Authors: Esi Edugyan
In the morning, Chip’s neck was stiffer than cold molasses.
‘Hell,’ he said, squinting over at me. You could see his breath. ‘Don’t it never end?’
I looked in the rearview mirror. ‘Kid?’ My mouth felt thick with cotton. ‘Kid, you awake?’
He lift up his head, grimaced.
‘Hell,’ Chip said again, rubbing his hands together to get warm. ‘Paris, buck. City of lights. We got any scratch?’
‘Some,’ I said, yawning. ‘Ernst give us some.’
‘Good old Ernst,’ Chip smiled, his teeth chattering. ‘Good old goddamned Ernst.’
Hiero was fumbling around in the backseat, working his arms into his heavy overcoat, folding up his damn knees into the seatback with a thump as he did.
‘Hell, kid, did you have to bring your elephant?’ Chip grunted.
Hiero stopped, looked at him.
‘Yeah, you heard me,’ said Chip, turning to him. ‘Now come on. Let’s get some of that famous French cuisine.’
‘
Dejeuner
,’ I said distractedly. ‘Breakfast is
dejeuner
.’
‘You goin be a gentlemen yet, brother. Damn. Since when you croak Frog?’
I shrugged. I was thinking of Delilah, some of what she’d taught me, but thinking of her suddenly stripped away any good feeling I’d had. I shook my head, wrestled open the door, got out. I felt dark, depressed. I kept seeing old Ernst in his brown suit, his pale brow furrowed as he turned from me to look uselessly out at the garden. I kept seeing the quiet pain in his face, like he known for weeks the end was near, but was paralyzed now that it had finally arrived.
We found a small outdoor café that was serving at this hour and settled under a green awning. It was empty but for a old gent reading the paper, dressed all in grey with a grey fedora set stiff on his grey head. Like a damn wax statue. The hard metal chair felt cold through my trousers, and though the chill was burning off some, I ain’t seemed able to get warm. As a car passed in the street, I lifted up my eyes, seen pigeons scattering like blown paper in the abandoned square.
‘Where everybody got to?’ I said. ‘Ain’t it a weekday?’
‘Brother, ain’t nobody work in Paris,’ said Chip. ‘Paris the city of
love
.’
Then a waitress come on up. Clearing his throat, Chip gestured for three coffees. He watched her hips as she walked back to the bar.
‘I always liked France,’ he said with a smile.
‘Get you mind off it,’ I said. ‘Hell, brother. After what all we just been through?’
The kid was leaning forward, setting his wrinkled coat sleeves on the table. ‘You think Ernst goin get out?’ he said soft-like.
‘You don’t got to whisper, Hiero,’ I whispered.
‘He ain’t comin kid,’ said Chip. ‘No chance. His car is
parked
.’
‘He said he goin try.’
‘Don’t matter.’
‘He said when his pa gone back to the Saar, maybe then. Maybe he goin use his own contacts.’
Chip just give him this withering look.
‘Hell,’ I said, all a sudden tired of it. ‘Leave it alone.’
Then the waitress come back, set down three cafés au lait. Chip turned this dazzling eighteen-carat smile on her. ‘Bon
jour
,’ he said. ‘Al
lô
.’
She laughed.
I closed my eyes. It sounded damn mournful, that laugh of hers echoing off the square.
‘Now
that
, brother,’ Chip murmured as she sashayed away, ‘
that
is the
real
French cuisine, right there.’
‘She got to be old as you mama, Chip.’
He give me a long thoughtful look, as if absorbing this. ‘Aw, that be the grateful type. Makes the sweetness all the sweeter.’
Hiero cleared his throat. ‘So what we doin?’
Chip was still staring after the waitress. ‘Somebody got to call Louis. Who it goin be? Sid?’
My damn foot gone to sleep and I stood up, started to shake it out. That old jack reading his paper glance over in alarm. He turn in his seat, fold one leg over the other, rustle his pages. I been dreading this hour. Louis Armstrong? Hell, I known this was it, this was our moment, our lifetime. Folks think a lifetime is a thing stretched out over years. It ain’t. It can happen quick as a match in a dark room.
Hiero was eyeing me. I known we both thinking the same thing. Louis was like to ask about Lilah.
‘Aw, I’ll do it,’ said Chip. ‘Where’s the number?’
‘I reckon Sid ought to,’ said Hiero. ‘Ain’t that why Ernst left him in charge?’
‘Hell, brother,’ said Chip, scowling. ‘Sid ain’t even in charge of his own
bowels
.’
I fumbled in my pocket, pulled out a mess of francs, crumpled notes, soft paper wrappers. I smoothed one out, slid it over the table to Chip. Like that, he was up and asking for the phone.
I looked at the kid. Seemed like something was seared inside him. Like all certainty been peeled back, torn off, leaving just teeth and sinew. He had his face down, studying his hands, and he ain’t said nothing to me as we waited.
After a time Chip come back out, lean over the old counter to smile at the waitress. Hell, that boy got the gumption of a tomcat. At last he saunter over our way, sit down with a satisfied flourish. His metal chair scraped on the bricks as he pulled it close. The shadows seemed to deepen in the square.
Hiero looked at him. ‘So? What he say?’
‘Who?’
I laughed angrily. ‘What you mean who. What he say?’
Chip smiled then, like he just swallowed the damn canary. ‘Boys, you just stick with me. That old gate like to sit on his hat when he get a earful of us.’
‘So he ask to see us? For real?’
But Chip only turn to the kid, give him this long, slow smile. He stirred his cold café au lait, set the spoon carefully down on the saucer, took a sip. His eyes met mine over the rim of the cup. ‘I reckon I might get a chance with that waitress. What you think? Worth the effort?’
Hell. Kid like to have chewed his own arm off from the nerves.
‘It ain’t funny, Chip,’ he burst out. ‘Come on, what he say?’
‘About what, now?’
‘
Chip
,’ I said.
He look at me, give a reluctant sigh. ‘Fine, fine. Louis say Montmartre.’
‘Mont
martre
? We
in
Montmartre. What about it?’
‘Keep you shirt on, kid. We got to
stay
in Montmartre. Just a few hours.’ He lifted his eyebrows at me. ‘You goin find this one hell of a day, brother.’
I felt a lurch in my chest.
‘What you sayin, Chip?’ said Hiero. ‘Louis say somethin bout Sid?’
But Chip, he just give this low cackle, like when we was kids.
We climbed the broken-stoned slopes of Montmartre, the morning already brightening. I felt frail with nerves. Got so my damn hands was shaking in my coat pockets. Louis goddamned
Armstrong
. We sort of fell into exhausted silence, and I glanced over at the kid. Hope eats at you like a cancer, I guess. If we just left Berlin sooner, I was thinking, if we just tried harder for old Ernst, for Paul. If we just been better men.
The steep streets was quiet and I wasn’t able to shake my feeling of being in the wrong city. There was crowds gathering in the cafés now, haunting the doorways of shops. All of them reading newspapers, muttering among themselves.
‘What’s goin on?’ said Hiero, nervous.
Hearing him speak, a man look up, watch him with cold eyes. We gone on past, drifting toward the buildings, away from the open streets.
‘Almost like bein back in Berlin,’ said Chip.
I frowned. ‘Not quite.’
He led us up toward a tall church outlined against the overcast sky. Its spire sharp and fierce, like a thing out of nightmare. We cut through a dark, treed park, up a narrow set of steps, Hiero gripping the railing and grunting behind us. Chip looked back at him, grinned.
‘I thought you horn players got the good lungs,’ he laughed.
The kid just lean right over when he reached us, gasping and coughing.
I wasn’t fooled. I known it wasn’t the hike making him dally. Watching him, I thought,
Sure you all that back in Berlin. But you about to meet genius, buck. You about to learn what you ain’t. Scary, ain’t it
.
Kid hacked like crazy, spitting the mess onto the cobblestones.
‘Hell, kid, ain’t that a bit of you appendix in there?’ said Chip. ‘Look, Sid. You ain’t never seen nothin like it. I think it’s got its own teeth.’
But I ain’t felt much like clowning. I drifted over to the rail, set both hands on the cold steel, looked down at the steps below us.
‘Go on, kid,’ said Chip. ‘Go find youself a pew. We like to be a while.’
I ain’t known how long we stood above that street. I watched a dark cat mince across the cobblestones. Someone dumped a bucket of wash water out a window. Then a lone figure come around the corner, start making its way up the road, its legs and arms looking grey and thin in the watery daylight, its head all bloated with a wrap. And, like that, I felt my heart suck itself down into this real deep hole in my chest. She stopped at the foot of the steps, folded her arms. She looked leaner, more worn and threadbare, but, hell. It was
her
.
It was Delilah.
I started shaking. Like that, I just started trembling real light and fast, like a bird’s heart in you fist.
Chip come up beside me. ‘Told you this was goin be a wild day,’ he murmured. ‘You just goin stand there? Or you goin down give her some sugar?’
I ain’t understood. I give him a helpless, frightened look, feeling the cold air coming in at my collar. Delilah was glancing across at a café, that huge blue wrap on her head like something from a far-off land. She was a mirage, I swear it. Suddenly this huge wave of meanness start pushing against me from the inside.
Hold on, Sid
, I thought.
You don’t know nothing yet. Just hold on
.
But Chip was already slipping past, starting down them steps. ‘Well, look who risen from the dead,’ he called with a smile. ‘Lilah, girl, you forget what we look like, you got to look so hard?’
She turned, and I seen her face clear. Was like my blood just stop. I couldn’t move. I stood above her at that railing and I couldn’t move a inch.
‘Charles,’ she cried with a sharp squealing laugh. ‘Charlie Jones!’
‘It’s Chip, sister. You know it.’ But he was smiling too.
She just lift up her skirts and run on up the steps, her long heels like gunshots on the cracked stones. She catch him in this savage hug before he even a half dozen steps down. I bet Chip ain’t been held like that even by his own mama. Then, over his shoulder, she lift up her eyes, and seen me.
Hell. I ain’t said nothing. I didn’t think I be able to say nothing.
She let Chip go and stood there breathing hard.
‘Delilah girl?’ I could feel myself gripping that cold railing.
She looked at me shyly. ‘Hi, Sid.’
Neither of us stirred, made any move to come closer. And then, hell, there was a high whooping cry, and a cloud of pigeons exploded behind me. I jumped a little. Sweet Lilah lifted her beautiful face away from mine, following the line of birds, and catching sight of the kid some steps up, she start to running. She held him to her chest in this ferocious damn embrace like she ain’t never held nothing she loved before.
We ain’t lingered long. Delilah led us into that old church, along the wood pews, out some back door into a small, grassed courtyard. Wasn’t no one around. A spiked iron fence behind a hedge, a wood bench under a apple tree, a table with three rickety cane chairs. She led us to a gate in the far corner, unlatched it. It opened onto a steep alley incut with stone steps going down.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s not far.’
‘We goin to see Louis?’ said Hiero in German.
I was too distracted to answer. I felt slack, strange, not quite in my own skin. It wasn’t nerves I was suffering now. Every time I sneak a look on over at her, hell. De
lilah
. It ain’t seemed possible. Watching her start down those steps, with her bird’s bones, with that oaky smell of outdoors on her like she just been walking the countryside, like it any damn day and not miraculous at all – everything rose up in me. I caught a glimpse of her scrawny ankles under them skirts, then they was gone.
It ain’t been but a week and a half, but she seemed a complete stranger. The stress of these last days, the grief – twenty years might have passed.
‘Tell me everything,’ she said. ‘I want to know everything.’ She put her slim hand to the back of her neck, like to check that her wrap was on just so.
Chip was running his fingers over the iron railing. ‘You supposed to be dead, girl. How come you ain’t dead?’
She smiled. ‘Careful, Charlie. You’re going to rumple your suit.’
‘Don’t start with that Charlie business. I mean it.’
Hiero trailed behind us, about as far from Delilah as that gate could get. She turn around, give him a wink.
‘I think he’s afraid of me again,’ she laughed.
‘You a ghost,’ said Chip. ‘We all afraid of you.’
‘So where’s Louis?’ I said, irritable.
Delilah, she ain’t hardly lift up her eyes at me at all. We come to the gate at the bottom and she lifted the latch, held it open for us. When she answer me, her voice gone different. ‘He’s just down here a way. He still isn’t well.’
Chip swore. ‘He sick? Louis been sick?’
‘You know that,’ she said.
I turned as we went, said to Hiero in German, ‘Lilah says Louis been sick.’
‘We still goin see him?’
‘Kid wants to know if he well enough for visiting,’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said simply.
She led us down a narrow street, past patisseries steaming with blond bread, past hidden bistros and fish stands stinking of guts and coquilles Saint Jacques.
‘You boys look awfully tired,’ she said.
‘Not too tired to scratch the old skins,’ said Chip.
‘You’re ready to play again?’ she smiled. ‘Already? You all are?’
‘Except Hiero lost his damn horn.’
She give me a look. ‘Is that the truth?’
I shrugged.
Armstrong was staying in a small hotel, top of Rue Lepic. We push on through the big glass doors. The lobby like to blind us, it so damn brassy and gilt with mirrors and white tile. Hell. Smoked-over glass on the inner windows, a shining brass elevator standing along the far wall. The doorman nodded to Lilah as we gone on past, lifting up his cap with one white glove.