Joplin's Ghost (41 page)

Kai hovered over Phoenix, so big that he blocked the light from the lamp on the end table. “Lil’ mama, you did great. You a’ight? You need anything? If you do, you know I’m here to drop the philosophy on you,” Kai said, his eyes unarmed. He offered a meaty, thoroughly tattooed arm so Phoenix could shake his hand. He must genuinely like her, Carlos thought. Kai didn’t look like anybody’s kiss-ass flunkie.

Phoenix nodded, grasping Kai’s hand. “Yeah, I know that, Krispy Kreme. It’s all good. I’ll lay off the ghost stuff. I’m sorry.”

Phoenix sounded more like herself than ever, suddenly. For the sake of Phoenix’s friendship with Kai, Carlos hoped the rumors about this man were wrong. If the rumors were right, Kai was a hit man, and he’d killed for G-Ronn before. According to lore, back when G-Ronn was a rising entrepreneur in the crack cocaine business, G-Ronn had told Kai to gun down a courier who’d cheated him, and that courier had turned out to be DJ Train’s brother. Or something like that. Carlos felt torn about what to say to Phoenix, since Kai was her friend.

And we know rumors are never wrong, are they, Carlos? Of course not.

The room’s gentle doorbell sounded. Since Carlos was closest to the door, he turned to answer it. Probably another reporter, he thought.

“Yo, hold up, fool,” Kai said, and brushed past him, deliberate contact. “I’ll get that.”

“Who are you, the Secret Service?” Carlos said before he could stop himself. Kai turned to give him a slow gaze that shot ice into Carlos’s spine. Carlos mustered a smile to show he was kidding—
ha ha, get it, dawg?
—and Kai walked on. Silently, Carlos cursed his own stupidity. He had to remember who the hell he might be talking to.

After the door opened, Kai bellowed, “What
WHAT?
Hey, O. G., where you been?”

Sarge’s voice came next. “Here and there, man. Everywhere but in trouble. Listen, this is my wife, Leah Rosen-Smalls…”

There was a party outside Phoenix’s door. Sarge entered hand in hand with a thickset white woman with active eyes and silver-streaked dark hair. She was carrying a bouquet of shiny helium balloons. Phoenix had her mother’s nose and jawline, Carlos realized. Leah Smalls wore a purple batik tunic, loose matching pants and earthy, open-toed sandals. An artistic soul, Carlos could see. Behind her came a lanky black man who looked vaguely familiar, and a white couple with a man who was Carlos’s height but portly, his hair windblown, and a blond woman with an athlete’s build she had preserved into middle age.
Gloria’s mother
.

Sarge saw Carlos, but shifted his gaze and walked right past him, and Leah Rosen-Smalls nodded cordially, not knowing who he was. The tall black guy, whose slightly receding hairline made him look a little older than Carlos, was dressed in a bright cobalt suit, black T-shirt and a large gold medallion. He gave Carlos a soul shake as he passed. “Hey, man, how you doin’? I’m Malcolm Smalls.” He said his name like he knew it meant something, and didn’t wait for Carlos to respond before he moved on, introducing himself to Kai the same way as if he had a deadline to meet everyone. One of Phoenix’s brothers, Carlos figured.
That
was why he looked familiar: He was a less bulky, smoother-faced version of Sarge.

When the group reached the living room, Phoenix shrieked and laughed in a way he had never heard. “Oh my
Goooooddddddd,
I didn’t know you guys were coming today! Mommm
eeeeeeeeee
.” She sounded more like a child at that moment than she had when he’d met her.

Serena and Gloria came out to join them, and the room was laughter and exclamations, surprise and delight, love and history. Voices babbled as they exchanged stories, commented on endless details of personal appearance—hair, clothes, and physique—and then agreed on how happy they were to see each other. They reminded Carlos of his family on
Mami
’s side, all abandon.

“Phoenix, do you
eat
on the road? This size doesn’t look healthy for you,” Leah Smalls said after their dancing hug. She and Phoenix draped their arms across each other’s shoulders, touching noses.

“Oh, Mom, please,” Phoenix said, although Carlos thought she
did
look too thin.

“…This is
sooooo
perfect,” Gloria’s mother told Gloria, “because we stopped by the box-office on the way, and we lucked into orchestra seats for
Avenue Q
for eight
tonight
…”

Malcolm Smalls hung near the edge of the circle, talking to Manny: “Yeah, my dad’s been sayin’ we need to put our heads together…”

Manny nodded, reaching for a business card. “Yeah, man, yeah. Sarge has told me you’ve got great contacts, and we need promotion help in the Southeast. Maybe you, me and my boss Katrice can sit down…”

A family reunion and networking session all in one,
Carlos thought.

Everyone belonged here but him.

Carlos tried to catch Phoenix’s eye, but she was at the center of the circle, and as soon as one person was finished with her, someone else wanted to give her a hug. He would leave her to her family, he decided. He could use some lunch. He would write a note and slip out.

Carlos was just returning from the bedroom, where he’d gone to retrieve the leather satchel with his Palm Pilot and notebooks when he almost walked into Sarge, just beyond the bedroom doorway. Sarge had been waiting for him. Sarge nodded back toward the bedroom. “Talk to you?” Sarge said.

Carlos couldn’t think of anything good that would be waiting for him behind a closed door with Sarge. “I’m just on my way out.”

“Then don’t let me stop you.”

Carlos walked past Sarge, careful not to violate his personal space. He hoped to catch Phoenix’s eye as he passed her, but she was in the middle of what seemed like a tentative embrace with her brother, almost at arm’s length, both of them eager to separate.

Carlos sensed Sarge following him by two paces.

“Can I help you?” Carlos said, not looking back.

“Wouldn’t want you to get lost,” Sarge said, still trailing.

“I know my way, Mr. Smalls. I live in this room.”

In the long foyer, when Carlos tried to open the front door, he couldn’t. Sarge had reached above him to brace it closed, and the space between them was now very narrow. Carlos wished he had kept his mouth shut instead of announcing to a man who didn’t like him that he was screwing his daughter, but Carlos had passed his tolerance for harassment today. In the living room, a round of laughter made Carlos feel unalterably lonesome.

“Young man,” Sarge said quietly, “you must want to get hurt.”

“No, sir, I don’t,” Carlos said, turning to face Sarge’s gaze. Carlos was the giant of his family at five-ten, but Sarge made him feel short. “Mr. Smalls, I get where you’re coming from. I made a mistake. I’ve apologized to you for the past, from my heart. But Phoenix and I are two adults. If you put your hands on me, don’t expect me to let it go again.”

“Did it feel good to get that out, son?” Sarge said. “I got one for you, too: My daughter is gonna pee in a cup for me today, and if I find out she’s been acting funny because she’s doing coke or H, and you’re somehow involved in that, you
better
have me arrested. You should call the cops right now.”

Sarge still expected him to be a monster, Carlos thought sadly. But what else was the man supposed to believe? “Phoenix isn’t doped up. I think you know that.”

“I don’t know shit,” Sarge said, and backed away.

Carlos took his chance to escape. When the door slammed behind him, his loneliness sharpened. Phoenix’s suite was at the end of the hall, and the paisley carpeting of the empty hallway seemed to stretch halfway to Harlem.

What had happened to him? Here he was amid the thumping heart of his beautiful city, and he wasn’t eager to go outside to vanish into the streams of humanity on Broadway; into the army of Yellow cabs, or to feel grand beneath towering billboards fit for ancient gods in their spectacle of lights and movement. He wasn’t eager to see acrobatic boys casually defying gravity for tips, Senegalese street vendors with third-rate trinkets from the Motherland and knockoff designer sunglasses, struggling musicians forced to play in daylight, Puerto Rican women selling
pasteles
fresh from their steamy kitchens, or black Muslims pushing bean pies and earnestness. His nostrils weren’t hungry for dank gutter steam, exhaust, sauerkraut and gyros.

Instead, Carlos wanted to go back into his room to be with Phoenix.
Life is hard enough without complications.
Which wise man had said that?

Carlos had walked within fifteen yards of the elevators when one made its polite
ding,
and he heard the doors slide open. A black man in a white suit stepped out, walking toward him. His heels snapped hard on the marble floor, but went silent where the floor met the carpeting. The man’s diamond necklace flickered in Carlos’s eyes.

Carlos wouldn’t have noticed another thing about the man if he hadn’t been striding directly in Carlos’s path. The way the man’s shoulders leaned forward, if he’d been running instead of walking Carlos would have thought the man was charging him. Carlos would move aside to make room for an old man, or someone with a cane, but this man’s dogged pace irked Carlos. Why was everybody fucking with him today?

“Hey, man, what—” Carlos began, and in that instant the man’s face was upon him.

The dark-skinned man was two inches shorter, his shoulders slight, his face a series of round features: round cheeks, round lips, round nose, round ears.
He was Scott Joplin.

Carlos realized who he was as the man reached him, and he felt his mind drain clean. Instinct made Carlos brace, expecting a collision, but there was none.

Instead, he looked down wide-eyed as the back of the man’s leg and his white coattail faded to nothing, passing
through
him, beyond his shining belt buckle. The impossible sight froze Carlos in place, until he felt his body quiver, gelatin. Carlos rocked with dizziness, his knees buckling. His breath was gone, as if he’d been punched in the stomach.

Carlos fell against the wall, hard, and his shoulder roared with pain, the only thing he could feel across the length of his body for three seconds. Carlos gasped, and his lungs labored. Had the walking phantom somehow been swallowed
inside of him
? As sensation crept back to his limbs, Carlos untangled himself and turned to see if the man had emerged on the other side.

To his relief, Carlos saw the figure walking away. The visage in the white suit hadn’t slowed, hadn’t changed his bearing, as if Carlos hadn’t been there. Three steps, four steps, five steps. The man reached the door at the end of the hall on the sixth step and did not pause.

Scott Joplin passed straight through Phoenix’s closed hotel room door.

Y
ou know this is completely pointless, right?” Phoenix said, flushing the toilet behind her bathroom’s partition of marble and smoky beveled glass while Sarge stood in the doorway, her sentry. Phoenix had half filled the plastic cup from Sarge’s drugstore testing kit, a ritual he had insisted was the only thing that could make him stay.

“We’ll see, Peanut. Give me the sample.”

“Don’t stand there in the doorway like she’s a criminal, Marcus,” Mom called, from where she lay across Phoenix’s hotel bed. “Why are you hovering? Give her some privacy.”

Where had the day gone wrong? First, Carlos had vanished without saying anything, leaving a one-line note about getting lunch—
Gee, thanks
. Now, this. Phoenix ground her teeth, gazing at her specimen cup, which she’d accidentally spattered in her stream.
Too bad. Let Sarge wipe it off.
She couldn’t believe she was putting up with this. Through the bedroom door, Phoenix heard George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog” playing on the hotel room’s sound system at party volume. She was missing her own celebration.

“Urine test results can be faked,” Sarge said. “You can buy clean piss on the internet.”

“Marcus, you sound like a lunatic. She’s doing what we said. Give her some dignity.”

Mom and Sarge were arguing, their natural state, but Phoenix hadn’t seen her parents this unified in a long time. Worrying about her had brought them into the same bedroom again, at least. Phoenix smiled about that, washing her hands with the hotel’s kiwi-lime exfoliating soap, or whatever exclusive blend it was.

Phoenix left Sarge to the test strips on the bathroom counter, joining her mother on the king-sized bed. Lying down, she realized how exhausted she felt, and she fought to keep her eyes open. Leah Smalls was lying on her side, her head propped on one elbow, and Phoenix mirrored her mother’s pose. Mom looked radiant to the tips of her silvery hair, which she had stopped coloring last year. Instead of making Mom look old, the streaks made her seem exotic. She looked better than Aunt Livvy, and that wasn’t easy. Aunt Livvy had always been the showier of the sisters, more preoccupied with her looks, but seeing her mother and aunt together today, Phoenix noticed that her aunt must spend too much time in the sun. The skin on her face seemed leathery, like a Halloween mask of a gorgeous woman. Mom’s body wasn’t perfect, but her face was still hers. Retiring from the School Board last year had been good for her, Phoenix decided. Her mother finally had her own life.

Mom reached across the bed to gently hold Phoenix’s hand, and her array of copper bracelets chimed. Mom’s blue-green eyes didn’t blink. “Hon…if you’ve gotten in trouble, please don’t underestimate it. Drugs are pandemic in music, and it’s not the road you want to take. Remember Charlie Parker? Bill Evans? Billie Holiday? Jimi Hendrix, who wasn’t much older than you when he died? It would kill Marcus and me both if we had to watch that happen to you.”

Phoenix might have laughed except for the earnestness in her mother’s eyes. Mom should know her better. Phoenix didn’t like the fuzziness of alcohol and had never been curious about Ecstasy, much less had she tried coke, heroin or meth. She liked weed fine on her downtime, but she’d learned with her band that her playing was sloppier than it seemed when she was high, so she’d never trusted weed as a habit. Phoenix had spent too many hours lost in melodies in her head—both before and after her ghost—to understand why so many musicians had forgotten that music didn’t need help.

“That’s not me, Mom,” Phoenix said, stroking her mother’s rough knuckle. Mom had never taken good enough care of her hands, always running to meetings to take care of other people, and some of her cracks had grown deep.

“Marcus says you’ve been acting strange, saying strange things. And we’ve never seen Glo this upset about you.”

That’s her own fault for being so stubborn,
Phoenix thought. Last week, Gloria had wasted a dozen opportunities to accept Scott’s presence. He had tripped her on the same spot on the rug three times in the same afternoon, but she refused to see him. The sheet music scores Phoenix had written in her frenzy last night were on the bed where her mother had been thumbing through them, and Mom
had
to know the music hadn’t come from her, even if Gloria wouldn’t. One piece didn’t look like ragtime at all; it might be a movement from a symphony.

“Drugs wouldn’t make me write that music.”

“You really wrote these last night, Phoenix?”

She nodded. “My new boyfriend watched me do it.”

“A new boyfriend already? What does he do?” Mom said. When Phoenix had turned eighteen, her mother had marched her to a doctor’s office to get her a prescription for the pill, no questions asked, her approach to sex education. Since then—with the exception of Ronn, who had scared her—Mom had savored details about Phoenix’s meager love life. Phoenix could feel her mother’s heart traveling vicariously with hers.

“You’ll meet him.” Phoenix couldn’t bring herself to say Carlos’s name yet.

From the bathroom, Sarge made a surly noise. Sarge probably had something to do with Carlos vanishing today, and how could she blame Carlos for leaving?
Awkward
didn’t do this mess justice. Besides, this wasn’t a family reunion, it was an intervention.

“Daddy, you know I had some weed with Ronn the other day, but that’s it,” Phoenix said toward the bathroom doorway. “If anything else shows up on those tests, it’s a lie.” From the bathroom, Sarge only grunted, so Phoenix went on. “I’m not the one you need to be testing, anyway. Malcolm’s the one acting like he’s bugging out.”

Phoenix was sorry as soon as she’d said it.

Phoenix’s mother swatted Phoenix’s hand, clucking. “Shame on you.”

Phoenix heard her father’s measured footsteps across the bathroom’s marble floor, and he poked his head out of the doorway to look at her. A thunderstorm was brewing on her father’s face. Malcolm was Sarge’s youngest son—he’d been ten when Sarge went to prison—and Malcolm had gone through rehab three times for crack addiction since he was twenty. Malcolm was the biggest open wound of her father’s life, and she’d jabbed it just to have something to say.

“I’m sorry,” Phoenix said before Sarge could open his mouth.

“Bugging out?” Sarge said, ignoring her apology. “In case you’re interested in someone else’s life for a change, Phoenix, Malcolm has been clean two years. You want to know why he’s
bugging out
? He doesn’t have any reason to have confidence in himself, and he’s shaking hands with people from a major label for the first time in his life, people who can help him believe in a dream. It may be tough for you to remember that most people don’t take these blessings for granted and piss all over them. Your brother is
nervous
. Cut him some fucking slack.”

Phoenix blinked, her face hot. “Daddy, seriously, I’m sorry. When I saw Malcolm with you, I was really happy for both of you. For real. I don’t know why I said that.”

Sarge didn’t answer, returning to the bathroom. She could almost hear his thoughts:
What else do you expect from a junkie?

The door to the bedroom clicked and swung open toward them, allowing the music from the living room to fly in at full volume. “Atomic Dog” had become Sly & the Family Stone’s “Dance to the Music.” Phoenix heard Serena and Malcolm laughing, telling loud stories on each other. But no one walked into her room.

“Hello?” Phoenix called.

No answer. Phoenix got up and glanced into the living room to make sure no one was nearby. Kai and Manny were closest, but they were bent over the minibar, not looking at her.

Phoenix closed the door again, shaking it to make sure it stuck, then she smiled.

You’re here, Scott. I know.

She hadn’t thought about Scott with her family around, and maybe he got restless when he was ignored. Maybe he’d expected her to fax the new pieces to Van Milton right away, and to pay his biographer, Berlin, a home visit. But Scott would have to wait.

“I suppose that’s your ghost?” Mom said, eyeing the door with suspicion.

“It’s possible. He shows up in different ways.”

“You sound very cavalier about it.”

“I’ve learned you can get used to anything.”

Right, Mom?
Phoenix wondered how much her mother knew about Sarge’s lady friend in Baldwin Hills with a daughter at Spelman. Did she pretend she didn’t exist? Was she relieved? Mom never talked about her relationship with Sarge, and Phoenix longed for more days like today, with her parents acting as a team. Unless she’d imagined it, they’d been holding hands when they first came. It was too bad the current crisis would be over so soon.

Sarge came out of the bathroom, holding a test strip in each hand. Phoenix had no idea how many drugs he was testing her for, but Sarge was grinning. “Well, you’re clean,” he said.

“I know I am.”

“I really thought you were strung out, Phee, and that scared me. You know what I’ve been through with that. I apologize.”

Phoenix hugged her father, their first real hug since the television taping. His arms were a cradle. “If you accept my apology about Malcolm, I’ll accept yours.”

Sarge kissed her forehead. “Deal.” He took Phoenix’s hands and stared at her, probing. “Phee, if it’s not about drugs, what is it? Where’s all the Joplin coming from? Help me understand. You’ve never been interested in ragtime. Just that one night.”

Phoenix’s heart thundered. Maybe today was her chance, she thought. Phoenix squeezed her father’s hands as hard as she could to keep his attention.

“Daddy…what if you woke up in the middle of the night and found out you’d filled up a notebook with fifty pages of somebody else’s handwriting? And a historian told you the writing looked like Malcolm X’s, and a psychic told you Malcolm had chosen you to write the book he
would
have written if he hadn’t been shot? What would you do?” Phoenix thought she saw something in her father’s eyes, a shard of understanding. “Would you keep up your life as usual, or would you try to help Malcolm be heard?”

“Or Anne Frank,” Mom murmured, trying to imagine it. Anne Frank was her heroine.

“Right,”
Phoenix said. “That’s what happened to me. I didn’t ask for it. I don’t know how or why, but I think it started with that piano that hurt me. From the Silver Slipper.”

“Oh, my God,” Mom said, a sudden realization.

“What?” Phoenix said.

“That piano was haunted. Remember, what I told you, Marcus? From when we were kids. Something happened. Ask your aunt Livvy, Phee. Livvy knows.” But just that quickly, the ghost dropped from Mom’s mind as she studied Phoenix from head to toe. “Darling, don’t fall into the same trap I did when I was dancing. You’re skinny as a rail. Even people who make their living on the stage have to
eat
.”

K
ai and Manny were gone by the time Phoenix and her parents came back to the living room (
Jay-Z’s got a better party uptown,
Gloria explained), so everyone left was family. After declaring he was tired of funk, Sarge switched the music to Charlie Parker playing on WBGO. Phoenix saw him whisper to Gloria while her cousin’s eyes tracked her, and Gloria grinned with relief. Sarge not only patted Gloria’s shoulder, but kissed her cousin’s cheek, a rare sight.

Three large pizzas from Broadway Pizza arrived, and they sat in a loose circle eating together, passing Coke cans and napkins and shredded mozzarella back and forth, no big deal. But it
was
a big deal. Serena and Malcolm had never been in the same room with Aunt Livvy and Uncle Dave. Even she, Sarge and Mom hadn’t shared a meal in forever. The sight of her family warmed a part of Phoenix she hadn’t realized was craving warmth. Phoenix was so happy, she felt like Scott, floating invisible in the room.
I wish Carlos could have stayed, too,
she thought, but his absence didn’t dull her contentment. He would come back.

“I gotta give it up to you, sis,” Malcolm said, raising his pizza slice in a toast. Phoenix expected him to turn toward Serena, until she realized he was addressing
her
. “You’re not at all like I thought. I guess I always figgered you’d be stuck-up. Huh, Reenie?”

“I told you,” Serena said, smiling. “Phee’s good folks.”

“Why’d you think I was stuck-up?” Phoenix asked.

Malcolm shrugged. “Hey, no reason, I guess. That just shows what I didn’t know. But you’ve got it goin’
on,
I’m blessed to be your brother, and I pray to God for your success.”

Everyone mumbled their agreement, raising their glasses. Phoenix got up to kiss Malcolm’s cheek, and she meant it this time, not like the brushing kiss she’d given him when he first hugged her, a virtual stranger who’d appeared from nowhere. She wished she could take back the awful, thoughtless thing she’d said about him to Sarge.

“Welcome to the party, Malcolm,” she whispered.

“I’m just glad to be upright, sis. Praise God.”

“Amen,” Serena murmured.