Coq au Vin

by Charlotte Carter

  “Could you play any faster than that?” I said through my teeth.

  “Stop being sarcastic and concentrate,” he said. There was that smirk again. I wanted to slap him.

  Not really true. Number one: whenever I looked at that mouth of his, smirking, smiling, whatever, all I wanted to do was die in his arms. Number two: he had done the impossible—flogged me, metaphorically that is, until I learned to play Bird’s “Segment” at the proper breakneck speed. How could I be mad at him? Andre believed I was a better musician than I did, and whether he was right or wrong, I had, beyond question, improved immensely. I could feel it happening, evolving, every day I spent with him. It was as if I were topping myself in a cutting contest with me.

  “We’re knocking off now—right?” I threatened, already packing up. Little or no sleep last night, I was exhausted.

  “Yeah, right,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

  He put an arm around me and together we tripped across the avenue de la Grande Armée in the kind spring air. Through the traffic, across the noisy boulevards and the narrow streets we went, not talking at all. We were heading back to the apartment to clean ourselves up, and inevitably to make love, before going to meet Gigi for dinner. Life was so good it almost scared me.

  Almost. There was no need yet to feel the gods were about to lower the boom on my perfect life. Because of course life wasn’t perfect. I had not found Vivian. Indeed, I had not come within a mile of finding her—not a single lead—and it was starting to eat me up inside. I’d be happy if Gigi turned up even the slightest little piece of information.

  Back in the safety of the little love nest on rue Christine, I took a nice nap in the afterglow of afternoon sex. Odd how afternoon dreams are the worst, but afternoon fucking is usually the best.

  Around seven that evening Andre and I pulled into virtually matching outfits: black jeans and white shirts. Each checking the other out and gaining assurance that we looked really cool, we left the apartment and caught the metro at St. Michel, heading for the bistro in the Bastille where Gigi liked to eat.

  The place sure had the right smell. Onion and rosemary, rabbit and scallops, sweetbreads and hundred-year-old cheese and rich red wine danced around my senses. I searched the noisy, plain room for Gigi, but he had not yet arrived. We took a table, the burner under my appetite suddenly cranked up to red alert. Andre and I were devouring olives when I caught sight of Monsieur Lacroix, the lovely Mamselle Martine in tow.

  We had a sensational meal. And I bet there wasn’t another foursome like us in the place: Gigi and I doing most of the talking as he reported on the people he’d asked about Aunt Vivian; Andre looking a little uncomfortable but gamely trying out his newly mastered French idioms on Gigi; and Martine, who clearly thought Gigi’s mission was preposterous, barely speaking at all but commanding and drinking wine as though—well, as though she was paying for it.

  “We are fairly sure your aunt is not in the life,” Gigi pronounced.

  Well, that was nice to hear. Aunt Viv, as far as Gigi could determine, was not currently a streetwalker. I stole a quick glance at Martine, who was guffawing.

  Martine seemed as eager to show off her rather good English as Andre was to master colloquial French. “So what is this story?” she said expansively, helping herself to more wine, “the two of you are playing what? That…jazz?” She formed the word as if it were something gross she had come upon in the refrigerator.

  “That’s right,” I said. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like jazz?”

  She shrugged. “It is useless. Anyone can play popular music.”

  “Oh really?” I said mildly. Oh really? Is that so, you charmless whore? “What sort of music do you admire, Martine?”

  “Ze blues,” she answered immediately.

  Andre and I exchanged looks. I had to admit, his was more amused than mine.

  “People are always speaking about these jazz men,” Martine said dismissively. “How brilliant they are, how sophisticated. I say ‘shit’ to sophistication. The only real American music is the blues. Can you and your man with his silly little girl’s pigtails do what John Lee Hooker does? (Jean Lee Ookheir, she pronounced it actually.) Do you have his pain? Do you have his cri de coeuri Or Lightning Hopkins (Op-keens)? No! You can play your childish ballads all you want, but you will never make anyone feel the way Muddy Waters did. No. You have no feeling compared to them. No soul. I do not care how black you are.”

  What could I do? If I got up and bitch slapped her, which was what she deserved, it was going to cause no end of trouble. Somebody might panic and call for help. Gigi might pull out of the deal and leave me right back where I started. Or, just as likely, Martine, despite the thirty pounds I had on her, might end up kicking the shit out of me. I kept my seat. It had to be the high road for now.

  “Well, thank you, Martine,” I said crisply. “That was most informative. Tell me, is Muddy Waters your very favorite noble savage?”

  “Do not patronize me.”

  “Patronize you?” Andre repeated, not so amused anymore.

  She shirked off his remark. “If you are really interested in who I like—for me, there is no one like Haskins. He was the best blues man of them all.”

  Haskins? Who the hell was that?

  I looked to Andre, Mr. Negro Music, for help. But apparently he, too, was drawing a blank on the name.

  “It does not surprise me that you have not heard of him,” Martine said sniffily. “See, Mr. Pigtails? I told you, you know nothing about the soul.”

  The three of us—Gigi, the slow-boiling Andre, and I—all sat back as Martine launched into her lecture.

  “Little Rube Haskins,” she said, “was a giant. A hero. He was unfairly locked up in your racist Mississippi prisons. But he escaped, first to Canada and then to Marseilles. Finally he came to Paris. He was the last in a line of giants like Leadbelly and ’Owling Wolf.”

  Andre listened intently as she rattled on. “Listen, Martine,” he said when at last she stopped for a breather, “are you telling me this Haskins was living and singing in Paris in the 1970s?”

  “Yes, that is right.”

  “And he wrote all these songs himself, you say?”

  “That is right.”

  “But…but how come I don’t know anything about this genius? I mean, why doesn’t his name turn up in anybody’s book? Why don’t we see him listed as the composer on any folk music? How come I never once even heard the guy’s name?”

  Martine used Gigi’s disposable lighter to fire up her cigarette. She took a luxurious puff from it and then told Andre, “You expect me to explain your ignorance to you? This I cannot do.”

  Sharp intake of breath. Like he was counting to ten. “I don’t suppose you have any of his records?”

  “Records!” Martine scoffed. “Records? He had no records. The music industry is interested only in money, not in the truth. Haskins was appreciated only by the aficionados. Besides, just as he was about to go into the studio to make an album—he died.”

  “So how did you hear him? You went to these places where the aficionados hung out? Or to some kind of underground concerts?”

  “What are you talking about, you ignorant man? I never saw him in my life. How old do you think I am? I was only a girl then. I’ve heard the tape recordings made of him at the clubs. They’re collector’s items today.”

  Andre gave her a lingering look of appraisal, full of skepticism.

  Gigi, draining his glass, placed a proprietary arm around Martine’s shoulder. “My Martine is like an encyclopedia, you know. Full of information—and opinions—no?”

  “Yeah,” said Andre, in English. “Full of it.”

  I gave him a sharp look.

  “Hey, Martine,” he challenged, “what’s your favorite song by this giant—what’s-his-name—Rube Haskins?”

  “‘The Field Hand’s Prayer,’” she snapped right back at him.

  “The what?!” He reared back in his chair, openly laug
hing at her.

  This time, the look I threw him had broken glass in it.

  “You find it funny?” Martine said, going red at the ears. “You think Haskins could not write a song better than the weak, pitiful white immigrants you jazz musicians worship? You would rather hear something by Cole Porter than the words coming from the heart of the descendant of a slave? What sort of idiot does this make you?”

  Oh shit.

  To quote my friend Aubrey, What you have to say that for?

  Andre’s eyeballs were orbiting their sockets. Spittle at the corner of his mouth. Fists clenched. All the signs of a man about to go ballistic.

  He leaned toward her threateningly. “Listen, you skank, what you know about the blues—” was all I let him get out before I smashed into his ankle with my low-cut boot.

  “Andre!” I called into his face like a drill sergeant. “We’ll have Martine over to the apartment for a night of shop talk some other time! We’ve got plenty of other stuff to talk about right now, don’t we, Andre?”

  He was fuming, but he shut up and, except for the stray wisecrack, remained that way while I passed a few more hundred francs to Gigi and listened to his rundown of where he was going to go later that night to ask about Vivian’s whereabouts. I wrote down the phone number at the rue Christine apartment and he tucked it into his pocket.

  Before the party broke up, Martine had an Armagnac and ordered espressos for all. Generous of the cow, wasn’t it? I didn’t want any goddamn coffee, but she had moved too quickly. I paid the check, glowering at her and at Andre.

  We parted from them on the street, Gigi bursting with good manners and good will.

  “Stop worrying,” he said reassuringly. “I will find your wayward aunt.”

  “Y’all can stop worrying, too,” Andre muttered under his breath. “Why don’t you take a fucking cab to the Delta on our money? Check out some authentic blues.”

  I waited until our dinner companions turned the corner before loosing my rage on my lover.

  “Andre, what the fuck do you mean, starting a fight over some lame ass singer with that dumb whore?”

  “What the fuck do you mean, starting? I didn’t start it! That ‘dumb whore’ had the nerve to talk to me about slaves!”

  “Shut up, fool! You let that silly woman bait you. You let your know-it-all musical ego run away with you—like it was your balls on the line instead of finding Vivian. Finding Vivian! That’s the real point here, remember? I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass for Martine’s musical opinions either, but I can’t afford to let this guy Gigi go yet. It’d be like flushing my money down the toilet, and we still wouldn’t know anything. It’s…It’s…God damn, what is the matter with you, Andre!”

  Our second public brawl. Screaming at each other—that’s how this relationship had started. We went at it full throttle there in front of the restaurant, a few curious onlookers, non-English-speakers, I guessed, treating it as though we were the evening’s entertainment: like we were street theater.

  We used the walk home to cool down.

  By the time we shut the door of the apartment behind us, I was exhausted all over again. I put on water for herbal tea and grudgingly made enough for Andre as well.

  I plopped his cup down in front of him at the table.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

  I grunted.

  “I’m really sorry.”

  That sent me into his lap, tearing up and snuffling. He rocked me for a while.

  “I’m trying to do what’s right, Andre,” I said. “I’m just trying to do right by Auntie Viv. I don’t know, maybe I’m just feeling guilty because I used to wish Viv was my mother instead of—instead of my perfectly serviceable lovely mom. Pop treated Viv so bad, you know? Just because she decided she wasn’t going to be a housewife in Queens—just because she wasn’t all buttoned up and appropriate like him. Because she wanted to be free. I loved her for showing me that. I fucking owe her for that. Viv made a lot of stupid moves, but she lived her life—you know? I have to find her, Andre. Not just because of the money—I want to know she’s okay.”

  “I understand,” he said, trying to quiet me, wiping at my tears.

  “I was awful to you, wasn’t I?” I said. “Cussing and carrying on like that.”

  “Yeah, you’re an awful bitch. A real margère—a shrew.”

  “Mégère,” I corrected him.

  “Thank you, teacher. Let’s go to bed, let’s go to bed, let’s go to bed.”

  I laughed. “So a crying woman gets you hard, huh?”

  “A paper clip gets me hard, Nan. I want inside you.”

  No time to undress. Push the hot tea aside. Straddling him on the little wooden chair. He unbuttons my jeans. Shirt over my face. My arms immobile. Can’t see him, what he’s doing. Just feel him, working his way in. Poking blindly at his eyes. Fight free of the shirt, buttons popping. Tugging on his braids. He’s picking me up. I’m gummy with lust. Irradiated.—“I’m sorry.”—“I know.”—“I love you.”—“I know.”—“Don’t leave me.”—“I won’t. Promise to play the Ravel for me, after,” I say through a giggle.—“Yes. All right. Oh yes,” he says.

  Pressed tightly up against my back, he soaped my hair.

  “I’ve got a surprise in store for you,” said Andre, straining to be heard over the knocking of the old pipes in the shower stall.

  “Ha! That ain’t no surprise, Geechee. You get one of those just about every half hour.”

  “No, not that,” he said. “This is something we have to go outside for.”

  “What? Where?”

  “It’s on the street.”

  “What street?”

  “I don’t know the name of it. We just have to walk till we find it.”

  “It” turned out to be a dusty, narrow shop near the Comédie Française. It specialized in music scores and art relating to music. The two older women who ran the place nodded warmly—maybe even conspiratorially—to Andre and let us wander undisturbed all over the shop. I was in hog heaven, oohing and aahing over a photo of Billy Strayhorn arm in arm with Lena Horne, when Andre disappeared up the aisle. I could hear him exchanging hushed words with one of the ladies. In a minute the two of them approached me carrying a framed pen-and-ink sketch.

  Andre turned it so that I could see it full view.

  “Monk!” I screamed.

  “C’est beau, oui?” the owner said, smiling.

  “It’s beautiful,” I agreed.

  “And it’s yours,” said Andre.

  “Mine?” I grabbed it out of his hands. “Really mines?”

  “Yeah, I bought it—in three installments.”

  I gave him a dozen kisses.

  We were having a great time in there. While the sketch was being wrapped, I continued to browse. I went up and down the rows, flipping through all kinds of memorabilia and photos. It was in the bargain rack marked “Miscellaneous” that I came across the most startling piece of all.

  “Andre!” I shouted out.

  They must have thought I’d been bitten by a fat sewer rat or something, because all hands rushed over to where I stood.

  “What is it?” he asked in alarm.

  “Look at this photograph!” I pointed to a shiny head shot of a pomaded black man trying to look pensive and irresistible. “Look at the caption and tell me if I’m dreaming.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Andre said. Just that.

  “Little Rube Haskins,” I quoted the caption. “It says this is Martine’s hero, Rube Haskins—right?”

  “Yeah. It does.”

  “Man, do you know who this is?” I said, my eyes popping. “Take a good look.”

  “I don’t have to,” he replied. “That’s your aunt Vivian’s friend. Ez—from Èze.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Pop!Pop!Pop!Pop!

  Not that we had anything much to celebrate, but Andre and I went clubbing that night. Bricktop’s.

  The joint was jumping.

  I had bought that amat
eur photo of Rube Haskins and we had run home from the music shop to compare it with the one in Vivian’s scrapbook. No question about it; my aunt’s Riviera companion and the obscure blues genius called Rube Haskins were one and the same man.

  Sitting in the apartment, looking in bewilderment from one picture to the other, I got one of those shit! why didn’t I think of it before? flashes. The original Bricktop had been a social lion. Everybody who was anybody in jazz-age Paris had passed through her door. Perhaps it was the same kind of thing with the present owner of Bricktop’s. He might actually have known Haskins.

  “Let’s get over there,” I urged Andre. We could talk to the owner before we hit the streets to play tonight.

  It was one move that Andre had no trouble endorsing. It seemed safe enough to go and talk to Morris Melon. He was no ex-pimp with a razor-scarred girlfriend, and it seemed unlikely he’d make us pay by the hour for a little conversation.

  I wriggled into my long, tight brown skirt with a matching sweater cropped so short that its bottom hem fell just below my nipples. I tucked the Rube Haskins head shot into my purse and Andre and I grabbed our respective axes and headed out into the night.

  Like I said, the joint was jumping. In fact, the whole town was bustling. After all, it was springtime in Paris. Folks at Bricktop’s were finger popping and flirting, eating and drinking with abandon, and gathering around the pianist to request their favorite song.

  The elderly proprietor was just as much in the spirit as his customers. Morris Melon was drunk as a lord.

  Leaning on his spiffy cane, he was up near the entrance greeting people as they walked in.

  Small man, big voice. “Children!” his basso rang out when we stepped across the threshold. “Bienvenu!”

  “Merci, Monsieur Melon,” I said as he waved us to the crowded bar. “Will you allow us to buy you a drink?”

  “Lord yes,” he agreed, and joined us there.

  Andre started out slowly enough, but was soon in high gear with his music and tell-me-about-being-black-in-Paris quiz. We listened attentively while the old man pontificated and reminisced and testified, though I suspect that Andre already knew the answers to most of the questions he posed.