We Were Kings (16 page)

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The Pacific Club, Columbus Avenue, Roxbury

SOME AFTERNOONS, THE
stage of the Pacific Club was packed with musicians eager to burn off the slow hours of a lazy summer day. The players who had arrived too late sat at the tables and booths, waiting their turn. They sat impatiently and drank dime beers or bottles of tonic, and, lighting one cigarette after the other, they filled up the glass ashtrays before them. The ceiling fans were turned to their highest settings; they broke apart the smoke but didn't do much to the heat.

A soprano-sax player, Jimmy Rollins, called out to the owner of the club: “Hey, Moody, I feel a chill in the air. How about firing up that furnace.” Moody responded with a dismissive shake of the head and went back to scrubbing down the bar top with wood soap, the pine scent both medicinal and heady.

Other than the musky stink of himself and the rest of the musicians onstage, Dante didn't smell much of anything. He sat behind the old, beaten-up piano and played with an intensity that he hadn't felt in quite some time. Some of the young players eyed him up and down, skeptical of a white guy leading the rhythm section. However, the old-timers knew him well, even treated him with a little extra care, knowing some of the tragic shit he'd gone through.

Maxwell Curtis was back from New York, brandishing that old trumpet that could sound like a broken heart or its complete opposite; somebody had once said it “screamed like a fat Harlem whore in heat.” Louis Valentine showed up with his trombone. Dante hadn't seen him in well over a year. Louis had done some time up in Walpole for forging checks, and despite not playing for a while, he brought in some challenging edges, and the way he slid in and out of the rhythm kept Dante on his toes. Old Toad was there on drums, all five foot one of him, and occasionally, when he got tired, the old man allowed a teenager who everybody called Blue Hill Slim to take a seat behind the kit and try to keep up.

As the afternoon turned into early evening, a dozen other players switched in and out. Since Dante was the older of the two piano players, he sat through many renditions of Tin Pan Alley standards and some daring takes on popular songs from the war. On the few songs he didn't know, he pulled back and didn't try to showboat. But most of them, he played with vigor and soul. He hadn't had this much fun in years.

By the time six o'clock rolled around, he was dizzy from the heat, and his stomach growled with a raw, biting intensity that flared up even worse when he took a shot of rotgut whiskey from Old Toad's copper flask. After they went to town on a rendition of “Flying Home,” they all decided it was time to take a break. Out in the back between a dumpster and stacks of wooden crates filled with empty Pepsi bottles, Dante shared a joint with Maxwell. The reefer sizzled in the humidity, and the bitter taste of it made Dante's throat sore, but going back inside, he was recharged for another set, his head light and his senses sharp.

Jimmy Rollins and Valentine helped Toad bring out the vibraphone that had been gathering dust in the storage room. Rumor had it that it once belonged to Lionel Hampton himself, but by the looks of it now, it was good for nothing but the trash heap. Toad wiped down the aluminum bars with a rag and then brandished a pair of soft wide mallets, the rounded ends a bright cardinal red. He went at it with an odd tenderness, striking the notes and letting them hum and resonate. The sound emitted by the instrument was almost saintly, reverent. Those talking in the booths and at the tables shut their mouths and watched the old man play. Slowly, those onstage joined in, and they toyed with the rhythm until it became a real song with its own melody. They stretched it for as long as it could go, and when it ended, a churchlike silence filled the room.

It was during this quiet moment that Dante sat back on the bench and finished the last of his drink. The bitterness of the quinine made his tongue feel puckered and dry.

A shaft of bright light came across the front of the club. Two women walked in and went to the bar. One was squat, thick-hipped, wearing a purple hat with a halo of peacock feathers. The other was slender and tall.

The owner, Moody, leaned on the bar reading the
Globe
and tugging away at his large half-bent pipe. The short woman offered her hand to Moody. Moody looked up and laughed, removed the pipe from his mouth, took her hand as though she were royalty, and kissed it. Then Moody said something to the slender woman, and she responded as if she were upset with him, but Dante could tell she was just playing around. She leaned over the bar and kissed the big man on the left cheek and then the right; she did it with the affected air of a European socialite. Dante squinted through the smoke, and he watched her come toward the stage. She stopped at one of the round tables, grabbed a book of matches and an ashtray.

Her shoulders were almost bare in a thin-strapped cotton dress, and she wore a pair of leather sandals. She was tall and lean with the muscles of a dancer. Her hair shone with a metallic gleam and was pulled back tightly and tied into a neat bun. She walked without seeming to be aware of her figure or the amount of bare skin she showed from her shoulders down to her long, finely sculpted legs. Besides the dress and the sandals, she wore nothing else. No makeup. No jewelry. Not even, from what Dante could tell, a bra.

Behind him, Maxwell teased his trumpet, blowing at it and clearing it of spit.

She looked up at the sound, saw Dante watching her, and smiled. His lips felt leaden but he managed a smile in return. He went to light a cigarette and pretended he was getting ready to play. His hands were shaking. He felt exposed, examined. She let her eyes linger, as if she were trying to locate his face somewhere in her memory; perhaps she had met him before.

Dante looked down, softly plinked the piano keys.

There was something about her that reminded him of his late wife, Margo, that natural beauty that was averse to gussying up like some forbidden, lustful idol. That was what Margo's sister, Sheila, did, and briefly he saw Sheila too—a woman who carried trouble with her, a woman who found comfort not in the company of a few women but in the company of many men.

Standing behind Dante, Maxwell leaned in and whispered, “I hear she likes them white, Cooper, but there's one thing you ought to know.”

He turned, a bit dazed still. “What's that?”

“Guess who her cousin is.”

“Who?”

She was standing at the bar, smoking a cigarette. The bartender, Bowie, was making her a drink.

“Big Moody himself.”

“I never seen her before,” Dante said.

“She moved up here from Baltimore.”

“That's nice,” he said, trying his best to sound like he didn't give a shit.

He and the band went into the song “My Melancholy Baby.” Several chords in, Dante stumbled. As a result, the bass player floundered too. The drummer tried to fill in the hole but couldn't quite make it. Jimmy Rollins ran a finger across his throat. “Cut it,” somebody hollered.

He could feel the woman's eyes on the stage watching him intensely, as if she were playing a game to see who could stare the longest without flinching. But when he looked over, he saw that her back was to the stage. Suddenly, the room seemed to be closing in on him. Maybe it was the reefer, he thought. It felt as if his senses were misfiring and dulled around the edges. He knew it was time to call it quits. He glanced at his watch and stood up from the bench.

The other piano player took his seat, and Dante patted him on the shoulder. He grabbed his hat and his smokes and stepped off the stage, walked through the club toward the bathrooms in front, nodding at Moody as he passed.

“Sounded like you were digging for clams there,” Moody said, grinning.

His cousin stood at the bar and she turned to Dante. He felt helpless standing under her gaze. She too grinned. He tried to think of something witty to say but nothing came out.

As he stood at a urinal in the bathroom, the door opened. Maxwell walked up to the empty urinal next to him. He unzipped and grunted as he began to piss. Dante flushed and went to the sink.

“What's her name? Moody's cousin.”

“Isabelle. I heard him call her Izzy. All I know is she's from Maryland, got no curves for a black woman, and she's living up on Mission Hill.”

Dante turned on the faucet, cupped cold water in his hands, and splashed his face again and again.

Behind him, Maxwell kept on talking. “Just remember, Moody will eat you for breakfast you look at her the wrong way. He ain't got no daughter, so I'm sure he's going to treat her like one while she's here. That means you behave like she's a preacher's wife. Off-limits.”

“I just asked who she was, that's all. I'm not going to jump her or anything. I know better.”

“Do you?” Maxwell touched Dante on the shoulder with one hand while he zipped up his trousers with the other. “I'd say she's trouble, even though she don't want to be. What I gather is she needed to get away from Baltimore. You take that and you fill in the blanks.”

Dante jangled the keys in his pocket to make sure they were still there. “Need a ride home?”

“I was just going to get on my knees and beg for that. Seriously, I'd appreciate it.”

While Maxwell went to get his trumpet, Dante stood at the empty end of the bar near the exit. Moody and the short woman with the peacock hat had gone off somewhere. Bowie was still behind the bar, and another man had joined in Bowie and Isabelle's conversation. He was large and broad-shouldered, looking as if he'd just stepped off a plane from Miami with his tailored khaki slacks looped with a white leather belt and a bright turquoise shirt neatly tucked in at his wide waist. He leaned toward Isabelle, trying to make her laugh with some foolish story about visiting Baltimore. Dante expected her to turn around and offer him one last glance so that he'd know she still sensed his presence in the room, but when Maxwell came back and said he was ready, Dante reluctantly turned and walked toward the exit.

He held the door open for the old trumpeter and then followed him outside, where it felt considerably cooler despite the temperature holding steady in the nineties. A 1949 bright red Cadillac was parked in front of Dante's junk box. It looked as if it had just been spit-polished and waxed to a virginal shine. He knew that the car belonged to the well-dressed man now talking to Isabelle. He looked at his own car with its dents and rust and four mismatched tires. A weight pulled at his chest.

“Jesus H.!” Maxwell called out. “I ain't even got a license, Cooper, so don't take offense, but by the looks of it, this here old horse needs to be put out of its misery.”

“Are you talking about the car or your own sorry ass?”

Maxwell laughed. “Fuck you, Cooper.”

As Dante muscled the key into the lock of his apartment door, he could tell that something was wrong. He walked in and closed the door behind him. Afraid that he'd encounter something thrown on the floor, he stepped forward with staggered, uneven steps. He dragged a hand through the darkness and called out for Claudia and Maria.

There was no response.

From his left came a sudden movement. His eyes adjusted.

It was just the curtain shuddering from a dull breeze. From outside came little light and little sound too. It was as though the city held its breath.

He decided not to turn on any lights—if someone was there, he could use the darkness as a cover—but he feared he'd knock over a lamp or bruise his knee against some of the bulky furniture they'd acquired secondhand. He still didn't feel comfortable with the layout of the apartment, even though it was the place they'd called home for well over a year now.

He could hear the pipes in the apartment above; the tenant must have been taking a shower. The three bedroom doors were open. From Maria's room came a pale glow from the streetlight. He could see that her bed was empty. The bedsheets were rumpled and twisted, and one of her dolls peered out from the messy folds, its hair knotted and twisted like a madwoman's. Claudia's room was even darker, no light at all. He could smell a familiar odor lingering inside: the rotten cigarillos that Vinny smoked.

Footsteps from above sounded against loose floorboards. Standing in the hallway, Dante wondered if the tenants upstairs would hear if something bad happened. And if they did, would they do anything about it? Come downstairs and knock on the door, or call the police?

When the footsteps ceased and the quiet settled back in, Dante was able to hear something else. It was the sound of water dripping and it was coming from the kitchen.

The fridge door had been left open, and a rectangle of fluorescent light lay on the black-and-white-tiled floor. There was a puddle of milk, and something red was swirled into it, making it look pink. He knelt down on one knee, looked closer, and saw there was also broken glass.

He stood and reached to the wall, switched on the light. Beside the shattered glass of the milk bottle, small footprints in blood went across the kitchen and into the pantry. From inside came a child's whimpering.

He cautiously stepped into the pantry, reached up to the string and pulled it down. The light from the bare bulb blazed, leaving no shadows, and there, in its unflinching brightness, Maria sat and looked up at him like some savage child, her feet bare and the right one bleeding, the gash nearly two inches long.

“It's okay, love. I'm here now.”

He knew what had happened. She had been alone and gotten thirsty. She went to the fridge for some milk and her hands couldn't fully grasp the bottle and it came crashing down. She'd probably panicked and tried to clean it up but she stepped in the puddle and a fang of glass sliced deep into her foot. Claudia hadn't been around to help her. Neither had he.

“It's okay, Maria. I'm here now,” he repeated, softer this time.