Ten Cents a Dance (14 page)

Now the mornings at home dragged, because they were time away from Paulie. In order to get away, I made up stories to tell Ma, most of them about Peggy deGroot. Not the real Peggy. This Peggy was a telephone operator. She lived in Canaryville, the Irish neighborhood next to us, and we rode the el back and forth to work together. I went to the movies with Peggy or met her for lunch at a hamburger joint. Other times, we went shopping. Ma liked her. "I'm so glad you've made a nice friend," she said. "I know you were fond of Angela Wachowski, but really, Ruby, she always was a little wild for my comfort."

"I know," I said, and I told Ma how Peggy deGroot had helped wallpaper the bathroom in her grandma's flat.

I was scared Paulie wouldn't like me going out after hours, or going with Filipinos. But he didn't care. It's a racket, he said, and if you were going to make it in a racket, you had to go in the whole way. "A girl with your looks and pep, I bet you take the chumps to the cleaners," he said. I didn't like when he said that; it reminded me too much of Yvonne and Gabby and their scams. But it was just the way he put things, he didn't mean anything by it.

In fact, I was getting antsy to get back to Lily's. I hadn't been there in over a week, not since before the mess with Tom. Manny's schedule had changed; Pullman had put him on some long runs, and I wasn't sure when he'd be back.

"You'd love it," I told Paulie. "You've never seen Lindy Hopping like they do it there. Why don't you pick me up at the Starlight some night and take me?"

"Go with your fish, I don't care," he said. "But me, sit in the same room with a bunch of dumb shines? Not on your life."

It was like I'd given him a flower and he'd stepped on it. Lily, a dumb shine? The way she'd built her place up— still a hole in the wall, sure, but so popular now she'd had to get twice as many tables and three more waiters. And Ozzie and the band, they were cooking so hot that white musicians from the white clubs had started coming to hear them play. The doorman razzed them, asking if they'd come for more lessons.

I tried explaining all this, but Paulie only said, "Pipe down, the newsreel's on." As if I wanted to look at stupid Hitler. He had nothing to do with us, and it was all the way across the world, so who cared? I ate my Old Nick and breathed the delicious scents of chocolate and Paulie. I'd get him to Lily's somehow. It'd just take some work. He'd love it, once he was there. Once I decided that, everything felt all right: again.

That night, my head was so full of Paulie I couldn't bear to think about anything else. The noise and chatter of the hall wore on my nerves so that by the break, I ached for quiet.

Silence this time from the little dark room, except for the scratching of a pen on paper. I stuck my head around the door. Ozzie leaned on the windowsill, in the rectangle of streetlight, scribbling notes.

"Can I come in?" I asked.

Ozzie jumped so hard his fountain pen left an ink blotch on the paper. He muttered under his breath and waved the paper to dry it. "You know, you can go anywhere you want in this place," he said, his voice tight with irritation. "Why you gotta come here?"

"I thought maybe I could listen. Like before."

"You can hear it at Lily's. We've been rehearsing; we'll play it tonight. You gonna be there?"

I felt suddenly shy. I wondered if he thought I was a good dancer. The Negro girls didn't think much of me, I knew. They always tried to steal Manny away:
Say, daddy-o, aren't you ready yet for a real rug-cutter?
Like I wasn't standing right there.

Girls—colored and white—asked Ozzie to dance, too, whenever he wasn't playing. He always smiled and shook his head no, quiet, his gaze slipping to wherever Ophelia, the slim, freckle-chested singer, was. The other musicians razzed Ophelia as if she was their little sister. Called her "Coatrack" and "Broomstick," that sort of thing. But not Ozzie. When they started in on her, he'd frown and fidget, looking half-embarrassed and half-exasperated, like he was thinking,
Come on, girl, zing Jem back already.
Which she should have. But she sang her heart out and ignored them all, so, of course, the other fellows never let up on her for a minute.

Ozzie pointed his fountain pen at the doorway. "Please. Miss."

"My name's Ruby," I said.

Ozzie acted like I hadn't spoken. The pen pointing like an arrow. I sighed and flounced back around the door. "All I wanted to do was listen," I said, stomping into the hall. "If this is how you treat girls, no wonder Ophelia won't give you the time of day."

Through the open doorway, I heard him say, "What?"

"Ophelia," I repeated, a little louder. "The singer, the one you're always making sheep's eyes at?"

I heard his chair scrape back, heard the scuff of shoes on the bare floor. Walking a tight circle, I guessed. Stopped with one hand on his hip, the other holding his trumpet. I'd seen him do that on the bandstand, once, when he'd gotten good and fed up with Hamp's direction. I was pretty sure Ozzie'd gotten in trouble for it.

"What would you know about colored girls?" His voice suspicious—but underneath, a tiny, little hope.

I tipped my head back, laughed silently in the dark. Then said, "I know one particular colored girl doesn't think much of musicians."

For half a minute, he didn't say anything. Didn't move, as far as I could tell. Then, slow, the door swung open wider. When I went inside, he was sitting by the windowsill again, jotting more notes, the trumpet an upright glimmer on the floor by his chair. He didn't look up. But he pulled a cigarette pack and a matchbook out of his shirt pocket and tossed them onto a broken chair between us. I lit one of the matches, found another chair, and set it by the wall behind the door, so that if anyone came in, they wouldn't: see me. Then I shook a cigarette out of the pack, tore a second match out of the book, and sat down.

. . .

Later that night, Manny and Alonso showed up. They clocked me and Peggy out early. Gonna do the rounds, they said.

We hit the Hoot Owl Cafe first. The Hoot Owl was a black and tan, but unlike Lily's, the customers were mostly white, and it seated a few hundred people, not just a few dozen. It wasn't on any dark side street, either, but on South Garfield in Bronzeville, where the neon signs of the after-hours clubs lit the air, and even at three in the morning, people of all colors jammed the sidewalks. We ate chop suey and hamburgers, listened to the swing band cook, and sipped our drinks: rum and Cokes for me, gin fizzes for Peggy, shots and bumps—whiskeys, with beer chasers—for the fellows.

From the Hoot Owl we went to the Jelly Roll, and from there to the Palm, before finally we ended up at Lily's. By then, all I knew was I was having a damn good time. Paulie still on my mind, of course, but farther back, tucked somewhere behind the rum and jazz and laughing crowds. Lily's was jammed; a waiter had to squeeze another table next to the bandstand for us. Ozzie was there, his shirt already soaked down the back, trumpet growling. I hoped they hadn't played his new song yet. He'd told me the name—"Candy Apple"—but he didn't have to say who he'd written it for. Ophelia wore a few different dresses onstage, and all of them were red.

We'd barely sat down when an excited sway ran through the crowd. I craned my neck, but I couldn't see anything. "What is it?" I shouted over the music. "What's happening?"

"Horace Washington just came in!" a fellow at the next table shouted back, just as I glimpsed a colored couple strolling behind Lily and a waiter hoisting another table overhead. The man was big, not tall, but wide across. His coat was thrown over his shoulders; underneath, he wore the sharpest pinstripe suit I'd ever seen on anyone, black, Oriental, or white. People shuffled and scooted aside, making room. Calling out hellos. The man nodded, slapped shoulders, tipped his hat. The woman with him wore a full-length mink coat, and she nodded around, too, smiling.

Alonso leaned to the middle of the table; we all leaned in with him to hear what he was saying. "That's him, all right. I've seen him a couple of times before, at the Rhumboogie."

"All I see is a colored man in a nice suit," Peggy said.

"All the black and tans you've been to, you've never heard of Horace Washington?" Manny said. "He's the biggest policy king in Chicago. You know policy, don't you?"

Sure we did. Policy was Negro gambling. Pick three numbers. If they came up lucky, the player might win a few dollars. Or a few hundred. One night at Lily's, a fellow had come in wearing a brand-new zoot suit with a diamond tie pin. Bought rounds for everyone in the place, tipped every member of the band ten bucks each and fifty for Lily. Word around the club was, his numbers had hit for almost a thousand.

"The policy kings own the games," Alonso explained. "A nickel a bet, hell, everybody in Bronzeville plays. The kings pay off the winners. Pay off the cops. Keep the rest. Thousands and thousands of dollars, every day. The kings are worth millions."

"Millions!" I popped up in my chair, trying to get another glimpse. But the couple had sat down; with the dancers in the way, and the cigarette haze, I couldn't see. Manny flipped a coin onto the table. A buffalo nickel.

"A million bucks built on that," he said. "Hard to imagine, huh?"

Not for me. Everything I ate these days, everything I wore, came from nickels. Nickels added up just fine. I imagined stacks of them, shining soft gray, reaching up to the sky.

"If he's such a big shot, then what's he doing
here?"
Peggy wanted to know.

Before Alonso could answer, the band swung into "Candy Apple." When Ozzie's solo came, he stood up— he always stood for his solos—bobbing and swaying as though the notes rose from deep inside, rattling him as they came through. Eyes closed, his face tense as a fist and then suddenly lifting, as if the music asked some question he was half-afraid to hear the answer to. I snapped and shimmied with Manny, my feet flying, feeling strangely jealous. To have someone make something so beautiful, out of his head, just for you . . . Ophelia better appreciate it.

"But don't make a big deal out of telling her," I'd advised. Thinking of Paulie, and the blue silk dress. "Drop it casual, then scram. Let her stew a little. Oh, and," I said, heating up, "the next time those boneheads in the band start calling her Broomstick, tell em to knock it off. Make sure she hears you, too."

"They only pick on her because she's a kid," Ozzie said. "That's just musicians, it doesn't mean anything. Hell, I've gotten crap every place I've ever played."

"You're a boy. She's the only girl up there and she's got eight fellows calling her Mop Handle—"

"
I
don't!"

"- and you wonder why she doesn't give two hoots for tlie whole pack of you. You tell 'em to knock it off. You've at least told her she's pretty, haven't you?"

Ozzie picked up his trumpet, fingered the keys. Bent back over his papers.

"You haven't said one word to her," 1 accused. Sudden corn motion at the far end of the hall, girls' voices swooping and diving. Break almost over. I stood up and stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray. "Well," I'd told him, "I'd start with hello."

I didn't know what time it was when we finally left Lily's. Or how many rum and Cokes I'd had. Peggy and I staggered up the stairs to the sidewalk, screeching laughter and hanging on to each other, Manny and Alonso on either side of us to keep us from falling.

I had the cab let me off at the usual spot. Two blocks away from our flat, so nobody on our street would see me get out of a taxi when I was supposed to be coming home by the el. Walking, I could barely feel my feet. I seemed to be floating, almost, held to Earth only by the pocketbook over my shoulder. Once home, I noticed the walls were swaying. Careful not to hit them, don't wake anybody—careful past Ma's room—the floor rising in waves under my feet, don't look—my room, the door open, like always, to get the last bit of warmth from the coal stove. Just as I stepped inside, the floor tipped. I pitched sideways. I put my hand out, to catch myself, but the wall seemed to jump backward. I heard a crash, and then someone gasping.

"Ruby?" Betty whispered. "Is that you, what happened?"

"Shh. Don't wake Ma. Go to sleep." All I had to do was find the bed and get in. I moved my feet, but I didn't seem to be going anywhere.

"You're
drunkl"
Thrilled or outraged, I couldn't tell. I started laughing. As if I could be drunk. I'd just been jitterbugging with the best hoofer in Chicago. I'd showed them a thing or two, those colored girls who laughed at me behind their hands. I almost said that. Then I remembered: "I was at work," I said.

"You smell like a tavern." Betty's voice bounding somewhere above me. I wished she would hold still; I couldn't see her, and trying to figure out where she was was making me dizzy. "You were out with Paulie, weren't you? Did Paulie get you drunk?"

"Stop saying that word, I—" A sudden glare blinded me. It was as if someone had taken the sun and hung it directly over my face. I moaned and raised my arm over my eyes. Still too bright. I turned my head. Not two inches from my nose were Ma's slippers.

"Ruby! What on earth are you doing on the floor like that? Get up!"

"She's drunk," Betty said.

I raised my head. It seemed like I had to raise it a long time. Not sun, I realized. Lightbulb. Hanging overhead. I was on my back. The light dimmed and Ma's face hovered over me.

Sweet Ma. I smiled at her. "Hi, Ma," I said. She must be kneeling over me. Ma didn't kneel well. Even in church, she mostly sort of sat forward on the edge of the seat. Hands clasped on the back of the pew in front of her. "Bad Ma," I said. "Don't kneel."

She grabbed my arm and shook me. She couldn't shake hard but my hand flopped as if all the bones had gone out of it. "Where have you been?" She leaned close, peering. "What is all that makeup doing on your face?"

No. No makeup. I'd washed my face. Hadn't I? Better wash it now . . . I tried to push myself up, but the floor bucked again.

"Put her in bed," Ma said.

"With
me?"

"You can go in my bed. It's almost five, I might as well stay up."