Young Man With a Horn (16 page)

It didn’t take long. Fortune, in its workings, has something in common with a slot-machine. There are those who can bait it forever and never get more than an odd assortment of lemons for their pains; but once in a while there will come a man for whom all the grooves will line up, and when that happens there’s no end to the showering down.

Somehow Rick became known. It started the first night at Louie Galba’s, and there was no stopping it after that. It went along something like that stock sequence they use in the movies to show that news is being spread: copy men at their desks, then papers tumbling off the press, newsboys shouting their heads off, customers hunting for their nickels, and standing out above everything: the headline.

He was a musician’s musician, that’s how it started. The boys in the trade accepted him the way they’d accept a flawless reed or an improved mouthpiece.

Nobody resented him, because he’d sprung full-blown into New York. Nobody, except Jeff and Smoke and Hazard, had known him when; he hadn’t climbed up over anybody’s head. He just appeared and took his rightful place and stayed in it. There was a lot of excitement about it at first; there was the shock of discovering him, hearing him for the first time, telling somebody else to go hear him. And then in a year, or make it two, everybody had heard him and he had become a mark to shoot at, a standard to measure by. When he was twenty-four he was head man in the trumpet-playing business in this country, which is to say in the world. He never got much better than he was at Galba’s that first night, he never got very much better than he was at the Rendez-Vous in Balboa. The main difference was that by the time he was twenty-four he was known, his name was known, and when he played you listened. He had a hundred thousand friends and the weather was always fair. You’d hear musicians say of a young comer, ‘He’s all right, but he’s nobody’s Rick Martin,’ in the same way you hear another kind of connoisseur say, ‘She has a certain talent, but she’s no Duse.’ The big name.

He hadn’t changed much. He looked almost the same except that he was thinner. All the boyish imprecision of line was gone and he had hardened into what he was. He was sharp and firm and thin, and his eyes were as hard and bright as copper in the sun.

He was playing in Phil Morrison’s orchestra when he was twenty-four, and he was making more money than he had time to spend. He could just about name his price at that point, but he never did. Phil kept things nice for him, and he worked hard for Phil.

There were twenty men in Morrison’s orchestra, and two arrangers, one girl vocalist and a vocal trio. It was an organization, and almost as businesslike as an insurance company. They rehearsed three afternoons a week and Morrison drove them like slaves. But when they were on the stand everything worked like a charm; the boys knew what was wanted, and Phil Morrison stood up in front aimlessly waving a stick, so genial and relaxed that you’d get the idea he didn’t know what was going on. Not so, though; one false move in that band and you were seeking employment.

Phil played his own arrangers’ arrangements of popular tunes hot off the press. Any song he bought automatically had a good run; and he took them as they came, popular favorites all, played them for a month, and then shuffled them, one by one, off the bottom of the deck to make room for next month’s batch. He had them pretty heavily arranged, with a transitional passage before every vocal, a new key for every chorus, and a grandiose finale, usually with some bells in it somewhere. This was his stock in trade, the standard product, and he was known for it. His orchestra held the established first place among society orchestras for years and years. And for a big orchestra, and a society orchestra, it was good. The way Rick Martin’s trumpet used to spring up above the rest of their heads would make you think it was a great orchestra, and Rick wasn’t the only good man in it, either; there was a fiddler who made you think twice, and a man who blew as good a trombone as you’ll hear anywhere in public. But it wouldn’t do to call it a great orchestra because it pandered to all tastes and there was always that grandiose ending. It was just a good big orchestra, playing out its nightly schedule at one big hotel or another, working for money, drawing a crowd, getting people out on the floor. But when that thin blond boy stood up in his place and tore off sixteen bars in his own free style, filling in the blank that was allotted to him on the score, it was a surprise forever, like seeing an airplane take off from the deck of a good solid ship. To hell, please, with the law of gravity.

The orchestra played from seven until one, but from seven until nine it was just Phil and enough of the boys to play for the dinner crowd. Rick never went to work until nine, when the serious dining was over and night life was about to begin. Then he played for four hours, almost without a break, because he worked in all the intermissions laying down backgrounds for the trio doing odd jobs, playing straight solos. At one they quit for the night, and he was always just hitting his stride, so he went somewhere else. He lived his life after hours. After his good work was done he did better work.

It was at Louie Galba’s one night at about two-thirty that he met Amy North. She and Josephine Jordan came in together. Rick and Louie Galba and Jimmy Snowden and Milt Barrow, who played clarinet in Johnny Deane’s band, were all sitting on the edge of the little platform jamming away four at a time on an old tune that didn’t mind being slapped around, didn’t mind being unrecognizable. Jeff was playing piano for them and Smoke was playing drums. And right in the middle of it, the door opened and in came these two, apparently sober and in their right minds. Josephine, wearing a long blue dress and a squirrel coat, automatically flashed a smile around the room and then went to a little table back in a corner. The white girl followed her. She was wearing a rain coat and a black felt riding hat turned down all the way around. She took the hat off while she was crossing the room and brushed the rain from it. Her hair was light, nearly red, and she wore it parted on one side and brushed back sleek and straight behind her ears and knotted at the back of her neck. She looked like an English girl about to go out for a day’s shooting, but she was American, and I don’t think it was very clear to her then what she was out to do.

A waiter came up to their table. The girl talked it over with Josephine and gave the order, and when they had their drinks they touched glasses lightly and drank to something or other in all seriousness. To crime, possibly; or to success, or to interracial understanding. Mud in your eye, in one form or another—I give you Josephine Jordan and Amy North, the heathen and the English-looking.

There were about thirty people left at Galba’s, and six of them were making music for the other twenty-four to listen to, just playing for fun. Galba’s was almost wholly a musicians’ hang-out by that time of night. There were always a lot of women around, but even so, the place had a kind of inner-sanctum air. When the music stopped and Rick put his horn under his arm and went back to his table to get a drink, the rest of them followed; then somebody over on the far side of the room yelled Jo, and then somebody else yelled Jo, and in a minute the room was full of it.

‘I guess that’s my ticket,’ Josephine said. ‘I guess I’ve got to go sing. We should have known better than to come here.’ But she didn’t hang back. She slipped the squirrel coat from her shoulders and stood forth in her long blue dress, and there was a great shout for her. She motioned to Jeff as she crossed the room.

Amy North drank off her drink, called the waiter, and moved to the other side of the table, facing the music. There are various ways of showing off, and one of them is not to show off. You couldn’t tell about Amy North; she sat there, both hands on the table, not moving a muscle, only watching Josephine as if she were a horse she’d just put her last cent on.

There was a conference in front of the platform, Josephine talking it over with Jeff and Louie Galba; then something was decided and Jeff jumped up on the platform and held his hand out to Josephine while she climbed the two steps, and Louie Galba silenced the people, saying, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen...’ (Applause.) ‘We are about to hear the song “I’m in Big Trouble,” sung by the star of the show Big Trouble, Miss... Josephine... Jordan.’ (Applause.)

Jeff, sitting very straight at the piano, played out a slow introduction; Josephine, standing at the edge of the platform, swayed slightly, closed her eyes halfway, and began her song:

She sang it quietly, and you could hear every word as if she were close to you, talking to you. She stood, swaying in her long blue dress, sleek and tall, her bare brown arms slightly raised from her sides in a way they’d taught her. But they hadn’t taught her to do what she was doing with the song, they hadn’t taught her to sing The room is cold, the streets are wet, I’m here alone, babe, did you forget? and make it stand for all the trust and all the betrayals of all time. It was the true, tragic thing, from her mouth, and to hear it was to know it.

She bowed when it was over, ducking slightly at the knees three times, left, center, right, and then she turned around and thanked Jeff and started to go down the steps. But they didn’t want her to, the customers made an awful commotion. Josephine went back and made bows again, and smiled directly at Amy North. Then she turned around and conferred with Jeff, and in a moment he motioned to Rick, who was sitting with Milt Barrow and Smoke. There was another conference, very short, and Louie Galba told the customers that Jeff Williams and Josephine Jordan and Rick Martin were going to try to remember how they did their last record and do it that way again. ‘Four or Five Times’ was the title, an Orpheum Record released this week; Josephine Jordan and Her Play Boys; and incidentally it won’t make Miss Jordan sore if you rush right out and buy this one. (Laughter.)

They played that and three more, and then Josephine said she’d had enough, whether anybody else had or not; what she needed was a drink with a lot of gin in it. ‘Get Danny and come over to my table,’ she said halfway between Jeff and Rick. Jeff went back with her and Rick went to get Smoke.

When Rick and Smoke came back, the table was being reorganized, going into a merger with another one to make room. The white girl between Jeff and Josephine had taken off her coat.

‘This is my brother, Dan Jordan,’ Josephine said to Amy. ‘And this is Professor Martin, Doctor North.’ Amy smiled at Smoke, and then turned to Rick and said, ‘I’m charmed, Professor,’ and Rick said something or other, nothing much, in return. He was looking back at the platform, watching Milt Barrow and Louie and a couple of men from Freeman’s getting ready to play. ‘Who’s the guy with the sax?’ he said to Smoke, and Smoke said some friend of Abe’s, just in from Chicago and supposed to be good.

Everybody sat down then and ordered. Rick seemed to feel that the evening was over; he yawned, stretched his legs under the table until they got tangled with Amy North’s feet; then he sat up straight again, lighted a cigarette, and had the package back in his pocket when he saw that Amy North had the look of wanting a cigarette. So he fetched out the package again and held it out to her.

Jeff and Amy were on one side of the table, Rick and Josephine across from them, and Smoke at the end next to Rick.

‘Remember Ferry, used to play piano for Valentine?’ Rick said to Smoke. ‘He’s dead.’ And when Smoke asked how and when, Rick said: ‘Last week sometime. He quit Lee and bought a car and he was driving out to California with the top down and a train hit him. Somewhere in Kansas. Only way they’re sure it was him, they found his union card.’

‘I’ll be damned,’ Smoke said, and Josephine said, ‘Was he the good-looking one that played with Valentine, or the other one?’

‘The other one,’ Rick said. ‘Ferry was a funny-looking guy, and crazy as hell, too. He used to walk everywhere, couldn’t stand to be in the back of a taxi; if he had to take one he’d always sit up front with the driver, it drove him nuts in back; and he used to walk up to the eighth floor of the hotel all the time, because he didn’t like elevators. The bars, or something. Once we took him home drunk and put him in the elevator and he opened his eyes just as the door closed and he made a terrible squawk. We had to hold him until we got to his floor. And he’d always get somebody else to go in a phone booth and phone for him. God, I’ve made some silly calls for that guy in my time.’

‘Did he like to be in any room at all?’ Amy North asked. Her voice was mid-register, and she used just enough of it to make herself heard.

‘No, he didn’t,’ Rick said, ‘much. He used to sit in the park quite a lot.’

‘Claustrophobia,’ the girl pronounced it.

‘What did you say?’ Rick said, and all of them looked at her.

‘It’s rather a common thing,’ said Amy North looking down into her glass. ‘I don’t like telephone booths much, myself. I always get the feeling when I’m in one that it might fall down, and there I’d be, flat on my back in a telephone booth. They’re too narrow; you can’t raise your arms straight out.’

‘Oh, well,’ Josephine said, ‘you can always phone in them, and that’s all they’re supposed to be for.’ She looked around the table and said: ‘This is the way she gets when she remembers she’s a doctor. Sometimes she’s nice.’

The two of them exchanged a look, and Amy said, ‘It’s big of you to say so.’

‘Are you a doctor?’ Rick said.

‘No,’ Amy said. ‘I’m not.’

‘Well, she’s going to be,’ Josephine said. ‘Aren’t you? Or what

was it?’

‘I wrote it down for you only yesterday.’

‘Well, anyhow, she’s going to hypnotize people and get them to say what balled them up when they were kids. Isn’t that it?’

They looked at each other and laughed as if Josephine had said something pretty funny; Rick and Smoke and Jeff sat there looking troubled.

‘Maybe we need a drink,’ Rick said. He called the waiter.

‘Once I saw a man hypnotize a woman in the window of Rogers’ Dollar Store,’ Smoke said. ‘They left her in there two days and nights, asleep on a couch in there, and she stayed asleep the whole time, because my brother Nathan set the alarm for two o’clock one night and went down to see if it was a fake or not, and she was in there asleep, all right. Then the next afternoon the guy that did it stepped into the window and snapped his fingers in front of her teeth and she sat right up and smiled.’