Leavin' Trunk Blues (32 page)

“Trying to quit,” Nick said.

Two of the women giggled. One leered.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Nick said to the leering one. “Your eyes will stay that way.”

The blonde grabbed his leg and moved her hands toward his crotch. “Stay.”

“Tell you what,” Nick said, moving her hand off his leg. “Tell me where Elmore is and I’ll bring you guys some donuts to go with the sugar.”

The blonde rubbed up and down on the shaft of Nick’s boot. “Last room down the hall. You can hear him from here, won’t shut up.”

Nick broke her grasp and followed the hall, covered with recent gold albums, and more pictures with white rockers. King shaking his curls with sweat as he extended his guitar to the crowd.

He heard someone playing a few blues chords through a fuzzy amplifier. Basic stuff being played over and over again. He could hear a black man’s hoarse voice say, “That’s it. Uh huh. One more time. That’s right. C’mon.”

Nick turned into the room and saw King with a young white boy and two white women drinking whiskey. The girls looked cut from the same mold as the coke sniffers. Fake boobs, dyed hair, and capped teeth.

Nick knew the kid. Cadillac Mack Miller. Teenage blues protégé who had more money than most veteran bluesmen combined. He played a predictable mix of blues standards with an edgy teen angst. He growled and howled out his fifteen-year-old pain like a minstrel act. Somehow it sold. Teenyboppers and white blues fans ate it up. After hearing one of his songs, JoJo had commented, “How’s a kid know about the blues? He ain’t had a job, lost a job. Had a woman or lost a woman. Kid don’t know pain from ice cream.”

Nick tended to think that was true. Blues wasn’t necessarily about race, but it was about experience. Besides, Miller looked like a frail woman. Long stringy blond hair, pale delicate skin, and glossy lips.

“Hit it, hit it, hit it,” King droned with the ice clinking in his whiskey glass. The girls swaggered to the music. One played with her hair as she arched her back. The other tapped her foot and played with a long strand of gum. “Play them blues, kid, play them blues.”

King spoke with all the enthusiasm of a whore asking a man to finish it up. He took another chug of whiskey and looked at the doorway. His eyes narrowed.

“Nick Travers,” Nick said. “Remember JoJo’s?”

Elmore King rolled his head over to Nick and grinned. Miller played one of King’s songs as Nick shook the legend’s hand. King nodded and smiled. He drank from a crystal glass with a joint dangling from his other hand.

King leaned his back into the plush, blue chair like he’d just finished a marathon, his eyes red.

“You want a picture or somethin’?” King asked, smiling. The veins in his eyes were angry and thick. His hair was styled with Jheri curl lotion.

“No,” Nick said. “Been trying to get in touch with you. See if you remembered playing in New Orleans, ask you about some things.”

“Oh, you know I play so many places it’s hard to remember,” he said, slurring. “Think I played at the Superdome the last time. ‘Star Spangled Banner.’”

Nick nodded. What an asshole. This guy knew who he was.

King looked over at one of the girls and licked his lips at the big-chested gum chewer. Miller never glanced up from his shiny blue Stratocaster.

The girls couldn’t have been less interested in the conversation.

“Listen, I’ve been in town doing some research,” Nick said.

King put his hand on the knee of the woman.

“Been interviewing folks from King Snake,” Nick said. “Talking to people about your old boss, Billy Lyons.”

King’s head rolled back around and he squinted his eyes at Nick. He looked at the ground littered with cigarette butts and beer caps and shook his head. Disappointment, like Nick had just failed a big test.

“You want to interview me, talk to my agent,” he said. “I’m just hanging out tonight. Want to enjoy the show.”

“Did you get my messages?” Nick said. He tried to keep the force from his voice. Easy roll. Just a polite conversation.

“No. People handle those things for me.”

Miller looked up from the guitar. He stopped playing and watched. Outside, the band was jamming and the muffled music sounded like it was trying to break down the barriers.

“Over a bottle of Crown Royal, you once told me Ruby Walker got a raw deal,” Nick said. “I paid for the Royal. So don’t try to tell me you don’t remember.”

“Shiiit.”

“Listen, man, I’m trying to help Ruby. She says you were with her the night Billy was killed. Dirty Jimmy Scott said you drove her home.”

King’s eyes bored into Nick’s. He had a sleepy-eyed stare. Almost looked like a crazy gunfighter trying to psych out his rival.

Nick was so scared he thought he might yawn.

“Forty years is a long time for silence.”

“Get the fuck out of my club,” King said.

“What?”

“I said get the fuck out of here,” King said. “You people don’t know when something ain’t your business. My life ain’t some kind of goddamned Trivial Pursuit. I’m not some nigger needs to be studied. I’m just a musician. Now get the fuck out of my club.”

“Why’d you tell Dirty Jimmy he couldn’t go back to the studio that night?” Nick asked. “You scared he’d see Billy Lyons’ blood? The holes that forty-four left?”

King stood tall and pushed Nick in the chest. One of the girls disappeared and Miller started playing again. It was the stop time of Muddy Waters’s “Mannish Boy.” He flipped back his hair like a woman and sneered at Nick.

“Were you with Ruby the night Billy was killed?” Nick asked. “Were you at the Palm Tavem with her? Was she with you? Did you drive her home?”

King sucked in some more reefer and blew it from his nose.

“Kid,” King said to Miller. “Get lost for a minute.”

Miller shook his head, put down the Strat, and grabbed the other woman by the arm. They disappeared.

“Record company said it’d be good to spend some quality time,” King said, blowing reefer smoke and staggering his stance. “As much money as they pay me, I’d waltz with the grand wizard of the KKK.”

Nick nodded. The electrifying guitar on stage felt like it was about to rip through the walls and zap King in the chest. Give him a million volts of reality.

“You must think I’m the biggest motherfucker in Chicago,” King said, slumping down into the seat. “Right?”

Nick was silent.

King extinguished the orange end of the joint on the bottom of his boot.

“You been talking to folks?”

Nick nodded.

“You think you’re smart,” King said. “Think you know the whole deal just because of some words of some old man.”

“Why wouldn’t you let him get his harps?”

“No, sir. I kept my mouth shut and it’s gonna stay shut.”

“What are you talking about?” Nick said. “Ruby’s suffered enough. She’s spent most of her life in something you’d use for a closet. She’s surrounded by killers and bull dykes. Is that what you want?”

“I just want to live,” King said. “Go on.”

“If you want to talk I’ll be at the Palmer House. It’s your move,” Nick said. “You can’t hide from Stagger Lee forever.”

King threw his old-fashioned glass against the wall. He walked away as the whiskey and glass dripped to the floor. As Nick opened his mouth, three guys in Crown Room T-shirts grabbed him by the arms. Nick tried to shake them off, but they dragged him through the VIP halls and back into the bar. People pointed at Nick, screaming for him to leave.

“Let him go, you fucking morons,” Kate yelled as they dragged him to the door. She kicked one of the bouncers in the nuts and the man fell away.

Another guy grabbed Kate. Nick freed his arm and knocked the guy to the ground as the other guard twisted Nick’s arms behind his back.

He tossed Nick outside. Kate called the bouncer a motherfucker as they pushed her onto the cold sidewalk.

The bouncer slammed the door shut.

On the street, there was hushed snow and the sound of muffled music playing inside the club. The green neon glowed onto Kate’s angry face.

“That arrogant fuck,” she said, pulling herself to her feet. She touched her sore stomach and marched back to the door.

“Kate,” Nick said, looking at the torn elbow on his coat. “You want to go to jail tonight? Let’s just go. We’ll go at it another way.”

“What did you say to him?” she asked, pulling her gloves onto her hands and helping Nick to his feet.

“1 asked him about not letting Jimmy get his harps,” Nick said. “King said he wasn’t going to say shit about what happened and then he told me to get out of his club. Told me he didn’t want to be studied. He was pissed.”

Kate muttered under her breath as they walked under the rusting El tracks back toward the city. “Motherfucker.”

‘You want me to wash your mouth out?” Nick asked.

“Fuck you,” she said.

Nick grabbed her hand and pulled her close. Her eyes were still heated and he could smell the gin on her rapid breath. A taxicab passed. The El rolled by. Nick smoothed his hand across her cheek and tucked her brown hair behind her ear. Her eyes were huge brown discs.

“How’s your stomach?”

“Sore.”

“Too sore?”

“Leave me alone, Travers.”

Her mouth parted and her head tilted.

And he kissed her.

Nick kept kissing Kate all the way up the Palmer House elevator as his hand ran underneath her coat and over her warm back. He could feel her lips on his ear and her fingers messing his shaggy hair. They lost their balance when the elevator stopped at the fourteenth floor, and her mouth pursed into a slow grin. Nick’s stomach burned, smelling her hair and tasting her lips. He knew he’d waited so long to be with her again. When he was with Kate, he was at home. Nothing existed outside their loop.

He led her by the hand down the corridor to his room, sliding the card into the lock and kicking in the door. The bedside lamp was on and soft snow fell outside. Completely weightless, shifting in the Arctic wind.

She walked ahead, grabbed his hand, and pulled him onto the bed. He held her back and set her down onto the cool sheets smelling of bleach. He kissed her neck and she arched her back. She wriggled free of her peacoat, and Nick threw it onto the floor as she kicked out of her shoes and kissed him with an open mouth.

Their tongues worked together, tasting her sweetness and the gin on her beautiful breath.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Nick asked.

She nodded.

“What about your stomach?”

Kate grabbed his hand and pushed it on the warm skin surrounding a bandage. He moved his hands under her black sweater and cotton underwear. She was braless and Nick brushed his hands over her breasts and down again to her stomach. He could feel the taut muscles and the curve of her hips. She pulled him on top and opened her mouth more. He tasted her rich saliva and felt her hips grinding into his. He pulled up her sweater and kissed her stomach and chest. She arched her back again, and he kissed the spot between her breasts. She sighed and made soft sounds. He felt weightless as the falling snow, like they were drifting downwards as she fumbled for his zipper.

He kissed the narrow part of her waist and stomach trailing up to her breasts again. She straightened her hands above her head and he lifted the sweater away. Her hair was still damp from the snow and he smoothed it behind her ears. He kissed her thick eyebrows, nose, and dimpled chin. He kissed her glorious neck and thick, rubbery lips and unbuttoned her faded blue jeans. She gripped the edge of her jeans and pulled them down past her white Calvin Kleins as Nick stood back from the bed and stripped down to his Scooby Doo boxers.

He dove back into bed and brought her with him under the warm blankets. She laughed as he pulled away their last pieces of clothing. Finally, they were back together, cold feet feeling each other, knowing he was right where he needed to be.

On the second go-around, their bodies worked, coated with sweat. She rolled on top of him and landed her hands on his chest. Her eyes closed as if in meditation, her brown hair swaying down onto his face. They stayed that way for a long time, a drop of sweat rolling off her nose and into his eyes, until he wrapped his arm around her back and spun her back to the bed.

He kissed her forehead and cupped his hand to her face.

As he stared into her brown eyes, he felt the days, weeks, and years break away from them. Her mouth on his, her sweet smell all over his body, was a homecoming.

--

For the last few months, Nick had been having strange dreams about the blues. Maybe he should’ve seen a psychologist, stop mixing Jack and Dixies, or stop trying to enter dead people’s lives. But ever since he spent a late summer in the Delta last year, Robert Johnson had entered his mind and spoken to him in the deepest layer of his subconscious. Or maybe Robert Johnson had become his subconscious. Either way, the master blues guitarist who died in 1938 broke free early that Christmas Eve morning. Nick could see him standing at the foot of his hotel bed, in his creased pin-striped suit, a beaten black guitar case in his hand, smiling a wide grin on his deep black face.