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Sport 32: Summer 2004
Late Night at the Embassy
Late Night at the Embassy
They keep playing longer than you think they're going to, and then after that they play quite a lot more. It's one o'clock. It's two o'clock. What's interesting about the crowd is who sticks around.
There's a man in glasses that should be half-moon and he's wearing a bow-tie, and he's balding and every reasonable expectation you have is somehow confounded by how intently he's listening, how absolute is his attention. Even when his friend, the friend with the beard, takes his leave he sits on.
One of the three girls in the corner calls out, giggling sadly, ‘No! Don't go!’
‘Not the end! Not the end!’
‘One more! One more! One more!’ cries the red-headed girl. Honestly, this is the kind of girl you'd sleep with a member of the band in front of, just so that she knew you could.
‘Grant us our last wish!’ she cries, then subsides and collapses again, giggling and wriggling.
But now it is clear even to the red-head that, really, they need to stop. There it is: the crash and scramble across the bar of coins being page 101 emptied from the till. Jonathan stands. There are a half-dozen people still seated. He ambles forward and mumbles into the microphone, ‘We're the Jonathan Crayford Trio.’
‘And,’ says Patrick, moving off the stage and into the scattered tables, ‘we can't understand why you're still here.’