A Conversation with the Mann (31 page)

I
LEFT
N
EW
Y
ORK
for five weeks on the road that would culminate with me opening for Eddie Fisher at the Sands in Las Vegas.

D
EFINITION MADE
L
AS
V
EGAS
a city. Reality said it was a town. Barely. What it was was a district that had sprung up along a railroad stop and, south
a ways in Paradise Township, about half a dozen hotel/casinos along the Los Angeles Highway. Later on they would call it The
Strip. The city—the town—being in the desert, was hot in temperature except at night, when it was cold, and during the winter
when it was freezing nearly all the time. It was full of sand that was unstoppable from being windblown through every crack
and crevice, dusting every object indoors or out. It had no factories, no major industry. It had no reason for being.

Except one.

You could gamble in Las Vegas.

You could gamble in a lot of cities. You could gamble all over the state of Nevada. But Vegas added a couple of wrinkles to
the trick: flashy carpet joints with free meals if you lost enough. Big losers got their rooms comped, too. For spice there
were showgirls who went topless and free juice handed out by cocktail waitresses wearing barely more than the ladies in the
chorus. Las Vegas passed out the drinks with a wink and a neon tease, not to be nice but because it knew the more you drank,
the stupider you got. The bigger you bet.

And if somehow all that wasn't enough to get you to get yourself to the high desert, Vegas had one last card up its sleeve:
entertainment. It was live entertainment capital of the West. Hollywood might have been where the stars shacked, but Vegas
is where they shined. Onstage and in person. And there was nowhere they shined any more hotly than at the Sands. Subtitled
“A Place in the Sun,” ultramodern by design, the hotel/casino to beat all hotel/casinos made her presence felt in The Meadows
from the day its doors swung open: You pulled up a slick circular drive under three narrow beams that shot from the hotel,
then ninety-degree-angled straight into the desert floor as if the building itself were staking a claim to the city. Forget
the old-fashioned cabin-style wood-and-stone construction, you were welcomed into the joint by chrome and glass and marble
letting you know this was the up-to-date way to lose your money. And just in case you still weren't sure about things, there
was the sign. Fifty-six feet tall, every inch of it burning with lights that boldly, simply, in scripted letters read: SANDS.
No doubt at all. This was
the
place in the sun. It was one big slice of all I ever wanted. All I ever dreamed of.

If nothing else, what made it that way was the Copa Room, sister to the club in New York. And same as the club in New York,
the Copa was where anybody who was anybody—Marlene Dietrich to Noel Coward—wanted to be. Working there made playing the empty
desert of Vegas better than bearable. It made it an event.

But for all the Hollywood celebs, all the palm trees and neon, Vegas was still strictly Hicksville. Hicksville is where Jim
Crow called home.

“Sorry, Jackie.”

Jack Entratter was sorry.

Jack Entratter was the entertainment coordinator of the Sands, the fellow who handled the Copa Room for the casino. At six
foot three, he was a hulk of a man, weighty, and sporting several chins. He would've come off as a monster except that he
was a fairly decent guy. Maybe by nature, maybe because he was humbled by the gimp a childhood illness had left him. Either
way, you kinda believed him when he said: “You know, I've got no problem with things, but it's policy. We just don't allow
coloreds into the casino. You understand, don't you, Jackie?”

Sure. I understood. It was the same as it was a lot of places. I could entertain. I could make good money. I could stand onstage
and take all the applause an audience could dole out, but after that I was expected to be gone, and be quick about it.

“If it was left to me …” Jack was getting in all his apology bits. “But we can't make any exceptions.” He modified himself.
“Except, one exception.”

I knew the exception. But then, Mr. Entertainment was an exceptional cat.

Jack looked from me to Sid and back again, helplessness in his face, then held up his hands in a show of things being completely
beyond him. In case I couldn't read all that: “There's nothing I can do.”

And there wasn't. Didn't matter Jack was taking orders from Frank Sinatra himself. Sinatra may have been a part owner in the
Sands, but that didn't make him boss, just slave to the paying customer. The paying customer didn't want any blacks in the
casino, the paying customer didn't get any blacks in the casino.

Sid and I thanked Jack. Sid and I left.

The Sands was good enough to provide us with a car while we were in the city. We'd need it. It was a good trip between the
hotel and the part of town known as Westside. The “Negro” side. The side where we would be staying. And the whole of it made
the black section of Miami come off like the French Riv. Small, rundown shacks for houses. Beat-up cars that were ten years
old the day these people bought them “new.” I didn't see any schools, or a hospital. I didn't see anything you could call
nice or decent. Westside seemed to lack everything except poverty. Poverty was all over the place and plentiful.

We checked in at Mrs. Shaw's, a boardinghouse where out-of-town blacks stayed, famous and otherwise. Stayed for about twice
what it cost to room at one of the hotel/casinos. If we could've roomed at one of the hotel/casinos. We couldn't, so we paid
Mrs. Shaw's prices. End of discussion.

Sid got stares—a white fellow staying in a colored rooming house—and I gave the stares right back: The cat's with me, so lay
off.

We got our keys and went up to our rooms. They were unattractive.

Same as I did whenever Sid was with me in a city that wasn't progressive, I told him: “I'm a big boy. If you want to head
back to The Strip …”

Same as he did every other time, Sid waved me off, tossed out a few excuses. “Clip joints with neon trim.”

Time to kill, sitting around, we talked some about the upcoming show, did a back-and-forth about which bits I should go with.
That got followed up with a little yatter on sports, weather.

Then, Sid, from left field: “I was talking to Frances.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Yeah. You know her new record's a smash.”

“Hear it all the time.”

“Yeah.” Sid took a beat, went on with: “CBS is giving her a special.”

“That's great. She's a great kid. If anybody deserves—”

“It's a pilot, really. If it does good numbers, they're going to give her her own show, a variety thing. Fatima's all set
to sponsor.”

I rolled my tongue around in my mouth, wiped away the bad taste that was forming.

One time. One time Frances was on Sullivan—one sensational time—and now she was
this close
to becoming Ed in a dress. My jealousy broke its leash.

Sid told me: “You should call her.”

Thinking of me skipping her debut just to play Tahoe: “She's on her way. She doesn't want to hear from me.”

“She forgives you.”

That hurt some. Hurt a lot, Sid cutting deep to the truth, that I needed to be forgiven. But I did. I knew it, Fran knew it,
Sid knew it.

Sid tried to soften the comment. “Frannie knows how much working Tahoe meant to you. It's what got you to Vegas, and you and
I both know what a break it is doing shows here. So does Fran.” Pause. “She misses you, Jackie. If you would just call…”

“I did. You know I did, and I couldn't get through, so don't act like I didn't.”

“A couple of times after she did Sullivan, but other than that, how hard did you try?”

The question didn't get answered, but the truth, the truth that Sid and I both knew: not very. It wasn't fear of Fran's reaction
that kept me from calling. I knew she'd understand me picking Tahoe over her, or at least, like Sid said, I knew she would
forgive me. The thing that wouldn't let me make the call was my own shame.

I said: “Tonight's a big night. I better rehearse the act some.”

Sid didn't even bother making an effort to carry on the conversation. He said okay and left.

I didn't go over the act. I was too restless. I lay down and tried to nap. I was just restless in bed.

I went early to the Sands, leaving a message for Sid telling him where I'd run to.

At the Sands they would only let me into the Copa Room, and only through the back. For the moment that was okay. The Copa
Room was all the more anywhere I needed to be. I sat in my dressing room staring at my reflection in the makeup mirror. I
can't say how I felt inside—not like a man, but I wasn't a boy—but on the outside my face looked years worn. Permanent nicks
from my father and his fists and belt and booze bottles and everything else he'd ever hit me with. A tattoo barb-wired into
my cheek. Lines around the eyes, notches of worry, carved there night after late night spent in sleepless fret over my life,
my career. Tommy. All that, and I wasn't even thirty. The thought of how I'd look in twenty-five more years made me turn away
from myself.

A houseboy came 'round, asked if there was anything I needed.

Prime rib. Medium.

He went off to fetch it without a word.

I went out to the stage, looked over the show room—green accented with red—green walls, red chairs, green carpeting. Guys
in redjackets setting the tables. I stood looking at the empty space projecting my thoughts a few hours into the future when
the room would be packed with people eager to get entertained. Waiting to be entertained by me. Me opening for Eddie Fisher,
at least. But even at that, I was far from Harlem, from the Fourteenth Street Theater, and not just in physical distance.
I was on the opposite end of a ladder nearly impossible to climb. But I'd made it. Not to the top, but at least to this rung:
the Copa Room in the Sands in Las Vegas, Nevada. And in my heart, regardless of whatever big dreams I'd been carrying around
in my head, I knew where I was was farther than I ever really thought I could go. But I still wasn't where I wanted to be.
I wanted to be able to walk out the doors and into the casino. I wanted to be headlining. I wanted Sullivan. I wanted the
pilot Fran had. I wanted a shot at my own show.

I wanted.

I wanted.

With everything I had, I wanted more. That was the thing; for all its shine, success was nothing but a cheap back-alley score.
And same as the hot bottle cap habit I'd witnessed my pop fix so many times, the more you got, the more you wanted. The more
it
made you
want more. I could feel all my dreams getting twisted up. I could feel my desires becoming diseased: that it should matter
so much to me to be fawned on out in a casino whose only affection was for the money you dropped, that I should have envy
and jealousy for the best friend I'd ever had … I couldn't make sense of how I felt. I couldn't stand how the dope of need
made me feel. The other thing I couldn't do was quit that jag if I'd wanted to. And I didn't want to.

I went back to my dressing room. The houseboy brought 'round my rib, wished me a good show. Time was I could never have eaten
before I went up. Nerves would have worked on whatever was in my stomach every second I was onstage, made my gut sick.

Not that night.

That night I knew everything was going to be fine. The worst I had to endure in my ascent—from drunk hecklers to rednecks
wanting to put a rope around my neck to other points along the way mostly bitter and bad—was behind me. What was going to
happen in the Copa Room was the beginning of my true beginning: me hitting the stratosphere star-style.

The prime rib went down easy.

Sid was in the room. So quiet he was, I didn't even hear him enter. I looked up, he was there. I told him what I knew to be
fact:

“It's going to be a good one tonight, Sid.”

He was slow to respond. When he finally wrenched his mouth open he closed it up again without saying anything.

“What?”

Sid looked away from me.

“What is it? Fran? You hot at me over Fran? Look, I said I would call her.”

“… No.”

“I'll call her right now, do all my make-up bits. That make you happy?”

“No, Jackie. It's not… You should …” He practically turned his back to me. “Just have a good show.” Sid was hiding something.
Trying to hide something but not doing much of a job of it.

“What's going on?”

“Nothing. Nothing's going on.”

“Where'd you learn to lie, in a convent?” My biggest fear: “Did they cancel me?”

“No.”

My second biggest fear: “Are you sick? Are you o—”

“Just have a good show. The show's the thing; that's what's important. Anything else … it can wait.”

Sid had done a lot of hemming and hawing, but he hadn't answered my question about him being ill. I went to him, took him
by the shoulders, and spun him around, my compassion and concern coming out rough.

“Tell me! Whatever the hell it is, just tell me!”