The Jazz Palace (22 page)

A strip of orange cut across the sky as Benny and Opal stumbled out of the club. The sun was rising as they followed the lake. Laughing, Benny told her that she'd danced with Al Capone. She took off her yellow slippers and rubbed her aching feet. Her ankles were raw, and she had blisters on her toes. She rested her head against his arm. Her breathing was labored as she drifted in and out of sleep. She snored lightly in a way that amused him. Benny drove fast, trying to stay awake. He wanted to pull over and go to sleep, but he kept driving. Opal was light and feathery as a bird. Her bones barely pressed into his flesh. Her breath was shallow. It reminded him of Marta's little girl. As he pulled into the alley, he nudged her awake. “Your sister is going to kill me.” He kissed the top of her head.

Opal yawned and stretched like a cat. She kissed him on the lips, and then slipped out of the car. As he pulled away, she waved with the shoes that she carried in her hand. Before she went inside, Opal looked up at the morning star and made a wish. She wished that she could see the lone star every morning, and that she could stand outside in her stocking feet as the rest of the world slept and breathe in the fresh air.

Carefully she opened the door, tiptoeing inside as if she knew every creek in the floor. In a corner of the candy store she took off the yellow silk dress which now smelled of cigar smoke, rum, and sweat—the scents of men that she'd never known—and slipped back into the plain skirt and blouse she'd worn the night before. In a bin she stashed her dress and cloche hat and fishnet hose and the yellow slippers in which she'd danced with a gangster. They were sacred relics to her now. She slipped into bed beside Pearl, who never said a word.

Opal sat on the edge of her bed, thinking that she barely remembered her mother. But she did recall one thing. Anna was afraid of mirrors. There was a tarnished silver mirror in Opal's hand, and she stared at herself in it. Her mother had feared that she would suddenly find herself reflected in someone else's life. Opal was not afraid of that. She welcomed it.

She'd been an orphan for as long as she could remember. When she was a little girl in shul and with Pearl and Ruby on either side, clutching her hands, they listened to the men recite the Kaddish, the Orphan's Prayer, and Opal thought it was a prayer for her. She'd been just a child when her father was killed and not much older when her mother died. Now she was sixteen. When she was very small, she'd believed that Pearl was her mother. It was Pearl who had led her by the hand across streets, Pearl who had wiped her bottom and fed her food. She'd cried when Jonah told her that her real mother wasn't Pearl. It was the old woman with the bloated legs and spider veins who stood at the sink, spitting in the air to ward off evil spirits.

Now Pearl moved through their rooms, putting laundry away, changing sheets, as oblivious to Opal as if she were a ghost. Even if Opal said such mundane things as “Pass the salt,” Pearl pretended not to hear. If she cornered Pearl in the bathroom or barred her
entrance into the saloon, Pearl waited as if all that stood in front of her was air.

As Opal brushed her white-blond hair that she lightened now with lemon juice and peroxide and applied cream to her milky skin, she wondered whom she resembled. Some claimed that she was a pale version of Pearl, a phantom of her older sister. In truth she bore no real resemblance to any of them. At times Opal felt as if she'd been kidnapped and left behind by a troop of gypsies. Certainly no one would ever take her for a Jew.

On the dressing table she had assembled a tray of lipsticks and rouges, tortoiseshell combs and sable-hair brushes, perfumes in bottles of cut glass—most of which had been left from Anna. Nothing belonged to Opal. It was all borrowed or shared or handed down. When she looked at the clothes in her drawers and closet, there was nothing new. It was all discarded skirts and dresses that Pearl had remade for her—cutting old cloth to fit Opal's delicate bones.

Now she had something that she didn't have to share with anyone. It was a secret, festering inside of her. At the Golden Door something wild had been set loose. She drank gin and danced with a gangster. She stayed out until dawn. The caged creature had had her taste of freedom. And she vowed never go back inside again.

T
he next time Benny showed up at the Jazz Palace, Opal moved the chairs out of the way so she could dance. He didn't play with his head down. He kept his eyes on this dancing girl, his head thrown back. A cigarette dangled from his lips and, as Opal flung her arms and legs, dipped her head, he laughed. When she went behind the bar to make herself a whiskey sour, Benny said, “I'll have whiskey, too.”

“You don't drink here,” Pearl told Opal. But Ruby took her aside.

“She'll just drink elsewhere.”

“She is shaming us,” Pearl said.

Ruby shook her head. “You're the one who spoiled her.”

Pearl poured Benny his drink from the best whiskey that she kept under the bar and placed it on the piano top. A little of the brown
liquid splattered on the keys. He whisked the moisture away with his fingers, licked it off, and kept playing, pausing only to take sips that stung as he swallowed. Opal clasped her glass with her moon-shaped nails, filed just so, and polished red as she leaned across the piano. As he played, her feet started to move. She swayed. She tossed her head back and shook her golden curls. Her arms moved in rhythm with her feet, her hips. It was more as if she were flying than dancing. Watching her, Benny played like one possessed. He pounded the keys until his fingers were numb, and then he played some more. He hit the keys hard, then soft as his fingers made easy runs up and down. He took on standards and requests. But mostly he went with whatever tune popped into his head.

He was covered in sweat and his fingers ached when Pearl said she was closing. He said good night, then stumbled out into the cold alley. The ground was slippery. It was almost spring, but still fresh snow was falling and his boots made a crunching sound as he walked, huddled, with that biting dog of a Chicago wind at his face. He was tipsy, but his body felt warm. He'd had too much to drink, and he had to get home. Even sober the cold could be deceiving and he knew they mustn't dally for his own brother had frozen to death on a winter's morning and Benny lived with the fear of the cold taking over his limbs.

As he stumbled down the alley, he heard his name being called, but he thought it was the wind. “Benny, Benny,” she shouted again. Turning, he saw Opal racing toward him with just a shawl around her arms. “You forgot your hat.” She slipped as she rushed to him and he caught her, gripping her tightly. Covering her mouth as she coughed, she tumbled against him.

He slipped his hand around her waist. “What are you doing?” he asked, a scolding tone in his voice. “You'll freeze and your sisters will never forgive me.”

“Oh, who cares? I am having fun.” Her breath was hot against his cheek. They huddled, bent over, scarves around their necks. It was March, but still icicles hung overhead, and Opal, laughing, reached for one. She plucked it as if from the sky and gave it to Benny. “Suck
on it,” she told him. She plucked another for herself, holding it as if it were a cigarette.

He pulled on his icicle as well. “Wonderful.” Benny laughed.

She put his cap on and gave it a tug. “I can hardly see your face.” Opal reached up and pulled it off his head. Her laugh was tipsy, and as Benny grabbed into the air, she dashed behind some garbage cans. “There,” she said, “now I can see you.”

Benny ran his hand along his head. His ears were numb. His head felt naked and exposed. He reached for his cap once more as Opal tugged it on to her head. He gazed at her in her scarlet coat and shoes, his gray cap on her head. “You look good in it,” he said. “You can keep it.” Opal laughed, clasping her arm tightly through his.

A blast of cold air struck them, and she pressed against his shoulder. He led her trembling to the end of the alleyway. At the streetlight he paused, and his lips came down to hers. It was a brief, burning kiss, but it left a feeling, moving through him like a locomotive, starting up slowly as it gathered speed.

A
cross the prairie, wheat blew in the wind. There were miles of it, tall and waving, seas of winter wheat. When it was ready, the farmers of Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa, harvested it, separating the grain from the chaff. Then they drove their truckloads to the grain elevators where the farmers were paid by the bushel. Winter wheat was bought in autumn. September wheat was sold in July.

The farmers were never happy with the price their crops bought. They grumbled and complained among themselves but in the end had no choice. They took what was offered whether it was a dollar or seventy-five cents to the bushel. They accepted this because, months before, some manufacturer had speculated on the price of wheat. Pillsbury or General Mills purchased the grain to make bread and cakes, store-bought items, and what had once flowed like a sea was now shipped to the mills.

As Benny sat in the order booth, he tried to understand the journey of the wheat. How it was so young and went so far. How so much
happened to it in its short life. He pictured wheat in fields and silos, on trains and mills, being fought over and bargained for, and he was filled with envy. Thoughts of a girl got caught up in the wheat. Not Pearl, whom Napoleon wanted him to like, but Opal—that porcelain doll with the yellow hair.

If Opal was thirsty for men, Benny was searching for his muse. The music had come so easily to him. He feared it would leave in the same way. By stealth. In the night. He'd wake and find it gone. He feared that it was a guest who'd stopped on its way somewhere else. He couldn't explain this to anyone. How dead he felt, how ordinary he was when he wasn't playing or thinking about playing or composing a tune or tapping out what was in his head. He wondered how normal people went about their jobs in factories or at an office, how they put soup and bread on the table, dressed their children and took them off to school, how they got through their days with nothing to elevate them beyond unmade beds and meals and doctor's visits.

He couldn't find his inspiration in the chicken-scented hallways, in Harold's empty bed, at the caps factory, and now at the Board of Trade. He didn't find it being with a woman, but by imagining being with one. It wasn't the real flesh and blood that he wanted, but a vision of one. That was why he couldn't be with Pearl. There was nothing to imagine. He couldn't uncover the mystery there. Because Benny didn't have another word yet for what he felt for Opal, he called it love. It must be love if it kept you up at night. Even though deep down Benny knew that this was something else.

He was thinking of the wheat and its flow and the girl with corn-silk hair who brought him his soda as his hands shot up from the booth and the orders came in. “Buy” and he waved toward his chest. “Sell” and he pushed it away. A closed fist meant a dollar. Five shakes of the fist, five dollars. Thumbs up was seven-eighths of a dollar. And Moe and his uncle shot back the same signals, confirming purchases and sales.

With his big, sure hands, Benny learned the signals quickly. Moe told him he would when Benny had gone to his friend one afternoon and said he needed a job. Milo Peyton had sold the Regency to Balaban and Katz, and they were refurbishing it for a vaudeville house.
He couldn't watch his father, sitting up night after night, counting his debts, knowing he'd never make payroll. It became clear to Benny when he returned home from the clubs and found his father still awake, or collapsed in a chair, a pad and pencil in his hand, that he'd have to keep working days.

The booth was small and cramped, but he was grateful to Moe who'd gotten him the job. They went to work in two-toned jackets of tan and blue and spent the day, taking orders, carrying messages from the traders. Benny found the work tedious, and the noise in the pit grated on him.

He answered calls, shouting back while his unresolved melody, “Twilight Blue,” was floating in his head. He fiddled with it. He tried to make it better, but some refrain eluded him. He couldn't get it right. The final phrase of his song and the face of the girl all intertwined. How long would it take for Opal to grow up? The thought of her brought heat to his veins. She made the hair on his neck stand up and his nipples go hard. It felt like love, didn't it?

Besides, she was a Jew who looked like a shiksa, a word his mother roughly translated as “lizard.” What more could a Jewish boy—or his mother, for that matter—ask? Never mind that her laughter was out of proportion, her gaze never seemed to let him go, and he began to wish that her brain matched her blue marble eyes. Or that Pearl was the one with the golden hair. Why couldn't he take the two girls and fold them into one?

Moe's uncle was shouting at him. “What about the order, Benny? Do we buy or sell?”

Benny fumbled through the sheets in front of him. Buy or sell what? He couldn't remember what he'd just sent to the floor. “Sell.” Benny pushed his hand away from his chest with a thumbs-up as the music in his head slipped away.

T
hat evening Benny packed up his red suitcase and walked the streets with it clasped in his fist. He was looking at postings until he found a laundry with a sign in a window on Ashland.
ROOM TO RENT
. A thickset Polish man led him up a steamy stairwell that stank of
cleaning solvents into a spare but clean room. It had a bed, a dresser, a washbasin, and a mirror. There was a water closet in the hall. The view was of a billboard of a girl with a blond-haired bob, puffing a Lucky. Smoke came out of her mouth. The sign read
REACH FOR A LUCKY INSTEAD OF A SWEET
. It had been proven. Girls who started smoking lost weight. The room rented for two dollars a week. “I'll take it,” Benny said.