The World of Tomorrow

by Brendan Mathews

  Once he had the crew lined up, Martin went to work shaping the set list. His charts—the written arrangements that brought together, page by page, the parts that each musician would play—looked like the scrapbook of a mental patient. They were scribbled on cocktail napkins and butcher paper, on the backs of receipts and in the margins of the New York Post. Only in the past two weeks had he transcribed onto neatly lined pages his hurried quarter notes for the saxophones, the mirrored notes of the trumpets, and the low, insistent halves of the bass. He had thought of this as his chance, for one afternoon, to play these songs the way he heard them in his head, but what came out in these noontime rehearsals was better than he had ever imagined.

  While Martin had thought he would be leading the way—isn’t that what the bandleader did?—he quickly learned that he was playing catch-up. Men who could hold their own at Minton’s were already taking jazz music to places it hadn’t yet been. Still, he was the one who had brought this group together. Hadn’t he seen plenty of bands full of talented players that somehow never clicked, whereas this group found its groove in a matter of weeks? He must have had something to do with that. Even if he lacked the angel’s kiss that elevated Duke and Basie to the jazzman’s Olympus, he could still set the direction and let the players take it from there.

  Yes, Martin was on to something, and it was the sound of the band that had pushed him to walk out on Chester. These Monday sessions were proof that he wasn’t just imagining what he could do if he was the one counting time and building the set list. Since last week’s rehearsal, he had bounced between light-headed joy and a sour stomach of dread: How could it be that this band would only live for a day, a musical mayfly, and then disappear? Every man in the band had another regular gig. Martin had already been forced to replace the trombone when Joe Falco went off for a three-month stand in the Poconos. And Hooper, his ace trumpet, had a gig at the World’s Fair that he hoped to flip into a seat in the house band for The Hot Mikado, which was moving this month from Broadway out to the fairgrounds.

  But Martin had a plan—his own top secret plan—and he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. It was too far out in the world of what-if, a sunshine daydream locked up tight against the cold rain of reality. But over these past few days that lock had begun to turn and the tumblers to fall into place. He had set it in motion by quitting Chester’s band. Click: the first number in the combination. Then there was the news, delivered today by half the members of the band, that his song had been rearranged by none other than Benny Carter and was driving the dancers into a frenzy at the Savoy. It was a sign that Martin’s star might again be on the rise, and—click—that was the second number. And then there was this band, his band. They had been working toward this moment for months, when they would move beyond being musicians playing a session to being a real band. In a session, someone was always gassing around, showing off. It was a ragtag business, playing for the joy of it. But now the band had come together. No doubt about it, this band could really swing. Click: the last number in the combination.

  So this was Martin’s plan: Saturday wouldn’t be the end, it would be the beginning. He had learned plenty from his early days in America playing one-night stands with nonstop touring bands, and then later with Chester during their summer tours. He knew the towns where a band could play to a packed house and then do it all again in the next town over. It was a dog’s life, to be sure, but they only had to keep at it long enough to make a name for themselves. And with the way Hoop was blowing that horn, the way he absolutely tore apart “One O’Clock Jump,” and with the bandleader being the man who had written “That’s More Like It,” well, that was a sure bet in Martin’s book. They would blaze a path across the territories and then return in triumph to New York, where they would settle in as the new house band at somewhere like the Pennsylvania Hotel. It sounded crazy to be thinking about the Pennsylvania, which had been Basie’s spot for years, while the band was sweating through its paces at a hole-in-the-wall like the Dime, and that was one reason he hadn’t breathed a word of it. But hadn’t Benny Goodman been ready to break up his band in the middle of their marathon cross-country tour? It had been a complete wreck right up until they went to L.A. for one last show at the Palomar, where they blew the roof off the place. That success, broadcast live around the country, carried them back to New York like conquering heroes, and it had been nothing but gravy for those guys ever since.

  But he was getting ahead of himself, because sure, there were hurdles to overcome.

  Martin knew that before the band played a single note at the reception, half the crowd would already be in a lather. What kind of joke was this? Colored musicians? An integrated band? The wedding guests would have a laugh if Martin were to assemble an all-white band and put them in blackface. That would be a gas. Like dancing at the Cotton Club, they would say. But this? He could already imagine the look on Dennis Dwyer’s boiled-potato face. And he hadn’t told anyone. Not Rosemary, even. She would only argue him out of an idea that he knew was a good one, but it was Rosemary, after all, who had recruited Martin as the bandleader, and hadn’t he taken to the job with gusto? Had he complained, even once, about the wedding?

  And then there was the long-term plan. Rosemary wouldn’t exactly go wild about Martin being out of town for weeks, maybe months, at a time, but if that plan got them out of Mrs. Fichetti’s and into a house of their own, then all, he supposed, would be forgiven. More and more since the baby was born she had been giving out about his late nights and the hours kept by a musician, but isn’t that what she’d signed up for when they married? He had to believe that what really troubled her were the close quarters with a nosy landlady always looking over her shoulder. If she had her own place to mind, she wouldn’t care if Martin was on the moon five nights a week.

  Getting Hoop and Teddy Gaines on board was also going to take some doing. Even if Hoop complained that his current gig was a straitjacket, a straitjacket kept a man warmer than no jacket at all. And there could be other hurdles. Even in New York, there were ballrooms that wouldn’t book mixed bands, and he’d heard it was ten times worse down south, where there was loads of money to be made playing one-nighters. It was hard to figure, but Martin was confident he could sort it all out. Times were changing—when Benny Goodman jazzed up Carnegie Hall, Basie and Fletcher Henderson and plenty more joined him on the bandstand, and hadn’t the crowd applauded like mad? He was also counting on Hoop’s wife, Lorena, to help her husband see the light. Hoop was always telling Martin that she could sing like an angel, and if the band took off, it could mean steady work for both of them—and maybe being together on the road would smooth out the rough patches. In a different life, Rosemary would make a crackerjack tour manager. There was no one better at keeping all of the i’s dotted just so. But you sure couldn’t put your wife and kids on the road with a crowd of musicians. He wasn’t raising his girls to be tinkers.

  He could feel it now, closer than it had ever been. On Saturday everyone would hear it and they would all know that the group was too good to break up. That’s when Martin would lay it all out for them. The Martin Dempsey Orchestra would spring fully formed from his head and they would march out together, ready to take on the world.

  WHEN THE LAST note ended and brought the rehearsal to a close, there was a hush, then a collective intake of breath. Someone cursed, with reverence, for the sound that had filled the room. Only then did they realize just how much they were sweating in the narrow, lightless confines of the Dime. Stretching like men coming out of trance, they staggered off the club’s one-step riser and went in search of the jackets they had shucked off, the shirts slung over music stands.

  Teddy Gaines came out from behind the drum kit and leaned against the piano. “Word is you gave old Chestnut your walking papers,” he said.

  “I did,” Martin said. “Just so.” A nervous smile tricked the corners of his mouth, as if this was a joke he hadn’t gotten used to telling.

  “This here’ll be some
thing new,” Hooper said. “I never played with a bandleader who’d lost his mind.”

  Gaines and Exley, the bass player, both guffawed. They had been thinking the same thing since the news broke of Martin’s midsong departure.

  “Come on, now,” Martin said, fishing a slender chrome case from his pocket. He deftly removed a cigarette and laid the case on the piano. “It’s the sanest thing I’ve done in a long while.”

  “So what was it,” Hooper said, “the steady paycheck got you down? Tired of playing on the radio all those years? Too many rich folks buying you drinks?”

  “You know there’s more to it than that.”

  “Do I?” Hooper helped himself to a cigarette and the use of Martin’s lighter. He took a few languid drags.

  “Could you do it?” Martin said. “Play that la-dee-dum night after night? There’s no life in it.”

  “There’s no life in starving either.”

  “You’re worse than Rosemary.”

  “Rosemary must be a saint. If I quit a gig like that, Lorena would cut off my balls and throw them in the river.”

  “I thought she did that the day you got married.”

  Hooper laughed. “You might have balls, but you’ve got no brains. You don’t like what Chester’s cooking? Clean your plate and when the job’s done, go to Minton’s, or to Monroe’s, or do what we’re doing here—just play. You think I’m living my dream, playing for the squares at the fair? But I’m getting paid to play, and there’s plenty who can’t say the same.”

  Hooper was trying to keep it light but he knew he was lecturing. He could already hear Lorena’s voice in his head. Life lessons from Professor Hooper, she would say. Thank you, Dr. Know-It-All. She could make it sound like a joke, like a pet name even, or she could make it clear that he was working her last nerve. But it was a hard habit to break: when you’re the oldest of six, you grow up telling everyone else just how it’s going to be.

  Hooper shook his head. “Maybe I’m just as crazy as you—letting you talk me into playing a party for a bunch of drunken white folks.”

  “They won’t all be drunk,” Martin said. “Not at first.”

  Hooper mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. Futile. Both the rag and his head were soaked.

  “You really think this is going to work?”

  “It’s going to be grand,” Martin said.

  “I don’t know what world you’re living in, but it’s not the real one.”

  “You don’t think we sound brilliant?”

  “We’re better than brilliant. That’s not the part I’m worried about.”

  “You could have said no.”

  “I guess I’m not living in the real world either.”

  MARTIN HAD PLANNED to stop at the Plaza after practice. As far as he knew, Francis and Michael had come and gone in the night without making a sound. The only sign of them in the morning had been a pillow and a folded sheet on the sofa, and that giant bottle of champagne, empty in the kitchen. But with the news that his song was lighting up the Savoy, he had a new mission: to visit every music store between Midtown and Harlem. If the sheet music was selling, then that was a sure sign of success. And if they’d stopped carrying the sheet music last year? Then he’d tell the clerks to put in a rush order, because his song was sure to be the biggest hit of the summer.

  On his way out the door, Martin was stopped by the Dime’s owner, Artie Gold. Artie usually passed time at the Monday rehearsals at a round table at the back of the club, tallying last week’s receipts and gabbing with the men who delivered the essentials: ice, beer, linens, seltzer.

  “Looks like you’re developing a fan club,” Artie said.

  “Is it the beer guy?” Martin said. “Or is it the iceman? I tell you, the icemen love us.”

  “No, you dope,” Artie said. “Didn’t you see who I was talking to? That was John Hammond.”

  Hammond’s name knocked the wry smile right off Martin’s face. Every musician in New York City—in the whole Western Hemisphere—hoped to catch the eye of John Hammond. One nod from Hammond was a ticket to the top; just ask Billie Holiday, or Benny Goodman, or Basie himself. The word on the street was that Hammond had paid out of his own pocket to install the air-conditioning at the Famous Door during Basie’s long, legendary run. That’s how badly he wanted Basie to make a splash, and it was just the kind of thing Hammond did for his musicians. But folks around town also called him the Undertaker, because just as likely as not, when you saw Hammond in the audience he didn’t have his eye on you—he was there to tell your bandleader about his latest find, some kid fresh off the train from Chicago who was perfect for the seat you were currently occupying.

  “Hammond?” Martin said in disbelief. “Here?” He was sure Artie was pulling his leg, but what if—

  “He caught your last number and he wanted to know where he could see the whole act. I told him you were just a bunch of shoeshine boys I let play on Mondays out of the kindness of my heart.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “Of course I didn’t. Sheesh. I told him you had a wedding up in Woodlawn—when is it, Saturday? Leave me an address and I’ll pass it on.”

  “Why don’t you give me his number and I’ll ring him up? No need for you—”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t work that way,” Artie said. “Just don’t get your hopes up, okay? He’s a busy man. And Woodlawn? Sheesh—that’s like the other side of the moon.”

  Don’t get your hopes up? Martin’s hopes had never been higher. Quitting Chester’s outfit, then hearing about his song at the Savoy, then feeling the band in full swing—he had all the numbers in the combination that would unlock his future. On Saturday the door would open wide, and John Hammond himself would be waiting on the other side.

  THE PLAZA HOTEL

  IT WAS LATE IN the evening when Michael got out of bed. His clothes from the previous night were still pooled on the floor: his jacket near the bedroom door and then his trousers and then another step to his tie, his shirt. The shoes, like Mr. Yeats, were nowhere in sight. If the bed had been three feet farther from the door he would have collapsed on the carpet—that’s how exhausted he had been when they had reached the hotel in the early-morning hours. Still, he was shocked that they had found the place at all.

  When they’d crept out of Martin’s apartment, Michael on tiptoe and Yeats in an insubstantial shuffle, the mantel clock registered ten minutes after three. Michael had realized during his Saturday stroll down Fifth Avenue that he could still tell time—the meaning of the short and long hands had not been lost in the fog that still obscured letters and numbers. He had since made a point of seeking out clocks, whether on lobby walls or church towers. This was something he could know. This was proof that he was still a part of the delimited world.

  The street outside Martin’s apartment was occupied only by bent-necked streetlights, and when Michael asked Yeats the way to their hotel, the old man seemed puzzled. He took a few steps to the right, then paused and muttered to himself. He turned left but lacked the conviction to take a step in that direction.

  “Are the pages on the big book of time turning again?”

  Yeats nodded gravely.

  Michael scanned the row of houses that ran the length of the block. A lightbulb burned in only a single window. The rest of the buildings were dark. He could imagine that in each house a family slept untroubled by the waking world. “Sure it’s fine,” Michael said. “It’s all peace and quiet.”

  “For now.” Yeats blinked hard and again looked right, then left. “This way.”

  On the Grand Concourse, trucks bearing ice or bundled newspapers or bottles of milk trundled into the city. Two taxicabs rolled past, their drivers nodding at the wheel, before Yeats told Michael to raise his hand to signal for a ride. A third car jerked to a stop at the curb.

  As they entered the cab, the driver turned his squashed face toward Michael and mouthed some variation of Where to, buddy? Yeats advised Michael that this would be the time to gi
ve the man the card in his pocket. Michael did as he was told and sat back with a look of satisfaction on his face. He was insulated from the grumble in the man’s throat, the chewed-over words about the middle-of-the-night Bronx fare who was too highfalutin to speak to a cabbie.

  When they arrived at the hotel, Michael handed the driver one of the bills in his pocket and kept his hand out, awaiting the change that the driver grudgingly provided. Then he was out of the cab and up the stairs, and he was sure, for a moment, that as he exited the cab he saw the woman from last night—the pretty one, the wild one—ducking her head into the same car he had just vacated, and he was about to call this fact to Yeats’s attention, but when he turned his head one way Yeats was gone and when he turned quickly the other way, the weight of the day and the night and the spectrally assisted travel from the Bronx to Manhattan descended suddenly on his shoulders. He caught a last glance at the taillights of the cab—was Yeats now traveling with her?—just as a man in livery tipped his cap and pulled open the door, and then he was inside again, crossing the lobby, brightly lit against the predawn gloom.

  The man behind the desk nodded to him and turned toward the vast bank of pigeonholes where the room keys were kept. With another nod, the man handed Michael his key, and with a sweep of his arm indicated the location of the elevator. In the elevator, Michael showed the key with its numbered tassel to the operator, and then the doors were opening and he was following the hallway to his room. The weight on his shoulders grew heavier and his head began to cloud and he was through the door and across the sitting room and into his bedroom, where he shucked his clothing article by article, and when he felt the mattress against his shins he let himself fall.