Filter House (28 page)

Jasper surprised me with an awful good imitation of a red-winged blackbird. Lower register, of course. But his voice trilled up and spilled over the same way, throbbing sweet and pure, straight from his poor little heart. A pretty song, but he was singing it to the wrong audience.

Once, I was one of the richest women on this continent. Powerball winnings. I took and built the Water Museum, then finessed an old congressman of a lover of mine into pushing through our charter. He secured us the sole, exclusive rights to be selling off the Great Lakes’ water to irrigate them thirsty Western states.

Or not.

Didn’t them cowboys kick up a dust storm! Kept us real busy for a while there, in the courts and on the talkiest of the talk shows.

I’m not rich no more. What I didn’t use building the Museum or fighting to protect our charter, I wound up giving us as a donation. Not so famous no more, neither. And important? Not in the least.

During the season, I sell tickets and polish windows, hand out sea-weed candy to unsuspecting kids. Nothing but that would stop because I died, much less if I changed my feeble mind.

I sighed. Jasper had finished his aria, and I prepared to shut the door. Then, shears still held tight, and Buddy close and attentive at hand, I did the funniest thing. I kissed him, right on his damp, still-kinda-smelly forehead. He looked up at me, and he done something funny, too. He smiled. I smiled again, but neither of us said a thing. I backed out, still careful, and locked him in. I have a sneaky suspicion this one
might
turn out to be interesting. When he’s good and ready.

But She’s Only a Dream

An old man named Roscoe reminisces, tilting his chair back as the sun sets. “She musta been from somewhere ’round here. Kansas City ain’t that big a town. But no one ever seen her ’cept at jam sessions and gigs. Sittin by, listenin in. Never liftin her voice above what was ladylike to speak let alone tryin to sing. She was always pretty much a mystery to everyone.”

Darktown pops and sizzles like a bonfire, but daytimes the flame’s invisible. Charcoal and ash flicker to the strobe, faces grimace and turn to it, scarves snap to it, newspapers crackle to the nameless music of the streets.

This is a frantic song, a sixty-cycle-a-second scuffle. Not till evening does the light mellow. Then, golden horns fill certain cellars with a smooth hush, a yellow melody rising from below linked shadows. The soft sounds spill upwards, pooling at the feet of passers-by.

Laura seems a little nervous, standing there on the sidewalk, tugging at her hat, her clothes, her hair. Yet she is perfect: lipstick even, stocking seams straight, beige- and brown-dotted hem swirling just so, brown pumps clicking just right down the cement steps.

She opens the door on a room full of men and instruments; already the dampness is warming with body heat. They have traded axes, goofing themselves loose. Winks and nods greet her entry, and she smiles in return, working her way to the sofa at the far end of the room. A skinny, coal-colored youth sits there restlessly, waiting for the games to end.

It isn’t long. First a slow blues. Then “Just You, Just Me,” and they’re really cooking. Smells good. Laura weaves her head in time to the fumes, delicate nostrils wide with pleasure. The next tune, a rhythm-and-blues, starts out at a medium tempo, but the drummer winds it up midway to a fast burn. At different times different musicians glance at Laura to see the music made visible. Her black eyes are afire with secrets.

During their break, the cellar darkens with smoke and brightens with talk, most of it about the foregoing jams. Laura doesn’t say too much; once in a while, “Yes, I liked that,” or “Uh-huh, it was real nice.” Her voice is quiet, her words proper. Occasionally a man throws his arm over her shoulders, gives her a friendly squeeze, and her slight smile slightens.

Everyone knows when it’s time to go back to work and play. Springs sigh, sheet music shuffles, places are resumed. Laura listens feverishly, her small, pointed chin cupped in one hand, elbow balanced on one knee. She can only stay for two more songs. Her mouth looks unsatisfied as she leaves. “Later, boys.”

“In a minute, Laura.”

She doesn’t walk far. Scared of the dark, even the brilliant darkness of the black folks’ wide-grinning night. She hails the first cab she sees, gives a fancy uptown address. The cabbie drives her right to the servants’ entrance. She shorts him fifty cents on the fare. “Iffen you wants to wait, I’ll get de res’ fum Miss Anne,” she says. He snorts, but what can he do, drive her back?

She goes upstairs to the empty boudoir next to the master bedroom. The decor is severely pink, scented, and stiffly starched. She sits at a marble-topped vanity, its surface a mirrored intricacy of shiny vials and pots. She opens a large alabaster box, smoothes a transparent cream on her already creamy skin. A man calls through the door without opening it. “Hey, honey, that you?”

“Yes, it’s me.” She pulls a pink tissue from a shell-covered box.

“You’ve been at that meeting this entire time?”

She wipes quickly, cleaning half her face. “Yes, I have.” She looks long at her reflection. She is half full. She takes another tissue to her face. She is waxing. “We had a lot of work to do. Bazaar’s coming up. You know those poor people depend on us organizing it.”

“How you women can talk all night about a miserable bunch of niggers is beyond me.”

She was always pretty much a mystery to everyone.

“Okey-doke, Smoke.” The cabbie slipped the worn dollar bill into his shirt pocket. He had his full fare now and a fifty cent tip.

“That ain’t my name.” The skinny, coal-colored youth turned away from the cab he had followed all the way from Darktown.

“Who said it was?” Backing down the drive, the cabbie kept his eyes on the street end. He missed seeing how the coal-colored youth melted into the shadows. Went around the corner of the house. Walked up the steps. Seeking something that he sometimes got a taste of at jam sessions. A pause, while he did something to the lock without using a key. Then through the door.

Inside, the large kitchen lay mostly dark. Light from a far-off street lamp filtered through white net curtains over a counter on one side. Straight ahead a glow silhouetted a door and leaked out over blue and green linoleum tiles. The skinny youth pushed the door, and it swung open on a passageway with oyster white walls, tastefully carpeted in beige.

The same carpet ran up the staircase. So did he, quietly. The stairs doubled back on themselves and left him on the landing where they ended, facing the front of the house. Two doors. He closed his eyes and followed his nose through the one on his left.

She was in there, seated at the vanity. She swiveled on the pink bench as he entered, giving him the look of a wild thing surprised in its natural habitat but still sure of escape. A silk robe embroidered with rose and coral chrysanthemums clung to the new ivory of her shoulders.

“Laura,” he whispered.

“That ain’t my name.”

He shook his head. Didn’t matter what she called herself here, or how much paler her face. Whatever tricks she played, he would know her anywhere. She was it—inspiration. The breath of air that fed the fire. He took a step closer, drawn by her scent, a mixture of fine cologne and fresh, faint sweat.

“My husband’s in the next room. I can call him.”

“But you won’t.”

“Be a shame if anybody found you in a white woman’s boudoir.”

“Who said you was white?”

She swung her legs around and planted them firmly before her, placed one hand between her knees and pressed them tight together. Touched the other to her loose, lustrous hair, silken as the robe she wore. “I did.”

He shook his head once more. “I ain’t come to cause no trouble.”

The bare skin above her breasts rose and fell sharply as she let out a silent, humorless laugh. “Why, then? You followed me home from that jam session, somehow. You broke in—”

“No, I didn’t. Didn’t have to. Door was left open.”

“I locked it.”

“Musta been someone else come in after you. Maid.”

“Annie would never neglect a thing like that.”

“And your husband wouldn’t never enter this here room less you asked him in. I know. You tooken care a him good as your servants. Wouldn’t never believe he married no colored gal, neither, less you told him so.

“Or would he?”

She rose slowly, her hands swinging naturally at her sides. The right one held a gun now, but not as if she planned on doing anything immediate with it. “Why don’t you stop making these threatening remarks and tell me what it is you want?”

“Honey? Are you coming to bed now?”

“I’ll be in soon, Chester,” she called back, her voice loose and flowing as her hair.

“Who’s that I hear talking to you?” The man on the other side of the open door sounded nearer now.

“It’s only Annie. She’s helping me practice my part for the church play.” She used the gun like a traffic cop’s baton, waving the youth toward another door opposite the one her husband stood behind. It was shut. He opened it on a tiny bathroom, obeyed her gestures, and went inside.

“I thought you gave her the evening off.”

“I guess she didn’t have anywhere to go. We’re as good as done, so I’ll be right in, after I use the necessary.” She stepped into the small room and closed the door behind her with a soft click. An overhead light came on as her hand fell from a wall switch.

The gun’s muzzle pointed at him, almost, it seemed, of its own will. The opening glittered like an animal’s eye. “I asked you before,” she said. “What—?”

“What I want?” The stories he had heard agreed on one thing: this was no one to trifle with. He hesitated before the truth surged out of him, a wave desperate to reach an unknown shore: “I want to play.”

“Play what?”

All the music, the sweetness, sharpness, rolls and riffs and changes he’d ever heard swept through his mind. All the instruments. Choose one. She was waiting. “Piano.”

She looked at the mirror over the white washstand, smiled at a joke shared with her reflection. “And what present did you bring me?” The gun still pointed in his direction.

“It—in my coat pocket—I’ll—” He moved to ease open the satin-hemmed slit above his breast, and her eyes were on him again.

“Hands,” she said. Reluctantly, he started to raise them. “No!” The gun waved impatiently. “Hold them out here, where I can see them!” Barely a tremor showed as he stretched his forearms level with the floor: his fingers, long and thin, black as twigs burnt bare by autumn, nails ridged and trimmed to neat ovals.

“Turn em over.”

His palms, rose creased with brown, oblongs seeming small in contrast to the fingers’ spidery length.

“All right. In the tub. Take your shoes off.”

He hesitated.

“Take them off first, then get in.”

He wore black lace-up Oxfords, ancient but well-polished. He left them on the white tiles, climbed over the tub’s curled porcelain lip, slipping awkwardly in his socks.

“Now strip.”

He did nothing, as if unsure he’d heard her right.

“Off with your clothes. Unless you brought a spare set.”

He shrugged out of his jacket. A good jacket, dark grey with a faint crosshatching of light blue. Folded it carefully, then looked around to see what to do with it. Balanced it on the tub’s edge, at one tightly curving end. Loosened his tie and slipped it off from under the collar of his pale grey shirt. Unbuttoned that. Stopped. The thin cotton tee he wore beneath it barely veiled the darkness of his chest. “What—”

“Lie down.” She swept the gun’s muzzle sideways, describing a horizontal line for him to imitate. “You want to keep your clothes on, that’s fine by me. I don’t care about them if you don’t.

“Me, I like what I’m wearing.” As she said this, she unbelted the kimono and let it slide off her shoulders. Beneath, she was naked. She held herself the way she now held the gun: purposefully. The parchment of her skin glowed like a lampshade, color breaking out where the candle’s flame came too close to it, burning it pink and red and brown and black. Her fingernails, the taut tips of her breasts, her hair—