Of all the dingy movie theaters in the city, her rump had to walk into mine, clad in sheer pink panties beneath the opening credits of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. Her name was Scarlett, she said, the color of her lips. A name and a color red enough to make your knees shake like they were hands, sure, but I heard the smoke in her voice and knew this dame was no good.
I told her she looked more lost than Coppola had suggested, and she told me maybe I could help her find what she was looking for—a tall fellow, grizzle-chinned and real sinister-like, a nighthawk. I told her a fellow like that doesn’t need to be looked for. She told me he called himself “Tom,” but he was too many men for one name, and I suddenly remembered the fellow—went by the name of Tom Waits, liked to tinker with tunes—but I didn’t let on. “Tell me,” I asked, because asking’s my job, “what a gal as colorful as you needs with a man like that?”
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She said that her intentions were her own, but that they were innocent as a dreamer’s thoughts. I decided to call her bluff. “Listen, toots, either you sing like a canary or I’m gonna rattle your cage.”
And sing she did, but the bird didn’t sound much like a bird. Instead, the damsel gave me a few breathy whispers, audible, sure, but like she couldn’t decide whether she was telling me a secret or playing lounge queen. I recognized the words, though, and I shivered like a shaved cat in a snowstorm. These are Tom Waits’ words, I told myself.
She knew ’em all, in fact. She told me in convincingly sinister words about a “Town With No Cheer” while horns seemed to spill around her like a beer in a drunk’s hands, and all about “Falling Down,” during which I swore I could hear a kiddy piano playing in a windstorm. For a split second, I heard what sounded like that fellow Bowie, another real piece of work, and I thought to myself that this gal ain’t so bad, really. Same went for her take on “Fannin Street,” though she sounds a bit like those bands Coppola likes—Jesus and Mary Chain, Echo & the Bunnymen. Again, the Bowie voice—I must be going soft in the head.
But my instincts kicked in something fierce when she started telling me “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up.” Something about this gal’s story wasn’t right—rather than playing all coy and kittenish, or even giving me Tom’s faraway take on his youth, I got a bunch of Big City glitz and quick words, like she was cutely skating across Tom’s pleas. I told her she was on thin ice.
She kept it up, though, and suddenly it hit me like a frozen fish. Someone was playing this dame. All the evidence was there—the stuttering drum machines, the doo-wop backing vocals and the hazy rush of guitar and chimes like cars in a tunnel, running over her voice on each tale. She was somebody’s mouthpiece, all right—probably that high-falutin’ New York producer fellow, David Sitek—but she sure wasn’t Tom’s.
“Baby,” I told her, “You’re even more lost than I thought. Let me find a landmark for you…like the door.”
It’s been a week since I heard from her, but I still get some of her words mixed up in my head. Would I see her again? Sure, I would. But only for a song or two. After all, a person’s gotta make their own way in the world. Ain’t that right, Tom?
