Jazz Moon (20 page)

H
e took extra time to dress, imitating Baby Back's self-indulgent routine. Suave styling of the hat. Buffing the cuff links. Fastidious knotting of the tie. He felt entitled to a little self-indulgence.

He stepped out of the boardinghouse, took in the night, the three-quarter moon trifling above, and headed to Chez LeRoi. Eleven p.m. Montmartre was awake. The streets and cafés and storefronts were beset with people. Rowdy shouts and laughter raged out of a brasserie where men downed tankards of ale. Someone somewhere played a record of a woman wailing in nasally French as a jazz orchestra backed her.

Ben walked down rue Constance where street vendors straddled the curb, haggling to sell their cheap trinkets, then descended into the madness that was the Place Pigalle. He joined the masses of people swarming the square. The madness engulfed him. Slovenly prostitutes locked illicit eyes with any man or woman who looked in their vicinity. One eyed Ben and scratched her privates. He giggled to himself and kept going and nearly ran into an elderly accordion player hobbling about, seeking tips. Ben dropped one centime in his tin cup.

Over here an artist exhibiting work, some of his canvasses on easels, some on the ground propped upright by bricks. And over there another, striding the square, carrying a canvas in paint-smeared hands as he leapt in front of potential buyers to display his masterpiece.

To Ben's right, a group of flappers—young girls brandishing bare arms and bare curvy legs and hoards of fringe lopping off their scant dresses. To his left, a mime with a face painted chalk-white and stained with black teardrops. He performed a skit—something tragic that ended with the poor soul prostrate on the dusty ground. People clapped and the mime sprung up from his deathbed and stepped daintily among the crowd with a black bowler hat, begging for coins. Ben drew another centime from his pocket and threw it in the hat.

On the west end, expensive goods and drugs were peddled out in the open by slick men in slick suits, a moody aura of danger ghosting them like a dark halo. On the east end, young men slouched against streetlamps, cigarettes hanging limply from their slack mouths, hands fingering their sloping hips as middle-aged and old men inspected them. Rich slummers and tourists—out of place in their top hats and tails—pointed and gaped, wide-eyed and happily scandalized.

Ben looked in the doorways of some of the shoddy bars lining the Place Pigalle. Seamy places clogged with workmen, sleeves hiked up, shirtfronts open, their sweaty odors steaming out into the square.

So much here, such an over-exorbitance of color and sound and smell, that the brain had to parse everything into component parts and then reconstitute them into some kind of seeable whole. Ben's attention was pulled and jerked and pushed and contorted in multiple directions all at once by this circus of sensations. He was afraid to look at any one thing too long for fear he'd miss out on something else.

 

Chez LeRoi was packed. Twelve tables, five times the people. They laughed and bragged and sucked down oysters and champagne while waiters paraded from the bar to the tables with bottle after bottle after bottle of it. And the people kept coming. Limousines deposited patrons dressed in tuxes and satins and diamonds. They crammed in where they could: at the bar, in corners, or on other people's laps.

LeRoi Jasper cruised through the club, chitting and chatting with patrons, feeling up women, and directing waiters. Otherwise, he spent time at his own private table with a slim white woman—different from the one earlier—with dark hair styled in a sleek bob cut. Jasper nosed in close. They kissed with the sweet restraint of people who know that discipline exerted now will earn them a more ravenous night later.

The band cranked. Baby Back went at his trumpet, leading the band like it was the
last
jam session. A woman in flapper regalia hauled herself onto a table, threw back a glass of champagne in almost one gulp, then let fly a spirited Charleston. Finished and sweating, she imperiously held out her glass to a passing waiter to be refilled.

Ben had arrived late. There was no place to sit and he chastised himself for his tardiness. He found a foot of unoccupied space near the bar and just stood in it until LeRoi Jasper bumped into him.

“Don't look so serious,” Jasper said. “You're in the hottest club in Paris. Come over here. I'll introduce you to some people. They'll love you.” He lowered his voice, accomplice-like. “You know the French adore us coloreds, right?”

He escorted Ben to a group headed by the tabletop Charleston woman.

“LeRoi, come here,” she said and kissed him on one cheek and then the other in quick succession. As earlier, Ben gaped at them, certain he'd never adjust to seeing such intimacy between a colored man and a white woman.

“Ah, Baroness Deneuve,” Jasper said. “Lovely to see you. Although I'm quite upset with you. You have not been here in some weeks and I suspect you've been patronizing Chez Florence instead. I feel positively neglected.”

“
Mon cher,
you know I always find my way back.” She batted green eyes fringed with a quantity of eyelashes. She looked forty.

Jasper laughed. “
Je vous présente
Ben Charles, the new bandleader's cousin. They arrived from the States this morning.”

Baroness Deneuve's group cried, “
Bienvenu!
” as she guided Ben into a chair.

“This morning? You must be exhausted. You
must
have some champagne.” She seized a glass from the tray of a passing waiter and shoved it into his hands.

“
Merci, mademoiselle,
” he said.

“
Mademoiselle?
” A seizure of laughter. Her entourage followed suit. “
Mon cher,
I am
la Baronesse Juliette Deneuve
.” She tapped Ben's chin with her finger. “But you had better call me Denny.” She retrieved her own champagne and toasted. “To Ben and
le jazz-hot
.”

Her friends raised their glasses and cheered as if Ben was a soldier returning from the front.

“Are you from Harlem?” someone asked.

“Yes.”

Curiosity sizzled as chairs scooted closer and cigarettes were removed from mouths mid-puff.

“Josephine Baker is from Harlem. Do you know her?”

“Afraid not,” Ben said.

“I hear there are parties in Harlem every night.”

“And waiters who dance the Charleston as they bring the food.”

“And everyone sings the blues.”

Ben laughed. “Well, that last one might be true.”

Denny sat with legs crossed, one arm on the back of her chair. A lovely man was next to her. He looked twenty. When Denny placed a cigarette between her lips, he lit it automatically, as if by reflex.

“As you all know,” Denny said, “I've been to Harlem. I went to a divine spot called the Cotton Club. All of the entertainers are Negroes and they are
wild
. The music is jungle-like. Authentically African. The sets have a jungle motif and the chorus girls are dressed like natives. I think LeRoi should do something like that here. What do you think, Ben?”

“Can't say. Ain't never been to the Cotton Club. They don't allow Negroes.”

“
C'est ridicule
. All of the musicians and dancers were Negroes.”

“They're allowed on the stage, but not in the audience. They don't let Negroes in.”

His revelation sobered the tipsy group. At first dumb with disbelief, the people offered Ben their pity, their outrage, which made him feel ecstatic but guilty, too, for ruining the party.

Denny perked up. “Do not worry about it,
mon cher
. You are in
Paris
now!
Garçon! Encore du champagne!
”

He had started his fourth glass when the lights dimmed and LeRoi Jasper took to the stage.

“
Messieurs dames, bienvenus à Chez LeRoi!
Thank you so much for coming to the hottest club in Paris. We have the best of everything. The best champagne, the best food, and—needless to say—the best-dressed, best-looking people!
C'est vrai,
this crowd tonight may be the most beautiful Chez LeRoi has seen in recent memory. But with beauty comes danger. You stunningly lovely ladies had better beware because I see a number of wolfishly handsome gentlemen whom I suspect are on the prowl! It's never a good night to go home alone, is it,
mes beaux messieurs?
Forgive my irreverence,
s'il vous plaît
. I am only trying to loosen you up—as if drinking up every last drop of my champagne isn't accomplishing that already! I swear,
mes amis,
I stock and restock enough of the stuff each week to intoxicate a small country. Well, just as important as having beautiful people and an ocean of champagne is providing the finest jazz in Paris—which we do each and every night.
Alors,
with that in mind, Chez LeRoi presents to you
l'oiseau chanteur de Paris
—the songbird of Paris—Mademoiselle Gloria Fairchild!!”

The crowd thundered. The lights darkened. The band swelled to a frantic tempo. Glo shimmied down the spiral staircase to the stage. What a sight in her sleeveless gown of golden, flashing, clinging material. The low-cut bodice hugged her breasts. Her snug skirt amplified the slope of her round hips as it draped to the ground. A short train trailed in back. Her hair was fashioned into a simple, graceful bun.

Glo
glowed
.

She and the band discharged a snappy number:

Glo's voice was robust, with low and middle notes that bellowed or growled and high notes that rang. The big smile on her face opened up her voice, added some light. And she enchanted the audience by singing to specific people in the crowd and winking or flirting.

Then the band took over, igniting a wildfire. From the pounding of the piano keys to the bludgeoning of the drums to the thundering brass to the thrumming banjo. The heart of the wildfire: Baby Back. He was the match that lit the flame, the gasoline that maddened it, the wind that fanned it. His trumpet stormed above the band, cutting a musical path right through Chez LeRoi. It was his big night and he worked it: eyes closed, knees caving to the floor because he couldn't control the music roaring through him.

That first number put the crowd on its feet. They just about mobbed the stage after the second. But the third blasted Chez LeRoi off the map. It opened like a dirge. A low-down, slowed-down blues.

Glo sang like she was already dead inside. Her plaintive tone made you want to belt the guy who broke her heart.

Glo's vocal was the main attraction, the band a partner that affirmed her lament. But out of that affirmation, Baby Back's trumpet dawned. She would feed him a phrase and he would take it, embellish it, feed it back. If Glo contributed the main theme in this blues concerto, then Baby Back applied the variation as they, phrase by phrase, seduced the audience down the primrose path to the blues. The song was part gritty gospel-shout from the back alley bars of New Orleans, part sophisticated ballad from the chi-chi nightspots of Manhattan. Part earth, part air. All blues.

When it ended, the audience brawled into cheers. Glo and Baby Back descended from the stage and into a lovefest. They greeted the crowd—separately—shaking hands, giving and receiving kisses.

Denny took to the tabletop again while her entourage gushed.

“
Mon dieu
. You can tell they are from Harlem,
n'est pas?
”

“
C'est vrai.
I am so glad they have come to Paris!”

Baby Back's Paris debut. A smash. Ben cheered and whistled and screamed and stomped and clapped along with everyone else. He couldn't stop. Nobody could. He was fat with pride, lost in it. He wanted to never find his way out. Wanted to remain in these woods, directionless. North, south, east, and west useless. He didn't need the North Star. Incandescent Baby Back was his North Star.