Jazz Moon (3 page)

T
he poem was Angeline's anniversary gift, although not a surprise: He always composed a poem for their anniversary. It started when he told her about Shakespeare's mysterious Dark Lady—the inspiration for many of his sonnets.

“Well,” Angeline had told him, “I'm a dark lady. And I'm mysterious. So you can start writing poems for me.”

She now bragged to the ladies at the beauty shop that her husband immortalized her in verse, declared to her friends that she was the muse of a great
artiste
.

“I don't hear that typewriter!” she hollered from their bedroom. “I know you ain't finished writing my poem yet.”

“Just taking a break, Angel. Can't rush great art.”

Angeline swept into the living room, pivoting around and modeling her new dress: a creamy white, sleeveless number made entirely of long strands of fringe. Her straightened hair was styled into the undulating curves of a marcel wave. She twirled into a statuesque pose: chin in the air, chest up, arms outstretched like a stage star at curtain call.

“How do you like it?” Her best temptress voice.

“It looks all right,” Ben said, then began typing as he suppressed a laugh and waited for the explosion.

He didn't wait long.

The stage star pose disintegrated. Her hands sprang to her hips. “
All right?
Benjamin Marcus Charles, you did
not
tell me this dress—which took me six months to save up for—just looks
all right
. You better be writing some poems about this dress, 'cause it looks beautiful on me! Do you hear? Beautiful!”

Ben kept his head buried in his typewriter.

“Ben? You listening to me? BEN!”

He looked up. “You say something, Angel?”

He tried to keep his face straight, but it cracked wide open and a snicker bounded out as Angeline hurled herself at him.

“I'm gonna kill you! I'm gonna make a widow out of myself right now!”

Ben imprisoned her on his lap as she swiped at him and laughed at the same time. They sat quietly when their fun subsided. Her perfume smelled of vanilla with a dash of rose—Mr. Kittredge's gift. A gold heart-shaped locket hung at her breast. She wore it every day. Angeline gazed at him, unblinking. He sensed desire swirling in her. He avoided her eyes, traced a random pattern on her thigh with his finger. He could feel her willing him to look at her. He didn't. Couldn't.

With a terse outtake of breath, she shifted to the typewriter and began to study the poem.

“Hey! Not yet,” Ben said. “Not till next Saturday.”

“Hush.” She kept on reading.

He recalled the first time he sent a poem to a magazine. He had worked so hard, had been so sure it would be published. When it wasn't, he said he would give up writing. Angeline wouldn't let him.

“Shut up with that nonsense,” she had said. “Work harder. Try again. And again. And again.”

He did. Four months later, he had his first published poem.

Angeline smiled bigger with each verse of her anniversary poem. “I love it, Benny.” She kissed him. “I love
you
.”

She said it with a firmness that verged on a proclamation. Or a challenge he had to rise to. She awaited his response. Her tiny weight on his lap felt heavier, more intrusive than it should have.
I love you, too, Angeline.
The words should have come, and easily; she was his best friend after all. He wanted to be able to say the words, force them out if necessary, but they were thwarted by the tiny weight that threatened to crush him. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then went back to tracing the pattern on her thigh.

 

A battalion of chorines—all with café au lait complexions and
good
hair that fell about their shoulders like silk waterfalls—high-kicked a Tin Pan Alley number in front of the closed curtain. After their exit, the audience sat forward in their red velvet seats. A tall man in the balcony leaned over the gilded railing until threatened back into his chair by the woman behind him. Everyone awaited the main draw of the evening, what they'd endured the endless rounds of comedians and tap dancers and novelty acts to see.

People mumbled and fidgeted. The tension tingled. When the curtain rose revealing Florence Mills, the audience went senseless. Small as a schoolgirl, delicious as a pixie, she was costumed as a hobo against the painted backdrop of an open road. Hitchhiking Florence stuck her thumb out and sang “I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird,” her voice as sweet as a cello. Later, she did “I'm Craving for
That
Kind of Love,” starting mid stage, then vamping to the footlights in a slinky dress with a slit all the way up the waist. The crowd almost rioted.

Show over, the doors of the Lincoln Theater burst open and Ben, Angeline, and legions of folks splashed onto 132nd Street. Lights everywhere. Automobile headlights. Porch lights. Lights in store and restaurant windows and muted lights behind apartment drapes. Clara Bow's name lit up a movie theater marquee.
JELLY ROLL MORTON AND HIS RED HOT PEPPERS
gleamed above a nightclub. The street glowed. Even the sidewalk seemed to glimmer. And people were everywhere, ready for the next phase of their Saturday night. Ben and Angeline walked to Seventh Avenue, he in his best suit, she in her brand-new dress and hanging on her husband's arm. A flotilla of taxis streamed toward Jungle Alley, ferrying well-dressed whites from downtown, faces glued to the cab windows as they pointed and gawked at everything.

Angeline laughed quietly, almost to herself.

“What?” Ben said.

“Thinking about your poem:

It's the best poem you ever wrote, Benny.”

She made to kiss him, but he evaded her, deftly, took her hand and continued walking, swinging her hand playfully as if to repent for the evaded kiss.

They meandered along 135th Street, undecided about where to go.

“Teddy's?” Ben said.

“I don't know. It's all right, but—”

“Angel, that hostess was a mess. And that band . . .”
That trumpet player
.
Baby Back
. “Come on, Angel. Teddy's? Please? For
me?
”

Packed beyond capacity, beyond reason, Teddy's convulsed with hepcat pandemonium. Guys shouted entire conversations to one another from opposite ends of the club. Waitresses scampered with trays overloaded with teacups. The hostess hustled and bustled her fat hips through the crowd, chatting up patrons and laughing garishly at everyone's jokes, especially her own. The band blasted with an intensity that was almost violent.

The hostess said they'd have to wait for a table, but someone yelled, “Ben! Ben! Angeline! Over here!”

Reggie sat at a table in back with a skinny tree limb of a woman wearing long ropes of fake pearls and a slew of bangles.

“Want y'all to meet my main queen,” he said when they were seated.

Ben cut in. “You must be Lila. Reggie told me about you.”

Reggie grimaced and, through gritted teeth, said, “No, jack. This is
Vivian
. You know, my
main
queen.”

“Oh. Uh . . . I'm sorry. Lila is my
other
friend's . . . uh . . . girlfriend.”

Angeline sped to his rescue. “He's terrible with names. Can't even remember mine half the time. I'm Angeline. How are you?”

“I'm gangbusters! How are you?” Vivian said, high-pitched and squeaky as a piccolo. The girl seesawed in her seat. Ben detected gin on her breath, and a hiccup confirmed that Reggie's main queen was drunk.

“Where y'all coming from?” Reggie asked.

Ben fluffed up. “The Lincoln. Just saw Florence Mills.”

“Florence Mills? I bet the audience blew their wigs over her. Copasetic, jack!”

Vivian hiccupped. “Copasetic.”

The club was busy, the waitresses harried, but within moments they had a round of teacups. The people in front of them blocked his view of the stage, but Ben could hear a trumpet capering through a song.

Reggie and Vivian sat close, his arm ringing her.

“You live in the neighborhood?” Angeline asked her.

“She sure do,” Reggie said. “On 123rd. Ain't that right, baby girl?”

“That's right, papa.”

“She calls me
papa
. Ain't that cute?”

Reggie and Vivian kissed, tongues lapping and overlapping. One of Reggie's hands sneaked under the table. Soon after, Vivian's eyes rolled back in her head.

“Ooh. Ooh. Papa,” she tooted.

While Reggie toyed with his main queen, the band's violence segued into a blues. Sorrowful. Beguiling. The crowd had thinned a little, but Ben still couldn't see the band. The place had gotten quieter, the noise submersing into a drone. Ben heard the trumpet, at times sliding through the blues, other times driving it. And he could just make out the head of a girl singer.

The trumpet furnished an intricate obbligato that riffed off the singer's vocal. It punctuated it, added flavor and a bit of play.

“Hey, Ben,” Reggie said. “Bought a new record. It's called—”

Vivian hunched over the table. “Papa? I don't feel good.”

Angeline lurched her chair back. “Girl, don't you throw up on this table.”

Reggie popped straight up. “Ha! That means it's time to take my baby girl home.” He lifted Vivian from her seat, propped her up on wavering legs. “There, there, baby girl,” he said. He petted her backside, his face set in a dark pout. “Let's go home.” Turning to Ben and Angeline, he brightened like lightning. “It's been gangbusters! I'll plant y'all now and dig you later!”

As Reggie hauled Vivian out of Teddy's, the band dispensed with the inferno of dance music, ceased the vengeful no-good-man blues, and began something new. Something misty and whimsical, cloaked in a downy thread of blues, but not quite blues. The poet in Ben peeled back the bluesy threads and discovered a love song. The table in front of them had emptied, the crowd had dissipated, and he relished an unobstructed view of the band.

Baby Back's trumpet stepped lightly, carrying the melody, improvising and re-creating it as he went along, twisting and bending it to his will. Ben watched the trumpeter's face. There was nothing going on in Baby Back's world except that horn and that song as he manifested himself through his instrument.

Beautiful. So beautiful, Ben wanted to cry.

“Ben? Benny?” Angeline whispered in his ear, her voice edgy.

He had to strain his eyes away from Baby Back. He hoped she wouldn't see the tears in them. “Hey. How's my Angel?”

She glanced up. Something had caught her attention. A veil dropped over her face. Ben looked. Baby Back was approaching.

“Mr. Poet. Good to see you again.”

Ben hung his head, bashful. “Nice playing. The band's outrageous.”

“Thank you, sir.” Baby Back nodded to Angeline. “Mrs. Poet.”

“Mrs.
Charles,
” she said. She fingered the locket around her neck.

“Come again?”

“I'm Mrs. Charles. Ben's wife.”

Angeline and Baby Back faced each other. She didn't blink.

“I apologize. Mrs. Charles.”

“Oh, I forgive you. Just call me Angeline.”

“I think I'll stick with Mrs. Charles.”

Angeline affixed herself to Ben's arm. “Suit yourself.”

The trumpeter stood thinking, as if strategizing a crucial move. He grabbed a chair from a nearby table, plunked it down, seated himself. “Mind if I join you?”

Ben smirked against his will. “Looks like you just did.”

“We was just about to cut out,” Angeline said.

Baby Back ignored her. He surveyed Ben with a grin, as if he adored what he saw. Made Ben warm with embarrassment. Made him giggle. He turned away, covered his mouth the way the fancy ladies at The Pavilion did when they laughed.

“You're shy,” Baby Back said. “You're a shy guy.”

Ben flushed even more, but not so much that he couldn't take in Baby Back's powerful body, his face that scored looks from all the chicks in the room. This Negro Adonis. This African Hercules.

“You married, Mr. Johnston?” Angeline said, startling Ben. Even though she cleaved to his arm, he had almost forgotten her.