"Can't Buy Me Love"

The Booming Escort Business

They say a man's toilet is his throne, and at the hotel this expression holds a special relevance. Arriving in a fluster a few minutes before my shift begins, I take a trip to the bathroom, somewhere I see as an indicator of the hotel's luxuriousness. White cotton towels bearing the hotel's signature, neatly rolled up and stacked in pyramids, sit alongside marble basins, lined with expensive hand lotions and soaps. Grand mahogany mirrors hang on the walls, interspersed with lifeless black and white photographs of waterfalls and brooks, carefully chosen to suit the ambience of this luxurious restroom. (Curiously, a pair of armchairs sit by the hand-dryers, but I am yet to see anybody relocate here for the evening.) I check my tie in the mirror next to a man whose small stature is more than made up for by his excess weight. He has been rearranging his hair since I arrived. Between us lies a small stack of business cards, one of which he has picked up. They belong to the escorts, one whom is about to make another lucrative friend.

The business cards in the bathroom would soon be removed by management, but they had clearly raked in a lot of custom so far; tonight, the escort business was booming, and I could see at a glance that the majority of couples in the room had exchanged a great deal of money. I begin to play, and a few heads turn before returning to their conversations. Some of the escorts, sitting in complete silence with their wealthy partners who use them more as an ego-boosting image than as sociable company, watch for a little longer. After all, they have nothing better to do, as their dates for the evening stare into the space behind them.

After a while, two figures appear at the doorway, shadows lined by the bright light of the corridor. I recognise the shorter figure as the man from the bathroom. Like a perfectly rounded dough ball, he stands there with his arm around the waist of a tall, slender blonde lady, who seems to nearly double his height. As he walks through the room to the far corner of the bar, every head turns to see the woman he is with; her beauty a source of fascination equalled only by the evident wealth of the man paying her. Nothing else warrants such an unlikely couple.  As they walk past the piano and I see her from close up, I too am slightly stunned, and for a moment I forget the words of the song. Fortunately, nobody had been listening, and the little stumble goes unnoticed.

I take a break, and whisper with the bar staff to learn a little more about this gloriously mismatched couple. The lady is, of course, the top end of the escort price range, and would be costing him a small fortune. But I learn that the man in question is among the most wealthy of the hotel's guests, rumoured to have once tipped a pianist here with a one thousand pound cheque. My ears prick up, and I return to the piano, armed with a new incentive to play my best.

Later that evening I look up to see an attractive girl with olive skin and long dark hair, strutting across the bar towards the piano, holding a glass of white wine in her hand. Reaching my stool she whispers in my ear, telling me that I am 'very good', elongating the latter word in a slight whine - an internation I hear a lot in this environment. But I am flattered - not at her routine compliment but at the seemingly interested attention from a girl close to my own age, an unusual phenomenon in this bar. We talk for a few minutes, giving me a chance to practice the essential art of playing something convincing while holding a conversation; unfortunately, both suffer a significant drop in standards as I try to multitask. Yet it seems that the girl is easily impressed, and asks if I would like a drink. Intrigued, I oblige and tell her I'll join her on my next break.

She lingers, leaning on the piano and sipping her wine as I sing my next song:

L is for the way you look at me
O is for the only one I see
V is very, very extraordinary,

E is even more that anyone that you adore...

It happened to be the next song on my list, but her smile suggests I have impressed with this 'carefully chosen' song, with its apparently intentional message. She winks and spins on her heel, walking back to the bar, swaying in a self-conciously provocative fashion like Jobim's girl from Ipanema. It all feels a bit unreal, and I wonder what will come of this. My initial suspicion of her, being a customer at this hotel, is supressed for a minute, and I start to daydream, attaching wonderful and imagined attributes to this girl I hardly know. But after a few moments I look back up and see her, standing in the far corner of the bar. Suddenly it dawns on me. I recognise the crowd she is with, and the men who are lingering around her, and I realise I may have just initiated the most expensive date of my life. 

Meanwhile, the fat man and his escort sit side by side on the sofa next to the piano. Over the curve of her tactically and precarious propped up breast, I see him bending over the table, munching on a chicken wing. She sits back and stares straight ahead, expressionless. I can fathom little from the look on her face. It is not boredom, not sadness, but something else, something rehearsed and deliberate that betrays nothing to the man paying her so well.

I continue to work through my Beatles songbook, practicing different ways of playing familiar songs; Hey Jude with a swing, Come Together in a bossa nova, Lady Madonna as an old-fashioned boogie-woogie... Not impartial to the idea of a tip from the legendary wealthy tycoon, I try to give a worthy performance. But after some time, they get up to leave, without saying a word. Of course, I am used to this. But my thirst for even just a fraction of the legendary tip makes me curious, and I begin to question why they have left with such a seemingly intentional lack of acknowledgement.

Then I realise the implications of the song I'm singing:

I don’t care too much for money
Money can’t buy me love...
Can’t buy me love
Everybody tells me so
Can’t buy me love
No, no, no!

I hadn't realised quite how inappropriate the song was. My systematic churning out of Beatles classics had simply led me to this one. But in a room full of couples who cared a great deal for money and were well aware that it would not buy them love, it was an unwise choice.


I notice that the girl I was talking to earlier has also left, the message of the song no doubt hitting her like a bombshell.

We never did have that drink. And, not surprisingly, I didn't get a penny in tips that night.

"Come Dance With Me"

A livelier crowd

Behind the hotel bar lies a grand glass cabinet, full of spirits. It stretches up to the ceiling and beckons to the clientele, who order drink after drink, either to impress friends and clients, or to drown lonely sorrows. For the human jukebox, though, it is out of bounds; my power to alter the mood at the wave of a finger is too great to risk the detrimental effect of narcotics. Indeed, a drunk lounge pianist is not a pretty sight. So I sit at the piano with my usual glass of pineapple juice, lovingly poured over ice in a tall glass. My present situation is a far cry from the cigarette-smoking, whiskey-sipping pianists of the Casa Blanca era. Launching into Cole Porter’s I Get A Kick Out Of You, I feel the opening lyrics hold a special relevance:

I get no kick from champagne
Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all…

Yet as I survey the bar, it seems that these lyrics are at odds with the atmosphere in the room tonight. Over course of the evening, I would find myself accompanying unexpected bursts of alcohol-induced dancing, some charming and intimate, others squalid and embarrassing.

As I reach a quiet passage in the song, a loud shriek rings out from the far corner of the bar. A smartly dressed, successful looking woman, probably in her late thirties, has cracked open a bottle of champagne. I am told she is the boss of a major company, who are having some sort of celebration here tonight. Despite being the corporate queen in the room, she is clearly intent on asserting herself as a free-spirited party girl. While most of the room quietly judges, her male employees drool over her as she shouts ‘DRINKS! DRINKS!’ and beckons the bar staff impatiently. Suddenly, I feel like a painfully sober jukebox performing for a very drunk crowd.

“Can you play a little louder and drown out the sound of that awful woman?”

I look over to the table on my left, where the voice has come from. An old man and his wife look at me with pleading eyes. Happily, I begin playing a little louder, and they thank me before continuing to quietly sip their drinks.

Within a few moments, the consequences of their request become evident, as the company boss moves into the open space by the piano and breaks into an unflattering dance. She is followed by one of her male employees, whose attempts at seductive dance moves would no doubt be a source of painful embarrassment the following morning in the office. As she dances with her arms in the air and her hips wiggling, perfectly out of time to the music, he mirrors her moves and smiles with lecherous approval and a look of desperate encouragement. This is hardly matched by the others in the room, who raise their eyes and shake their heads. By the time I have finished playing the song, she has fallen flat on her face no less than three times. For health and safety reasons, I follow this song with something a little slower. And for my own amusement, I make that song Fools Rush In. Not discouraged, they continue to dance in the same way they had been earlier, equally out of time and a cause for increasing concern among the bar staff who eventually ask them to sit down. She protests and continues to trip over at regular intervals as her admirer escorts her back to the rest of the party. 


But before she gets to her seat she lets go of his arm and spins round to face me. Having not been acknowledged up to this point, I wonder what this belated attention will bring. Yet nothing could prepare me for what happens next. The woman runs back onto her makeshift dance floor, lifts up her smartly buttoned white shirt and flashes her bra at me, before spinning round and running back to her employees. As the Elvis song I am now singing goes, I’m all shook up. However, unlike the King, I am certainly not in love.

Having finished the song, I sit at the bar and read the paper, ignoring the continuing shrieks from the celebratory corner. The barman returns from the other side of the room, looking worried and a little angry. I ask what has happened.

‘That man. Over there. Horrible racist, complaining about immigration.’

‘That’s awkward, does he know you’re Australian?’

‘No, I just overheard him and his wife mouthing off so I’m putting on an English accent. Don't want any trouble.’

To my frustration, he walks over to the couple, greeting them in a convincing and well-rehearsed Queen’s English. They order their drinks, and I return to the piano. As I do the couple in question get to their feet and begin dancing. Having not warmed to them, I decide to play the part of the reluctant and difficult jukebox this time. As they attempt to dance to the gentle swing rhythms I have begun playing, I jolt them out of their routine by launching into a driving bossa nova. They look disappointed, and stand idly for a moment before trying to alter their routine to suit the new rhythm. Once they manage this, I morph into yet another rhythm, like a malicious driver slamming on the breaks and leaving his passengers flying out of their seats. To my pleasure, they admit defeat and sit down again. Looking over at the bar staff, I see them smile and wink back at me, with a masterful subtlety that is developed over years of working in a place such as this.

For some time, my playing retreats into the background again, and the evening’s designated dance floor remains empty. But before I reach the end of the set, the old couple sitting by the piano ask if I can play the old 1920s classic, My Blue Heaven. It is their favourite song, they say, and the one that accompanied their first dance, decades ago. Now, on their wedding anniversary, they would like to dance to it again. As I begin playing, they get up and sway gently to the music, looking calm and contented. Meanwhile I keep a steady rhythm to accompany their 2-step. I have felt my fair share of cynicism this evening, quietly judging and jolting vulgar dances out of time, but I would not want to bring this dance to a premature end.

Their movements are full of memories, and the timeless song continues as they lilt from side to side, its words perfectly suiting the intimacy of their dance:

You see a smiling face, a fireplace, a cosy room
A little nest that nestles where the roses bloom…
Just Molly and me
And a baby makes three
We’re happy in our blue heaven