Half-Blood Blues (15 page)

‘Really? It’s Clayton?’

He snorted. ‘
Clayton?
I ain’t from
Idaho
, girl.’

Paul come up onstage, lift up the lid of his piano, start working the ivories real soft. He was watching me and Delilah up in the flies.

‘She askin bout his middle name,’ I called down to him.

‘Tell her to try Cecil,’ he said, dropping a register.

‘Paul thinks it might be Cecil,’ I said. ‘I always thought Chauncey.’

‘I ain’t no Chauncey, buck. You know that.’

‘Cecil,’ Paul said again. ‘I got a good feeling about Cecil.’

‘Chevrotain,’ Hiero said abruptly, his voice cracking.

Paul hit a sour note, stop playing. ‘
Chevrotain?
’ he laughed.

I waved them down. ‘You both goin wrong. Old Jones’ folk ain’t so fancy as all that. It like to be Christopher. Or Curtis.’

‘What about Carolina?’ Delilah said. ‘Or Christina?’

Chip looked up at her blankly. ‘They
girls
’ names.’

She smiled, give him a wink.

‘Alright, alright,’ said Chip. ‘We wrappin this one up, sendin it out. You bucks ain’t even close.
Especially
you, girl.’

‘Chloe?’ she called down.

Chip snorted, shook his head. ‘
Chloe
,’ he muttered. ‘Chloe ain’t even on the right damn side of the
bonfire
.’

She give the kid a crooked smile and I laughed then, sort of leaned over, nudged her gently with my shoulder. Like to flirt.

She glanced over at me, her face closing right up. Not with anger or hate or caution or none of the usual reasons a jane shut down shop in you presence. No, it was something drier, something rougher. There just wasn’t no interest. Like she was wishing I get up to go, so the damn kid could come clambering up, take my place.

I smiled, looking painfully away. I was biting the inner wall of my cheek so hard I could taste the blood.

Next day I was shuffling through the club looking for Ernst when Chip and Paul call me over to the bar. They was sitting on the high stools, arms folded in front of them, playing a hand of dead man, working their way through a bottle of the czech.

Chip give me a drunken smile. ‘
There
you is, brother. Sit on down here a minute.’

‘I busy, Chip.’

‘We got to talk.’

‘Six of hearts,’ said Paul, frowning. ‘Or is that a nine?’ He turned the tattered card this way and that, staring stupidly at it. ‘I’m going to call that a nine.’

‘We into spades now,’ said Chip. ‘What you
doin
, buck?’

Paul poured a second finger into Chip’s glass. ‘You’ve got to catch up to me, or it’s not going to be much of a game.’ He’d folded his cuffs back over his fair forearms, the stains on his collar and cuffs a dull yellow.

We was all of us starting to turn sour, ripe, without no clothes to change into. Chip been scrubbing his out in the big sink each night, but there wasn’t no getting the old blood out. I could see a rip in Paul’s stitching at his shoulder. We was all shaving on the same dull razor. Our mugs full of cuts. On top of it all, the club was numbingly cold. It was the height of summer, and we was trapped frozen and afraid inside.

Paul lay down his hand. ‘Go on. But be gentle.’

Chip smiled. ‘Ten seconds of sack time, two hours of apology.’

‘Why don’t we walk Sid in? He’s good at showing his hand.’

‘You funny,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I pass.’

‘You been passin since the day you was born, friend,’ said Chip, licking his front teeth gingerly. His swollen jowls was starting to come down some. Still looked stuffed full of cotton though. ‘Aw, I kiddin. Come on now, I just kiddin.’

‘He’s just kidding, Sid.’ Paul was already pouring me a glass, sliding it over my way. ‘Sit down, sit.’

Chip chuckled. ‘You know what you is, buck? You a blue-ribbon fool. Starin after the kid like you goin murder him in his sleep.’

‘What you sayin?’

‘Like you goin murder him over that bearcat. Over that strip of lead.’

Paul smiled. ‘It’s okay, Sid. Don’t be embarrassed.’

‘He damn well should be embarrassed. Goin on like that.’ But Chip’s face, it turned all anxious then, and I was thrown a little, seeing his concern. ‘It just, we see what goin on here, Sid. You settin youself up for the icy mitt. Rejection, brother.’

‘It’s not how you do it,’ Paul agreed, running a finger along his moustache, shuffling through his cards. ‘What are we starting with, spades?’

‘Hearts.’

Paul frowned.

‘You want to get to her?’ said Chip. ‘Really get to her? You got to run the kid off first. But not like no schoolboy, not like no sucker. Like a
man
.’

‘Be a man, Sid,’ Paul murmured, distracted. ‘You’re sure you don’t want to start with spades?’

‘Hearts.’

I wrinkled my brow. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘Well, you goin sit or what?’ said Chip.

I sat.

‘We serious, Sid. You can’t stand round gawkin like a boy who missed the jitney. You can’t let her see you doin it. You got to be subtle, like. Just anythin he do, you got to sort of overshadow it. Make her forget his old game before he even finished. But you got to make it look like you ain’t tryin, or you
sunk
, brother. You got to do it
regal
.’

I felt that old blackness rising in me. Cause it seem damn sinister, the kid and Delilah. And yet I suspected it too. I blown air through my lips. ‘You ain’t seriously suggestin I fight a nineteen-year-old kid for a twenty-nine-year-old woman? For real?’

Chip shrugged. ‘Paul done broke up two marriages before he was sixteen.’

‘They were very youthful women,’ said Paul with a wide smile. But his eyes wasn’t focusing quite right. He reached for his glass.

‘See, there you go,’ said Chip. ‘And Delilah ain’t youthful.’

I shook my damn head, give them both a dark look. Then I downed the czech, shuddered, and turned to go. ‘You both off you nut. Ain’t no way Delilah interested in the kid. No way. She feel anythin for him, it be like a sister.’

‘I seen some low-down dirty things in my time, brother,’ said Chip, whistling. ‘This is just the icing.’

‘Watch you mouth. Just watch how you talk bout her.’

‘Hold up, hold up,’ said Paul with a easy smile. ‘Hold up there, Sid.’

Chip started laughing. ‘Don’t go all Joe Bavaria on us, brother. You ain’t a prude. Come on. So she ain’t no caviar. Each man got the spice he likes. So you like old ordinary pepper.’

‘Nothing wrong with pepper,’ Paul agreed.

‘It’s black,’ said Chip.

‘And peppery.’

‘That it is, buck. That it is.’

I give them both a closer look, leaned in, seen the red veins glowing in Chip’s watery eyes. ‘Jesus. How much you two had to drink?’

‘Aw, we ain’t hardly had nothin,’ Chip said, like he wounded by the question.

‘Hardly touched the bottle,’ said Paul.

‘
That
one, at least.’

Paul laughed a weird long laugh. He lowered his cards, his shoulders shaking. Chip glance quickly over at his hand.

I scooped the bottle away. ‘Jesus. Ernst wants us to run through a set for Delilah sometime in the next year. You reckon you sober up anytime soon?’

Chip leaned forward. ‘How we goin through a set without Fritz?’

‘Can’t play without Fritz,’ said Paul, nodding. He kept on nodding.

I glanced across. Paul had a second bottle of the czech down by his knee, and he was refilling his and Chip’s glasses on the sly. I just shook my head. ‘Hell. Day I listen to advice from jacks in the sauce, that be the day I hang up my old spurs.’

‘He’s going to hang up his spurs,’ Paul smiled.

‘No more ridin for Sid,’ said Chip. ‘You pourin us another finger? Pour one for Sid too.’

‘I ain’t touchin it,’ I said.

Chip give me a tragic look. ‘Brother, you got old Berlin’s finest genius when it come to the janes sittin right here, and you ain’t goin ask him
nothin
?’

I glanced across at Paul, his head lolling on his shoulders. And then I thought, hell, ain’t like there anything to lose. ‘Alright,’ I said. ‘For real. How you do it, Paul? How you get them to fall for you?’

‘You got to clear that glass first, buck,’ said Chip.

I frowned. Then I punched it back, set the glass on the bar with a bang.

Chip whooped. ‘
There
he is. The old Baltimore Special hisself. All aboard if you gettin aboard.’ He slapped me on the back.

I coughed against my hand. ‘So what you secret, Paul?’

He lift up one shaky eyebrow. ‘It’s no secret. You let
them
come to
you
. A jane doesn’t like to be pushed.’

‘It don’t hurt if you look like a Adonis, neither,’ Chip smiled.

Paul shrugged, chuckling.

‘You both off you nut.’ But I was smiling some too, now. That was the damn czech, I guess, eating its way through my liver. ‘I ain’t no Adonis, buck.’

‘Sid got a point.’

‘That is a point,’ Paul agreed. He cleared his throat, glanced up like he just realizing he sitting at a dark bar in a shuttered club and he ain’t changed his shirt in two days. He run a thumb under his bleary eyes. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay. First thing you need to understand, janes don’t make any sense. None. If they’re mad at you, it means they’re interested. Or maybe they’re not. If they ignore you, it means they’re not interested. Or maybe they are.’

I nodded, blinking. ‘Okay. They make no sense. Got it.’

Chip poured me another two fingers. ‘And you got to make them feel they
special
.’

‘Sure,’ Paul nodded. ‘You need to make them feel like you’re listening to them. Like you’re getting to know the
real
dame.’

‘And you got to buy them stuff, buck. Dames like presents. You ever known a dame not to like a present?’

Paul nodded. ‘Dames like presents. It’s true.’

‘You got to get her thinkin of you before she think of the kid.
That
the trick.’

‘That
is
the trick,’ Paul said, nodding sagely. ‘Yes it is. Whose turn is it?’

‘Pass that old bottle over, brother.’

‘I think it’s my turn. Isn’t it my turn?’

But I wasn’t hardly listening. Cause Hiero come out through the heavy red curtains from backstage, the left side of his afro pressed flat like he been sleeping. His horn was hooked over his forefinger, the thing gleaming like a outrageous jewel.

And, hell, Delilah come following him through. She was laughing, teasing, batting her damn eyes at him sort of foolish like, like she ain’t realized we sitting here. The kid turn up one side of his mouth, as if he got a cramp in his jaw, as if he embarrassed. Then he just pursed his lips to his trumpet, blown a huge high C, sliding down the scale hair by hair till he got to the bottom. His notes so damn hot they smart you ears.

He paused, put a hand to his eyes, stared out at us. ‘What you doin over there?’

Paul start to laughing. ‘Don’t you mind it,’ he called back.

‘We talkin bout you,’ said Chip with a sloppy grin.

I flushed.

I was watching Delilah up there onstage. She was wearing that gold headwrap from yesterday, its sequins glittering like a million eyes in its folds.

‘Ain’t that somethin,’ I murmured. ‘She look like a queen.’

‘More like a fortune teller,’ said Chip.

‘A misfortune teller,’ said Paul, laughing silently.

‘Aw, you both crazy. She lookin good.’

Chip fixed me with a baleful eye. ‘That there look like a mound of garbage on her head, brother. You think she’d wear that if she ain’t got to?’

I blinked. ‘What?’

‘Open you eyes, buck. That dreck on her head’s a gift.’

‘What?’

‘You don’t recognize that fabric?’

The bronze shimmer, the winking sequins – it hit me then. That drab curtain we drawn over the green room’s window. I tried to still my face. But I so overwhelmed with disappointment and irritation that I could feel my old cheeks creasing up.

‘What the hell,’ I muttered. ‘So we got no curtain now?’

‘Kid nailed an old tarp up,’ Paul smiled. ‘It works better. Cuts out more light.’

Chip belched. Then again.

He done pour the dregs into my glass when I wasn’t looking – that awful grit that cling to you tongue like bayou mud – and I started gagging, coughing back into the glass. Chip whooped. ‘Go on, buck,’ he grinned. ‘Polish her off.’

Felt so cross-eyed, it like I going blind. Holy hell.

The kid was squealing his way along them damn scales, squawling and brapping up and down, up and down again. Like to make you skin crawl. I closed my eyes, opened them. The walls was shifting ever so slightly.

Chip grunted. ‘I goin to the john. Don’t mess with my cards.’

Paul ain’t even stirred.

Delilah was reaching down, taking off her heels. She stood barefoot on the boards, and I was astonished at how short she suddenly was. Like a
kid
, I thought bitterly.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Paul said quiet-like. He lift up his head, and his eyes look very clear, very pale. ‘Sid? Hey, Sid.’

‘I listenin.’

‘I need help.’

‘Damn right you do. You and Chip both.’

He shook his head. ‘No. I’m serious. I need help.’

‘I told you,’ I said, leaning emphatically forward with each word, ‘I-take-Inge-but-not-Marta. Marta-ain’t-my-speedbuck.’

‘I left something at the flat,’ he muttered, ‘something I’m desperate without. I can’t go out for it. But I can’t ask anyone else either.’

‘Ask Hiero. He the one to make you dreams come true.’ I scowled, staring across at him still walking up and down them scales. Delilah was leaning back on the piano, just watching him work.

Paul give me a confused look. ‘Hiero?’

I was thinking of that advice they give me. Of what a jack can give as a present to make a girl swoon. Hell. I ain’t giving her no damn
rag
for her
hair
, that for sure. I got to make it
meaningful
.

‘You listening, Sid? Sid?’

My mind swum back through its fog. ‘You left it back at the flat.’ I nodded. ‘Sure. What was it again?’