The brown envelope sat on top of the piano like a small, flat bird. Jason looked at it, then at Molly, then at me, and the microphone in his hand drifted down to his side. “Carl,” he said, in the bright tone of a man selling a boat, “what is this? Some kind of joke for the anniversary?” “It is a closing letter, Jason,” I said. “I sold the building this morning at ten. The developer owns it now. The papers were signed in the office of a lawyer on Wisconsin Avenue, and the check cleared before lunch.” Nobody in the room breathed. The refrigerator under the bar hummed.
“You cannot sell it,” Jason said. “I have a lease. A ninety nine year lease, for the bar and the apartments, signed and notarized.” “I know,” I said. “The notary was your cousin, at a UPS Store on North Avenue, and I was never in that store.” I did not say it unkindly. I said it as I would tell a customer that the second string from the left was flat. “The title company found it in September. So did the lawyer for the developer. They have been waiting patiently, as I asked them to, to see what you would say tonight.”
A woman stepped out of the crowd near the door, tall, in a gray coat, with a leather folder. “Ms. Okafor,” she said, “representing the buyer. Mr. Kraus, the lease you recorded with the city has been flagged as fraudulent. We also have records showing that rent from the upper apartments has been deposited into an account in your name since March.” A gasp traveled around the bar. The tenants of the second floor, five students and a retired nurse, had been standing by the jukebox. Now they stepped forward, one by one.
A piano tuner who listened for fifty years heard exactly what was off about his son in law and played one flat note to prove it.
“Mr. Kraus,” said the nurse, whose name is Mrs. Alvarez, “you told us you were the landlord. You raised our rent twice. You said it was the new building policy.” “And the heat,” said a student with a nose ring. “You told us there would be no heat in January unless we paid early.” Jason raised both hands as though to hold the room still. “Everybody calm down. This is a misunderstanding.” But I watched his face, and it was the face of a boy caught with the cookie jar who keeps insisting on the crumbs.
Amy had been standing near the end of the bar with a glass of wine she had not touched. She walked slowly across the floor in her good dress, the green one she wore to church. “Jason,” she said. “The rent money from the upstairs. You said it was going into the bar fund. For the roof.” “Amy, honey.” “You said we were three months from closing. I gave you my savings.” Her voice shook. “I gave you the money my mother left me.” He tried to take her hand, and she stepped back, and in that single step I saw my daughter grow up.
I sat down at the old upright piano, the one I had tuned the week they opened, and I pressed a single key. A high note, a little flat, rang across the room. “I tuned pianos for fifty years,” I said. “You learn to hear what is off. You can pretend the string is fine. You can tell the customer it is the room. But a note that is flat stays flat until somebody turns the pin.” I looked at my son in law. “I was not going to say anything tonight. I was going to let you have your party. But you stood on my stage and told two hundred people that you built this.”
Ms. Okafor and I had made our decisions the week before. The tenants would keep their apartments for a year at the old rent, with the extra money returned to them by Jason, every dollar, within thirty days. The bar could stay open for six months under a short lease, run by Molly, who had managed it from the first day and knew the books better than anybody in the room. In exchange, the developer would not pursue the forged lease, so long as Jason repaid everything and left the premises. “It is more than he deserves,” Ms. Okafor said later. “It is exactly what Helen would have asked,” I said.
Jason did not argue. I think he was too tired. He put the microphone on the stage, took off his apron, and walked out the front door into the Milwaukee night with the glow of the neon sign on the back of his neck. Amy did not follow him. She sat beside me on the piano bench, in her green dress, with her hands in her lap. “Dad,” she said, “I wanted him to be someone. I thought if I stood next to a man who talked that big, I would be big too.” I took her hand. “You were always somebody,” I said. “You were just waiting for the right accompanist.”
The Hum ran for six months under Molly, and it was better than it had ever been. She hired a pianist for Thursday nights. She put a jar of pickled eggs on the bar and a chalkboard with the specials. On the last Thursday, she asked me to play. I had not played in public since Helen died. I sat down at the upright, my fingers stiff, and I played her favorite song, slowly, a little flat in the second verse, and the whole bar sat quiet. At the end, a student in the corner wiped his eyes and started to clap.
The developer kept the front of the building, the old brick with the ironwork, and put a plaque beside the door. Weber Block, 1982. Molly opened her own place around the corner with a loan from the bank and a handshake from me. Amy lives in a small apartment above it, with a piano I tuned myself. She plays, badly, on Sundays. Every once in a while a note goes out of tune, and she calls me, and I come over with my old tuning lever and turn the pin, and we sit there afterward and listen to it ring.