Drumsticks (11 page)

“Yes,” I said. “This is where Aubrey works. Exotic dancing, I think they call it.”

Caesar's was as lurid as ever. Dirty windows outlined in blinking red bulbs, the vile back beat of disco music booming out through the door and onto the street.

“Gross, isn't it?” I said.

Dan shook his head, the weirdest grin on his face.

“I'm safe going in by myself,” I told him. “They've got bouncers up the wahzoo in here. Besides, what if Aubrey's on now? You'll get one look at her bod and forget all about me.”

“Not a chance,” he said.

Shock. Puzzlement. Titillation. All there on his face.

Was I enjoying this. At last,
I
was the cool kid who was always leading everybody else into sin.

“Why don't you call it a night, Dan. I'll speak to you.”

“I'm going in with you.”

“Okay. Come on in.”

We made our way through the smoke-filled room. Men. Everywhere you turned. Young and old. Most of them drunk.

Dan said, straining to be heard above the din, “The mayor doesn't like strippers. What's your friend going to do if they start enforcing the law about places like this?”

I thought about it for a minute, and shrugged. “Maybe Alvin Ailey?”

As we were laughing about that, we heard a squeal of delight from somewhere behind us. “Smash! What up?” the voice said.

I turned to see Justin hurrying toward us.

Now, I would have predicted that a drink-and-chat meeting between Dan Hinton and the always outrageous Justin might well turn into a major surrealist event. But I was wrong. Mostly because Justin fell into near rapturous silence and let Dan do most of the chatting. By God, Dan Hinton had, like me, been raised by some rock-solid middle-class Negroes: he could keep up a polite line of small talk with just about anybody—even while they were staring at his crotch.

About a quarter to three, I convinced Dan to go home. I was exhausted and wanted to lie down in Aubrey's dressing room until she was changed and ready to leave. She was so busy that night she didn't even know I was in the house. But, I said teasingly to Dan, “I'll introduce you to her next time.”

He kissed me good night like a rutting musk ox. I suppose the endless parade of naked female flesh, together with the testosterone in the air and the mild attack of homosexual panic that Justin had probably evoked, all contributed to his fervid embrace.

So ended my dream date.

Justin wore a filthy expression.

“Down, boy,” I said. “The live sex act is over.”

“Child, where did you get that man?” he said. “You must be paying Mama Lou time and a half. I want that fucking doll back, you hear me?”

“Put your tongue back in your head, J.” Aubrey was suddenly at my side. “Nanette, where did you get that man who just left out of here?”

Last dance, like the song says.

The naked girls were all finished for the night and the cleaning people were sweeping the floor and stacking the chairs.

What time was it when I ate dinner? Nine or so. I had no business being hungry again, but there I was at the bar sharing an order of moo goo gai pan with Justin. The Chinese place off Canal Street never closed.

Aubrey was backstage cleaning herself up.

“Love is in the air,” J said with a sigh, making his chopsticks do a little dance across the bar surface. “Mama Lou is working those roots.”

“Oh, you think so, huh?”

“Yes, I do. Me and Kenny. You and Daniel. Love is all around and you're gonna make it after all, Smash-up. We're going to have a fabulous holiday season.”

“Yeah. Fa-la-la.”

“Speaking of Madam Lou and her magic, is there any news since our little enterprise uptown?” he asked. “Still trying to prove that Ida Williams was deliberately offed?”

“Still trying to find out exactly what happened. Ida wasn't exactly Miss Jane Pittman, turns out. She'd been in prison. Loveless doesn't think I'm quite so crazy now for being suspicious. I don't know much about the investigation. This pain-in-the-ass cop I know is supposed to be keeping me up-to-date on things. But I had to do something for him first. He's kind of got me over a barrel.”

Raised eyebrow. “My, my. Sounds promising.”

“Don't you ever stop, J?” I threw the fortune cookie at him.

“Okay. I'll stop. Are you ready for our next adventure?”

“What adventure is that?”

“Girl, don't pretend like you forgot about it.”

“I'm not pretending. What on earth are you talking about?”

“We're putting on the feedbag with Kenny tomorrow. You know—lunch? Crab cakes? Champagnes? You promised you'd go. He's taking us to Miss Mary's, our fave fag bar and grill.”

“I did? Tomorrow? Oh, shit, listen, J. I don't have a lot of time for drunches these days.”

Drunch
was Justin's contribution to the English language, a term describing a lunch that emphasized drinks over food.

In an appeal for pity I added, “I'm really beat, man. I thought I'd sleep in tomorrow and then try to run down that old clipping we found, the one from that Cleveland newspaper.”

“You
promised
, Smash-up. Kenny's going to be crushed if you don't.”

“Okay, okay. Champagne it is.”

“Not champagne—
champagnes.”

“All right, Tinkerbell. As long as the grapes don't come from New York States.”

CHAPTER 10

I Remember You

Justin lived in the East Village, not far from me, maybe ten minutes walking. But I'd never been to his apartment and he had never been to mine.

Knowing his campy self, I expected not so much an apartment as a theme park. And the theme might have been anything from Motown to Bette Davis to gay serial killers. But, just like the way things turned out at Ida's apartment, I was totally off the mark.

His place was off Avenue A, on the fifth floor of a well-maintained old building with rococo ironwork across the lobby and the elevator doors. The apartment was sparsely furnished in restful colors playing off one another like a wry take on a Japanese tea ceremony: lapsong souchong, bitter brown, strong green tea, mint, celadon, eggshell. One or two lovingly restored antique pieces. In the front room, rice paper shades admitted that muted but strangely tactile light peculiar to the Lower East Side.

I'd told Justin I would pick him up about eleven-thirty and we'd catch a cab over to the West Side where Kenny worked, at the southern end of Hell's Kitchen.

I oohed and aahed over his gorgeous all-nickel bathroom while he put the finishing touches on his outfit: he had to find a pair of socks that picked up that speck of color in his tie.

“By the way, what happened,” I asked in the taxi, “to break your unbroken record with boyfriends? I thought you only dated black men or Italians.”

“Ain't it funny? I'm with a regular white-bread guy who could just as well be me. I don't know. I met him at Mother Mary's one night and—bang zoom—I was in love. You know what I mean, Smash-up?”

I only nodded. Not because I wasn't listening. And not because I didn't care about his love-at-first-sight gushings. I had suddenly choked up. I was thinking about Andre. Thoughts about him and Paris and our time together there came at me that way, in quick, impossibly sad little bursts.

I pushed those memories away, hard, and looked over at Justin.

“Aside from all the jokes, you love him, do you?” I asked.

“Yeah, I guess I do. He's just a palooka who takes my money and makes me call him honey. But he's my palooka.”

“He borrows money from you?”

“A few bucks. When he's between jobs. The boy is naturally extravagant. I like that in a man.”

“Well, I hope you know what you're doing.”

He leaned in close and said, “Baby, I don't care.”

I did a loud, bad imitation of Lady Day—“
O mah man, I love him so, he'll nevuh know”
—and got a frightened look from the driver in the rearview.

Miss Mary's was a welcome refuge from the grunge of the street. The unmistakable aroma of martinis hit us as we swung in the door.

Kenny slid out of the booth to greet us. He wore a finely cut jacket over a black T-shirt and dark pants. Light, close-cropped hair. That lanky Midwestern look. About the same age as Justin—well, J had never specifically revealed his age to me, but I figured him for thirty-nine or forty. Anyway, as J had told me, Kenny was a lot like him, even down to the hint of hard living in the corners of his eyes.

Justin began to introduce us, but Kenny hushed him. He put a friendly arm through mine and said, “You must be the Smash-up. J talks about you and Aubrey so much, I'd know you anywhere.”

I was taken aback, balking instinctively at a stranger using that stupid nickname for me. I looked at Justin, who was beaming.

“Nice to meet you, Kenny,” I said.

“So you're the great jazz musician,” he said.

Great? I thought about it for a minute and then realized that Justin, not to speak of Kenny, had never heard me play a note. “I think you got me mixed up with some other Smash-up.”

“Oh, don't be so modest. Justin says you're going to be famous someday. If you're famous, you're great, right? Just don't forget us little people when you get your record deal and you become a legend.”

“Me, a legend?”

“For sure. Black beauty playing for pennies on the rough streets of New York. Can't you just see the poster? We'll shoot you on the Bowery; outside of one of those fancy bars where the models drink these days; you'll be wearing a leather jacket over your bra. I do a little PR work on the side, you know.”

“What does PR stand for—Puerto Ricans?” Justin teased.

“Shut up,” Kenny said.

He turned his attention back to me then. “We have to get you some high-profile work. Let me think if I know anybody at that club downtown—what's the name of that place?—oh, damn, you know where I mean. Oh, yes, the Village Vanguard.”

Right, a simple phone call and I'd be headlining at the Vanguard. I wanted to laugh, but of course I didn't.

“Sounds good, Kenny,” I said.

“Did I mention,” Justin said in a confiding tone, “that Kenny is the tiniest bit hyper?”

Suddenly it didn't seem all that presumptuous of Kenny to call me Smash-up. What the hell, I thought, it's better than Cueball.

It never occurred to me that J talked to other people about me. He had this diva worship thing going with Aubrey. But I always thought he considered me little more than a mascot. I hadn't even noticed it, but over the last year or so Justin and I were getting to be real friends.

So Kenny borrowed a few bucks from time to time—so what? I had had boyfriends in the past who subsidized my taste for nice Bordeaux and boxed CD sets. If J was in love with the guy, then Kenny was okay with me, even though he was plainly mad as a hatter. In fact, that probably helped endear him to me.

And so the “champagnes” began to flow. I had worried needlessly about the provenance of the grapes. We were sampling the wares of my favorite widow, old lady Cliquot, and getting soundly smashed.

An hour and a half later we had still not even glanced at the menu.

Kenny stopped abruptly midway through telling me about the trip to Cancun he was trying to talk Justin into. “I almost forgot!” he exploded. He then dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “I want to hear the latest on this thing you and J pulled in that old voodoo lady's apartment. Did you crack the case?”

“Hardly. But I did get a date out of it, indirectly.”

“Date ain't the word, honey. That man is a keeper,” Justin said.

I couldn't help grinning. “He is fine, isn't he? But as far as cracking any cases … I still don't know shit.”

“You'll find something soon, Smash-up,” Kenny assured me. “J says you're super cool and smart.”

“Oh yeah? I guess that's why I'm carrying a copy of this guy Miller's picture around like some kind of jerk,” I said. “I've been flashing it around like they do on TV.”

I pulled out the photo of Miller and Ida. “But my dufus cop dialogue needs a little work. I mean, what am I supposed to do—turn into Shaft? Do I say things like ‘Hey, slick, lemme axe you a question. Have you seen this dude?'”

“I don't think that's Shaft, honey,” said Justin. “I think that's Jackie Chan.”

Kenny took the print from me and looked at Miller's self-infatuated expression.

“Granted, he's a handsome devil,” I admitted. “And he knows it. He must have thought he was the Denzel of his day. I've looked at that stupid photo so many times, I'm starting to feel like
I
know him from somewhere.”

Kenny spent several minutes studying it, then commented, “He'd be older now, right? I mean, that lady Ida was much older than she is here, so he would be too.”

“Oh yeah. And I keep wondering if he's still good-looking. Black men don't always age well. 'Specially if they drink.”

“Speaking of drinks,” said Justin, “let's get another bottle.”

“I'm sold,” I said merrily. But at the same time I noticed that Kenny was holding the photo up to the light, turning it this way and that.

“What are you doing with that, Kenny?” Justin asked. “Don't tell me he's an old PR client of yours.”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean—‘not exactly'?” I asked.

“He's just fucking with you, Smash-up,” said Justin. “Kenny, I know you're high, but that's really not funny. That woman did get killed, after all.”

“It might be funny in a different way,” he answered. “I think I know this guy.”

Justin and I spoke in chorus: “Say what?”

“I don't mean I
know
him. I mean I think I've seen him.”