The Street (24 page)

The long black skirt flowed around her feet as she mounted the stairs. She was surprised to discover that she wasn't nervous or excited about singing with Boots Smith's band. Now that she was about to do it, she had regained her old feeling of self-confidence, and she walked swiftly, holding her head high, humming as she walked.

The shiny, polished dance floor looked enormous. Though it would be another hour before people arrived to dance, the colored lights were already focused on it—pale blue, delicate pink and yellow—rainbow colors that shifted and changed until the wide, smooth floor was bathed in the soft, moving bands of light.

As Lutie walked across the floor toward the bandstand where the orchestra was playing softly, she noticed that the Casino's bouncers were already on hand, standing in a small group off to one side. Their tuxedos couldn't conceal their long arms and brutal shoulders. They had ex-prize-fighter written all over them, from their scarred faces and terrible ears to the way in which their heads drew back into their shoulders as though they were dodging punches.

Boots jumped down from the bandstand when he saw her. He met her midway. ‘You know,' he
said, ‘I began to get the feelin' that you wasn't coming. Don't know why.' His eyes traveled slowly from the curls piled high on top of her head to the red sandals on her feet. ‘You sure look good, baby,' he said softly.

He linked his arm through hers and walked with her toward the men in the band. ‘Boys, meet Lutie Johnson,' he said. ‘She's singin' with us tonight. What do you want to start with?' he asked, turning to her.

‘Oh, I don't know.' She hesitated, trying to think. ‘I guess “Darlin'” would be best.' It was the song he had heard her sing in the Junto and had liked.

She avoided the eyes of the men in the orchestra because what they were thinking was plain on their faces. The fat pianist grinned. One of the trumpet players winked at the drummer. The others nudged each other and nodded knowingly. One of the saxophonists was raising his instrument in mock salute to Boots. It was quite obvious that they were saying to themselves and to each other, Yeah, Boots has got himself a new chick and this singing business is the old come-on.

Boots ignored them. He patted out the rhythm with his foot and the music started. She walked over to the microphone and stood there waiting for the melody to repeat itself. She touched the mike and then held onto it with both hands, for the silvery metal was cold and her hands were suddenly hot. As she held the mike, she felt as though her voice was draining away down through the slender metal rod, and the idea frightened her.

The music swelled in back of her and she began to sing, faintly at first and then her voice grew stronger, clearer, for she gradually forgot the men in the orchestra, forgot even that she was there in the Casino and why she was there.

Though she sang the words of the song, it was of something entirely different that she was thinking and putting into the music: she was leaving the street with its dark hallways, its mean, shabby rooms; she was taking Bub away with her to a place where there were no Mrs. Hedges, no resigned and disillusioned little girls, no half-human creatures like the Super. She and Bub were getting out and away, and they would never be back.

The last low strains of the melody died away and she stood holding onto the mike, not moving. There was complete silence behind her, and she turned toward the band, filled with sudden doubt and wishing that she had kept her mind on what she was doing, on the words of the song, instead of floating off into a day-dream.

The men in the orchestra stood up. They were bowing to her. It was an exaggerated gesture, for they bowed so far from the waist that for a moment all she could see were their backs—rounded and curved as they bent over. She was filled with triumph at the sight, for she knew that this absurd, preposterous bowing was their way of telling her they were accepting her on merit as a singer, not because she was Boots' newest girl friend.

‘I—' she turned to Boots.

‘The job's yours, baby,' he said. ‘All yours. Wrapped up and tied up for as long as you want it.'

After he said that, she couldn't remember much of anything. She knew that she sang other songs—new ones and old ones—and that each time she sang, the smile of satisfaction on Boots' face increased. But it was something that she was aware of through a blur and a mist of happiness and contentment because she had found the means of getting away from the street.

As the hands of the big clock on the wall moved toward eleven-thirty, the big smooth floor filled with dancing couples. They arrived in groups of nine and ten. The boxes at the edges of the dance floor spilled over with people—young girls, soldiers, sailors, middle-aged men and women. The tuxedoed bouncers moved warily through the crowd, forever encircling it, mingling with it. The long bar at the side of the dance floor was almost obscured by the people crowding around it. The bartenders moved quickly, pouring drinks, substituting full glasses for empty ones.

The soft rainbow-colored lights played over the dancers. There were women in evening gowns, girls in short tight skirts and sweaters that clung slickly to their young breasts. Boys in pants cut tight and close at the ankle went through violent dance routines with the young girls. Some of the dancing couples jitter-bugged, did the rhumba, invented intricate new steps of their own. The ever-moving, ever-changing lights picked faces and figures out of the crowd; added a sense of excitement and strangely the quality of laughter to the dancers. People in the boxes drank out of little paper cups, ate fried chicken and cake and thick ham sandwiches.

Lutie sang at frequent intervals. There was violent applause each time, but even while she was singing, she could hear the babble of voices under the music. White-coated waiters scurried back and forth to the boxes carrying trays heavy with buckets of ice, tall bottles of soda, and big mugs foaming with beer. And all the time the dancers moved in front of her, rocking and swaying. Some of them even sang with her.

The air grew heavy with the heat from the people's bodies, with the smell of beer and whiskey and the cigarette smoke that hung over the big room like a gray-blue cloud. And she thought, It doesn't make much difference who sings or whether they sing badly or well, because nobody really listens. They're making love or quarreling or drinking or dancing.

During the intermission Boots said to her, ‘How about a drink, baby?'

‘Sure,' she said. For the first time she realized how tired she was. She had come home from work and shopped for food in crowded stores, cooked dinner for herself and Bub, washed and ironed shirts for him and a blouse for herself. The excitement of coming here, of singing, of knowing that she would get this job that meant so much to her had completely blotted out any feeling of fatigue. Now that it was over, she was limp, exhausted.

‘I'd love to have a drink,' she said gratefully.

He gave the bartender the order and led her to one of the small tables at the edge of the dance floor. A white-coated waiter slid a small glass across the table to Boots. Then he opened the bottle of beer on his tray, poured it into a thick mug and placed the mug
so squarely in front of Lutie that she wondered if he had measured the distance.

Boots filled his glass from a flask that he took from his pocket. Then he slid the glass back and forth on the table, holding it delicately between his thumb and forefinger. He looked at her and smiled. The long, narrow scar on his cheek moved up toward his eye as he smiled.

‘You know, baby, I could fall in love with you easy,' he said. And, he thought, it's true. And that if he couldn't get her any other way, he just might marry her, and he laughed because the thought of being married amused him. He pushed the glass back and forth and smiled at her again.

‘Really?' she said. It was beginning rather quickly. But it didn't matter because the job was hers and that was the important thing. She searched her mind for an answer that wouldn't entirely rebuff him and yet would hold him off. ‘I was in love once, and I guess once you've put all you've got into it there isn't much left over for anyone else,' she said carefully.

‘You mean your husband?'

‘Yes. It wasn't his fault it didn't work out. And I guess it really wasn't mine either. We were too poor. And we were too young to stand being poor.'

They're all alike, he thought. Money's what gets 'em, even this one with that soft, young look on her face. And he almost purred, thinking not even marriage would be necessary. It would take a little time, just a little time, and that was all. He leaned across the table to say, ‘You don't have to be poor any more. Not after tonight. I'll see to that. All you got to do from now is just be nice to me, baby.'

He had thought she would give some indication that being nice to him was going to be easy for her. Instead, she got up from the table. There was a little frown between her eyes. The thick mug in front of her was more than half full of beer.

‘Hey, you ain't finished your beer,' he protested.

‘I know'—she waved her hand toward the bandstand where the men were filing in. ‘The boys are ready to start,' she said.

It was three o'clock when the rainbow-colored lights stopped moving over the dance floor. There was a final blast from the trumpets and the orchestra men began stowing music into the cases that held their instruments. The people filed out of the big hall slowly, reluctantly. The ornate staircase was choked with them, for they walked close to each other as though still joined together by the memory of the music and the dancing.

The hat-check girls smiled as they peeled coats off hangers, reached up on shelves for hats. Coins clinked in the thick white saucers. The men crowded around the mirrors adjusting bright-colored scarves around their necks, buttoning coats, patting their hats into becoming shapes, and adjusting the hats on their heads with infinite care.

Boots turned to Lutie. ‘Can I give you a ride home, baby?'

‘That would be swell,' she said promptly. Perhaps he would tell her how much the salary was that went with the job. Perhaps, too—and the thought was unpleasant—he would make the first tentative advances toward the next step—the business of being nice to him. At the moment she felt so strong and so
confident that she was certain she could put him off deftly, neatly, and continue to do it until she signed a contract for the job.

When they reached the lobby, there were only a handful of stragglers left. Even these were putting on hats and coats, the men ogling themselves in the mirror, the women posing on the circular bench in the center of the lobby. The women pressed their feet deep into the red carpet, enjoying the feel of it under their shoes, admiring the glimpses they caught of their own reflections in the mirrors on the wall.

At the foot of the stairs one of the biggest of the Casino's bouncers laid a hamlike hand on Boots' arm. Lutie stared at him, for at close range the battered flesh of his face, the queer out-of-shape formation of his ears, and the enormous bulge of his shoulders under the smooth cloth of the tuxedo jacket were awe-inspiring.

‘Hey, Boots,' he said. ‘Go by Junto's. He wanta see you.' The words came out of the side of his mouth. His lips barely moved.

‘He phoned?'

‘Yeah. 'Bout an hour ago. Said you was to stop when you got through here.'

‘Okay, pal.'

Boots obtained Lutie's coat from the checkroom, held it for her, pushed the big doors of the Casino open, then helped her into his car, not really thinking about her, but wondering what Old Man Junto wanted that was so important it wouldn't keep until daylight.

He drove down Seventh Avenue in silence, conjecturing about it. When he finally remembered that
Lutie was there in the car with him, he had reached 115th Street. ‘Where'll I let you out?' he asked absently.

‘At the corner of 116th Street and Seventh.'

He stopped the car at the corner of 116th Street, reached across her to open the door. ‘See you tomorrow night, baby?' he asked. ‘Same time so we can rehearse some?'

‘Absolutely,' she said, and felt a faint astonishment because his hands had gone back to the steering wheel and stayed there. He was looking up the street, his mind obviously far away, not even remotely concerned with her.

She watched his car until it disappeared up the street, trying to figure out what it was that had distracted and disturbed him so that he had put her completely out of his thoughts.

The wind lifted the full folds of her skirt, blew the short, full coat away from her body. She shrugged her shoulders. It was too cold to stand on this corner puzzling about what was on Boots Smith's mind.

As she walked toward the apartment house where she lived, she passed only a few people. They were moving briskly. Otherwise the street was dead quiet. Most of the houses were dark.

The cold couldn't reach through to her, even with this thin coat on, she thought. Because the fact that she wouldn't have to live on this street much longer served as a barrier against the cold. It was more effective than the thickest, warmest coat. She toyed with figures. Perhaps she would get forty, fifty, sixty, seventy dollars a week. They all sounded fantastically high. She decided whatever the sum
proved to be, it would be like sudden, great wealth compared to her present salary.

A man came suddenly out of a hallway just ahead of her—a furtive, darting figure that disappeared rapidly in the darkness of the street. As she reached the doorway from which he had emerged, a woman lurched out, screaming, ‘Got my pocketbook! The bastard's got my pocketbook!'

Windows were flung open all up and down the street. Heads appeared at the windows—silent, watching heads that formed dark blobs against the dark spaces that were the windows. The woman remained in the middle of the street, bellowing at the top of her voice.

Lutie got a good look at her as she went past her. She had a man's felt hat pulled down almost over her eyes and men's shoes on her feet. Her coat was fastened together with safety pins. She was shaking her fists as she shouted curses after the man who had long since vanished up the street.