"Champagne at Midnight

The mansion on Long Island smelled of gardenias and money, and Daisy Chen hated both of them.

She stood at the edge of the terrace, her back to the music — a ragtime band playing something that sounded like it had been invented after the song was written — and watched the water. The Long Island Sound was black under the August moon, the kind of black that made you think of drowning even when you knew the bottom was sandy and shallow.

Inside, the party was reaching that stage where everyone had had enough champagne to be honest and not enough to be interesting. She could hear the clink of glasses, the low roar of conversation breaking into laughter and falling back again. Somewhere in there, Jack was playing cards with a man who owned half of Manhattan and was probably losing.

"Chen, is that you?"

She turned. Samuel Goldstein stood in the terrace doorway, silhouetted against the chandelier light. He wore a white dinner jacket that probably cost more than her mother's entire wardrobe, and he held a cigarette in a long ivory holder the way a man holds a walking stick — with habitual authority.

"Mr. Goldstein."

"Don't 'Mr. Goldstein' me, Daisy. We've been over this. Samuel. Sammy, if you prefer."

She smiled. It was the smile she used at the speakeasy when a regular ordered a drink he couldn't afford — warm but precise, like a scalpel wrapped in velvet.

"I prefer Daisy," she said.

He laughed. It was a good laugh — warm, unselfconscious, the kind of laugh that made people trust you before they had reason to. He came to stand beside her at the terrace railing, his cigarette smoke curling into the night air.

"You look troubled, Daisy. Trouble you want to talk about?"

"I don't get troubled, Mr — Samuel. I get tired. There's a difference."

"Is there?"

She looked at him properly for the first time. He was forty-five, maybe fifty — age in Broadway was something you measured in years since your last flop, not calendar dates. He had the kind of face that had spent fifty years reading other people's expressions and had developed a habit of wearing its own like a mask.

"I'm not troubled," she said. "I'm just thinking about tomorrow."

"Tomorrow's the recording session. Jack's going to knock their socks off."

"Is he?"

Something flickered across Goldstein's face. Not doubt — Samuel Goldstein did not doubt — but calculation. The kind of mental arithmetic that balanced one thing against another and found the gap.

"You don't believe that."

"I believe what Jack believes. When he believes it, anyway."

Goldstein was quiet for a moment. The band inside shifted to something slower — a ballad, maybe, or a blues that nobody was singing.

"My father came to America with six dollars in his pocket," he said. "He thought money was something you earned. My mother thought money was something you held onto. They were both right, and they were both wrong. Money is something you use to build a bridge between who you are and who you want to be. Sometimes the bridge holds. Sometimes it doesn't."

Daisy looked back at the water. "What happens when it doesn't?"

"Then you swim. Or you don't."

He reached into his inside jacket pocket and withdrew a small envelope. It was heavy paper, cream-colored, the kind of envelope that announced itself without saying anything.

"I have something for you."

She took the envelope. It contained a single sheet of paper and a key — a room key, she realized, for a club on Broadway. The handwriting on the paper was precise, practiced:

"SOLO SPOT — THE GOLDEN NOTE — 11PM – 2AM — STARTING SEPT 1ST. COME ALONE. COME AS YOU ARE. — S.G."

Her throat did something she wasn't ready for. She closed the envelope and held it flat against her palm like a pressed flower.

"That's a lot of responsibility," she said.

"It's not responsibility. It's an invitation. You sing at my club, you sing for the right people, you sing the right songs, and the right people will do the rest."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I lose a good singer, and you keep singing to drunks who can't tell you what key you're in."

She laughed. It came out thinner than she intended.

"You're very direct, Samuel."

"I'm very tired of being indirect. Direct is honest. Indirect is cowardice with better clothes."

The terrace doors opened. Jack stood there, his hair wet from the rain that had started somewhere around nine o'clock, his jacket open, his tie loose. He looked like a man who had been dancing and hadn't realized he was dancing until someone told him.

"Daisy! There you are. I've been looking everywhere. The rain, the rain — come on, let's go home."

He came to her side, threw an arm around her shoulders. He smelled of rain and gin and the particular cologne he wore when he was trying too hard.

"Mr. Goldstein," Jack said, nodding respectfully. "Thanks for having us. Daisy and I are heading out."

Goldstein's expression did not change, but Daisy saw the calculation shift — like a compass needle finding north after being pushed off course.

"Mr. Morrison. Your session is tomorrow at noon. Get some rest."

"I always rest," Jack said. "Rest is what I do best. Dancing is what I do for fun."

Goldstein's smile was thin. "Goodnight, then."

They walked back into the mansion. The rain had turned the garden into something out of a painting — everything glistening, everything blurred at the edges, everything that had been solid now liquid and uncertain.

On the drive back to their apartment in Harlem, Jack was quiet. He was quiet when he was drunk in a particular way — not the loud, expansive quiet, but the tight, compressed quiet of a man holding something back.

"Daisy."

"Yes?"

"I don't want to move to Chicago."

She looked at him. He was staring out the window at the dark shapes of trees and fences passing by.

"You said you signed the contract."

"I signed. I didn't say I'd go."

"Dick needs you in Chicago."

"Dick needs a pianist. He doesn't need ME. There's a difference."

"Daisy, you're drunk."

"I'm not drunk. I'm clear. That's the problem."

She reached across the seat and put her hand on his knee. His jeans were soaked from the rain. His knee was cold.

"Jack," she said. "Stay."

He looked at her. In the passing light of a streetlamp, she saw something in his eyes that she had never seen before — not love, exactly, but the ghost of love, the thing that love becomes when you can't afford to keep it alive.

"Stay here," she repeated. "Sing at my club. Not Goldstein's club — ours. The one on 125th that's always too hot in summer and too cold in winter. We'll sing there. Together."

He didn't answer. He just closed his eyes, and his hand found hers on his knee, and his fingers curled around hers like a question.

By the time they reached Harlem, the rain had stopped. The streets were clean — the kind of clean that happens after a storm, when everything has been washed and nothing has had time to get dirty again.

At their door, Jack pulled her close. He was still holding her hand.

"Daisy," he said. "I don't know what I am."

"That's okay," she said. "Neither do I."

They went upstairs. The apartment was dark and warm and smelled faintly of the lavender soap she used in the bathroom. Jack sat on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes. Daisy stood in the doorway and listened to the city — the distant sound of a train, a siren three blocks away, the murmur of someone arguing in the apartment below.

She went to the window and opened it. The night air came in, cool and clean and carrying the sound of a jazz band practicing somewhere down the street. She could hear a piano — someone playing the same progression over and over, searching for something.

She took Goldstein's envelope from her pocket and looked at it. The handwriting was precise. The key was heavy in her other hand.

She walked to the kitchen and poured the half-bottle of champagne she had been saving for a special occasion into the plant on the fire escape. It bubbled for a moment, then went quiet.

Back in the bedroom, Jack was asleep. His breathing was even. His hand was still open on the bed where he had let go of hers.

Daisy sat on the edge of the mattress and opened the envelope. She read the note again. Then she took a pen from her pocket and wrote on the back:

"Sept 1st. I'll be there. Come with me."

She folded the paper, put it in her pocket, and turned off the light.

The city hummed. The plant drank its champagne. And in the dark, a choice sat between them like a third person in the room.

© 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- パスポート番号[ちゅうごく] 중국 여권 번호 Номер паспорта หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง Passnummer رقم جواز السفر CHN Passport) The aforementioned Author hereby grants to OXFORD INDUSTRIAL HOLDING GROUP (ASIA PACIFIC) CO., LIMITED （BRN74685111） all economic property rights, including but not limited to the rights of: reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, performance, communication to the public via information network, adaptation, compilation, commercial operation, authorization for third-party use, and rights enforcement. Such grant is exclusive and irrevocable. The term of such rights shall be 49 years from the date of publication. To contact author, please email to datatorent@yeah.net"

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