Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (56 page)

Jane slipped off her shoes and walked over to glance at herself in the mirror. George asked, “And where were Mr. and Mrs. Manhattan
this
evening?”

“The usual.” Burt’s voice came from the closet. “There was an opening at the Plaza … we looked into Morocco …”

“Don’t knock it,” George grumbled. “These four walls.”

I listened to them talking, realizing that it had been weeks since we’d been anywhere except Danny’s for dinner. It was always the benefits, maybe a drop-in at Barry Gray’s show, then straight back to the apartment, to the island I’d created, to the few people I’d allowed to live on it with me—like a recluse, avoiding aggravation. Not only had I given up everything I’d come to New York for, but by doing so I was giving sanction to the idea that I had no right to it. It was frightening. I was the guy who comes home from the office
and goes for a dip in the ocean, closing his eyes, luxuriating in feeling the tensions and pressures easing—unaware that he’s drifting from shore, further and further …

“Burt.”

“Yes, Sam?”

“What’s it like at El Morocco?”

He thought about it for a moment. “I guess it’s about the best place of its kind in town, probably in the world. It’s gay, sophisticated type crowd, glamorous …”

“But you’re never going to take me there, right?”

“Just say when.”

“It’s only one o’clock. Let’s go tonight?”

Chita jumped up. “You really mean it, Sammy?”

“How long will it take you to get home and change your clothes?”

She rushed for her coat. “I’ll be back in less than half an hour.”

Michael was already out the door and ringing for the elevator.

When the door closed I told Burt, “Maybe you’d better make a reservation … tell them I’m in your party.”

He dialed a number. I opened a window, got a camera and started making shots of the lighted buildings, appreciating the tripod which kept the camera steady, concentrating on the methodical clicks of the shutter that cracked across the room like gunshots until they were drowned out by the sound of Burt’s voice, angry, pinched, straining to be calm, but vibrating with emotion. I glanced around quickly and saw the skin pulled tight around his jaw, the muscle in his cheek throbbing; Jane started going through her purse, George picked up a photography magazine which he’d already looked through earlier in the evening. I heard the phone being set slowly on the receiver.

“They don’t want me, right?”

He sat down, stunned, his face totally drained of color, chalky. I walked over to him and gently pinched his cheeks. “Baby, it’s okay to be white but you’re overdoing it.” I sat behind my bar. “Well, I went for broke and I got it.” I looked at Burt. “Well, let’s hear it, don’t leave me in the dark. Oops. What do I mean by
that
?”

He was shaking his head slowly, staring at the phone, holding a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other, not moving to bring them together. He looked at me blankly. “It was unbelievable … he started to say they didn’t have any tables but he didn’t go through with that—he knew I’d know that’s ridiculous at this hour. Then he said he wanted to speak to John Perona—he’s the owner. I
don’t know if he actually did or not but he came back in a minute and said, ‘We’d rather not.’ I told him we weren’t asking if they’d rather or not. Then he asked me what you looked like.”

“What I look like?”

“He said … ‘He’s very black, isn’t he?’ ”

“You’re kidding!”

“I wish to God I were. Then he started copping-out by saying, ‘I mean he’s not light-skinned, I mean it’s awfully dark, isn’t it?’ Then he asked me to hold the phone again and came back with a new idea. He said you’ve been in
Confidential
and the scandal magazines and that’s the reason they don’t want you—because they don’t want to encourage people like that…. Sam, I should have mentioned a dozen of their steady customers who’ve been in those magazines, to say nothing of Bob Harrison who publishes
Confidential
—he’s there almost every night …” His voice lost its momentum. “But I was so dazed I … I just hung up.”

“Did they actually say, ‘No. He can’t come here’?”

“No. They know better. That’s against the law. They just said you’re not welcome and that you won’t be treated nicely if you appear there.”

I ground my fist into my hand, drawing my fingers tightly over the knuckles, watching my skin changing color under the pressure, overwhelmed for the millionth time by the great goddamned difference people saw in it, disgusted by my incredibly naïve optimism that had survived so many moments like this and had, again, inexcusably, suckered me into going for the rare chance that maybe this time it would be different.

“Sam?”

I looked up. Burt’s face was racked by the hurt and bewilderment of someone who’d always known fire was hot but now the first searing touch of it had shown him how hot it really is. He smiled grimly. “As he was saying you weren’t welcome, just as I hung up—the dance band was playing ‘Mr. Wonderful.’ ”

“Well, folks. It’s a small world. Particularly if you’re colored.” I stood up. “Okay, let’s forget it. It was a bad idea and it ain’t gonna get any better with you guys giving me the June Allyson smiles.” Nobody could think of anything to say. I looked around the room at Jane, Burt, and George. “At least you’ve got to admit this is the first funeral parlor you ever saw with TV, hi-fi, and booze.” The doorbell rang.

George groaned. “Oh, God …”

Nobody was making a move for the door. I stood up. “Well, somebody’s got to answer it.”

Chita was framed in the doorway, dressed to the teeth, posing
Vogue
magazine-style. She yawned, “I left my
large
diamonds in the vault.” Michael was behind her, all smiles.

I bowed them in. “This way, dear friends. Services will begin in a few minutes.”

The strip of street lights that ran up and down Broadway went off, a second later they went off at Seventh, then Sixth, Fifth—as if somebody were running across town pulling switches. I sat in front of the window and sifted through a batch of newspaper clippings—the reading of the public pulse, the sum total of what I’d accomplished: fair, fair, lousy, rotten; judgments, indictments, jokes that didn’t even pretend at good humor, pictures of me and white girls that had been taken at cast parties in complete innocence but were published dripping with innuendo. I looked at an item from the Negro press: “The Negro girls at Sammy Davis, Jr.’s dinner party at Danny’s Hideaway last Tuesday were only there as cover-ups for the white woman who was really his date.” My date had been Ruth King, an old friend and a top Negro model. But whoever had seen us, ten of us, had automatically assumed I was with a white woman. As if it was impossible I’d be with a Negro. It was only the ultimate in the same old story.

Billy Rowe’s voice came over the phone, heavy with sleep. “Sammy? What’s wrong? What time is it?”

“I don’t know what time it is, Billy, and I only called to let you know you can stop working ‘cause we ain’t never gonna make it.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“Just my gorgeous image. It’s set in their minds that my face is The Picture of Dorian Gray and there’s nothing gonna change it. I don’t even want you to try any more.”

“Sammy, I don’t understand, what happened?”

“Nothing happened, Billy.
Nothing
. You and Cliff did everything anybody could do but they don’t wanta know any different than what they always knew and that’s fine with me, ‘cause from this moment on I’m living my life and they can report it any mothery way they see fit. I’m not coming to them on my knees any more; let ‘em pour it on, let ‘em tell the cat on the street what he wants to hear ‘cause I
don’t care
what
he thinks any more. If he wants to take out his troubles on me then crazy, let him hang around uptown bitching about how I live and who I live with, but I’ve had it with apologizing and explaining myself and feeling guilty ‘cause I made it. It’s over.

“Baby, I want you to do just one thing for me: every time you meet a colored cat who works on a paper or a magazine and he’s been rapping me I want you to tell him, ‘I’ve got a message for you from Sammy!’ Tell ‘em they’re creating their own monster. Ask ‘em how come they don’t want pictures of me when I’m with a beautiful girl like Harlean Harris or any other of the colored girls I’m dating. It’s not copy, right? They wait till they see a picture of a white chick and they say, ‘Who they got here with this chick? Sammy Davis? Crazy!’ They complain about it and they rap me for it, but that’s really all they want because that’s copy. Well, you make sure they know they’re every bit as bad as the white cats who do it. Worse. When one of our guys who thinks he’s fighting for equality starts belting me ‘cause I live downtown—laugh in his face, Billy—tell that handkerchief-head he’s cutting his own throat.”

I hung up, hearing the sound of my own breathing, feeling my chest heaving, pumping the heat of my body up through my shirt collar. In the mirror behind the bar I saw my wet face, and beneath it a bronze plaque, and the words “Brotherhood,” “For Humanity” …

… I was holding a bent, twisted piece of bronze, trying to focus on the long wooden splinter that was sticking into my thumb like a dagger. The wooden back of the plaque was smashed and the corner of the bar was broken.

The cab let me off at 125th and Seventh. The street was silent, still. Iron gates were drawn and locked across the store-fronts. A woman turned the corner and passed by without looking at me and I was grateful for the acceptance. I pulled the collar of my leather jacket close around my neck, put my hands into the pockets of my levis and started walking. I looked to my left and to my right at the empty sidewalk, concentrating, until I could see the kids falling in alongside of me, staring up at me, happy just to be walking with me, and I heard the words “You’re Sammy Davis.” A statement of fact. I kept walking, to the barbecue stand. I leaned my back against the locked door and closed my eyes, seeing the faces, hearing the questions … reaching for the past.

When I got up I called George. “Come on. Let’s go spend some money and
be
somebody.”

“Sammy, I’m in the middle of a meeting.”

“Don’t tell me your troubles, baby, ‘cause I’m colored and I’ve got my own. Now, if you’re not in the middle of this lobby in half an hour your star may get so upset he’ll develop laryngitis.”

As we walked across town I stopped at an antique-silver place and gazed through the window at a large silver goblet resting on a piece of red velvet. “Hey, George. Dig.”

He shrugged. “I guess it’s okay if you’re Henry the Eighth.”

“It’s just right for Sammy the Second, too. C’mon in while I have them send it.”

We walked to Madison Avenue, and at Lefcourt’s I showed Lloyd, my salesman, the shoes I wanted to see. “In black and brown.”

George murmured, “What do you mean by
that
?”

Lloyd, a Negro, shot a glance at him, but said nothing. When he left to get the shoes I looked at George. “Your face is so red I can’t even see your lips.”

He was frantic. “It slipped. I should apologize. Or would that make it worse?” He slumped into his seat.

“Baby, Lloyd’s the peaceful type so you’re lucky, but some of our guys are Mau Mau’s: they cut first and ask questions later.” He groaned. I leaned in close to his ear. “You keep making mistakes like that and someday you’ll really put your foot in it and you’ll hear somebody asking, ‘Hey, man, cat got your tongue?’ and then you gonna hear another voice, mean and angry, saying, ‘Yeah, daddy, I got it right here.’ ”

When at least a dozen boxes of shoes were piled alongside me George said, “My God, isn’t that enough? Even a train stops!”

“Baby, do you mind if I get a little pleasure out of life?” A crowd was forming outside the window, watching me. I swung the show into high gear. While Lloyd was trying a shoe on me another salesman was on the run for more styles. The crowd kept growing and so did the pile of shoes until I was almost hidden by the boxes.

We walked up Madison Avenue. George said, “I thought you were so broke.”

“I ain’t half as broke as I’m about to be. Now just up the street, with a little turn to the left and a turn to the right, we have A. Sulka and Company where you will see a truly creative man destroy himself. Then we follow the yellow brick road to Gucci.”

George was almost punchy as we left there. “Six suitcases for like a hundred dollars apiece—and you’re not even going anywhere, Sammy, I’ll see you later. I really can’t stand watching you in these stores. It’s like letting Ray Milland loose in a distillery. You’re doing
Lost Weekend
, but with money.” He hesitated. “Look, I’m not trying to be staff psychiatrist, but whatever your reasons are you’re only causing more trouble for yourself with all this.”

“I know.”

“You
know
?”

“I’ve been making big money for a long time, I’m not exactly drunk on the novelty of it. Baby, I know everything wrong that I ever do—and I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me why I keep doing it.”

“But if you know it’s wrong …?”

“I’m not looking to be right. I’m just looking to be happy.”

He was shaking his head. “You’re too smart to mean that.”

We were at the corner of 52nd street and I saw a song plugger I know get out of a cab and waltz into “21” like he owned the place—and I knew that no matter what I ever accomplished I could never hope to go into one of those places and feel like that. It was all so stupid, so unimportant—except for the fact that I knew I would never be able to understand, to really grasp it, and that after all these years of looking in a mirror and seeing a man, I finally had to accept that it might as well be a trick mirror. I half wished it were. I looked away. “I don’t know, George. I’d like to be as wise as I am smart—but I just can’t swing it.”

Because we’d stopped walking, a few fans appeared and offered me pieces of paper to sign. One of them stared at George with curiosity. “Are you anybody?”

He scowled. “I’m a famous madam.”

I steered him away, and we continued walking. After a while he said, “I guess it’s none of my business, and I know it’s not a Lucky Strike Extra to be colored, but if there are a few places and a few idiots … well, how can you let them bother
you
? I could understand if the average ‘colored cat’—whatever
that
is—complains, but you’re a big star, people stop you on the streets, you can go almost anywhere and wherever you
do
go you get treated better than most people ever hope to be treated.” I didn’t answer and he continued, uncertainly. “I mean you’ve got to admit that it
is
a lot better for
you.”