A Toast Before Dying (18 page)

I heard the front door close but waited several minutes before I rolled out from under the bed and tiptoed to the bathroom.

I was debating whether to flush the toilet when I heard the sound again.

It can’t be! Another key? Is someone else coming in? The place had more damn traffic than Penn Station. Why can’t they let the dead rest in peace?

The door closed quietly and the same footsteps—I was sure it was the same person—were now moving quickly toward the bathroom. I jumped away from the door and stepped into the tub behind the heavy shower curtain.

It was a man who flipped the lid and muttered under his breath at the unflushed toilet.

I held my breath and crouched low like a runner, feeling the cold porcelain against one knee and the palms of my hands.

 … If he opens this curtain.

 … If he opens the curtain, girl, don’t let him catch you praying. Do what you gotta do!
The whisper was strong, yet calm. It faded then whispered again:
Use what’s at hand
.

I didn’t smile but now I was ready to spring up like a cat, knowing that my weight and his surprise would be enough to knock him off his feet. I didn’t need to go a Tyson ten, just one fast fist to his face would be all I needed to get me in the wind. I crouched lower and felt the sweat curl down my arms.

Steady, Mali. Steady …

The footsteps walked slowly past the tub, the light went off, and the bathroom door closed.

I remained still for several minutes, until my knee started to complain. Finally, I eased up and was about to step out of the tub when one curtain was suddenly snatched back. In the dark, I grabbed the other curtain—they were heavy damask designer numbers—and vaulted out against the man, heaving the curtain over his head and arms.

“My God! What the hell—? Who the hell—?”

I managed to knock the breath out of him as we fell to the floor and he hit his head on the tile. By the time I’d sprinted to the door, he was groaning, trying to stagger to his feet.

Outside in the hallway, I ran for the stairs and was through the courtyard and out in the street in the time it took to dial 911. If indeed he dialed 911. Whoever it was probably did not belong there any more than I did. That’s why the lights were out.

I walked fast down 116th Street without looking back and lost myself in the crowd of Lenox Avenue.

Dad came up from his study when I walked in. “Alvin called just five minutes ago. Still having a good time and doesn’t want to come home. But I told him he has to be home by the last week in August. Boy needs time to wind down before thinking about school.” He paused. “You look kinda out of it. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing that a dry martini wouldn’t fix.”

He went to the bar, fixed two drinks, and handed me one. I tried not to show my nervousness. “I’ll be glad when he comes home,” I said, not sounding too convincing. The time will fly by and Kendrick will probably still be in jail. I had no idea, no plan about what to do next. Suddenly I felt too tired to enjoy my drink. I put the glass down and was about to retreat to my room, when Dad said, “So, how’s Adele?”

I picked up the glass again and settled in on the sofa. “She’s fine,” I said. “Talked a bit about Thea, but
mostly about Dessie. I didn’t know Dessie was Thea’s grandmother. Or that she’d once danced at the Cotton Club.”

He lifted his glass and took a swallow before he answered, “Yep.”

“Did you know Dessie?”

“Slightly.”

“How come you never mentioned it.”

“ ’Cause you never asked.”

“Come on, Dad. What’s up?”

Another minute passed before he made up his mind. Finally he said, “Story is Dessie was an original Cotton Club Cutie whose bills had been paid by her downtown daddy, and when he closed his eyes without mentioning her in his will, she’d had to sell her silver Cadillac and get a real job. Finally ended up on the other side of that knife-scarred counter of the Half-Moon serving two-for-one shots of watered vodka for the next forty-three years. But I never mentioned her.”

“Why not?”

He moved to the bar and mixed another drink and then leaned over to refill my glass. When he spoke again, his voice was low and his speech deliberate.

“Did you know that your mother’s mother had wanted to be a dancer too? When she came to New York as a young girl, her head was filled with all the tales about Harlem and all the fabulous places. She’d heard about Connie’s Inn, the Club Sudan, Smalls’ Paradise, but most of all she wanted to dance at the Cotton Club. Dance was going to be her life. Here was a young
girl who could out-strut anything on two legs. And she was beautiful.

“One day she walked into that club, and not understanding the stares and snickers, asked for a job. The gangsters didn’t even let her try out. They looked at one another, and at her skin, and then offered her a job cleaning the ladies’ room. One told her she might even be too dark for that.

“She walked out and never danced again. Not even at the Savoy. She eventually finished school and became a teacher. But the Cotton Club? That name was never mentioned in her house. When your mother was growing up, she had to promise to complete her education first before she got serious about a dance career.

“Dessie was a good dancer, so I heard. That’s all I can say because that’s all I know. As far as I’m concerned, the less said about the old Cotton Club, the better.”

I finished my drink in silence, understanding that this talk would not happen again. I hadn’t seen my father so sad and angry in a long time.

When he left, I changed into fresh jeans and a T-shirt and went around to Charleston’s to return the picks.

“You finished fast,” he said when I walked in. “And look like you peeped in somebody’s grave.”

“Not quite,” I said. I leaned against the counter, wanting to fold my arms and rest my head.

“I need two orders of ribs with extra everything and extra sauce,” I finally said.

He took two large containers from the overhead
shelf, glanced at me again, and then pointed to the sign next to the one that read:

A smaller sign read:

He tapped the smaller sign. “Mali, three orders in one day ain’t good, Honey. Even if it
is
my food. What’s goin’ on with you?”

“Nothing I can’t handle. Besides, one of these is for my hairdresser.”

Now he really stared at me—and at my afro, which had probably shrunk from the sweat of my earlier encounter and was now plastered against my scalp like tight little pea pods.

“Your hairdresser. Mm-hmm. When was the last time you was there?”

“Please, Charleston, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“Not tonight. I’m too tired.”

He packed the orders and I paid him and walked over to Eighth Avenue. It was nearly ten o’clock but the lights were still on and Bertha was working on a customer. Before she said hello, she said, “You brought me something from Charleston.”

She moved away from the woman in the chair and came over to inspect the bag. “Damn, this smells good.
You know how he got his name? Years ago, he was on the lam for six months and got tagged in Charleston for walkin’ against the light. Ain’t that somethin’. Gettin’ tripped over a little thing like that.”

Bert turned to the woman and put the last curls in place, misted her hair with spray sheen, and handed her a mirror. The woman gazed without comment, paid her bill, and left.

Bert counted the money and sighed.

“Not even a nickel tip. I was just about to close when she stepped in claimin’ she had a hot date. I shoulda flipped the sign in her face.”

She flipped the
CLOSED
sign now and opened the package.

“Ain’t seen you in a few days, Mali.”

“No. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do now that Flyin’ Home is dead. He was the one who could’ve helped Kendrick.”

“Maybe,” Bert said, spreading her napkin in her lap, “you oughtta go back and look at Thea again.”

“Last time I looked, she was dead also,” I said.

“I mean, look again at her life.”

“Or look around it. I had a short meeting with Teddi Lovette yesterday.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Early on, she had wanted to find out stuff about Thea also. Then yesterday she calls me downtown to the theater to ask me to forget the whole deal. I think the woman has some mental problems and so does her mama.”

Bert did not answer and we ate in silence. Then she shook her head.

“I think,” she said, eyeing her forkful of collards as if she expected to find a worm sautéed among the green, “I think Kendrick finally told her.”

“Told her what?”

“That he wasn’t interested in her. That’s probably why she wants you to back off now.”

W
ith all the other stuff happening, I’d had no time to think about Dr. Thomas’s party. On Wednesday morning, I sat at the breakfast table staring at the money near my plate, wondering if it was a mirage. Then I looked at Dad again.

“Do you mean it?”

“Of course. Consider it a bonus.”

“But three hundred dollars to buy a dress. I—”

“I want you to wear something decent this evening. You know how Blaine Thomas is. He likes everything just so, especially his guests.”

“But I’m not a guest. I’m his neighbor. We’re his neighbors, his friends.”

“Mali, this is a political fund-raiser and this friend’ll be in a dinner jacket and this friend doesn’t want to see his daughter in that threadbare black dress.”

Threadbare. My little black dress. What could I say. I was too shocked to be angry and had too little
time to drool over my windfall. It was 10
A.M.
The party was scheduled for 7
P.M.
I sailed out the door and forty-five minutes later was standing in front of a full-length mirror in Gourd Chips, an Afrocentric clothing shop on Court Street in Brooklyn. The black-and-white hand-painted design on a flared cotton jacket and wrap pants beckoned as soon as I stepped through the door. “I’ll take it,” I said, turning a final time.

Then I doubled back to Mart 125 for a pair of sterling-silver hoops I had salivated over for two months. By 5
P.M.
I was home, lying across the bed, my eyelids draped with fresh cucumber slices, and Stevie Wonder’s
Songs in the Key of Life
flowing softly in the background.

I lay there thinking about Anne Michaels and what she’d be wearing. I also thought about Rita, the senator’s assistant. I wondered, with her new hairstyle, if she would have the same rhinestone glasses she’d worn in the Pink Fingernail.

Dr. Thomas lived two doors away, and it was five after seven when I rang the bell, congratulating myself for being early. The door opened and already present was that small fanatic band who had dedicated themselves to stamping out the last vestiges of CPT (colored people’s time, where one arrived so late the guests were already leaving),

I smiled, imagining them poised at the sound of the starter’s pistol, then charging down the block to ring
the bell at exactly Seven Pee-em on the Dot. They were the folks who took all the fun out of “arriving.”

One did not walk through the door of Blaine Thomas’s house so much as one
arrived
—the way movie stars did it in those grainy black-and-white thirties fantasies: pausing in grand foyers to deposit pearl-handled walking sticks, Dracula-inspired capes, furs, and other necessary accessories into the arms of faceless factotums.

There was no thirties drama tonight. The only hired help were the lone brass-buttoned bartender standing at parade rest behind a mahogany bar stacked with an impressive pyramid of liquor and a chef from Copeland’s Catering carefully adding the finishing touches to an exquisite buffet.

So one arrived in the foyer with its gallery of art and moved on to the double parlor with its bleached-oak spiral staircase and a glass table where the political factotums waited to accept the checks necessary for Senator Michaels’s campaign.

Dr. Thomas had a large psychiatric practice and he had helped me through the difficult period following Benin’s death. He and Dad had been friends for forty years, but I wasn’t sure how long he’d known Edwin Michaels.

Dad’s music drifted from the rear parlor, and I moved toward the sound. He sat at the piano, fingers floating over the keys.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

I kissed him on the forehead. “Thanks, Dad.”

“For what?”

“Foresight,” I said, and moved back to the front
parlor. Mildred Thomas, small and elegant in a pleated column of yellow silk, waved to me. At fifty-something with round wire frames and close-cut hair, she looked more like Dr. Thomas’s daughter than his wife.

“You look gorgeous,” she said, and I felt grateful to Dad again.

The door opened and Mildred walked toward it, pulling me along. When Rita stepped in, I scarcely recognized her.

“This is Rita Bayne, Senator Michaels’s assistant.”

“We met earlier, a week and a half ago in the Pink Fingernail,” I said, marveling at Miss Viv’s handiwork. Rita’s hair was highlighted with auburn and pinned away from her face, and her brows were brown crescents above kohl-lined lids. She blinked rapidly and I guessed that the rhinestone glasses had been left at home and the contacts were something she was struggling to get used to. Her black knit dress downplayed most of the usual structural defects, and a small black crocheted bag hung from her left wrist.

“I remember you,” she said. “I remember your eyes. Unusual.” She continued to blink, and I nodded and smiled. And kept smiling, refusing to confirm if the pale gray coloring was inherited from my mother or bought from Bloomingdale’s Optical.

“Come,” said Mildred, escorting us to the bar, where the waiter had the blender churning out a line of piña coladas.

The bell rang and Mildred excused herself. Dad’s low-keyed notes floated just above the hum of conversation as more people arrived. I watched old friends pause
to admire additions to the Thomases’ art collection and newcomers move quickly to absorb everything twice in their short visit.