FOUR KINGS: A Novel

by M. D. Elster

  The knocking came again. He sighed.

  “I’ll go see to it,” he said, rising from his desk. “You stay here.”

  But I did not stay there in his office — that much I remember. I snuck out of the office and crept quietly along, some distance behind him. I’m not sure why I did this. In retrospect I must say it was one part curiosity, and one part protective instinct. I had already lost two parents. I did not intend to lose a third… not without a good clean fight. I crept along, tiptoeing so my stepfather would not notice me, and watched as he pushed open the nightclub door to reveal a beautiful svelte woman standing on the other side, her eyes made up like a starlet’s, her red lips smiling, a fashionable hat perched on her head, her black hair waved in a chic bob.

  “I’ve come to audition for you,” she said to my stepfather in a confident voice. She was obviously nervous, but trying not to let it show. Even through the doorway, I could see: Her pristinely waved hair vibrated ever so slightly around her smiling face and gave her away — she was trembling a little.

  I must say, at that point, a good number of talented musicians wanted to get on my stepfather’s stage. He had been approached plenty of times, and by plenty of ingénues, but not in quite so aggressive a manner. He had no automatic response for this maneuver. He stood there, holding the door open, and blinking stupidly. Colette saw her opportunity and seized upon it.

  “Nice eyeshade,” she remarked, as she brushed past him and into the club. She winked, and for a moment I thought I imagined a tiny arrow shooting out of her eyes and into my stepfather’s heart, for he stood there as though he had been dealt some variety of fatal blow.

  After a few seconds, he shook himself, let the door shut, locked it, and followed Colette back inside the nightclub, to where she was setting up on stage, positioning herself before a microphone and switching it on.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re about,” my stepfather said. “This isn’t an open audition. It’s Sunday, we don’t open till six, and we haven’t a piano player on hand to accompany you.”

  I tried not to acknowledge the twinge of jealousy I felt as he removed the eyeshade, smoothed his hair, and hid the shade behind his back as though it had never existed in the first place.

  “I don’t need one,” Colette said. She stood upright, straightened her spine, and repositioned the large silver microphone. She absent-mindedly patted at her hair. I noticed her hairstyle was very pretty, waved just slightly over one eye, along the side of her cheek. “Ready?” she asked in a saucy, belligerent tone.

  “Honestly, mademoiselle, this is hardly appropriate. I beg you to leave and come back at some more appropriate time.”

  “I’ll be singing ‘Bei Mir Bist du Schöen,’ ” she said.

  My stepfather froze. This had always been one of my mother’s signature songs. “Really?” he said in a skeptical tone. “Well, I’m inclined to be an ungenerous judge when it comes to that one. If you elect to proceed, then I must warn you, you’ll only be hanging yourself.”

  Colette smirked, projecting an air of being undaunted. But I could see the feather in her tidy black hat quivering madly in the air.

  “Well, then,” my stepfather said. “If I can’t be rid of you, you’d better go ahead and get it over with.” He gestured with one hand as though to say go on; be my guest.

  As I looked at Colette I had a strange flash of my mother just then. I can’t say why — the two women were opposite in many ways. My mother was pale and blonde; she put people in mind of an angel, or perhaps a girl in a Botticelli painting. There was something ethereal and slightly washed-out and very soft about her coloring, whereas Colette was quite the opposite. She was sharp-eyed, like a cat. Her hair was as black as my stepfather’s — blacker, in fact — as his was shot through with the occasional strand of silver, and hers was not; it was as inky as a raven’s wing. She stood with the confidence of a slinky panther. My mother stood like a wispy reed blowing in the wind. It would be difficult indeed to confuse these two singers on a stage: Colette and my mother. And even so, as Colette began to sing that day there was something that roused memories of my mother’s first days onstage.

  Like my mother, her voice was unexpectedly low and melodic. She was right; she hardly needed accompaniment, her voice was enough. She simply closed her eyes and sang, letting the smooth, silky vibrations fill up the room. I also saw the look on my stepfather’s face as he watched and listened. Perhaps this, too, played a role in triggering my memories of my mother.

  There was a wolfish look in his eyes — similar to the look that had soothed my worries during all those mornings after my mother had fought with my stepfather. It was a look that revealed what he wanted, and whereas it had made me feel safe when he’d aimed it at my mother, now it made me feel frightened, out of control — for it was clear to me who was rapidly gaining control of my stepfather’s heart: Colette.

  He gave her a job singing at the club, naturally enough, and before too long, Colette’s name inched its way to the top of the marquee, and the lettering grew larger and larger. I was leery of all this, but there was one positive side effect. Colette’s sudden materialization in our lives meant my stepfather was happy and distracted. He whistled merrily everywhere he went, he ceased to check my marks in school, and he relaxed his policy of barring me from the nightclub somewhat. I wasn’t sure what to make of Colette, but I was glad for anything that transported me away from my claustrophobic world of school uniforms and sadistic peers. Backstage at the nightclub had always been my escape; it was a world filled with “theater people” — people, who, for all their talents, were often secretly every bit as much a misfit as I was.

  That was when and how I became acquainted with Jules Martin.

  In general, I’d always gotten along with stagehands. The group who’d run the club back in Paris had been like a rag-tag group of funny uncles who looked after me. They’d humored my curious questions, showed me the ropes backstage (in some cases, literally), they’d let me pull levers and switches, and even curbed their usage of profanity around me — at least, somewhat (the occasional near-disaster backstage still elicited certain unprintable words). And of course there was dear Max, my favorite, who had been rounded up and taken away from me by the Germans. Even now, I wonder about Max… if he is all right, if he is even alive.

  In any case, as I was older now, my relationship with the stagehands in New Orleans was a bit different; they were less paternal towards a teenage girl, to be sure, but they were still kind. There were four of them, and I liked them all, but one made me nervous: Jules Martin. Perhaps this was due to the fact that he was rather close to my own age. Or perhaps it was because our first encounter was rather confrontational and awkward. The first time I met Jules Martin, he bawled me out. And, for my own part, I suppose I sassed him right back.

  This happened some time later, months after Colette’s audition. I’d only just begun to hang around the nightclub a bit more — I hadn’t been allowed to be there during the evening for the better part of two years. Colette had taken the stage, the curtain had just gone up, and she was waiting there in the dark when suddenly it appeared there was no one to operate the spotlight. I quickly climbed the ladder up to the catwalk and performed the necessary actions to swivel the unwieldy contraption and switch it on.

  “Pssst! Hey!” I heard someone hiss at me, “Get away from there! What are you doing?!”

  I turned to see the figure of Jules scrambling towards me, out of breath, frantic. I knew who he was, and he I, but we had never formally introduced ourselves. I didn’t answer right away. Down below, Colette began to sing and I could see the audience smiling in appreciation.

  “I said, what do you think you’re doing?” he repeated, taking over the spotlight. It was clear he was angry. I stepped back, annoyed.

  “Well, evidently I’m doing your job,” I snapped back in a hushed voice. “Where were you? You missed your cue!”

  I took a closer
look at him. He wore a cap, an undershirt, and suspenders, but around his neck was an incongruous bowtie, its bow quite lopsided and mangled. He saw me looking at it.

  “Jacques was teaching me to tie a bowtie,” he admitted begrudgingly.

  Jacques Deroy was one of our headliners, a man who grinned suavely as he crooned up-tempo jazz ballads. I couldn’t help but snort in puzzlement.

  “That’s why you were late? Why don’t you know how to tie a bowtie, and why do you want to learn anyway?”

  “I ain’t got people,” he said, “so no one ever taught me; I never learned. But a fella needs a bowtie if he’s gonna headline someday on stage.”

  “Oh… you want… you want to be a performer,” I said, slowly comprehending.

  “I’m going to be a performer,” he replied in a determined tone.

  “Do you—”

  “Sing? Yes. And I taught myself to play piano,” he said proudly. “Although I gotta hear things played once through first. I have trouble reading the notes. Jacques is helping me fix that, too.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I believe he took my silence for skepticism, or mockery even.

  “Look, I’ve got talent,” he said in a defensive voice. “I’ve even come up with my own songs. I don’t need you to believe me.”

  “I wasn’t—” I began to protest, but he cut me short.

  “C’mon,” he snapped. “Anyway you know you’re not supposed to be up here, so… scram.”

  He was so vehement in his tone, I quickly left him up there on the catwalk without another word.

  But I was intrigued. As prickly as he’d been towards me, I sensed he also wanted to impress me. And he seemed, like me, to be something of a young misfit in the world. I asked the other stagehands about him. They all raised their eyebrows at me — thinking, of course, my inquiry indicated some sort of romantic interest — and told me what they knew about Jules Martin. He’d grown up in foster homes mostly, until he struck out on his own at fourteen, and worked odd jobs backstage in many of the jazz clubs in New Orleans. He was obsessed with the music scene, and — according to his fellow stagehands — was not untalented in this regard. He hoped to be adopted into a jazz band of some sort, or else… or else, convince my stepfather to allow him to audition for the chance to sing a few numbers in the nightclub.

  I sympathized with him when it came to the obstacles he faced in petitioning my stepfather for an audition. Colette may have been able to successfully shoulder her way in, but that was partly owing to my stepfather’s weakness for beautiful women, and Colette in particular had him smitten. Jules was a young man with no formal musical training or social pedigree, and a colored youth to boot. My stepfather was colorblind to jazz headliners who had already made it big on the music scene, but not to a young Negro boy who had nothing to his name. Jules had his work cut out for him in trying to get my stepfather to give him the time of day. On more than one occasion, I eavesdropped to hear Jules begging my stepfather to let him perform just one number on stage… and my heart went out to him as my stepfather merely grunted and walked away.

  And then — without meaning to — I believe I did something that made things a great deal more difficult for Jules.

  The incident occurred one evening, a year or so after after we’d become acquainted with each other, and some months after Colette and my father had become engaged. We were backstage and Jules was showing me the props and costumes for a new calypso number Colette wanted to try out. We had slowly but surely grown more and more friendly with each other as the days ticked by, and as Jules became accustomed to seeing me backstage. He had begun to trust me, to allow me to help run things, and we worked together as partners. It made sense that, as nervous as he sometimes made me feel, we’d formed an organic friendship. As I’d suspected, we were close in age — I was fourteen, he was sixteen — and we’d both had some difficulty finding a proper home in the world. Jules had been forced to drop out of school in order to work; I remember feeling slightly ashamed that I wished I could do the same, for he envied the education I took for granted and was so selfishly ready to discard. Buried beneath his tough exterior, he had an easy, jokey sense of humor that I appreciated. And the one quality we held in common that was greater than all else: We were both defined by our loneliness, and yet paradoxically, were both habituated to being alone. There was an unspoken understanding between us.

  On the evening of the incident, he was showing me some props for a new act. There were all kinds of jeweled and feathered pieces — pieces I’d only ever seen on colored women during New Orleans’s great Mardi Gras parade, and now Colette and some of the chorus girls were going to wear them onstage. As we inspected and giggled over the costumes and props, laying them out on a large table, plotting out the logistics for keeping them backstage so as to help the performers easily find each prop when it was needed, our hands clumsily met… then our eyes… and then our lips.

  By that point in my life, I had only ever kissed a small handful of boys, and the kisses had been childish pecks, mostly, exchanged out of obligation or on a dare. Jules was the first boy I’d ever kissed simply because I wanted to kiss him. All the others, even the ones I thought I’d fancied — the boy who had been nice enough to escort me to a school dance even though it was obvious his aunt (a friend of my stepfather’s) had forced him to do it, or, going further back to our time in Paris, the thuggish boy about our neighborhood who fancied himself my protector — all these others, I’d pecked on the lips or cheek because I’d felt sorry for them, or else because I’d wanted to thank them… but I’d never kissed anybody solely on the impulse of my own desire. Until Jules.

  There was something about him — something beyond his handsome face — that drew me to him — drew me to him acutely, as though he were water and I was overcome by thirst. Perhaps that’s a bad analogy. I don’t know how best to describe it. Whenever I try, I feel foolish. For instance, I might also describe my attraction in terms of scent — because Jules smelled really good to me. But in saying that, I am embarrassed, for it makes it sound animalistic, or else like teenage lust, when I believe there was something deeper behind this allure. When I think of how he smelled, the words that spring to my brain are: He smelled familiar, like home. I wanted to go home.

  And so I kissed him.

  I didn’t know we had been seen, or that word had gotten back to my stepfather until a day later. The first hint this had happened came in a less than subtle manner, when my stepfather flew into a rage. He’d always been protective of me, and most especially what he nebulously referred to as “my virtue.” The idea of a young man kissing me — a young colored stagehand, no less — was too much for him. He raged at me, louder than he ever had before, his face redder than I’d ever seen it. He locked me in my bedroom, and decided he would fire Jules on the spot, the very second he saw him.

  It was Colette who was finally able to calm my stepfather down. I had to be impressed with her skill in charming him; she even managed to dissuade him from firing Jules in the end. I wasn’t privy to what she said to my stepfather to get him to keep Jules on, but whatever it was, it did the job. Colette had a way of smoothing things, of melting my stepfather’s impossible icy stare. I was once again banned from spending any time hanging around the nightclub, and for a little while, at least, I obeyed.

  When I finally worked up the rebellious nerve to set foot in the club again, I was supremely careful not to let anyone see me. I was like a ghost that haunted the backstage area, hiding in dark corners, crawling up to a rarely used part of the catwalk and watching the glowing red and blue lights on the stage down below.

  I was especially careful to keep away from Jules. I didn’t want to give my stepfather further cause to fire him. A second, perhaps more selfish reason was that I felt a sense of gawkiness and embarrassment. I had, after all, been the one to initiate our kiss. The expression on his face told me that Jules was every bit as surprised by my sudden boldness as I was. I didn’t
know if the kiss meant anything to him. I didn’t know whether or not he’d liked it. All I knew was that it had ultimately caused him a great deal of grief, and very nearly gotten him fired. We had not directly crossed paths since the night it happened, and I was sure it would be awkward when we finally did.

  And yet… the fact I was harboring feelings for him was made plain to me all over again one night as I hid in one of my spots high up on the catwalk. From there, I had a vantage of both the front of the house and backstage at once. It was both dizzying and pleasant — a little like being in an eagle’s nest, I imagine. I was mostly occupying myself by humming along with the musicians onstage, when the sight of Jules puttering around on the backstage floor caught my eye. Mostly, he was putting props in order, and rolling a piano out of the way. But as he worked, he clearly didn’t think anyone was watching him, for playfully executed a few dance steps, á la Fred Astaire. I smiled, happy to see him, even from afar.

  But then I glimpsed another figure approaching: Colette. I felt my throat tighten in a curious manner as she drew him into some sort of private conversation. I was too high up, the music was far too loud; I couldn’t make out a word they were saying. They were standing rather close, and I noticed she laid a hand on his shoulder at some point in the conversation. My eyes focused in immediately on that hand: Something about the gesture appeared intimate — so intimate, in fact, that I felt obliged to look away, but could not. Finally, after several minutes, he nodded, she nodded, and then they parted. I noticed Jules watched her slink away, walking her signature walk. He watched, motionless, and — I can only assume — riveted.

  Jules and Colette — why would they need to have an exchange about anything, let alone one that involved the body language I glimpsed? The image of that scene returned to me again later that night as I lay in bed, trying to sleep. I pushed it from my brain again and again, but like some sort of persistent oceanic tide, it kept coming back.