by John Ridley
As he handed me my drink: “Haven't had a chance to catch the act yet, but I hear you're puttin' on a real swinger of a show.”
“Yes, sir. They've been real good.”
“Yeah. Momo said Frankie C was ravin' about you, didn't he, Jilly?”
“Said you was a hoot.”
“So I told him let's get this kid in here. You ever meet Momo?”
Meet him? Last time I even asked about this Momo guy, all I got for my trouble was a verbal smacking. “No, sir.”
“You've got to meet him sometime. Sammy's a real good guy.”
“Sammy?”
“Sammy. Sam Flood.”
“Momo,” Jilly said, once again growing impatient with my rube-ness.
“Sure. I'd love to meet him someti—”
“So how's everything? Everybody treating you decent?”
“They're treating me decent. I don't think I've ever—”
“Nobody's giving you any trouble, are they?” The way he kept cutting me off, I got the feeling Frank could carry on a dialogue just fine by himself. “'Cause you've got the run of the joint, Charlie. Anybody says different, you tell me.” A cloud fell over Frank. He became a very dark man. “You tell me, and I'll tell them and tell them so they don't forget.”
“Yes, sir, but I haven't had any problems. None at all. Everybody's been real fine. Like I said, real fine.”
“Swell.” And quick as it'd come the cloud sailed on. Frank was all sunshine again. “Listen, you know I've got a piece of the Sands in Vegas. I'm gonna talk to Jack about gettin' you in there.”
Just like that. With a word, with a mere wave of his hand, he was offering me a slice of my dreams with the same non-effort that anyone else would offer a glass of water.
“The Sands in Vegas? You're … you're giving me the Sands?” The plane had crashed. I was thinking: My plane had crashed before I'd even gotten to Tahoe. My plane had crashed, I'd been shredded and burned and killed, and I ended up here. I'd been a good little boy, and I'd gone to heaven.
“I'm not givin' you anything you didn't earn by knockin' 'em dead from my stage, Charlie. How do you think it's done anyway? Connections. Who you know. Now you know me.” Frank got with a smile, big and toothy. He liked being benevolent. He dug being the king. “Have to slot you as an opener, but we'll make it worth your while. Jilly, how much we payin' Charlie?”
“Five-fifty.”
“Five-fifty? Why you lettin' me be so tight with the kid? How's he supposed to pitch dames livin' on the cheap?” To me: “How's seven-fifty sound, Charlie?”
“That's just… I'd do it for free.”
“Let me tell you somethin': You're only worth what you say yes to. You say yes to nothin', you're worth nothin'. Vegas or not, you do it for real money, you do it for keeps, or you don't do it at all.”
Some swinging lingo. But you don't rise and fall and rise again without learning a few things.
Frank said: “Glad we had a chance to talk, Charlie. I'm expectin' big things out of you.”
I thanked him for his time, trying to be cool, trying to sound one-star-to-another.
I followed Jilly for the door.
“Pallie.”
I turned back.
Again Frank insisted to me: “I'm expectin' real big things from you.”
Then the king gave me his blessing: a salute with his highball glass.
SUNDAY NIGHT. On the West Coast rebroadcast of the Sullivan show, I watched Shelley Winters get an intro from the audience, Peg Leg Bates do a tap number, and sandwiched between shtick from Reiner and Brooks and Japan's Fujiwara Opera Company was Frances Kligman as Fran Clark doing a swinging version of “In Other Words.” She gave the tune all it was worth, brash and brassy but never overbearing. If she was nervous, I couldn't tell. If she carried any stage fright, it didn't show. She wasn't some little girl doing late-night spots on Fourteenth Street anymore. She was a star in the happening, crossing the sky and heading straight for Fameville.
Monday morning. The trade papers had nothing but orchids for Fran. She was a definite sensation.
Sunday night and Monday I tried to call Fran, congratulate her. I couldn't get through for all the busy signals.
BACK IN NEW YORK. Back in the city. The city more hub than home, a base of operations. It was where I went when I wasn't working the road. It was where I went to wash my clothes and read mail and take care of Pop and maybe see Tommy.
Maybe, but not likely.
New York had become her hub as well. Detroit was her home. Especially once she started working on her first record.
So we'd call, usually missing each other. We were missing each other a lot. We were not speaking to each other with greater regularity. I would leave messages for Tommy at Motown. Pop, when he was sober enough, would remember to tell me when Tommy called. When he was sober enough.
He was hardly ever sober.
I often missed messages from Tommy.
I did my laundry, read my mail. Got ready to head back out onto road America, worked on some new bits.
As I wrote, Pop came 'round. Didn't say anything, just shadowed the door to my room. I let him stand there. Didn't talk to him much anymore. Didn't talk to him at all anymore. Not if I could avoid it. But after a while of him staring at me, grating on me: “You want something?” I said it neutral, not knowing which version of my pop I was talking to. High Pop. Jagged Pop. Strung-out Pop. Crashing Pop.
He said: “Goin' again soon?”
“Yep.”
“Seem like you always goin' off somewheres.”
“Seems that way.”
“Doin' it a lot. Goin' off a lot. Guess things is workin' out for you.”
“I guess.” The Dodgers had just moved from N.Y. to L.A. I wondered if I should do a bit on that.
“You always goin' off and … and … always goin' off… Workin' a lot… Wha's that like, bein' up in front of all them people? Wha's that like?”
“Nothing. It's nothing at all.”
“I figured it must be … all them people …”
I turned, looked.
Sweaty. Bleary-teary eyed. Little tremors snapping and popping all over his body. It was crashing Pop. Dried-out-and-in-need-of-a-hit Pop. Harmless Pop.
Blubbering his way back around to: “You goin', and I get to feelin' alone …”
“City full of people out there. Clean up. Go meet some of'em.”
“Yeah. I'm thinkin'… I'm thinkin' I'm gonnahhhhhmabbaaa …” He mumbled off into something, then mumbled up into: “… to tell you that… you workin' so much now, goin' to all them cities and doin' good for yourself… just wanted to tell you—”
“Tell me what? What are you going to tell me that you're only telling me 'cause you're dry and talking crazy? What do you want to tell me that you won't even remember you told me tomorrow, when you're lit up? What do you want to tell me that doesn't matter, doesn't mean anything 'cause it's only the drugs, or lack of drugs, or the need of drugs that's keeping you talking in the first place? So what, what are you going to tell me?”
My father didn't say anything to that. He just looked like I looked on the any number of times he stretched out and smacked me for no good reason: hurt.
Eventually he faded from the room. I heard him rummaging around the apartment. I heard a beer get popped open. A snack to him. To him it was just an appetizer.
I kept writing.
I HAD EXPECTED to see her. Not that day. Not that morning. Afternoon, really, for the rest of the city. But following a night of working the clubs, post-noon was still morning for me.
Anyway.
I hadn't expected to see her that day, sitting alone, looking tired, thumbing a copy of Look magazine, as I got breakfast—lunch—at a diner on B'way. But I always figured sooner or later I'd cross with Nadine Russell again. I'd lost track of her, or she let me lose track of her after I'd returned from that logging camp years back. She'd made it plain her affections stretched only to the end of a dollar bill, of whic
h I had, apparently, not enough.
In the time when I had gone on to do piece work, she'd gone to trade school to learn typing or steno or shorthand, to become a career girl at either of the two companies in all of New York where a black woman in those years might actually be able to have a career. Didn't matter, really. A career wasn't truly what Nadine was working toward. What she wanted was a man. A man with good prospects ahead of him and a little cash making noise in his pockets. Name a better place to find one than working in an office tower. Okay. Fine. Except, her man would have to be a black man, and every black woman was looking for such a black man and there weren't hardly enough black men to go around in the first place. Factor in the lack of prospects for men of color … Nadine was eating alone for a reason. She was looking tired for a reason. No man meant her temp life as a career girl had turned into an unlimited engagement. No one to take care of her, no one to buy her nice things, take her to dinner and a show. No one to come home to, or to make her feel special for no special reason. Nothing waiting for her but a job of memo typing, taking dictation.
And I was happy for that.
Nadine had seen me as a man without means, and how could such a man fulfill her ambitions? Jackie, the hey-boy. Jackie, the moving-company guy. Only, I'd turned myself into Jackie the rising comic and pal of celebrities. Jackie, the cat who earns a whole lot more than your average black and still had room to grow. No doubt Nadine knew this. No doubt she'd seen me written up somewhere, one of the Negro papers, heard talk about me from whoever she kept in touch with from the old neighborhood. She knew I'd made it, and I knew it must be killing her, and, honest, I couldn't wait to take the cold truth and wash her smug mug with it. Oh, I had the moment well rehearsed. When we met I would feign non-recognition, a quizzical look billboarding my face that reorganized itself into pleasant surprise when Nadine reminded me of her name. Oh, Nadine, how you been? Really? That's just swell. No, I haven't heard of them, but I'm sure they're a nice little company to work for. Yeah, well, you do look a little worn, but I'm sure once you move up some … Really? That long, and no promotion? Me? Okay, I guess. Yeah, opening for this star and that star and me, me, me, and yeah I'm earning a lot of money, and I guess I'm making it big, and I guess you should've been better to me. I guess you'll find a black man who's doing as well as I am to call your own.
Someday.
Maybe.
Nice seeing ya, Nadine.
Yes, I had the script written and ready. But hell if I was going to cross the diner and acknowledge Nadine. I waited for her to notice me. Waited through the tail end of my breakfast and another cup of coffee and another couple of eggs, scrambled.
I loved that about New York: You could order any food you wanted any time of the day without the what-the-hell-is-this-boy-doing-eating-breakfast-for-lunch look you'd get tossed anywhere else in America. It was going to be a sweet day all around.
Finally, Nadine finished up, finished with her food, reading her magazine. She stood. She moved through the diner, out the door to Broadway. She fell in with the foot traffic that was heading the direction she needed to go and walked.
She had not even noticed me.
Or…
No. She'd spotted me. She'd spotted me, but the embarrassment of having let me go only to watch me explode while she was sweating away workaday-style with so very little to show for herself kept her from so much as glancing in my direction. She was probably out on the street now, crying, cheeks streaked with five-and-dime mascara as she trudged back to all the nothing she had.
Yes. That's how I chose to believe things.
THE DREAM I'D BEEN HAVING was a bad one. It was about a black guy who was trying to wander home. That's all he was trying to do: just get home. But on the way home there were nails like claws, and shiny knuckles that wanted to tear him to shreds and beat him down. Pretty much they wanted to end his existence. And the guy kept thinking someone was going to come along the road he walked and save him from taking a thrashing. Save him from getting killed.
No one came. The guy was all alone. The guy was as good as dead.
The thing about the dream: A lot of times I would have it while I was wide awake.
I LEFT NEW YORK for five weeks on the road that would culminate with me opening for Eddie Fisher at the Sands in Las Vegas.
DEFINITION MADE LAS VEGAS a city. Reality said it was a town. Barely. What it was was a district that had sprung up along a railroad stop and, south a ways in Paradise Township, about half a dozen hotel/casinos along the Los Angeles Highway. Later on they would call it The Strip. The city—the town—being in the desert, was hot in temperature except at night, when it was cold, and during the winter when it was freezing nearly all the time. It was full of sand that was unstoppable from being windblown through every crack and crevice, dusting every object indoors or out. It had no factories, no major industry. It had no reason for being.
Except one.
You could gamble in Las Vegas.
You could gamble in a lot of cities. You could gamble all over the state of Nevada. But Vegas added a couple of wrinkles to the trick: flashy carpet joints with free meals if you lost enough. Big losers got their rooms comped, too. For spice there were showgirls who went topless and free juice handed out by cocktail waitresses wearing barely more than the ladies in the chorus. Las Vegas passed out the drinks with a wink and a neon tease, not to be nice but because it knew the more you drank, the stupider you got. The bigger you bet.
And if somehow all that wasn't enough to get you to get yourself to the high desert, Vegas had one last card up its sleeve: entertainment. It was live entertainment capital of the West. Hollywood might have been where the stars shacked, but Vegas is where they shined. Onstage and in person. And there was nowhere they shined any more hotly than at the Sands. Subtitled “A Place in the Sun,” ultramodern by design, the hotel/casino to beat all hotel/casinos made her presence felt in The Meadows from the day its doors swung open: You pulled up a slick circular drive under three narrow beams that shot from the hotel, then ninety-degree-angled straight into the desert floor as if the building itself were staking a claim to the city. Forget the old-fashioned cabin-style wood-and-stone construction, you were welcomed into the joint by chrome and glass and marble letting you know this was the up-to-date way to lose your money. And just in case you still weren't sure about things, there was the sign. Fifty-six feet tall, every inch of it burning with lights that boldly, simply, in scripted letters read: SANDS. No doubt at all. This was the place in the sun. It was one big slice of all I ever wanted. All I ever dreamed of.
If nothing else, what made it that way was the Copa Room, sister to the club in New York. And same as the club in New York, the Copa was where anybody who was anybody—Marlene Dietrich to Noel Coward—wanted to be. Working there made playing the empty desert of Vegas better than bearable. It made it an event.
But for all the Hollywood celebs, all the palm trees and neon, Vegas was still strictly Hicksville. Hicksville is where Jim Crow called home.
“Sorry, Jackie.”
Jack Entratter was sorry.
Jack Entratter was the entertainment coordinator of the Sands, the fellow who handled the Copa Room for the casino. At six foot three, he was a hulk of a man, weighty, and sporting several chins. He would've come off as a monster except that he was a fairly decent guy. Maybe by nature, maybe because he was humbled by the gimp a childhood illness had left him. Either way, you kinda believed him when he said: “You know, I've got no problem with things, but it's policy. We just don't allow coloreds into the casino. You understand, don't you, Jackie?”
Sure. I understood. It was the same as it was a lot of places. I could entertain. I could make good money. I could stand onstage and take all the applause an audience could dole out, but after that I was expected to be gone, and be quick about it.
“If it was left to me …” Jack was getting in all his apology bits. “But we can't make any exceptions.” He modified himself. “Except, one exc
eption.”
I knew the exception. But then, Mr. Entertainment was an exceptional cat.
Jack looked from me to Sid and back again, helplessness in his face, then held up his hands in a show of things being completely beyond him. In case I couldn't read all that: “There's nothing I can do.”
And there wasn't. Didn't matter Jack was taking orders from Frank Sinatra himself. Sinatra may have been a part owner in the Sands, but that didn't make him boss, just slave to the paying customer. The paying customer didn't want any blacks in the casino, the paying customer didn't get any blacks in the casino.
Sid and I thanked Jack. Sid and I left.
The Sands was good enough to provide us with a car while we were in the city. We'd need it. It was a good trip between the hotel and the part of town known as Westside. The “Negro” side. The side where we would be staying. And the whole of it made the black section of Miami come off like the French Riv. Small, rundown shacks for houses. Beat-up cars that were ten years old the day these people bought them “new.” I didn't see any schools, or a hospital. I didn't see anything you could call nice or decent. Westside seemed to lack everything except poverty. Poverty was all over the place and plentiful.
We checked in at Mrs. Shaw's, a boardinghouse where out-of-town blacks stayed, famous and otherwise. Stayed for about twice what it cost to room at one of the hotel/casinos. If we could've roomed at one of the hotel/casinos. We couldn't, so we paid Mrs. Shaw's prices. End of discussion.
