A Conversation with the Mann (33 page)

I didn't much know how to respond, if I should modify my compliments or wish him luck getting the hell out of that spot fast
as he could.

“But you doing all right, Jackie.”

Underplaying: “Guess I am.”

“Sure you are. See your name in the paper and whatnot. See you working at this club or that.”

“Wish you'd come down sometime,” I offered. “Catch a show.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that. 'Cept, I don't suppose they'd let me catch a show at the Copacabana. Guess I could see you at
the Apollo. Guess I could. If you ever played the Apollo.” He slipped me that no different than if he was slipping me a knife.

I tried to get things going in a different direction with: “Well, I'll tell you, Li'l Mo”

“Morris. I don't go for Li'l Mo. Not no more.”

A half a mile got added to the gap between us.

Morris looked around at my collection of packed boxes. He said as much as asked: “Moving, huh?”

“Just taking it downtown some.”

“We'll miss you up here.”

“Midtown ain't China. And you know you can—”

“That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is we can't afford to be losing good brothers. Doesn't look right.”

“What doesn't look right? That Negroes are making it, that they're moving up?”

“Moving up means moving out, leaving the rest of your people behind? It's saying you're not really a successful black until
you don't have to live with blacks anymore. So, you—brothers like you leaving—it doesn't look right.”

“So I should stay here just 'cause that'll look good to some other Negroes—”

“The word is black.”

“And you don't think it looks good to other
Negroes
”—used in spite—“ that I've worked hard enough I can live in a good neighborhood.”

“Harlem's no good?”

“I didn't say …” Just then I realized how hard I was breathing. The effort this conversation took was the same as running
uphill with lead in your pockets. “There's nothing here for me anymore.”

“And how's there ever going to be anything here for anybody, when soon as they can the blacks who get over get out?”

“Come on with that. I can't help what other people do. I'm talking about me. If I go, if I stay; one person isn't going to
matter one way or the other.”

Morris nodded like he understood. Nodded, but said: “Not one person. One more person.”

After that we were done talking. Done truly talking with each other. We pretended to go on a bit about sports, music. Subjects
that were conversable but not combustible. But it was plain we were talking just so neither of us would feel like we didn't
do all we could do to keep up our false-front friendship.

With “Guess I need to be getting on my way,” Morris indicated the game was over.

“It was real good seeing you Li … Morris.”

We hugged again, awkwardly again, and Morris left.

I closed the door.

“I
S THERE SOMETHING WRONG
, J
ACKIE
?”

Tommy was on the phone.

“No,” I lied. “Everything's … everything is—”

“You seem so quiet.”

“I'm just … you know, just…”

“If there's something you want to tell me …”

“Just a little tired.”

I couldn't say for sure why I was lying. It wasn't as if my father passing was some particularly traumatic event Tommy needed
shielding from, that sooner or later she wasn't going to find out he'd died. But my reasons for doing what I was doing were
many, just not good. I didn't want to burden Tommy with my grief while she was putting together her record. I didn't want
her worrying about me when her career gave her worry enough. The recording was coming slowly but well, she said. The song
was sounding good, she said. She said she was thinking of going with a stage name. Tammy felt more girlish, sweeter, than
Tommy, she said. So let her concern herself with all that and let me leave my pop out of things.

Truth was, at the minute, I didn't want anybody's worry. I didn't want any more sympathy, or people asking how I was holding
up. I didn't want to have to try to explain my jumbled-up feelings over Pop's death. Most of all I didn't want to be reminded
of or have to deal with those feelings myself. Denial was better all around. Better, especially, for Tommy. That's what I
told myself anyway, told myself that what I was doing—lying—I was doing for her.

Tommy didn't get any of that.

All Tommy got from my quiet voice, from my distant and dodgy nature, was that she was being pushed away when, in reality,
I wanted nothing more than to hold her close.

She told me in a week's time she would be playing at the Riv in Atlantic City. She told me how badly she wanted me to come
down. Even if she couldn't see me from the stage, just wanted to know that I was in the audience. She told me how much she
wanted nothing more than to be with me.

I told her the week she would be in A.C. was the week I would be working Slapsie Maxie's in Los Angeles.

Her opening night I sent Tommy flowers and a “break a leg” card.

T
he Noon Balloon took me West. I hadn't been in Los Angeles since, years ago, a change of trains on the way to Washington State
gave me a couple of minutes to try to spot the Hollywood sign. I couldn't see it.

Now, not too many years later, driving a rental from Union Station to my hotel, the sign—giant white letters that looked to
me a mile high each—was plainly visible from where it sat on the hills that separated L.A. from its valley neighborhoods.
The city was as I'd left it: sunshine and open spaces. In reality a bunch of suburbs— Boyle Heights and Silver Lake and Echo
Park and Los Feliz and Inglewood and Brentwood and Westwood. And Hollywood—pearl-strung together by endless stretches of dirt
roads, urban streets, and superhighways that would take you wherever you wanted to go: city or beaches or mountains or rugged
countryside. There was all that in one place. There was so much. There was so very, very much. Everything about Los Angeles
cried growth and opportunity. It was Outpost America, the far edge of our nation. It resembled the rest of the country but
refused to adopt her cultures and customs, opting instead for a carefree existence. Because, maybe, of the heat from the always-present
sun, because, maybe, of the weak scattering of trades other than the entertainment business, there was a particular ease and
dreamlike manner overlaying the constant hubbub of its one true industry: getting famous and staying famous and grabbing back
fame once lost. After the crush and crowds, the cold shoulder, get tough or get lost bump that New York continuously tossed
you, the casual flow of life in the pueblo was a warm and friendly embrace that told you to slow down, relax. All things would
come to you in their time. In
their
time. But somewhere, in some manner, it was there for me. It—eveiything Hollywood had to offer—was there, a hidden gift that
only had to be found to be enjoyed.

For my two weeks in Los Angeles I made the Sunset Colonial my pad. The hotel was ground zero for a bushel of fresh-off-the-bus
actor and actress types. It sloshed beefcake boys and bottle blondes. They'd headed west with a lot of ideas on becoming stars.
Ideas, but not a single plan on how to reach their destination. With nothing better to do, they made looking good their business.
Poolside became their office. They idled there sunup to sundown, plying their trade, waiting to get over.

Waiting.

They would wait as long as it took, or wait until the waiting broke them and sent them limping back to whatever life they
used to live before hitting L.A.

I hit the Colonial. The cat at the desk checked me in in a very businesslike fashion. Businesslike right up until I let it
slip accidentally on purpose I was working Maxie's, that I'd worked the Copa and the Sands, that I was a legitimate talent.
Then the kid couldn't “Mr. Mann” me enough.

That was the nutty thing about Los Angeles, about Hollywood: different from the rest of America that was caught up in its
race problem—either trying to beat people of color down, or lift them up to stroke their liberal guilt—the only color Hollywood
cared about was green: You make money for somebody, you turn a profit and return a dividend, there isn't anybody who doesn't
love you no matter what you are. The guy behind the counter was obvious in his hoping that I'd introduce him around, get him
an “in” someplace where people with real juice congregated, so I got treated decent.

I got the same warm hand from the rest of the staff. Hector the valet; Rick the bell captain; and Doary White, a sweet young
black girl, a maid at the hotel with a perpetual smile—similar in fashion to the smiles the starlets-in-training tossed me
as they floated around the pool wearing something next to nothing. But their smiles were just show. I was hep enough to know
the real goods they saved for the moguls and producers, the big-box-office actors who could tra-ject their careers upward.
All a guy my size would ever get was ivory from a distance. I didn't take it personal. In Hollywood, if you had nothing to
offer, you were nothing; and people wanting things from people, that was just business. Truth of it was those poolside girls,
women who in any other city would be hanging on street corners whistling at the cars that slow-rolled by, made me thank God
I had a girl like Tommy.

Unlike the headline clubs I'd been working—me opening for some name talent—Slapsie Maxie's was a showcase room, a bunch of
acts who filled a bill that ran on into the night. A good place for scouts, agents, and studio suits to catch a string of
performers live. Deals—TV deals, movie deals, record deals—got made over drinks at the bar. Your career, your life; all you
needed was one solid set to alter them forever. A truth reflected in the eyes of the acts who x-rayed the mingling suits desperate
to find the one who would elevate them to a place just short of immortality.

I had three solid sets. My first three nights at Maxie's were strictly killers. People nearly choked, they were laughing so
hard.

No one offered me any deals.

TV, movies—neither was ready for the next black sensation. They barely knew what to do with the colored acts they had. I waited
at the bar alone. A fast girl waiting for a trick who never showed. I was just like that. I would have pimped myself easy,
said anything, done anything to please any John with juice. There were no takers.