by John Ridley
I ignored the cabbie, him barking at me that he didn't care how long I sat he wasn't about to shut off the meter, and listened.
And then the song ended.
And then I got excited all over again in anticipation of the disc jockey announcing her name, Tommy's name, my girl's name over the airwaves for all of New York to hear. And he did.
Sort of.
He said the name of the song, said something about how it was some fresh wax out of Detroit by a hot new sensation. Then he said a name I didn't recognize.
The deejay was wrong. He had to be wrong. I'd know my girl's voice anywhere, but the name …
I paid up the driver, forgot about wherever else I used to be going, and set out to find a record store. My legs moved to the rhythm in my mind: The deejay was wrong. He had to be wrong.
Tommy's disc was so new, I had to hit three stores before I found one that carried it.
The deejay was wrong. He had to be—
I checked the label. The deejay wasn't wrong. No matter how much I recognized the voice, the name wasn't the same. Tommy was going by Tammy. She'd said that. I remembered, vaguely, Tommy saying something about going by Tammy. Tammi with an “i.” So that was a kick, but just a little one. What really slugged me was that along with her first, she'd changed her last name as well. Tommy, my Tommy Montgomery, was now Tammi Terrell.
I CALLED TOMMY. TAMMI. She wasn't at her apartment.
I called over to Motown. The woman who answered the phone told me she was in the recording studio and couldn't take a call, asked if I wanted to leave a message. I hung up.
I got myself out of the Detroit airport—only eighteen hours since I'd heard the record—got a cab, and headed the driver for Motown. This time it was me who had a surprise for Tommy. Tammi.
The cabbie took me where I was going. I didn't know what I expected, but I expected more than what I saw: a brownstone— small, plain—that looked a couple of late payments shy of being abandoned. In a window was what looked to be some schoolkid's class project, a handmade sign: HITSVILLE, U.S.A. Other than that, I wouldn't've known I was in the right place. Until I walked through the door. Black people. Nothing but black people. Black singers and songwriters, musicians, engineers. Black executives and accountants, and black secretaries. It was a sight not regularly seen in those whitewashed days: black people working together in a business setting. Black people owning and earning and achieving. That's just how rare it was; even if you were black, the sight of seeing your own kind making it was enough to shock you. That's how conditioned we were.
“Jackie!”
I turned, looked. Lamont Pearl making his way over to me.
“Jackie, what are you doing, man? How long you been here?” He took my hand, pumped my arm like he was hoping I'd spit gold.
“Just, uh … I just walked in.”
“You doing a show this week?”
“No, I was … had a few days off. Thought I'd fly in.”
Impressed, or at least acting so: “Fly in? You're doing all right.” Like he wasn't doing fine himself. If nothing else, and there was plenty else to him, Lamont knew how to stroke with the best of them. “And look at that suit. What is that, is that a—”
“Cye Martin.”
“Yeah, that's sweet. That sure is sweet. Sammy wears those, you know. What am I talking, 'course you know. Read in the Courier you and Sammy—”
“Tommy around?” I said what I said stressing her old name. I said what I said to the point, trying to let Lamont know that maybe he had time for chitchat, but I didn't. But the effect of my attempt to take charge was the opposite. Lamont just smiled at me the way you smile at a kid playing soldier. His thumb made the rounds over his fingertips. Back and forth and back again.
“Sure, Jackie. Let's go find your girl.”
Lamont walked me by rows of small recording studios. Little universes in a bottle. Passing the glass windows, you looked in on men and women, solo, in groups—their faces young and unfamiliar, hungry to be famous—recording, rehearsing, listening to playback, but all done in silence behind soundproof walls. It was if I were a god up high looking down on the festival of man.
I wondered if that's how the shadow boss, Berry Gordy, felt when he walked the halls of his little city, his Motown, his Hitsville.
Tommy/Tammi was in one of the studios with a lanky black fellow, clean shaven and with a neat, tight Afro. Almost in a Caucasian way, his features were narrow and angular, and in fresh-laundered slacks and shirt he was looking just a little too prim. A little too proper. A little too like a cat who thought he was slick and could get slick with any girl he cared to. The two of them were laughing. What at, I didn't know. Something funny he'd said or she'd said. A busted take that'd been replayed for them. Didn't matter. Whatever the reason, whatever it was, I didn't care for the sight of it.
Lamont rapped a knuckle on the glass. Tommy turned, looked blank-faced. A second, a couple of them went by before it sunk in it was me.
The very next thing, Tommy was in my arms hugging me, kissing me. I was doing likewise and at the same time shooting a look at Pressed Pants and Starched Shirt that said: Yeah, she's mine.
Between kisses, from Tommy: “What are you doing here? Why didn't you tell me you were coming?”
“A surprise, baby. You like surprises.”
“When they're about you I love them.”
As tight as we already held each other, Tommy tried to sink herself even deeper into me. Forgetting about Lamont and the Nancy boy in the booth, forgetting about everyone else in the building, Tommy and I spent a good moment exploring each other. Months and distance and separate lives had worked on us, but for all that changed what remained was intense. We were back together even if just for a minute. That was enough for me to hang my hopes on that whatever else and whatever more Tommy and I had to get through, we would arrive, one day, at a place that was our own.
Lamont broke the spell with: “Tammi, why don't you knock off for a bit, let Jackie take you for some lunch?”
He wasn't out of line with that. Not hardly. Except for maybe he'd called her Tammi with as much emphasis as I'd called her Tommy, if anything, he was doing me a favor cutting her loose for the afternoon. But something about his offer just caught me the wrong way.
Snide: “Really, Lamont? Is that okay; is it okay if I take my girl out to lunch?”
All I got from Lamont was more of that “oh, you little boy” smile.
From Tommy I got some stink-eye.
WE FOUND A SPOT 'ROUND the corner from Motown, a diner-type joint where everything came grill-cooked. The background music the constant sizzle of frying foods. We got a table, sat down, and right away I went to work on the menu.
“It all looks good. You know what you want, baby?”
Tommy wasn't about to let things go. “Why are you like that?”
Playing dumb to my own behavior: “Like what?”
“Why are you like that with Lamont?”
“Because he's always around you, always acting like he owns you.”
“He's handling my career.”
“You don't see Sid around me day-night-day.”
“If he did, I wouldn't care.”
“That's because Sid isn't trying to—” I cut myself off before I said something I'd surely regret. But I didn't stop soon enough that Tommy couldn't figure where I was going with things.
“Is that what you think? You think Lamont's just trying to sleep with me?”
“I didn't say that.”
“Not by much you didn't. And if he was, do you think I'd let him just to get a record out?” Slow, Tommy shook her head side to side while a hand rubbed it. “You're breaking your own records. Doesn't even take you a minute of arguing to get my head pounding.”
I tried smoothing things. “So I'm anxious to see you, I rush here and catch you smiling and laughing with one cat, I got Lamont doing bits about you in my ear, and I get a little hot. Some people call it love.”
“Je
alousy's what they call it.”
“Only the ones who don't know what passion is.”
That got five-eighths of a grin out of her.
A waitress came around. We ordered. The waitress left.
I said: “You look good, Tommy … Tam— I don't even know what to call you.”
“How about you just call me baby?”
“You look good, baby.”
That brought out the last piece of her smile. “You, too.”
“Did you do something to your—”
“Braces. Just got them off.”
“Your hair looks—”
“It's just a wig. With the traveling and all it makes it … you know …”
“I heard the record.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Heard it in New York.”
“Yeah?”
“It was … I had to have the cabbie pull over, I wanted to listen so bad.”
“I wanted to play it for you.”
“I was riding along, and it comes on and … and I was shaking so hard. I was so excited, I—”
“I wanted to play it for you. I wanted to call you and … I was so nervous about it, about how it sounded. Then the next thing I know it's done, and it's out and—”
“You didn't tell me you changed your name.”
“You didn't tell me your father died.”
Well, that put the brakes on things right there. The waitress brought out our food, extended the quiet beat. I sat like a fighter in his corner figuring how I was going to approach after the bell.
The waitress left.
Round two.
Before I could say anything, Tommy said: “I'm sorry about your father. I know things weren't always good for you two, weren't good at all. But just the same, it must—”
Digging into my food, not wanting to talk about that: “This sure looks good. Hope you're hungry.”
“No, I'm not. It must hurt in some ways losing him, and I'm sorry.”
“So what's with the name change?”
Tommy/Tammi didn't care for being dismissed. For a second she teetered between getting up and walking out, and picking up a butter knife and going to work on me. She settled on: “It's a stage name. I told you I was going to change my name.”
“Mentioned it once. Said you might; all you said was you might—”
“I told you, Tommy was too … Tammi: It sounds good; has a good ring to it.”
“Tammi. Tammi with an “i.” Tammi Terrell.”
“Yes. It has a—”
“Terrell. Tammi … why Terrell? Out of all the names, out of everything you could've … Terrell. Why?”
Nothing from Tommy/Tammi.
“Why Terrell?”
“I got it from a friend of mine, Jean. I got it from her brother. It's their last name, Terrell, and he said I should take it. He said it would sound good, sound good with Tammi. It does.”
“What else did you get from him?”
The crack not even finished, and she was up and out of her seat and moving for the door. I grabbed her wrist and she snatched it free like I'd wrapped it up in nothing more substantial than tissue. I reached for her again, not to grab her—couldn't hold her if I wanted to—but to say to her with a touch what my ass of a self was useless to say with words: I'm sorry. Don't walk away. I'm wrecked up, and please don't leave me alone with myself. Please.
She stood where she was so ready to go, so ready to get back to the life she was building without me.
She stood there …
She sat. For the longest time we were motionless across from each other no different from the two most unfamiliar people on the planet.
Eventually Tommy/Tammi—Tammi/Tommy got to a place where she could say: “That really, really hurt me, Jackie.”
“I'm sorry. I am jealous, I'll admit that. I'm … I heard the record, heard the disc jockey call you Tammi Terrell and I thought maybe, you know, you had gotten hitched and you didn't tell me. I flew out here fast as I could; then I see you with those … those men, those musicians. Musicians. You know how they are. If they were any bigger sex fiends, they'd be sleeping with each other, and they probably are anyway.”
Tammi/Tommy gave me nothing but blank face, and I realized I'd just wasted an explanation on a subject she wasn't trying to deal with.
“That's not … what hurt me, what I'm talking about. When your father passed and you felt like you had to hide it from me—”
“I wasn't… How am I going to hide my pop dying? I didn't tell you because I didn't care about him.”
“This isn't about him, it's about you. You and me. If you loved him, if you hated him, you must have felt something when he died. And whatever it was you were feeling, you wanted to keep it from me.”
“Yeah, I did. I did want to keep it from you. In the middle of everything else you're doing, in the middle of putting out a record, you want to deal with me trying to deal with my pop?”
“I wanted to help you with whatever you were going through. I wanted—I want to be part of your life, and you just pushed me away. Do you know what that feels like? To love someone, to think that they love you—”
“I do love you.”
“And that's how you show it, by treating me like a stranger?”
First one, then a few, then came a rain of tears from her eyes. I don't think I'd ever seen her cry before. I was sure I hadn't. I would have remembered. Seeing her break down, knowing I'd caused it, it was the most painful thing I'd ever witnessed. It was a misery, seen once, I would never forget. I tried as best I could to soften the hurt.
“The thing is, the thing you've got to understand, I did it for you.”
“That is so … That is just a bunch of—”
“If I had called you when my father died, would you have come to me?”
“You know I would have.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know it. You would've come, you would've held my hand, kissed away my ache, and while you're doing that, how're you supposed to cut a record?”
“Would you shut up about my record!” More rubbing at her head. “It's nothing! It doesn't mean anything!”
“You're the one always going on about me just wanting to be famous, about how I've got to realize what we do is special. It is special. Your singing is, anyway. I'm not going to be the guy to keep you from it, or to keep you from being the biggest star you can.”
She started to protest.
“So that everyone can hear you sing, everyone can hear how special I already know you are. I'm not pushing you away, I'm … I'm pushing you forward. There'll be time for us.”
At that Tammi/Tommy laughed, and it wasn't a pleasant laugh.
I took her hand. Across the table I kissed her tears. I said to her again: “There'll be time for us.”
She leaned in, rubbed her cheek against mine. Was there ever anything so soft as her flesh?
Pretty soon Tammi/Tommy—Tammi. She was Tammi now— pretty soon she stopped crying, sat quietly; then me and her worked very hard at being a guy and his girl out enjoying a meal together. A couple of times, when we weren't working at it, when we just let moments happen—when she laughed at something I'd said, or I lost myself in her smile—things were as they used to be a few years prior when I was just a late-night comic and she was just a coffeehouse singer. But the moments came and went and did so real quick. It was becoming obvious that as much as we cared for each other, as time passed with us apart it would become more and more of a chore to make love stay.
We talked some. Updated each other on ourselves. Tammi asked if I was as close with Sammy Davis, Jr. as she'd read in a couple of the Negro newspapers. By way of answering I pulled her to a pay phone, dropped some dimes, dialed Sammy in L.A. He wasn't there. The housekeeper said he was in Chicago, doing shows at the St. Claire. Tammi said it was okay, she believed I knew Sammy, but said it like maybe she didn't. I got the number of Sammy's hotel in Chicago. Dropped more dimes. Dialed. I got put through to his room. After a couple of big hellos
passed between a couple of Charlies, Sammy and I rapped for a tick about this and that and nothing in particular. I put Tammi on. Sammy and Tammi rapped for a tick about what a swell guy I was and what a talent I was and how he hoped “us kids” would go places in the near future. Sammy said his good-byes, “babe,” and hung up.
I think for the first time Tammi was actually impressed by my growing stature.
We finished eating, sat some more until the time it took to come up with things to say to each other drew longer and outweighed the minutes we spent talking. A final question from her: Would I be in Detroit awhile? I told her I had to get back to New York, then hit the road.
There was nothing more to say.
I paid.
We left.
I walked Tammi back to Motown, walked her inside before I kissed her good-bye—long and deep and hard—for all to see.
I left.
I walked some, finally hailed a cab, and got in and sat down. It was more like I'd slumped down using all of the door to keep me nearly upright.
I felt in the pocket of my coat, felt the jewelry box I had brought with me from New York thinking that this time would be the time I took the ring from it, put it on Tammi's finger, and asked her to be my wife.
But as I sat across from her in the diner, I knew that the ring was nothing but a noose that would slowly, day by day, strangle her voice quiet. Like I'd said to her, I wasn't going to be the guy to do that. I meant it. Same as always, I was doing what was good for her.
I laughed as Tammi had. Yeah, I was doing what was good for her. And I was “good for her-” ing her right out of my life.
“Buddy,” the cabbie wanted to know, “where you going?”
FROM DETROIT TO NEW YORK I had to do a stopover in Chicago, change planes. I grabbed some coffee, a sandwich. Waited. While I was doing my waiting, Sammy was doing the Jack Eigen show—a radio talk guy popular around town—plugging his stand at the St. Claire. The show played over a box near my gate. Jack and Sammy went back and forth with the same old showbiz gibble-gabble: what a sensation Sammy was, what it was like to be such a sensation. A little on this bit of gossip, or that—was it true, wasn't it?
