She took his hand then, and removed the bottle of ketchup in its brown paper bag, setting it on a table near the door. She led him to a sofa, where he sat down, unbuttoning his jacket and jerking up the creases of his pants leg as he sat.
She walked quickly to the portable radio plugged into the wall, and turned it on. A newscaster’s voice broke in. She turned the dial rapidly, bringing in a program of quiet dinner music, but the sound of the newscaster’s voice had started him back along the track of the past ten minutes. It had been no longer than that since he had left his apartment, left Madelaine with the lamb chops, and Roxanne spoon-feeding Beth.
Yet he didn’t seem to care. He was making as big a decision as he had ever made. He was changing the course of his life, and he knew it. He was raising a barrier between himself and the life he had led with Madelaine, as surely as he sat here, yet he didn’t care.
He knew this was the way it was, because it was.
He did not consider the idea of sin, and he did not consider the idea of adultery. This was real, it was true, it was the way he must live.
Then the Woman turned away from the radio, and unwound the belt that knotted her car coat closed. She stripped off the jacket and hung it carefully in the closet.
At that instant he wondered where she had been going, to be waiting at the bus stop, and if it could have been so unimportant an engagement that she could break it to bring him here like this, a stranger.
But he also knew, in that instant, that she had wanted him…not just any man, not anybody, but him.
Him, pure and simple and direct and true. The way it should have been. The way it was meant to be. The way the world saw it and the way it was going to be. The way it was.
She faced him, and he was assured of her beauty. It was not a cheap or a superficial beauty. She was a handsome Woman, right through and down as deep as anyone could wish. She was not ashamed, for there was nothing to be ashamed of, and she knew what was about to happen, even as he knew.
William watched as she unbuttoned her sweater, folded it precisely on the chair beside the table. He watched with growing expectation, but without a feeling of lechery as she reached behind her and unfastened the brassiere of pink material. He stared calmly at the shape of her breasts, so warm and inviting, and as she stepped close to him, signifying he should unzip her skirt, he knew this would not be the last time he would see the Woman. He knew, as his fingers touched the warm metal, that he would see her again, and whether on the subway, or on the street, or in the pharmacy, it would always end like this. That they would never say a word, and that they would never know each other’s name, but that it would be just like this over and over again.
And it was right. It was the way it should be.
She slid the skirt down off her hips, the silky sound of her slip rustling making the only sound over the quiet dinner music so typical of his apartment down the street.
She folded the skirt properly and laid it beside him on the sofa. She put her thumbs between the silk of her slip and the dark blue of her pants, and pulled down the half slip. It went atop the skirt, and somehow that seemed so right, also.
She took him by the hand and they went into the bedroom. As he watched in the filtered light from the living room, light that cast an aura around her, touching the faintly blond hairs that covered her body like down, she turned back the covers of the bed.
Then she sat down on the bed, and unfastened her stockings, removed her shoes and took off the nylon hose, the garter belt and, finally, raised herself so she could slip out of the dark blue underpants. Then she lay back on the bed, perfectly flat, like a painting of exquisite gentleness.
Afterward, she went into the bathroom and locked the door. He knew what she meant. That it was through for this time, and that she wanted no money, that she had done it because she had done it, and there were no recriminations, no apologies, nothing to be said. It was done, and she had wanted him as William, with a false plate, and with heartburn and with a bank balance of $612.08. Jointly in his wife’s name.
He dressed quickly and left the apartment, not even taking notice of the number on the door. He would know it when he came again, for he would not come alone. He would be led by her, and he would never come there unless she did lead him; that was the silent bargain they had made.
He knew every line of her body, as well as he had grown to know Madelaine’s in the ten years of their marriage. He knew the feel of her hair and the scent of her body. He knew where every bit of furniture stood.
He walked out onto the street, and the air had turned chillier. But he walked slowly, feeling the sting of the air as he drew it into his lungs.
There had been nothing said, but the message was there for always.
He opened his apartment door with his key and walked in. Madelaine hurried out of the kitchen at the sound of the closing door and stared at him oddly, hands on hips, eyes sparkling.
“Bill, where were you? I’ve already eaten, and Roxanne too. We went ahead. The chops are cold. I’ll have to heat them for you now. We ate them without ketchup. Where were you?”
William handed her the bottle of ketchup in its brown paper bag, and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
His mind was quiet, and there was a feeling of fulfillment that mounted to his chest as he said, “I met an old, old friend. We had a few things to say to one another.”
And he did not lie.
Have Coolth
Once upon a when, Derry Maylor had been cool. But that was past, and now there were long, thin dark spaces when he walked. Even the night was quiet for him; no sounds of the boo-dow in his head. He had taken to squareness, and wore his collar turned up.
How does a man blow his coolth?
It takes a combo of many littles. Like the chick with the eyes so green and so razor-slim the little kids ask her like, “Are you Chinese?” It takes the loss of all your bread and the loss of all your steam and most of all, the loss of your virility.
Get creamed once by a badass chick, and you’ve had it. Derry Maylor had had the course. Now came the times when the drums were quiet, and the horns didn’t blow, and the faint cha-tah of the sticks could not be heard. Rose had been her name, and Rose was her name, but Rose wasn’t right.
Try Bitch.
Which is the worst of all, man, when you blow piano that’s more than piano, and the chick takes your blood and your liver and wraps them up for 89¢ a pound—(any buyers?)—then you got to stay away from the lofts where the men are blowing and the smoke is warm and thick; then you got to stay away from the Sweet Lucy and the good Guatemalan shit and the honk and spike and the speed and the Good Book because when you come down off them, you got the blues so bad more worse you want to puke. Then you got to stay away from it all, like the piano, because the piano has been Mama and Poppa and home and life and all of it so nice. But what you got now?
You got tsuris.
Derry Maylor was about medium height…this is the make on him, so dig. He had eyes set up under his brows, so unless the light was with them, you knew he had no eyes. But when the light was right, then dig, they were as blue as something Tatum tinkled. His nose wasn’t merely a blow-station, it was a monument. Cyrano and Derry Maylor were blood brothers in the Society of Snot-Sockers. But it didn’t look bad, that was what made it swing so; it was a nose like larger than life. It was straight and squared at the tip, and it came down at you like a hungry buzzard, but it swung, and that counted. His mouth was very strong, but very thin; and all that, with the high Cherokee cheekbones, made him look rough and cold and with it.
But was he?
Not now, he wasn’t. Once, but Rose, and whamm!
No, he was a loser now.
That’s why he was mugging lushes in the Village.
For piss money. For pennies.
That was how I met the Tiger. I always called him the Tiger because he had a scrapbook he showed me once, with some pix from when he was at Middlebury, with all that sophomoric jazz in the room he shared with
a guy he called the Bear. All fancy liquor bottles and like that. But that had been in the days when he had been another Derry Maylor, and the world was smelling like Air Wick.
I met him in the Village, most strange.
I mean, he tried to mug me.
He came out of this dark little side street off Bleecker, and came sneakity up behind me, like I played it cool. This cat didn’t. He just didn’t. I mean, he came on like gangbusters. Down came the duck and burped and said the secret word, “I’m gonna lick you one up longside the head and take your bread man,” so I just naturally turned on him when he got close enough and had this leather glove full of nickels raised to whomp me, and I said, “Shit, man!” And tagged him one right on that monumental bazooz of his.
He did a back flip and swam the length of the pavement, just for chuckles.
I mean, like I got a nasty temper, so I picked him off the sidewalk and shook him a little till his eyeballs registered UNCLE, then I set up that kook against the building wall and belted him again.
I got to learn to control my temper, for true.
After a while, after about half my Viceroy was gone, he picked himself off the deck, shook his head like a St. Bernard what wonders who swiped his cask, and tried to take me out with a strong left. I ducked and caught him around the shoulders in a loving clinch.
“Baby, you want a mouthful of bloody Chiclets, you keep peppering my good nature. I’ll kill you, baby.”
So the Tiger just naturally settled back, because when you’re being hugged close by a two-hundred-pounder you make all your decisions for Christ.
When I saw the light of sense flick in his eyes, I turned him loose. I dug this guy, and the first make I got was one of chagrin. Like this cat was really ashamed; I asked him, “You got bills to pay or is this a hobby?”
He shook that bony head of his, and in the faraway streetlight I caught a glimpse, for the first, of those blue eyes. They were but tired.
“You got a name?”
He wouldn’t say. I felt more sorry than anything else for the guy, but what could I do? Not only was I not my brother’s keeper, I was almost not my own keeper sometimes, what with public relations being as slow a game as it is.
“Well, watch yourself, Cootie,” I laid it down, and made to split. “The next mark might tear your head off. Try getting a job, hey?”
I started to walk away, and I heard this odd voice behind me, and the guy said:
“I haven’t eaten in three days, mister.”
It was so goddam pathetic, I stopped. I would have backed up without turning around, I didn’t want to catch the expression I knew he had on his face, and put a buck in his hand, but there was something strange in his voice. Something sullen, and yet very hip. It was like a way of talking, that gave me the tip this guy had it.
“You want some coffee?” I asked him. He gave me a weary peck with that beak of his. So…
I took him to Jim Atkins and we fell down on a pair of straight-blacks, till I saw the way he was hollow-cheeked and miserable.
“Come on, man,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. We went over to Eighth Street, to a little delicatessen I know, and walked through to the back where Cummerbund holds dominion over a twelve-table kingdom. Hardly anybody but the hip go to the delicatessen to eat, and Cummerbund is part of the reason those who do go come back often.
Cummerbund isn’t his name, but his real name is so easy to forget, and that silk cummerbund is so incongruous, it fits—so why fight it? It’s a good place to talk.
I ordered a hot plate of matzoh ball soup for him, and when Cummerbund had brought it—nodding to me in recognition, which warmed me—I put in a request for two hot corned beef sandwiches—lean—two orders of blintzes, two slaws, and a couple more coffees. While he shoveled it all in, I sized him up and decided this was a good kid.
He looked as though he was with it.
Over a cigarette and a second coffee, I tried to feel him out: “You got a name?”
He didn’t look up from the java, but he said, “Maylor. Derry Maylor.”
We sat and gabbed, and after a while he started to open up, and gave me a little of himself, and it came up seven that I’d dug this kid before.
“You ever play any piano?” I asked.
“Some,” he said, and it clicked.
“You used to be the fourth in Con Whitney’s Quartet, right? Played the Vanguard and that one side for Bethlehem, right?” He gave me the nod again. It was like a salute by a buzzard.
Then I knew the kid was okay, because he had talent, not the kind of gaff the Village phonies put out, but the real thing. So I became my brother’s keeper. So sue me.
Derry Maylor, the Tiger, came back fast. All it took was a strong hand because when it came down to it, he was pretty weak in the clinches.
Working as a freelance public relations man for a grab bag of second-rate attractions—like Lulu Seeker, The Girl with the Educated Crotch, so help me that’s how they bill her in Jersey City—I didn’t make much bread, but man, did I have coolth.
Part of the coolth came from taking my fee out in trade at low joints like The Hedonist Union, a down-the-stairs bôite featuring prices too sour and jazz too sweet. But I got it mentioned in the columns from time to time, and once in a while CUE did a restaurant piece mentioning it; I was being paid what I was worth.
Usually, I took my pay out in meals. I bought my own bicarb. Giulio, the chef, was a worse cook than my mother, and she had been only the last in cooking. Burned water.
Giulio was worse. But it was free.
So I took the Tiger down to see Frankie Sullivan, who owned the joint, and in a burst of fantastic dynamiting, sold him on the kid. Sullivan started the Tiger at fifty a week, backing him with three pick-ups from around town who were pretty well known. It wasn’t a smash at first, but that was how Miles and Bird and Cannonball had started, so I waited. I figured he had it, and when he had enough under his belt, he’d start to shine.
I was right. The kid began to make real sounds. By no sheer coincidence Derry Maylor was living with me, and I saw him every morning when I got up to start pounding my rounds, so I’d ask him, “How they swinging down there?” And at first he’d just nod sleepily from the Castro and turn over. But in a few weeks, he started to tell me things:
“We hit a couple good ones last night. Richie was really fine on Monk’s ‘Midnight,’ and I think Tad’ll be a great stick man one of these days…” then he’d realize he’d been exposing himself, and flip over in the sack. But he was coming back up the road, and that swung.
A couple evenings, when The Hedonist Union was closed, we’d make the scene at The Five Spot or Birdland or The Jazz Gallery and the kid would dig. If I knew someone there, I’d have them invite him up for a sit-in, and the kid just glowed. It was like great. Once he even sat in with Mingus at The Showplace. Far-out, but rewarding.
Let me tell you about the Tiger’s music.
It was more than him. It was like his nose; bigger than life. When Derry Maylor slid onto the bench, and hunched down, there was a bomb about to go. He’d crack his knuckles, and let his hands rest on the white keys for an instant, waiting for the nod from whoever was heading up the set. Then he’d dip his head to pick his way through the intro, and start letting it out from under his fingernails.
The sounds were full sounds. No histrionics, no Liberace or Ahmad Jamal stuff, none of that. It was more like a progressive Waller, if you can put a make on that. There was gut in it. He flatted himself constantly, and the riffs were all minors. It was big tone, what he played, and there was the whole fist in it, not just a pinky at a time. It made you hear that piano over everything else, but at the same time the combo was top ride, the Tiger didn’t try to upstage them. Yet he was the horse and they were the riders. Without him, they’d of been walking, it was that simple.
When they turned him loose for a solo, he cut in on the upbeat and struck away like trampling down the vineyards where the grapes of wrath and li
ke that. He was so good it caught you in the stomach and you got all hot and prickly in the palms of your hands because they were beating on the tablecloth.
That was Derry Maylor’s music.
It was all him, and more than him. It took from everyone in the joint at the same time, and sucked it out like some ego-eater, and fed it back richly and many-colored clean. It was a talent you could identify, and there wasn’t any question is that Monk or is that Evans or do you dig Powell in the left hand. It was all Tiger, none but Tiger, this Tiger and period.
He was coming back. But strong.
One night, I’d cut my rounds early that day and had caught some sack time, I fell in on The Hedonist Union to pick up on some Maylor. He was good that night, really mellow like Jell-O, and when the second set was done, I sent word round to him by a juicehead named Juicehead, and the kid made it to my table.
“Nutty, man,” I greeted him, holding it out. He took my hand, and gave me that self-effacing little beak-nod. “Really great, specially on ‘Hotshoe.’ Whose number is that?”
“A thing Shorty Rogers recorded from a Brando movie a couple years back. Like the changes we got on it?”
I gave him a thumb-and-forefinger okay and he smiled. We sat and had a few on the rocks until he had to make the next set. I dug all evening, and when he was finished, when the night was like a big coal chute, we staggered home to my pad, going oo-shoobie-doo all the way like a pair of wet brains.
But when we fell upstairs, the Tiger couldn’t sleep. For the first time since I’d met him, he seemed willing to talk about himself. So I grabbed off a couple vitamin B-complex caps that helped dispel the foggy-foggy-doo settling in on me, and I picked up what the kid was laying down:
I never had much (he said) but the piano. You know how it is, you come from a family with dough, and they’re good to you and everything, send you to a good school, but you just don’t swing. You know, it’s like you’re a round peg not nearly square enough. And they don’t dig, they keep saying make something of yourself, and stop screwing up. So you try, but it’s no go. Then one day you get enough guts to cut out and you hit the big town with five bucks and a couple of hands of piano. That was the way it was with me.
Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation Page 21
