A Gift From Nicholas

The upscale Culver City supermarket had rented a baby grand piano for the holidays, but nobody was there last week when 7-year-old Nicholas King and his parents walked by.

So Nicholas, who has been playing since he was 3 1/2 and aspires to be a concert pianist, quietly sat down and played a few bars. A man stopped and told him he’d give him a quarter for a Christmas song. “A quarter?” said another man. “That’s nothing. I’ll give you a dollar.”

Several songs later, Nicholas had collected $5.25. He could have bought a toy, but he remembered an episode of “Wheel of Fortune” in which celebrity guests donated their winnings to charities.

“All the stars gave their money to the poor, so I wanted to give it to kids,” he said.

The next night, with the approval of the management of the Pavilions market, he returned, armed with a 2-gallon jar and a laminated sign asking for checks payable to Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles. He finished the night with $150.

For the past week, he has been giving daily impromptu two- or three-hour performances, playing between the hired pianist’s stints. He’ll play his closing performance Christmas Eve, and a representative of Childrens Hospital will be there to collect the boy’s proceeds, which passed $500 on Monday.

“He thought that if he gave the money, all the kids would be cured so they could go home for Christmas,” said his dad, Paul King. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise.”

Childrens Hospital was surprised by the child-instigated charity drive. “That’s wonderful,” Harry Tuttle said when a Times reporter told him about Nicholas’ efforts.

Nicholas is home-schooled by his mother, Marilyn, who taught him to read music and words at the same time. His parents bought him a secondhand canary-yellow piano, propping him up on a pillow so he could reach the keys. He has been receiving weekly lessons ever since.

“He just took to it,” said Marilyn King.

Last winter, Paul King, who owns a carpet cleaning and restoration business in Inglewood, plunked down $5,700 for a new baby grand.

“Yeah, we got it right after the BMW Z3s came out,” Paul King said with a twinge of remorse. “But the six-cylinder Z3s weren’t out yet anyway.”

After every performance, Nicholas returns to his Culver City home, where he runs to the basement and sits cross-legged across from his dad tallying up the day’s contributions. By Sunday night he had earned $450.84.

Earlier that day, kids swayed, moms grew misty-eyed and dads chuckled as Nicholas performed “Silent Night” in the middle of Pavilions’ deli section.

“It’s amazing!” said one woman, “He really seems to enjoy it, doesn’t he?”

“Esta lindo, que bueno!” said another.

Midway through the song, the musician apparently got bored with the Christmas classic and launched into “Heart and Soul,” tongue jutting out of his mouth in concentration, hands fluttering up and down the keyboard.

An elderly man angled up and put a $5 bill into the jar perched on top of the piano.

Nicholas gazed up at his admiring audience with wide brown eyes, sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

“Where’s his mother?” a woman asked.

Nicholas responded with a robust, dimpled, partially toothed grin.

He can’t see or be seen over the boxy instrument, which is decked out with mistletoe, champagne bottles, dried flowers and teddy bears. His feet barely touch the pedals; most shoppers assume they’re watching a player piano.

(“This one lady came over and kissed me in public,” Nicholas said, nose wrinkling in disgust.)

A 7-year-old in a Lakers stocking cap and coat stopped, opened his mouth and scratched his head. A mystified 8-year-old gasped: “He wants to play?”

“You hear about child prodigies, but seldom do you see them,” said Cristina Riban, who had dashed to the store for a bottle of wine but stayed to watch.

Nicholas played on, tuning out the “Oohs!” of passersby and concentrating on his six-song recital, played from memory. Every few minutes, he flung his right arm upward with a Liberace-like flourish. (His dad later explained that his oversized sweatshirt sleeve kept falling over his hand, yet he refused to roll it up, saying it would look “dorky.”)

At 2:30 p.m., dad, watching from a nearby lunch counter, decided it was time for a break. Nicholas had been going strong for several hours and hadn’t had lunch. He called to his son several times before he got his attention.

“You wanna go?” he asked. Nicholas stopped mid-song, contemplated the question, then shook his head. “No, n’yet,” he said, picking up “The Beautiful Blue Danube” where he left off.

Nicholas will play from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. today and from noon to 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve. His home is only a few blocks from Pavilions.

“Our biggest problem,” his father said, “is keeping him from sneaking over here when we aren’t looking.”