Cubop City Blues (18 page)

Someone brought Johnny a pair of sneakers that were too large for him, and they got back into the paddy wagon and drove to Haulover. They walked across the wide beach toward the nudists, to whom the policemen must have appeared like Nazi storm troopers—two big American men in black uniforms and a smaller Cuban American trailing behind, the two balseros hidden among them. The volleyball players stopped batting their ball and several of the nudists began to gather their things.

At the water's edge Johnny noticed that the
Ana María
had disappeared. He looked up and down the beach and back to the dunes that separated the road from the beach, even out to sea, thinking perhaps the tide had taken it. By this point the old man with the ponytail had come over to the troopers, and before he could speak to them, Johnny asked him in his frantic movie English where his boat was.

The Coast Guard sank it, the old man said.

What? Johnny said, though it came out sounding like
Guat
.

The Cuban American officer explained that that was what the Coast Guard did with all vessels that came illegally from Cuba. But Johnny should be happy. He had touched American soil. That meant he could stay. Wet foot, dry foot, remember that when you go before la migra. Wet foot, dry foot, he repeated slowly so Johnny could catch it.

Johnny didn't want to catch anything except a break. Crossing the Florida Straits had been his obsession for ten years. Now his obsession was gone along with the
Ana María
. He was here on solid ground. Wet foot, dry foot. He stood still a moment pondering whatever it was fate had prepared for him. He had set out for Miami and instead landed among a bunch of crazy nudists. ¡Qué cosa! Still in handcuffs, he started walking down the beach away from the group, increasing his gait as he heard the policemen's voices yelling to stop, and then he broke into a gallop, clopping along in his big sneakers until they slid from his feet and he could run freely. The voices got dimmer and finally stopped altogether. He felt like he had escaped demons wanting to pull him back, and just as he looked over his shoulder to see where they were, he tripped and landed with his cheek on the sand. For a moment he was stunned. He could see the waves moving up the beach and reaching his left arm; he could hear seagulls squawking overhead and the far-off hum of traffic. He could feel his breath as it moved in and out of his lungs and under that his heart beating loud and deep like a drum just before it breaks. He turned to face the sky. He'd never felt so tired. He closed his eyes a moment and heard Miami calling. He stood and wriggled his arms until the handcuffs slid from his wrists, then waded into the water, and swam toward her with long easy strokes. In his sleep he was swimming to Miami.

THE SPANISH
TINGE

J
elly Roll was with a woman when the Cuban showed up at his door looking for work. The Cuban was holding a horn case in his left hand. The right, long and graceful, dangled at his side and swung back and forth grazing against his pants.

At this hour? Jelly Roll asked. It's one o'clock. Good thing I'm done.

I'm not, the woman said.

Give me a minute, Jelly Roll said over his shoulder. Then he turned to the Cuban and asked his name.

The Cuban had not eaten very well in his life. His cheeks were hollow and his jacket hung loosely from his shoulders, pant cuffs barely below his ankles. He was wearing somebody else's suit.

Adalberto Fuentes, the Cuban said.

That's some name.

Yes, the Cuban said, looking beyond Jelly Roll to the woman. She was caramel colored with straight hair and full lips and she was very beautiful. The sheets were pulled all the way up to her neck.

A-dal-ber-to, the Cuban repeated. I need a job.

I'll call you Bert. Sugar, meet Bert, Jelly Roll said. He looked into the Cuban's eyes. Come by the club tomorrow at five. See if you can play that thing.

Adalberto turned on his heels and, in his elation, walked the three miles to Franklin Street, where all the Cubans stayed. There were flute players and piano players and bass men. Couple of violinists, half a dozen horn men. Adalberto acted like he was the only cornet player among them. He was cocky and ignorant, but he had a natural talent that was bigger than he knew how to handle. Two weeks in town and already he had an audition with Jelly Roll Morton.

Next day Adalberto was at the Toucan Cafe at 5
pm
sharp. The place was closed, door locked. He lit a cigarette and waited. He looked right, then left. Children playing down the street, an old man on a horse-drawn cart clopping by, a couple of men lounging at the corner. It was humid hot and he could feel beads of sweat trickling down his back. He walked around to the back door, then returned to the front. By 6
pm
he figured Jelly Roll had forgotten about him. That copper-colored lady ensnared him in her trap, Adalberto thought, and just as he was about to leave, a man in a white shirt and black bow tie came to the door and opened the place up.

You seen Jelly Roll? Adalberto asked in his best English.

What? the man said, scrunching his face.

Je-lly-Roll-Mor-ton.

He ain't here tonight. Jelly Roll never works Tuesday. Where you from?

Cu-ba, Adalberto said. I come here to play for Jelly Roll. He told me.

No Jelly Roll tonight, said the man, waving his hands sideways in front of his face. Or tomorrow. He's on the road to Chicago. Horns a dime a dozen in this town. Dime a dozen.

I can play for you.

The man gave a quick forced laugh like he'd just heard a bad joke.

I'm just a bartender, man. Tuesday's off night. You go ahead and play if you want. Keep me entertained while I set up. You better be good.

Adalberto wanted to say, Nobody's better than me, but he kept his mouth shut and played his cornet as if he were playing for Jelly Roll himself, and when he was done, the bartender repeated, Lots of good horns in this town. Nevertheless, he gave Adalberto the address of a club a few blocks away that might give him some work. Adalberto walked there and played again, his lips warm now, fingers loose, and the manager said he would try him out.

Ten dollars a week, plus a take of the door after one month. You don't show up the piano and you don't show up the bass player and you don't show up the clarinet. Otherwise, there's trouble and you're out of here in a whistle blow.

Adalberto did as he was told and became a sideman at the Palace Bar. Asked for nothing, lived like a rat in a falling-down excuse for a rooming house run by a deaf woman from Cienfuegos who didn't care the least about music, or cleanliness. Days he slept and lounged and ate; nights he spent at the Palace, getting thicker, deeper, broader in his playing, to the point where the other guys let him solo occasionally and he'd blare out sounds so hot big smiles opened in the crowd's faces, and they closed their eyes and moved to the music. Horn's supposed to lead. The bass had no choice but to follow along and the piano played the harmony. Afterward, Adalberto wasn't quite sure what had happened with the music but knew it was good.

One day in the middle of his solo he looked down at the audience and saw Jelly Roll Morton himself sitting at one of the front tables with a beautiful lady. Adalberto missed a note, which he thought no one noticed because it was in the middle of a riff that was going all over the place, and he made up for it by blowing so hard the wineglasses rattled, or seemed to, and the people winced and cupped their ears, wanting to hear and not hear at once. When the band was done with the set, the bass player suggested they go down and pay their respects to Jelly Roll. Adalberto turned him down saying if Jelly Roll wants to say hello, he can come to the bar.

What are you saying, boy? You don't treat Jelly Roll like that. He's the man.

Adalberto was still young, but he'd lost his innocence there in New Orleans—everybody did—and he'd more than made up for it with petulance. So while the other musicians hung around the famous man, Adalberto sat at the bar and ordered a beer and struck up a conversation with the bartender.

Lake Ponchartrain. He said that right. His English was a lot better now. Never seen a lake that big. Bartender said no. Have you seen a river as big as the Mississippi? Bartender said no. Have you ever heard a trumpet as good as mine? Bartender didn't answer.

I have, Adalberto heard a voice say behind him, and when he turned, he saw Jelly Roll, the beautiful lady hanging on his arm, the diamond on his front tooth gleaming with the light of the bar. The man loved his diamonds. You missed a note and tried to hide it with that riff. I know a horn player would have gone with that note to see where it led, then brought it back on a leash.

Who's that? What's his name?

Name don't matter. Always somebody better, Jelly Roll said. Then he kissed the lady on the jaw, right under the ear, turned her around, and left the room.

Jelly Roll was there the following night and the next, right on through the weekend. Never came back after that, however, and Adalberto was not to see him again for many years. Meanwhile he made the rounds of New Orleans clubs, got a girlfriend, lost her, got another, and left her because she wanted to get married. Music is my wife, he told her, feeling stupid and miserly afterward. He played with dozens of groups, doing parades and funerals, street competitions, most of which he won, except when he went up against Keppard and Emanuel Perez. Then he realized what Jelly Roll knew—there's always somebody better. He went back to Cuba to visit and was a big hit there, playing the swing with a little 6/8 measure and a blues syncopation he'd sneak in when he could, driving bandleaders crazy and audiences wild.

All kinds of things happening in New Orleans, he told his friends in Havana.

All kinds of things happening right here, his friends said.

You can't play the white clubs here, he said.

How about New Orleans?

White, tan, and black. Don't matter, long as you can play.

He told them about Buddy Bolden, best horn in the world. I heard he's gone crazy. Told them about Armstrong, a boy of fourteen, who was playing it up in the whorehouses of Storyville. Told them about Jelly Roll himself and what he'd done with piano rags. Then he had to explain what rags were: contradanza con chu-chu. Chattanooga choo-choo. Left hand striding, right hand keeping the melody.

His friends were impressed but not awed. They played with him and tried to outdo his innovations. Cuban music in those days was just coming out of danzón, mostly because people could dance to it slow and regal as if they were French nobility and not the white trash that had come from Spain or the free blacks that worked themselves out of the cane fields and wanted to be whiter than white. When the montuno part of the danzón came on, which is what the musicians really went for, the couples would stop while the ladies fanned themselves and the men talked nonsense with one another, waiting for the danceable parts to return.

The musicians listened. In the montuno was the mambo; in the montuno was the cha-cha-chá, although no one knew it at the time, and it occurred to them to stretch the montuno out until the dancers got tired of waiting for the slower movement and started dancing to the music, no matter that it was faster and more manic and made them sweat like they were in the jungle, el monte, leaping like lizards and mounting the women. That's where the word montuno comes from to begin with. Caballo, ¡qué te monte el santo! It was montuno they were after. The rest of the danzón was nineteenth century—the contredanse, the quadrille. That's not what Cuba was about.

Adalberto went back to New Orleans with what he'd learned, wanting to blow the winds of change through his lips. He began to play more brazenly, as if his life depended on it, and just like he'd amazed his friends in Cuba with the new American music, he amazed the New Orleans crowd with his montunos, playing in and out of ragtime, pushing through to something new no one had heard before, the habanera docking into port as it had done in Spain and France, where Bizet picked it up, and in Buenos Aires, where it blended with the milonga and became tango.

And then, when he was playing the kind of music that might make him famous and respected and, above all, rich, love struck. Love disguised as a soft dove, a kid glove. She was a beauty from Puerto Rico, a tiny brown-colored thing with slanted eyes and thin lips that betrayed some Oriental ancestry, and the loveliest swaying and grinding—when she wanted to grind—hips in the whole world. Meek and sharp with a brain like a sponge and a heart like a well.

All this came to him the first time he saw her, dancing with a Creole man in a tuxedo whose face was bloated with drink and drugs. Adalberto stopped his playing, no matter that he was in the middle of a riff somewhere between Havana and New Orleans, lowered his cornet, and started snapping the fingers of his right hand, keeping the beat like that, like that, his eyes fixed on her. The rest of the band put down their instruments and listened to his fingers snapping in clave, waiting to see what came next. Nothing did except Adalberto's stare, which the girl returned, ignoring the Creole man's bloodshot killer eyes. Adalberto wasn't even blinking—snap snap snap, snap snap—the audience barely breathing, the girl with the China eyes letting her mouth open into a sweet-and-sassy smile. The Creole man turned to her and had some words, took her off the dance floor, threw money on the table, and led her out. On his way he leaned over the manager, Little Red, who nodded officiously and gave a quick slicing look at Adalberto. Adalberto brought his cornet to his lips and resumed playing, the rest of the band did, too, and the crowd exploded. But something had changed. His playing had grown plaintive. Part of him was outside the club, chasing after the girl with the China eyes.

After the show, when the musicians were sitting at the bar, Little Red told Adalberto he was done at the club, paid him the twenty-five dollars he was owed, and said loud enough for the others to hear that he'd just made eyes at China, the girlfriend of one of the most powerful men in town.

Who's that man? Adalberto asked.

Bob Rowe, said the trombonist, the King of the Tenderloin. And that girl you were eyeing was his whore. Then the trombonist said to the manager that if Adalberto went, he went, too, a sentiment echoed by the bass player. Only the young clarinetist, who'd joined them a month before and had his own ambitions, remained silent.

Finding himself without a band, and not just a band, but the hottest young band in town, Little Red took back his words.

You back in, but you keep messing with his girls, you going to find yourself with a knife in your belly one of these days. Give me back the money.

That's my money, Adalberto said, pocketing the twenty-five. You owe it to me. No sin looking at a girl.

Every sin in the book in those eyes, Little Red said.

The clarinetist, who was barely seventeen, chuckled. Every sin in the book, he repeated. Every sin.

Adalberto went home feeling like there was a fly buzzing around him just beyond his reach. He spent a restless night, waking to China's eyes and her smile, then falling back asleep. It was too good to be a simple dream and not a portent.

The band played on a couple of weeks to the same upbeat crowds, and for that Little Red was grateful. Then Bob Rowe appeared again with the Puerto Rican girl and another wrapped around his other arm. After the set, Adalberto walked himself slowly over to Rowe's table and introduced himself to China, ignoring Rowe and the other girl. That was trouble, and when Little Red noticed—the man had eyes at the back of his head—he rushed to the table and ordered a bottle of champagne on the house. Rowe was not a strong or a particularly large man, but he had olive green eyes that went somewhere beyond hatred to the other side of the Milky Way. Voodoo eyes, they were called in those days. He'd killed men and he'd killed women. Adalberto sat at the table unasked and flirted with China while Bob Rowe turned his champagne glass slowly and listened to the backup band, saying nothing to Adalberto until just before the second set, at which time he leaned over and whispered, I know just where it's going. Won't kill you, won't even make you bleed much, but every time you take a deep breath you gonna remember my name and how it was you stopped blowing so hard.

Bob Rowe never returned to the club. The musicians forgot about his words to Adalberto and continued to bring down the house every night. Already their reputation had spread beyond New Orleans, and there were a number of musicians, some envious, some just curious, coming to hear them play, especially the Cuban with the wild horn. Little Red finally got to relax a bit, but not so much that he didn't withhold their salaries as long as he could, not because he couldn't afford to pay them, but because that way he could keep them at the club instead of losing them to one of the fancier places uptown. They were young and more in need of adulation than money. They survived on tips, got free drinks at the bar after sessions, and had access to girls in Storyville at a discount when they needed them.