Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground (28 page)

I spotted Lucifer making straight for the table where the crowned heads were seated. There was the stinko King Lamar IV and, beside him, the silky blond queen. She was smiling with incurious eyes, her tiara close to capsizing in the permanent wave of her hair. Having picked up a slab of ribs, she held it as delicately as a panpipe, then proceeded to tear flesh from bone with flashing teeth and a winsome toss of the head. Okay, I thought, so she's your grade-A shayne maidel. Even smeared with sauce like a daub of warpaint, her skin has the sheen of what? freshly minted shekels? And her coloring bespeaks generations of having kept mongrel impurities clear of the blood. She was a doll, I wouldn't dispute it, but prettiness aside, was this a face to make the dumb speak? What did this ambrosia-stuffed Queen Marva June have to do with the lady whose praises were being sung in that squalid closet off Beale?

Oh, she could flirt all right, patting her lips with a napkin to hide a yawn. She could blow a kiss with deadly accuracy, perfectly at her ease at this celestial altitude. But it still took a knocked-out shvartzer back on terra firma to make her divine.

A poke in the kidneys from the head waiter/mayor roused me. Once again I was forced to assume a variety of unnatural postures to keep from spilling the contents of my tray. By the time I recovered myself, the mayor had moved on, though not before warning me to get the lead out of my tail.

I approached the tables with the intention of filling empty place settings with plates. This was easier said than done, especially given the amount of wobbling I was prone to. Nor did it make things more manageable when I tried to brace the tray against my hip, since my arm wasn't long enough to hold it—though even if it had been, I still would have been short by at least another arm to perform effectively. I was further un-steadied by constantly having to swivel my head back and forth to keep track of Lucifer. Calamity came quickly enough, when I upset a glass of wine into the lap of one of the guests I was trying to serve.

“Watch it, boy!” snapped this horse-faced character, hair combed into a pompadour like the neck of a violin. I don't know why this should have especially hurt my feelings. He hadn't used strong language, only called me boy, which after all was what I was. But something in his tone of voice made me feel misused, bent under my serving tray like an ancestor under a pyramid stone.

Wanting somehow to erase the whole incident, I set down my tray and began to tug at the edge of the tablecloth. I meant to use it as a towel, to assist the guest in wiping the spill from his trousers. But my efforts succeeded only in dragging his dinner to the brink of the table, where it teetered just shy of following the lead of his drink. In the end all I got for my trouble was roughly shoved aside.

The band struck up a polka with a beat like a leaky faucet. Close to tears now, I was nearly at the point of letting them go, but for the prospect of spoiling my makeup. Without thinking, I stooped to lift my miserable tray again, then wondered what I was doing. Why should I stand here struggling with this ungainly burden when Lucifer had already rid himself of his?

Maybe he thought it was better to be empty-handed, gesticulating like an idiot, when you pleaded your case before a royal court. The sight was astonishing enough in itself, but even more remarkable, if the pert tilt of her head was any indication, was that the queen seemed actually amused. This went for Lamar IV as well, who'd arranged his squiffy features to approximate concentration, leaning forward lest he miss a word. Several other members of the court within hearing did likewise, all of them beaming with rapt indulgence at the nervy kid.

Had I been guilty of having too little faith? Come to think of it, why shouldn't Lucifer's patter, which worked so well on the street, be even more persuasive up here in the thinner air? Who said Michael's situation couldn't have a happy conclusion? Once convinced of the philanthropic import, what was to prevent this shining entourage from rising en masse and making an impromptu royal progress down Third Street from the Peabody to the Baby Doll Hotel? Surely stranger things had happened.

Maybe I'd sold her short, this mistress of Michael's dreams. Maybe she was a lady of charity and social concern who was personally not above slumming. She was the ultimate good sport. Or was it just that she was easily amused? Because, in the midst of the cheeky kid's song and dance, she seemed, just as easily, to have become bored. Whatever interest she'd taken in Lucifer's performance had evidently run its course. Unburdening herself of a sigh, she looked suddenly testy, her expression degenerating into an impatience bordering on outrage. Turning sharply to the left and right, she signaled that the joke had gone far enough: it was time for someone to remove the offense. This was when Lucifer chose to fall to his knees.

Almost simultaneously I heard a piercing shriek from the table beside me. I went so far as to utter an audible “Nu?” but still couldn't bring myself to look. Then I looked. A small enamel bowl, slid from my tray, had plopped upended onto the pale, strapless shoulder of a garlanded debutante.

“What's that!” she cried (a little irrationally, I thought), twisting her neck to watch rills of mayonnaise plunging down the close-pored slope of her décolletage. Because it was all I could do to be literal under the circumstances, and meaning no disrespect, I politely informed her, “It looks like slaw.”

A vein pulsed in her velvet-chokered neck, and she flushed a color that, even in the failing light, rivaled the red of the overhead lanterns. She plucked the bowl from her shoulder like some gross sucking insect and slammed it down on the table in disgust. With his napkin her escort assaulted the little mound of coleslaw that remained perched on her bare shoulder blade. As if he'd knocked off a chip that she'd placed there in defiance, this only served to rekindle her wrath. Looking around for some further means of expressing her vexation, she raised herself to give me a stinging slap across the cheek. She shrieked again to see how my complexion had come off on the palm of her hand.

Her escort got to his feet to take charge, then looked like he wasn't sure what he was taking charge of. Inclining his head, which was the pink of strawberry ice cream in the inverted cone of his party hat, he frowned as he examined my cheek. I could feel how the young lady's fingers must have left their half-chevron of parallel markings, which the gent seemed to find familiar but couldn't quite place. He leaned back for a better appraisal, giving my nostrils a rest from his essence of Wild-root and Sen-Sen. Then he folded his arms across his belly, cradled snugly in the sling of a watered silk cummerbund.

“We wheel get to the bottom a thee-us, son,” he said, drawling so mellifluously that I couldn't tell whether he meant to threaten or console. Nevertheless he seemed pleased with himself, as if he'd spoken for all honorable men. He was building toward such a fine indignation that it was almost a shame to see him so upstaged, but at that moment the debacle behind the royal table had captured the attention of the entire banquet.

Lucifer had finally gone too far. He'd grabbed Queen Marva June by the arm—intending what? To topple her from her throne and drag her out by the hair? With the kind of hold usually associated with victims of drowning, one of the waiters had locked his hands around Lucifer's chest. He was lifting the kid from his knees in an effort to detach him from the white woman. It was an action repeated from his side by King Lamar himself, who, without leaving his chair, had taken advantage of her predicament to embrace his beleaguered queen about the bust. He was himself clasped from behind by a concerned peer of the realm, a spruce young man who looked as if he in turn wanted assistance—someone to help him hang on to the king, or at least to correct the cant of his bow tie. It was a full-fledged tug-of-war, in the middle of which stood the moonlighting mayor of Beale Street, his comportment, as ever, unimpeachable. Trying to pry loose the colored kid's fingers from the lady's alabaster wrist, he might have been presiding at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. His attitude suggested it was all in a night's work.

Meanwhile the harried young queen was no longer making a pretense of self-control. Her eyes were utterly given over to horror. Her immoderate whoops and yelps had stopped the band.

So this was it, the absurd and pathetic end of the wisenheimer's once illustrious career. Oh Lucifer, that it should have come to this! The banquet guests would no doubt agree that lynching was too good for him. They would probably pull him to pieces, like the popular musician in one of my cousin's stories, with their bare hands. They would afterwards wear his dried parts, the party favors from this red-letter occasion, as lucky charms on their bracelets and key chains. Thus resigned to the worst that might befall him, I watched helplessly as the twin was made to let go of the object of his brother's desire. I saw, though it didn't sink in, how he wrenched himself out of the clutches of his would-be captors, leaving his empty jacket in their hands. It wasn't until he'd hotfooted it past me, chiding, “Mistah Harry, you slow as mule blood!” on the way, that I understood Lucifer had broken free.

Taking heart, I said so long to my serving tray, which I let fall with a resounding clatter to the patio tiles. Before I had managed to jar myself into motion, however, I was overtaken by a pack of puffing gentleman guests. Galloping after the wise guy, they were throwing off any impediments to speed, shedding tuxedo jackets and sashes, letting paper hats fly where they might. Several of the waiters, dispatched by their captain, had also sprinted forward. They kicked out their legs in suspiciously stylized strides, after a fashion that looked more suited to a cakewalk than to giving chase. But even they had a head start on me in pursuing the twin.

This is not to say that anyone was close to catching him. Making a beeline across the footlighted dance floor, he swerved only to avoid one of the escorts (who, in his attempt to tackle the elusive twin, had skidded on his boiled shirtfront across the floor). He hurtled a railing and cut across a corner of the mock-up piazza while band members snatched their instruments out of his way. Shagging it over the gravel that bordered the formal terrace, he lifted his knees like he might be about to take flight—and did. He bounded into the air, landing kerplunk on the tin-plated parapet that surrounded the hotel roof.

Backlit now by the huge neon sign straddling the hotel's opposing wings, Lucifer struck his stance so purposefully—jerking his cap out of a back pocket to pull it on—that the host of pursuers were brought to a sudden halt.

I figured that this was a calculated effect. What was also calculated was the way that he looked behind him toward oblivion, then back toward the hostile mob, as if weighing alternatives. The kid sometimes pushed make-believe to such lengths, though, that you couldn't tell it from the real thing. My kishkes having tied themselves in knots, I cried out, “Don't you dare!”

But mine was not so dissimilar from all the other angrily raised voices. Apparently set on preventing him from cheating them out of his retribution, the banquet guests were bellowing in varying degrees of rancor. Much as I wanted to reach the kid, like everyone else I was glued to the spot. Still, I was a little encouraged that, while I couldn't see his face too clearly, I thought I could make out a trace of his devilish grin. Then he turned his back on the whole affair and was gone.

My ribs slammed shut like a trap sprung over my heart. Surging forward along with the gentleman guests, who cautioned their dates to stay put, I stumbled over the gravel to the parapet. Leaning against the bird-fouled tin for support, I hid my face in my hand. I was in no hurry to look down the long stories toward the crumpled body at the bottom of the shaft. Flanked as I was on either side by irate tuxedos, I still thought I could hear him calling: “Mistah Harry, you bout to miss the boat!”

I uncovered my eyes, though my brain took its time in corroborating what they saw. He was waving his cap at me from a fire escape catty-corner to the Plantation Roof, across a chasm some ten feet below.

“You birdbrain!” I started to yell at him. “You pinhead stovelid jungle-bunny momzer coon!” I was that glad to see him. Removing my glasses to wipe my eyes, I delivered myself of a gut-wrenching sob. I clutched the wall again, braced against the event of some joker's congratulating me on a fine choice of epithets. But everyone else was too busy spitting curses of their own.

That's when I began to think—as the wise guy still waited, urging me to take the leap—that I wasn't so glad to see Lucifer after all. He had some nerve inviting me to risk my neck, especially when I could just as easily stay where I was, under cover of the general acrimony. Across my cheek I could still feel the debutante's smarting handprint, exposing me as neither one thing nor another. If I wanted, I'd have bet I could back up crabwise into the kitchen; I could wipe off the blackface, put on a funny hat, and come out to join the party. Having passed for a darkie, I could certainly impersonate my own kind, more or less.

Lucifer shrugged a mighty shrug and started down the fire escape alone. Myself, I began to slink backwards, meaning to take advantage of the foofooraw and disappear. But what I was doing, I was coming to my senses, I was losing my mind—take your pick. I was backing up to give myself room to take a run at the wall.

While you couldn't exactly say I bounded onto it, I got a leg up just the same. I raised myself slowly until I was standing erect on the tin, which shuddered like distant thunder from my trembling. I was leaning out over dizzy nothing, shouting at Lucifer to hold his horses, wishing that someone would for God's sake stop me before I did something rash. They should try and stop me if they dared.

Then my legs were churning in midair for a purchase. My waiter's jacket billowed about me, providing resistance (I could have sworn it) against the velocity of my descent. How else could you explain the way that drop seemed to last some considerable fraction of forever? Long enough for people gazing out of hotel windows to remark in passing the nearly aerodynamic boy.