she could hear the creak of his couch as he leaned back. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “I didn’t grow up in the city like you, but there’s something about it. It’s restless, you know? Like it’s always searching for something.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I know.”
“There’s this memory I keep coming back to,” he said. “My first week in Chicago, I stumbled into this tiny jazz club a few blocks off Grant Park. The kind of place you’d miss if you weren’t just stumbling around looking at everything. It was seedy—literally a hole in the tall wall of steel. Dim lighting, abused tables, a bartender who looked like he’d heard every story there was to hear.”
“And the music?” she asked, leaning forward on the counter, drawn in.
Sam chuckled. “Oh, god, the music. A saxophone quartet. My next door neighbor out in California used to play drums in a quartet, by the way. He often invited me over as the one single audience member. Anyway, it was some great jazz night. They were having a musical conversation about, oh, I don't know, about the city on lonely nights.
Eva closed her eyes. “Sounds magical.”
“It was,” he said. “That city, those nights… it'a working city. Unembarassed about long days and big dinners heaped on your plate at night. And the small crowd in the club--they were needing that glass of scotch whiskey and that live, open jazz as much as they needed money in their bank accounts. I felt it wasn’t just music; it was survival.”
“And you? What did you need?”
Sam’s voice softened. “Probably that it was okay to feel everything. That the highs and the lows were part of the same song. That we’re all just variations on the same human theme.”
Eva was quiet for a moment. Outside, the distant hum of traffic blended with the sound of her washing machine in the next room. She thought about her own life, the university teaching assistant job that kept her busy but not fulfilled, the nights spent listening to Oscar Peterson or Bill Evans while she graded papers.
“Jazz does that for me too,” she said finally. “It’s like… it's like it’s okay with the world as it is. Even when it’s sad and messy.”
“Exactly,” Sam said. “It’s like jazz gives you permission to be human.”
“Levallois Swing does that for me,” she said, smiling. “It’s this simple French jazz piece. Folksy and light. It reminds me to breathe, to let go at night.”
“Sounds beautiful,” Sam said. “You’ll have to play it for me sometime.”
“Maybe,” she teased. “If you’re lucky.”
They laughed, the kind of laugh that felt like a bridge between their separate worlds. For a moment, the miles between them seemed to vanish. Eva imagined Sam’s smile, the way his eyes would crinkle at the corners. She pictured him leaning forward on the couch, his voice low and full of promise.
“Eva?” he said, breaking the silence.
“Yeah?”
“I . . . I really like talking to you. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this . . . connected to someone before.”
Her heart wobbled, and she pressed a hand to her chest as if to steady it. “Me too,” she whispered. “Me too.” She hesitated for a moment, then took a deep breath. "Sam, there's something I want to tell you."
A pause stretched between them, filled only by the distant hum of traffic and the washing machine.
"I'm transgender," she said finally, her voice steady but quiet. "I don't know if this changes anything for you, but I don't want to hide it. Not with you."
The conversation drifted on like a smoky jazz tune—unpredictable and undeniably alive.
**********
Sam sat in the dim little jazz club, nursing a glass of scotch, the ice slowly melting into the amber liquid. Thinking on Eva he teared up. The place hadn't changed much since that first night years ago—a small, seedy hole in the wall off Grant Park, where the music came from somewhere deeper than the instruments themselves. The air smelled of old wood, burnt citrus, and the faintest trace of cigar smoke. The room had absorbed decades of human stories whispered over drinks.
The piano trio on stage played something slow and meditative, a blend of melancholy, madness and reason, the bassist thumping a slow heartbeat. Sam closed his eyes and let the sound wash over him, allowing himself to sink into the memory of Eva.
It had been three years since that first late-night phone call. Three years of long conversations, weekends spent navigating between the country and the city, of laughter, of shared silences, of love that had crept up on him unexpectedly. And now, three months since she had left.
He remembered the trepidation he had felt when Eva first told him the truth about herself. There had been fear—not of her, but of what it meant for him. No. He had admired and wondered about her strength. But what about him? Did it make him gay? What did it mean about his attraction? As time passed, those questions faded in importance. What had mattered was the way she looked at him, the way their bodies fit together in a way that just felt right. In fact, the sex and intimacy had turned out to be better than anything he had ever known—freeing, electric, untethered from the the top heavy years of tradition and expectation.
She had once told him that jazz made room for every emotion, every contradiction. It made space for the ache of missing someone and the warmth of remembering them at the same time. That was how he felt now—caught between the past and the present, grief and gratitude.
Eva had been right to tell him the truth that night. He had listened and accepted. The split happened because of other things—the push and pull of different lives, different values and dreams. She was chasing who knows what in Chicago, and he belonged to the open skies and quiet roads of the countryside. He had Luke to raise, and she had a different life to carve out for herself. Was their separation because of her being trans? No. He was sure of it.
The bartender caught his eye and refilled his glass without speaking. Sam nodded his thanks and turned his attention back to the stage. The pianist—someone new, someone young—started playing something familiar. "Peace Piece." Bill Evans. The song Eva had told him always put her in a great mood. Expansive, just okay with the world.
They weren’t together anymore, but she had left her music with him. The sound mixed in his belly with the Scotch whiskey, and for the first time in weeks, Sam let them both carry him forward.