The C-sharp rings out, low and lonely, vibrating through the lacquered wood of the upright piano. Della Mosely keeps her eyes on the keys, her fingers moving with a practiced, heavy grace that matches the thick silence of the private dining room. The scent of expensive rye and funeral lilies hangs like a shroud over the five men seated at the long mahogany table. They drink without speaking, their broad shoulders shadowed in the dim amber glow of the Beale Street steakhouse’s upper floor.
She was hired for ninety minutes of blues, but the room demands something more skeletal—a hollowed-out sound for a father who just put his eldest son in the Memphis clay. Della’s own rent is three weeks late, and her son’s tuition is a mountain she can’t climb alone. She needs the envelope of cash promised by the stone-faced woman near the window. She plays the final bridge of 'Going Down Slow,' her pearl earring catching the light as she tilts her head.
Behind her, the air in the room shifts, the sudden draft cooling the sweat at her hairline. In the mirror above the piano, the heavy mahogany door at the back of the room begins to swing inward.
