A Conversation with the Mann (30 page)

Frank said: “Glad we had a chance to talk, Charlie. I'm expectin' big things out of you.”

I thanked him for his time, trying to be cool, trying to sound one-star-to-another.

I followed Jilly for the door.

“Pallie.”

I turned back.

Again Frank insisted to me: “I'm expectin' real big things from you.”

Then the king gave me his blessing: a salute with his highball glass.

S
UNDAY NIGHT
. On the West Coast rebroadcast of the Sullivan show, I watched Shelley Winters get an intro from the audience, Peg Leg Bates
do a tap number, and sandwiched between shtick from Reiner and Brooks and Japan's Fujiwara Opera Company was Frances Kligman
as Fran Clark doing a swinging version of “In Other Words.” She gave the tune all it was worth, brash and brassy but never
overbearing. If she was nervous, I couldn't tell. If she carried any stage fright, it didn't show. She wasn't some little
girl doing late-night spots on Fourteenth Street anymore. She was a star in the happening, crossing the sky and heading straight
for Fameville.

Monday morning. The trade papers had nothing but orchids for Fran. She was a definite sensation.

Sunday night and Monday I tried to call Fran, congratulate her. I couldn't get through for all the busy signals.

B
ACK IN
N
EW
Y
ORK
. Back in the city. The city more hub than home, a base of operations. It was where I went when I wasn't working the road.
It was where I went to wash my clothes and read mail and take care of Pop and maybe see Tommy.

Maybe, but not likely.

New York had become her hub as well. Detroit was her home. Especially once she started working on her first record.

So we'd call, usually missing each other. We were missing each other a lot. We were not speaking to each other with greater
regularity. I would leave messages for Tommy at Motown. Pop, when he was sober enough, would remember to tell me when Tommy
called. When he was sober enough.

He was hardly ever sober.

I often missed messages from Tommy.

I did my laundry, read my mail. Got ready to head back out onto road America, worked on some new bits.

As I wrote, Pop came 'round. Didn't say anything, just shadowed the door to my room. I let him stand there. Didn't talk to
him much anymore. Didn't talk to him at all anymore. Not if I could avoid it. But after a while of him staring at me, grating
on me: “You want something?” I said it neutral, not knowing which version of my pop I was talking to. High Pop. Jagged Pop.
Strung-out Pop. Crashing Pop.

He said: “Goin' again soon?”

“Yep.”

“Seem like you always goin' off somewheres.”

“Seems that way.”

“Doin' it a lot. Goin' off a lot. Guess things is workin' out for you.”

“I guess.” The Dodgers had just moved from N.Y. to L.A. I wondered if I should do a bit on that.

“You always goin' off and … and … always goin' off… Workin' a lot… Wha's that like, bein' up in front of all them people?
Wha's that like?”

“Nothing. It's nothing at all.”

“I figured it must be … all them people …”

I turned, looked.

Sweaty. Bleary-teary eyed. Little tremors snapping and popping all over his body. It was crashing Pop. Dried-out-and-in-need-of-a-hit
Pop. Harmless Pop.

Blubbering his way back around to: “You goin', and I get to feelin' alone …”

“City full of people out there. Clean up. Go meet some of'em.”

“Yeah. I'm thinkin'… I'm thinkin' I'm gonnahhhhhmabbaaa …” He mumbled off into something, then mumbled up into: “… to tell
you that… you workin' so much now, goin' to all them cities and doin' good for yourself… just wanted to tell you—”

“Tell me what? What are you going to tell me that you're only telling me 'cause you're dry and talking crazy? What do you
want to tell me that you won't even remember you told me tomorrow, when you're lit up? What do you want to tell me that doesn't
matter, doesn't mean anything 'cause it's only the drugs, or lack of drugs, or the need of drugs that's keeping you talking
in the first place? So what, what are you going to tell me?”

My father didn't say anything to that. He just looked like I looked on the any number of times he stretched out and smacked
me for no good reason: hurt.

Eventually he faded from the room. I heard him rummaging around the apartment. I heard a beer get popped open. A snack to
him. To him it was just an appetizer.

I kept writing.

I
HAD EXPECTED
to see her. Not that day. Not that morning. Afternoon, really, for the rest of the city. But following a night of working
the clubs, post-noon was still morning for me.

Anyway.

I hadn't expected to see her that day, sitting alone, looking tired, thumbing a copy of
Look
magazine, as I got breakfast—lunch—at a diner on B'way. But I always figured sooner or later I'd cross with Nadine Russell
again. I'd lost track of her, or she let me lose track of her after I'd returned from that logging camp years back. She'd
made it plain her affections stretched only to the end of a dollar bill, of which I had, apparently, not enough.

In the time when I had gone on to do piece work, she'd gone to trade school to learn typing or steno or shorthand, to become
a career girl at either of the two companies in all of New York where a black woman in those years might actually be able
to have a career. Didn't matter, really. A career wasn't truly what Nadine was working toward. What she wanted was a man.
A man with good prospects ahead of him and a little cash making noise in his pockets. Name a better place to find one than
working in an office tower. Okay. Fine. Except, her man would have to be a black man, and every black woman was looking for
such a black man and there weren't hardly enough black men to go around in the first place. Factor in the lack of prospects
for men of color … Nadine was eating alone for a reason. She was looking tired for a reason. No man meant her temp life as
a career girl had turned into an unlimited engagement. No one to take care of her, no one to buy her nice things, take her
to dinner and a show. No one to come home to, or to make her feel special for no special reason. Nothing waiting for her but
a job of memo typing, taking dictation.

And I was happy for that.

Nadine had seen me as a man without means, and how could such a man fulfill her ambitions? Jackie, the hey-boy. Jackie, the
moving-company guy. Only, I'd turned myself into Jackie the rising comic and pal of celebrities. Jackie, the cat who earns
a whole lot more than your average black and still had room to grow. No doubt Nadine knew this. No doubt she'd seen me written
up somewhere, one of the Negro papers, heard talk about me from whoever she kept in touch with from the old neighborhood.
She knew I'd made it, and I knew it must be killing her, and, honest, I couldn't wait to take the cold truth and wash her
smug mug with it. Oh, I had the moment well rehearsed. When we met I would feign non-recognition, a quizzical look billboarding
my face that reorganized itself into pleasant surprise when Nadine reminded me of her name. Oh, Nadine, how you been? Really?
That's just swell. No, I haven't heard of them, but I'm sure they're a nice little company to work for. Yeah, well, you do
look a little worn, but I'm sure once you move up some … Really? That long, and no promotion? Me? Okay, I guess. Yeah, opening
for this star and that star and me, me, me, and yeah I'm earning a lot of money, and I guess I'm making it big, and I guess
you should've been better to me. I guess you'll find a black man who's doing as well as I am to call your own.

Someday.

Maybe.

Nice seeing ya, Nadine.

Yes, I had the script written and ready. But hell if I was going to cross the diner and acknowledge Nadine. I waited for her
to notice me. Waited through the tail end of my breakfast and another cup of coffee and another couple of eggs, scrambled.

I loved that about New York: You could order any food you wanted any time of the day without the what-the-hell-is-this-boy-doing-eating-breakfast-for-lunch
look you'd get tossed anywhere else in America. It was going to be a sweet day all around.

Finally, Nadine finished up, finished with her food, reading her magazine. She stood. She moved through the diner, out the
door to Broadway. She fell in with the foot traffic that was heading the direction she needed to go and walked.

She had not even noticed me.

Or…

No. She'd spotted me. She'd spotted me, but the embarrassment of having let me go only to watch me explode while she was sweating
away workaday-style with so very little to show for herself kept her from so much as glancing in my direction. She was probably
out on the street now, crying, cheeks streaked with five-and-dime mascara as she trudged back to all the nothing she had.

Yes. That's how I chose to believe things.

T
HE DREAM
I'
D BEEN HAVING
was a bad one. It was about a black guy who was trying to wander home. That's all he was trying to do: just get home. But
on the way home there were nails like claws, and shiny knuckles that wanted to tear him to shreds and beat him down. Pretty
much they wanted to end his existence. And the guy kept thinking someone was going to come along the road he walked and save
him from taking a thrashing. Save him from getting killed.

No one came. The guy was all alone. The guy was as good as dead.

The thing about the dream: A lot of times I would have it while I was wide awake.