Cradle (30 page)

Angie Leatherwood was a consummate performer. Like many of the very best entertainers,
she never forgot that it was the audience that was the customer, that it was they
who both created her image and enhanced her mystique. She began with the title song
from her new album,
Memories of Enchanting Nights
, and then sang a medley of Whitney Houston songs, according a tribute to that brilliant
songstress whose talent had sparked Angie’s own desire to sing. Next she showed her
versatility by blending a quartet of songs with different beats: a Jamaican reggae
number, a soft ballad from her first album,
Love Letters
, a nearly perfect Diana Ross imitation from an old Supremes song, ‘Where Did Our
Love Go?’ and an emotionally powerful, lilting encomium to her blind father entitled
‘The Man with Vision’.

Thunderous applause greeted the conclusion of each song. Sloppy Joe’s was sold out,
including all the standing room along the hundred-foot bar. Seven huge video screens
scattered throughout the spacious club brought Angie home to those who were not close
to the stage. This was her crowd, these were her friends. A couple of times Angie
was almost embarrassed because the clapping and the bravos would not stop. At Troy’s
table, very little was said during the show. The threesome pointed out songs they
particularly liked (Carol’s favourite was the Whitney Houston song, ‘The Greatest
Love of All’), but there was no time for conversation. Angie dedicated her penultimate
song, ‘Let Me Take Care of You, Baby’, to her ‘dearest friend’ (Nick kicked Troy under
the table) and then finished with the most popular track from
Love Letters
. The audience gave her a standing ovation and hooted noisily for an encore. Nick
noticed while he was standing that he was a little woozy from the two strong drinks
and was also feeling strangely emotional, possibly because of the subliminal associations
created by the love songs that Angie was singing.

Angie returned to the stage. As the noise subsided, her soft and caressing voice could
be heard. ‘You all know that Key West is a very special place for me. It was here
that I was raised and went to school. Most of my memories bring me back here.’ She
paused and her eyes scanned the audience. ‘There are many songs that bring back memories
and the emotions that go with them. But of all of them, my favourite is the theme
song from the musical
Cats
. So, Key West, this is for you.’

There was scattered clapping as the music synthesizers accompanying her played the
introduction to ‘Memories’. The audience remained standing as Angie’s mellifluous
voice launched into the song. As soon as she began, Nick was instantly transported
to the Kennedy Centre in Washington, DC, in June 1984, where he was watching a production
of
Cats
with his mother and father. He had finally come home to explain to them why he had
been unable to return to Harvard after his spring break in Florida. But try as he
might, he could not begin to tell the story to his disappointed father and broken
hearted mother. All he could say was, ‘It was a woman…’ and then he would fall silent.

It had been a sad reunion. While he was visiting his home in Falls Church, the first
malignant polyps had been discovered and removed from his father’s colon. The doctors
had been optimistic about several more years of life, but they had stressed that colon
cancer often recurred and metastasized to other parts of the body. In a long talk
with his suddenly frail father, Nick had promised to finish his degree in Miami. But
that was little solace to the older man; he had dreamed of seeing his son graduate
from Harvard.

The performance of
Cats
at the Kennedy Centre had been only mildly entertaining for Nick. In the middle he
had found himself wondering how many people in the audience really knew the author
of the source material for the songs, T. S. Eliot, who not only admired and enjoyed
feline idiosyncrasies, but also once began a poem by describing the evening ‘spread
out against the sky, like a patient aetherized upon a table’. But when the old female
cat walked to centre stage, her beauty faded into wrinkles, and began her song of
her ‘days in the sun’, Nick had been moved along with the entire audience. For reasons
he never understood, he had seen Monique singing the song, years in the future. And
in Washington he had wept, silent tears hidden quickly from his parents, when the
achingly pure soprano voice had reached the climax of the song.

Angie’s voice at Sloppy Joe’s was not nearly as piercing as that soprano’s in Washington.
But she sang with the same intensity, evoking all the sadness of someone for whom
all the joys of life are in the past. The corners of Nick’s eyes filled with tears
and one of them brimmed out to run down his cheek.

From where Carol was standing, the lights from the stage reflected off Nick’s cheek.
She saw the tear, the window of vulnerability, and was herself moved in return. For
the first time she felt a deep stirring, almost an affection, for this distant, solitary,
but strangely attractive man.

Ah Carol, how different it might have been if, for once in your life, you had not
acted impulsively. If you had just let the man have his moment of loneliness or heartbreak
or tenderness or whatever he was feeling, then you might have mentioned it later,
at a quieter time, to some advantage. The sharing of this moment might even have eventually
been part of the bonding between you. But you had to tap Nick on the shoulder, before
the song was through, before he even realized himself that he was tearful, and break
his precious communion with his inner self. You were an interloper. Worse, as so often
happens, he interpreted your smile as derision, not sympathy, and like a frightened
turtle withdrew completely from the evening. It was guaranteed that he would reject
as insincere any subsequent overtures of friendship.

Troy missed the interplay between Carol and Nick. So he was quite surprised, when
he turned around and sat down after the final applause, to find Nick’s shoulders set
in an unmistakable pose of hostility. ‘Wasn’t she wonderful, angel?’ Troy said to
Carol. ‘And how about you, Professor? Was this the first time you heard her sing?’

Nick nodded. ‘She was great,’ he said, almost grudgingly. ‘And I am thirsty. Can a
man get a drink in this place?’

Troy was slightly offended. ‘Well, pardon us,’ he said. ‘So sorry that the entertainment
lasted so long.’ He tried to signal for the waiter. ‘What’s eating him, angel?’ he
said conversationally to Carol.

Carol shrugged her shoulders. Then, trying to lighten the atmosphere, she leaned toward
Nick and tapped him on the forearm on top of the table. ‘Hey, Nick,’ she said, ‘have
you been taking angry pills?’

Nick quickly withdrew his arm and grumbled something inaudible as a reply. He turned
away from the conversation and saw that Angie was approaching the table. He stood
up automatically and both Carol and Troy joined him. ‘You were fantastic,’ said Carol,
a little too loudly, as soon as Angie was within earshot.

‘Thanks… Hi,’ replied Angie, as she walked up to the table and took the chair that
Troy had pulled out for her. She spent a few moments graciously acknowledging praise
from people at the nearby tables. Then she sat down and smiled. ‘You must be Carol
Dawson,’ she said easily, leaning across the table toward the reporter.

Angie was even more beautiful in person than she had been in the picture on the disc
jacket. Her colouring was a dark brown, not quite black. Her makeup, including the
light pink lipstick, was muted to permit her natural assets, including virtually perfect
white teeth on prominent display when she smiled, to draw the attention. But beyond
the beauty was the woman herself. No still photograph could do justice to the natural
warmth that radiated from Angie. People liked her immediately.

‘And you must be Nick Williams,’ Angie said, extending her hand to Nick. He was still
standing, looking uncomfortable and uncertain, although Troy had already seated himself.
‘Troy has told me so many things about you in the past few days, I feel as if we’re
already friends. He claims that you’ve read every novel ever written that’s worth
reading.’

‘That’s an exaggeration, of course,’ Nick replied, obviously pleased to be recognized.
He seemed to loosen up a little and finally sat down. He started to add another comment
but Carol jumped into the conversation and cut him off.

‘Did you write that beautiful song about the blind man yourself?’ she asked, before
Angie had really had time to sit down and collect herself. ‘It seemed to be a very
personal statement.’

‘Yes,’ Angie answered Carol pleasantly, without a trace of irritation at Carol’s aggressive
behaviour. ‘Most of my material comes from other sources, but occasionally I write
a song myself. When it is a very special subject for me.’ She smiled briefly at Troy
before continuing. ‘My father is a remarkable, loving man, blind from birth but with
an uncanny comprehension of the world at all levels. Without his patience and guidance,
I probably would never have had the courage to sing as a little girl. I was too shy
and self-conscious. But my father convinced all of us when we were small that we were
somehow special. He told us that God had given each of us something unusual, something
uniquely ours, and that one of the great joys of life was discovering and then developing
that special talent.’

‘And that song, “Let Me Take Care of You, Baby”, did you really write that for Troy?’
Nick blurted out his question before Angie had finished her sentence, thereby destroying
the soft mood created by Angie’s loving description of her father. Nick was on the
edge of his chair and for some reason seemed agitated and unsettled. Troy wondered
again what he had missed in the interaction between Carol and Nick that had caused
his friend to become so tense.

Angie looked at Troy. ‘I guess so,’ she said with a wistful smile, ‘although it was
originally meant to be a playful tune, a light commentary on the game of love.’ She
stopped for a moment. ‘But it does talk about a real problem. It’s very hard sometimes
being a successful woman. It interferes—’

‘Amen. Amen,’ Carol interrupted while Angie was still developing her thought. This
was one of Carol’s favourite subjects and she was ready to pounce on the opportunity.
‘Most men cannot deal with a woman who is the least bit successful, much less in the
spotlight.’ She looked directly at Nick and then continued. ‘Even now, in 1994, there
are still unwritten rules that must be followed. If you want to have a permanent relationship
with a man, there are three don’ts: Don’t let him think you’re smarter than he is,
don’t suggest sex first, and, above all, don’t make more money than he does. These
are the three key areas where their egos are extremely fragile. And if you undermine
the ego of any man, even when you’re just kidding with him, then it’s a lost cause.’

‘Sounds like you’re an expert,’ Nick replied sarcastically. His hostility was obvious.
‘I wonder if it ever occurred to any of you liberated females that men are not put
off by your success, but rather by the way you handle it. What you accomplish in life
does not mean shit at the personal level. Most ambitious, aggressive women I have
met—’ and now he was looking directly at Carol—‘go out of their way to make male-female
relationships into some kind of competition. They will not let the man, even for a
moment, have the illusion that he lives in a patriarchal society. I think some of
them purposely emasculate—’

‘There it is,’ Carol jumped in triumphantly. She nudged Angie, who was smiling but
still a little embarrassed at the rancour in this exchange. ‘That’s the magic word.
Whenever a woman wants to argue and not accept as gospel some profound male truth,
she is trying to “castrate” or “emasculate”—’

‘Okay, you guys,’ Troy interjected firmly, shaking his head. ‘That’s enough. Let’s
change the subject. I had thought that maybe you two could enjoy an evening together,
but not if we’re going to start this way.’

‘The problem,’ Carol continued, now looking at Angie and ignoring Troy’s request,
‘is that men are frightened. Their hegemony in the Western world is threatened by
the emergence of women who aren’t willing to be just barefoot and pregnant. Why, when
I was at Stanford—’

She stopped and turned when she heard the legs of a chair scraping across the floor.
‘With all due respect, Miss Leatherwood,’ Nick was standing up again, holding the
chair in his hand, ‘I believe I will excuse myself. I thoroughly enjoyed your music,
but I do not wish to subject you to any more bad manners. I wish you continued good
fortune in your career and I hope that someday you can spend some time on the boat
with Troy and me.’ Nick turned to Troy. ‘I’ll see you at the marina at eight o’clock
in the morning.’ Finally he looked at Carol. ‘You, too, if you still want to go. You
can tell us about the wimps at Stanford while we’re out in the middle of the Gulf.’

Nick did not wait for a reply. He picked up the envelope and walked back through the
crowd toward the exit. As he was approaching the door he heard a voice calling him,
‘Nick. Oh, Nick. Over here.’ It was Julianne, waving to him from a nearby table full
of glasses and ashtrays. She and Corinne and Linda were surrounded by half a dozen
men, but Julianne was moving them all around and pulling up an empty chair. Nick walked
over to her table.

Thirty minutes later Nick was very drunk. The combination of Julianne occasionally
brushing his leg, Corinne’s gigantic breasts (covered now, but he could remember them
from Troy’s game in the afternoon), and intermittent glimpses of Carol through the
cigarette smoke had made him very horny as well.
Goddamn it, Williams
, he had thought to himself when he first sat down with Julianne’s group.
You blew it again. Here you had this perfect chance to charm her. Maybe even score
. But half an hour later, after the drinks, his thoughts were more reminiscent of
Aesop’s fox.
She’s too aggressive for me anyway. Famous. Pushy. Probably too hard underneath. And
cold in bed. Another ballbuster
. Yet still he watched her from across the room.