Eddie was out of town more than he was in. Hadn’t even showed up for one of his weeks in the showroom last month, and didn’t even bother to explain when he came back. He looked bad. June didn’t want to know what he was doing, or what he might be on.
But when he was at the El Capitan, the days Eddie stayed in the apartment, she went and found him there. Sometimes, she brought Marshall, who was two now and called Eddie “Master Knox.” June didn’t like this, but Eddie thought it was funny. June had wanted Marshall to call him Uncle, but Eddie had looked at her as if she were daft, so she had told Marshall to say Mister, which he had turned into Master. Now he climbed on his knee, put his fat white hands on Eddie’s cheeks, and told Master Knox about the rabbits in the park.
Eddie was good with Marshall even when his eyes were shot through with red, and his clothes smelled and his hair, and even when he couldn’t keep down anything June fixed.
And Eddie was good with June, too.
They didn’t talk about their troubles. June didn’t tell him that things were different with Del; that she was alone most of the time. Eddie never told her what was bothering him—what the women troubles were, or the money problems, or how damn sick he was of living in a town like Vegas.
June could guess. Eddie probably guessed. But what they did was race trucks with Marshall on the floor, smoke, play some fierce games of canasta, and listen to Cubop or mambo. Celia Cruz, Dizzy Gillespie, Compay Segundo. Eddie would listen to the same six measures a dozen times in a row, and then Marshall would hum the notes as he packed his toys into a basket or sat and splashed in his bath at night.
Sometimes, listening to a singer like Olga Guillot, June would lean her head onto Eddie’s chest, and he would step back and say, “No, June, you’re a death sentence for me. For you, it’s fun. For me, it’s the end.”
And she would knock it off, because of course she desired him—she liked men in general, and all women liked Eddie. Also he was her best friend, and he loved Marshall, so of course she sometimes wanted him, and even thought about tempting him, because she was sure she could. But something held her back, had held her back for four years. Maybe it was Shirley and Nancy at lunch.
Del came home for dinner that night.
He didn’t always. He said he had to go back to the El Capitan later, that maybe she would want to go too, catch Eddie’s show. He didn’t know how much longer Eddie was going to hang around; didn’t know how much longer the El Capitan could keep him.
That was Del’s way of telling her, she supposed.
She knew that Eddie would go—he would have to go—and she would be left here in Vegas; the place she had chosen, her place. She had cut every tie, but the bloom was off the rose, as they said. She was lonely. She was lonely and she felt stranded, and somehow it all had to do with Del, even though there was nothing she could put her finger on exactly.
“I want a baby.”
“What?”
“I want another baby. I’m ready. And it will be good for Marshall.”
Del was quiet.
June didn’t care. She felt a little wild all of a sudden. Maybe because of what Del had just said, or maybe the way Eddie had looked that afternoon, or maybe just that she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Something big enough to balance what was happening to them.
In fact, the thought of having another child hadn’t crossed her mind.
It would be pretty hard to do, given that Del hadn’t touched her in weeks.
He wasn’t mad. They didn’t fight. The other night, she had slipped into bed naked, and when he came in late, smelling of smoke and casino—the way he always did, even though he never smoked—she laid her narrow warm body close against his, lifted her leg over his hip, reached her hand around to his middle. And he stood up. Apologized. Said it had been a long day.
Well, Marshall was already in bed. Binnie never came out of her room once he was asleep.
June didn’t have anything to lose.
And she didn’t really want to have a conversation with Del; she just wanted him to touch her.
June smiled slyly at her husband.
“Only you . . .” she sang, with a slight tease.
It was the smile that worked. It always worked.
And probably Del didn’t want to talk about things either.
June unzipped her dress, slid it partway up her leg, kept her eyes on Del.
She could feel his ambivalence, that resistance that was always there—that was Del, but no other man she’d ever known—but he also felt a pull. She knew that too. He smiled at her.
June ran her hands through his hair, then her finger in her own private area.
She licked.
And the deed was done. Del took her there, on the dining room rug, which felt great, which felt mad, which didn’t last long, but at least they had coupled. At least she could still move Del. Later, June said she would go back to the El Capitan with him. She hadn’t been in the nightclub, hadn’t heard Eddie sing, in a long time. And Del thought that would be terrific, though he wouldn’t be able to join her for the show. Should he send someone to their booth to sit with her? She said no, it didn’t matter one way or the other. She was fine on her own.
Leo saw her before she entered the room.
“Mrs. Dibb,” he said. “The boss told me you were coming. Let me take your coat. Here’s your seat. Will Mr. Dibb be joining you?”
“Maybe.”
“Gimlet?”
“Yes. Please. And a second.”
“Of course, Mrs. Dibb. Eddie was in good form last night.”
“That’s nice to hear.”
Eddie wasn’t out yet. The band was playing low, and June watched as Leo seated the guests; the women wore long gowns and the men wore jackets and ties, handing their hats to the coat check girl as they walked in. Leo was a master at filling a room. There was an art to it: to knowing who would want a quiet booth, who would laugh and play along with the band from a front row table, how much cash someone might be willing to slip a maitre d’ for special consideration. Leo’s bald head shone with the effort and the heat from the stage lights, but his face was relaxed; his compact body moved easily through the crowded room.
June wondered if Eddie had a warm-up act tonight. He liked to mix it up; didn’t like to be held to a plan. She and Del figured out early on that they might suddenly have to pay a singer they hadn’t known they’d hired, or a bill for a set of instruments they’d never ordered. It had worked out. Their partnership with Eddie had lasted longer than most shows on the Strip, and when you figured what Eddie might have made somewhere else—how big some of those rooms were in the newer casinos—really, she and Del owed Eddie a lot. Maybe even all of it. Because Eddie Knox and the El Capitan were just a thing: something everyone who came to Vegas knew about, something a lot of people wanted to try. And the three of them had done it together, keeping it kind of easy, just making one another happy most of the time and not planning too far ahead.
Eddie came out alone.
The music stopped. The crowd quieted.
He looked right at June, lifted a finger to the horn player, and swiveled his hip in time to the one long horn note—the exact note, the exact swivel, of the first instant that she had seen Eddie Knox four years earlier.
Her whole body leaped.
And then he stood, silent, the horn silent, the room silent, still looking at June.
And she knew. She knew right that minute.
She loved Eddie Knox. She was in love with him, had been in love with him, would always be in love with him. She was doomed. Eddie Knox was not the man to love.
But it was total, and it was absolute, and the only thing that was notable was that she had kept it from herself for so long.
He was singing now.
A little bebop song, lips into the mike, flirting with a row of women in the right front.
He didn’t look at her again.
She barely heard the show.
He was great. She could hear tha
t. He was Eddie at his best. Not Eddie of the bloodshot eyes, not Eddie rail thin, not Eddie puking into a toilet. But Eddie as he had been, and Eddie as he was, with everything he’d learned in four years of carrying a nightclub, carrying a casino, carrying a whole certain kind of dream, night after night after night.
He was better than they’d even known.
And he sang and sang. He brought up some women to dance with him. He let an old man croon three verses into the mike. For a while, he sang from a booth on the other side of the room. And the audience knew it was a special night. They were all with him, pulling with him, hanging on his every note; they would talk about this night for years.
When it was over, nobody in the room got up to leave. They just sat there, waiting, watching. June could feel the longing. She caught Leo’s eye, and he walked her out the door at the back. Her body was trembling, and she did not dare see Eddie.
Leo had a security guard drive her home; said he knew Del was working late and that she would not want to wait for him. June let him tell her what to do. She couldn’t think about her husband; she didn’t want to see him. Had they actually been on the dining room floor that night? Had Marshall been sitting on Eddie’s lap that day? Her world spun and spun, and all these ordinary parts of it, these things that had made perfect sense, did not make sense at all. What was she doing? And what would she do now?
She didn’t get the news until late afternoon the next day.
Del told her. Came home from work early again. Came in and put his arms around her and told her that Eddie had been beaten the night before; that it was bad, that it had happened behind the El Capitan. He was in the hospital, and he would probably make it, but he looked real bad.
7
They’d taken Eddie to Las Vegas Hospital on Eighth. He was at the back, in a room with six beds, and the nurse who showed June where to go mentioned that there wouldn’t be much privacy. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. Perhaps she disapproved, perhaps she wanted June to say who she was, perhaps she was just a fan of Eddie Knox.
June said nothing. She wore heels and a narrow skirt and a jacket with wide lapels that she had ordered from the Bloomingdale’s catalog. Eddie’s bed was in the corner, and it was the only one partially obscured by curtains.
“Hey, Eddie.”
He looked at her, one eye fully shut, the other open just enough for her to see his pupil rotate toward her. He looked worse than she had thought he would. As bad as she had imagined, it was worse. There was no way to tell he was Eddie, his face was so swollen, and his mouth caved in a bit where his teeth were gone. She had meant to be cheerful, but it was all she could do to hold back the shock, to keep the tears in. She sat on the small green chair next to the bed, placed her fingers oh so gently on his arm, leaned her head near his face, but did not touch. He did not move or make a sound, and it was a few minutes before she could speak.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He mumbled then, and she strained to hear him. “Go away. Stay away from me.”
“I’m not going away. I’d never go away.”
“This is my doing, June. Please. You can’t help me.”
“I can help you. I can. Del can.”
Eddie made a sound then, when she said Del’s name, but she didn’t know what it meant. She couldn’t tell if he agreed that Del could help or not.
“Have they given you enough pain medicine? Can you eat?”
Eddie didn’t answer.
June didn’t try to keep talking. She laid her head on the pillow near him, her body bent awkwardly from the chair, and she stayed there, quiet, inhaling Eddie’s hospital smells: antiseptic and gauze and sweat and something it took a minute to recognize as blood. Eddie didn’t move to push her away, he didn’t protest. They lay there, head near head, silently, a long time.
June heard someone, a nurse, an orderly, pass nearby. There was the sound of breathing, a sharper step, a slowing step. She didn’t care. She didn’t care what they thought, didn’t care what they said, didn’t care what happened next. She had been naïve about all of it, about what Eddie was up against. She hadn’t spoken out when she should have, and it wouldn’t have made a difference, and still, she had sat silently at lunch with her friends, she had picked this town, she had seen the Westside, she had gone to all the big shows, many times. She knew as much as anybody could know. And she had known nothing.
She had been too stupid even to know what she felt.
But this was the man she loved, and if he were lying here, in pain, in this bed, in this place where not even Del could get him a room on the second floor, then she would lie here too, and they could all say anything they wanted. She didn’t care.
The nurse’s voice was brusque.
“He needs rest. And he doesn’t need someone laying on his pillow.”
June sat up. The nurse glared. June had given birth to Marshall in this hospital. She had a private room with a window that looked out over downtown and toward the mountains. The nurses brought her apple juice with ice chips every time she asked, and they brought the baby in too. He slept in the nursery, and every three hours or so, he came in to nurse, and afterward, Del would sit in the chair and hold his boy. The sun would stream in, and the white of the bed covers and the white of the baby clothes and the blue of the sky out that window fused in her mind, and felt like happiness manifest. Until today, June had loved this little hospital with its adobe walls and its red stucco roof, and she had loved that her son was born here, in Nevada, in the West.
“He’s had enough visitors for today. You’re not the only one.”
June sat up, pushed the green chair back from the bed, and went to stand in the corner. The nurse placed a glass thermometer in the side of Eddie’s mouth, laid the palm of her hand expertly on his forehead, lifted his wrist and watched the second hand on her watch to count his pulse, then wrapped a tan rubber cord around his arm. She inserted the needle with practiced efficiency, drew two vials of blood, carefully marked each with his name, and placed the purpling beakers in a basket marked “Lab—Colored.”
“He needs to rest, so you’re not helping him just standing around here all day. That’s what I told the other woman too.”
At this, June almost laughed, and she saw Eddie’s lip curl upward. He wanted to laugh too, knew what she was thinking, and so June smiled brightly at the nurse, who was, after all, good at her job, and the woman just shook her head and walked out.
June angled back to Eddie’s bed, tilted her head near his battered face, and said again, “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s time to go.”
“I want to stay. I don’t care what they think.”
“Please go. Please.”
“Eddie, I . . . I didn’t . . . I want . . .” Tears welled in her eyes, obscuring Eddie’s face. She didn’t know what she wanted to say. Just didn’t want to leave.
He turned away. Shook his head slightly when she said his name again. And June left.
In the lobby, she picked up a newspaper and sat down to collect herself. There was another article about the NAACP. They wanted the casinos desegregated. Negroes would be able to gamble, eat, stay in the rooms. There were rumors of a march. Inside, a small notice: “El Capitan Headliner Eddie Knox Beaten, Recovering in Hospital.” There was no indication of what had happened, just that the performer had been found hours after his show by a security guard from the El Capitan, who had rushed him to the hospital.
June folded up the paper and set it on the chair beside her. She didn’t want to think about who had found him, how long he might have lain there. She considered the front page story instead. The casino owners would hate a march. Would hate the publicity. Del said that there were some who would die before they would serve a black man. Others remembered watching their biggest headliners take off for the Moulin Rouge at midnight, had seen people flock to the Westside casino for the six months that it was open in 1955—paying customers who walked right out of their fancy carpet joints to
see a third round of late-night shows, and to play and gamble and drink in an integrated hotel. Those owners wanted the business.
“I visited Eddie today.”
“I heard.”
“He’s bad, Del. It was bad.”
“I know.”
“Who did it? What happened?”
“It’s complicated. I don’t know, exactly.”
“Exactly?” She wanted to shake him, he was so calm.
“Hey, I’m not the enemy. Eddie’s been taking a lot of risks; he’s been out of control for a long time. Something was going to happen.”
“Out of control? Whose control?”
“June, I can’t talk to you if you’re going to be this way.”
“What does that mean? What am I not getting? Eddie Knox was beaten to a pulp outside our hotel. Eddie. He could’ve died.”
“Yeah, he could’ve died.”
“Please. Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
“Can’t you protect him?”
“He’s gotta get out of town. He’s gotta stay away.”
“Because you can’t protect him?”
“Obviously I can’t.”
“What about Hugh? Have you talked with Hugh?”
She and Del never talked about Hugh. For a split second, he looked startled that she had said his name. Then he shook his head. Looked straight at her and said slowly, “Hugh isn’t going to protect Eddie Knox. That’s the last person to protect him.”
June did not want to dwell on Hugh. But Del had to understand.
“We have to do something. We owe Eddie. After all the money he made for us. And . . . he’s Eddie.”
Del didn’t answer right away. June knew she was pushing too far; that he was composing himself because he was angry.
“I don’t owe Eddie Knox. We had a business deal, and we both made money. He made his own choices after that.”
“I don’t even know who you are. A business deal? That’s what you call it?”
“That’s what it was.”
“I know you care about Eddie. I know he’s not just a business deal to you.”
'Round Midnight Page 4
