JUKE-BOX

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 457, 25 March 1948, Page 18

JUKE-BOX

a ] Written for "The Listener" |

by

R.

HUTCHINS

ISTEN, be a pal, and let’s go some place else. Yeah, I know the food is good, and it’s a nice clean place-but I still don’t want to go here. Used to come here for lunch every day. The waitress?-no, it was only that juke-box over there. Matter of fact, it was the first one they had in Queen Street. Uséd to draw a lot of hicks who’d never heard of one before. You’d see them all standing around, gawking at it, even when it wasn’t playing. And you had to push your way through to put in your zac to-play it. Then they . would all crane their necks as the record was lifted and swung slick and neat on to the platter. You would think it was magic, the way they crowded around to watch-it was kind of cute, too, with its bright yellow and red and green and chromium fittings, standing amidst the crowd in the front of the milk-bar. Anyway, many’s the sixpence I pushed into it in that first week. Got to know all the best records, and which number to push to get them, too. The best was a rugged trumpet by Muggsy. Good and solid. The toasted ham sandwiches and coffee went down good, listening to-that, Music helps digestion too, so they say. Anyway, one day I was soaking up the vitamins and the rhythm when she came into my life. She comes and sits at my table. A real peach. Sort of yellow hair hanging long to her shoulders. And green eyes and a purple lipstick. A grouse little thrush. So grouse, in fact, that the juke-box died away into the background in my head, and it was only the waitress coming with her coffee that broke the spell. After a couple of sips she asks, "You got two sixpences for this?" I look at the shilling in her hand and think here is my chance. "What's your choice?" I Say, the perfect gentleman. "Number seven," she says, with her green eyes all coy. So number seven it is. j

As I sit down again, I hear the record. A straight commercial by Dinah. Not the real thing, not like she can really sing. "Thanks," she says before Dinah starts. "That’s O.K.," I say and just launch into my line when the lyric begins. So I keep quiet for Dinah and Green-Eyes. She listens. Sometimes she shuts her eyes, and opens them suddenly to smile cute at me. The slow bass sometimes sways her shoulders and yellow hair over her half-cold coffee and my toasted ham. The song seems to mean something to her. So I listen. It’s a. love-song. The usual thing with broken hearts and where have you gone and somebody

new and I still love you sort of thing. Heard it lots of times before, and not thought much of it. But listening now with green eyes and yellow hair and lilac lips swaying in front*of me it seems different. The melolly seems richer, the bass so soft and intimate, and the lyric seems to make more sense. Funny, that. Must have been the tone of the juke-box or the toasted ham sandwiches, or something. So there I sit out the three minutes, hoping my hair is neat ‘and trying to hide where my front filling fell out. Dinah finishes and I get set to impress Lilac-Lips. But she .thanks me very much and gets up without giving me a chance, Which only adds to the mystery. * x ACK at work the boys kid me when I tell them about my affair at the juke-box. But I knew even then it was only the beginning. All next morning I was waiting for noon to try out my hunch. And I had sixpence ready: this time. Sure enough in comes Green-Eyes, I am all ready. In goes the coin. The soft whirring begins. The strings and the saxes go into the intro. She smiles. Just like yesterday, only more so, I play Dinah over again. And pay for her coffee, and she has a salad, too, Back at work the boys don’t kid me so much this time. They can See that something’s to it. And all afternoon I try to recall that mood with Dinah and Green-Eyes and toasted ham sandwiches, Well, to make it short, it goes on better and better each day. The jukebox is our rendezvous. Each noon, the same soft whirrings, the\same soft intro, and the same sad lyric. The juke-box itself seems more shinier, its colours brighter and its chromium more dazzling each day. Its red and yellow lights glow even brighter with our love. The bubbles

in the green water flutter up the glass tubes like the sparkles in those GreenEyes. I don’t play, even once, my favourite Muggsy, and you know what that means. After work, too, we go for an ice-cream or a milk-shdake and listen to our love-song. Not once or _ twice, but three. times, The girl behind the counter gives a dirty look. I can’t figure it out — we only play it three or four times a day. But then I guess she hears it hundreds of times a day, so I forgive her. And I am sure so would Green-Eyes, too-only she doesn’t say much about such things, in fact, she doesn’t say much about anything. * * * NYWAY, I keep pushing in the sixpences into the juke-box all that first week. Then it happened. Next Monday we meet as usual. My zac goes in. The whirring starts and Green-Eyes smiles. The intro. begins-only it isn’t our love-song. My heart flutters, A trumpet sounds. Green-Eyes goes red in the cheeks. Her lips pale, under the lilac. Her eyes go a cold grey, Her yellow hair goes like straggly bleached rope. It is the end. The shattering trumpet of Muggsy punches ragged holes in our love-spell. I can’t swallow the toasted ham. After the first blast | of trumpet the drums take over for a while. There’s nothing I can do. The racket goes on, whirling inexorably around on that shiny black disc. The lights glow from the juke-box. The bubbles gurgle up. I glance guiltily at Green-Eyes. She avoids my eyes. She is furious, sitting with clenched hands, as our romance is blasted away in public by three minutes of trumpets and drums, a * a | | KNEW it was the end. Out on Queen ‘ $§treet after the racket had finished I tried to explain, to apologise. But she had composed herself now and smiles cute and nice and says my how late it is and she must be getting back to work, As she walks off I know there will be no more Dinah. for us to-morrow, Her yellow head is lost in the crowd up the street so I go back to the jukebox. Then I see what has happenedthey have changed the records around and put in new pnes. And I had kept on thinking that the same button would get us our love-song. But what a hick I was, because I had read in a magazine about how they changed the selections every week back in the States where they come from. So I stare at the brazen contraption that had brought us to gether and thrown us apart. Next day I go back, just in case. But no Green-Eyes. Oh, well, I think, such is life, especially with juke-boxes to trap a man with, Still, it must have been the first romance ever to have been started in our city by a juke-box. And you’ don’t get a colour-scheme like that every day-the girl I mean. So I have my lunch some place else in philosophical silence. I’m pretty well recovered by the time I’m going back to work. But up the street I see a crowd outside a milk-bar, Yeah, you guessed it-another juke-box, gaudier and shinier than the other heart-breaker. And who should be sitting down opposite it in a blissful swaying to her theme-song but GreenEyes. And some other goon is sitting with her, spreading sixpences out on the table before her faraway eyes. So now you can see what this place means to me. I reckon I lost my heart in here. And nearly a quid in sixpences,