Jazz Moon (2 page)

T
hree a.m. when they cut out of Teddy's. She had been set on getting home, but once outside the smoky speakeasy, Angeline allowed them to take their time. Warmed by the tea-kettle gin, jazz still chiming in their ears, they strolled hand in hand down Seventh Avenue, stopping every so often to giggle or talk or so Angeline could smooth down the lapels of Ben's jacket and straighten his tie so the knot didn't veer to the side as the knots of all his ties tended to.

“You know, Benny,” she said, “it's been a long time since we . . .” She gave his tie a final nudge, then her lips drifted to his cheek and lingered there.

It was his fault they hadn't been intimate in so long. He'd make it up to her tonight. Try to.

By three thirty they had turned onto 128th Street and moments later scaled the stone steps to their four-story brownstone. As Ben fumbled in his pocket for the keys, Angeline took him from behind, turned him around, and kissed him as if they had already made it to their bedroom.

“Angeline,” Ben said, withdrawing from her for the second time that evening. “The neighbors gonna see us.”

“No they ain't, neither. That no-good super still ain't fixed this porch light. Remind me to thank him.”

She resumed kissing him.

“Humph. You need to be thankful for not getting struck down with lightning.”

Ben and Angeline froze mid-kiss.

“I've never seen such behavior in all my life. Practically having relations right on the front stoop. And at almost four in the morning, to boot.”

With the porch light out and their heads swimming in bootleg gin, Ben and Angeline had been unaware of anyone else's presence. But the person sharpened into focus now: an old colored woman with white hair done up in plaits. Their next-door neighbor: Mrs. Evelyn Harrisburg. She sat in a wicker chair, hand hooked onto the head of her walking stick, facing straight ahead onto 128th Street. Upright, stolid. In the darkness, her silhouette resembled the statue of a goddess sitting in judgment.

Ben squirmed away from Angeline. “Mrs. Harrisburg, what you doing out here at this hour?”

“Snooping,” Angeline said. “As usual. What you think she doing?”

“I'm not snooping,” Evelyn Harrisburg said, without facing them. Her voice was scratchy. “I'm sitting here, minding my own business.”

Angeline stepped toward the old lady. “You never mind your own business.”

Though feeble, Mrs. Harrisburg was everywhere and heard everything. Terrified that she would abruptly materialize, folks kept conversations in the hallways short and scandal-free. Even
good morning
or
doin' fine, child
were sometimes whispered.

She gave Angeline a once-over. “In my day, proper young ladies didn't go gallivanting out in public wearing dresses that showed off their bare legs and arms. We called that type of women
jezebels
.”

Angeline balled her hands into fists, fixed them to her hips, and started toward the old woman. Ben intercepted her and then crouched by Evelyn Harrisburg's chair.

“Tell you what, Mrs. Harrisburg. Let me help you upstairs,” he said, offering his hand.

She slapped it away. “I can't go inside. I can't. I won't! I won't! I won't! They're playing that devil's music. The folks right above me. Been playing it and partying all night. Hollering and stomping like they don't have a bit of sense. Inconsiderate. If my late husband was here, he'd go up there and tell them a thing or two.” She paused. “God bless his dear soul.”

Angeline rolled her eyes. “That's it. This jezebel's going in. Ben, if I was you, I'd leave her ass there.” From the front door, she looked back. “Don't take too long, Benny, you hear?” She pursed her lips in a kiss, then disappeared into the building, slim hips bumping.

“Tell you what,” Ben said to Mrs. Harrisburg. “I'll ask the folks to turn the music down. Let's go inside.”

She nodded and took his arm. During the slow tramp up the stairs, he pondered how someone who moved with such difficulty could be everywhere hearing people's gossip. From above, he heard a phonograph, full-throated laughter, and the pounding of dancing feet. Mrs. Harrisburg stopped and sniffed the air.

“They're still cooking up that stinky, Southern food.”

Ben inhaled the scent of collard greens and chitterlings, and was famished. They continued their haul up the stairs. “You know what?” Ben said. “You ain't lived till you had a good plate of chitterlings.”

“That mess is for ignorant, backwoods niggers from down South, not civilized folks.”

Angeline was right: He should have left her on the stoop.

“They come up here by the trainload,” Mrs. Harrisburg said, “with their Uncle Tom ways and their bad English and their stinky food. They make respectable colored folks look bad.”

She became stoic again and her pace waned as she took the stairs like a soon-to-be martyr ascending a scaffold. They finally reached the second floor and arrived at the old lady's door. The party sounds from up above were clearer, the smell of collard greens potent.

She held on to his arm. “You go up there and tell them to stop that noise.”

“I'll go up there now and ask them.”

“No. You
tell
them.”

Then she stepped into her apartment and slammed the door.

Ben walked up to the third floor and to the door of the offending neighbors. With all their cackling, singing, and shouting, Ben didn't know how his request would be received. He raised his hand to knock and stopped cold. A record played behind the door: a sweet ballad, a trumpet soloing through it, the notes dipping and diving and weaving in and out. Suddenly that trumpeter—the one from earlier—
Baby Back
—suddenly Baby Back's face flooded Ben's eyes and he couldn't bring himself to knock. He descended the stairs to his apartment.
Angeline's waiting
.

He drew a few breaths—to brace himself—and went inside.

B
en climbed out of the subway at East Twentieth-eighth Street and headed west towards Madison Avenue. He was downtown, well outside the safe zone of Harlem. For a Negro, and especially a Negro
man,
that required that he carry himself differently. Not with his head held too high since the last thing whites wanted to see was an uppity Negro, too haughty to realize his place. But not with his head down, an Uncle Tom. So he kept his chin level, his eyes straight ahead, his pace moderate.

He turned onto Madison and then onto Twenty-ninth, a street booming with skyscrapers that housed insurance companies, banks, law firms. Luxury hotels—the swankiest in Manhattan—peppered the area. As Ben continued on Twenty-ninth, one of them—all twenty-five stories of it—soared into view. The Pavilion Hotel. Consummate luxury. From its marble-floored lobby to its cavernous and voluptuously decorated suites, all catering to the preposterously wealthy. Gentlemen strolled the banquet halls in top hats and tails, jeweled cuff links gleaming on their sleeves. Women draped themselves in mink or ermine or fox and drenched their necks and limbs in their gem of choice: diamond, emerald, sapphire—whatever complemented the color scheme of their outfit or their mood.

The Pavilion's enormous dining hall buzzed. The smell of breakfast swam through the room: airy smells of fruit and pastry, the hearty aroma of bacon. But sound dominated. Silverware clinked against custom-made china; gurgling beverages from crystal pitchers and silver coffee urns vied with the Haydn sonatas gamboling out of the grand piano. The genteel babble of the patrons' voices lilted on the air, voices constrained and controlled. A lady held a gloved hand to her mouth when she laughed. A gentleman made his point by arching his eyebrows rather than his volume.

Ben moved about the dining hall delivering food and filling and refilling beverages, his service tight and efficient. But a sprint invigorated his step and carried him to a table near the center of the dining hall where his favorite customer waited.

“Morning, Mr. Kittredge.” He poured tea. “How you doing?”

The man looked up from a leather-bound book. His serious eyes lightened; a smile sprawled across his face.

“Benjamin! My dear boy, the question, really, is how are
you?
Last we spoke, you and your wife were going to be—how did you phrase it?—painting the town red.” Mr. Kittredge plopped two sugar cubes into his tea and stirred. “So. Is the town any redder than it was prior to last Saturday evening?”

His English accent was aristocratic, but less pretentious than many of the Brits Ben had served. He sounded like a real person, not a stuff-shirt. As one of the hotel's more elite patrons, he maintained long-term quarters there.

“Sir, I'm happy to report that it
is
a little bit redder,” Ben said.

“I take it you've recovered sufficiently. Or did you have too much . . . ?” Mr. Kittredge pantomimed drinking from a bottle.

“Mr. Kittredge,” Ben said, in a mock-offended tone, “that's illegal. I'm much too charming and innocent to be doing something like that.”

“Dear boy, you are indeed charming, but I have the very distinct impression that you are far from innocent.”

Mr. Kittredge's smile exposed lines around his eyes and mouth that suggested his age as fifty or so. His brown hair and mustache—precisely cut, meticulously styled—were stippled with crumbs of gray. He was handsome. For a white guy.

He ordered a bowl of grapefruit and half an English muffin. Ben brought the meal and then refilled his Earl Grey tea.

“Anything else, sir?”

“No. That will be all.”

Ben nodded and made to go.

“Oh, Benjamin. I almost forgot.” Kittredge reached inside his coat pocket and drew out a small vial of perfume. An intricate pattern of vines and flowers encrusted the glass. The stopper was in the shape of a golden rosebud. “I bought it to take back to my wife in England, but I doubt if she'll approve of it. She never seems to approve of the fragrances I choose.” He handed the vial to Ben. “Take it. Give it to your wife. Angeline, isn't it?”

“Yes. Angeline. But, Mr. Kittredge, I—” He stopped himself, then accepted the perfume. He had never held anything so classy. “Thank you. Thank you very much, sir.”

“You're welcome, dear boy.”

The Englishman went back to his book and his grapefruit. Ben pocketed the perfume, the most extravagant thing he'd ever been given. He resumed his duties, feeling like a rich man.

 

The quiet and cool of the staff dressing room welcomed him after the long day submitting to rich, exacting whites. He sat in a prehistoric wingback chair, a remnant from the hotel's past, that used to occupy a suite. Still in his uniform, Ben reeked of food and cigar smoke. He couldn't wait to get home and wash.

After bathing, he would present the perfume to Angeline. He closed his eyes and concentrated on what he'd do after they'd undressed, after she'd dribbled the perfume on her breasts, neck, between her legs. He would have to let her take control. He envisioned her tumbling him onto his back, easing herself down, onto him.
Concentrate
. But he would fatigue rapidly. He always did. He never had enough momentum to fully please her. But since he had begun concentrating
now,
a couple of hours early, then maybe by the time he saw her . . .

The dressing room door swung open.

“Ben! Hey, jack! What do you say?”

Reggie the bellhop. A rumbling spark of restless energy. Twenty, hip, handsome, and proud to death of all three. He stood in the doorway, eyes scintillating with mischief. A short man rendered clownish in his big bellhop uniform with all of its military-style epaulets and regal gold braid.

He inspected Ben. “You look sadder than a map, jack.”

Ben laughed. “Boy, get in here and close that door.”

Reggie jumped up onto a haggard chair with a missing arm. “Why you look so ragged?”

“I'm tired.”

“Tired? Listen, you don't know the least bit of nothing about tired till you've been toting white folks' suitcases all day.”

“I know about running back and forth and all around fetching food for them. Try that. That'll tire you out.”

Reggie jumped down. “Now that's some off-time jive. You can't tell me carrying a tray of food's harder than carrying a damn trunk.”

“Reggie, I started here as a bellhop. I know how it is.”

Reggie removed his high-collared jacket and revealed a blemish that seared his skin just below the neckline. Even with his dark complexion, it flashed red and angry.

“Boy, what is that on your neck?” Ben said.

“What can I say? The girl the other night got a little wild on me.”

“Jadine?”

“Oh, hell no. I nixed that chick.”

“Leslie?”

“Nixed her, too.”

“Sandra?”

The bellhop grabbed his chest as if he'd been bashed by a heart attack. “No, jack! You're killing me! I'm talking about Lila. She's my main queen now.” He removed his shirt. Muscle padded the shoulders, arms, and pectorals of his slim, trim body. “Met Lila at Teddy's.” He whipped his trousers down, stepped out of them, and tossed them into his locker, all in one fleet move. “You know—that joint I told you about.”

Ben's face heated as he watched him. “Went there Saturday.”

“Does that joint jump or what? And they got this new trumpeter. Man, he is solid murder with his horn! Was he there?”

Reggie stood directly in front of Ben in only his undershorts. A hoard of sweat gathered on Ben's chin.

“Yeah. Baby Back Johnston. He was there,” he said.

The love bite snagged Ben's eye again. Reggie's body odor breezed off him, strong, but not unpleasant. Back at his locker, Reggie stripped off his shorts. His ass—small and buoyant—defied gravity. It jiggled a little as he rummaged in his locker. Ben looked away and busied himself with the removal of his own uniform.

But his eyes kept lurking back, watching as Reggie spread powder on his underarms, then doused himself with fragrance—something harsh and alcohol-smelling. Reggie dressed himself as methodically as a valet would a rich man. First a clean pair of shorts followed by socks, which he clipped to garters halfway up his calves. Then a fresh undershirt that he tucked into his shorts. A crisp white shirt followed, the sleeves creased sharp enough to slice. On went his pinstriped pants: black, pleated, and cuffed. Next up: a tie, midnight-blue, knotted with such exactitude, you'd need a map to undo it. Cuff links—imitation gold, Ben could tell, but nice enough. Two-toned shoes—black and white—burnished to a fierce shine. The double-breasted suit jacket created a svelte contour. Reggie topped off his ensemble with a fedora, the brim angling down in debonair
fash
. He spent minutes styling it, then several more preening.

“Where you off to in these fine threads on a Monday?” Ben said. “Seeing Lila?”

“No, jack. She's my weekend chick.”

“I thought you said she was your main queen.”

“She is. But I branch out Monday to Friday. Well, Ben, as usual, it's been a pleasure. I'll plant you now and dig you later.”

Reggie strutted out the door like a bouncy peacock.

And Ben exhaled, relieved. He removed the perfume from his pants pocket and shut his eyes tight. “Come on. Concentrate, damn it.”

He tried to excite himself by imagining the places Angeline would dab the fragrance.