Driving the King (14 page)

“We can talk about next time,” she said.

“I'd love nothing better,” I told her. “Good night, Miss Abrams.”

“Good night, Weary.”

She gave me her hand once again, and it was still warm from the clapping and finger snapping that the music had called for. And I would have walked her home, even if home had been across the water, but she was fine with that cab that stopped as soon as she whistled. And with that she was on her way, and so was I. If I could have, I would have given back the meantime hours between right then and next time, just so we could start it all over.

C
hristmas had moved into NBC Studios. Fresh-cut trees and garland had been gathered from some California woods and lay stacked on pushcarts along the backstage corridors. All the sets, whether they were city sidewalks, living rooms, or kitchen tables, had been draped in holiday colors.

The story lines were no different, every romance and comedy skit had had some yuletide sprinkled on it. The rundown for
The Nat King Cole Show
was likewise arranged. Nat had turned a carol into a platinum standard years before. Since millions of folks owned that record, maybe the Nielsen families among them would watch. What the home audience would look like, no one could truly say, but the studio audience would sure enough grow.

Nat would no longer sing to a half-empty studio. Instead of a skeleton crew and a handful of salesmen, he would have a full-fledged audience sitting in the risers the apprentices
had set up, ten rows' worth of seats in a horseshoe around the stage. Each chair had a number, and each number was on a list at will call. Nat had set aside two of them for me, the left side of a middle row. A little perk he called it when he asked who I'd give them to.

“Met a girl down at John Dolphin's show, a friend of Evelyn and Willie in transcription. Thing is, I'm supposed to see her Thursday evening, and I don't want to look like I'm trying too hard.”

“Don't mess around and look like you're not trying enough, friend.”

The parking space we sat in was not our usual on account of the manufactured snow. A truckload of it covered the corner of the lot, tall enough to block our view of the NBC Color City marquee across the street. I had the windows down, and the snow pile smelled like soap and cake batter. I heard it was what they dumped on the fires when the water was low. The wind blew the fumes our way, so I rolled up the windows.

“Figured the women out here are a little different. They like a little more room.”

“All that talk saying fools rush in. It's wrong. The fact of the matter is the foolishness comes when you wait too long. I'm not calling you a foolish man, Weary, because I know better. She's seeing you with fresh eyes, so give her a good look.”

“A couple of good seats and some good advice on top. I couldn't beat that if I tried.”

“Why would you want to?”

I called Lucinda from one of the phone booths near the secretarial pool. The one I called from had been a prop once upon a time, one of the red British numbers that had been fitted with a Bell telephone. In the shows I liked, a phone booth was always something else, a dressing room for superheroes or a trap door for a spy. Always a little adventure. But I was calling a woman I'd just met and barely knew, and asking her to make a little time for me, and that carried a fair bit of intrigue I felt, rehearsing what I might say and those questions getting louder the closer I got to asking them. I shook loose of that feeling and dialed Lucinda's number, and before too long her voice carried me through that hello with that sweet rise and that bit of welcome in her tone.

“I know it's short notice, but I was wondering if you had plans Monday evening.”

“There's a little television show that I like on Mondays. One you've heard of.”

“I figured I could get you a bit closer. Nat left a couple of tickets, and, well, I thought you might want to watch it here at the studio.”

“If I say no, you might have to go to the next girl on your list.”

“It's not a list if your name's the only one.”

“That's sweet of you, Weary.”

“More like selfish. Giving myself an extra chance to see you again before I see you again.”

Outside that phone booth window, I caught a short Christmas parade. A cart full of snow and a twined-up tree on a dolly. The other window in that phone booth faced a dark cinder wall. Maybe it was a shop boy who left the white grease pencil, but it had been used to turn those windowpanes into a blackboard lattice inside the red frame. The top note had an arrow to the unlocked coin box, and a courtesy line: Use the nickel. Leave the nickel. How many calls had ridden on the head of that same piece of change? The numbers on the board were leftovers—a seven, a four, and the last little turn of a half-wiped three. I had set Lucinda's number to memory that night she gave it to me. Ever since then I had been itching to dial it, ready to hear her voice, her answer to my invitation.

“Your first Christmas out here away from your people. My people warned me about meeting a man around the holidays. It's winter and folks go out with their pores open, liable to catch something. Like a feeling.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“Sometimes nothing. Good to know whether the holiday spirit is coming over you, or you're feeling something that'll stay awhile.”

I was out of practice in telling a woman how I felt. I had never lost my sincerity, but I struggled to make it plain and to say it just so. Lucinda was still a lovely stranger. I remembered what Nat told me about fools and their waiting. And I ended that searching for the right and perfect words, because maybe I needed to talk my way toward them.

All manner of lines had been penciled on the phone booth wall. Some looked like scripts and some were little mottos folks like to remember and leave for strangers. If I had to write one, it would be a simple note I tried to remember. G
o ahead and tell her before your nickel runs out.

“It's not just on account of Christmas. If I didn't have an occasion to call, I'd find one. Start one from scratch. Besides, I know if you're sitting at home Monday night watching television, you'll be thinking about that empty seat that I was trying to save for nobody but you.”

“It sounds lonesome when you say it like that.”

She was right, and maybe we both thought it over during that little bit of quiet before she gave me an answer.

“Me and you and two good seats. That's an evening,” she said.

“That sounds like a yes.”

“And a thank-you to boot. I was going to tell you yes from the get-go, but I just wanted to keep you on the phone for a bit. Good to hear your voice. Take it easy, Weary.”

That row of phone booths faced the doors where the audience members would enter. On that Monday, I caught sight of Lucinda, a sweater over one arm and waving the other. She walked along the red and green velvet ropes and stood like she was ready in case that camera swung and put her on television. That kiss on my cheek and that “hello, friend” lingered for as long as that perfume did.

Bob Henry greeted the audience and delivered the news, odd to newcomers, that laughter and applause were prohibited during the show. The applause needed to be a particular sort that could be mixed and faded, so they would have to enjoy the show in silence. The moment Nat took the stage was their one and only time for applause, so they should take advantage of it.

Mrs. Cole and the girls stood in the wings, ready for the cue to join Nat at the end of the show. The living room on set was not as fine as theirs, but it looked the part. The mantel was nothing but rectangles of plywood, brick-sized pieces with a little more black paint in the shadow of the grout lines and a touch of silver on the edges, shadow and reflection making it all work. The spotlight would sell it just like the music would, because once Nat sang about an open fire it was easy to see it whether it burned or not.

Roasted chestnuts and Jack Frost and Eskimos were the farthest kind of cry from that California weather, but
the song filled the room just the same. That song had come out while I was gone for the world, and it was new to nobody but me. I had worked to turn it into something classic, playing it over and over again on my hi-fi, as I had done with so many tunes that I had missed.

Lucinda swayed a bit, but she watched the sound man and the boom he rolled, lowering the microphone above Nat's head, just out of the frame. With his voice collected by an unseen mike, Nat made freehanded gestures that welcomed, and then he reversed course and crossed his arms, cocked his head as if listening and thinking, as if the lyrics were simply a holiday brainstorm that had just come to mind.

Lucinda sang silently right along with that quiet chorus of folks in the risers, and we watched that glimmer that came from the silver bricks. The light created the make-believe sparks, but the ones beneath her touch were the same kind of electric, the first few crackles of the home fire.

DAY OF THE SHOW

3:00 P.M.

M
iss Vee said two more guests had arrived, and I found them in the ballroom. Before I saw Evelyn and Willie, though, I saw their cases stacked beneath the coat check counter. They'd flown into Mobile to see his people for a few days, and their bags still had the sunburst stickers from Eastern Airlines and tags for Bates Field.

Willie was across the room on a ladder, wrapping his wires around the rafters. The microphone stands lined the far end of the stage. Evelyn sat at the long table next to the coat check where they sold cigarettes and candy bars on show nights. She had arranged the spools of wire, and they spun a little as Willie pulled more slack. While he ran cable, Evelyn wiped down the microphones with a lamb's
wool cloth turned dark from her bottle of wintergreen alcohol.

“I almost called you from down in Mobile. I love his people, but there ought to be a rule on how many hours they have to wait before they can hand me another plate.”

She told me as much when she came around the table and hugged my neck.

“I bet it was good though,” I said.

“You know it was. But still. We'll be down there through the holidays, and I might not make it.”

Willie called over from his ladder, said he'd come and speak when he got done. A couple of kids were there with him, setting up stands. They had
PROCTOR
written on their band jackets, and I remembered the ones who traveled with the New Collegians, underclassmen putting in a year or two of work waiting for a seat to open up in the band.

“You did all right, Weary. Nice room y'all got for us tonight.”

“It's not Capitol, but it'll do.”

“It's more fun this way, for me at least. I'll go out and buy live records of songs I already have. I like the applause. Good to hear people while they hear it.”

“They'll clap for him tonight. Might holler some before it's all over.”

Evelyn pointed behind her to the coat check room, twin rows of empty hangers that would be full come evening.

“My first job in show business. Taking hats and overcoats when I was up in Oakland at Slim Jenkins's place. The house band used to make bootleg records after hours. Used the coat room for a booth. It's always been a good side hustle.”

Willie set his microphone stands among the rows the proctors had set up, some for the music and others for the mutes. The cables next to Evelyn spun off the spools as Willie pulled a little more slack to get the wires around the rafters alongside the stage.

“People been talking around Capitol. Word is the television show's gone for good. Is it true?”

“I wish it was a lie. A lot of people know?”

“People say it's a hiatus, but that's because they can't call it what it is. Where I come from, when a dog got old somebody would say, ‘We drove him out to the country and turned him loose.' I knew good and well they took that dog somewhere and shot it. That's how they do you in show business. They can't call it what it is, but they still do it.”

Her hands got quicker as her words did. She took it out on the fingerprints the last singer had left on the chrome. The microphones gleamed then and looked as clean as the wintergreen had them smelling.

“I can't stand television anyway. You see children with the tin cans and the string? That's how the music sounds. Then they make you jump through hoops to get a show.”

“After tonight, he'll go to Europe. A good way to start over and come back right.”

“What about you, friend? When Nat and Skip hit the road, where does that leave you?”

“I'm leaving for L.A. in the morning. Not sure about things when I get there, but I'll be leaving anyway.”

“What's between you and my friend's not my business, but she is my friend.”

Evelyn straightened the stacks of coat check cards, quick fingers, like she did when we played spades, the four of us.

“We talked before I left. She asked how I felt about coming back here. I can't say for sure yet.”

“All I knew about Montgomery was that Willie left in a hurry. And you. I heard that story for years before we even knew your name.”

The proctors had finished their working and held the two microphones Willie had handed them. He looked over to Evelyn, and she held the headphones to her ear and waited for the needle to jump when Willie started testing. Once she nodded to them, she put the set back on the table, but the proctors held the microphones a little longer. I couldn't hear what Willie was saying. Maybe he told some story about the old days. The speakers were off, but the sound board and microphones were on, and that
far-off story registered enough to make the needle jump along with the talk and the laughter.

As cool and drafty as it was, Willie had a little sweat on his temples when he came over to us.

“They don't teach them how to hold a mike in music classes. After all that practicing kids do, the singing needs to sound right. Got to.”

“Hear that, Weary, it's got to sound right.”

“That's why I brought y'all two down here.”

“See baby, old Weary's coming up in the world,” she told him. “Promoter and whatnot. Told Weary, it took him to get you back to Montgomery.”

“I needed to see it again eventually. I guess it might as well be for a show.”

Willie looked around the place and then he looked once more. The proctors had by then set out the mutes meant for each trumpet and trombone bell, each one a little dented. The way the New Collegians used them, quieting the music when they needed to, fluttering the notes with those handfuls of metal, was something I'd never seen until I heard them growing up. It had been their custom to pass down the mutes when they graduated. Before he walked over, Willie had flipped a few, checking which one was his back when. He didn't say anything about finding it, so maybe his was long gone.

His might not have made it back from the Empire. The derby mutes looked like helmets for soldiers, and some of them had been. Scrap metal from the First World War that had been reused, getting a new peacetime life letting notes roll around the bowl and then over the brim. Willie made his living listening, and I'm sure he had heard what I had when the fighting started, that clatter behind the backdrop of their music and things hitting the floor.

How could we not hear it still? I hoped for him the same thing I hoped for myself. We would hear the old sound for only a few hours more, until the show gave us a brand-new memory, loud enough to make that long-ago noise nothing more than a whisper.