by John Ridley
Sure. Whatever.
Sid nodded. Just a little. He took up his napkin, wiped his hands. Not that they were messed with anything, it was just a way of saying he was all done.
Reaching for his wallet: “Think I'll take a pass on dinner. Let me leave you something.”
“No… tab It's on me.”
“You don't have to buy me dinner to clear your guilt.”
“It's business, Sid. I don't feel guilty.”
He gave me a good looking-at. “No, I believe you don't.”
Sid got up, started out. He stopped, turned, said: “If things don't work out at William Morris …” That was all the more goodbye I got from him.
Sid left.
The waiter brought around my steak. I ate it, then washed it down with a hunk of shortcake. When I was finished, all I felt was full.
Funny how freeing a murder can be.
THE PAPERS WERE IN FRONT OF ME. Papers. That's what they were called. Agency papers. They were contracts that signed me up to William Morris for two years. There was nothing queer about that. Not really. I'd been with Sid longer and at the same rate, ten percent. But with Sid, there were never any papers. No contracts. We just shook hands, and that was that. A shake of hands, then he was my agent, and I was his—
“Something wrong, Jackie?”
“What's that?”
Chet pulled me away from my thoughts. He was there in the conference room at the WMA New York offices. It was Chet, a woman who was a secretary or assistant or something, and that other agent I'd met back in Los Angeles who never had much to say for himself.
Chet said: “Bottom of page eight, that's where you want to sign. On all the copies.”
I picked up the pack of papers, let them fall back down onto the table. “Pretty thick.”
“ things.” That came from the woman.
From the other agent: “All standard.”
“It's for your protection,” Chet offered.
I turned to the eighth page of the bundle of documents. At the bottom was a line just waiting for me to scrawl Jackie Mann across.
Just waiting.
Chet asked me again: “Something wrong?”
“No, there's nothing … I've never had to sign anything like this before.”
Once more from the woman: “Just legal things.”
“Really, it's all standard,” the no-name agent said again.
“If you'd like us to get you a lawyer to look it over …”
“I know it's standard, agency papers an all that. It's just kinda weird for me. I've never had to sign—”
“And you're a little nervous?” Chet asked.
“This place is so big. You've got so many clients …”
“You're afraid you'll get lost in the shuffle. That's a legitimate concern. For any other act it is, but you're very unique: a Negro comedian who's acceptable to white audiences. Think of how many … how few, I should say; think of the Negro talent that is also popular with whites. You can list them on one hand. Davis, Belafonte, Cole, Poitier. That's an exclusive club, I'll be honest, you're no good to us unless we put you in it. All of us are here for you, Jackie. From me all the way up to Abe. So if you're afraid of getting lost, no; no you won't. You stand out too much.”
Some smiles at Chet's double-meaning phrase.
Chet's little talk made me feel better, made me see he was right about things. Still, I just sat there.
“It's up to you, Jackie. I, we, don't want you doing anything you don't feel one hundred percent—”
“I don't have a pen.”
Everybody did nothing for a second, then we all busted out laughing. Jackie didn't have a pen. Ain't that just the funniest thing?
Chet dug one out of his pocket, handed it to me.
Across the blank line went Jackie Mann. That was that.
There were handshakes and goodwill all around. We all chatted awhile, and when the talk fell flat, I excused myself, let them get back to work. Might as well. They were working for me now. I shook hands with the secretary, with the no-name agent, and Chet walked me to the elevators.
Chet told me he would be in touch shortly, that he was working up a game plan for me and wanted to get me started on it right away.
The elevator rang, and I began to get on.
“Jackie?”
I turned back.
“My pen?”
PHILLY, CLEVELAND, two weeks in Reno, Tahoe …
My life was in replay. My life was in clubs and show rooms and dinner theaters. I was where I had been, which was not on television. Not on the Sullivan show. I didn't expect—didn't allow myself to hope—that I would land the show straight off, even with all the might of WMA pushing me. I figured it would take time. I figured right. I just didn't figure how much time. Two months turned into four. Nineteen sixty-two turned into sixty-three. I remained Charlie Road-Comic. Maybe I was making a little more at each stop—seventy-five extra at this club, a hundred, hundred and fifty at that one—but other than that…
San Francisco, L.A., a week in Vegas …
And little by little, month into month, the crowds were getting smaller. The empty sections of the club were getting larger. People were staying home. Frank C's prophecy was coming true: The future was television.
Cats without television were dinosaurs heading for the tar pits.
I talked to Chet about it, me and Sullivan and me not being on Sullivan. He told me he was lining things up, that he was this close to landing an audition. It would all happen in time.
Time crawled on. As it did, gradually, seemingly, I found myself talking with Chet less and less. Just getting him on the phone was turning into a magic trick. And Abe? Forget it. More and more I was doing business with Marty, who used to be the no-name agent. Marty was turning into my day-to-day guy, the guy who would handle my bookings, make sure everything was okeydoke at all my shows. He made sure everything was okeydoke from New York or L.A. Not once did he ever make sure that everything was okeydoke from where I was actually playing.
I was being passed off. I was being handed over same as a baton in a relay race, only instead of rushing me forward, it felt to me like these guys were just standing around on the track. If not strolling backward. My fear was the next person to get their hands on me was going to be that secretary girl.
Marty told me not to worry about things. Marty told me that Chet had told him that he was very close to nailing down that audition for me. Very close. This close. In no time at all I was going to have my shot at Sullivan. Until then …
St. Louis, Minneapolis, Milwaukee. Chi—
Chicago. I was doing a week in Chicago. So was Tammi, Her stand lapping over the tail end of mine. Had to happen sooner or later, us working the same city at the same time. I'd figured it would happen, but I never figured what would happen. What I hoped would happen was that she might call me. She might hear I was in town and call just to let me know that at the least she didn't hate me with every part of her there was to hate a person with.
But she didn't call. Days passed. My gig ended. Time for me to split town, and she hadn't rung up. Me call her? That took guts I didn't have.
All I could do: I went to see her show. I went to see her. I went but ended up standing around outside the club, unable to go in and sit and watch her.
But I was unable to do anything else.
I paid my money, got seated, waited for the show to begin. Short of breath and quick-hearted, I was a man waiting for his own execution. Same thing. Sort of. I knew seeing Tammi was going to kill me. It amounted to nothing more than penance, self-torture. I wanted to hurt me for her, the way I needed to be hurt for what I'd done to her.
The lights went down. The show started. She took the stage. Never mind the years that had passed. I saw Tammi and I was seeing her again for the very first time in that dingy, smoke-choked cellar of a joint back in the Village that she filled with light and beauty, the moment as fresh and as vivid but tinged with the knowledge … with the know
ledge that I had fucked everything up. There is no other way to say it. The truth of it, the vulgarity of it, was that real. I had fucked up.
It wasn't but sixty full seconds of looking at Tammi, of listening to her, before I couldn't take any more. I pulled myself from the club and into a cab and back to my hotel.
My hotel.
I wasn't completely sad. I didn't feel as if I wanted to break down and bawl. As I lay on the bed, one hour into another, staring at the ceiling, I felt very little other than the rent in my soul that was as fresh as when Tammi First left me. On the radio: Ruby and the Romantics. “Our Day Will Come.” The four walls of the room. Other than that, I was alone.
A knock at a door.
I lay still. Was it my door? Was it down the hallway? Was it even a knock or just a—
A knock again. A knock at my door.
I got up, walked for it, hesitant. I was scared. I was alone and I was scared, afraid a ghost had come calling. Hand on the doorknob, slipping under my sweat-slick palm.
I opened the door.
Oh, sweet Jesus …
Tammi. It was … it was my Thomasina.
I clutched at her. I clutched at her as I slid to the ground. I was on my knees before her, crying. Sobbing. Useless for anything but.
She took my head in her hands, pressed it to her stomach. From above me, in a whisper: “It's all right, Jackie. I'm here now. I'm here, and I love you. I will always love you. Nothing else matters.”
Her love, love that I had been empty of my entire life, came raining down on me. It filled the want for any other thing required to survive. All that I needed to live and to be and to exist was Tammi.
She was there. She was there with me, for me, but why? Why should she give me her gift of grace when the only thing I'd done was carve across her heart with my deceptions? Why … ?
“Why me?”
Her hands lifted my face. My tears made her shimmer.
She said: “You're special. Jackie Mann. You're special, and don't ever let anyone—”
I jumped awake. My hands gripped the covers of the bed. My face was sheened with sweat.
I was alone.
The phone was ringing.
I looked over at the clock. The night had passed to forty after nine in the morning.
I answered. “Hello?”
“Jackie?”
“Chet?”
“We're going to have to pull you off the road a bit. We've got you the Sullivan audition for as soon as you get back. Call me when you hit the city.”
Chet hung up.
THE SINGERS DIDN'T HAVE TO DO IT. Neither did the rock and roll bands. Not the dog acts or the variety acts. Just the comics. The comics had to go over to the Delmonico Hotel, go up to the eleventh floor to a six-room suite where the Sullivans lived, and put on a show for Ed himself. Ed and Robert Precht, Sullivan's producer. Ed had to see the comics because Ed didn't trust the comics. Comedians by nature were freewheeling and unpredictable. Full of surprises. Ed didn't like surprises. Ed liked to get exactly what he paid for and nothing more. So comics had to do what singers and rock and roll bands and dog acts and all the rest didn't; they had to please the king before they were allowed to perform for the kingdom.
I went to the Delmonico. The eleventh floor. I did my set. I did my set for two people. I don't care how long you've been a performer, you take away the other hundred and ninety-eight people you're used to joking for and the deal becomes a whole new thing. No laughs to mark your rhythm, to let you know how you're doing. Just nods from Ed and Robert. Occasional smiles like they're digging your bits. Maybe they're digging your bits. Maybe they're just smiling not to let on how much they hate you. Hard to tell. Ed never had much of a smile to begin with, and had even less of one after a car smash-up bashed in most of his puss. Sunken-eyed and sullen-faced, he had the look of a professional pallbearer.
With the nodding and occasional smiling, my five-minute set got whittled down to four and change.
I finished.
I thanked Ed, Robert, and stepped outside the suite into the hallway. Chet was there, waiting for me, decked in his standard blue suit. He asked how I did.
How did I do? Two guys grinning and head-bobbing. How should I know how I did?
We hung around a couple of minutes.
Robert stepped from the suite. Bob, he asked me to call him. He was a youngish guy, groomed straight-arrow clean, but the way he talked—the quick edit he did of my act, taking out this joke and moving around that one—made me think he got to be the show's producer because he was sharp, not because he'd married the boss's daughter. Although, he'd iced things by doing that as well.
Chet led the Jackie Mann parade doing “Isn't he something” bits. “Didn't I tell you the kid is terrific. Good-looking, well spoken, presentable …”
“And funny,” Bob added, almost as if reminding Chet of that.
“And funny. The funny goes without saying. What I am saying is that Jackie makes for a neat package, a real neat package. TV's going to like this kid, Bob. I'm telling you, TV's going to love him.”
“A week from Sunday we've got an opening in the comedy slot. Ed wants to have you on then, Jackie.”
“Perfect,” Chet answered for me.
Bob just sort of smiled at Chet's enthusiasm. He was well used to agents. “So, you'll give me a call, work out the details.”
“First thing in the morning.”
“Jackie.” Bob gave me his hand. “Great stuff. You're going to be sensational on the show.” Back into the suite he went.
Chet said: “This is a really, really … You know, Sullivan pays better than any other variety show on the air.”
“It's not about the money.”
“It's not about the money. No. No, it's not. But the money don't hurt, it doesn't hurt a bit.”
“Thank you.”
Chet gave me a “for what?” look.
“For getting me Sullivan.”
“You got the show. You're the one who was in there doing the bits.”
“For getting me the audition, then, thanks.”
“We told you we'd get you the audition. When we say something we … Unless, you thought maybe we weren't going to get it for you.” Chet made a playful show of being offended. “Did you really think we weren't going to come through for you?”
Those days I was back on the road, those days I couldn't so much as get Chet anywhere near a telephone. Yes, that's what I thought. But all I said was, again: “Thank you.”
Chet asked if maybe I wanted to go out and have a drink in celebration, but I declined. I just wanted to go home. I just wanted to walk home.
So I walked.
And let me tell you: As I walked, I felt real good. Real calm no matter that I was right up on the edge of everything I'd spent most of my life working toward. I'd heard about those fellows who'd flown supersonic test jets, how right before they hit the speed of sound the planes got kicked around and kicked around and then … nothing, They broke the sound barrier, and everything was lounge-act mellow. That's how I felt. I felt like all the head-banging and heartbreaking was in my past. I felt as if some cosmic court had handed down a vindication that every choice I'd ever made, no matter how it'd turned out, had been the right choice. For the first time I could ever recall, I felt that for the rest of my life the sailing was going to be nothing but smooth.
I REMEMBER IT BEING A WEDNESDAY. I remember it being a good day. I remember feeling rested, the five nights since my Sullivan audition being filled with deep sleep. I had the security of my television debut without being overly anxious about it. Things were happening as they should. When things happen as they should, what's there to be anxious about? I remember it being nice outside, the weather pleasant—sunny and warm without being too hot. I headed from my apartment over to a corner diner for a late break fast, and I don't recall the normal crush of people packing the New York streets or the usual hectivity. All around, things were shaping up to make for a real good day. Maybe t
hat's the way it was.
Or maybe it was a day like any other, but what the day revealed made the first part of the morning, in retrospect, seem so much better.
I got to the diner, a couple of guys in a booth trying to figure out Andy Warhol, and ordered food—French toast, two eggs scrambled. That was my favorite breakfast. French toast and eggs scrambled. The waitress wrote it up on a green ticket and put the order in the carousel at the kitchen counter for the cook.
Odd, I guess. Odd all of that commonplace stuff should stay so sharp in my mind. But all of that was part of the moment: what I ordered, the waitress taking it down and passing it off to the cook. Her going for coffee, and my eyes following her for no good reason but lack of anything else to do. As she crossed under a TV hung in the corner, I looked up at it and caught a face I'd only seen once, years before. There was no hesitation in my recognition. No matter how long it had been, I knew the face in an instant. Miami. That back road. The black man who saved my life was on television. His picture, anyway. His picture was on a news bulletin.
“What'd he do?” I asked for anyone to answer.
“What, hon?” the waitress asked back.
“That fellow, what did he—”
The waitress looked up at the television; the picture of the man was gone. Film was being shown of a house, the driveway with paint poured over part of it.
“I think they're talking about that man that got killed.” She was as detached about the information as a phone operator dispensing a number.
I tried to say to her “What?” but could not generate the word.
“Last night or this morning. In front of his house. They shot him, I think. Well, here …” She went over to the TV, reached up, and, fingers tweezering the knob, gave it some volume.
The newsman droned about what was, apparently, the latest civil rights assassination. Mississippi. Long after dark. Medgar Evers was walking up the drive of his house, when he took a bullet to the back.
Just one.
But just one bullet from a rifle is all that's needed to punch a fist of a hole in one side of you and tear out the other, taking with it all the meat and bone it can gather. Taking all that, and not stopping until it passed through a window and a kitchen wall to end up resting on a counter like some kind of dark souvenir. All that, and still not enough to kill this man. Not kill him right off. The bullet had put Medgar down, but he managed, blood pumping from him, to crawl up the drive to his front porch …
