It was the most attentive audience I’d ever had. They hung on my every note. A man played air bass and hum-scatted to our jazz standards. A woman stood, flapping her hands in front of her as if she were playing piano. They eagerly crowded the band to chat after the show.

I asked the air-pianist if she played the piano. “I don’t know,” she replied. “My father played violin in the San Francisco Symphony. Do you want to play hopscotch on the sidewalk?” A man complimented my singing and told me he was a detective. I asked him what sort of cases he worked on. He knitted his brow, considering. “Difficult ones,” he said. A few minutes later I asked a nurse about the man. “Oh, that’s Dr. [ ]. He was a very important doctor.”

The second or third gig, a few weeks later, was different. The audience was restless and the air stuffy. A piercing alarm set off. One woman kept threatening to bang into my mic stand with her walker, hissing angry orders at me. I tried the “look, a squirrel” defense, pointing across the room at a nurse. The woman was relentless until she was ultimately shepherded back to her living quarters. Two other residents were loudly insulting each other. After the gig, I vowed not to go back. I also googled “dementia” and “psychosis.” (Turns out I was right; some of them were psychotic — and not even that old.)

This is the story of my steady gig at the $19,000-a-month memory care floor in a luxury assisted living building — and how it came to an end.

No gig is perfect

The semi-monthly gig had positives. The building was elegant, it paid $100, had free valet parking, lasted only an hour in the early afternoon and I called all the tunes, though it wasn’t my gig. Our little trio got quite tight over the year (piano, upright bass and me on voice plus melodica/ukulele/percussion). Music taps into deep memories, and this audience was no different than any other in that respect. Certain tunes would transport them, and they would sing or dance along. To avoid recriminations from women who nearly triggered me like the octogenarians in my family, I learned never to wear dark blue, the color the nurses wore.

So, I continued to do the gig, when I was available, though the enthusiasm of that first date never returned. The patients declined shockingly fast. The doctor/detective never again spoke, instead spending his time napping while we played. Most of the audience napped, in fact. And by last week, my most alert, vibrant listener had her head in her arms, hunched over her knees, unable to sit up. Periodically she would explore the hand of the woman next to her and rotate her head like a praying mantis, looking up at her neighbor’s face curiously. Then she’d slump back asleep. (Ironically, she had been one of the several patients I initially thought were visitors a few months earlier. All were unmistakeably ill now.) Another lady with an ambitious facelift, overfilled cheeks and dyed black hair was more active than usual, talking to a pillar in the room. (Do the meds change? Is it progression of disease?)

Two events pushed me to give up the gig. The first was the fire alarm.

Various alarms tend to go off, but only occasionally. One is when a patient tries to escape the main double doors, which only stay open for 20 seconds when we load our instruments and amps in. It’s a horrible sound, but thankfully rare.

“Please… evacuate.” I stopped singing, but the band continued to play.

On this day, a siren wailed, followed by a saccharine robot voice over the loudspeaker. “Evacuate… now. Move away… from … the fire … area. Please… evacuate.” I stopped singing, but the band continued to play. Nurses and the floor events manager used their walkie talkies. The patients gazed around, barely concerned. The alarm resumed, as did the robot: “Evacuate… the building now.” No one moved. Finally I said, “I’m too much of a boyscout to ignore this,” putting down my mic and walking over to the manager.

“Is everything ok? Should we leave?” I asked. “It’s fine,” she said. “It’s not on our floor.” Hmmmmmm. Not two minutes later, a squadron of the San Francisco fire department clanked through with oxygen tanks and pick axes, presumably to inspect every floor. The gig resumed. False alarm.

The poor guitarist was unnerved, telling me on the elevator ride down how hard it was to play with someone giving him a thumbs down the whole time. “I thought she was giving ME the thumbs down,” I laughed.

The last straw was on Sunday. The lady who a few weeks back had given me and a guest guitarist “thumbs down” over and over, loudly remarking “We’ve loved having you, now it’s time for you to go” was quiet, albeit with a frown. (The poor guitarist was unnerved, telling me on the elevator ride down how hard it was to play with someone giving him a thumbs down the whole time. “I thought she was giving ME the thumbs down,” I laughed.) But in general, the gig had gone well.

The blasé valet

I loaded out and handed my ticket to a young, handsome valet. “I’ll get your car, it’s downstairs,” he said. A few minutes later my chariot pulled up and he got out of the driver’s side, leaving the keys in the ignition and the car running (I never, ever do this). I knocked on the passenger side, “can you unlock the doors?” He pressed the automated lock button and walked away. The door was still locked. I scooted around the car, but didn’t get there in time. The driver’s side door swung closed.

The comedy of errors that happened next turned a relatively simple operation into a humiliation. The valet looked chagrined as I called “I’m locked out.” He tried all the doors. “Do you have a slim Jim? Or a service you can call?” I asked. “No, this has never happened.” (Weird considering the average age of the drivers there is 80.) “You need to call a tow service to get in the car,” I said. He went inside. A few minutes later he emerged through the whoosh of giant doors with a roll of tape and his supervisors. The management team circled my running car, trying doors and slapping their palms on the windows. “Maybe we can open it with tape,” the valet said. “No, you need to call a service,” I said. The managers ambled back inside. Minutes passed. I felt I shouldn’t leave my car so I stood next to it, taking a video to document the time.

I went inside after about 20 minutes and the manager was standing next to the front desk, poking his phone. “Are you calling someone?” I asked. “She’ll do it,” he said, pointing to one of the receptionists. “You haven’t called?” I said. She looked bored. “We’re very busy,” she said with no affect. She picked up the phone and began slowly dialing, raising each finger with effort.

“My car is running out there!” “Do not raise your voice,” the receptionist sneered, shooting me a look of pure hatred.

Long story short, she called AAA and they told her I wasn’t a member (I had already told them that). At this point I raised my voice and said “My car is running out there!” “Do not raise your voice,” the other receptionist sneered, shooting me a look of pure hatred. The valet walked in. The evil receptionist sweetly murmured “It’s not your fault” to him.

“Look, you’re a very nice guy and I’m sorry but you and I both know it is your fault.” “I know,” he said. He appeared to be the only one concerned about getting into my car, which was blocking the garage, at this point. The lazy receptionist handed me the phone: “Do you want to call a locksmith?” “Do you have a number for one?” She pushed a slip of paper to me and I dialed. Thankfully the locksmith was available. I spent 25 minutes power walking around the building until he pulled up in a well beaten sedan. He got into my car in under two minutes. “That will be $120,” he said. “They are paying,” I said, pointing at the valets. “Don’t worry, we’ll pay,” they said. I threw my bags and mic stand into the car and drove off. The whole episode had taken more than an hour. I had planned to busk afterwards, but thought “that’s enough San Francisco for one day.”

On my way home I called the musician who books the gig and told him why I would never return again. “This gig had some positives, but the negatives outweigh them. Anyway, it’s run its course. One year was enough,” I said. “Also, based on how management reacted to my car being locked and running, blocking a garage full of luxury cars owned by 90-year-olds — if there’s a fire, they’re all gonna die.”

Not only that, if I had been one of the extremely wealthy residents in a fancy ride, they would never have treated me this way. They were emboldened only because I was a musician, a worker, a small woman they could push around. And they revealed that all that marbled luxury is just a facade. An insane asylum, dressed up as a five star hotel, is still an insane asylum.