Drumsticks (2 page)

I jumped into the first taxi I saw, thanking my stars the cabbie was an Indian. Not that they know the city so well or are such superb drivers—many of them are awful. It's only that they usually pick up black people when nobody else will and it was two in the morning and I looked like I lived under the Brooklyn Bridge.

Under ordinary circumstances the last place on earth I'd want to be at 2
A
.
M
. was Caesar's, the club where Aubrey dances with her tatas hanging out six nights a week. Under ordinary circumstances that loser Greek diner would be preferable to Caesar's Go Go Emporium. But tonight its gaudy neon lights were like a beacon of hope lighting up that scary little patch of Sixth Avenue.

Aubrey was on and it was a full house. Like always, the men were enthralled, loving her moves, eyes riveted to the stage.

I made my way over to the bar, where I saw Justin, the manager, settling in on his reserved barstool. He smiled at me and elbowed a customer off of his stool so that I could sit next to him.

“God amighty!” he said, getting a good look at me. “I hope you caught the license number of that truck.”

“I know, I know” was all I said.

“Did you get mugged or something?”

“No, I'm all right.”

“Where have you been all this time, Smash-up? Ugly school?”

I laughed in spite of myself, shaking away the runaway tear that was creeping down my nose, and he put a consoling arm around my shoulder. He shook one of his stupid long cigarettes at me and I took it gratefully.

“Well, even in your bag lady drag, it's good to see you.”

“I've been lying kind of low. Emphasis on ‘low.'”

“You got some troubles, right?”

“It's a long story, Justin. And you've heard it a thousand times before. Only the names change.”

“Oh,” he said knowingly, “
that
. Say no more, child. Mens! Can't live with 'em, can't chop their pricks off.”

He bought me a brandy over my protests that I'd had enough to drink.

We fell silent for a time, until he commented, “Aubrey's still number one,” he said, his eyes following her gyrations. “Girl's looking fabulous tonight.”

I nodded, and echoed, “Fabulous. And you, Justin. How are you?”

“Little me? Your favorite fagorita is cool.” He turned the smile up a notch, then not so much said as sang, “Met somebody noo-hoo.”

“No kidding? That's terrific, J.” He did look exceptionally happy.

“Still playing your jazz music, Smash-up?”

“Yeah. Still playing. Lot of tourists around this summer. I made out pretty good. I've got to hustle up some kind of steady income soon, though.”

“We can always put you in a wig and you can wait tables here. With that shelf of yours, the tips would be awesome. Maybe you could work up some kind of topless routine with your sax. Who knows, darling? Anything goes.”

Now that was something I'd never thought of. Topless lady saxophonist. That would secure my place in the annals of jazz, surely.

“I'll give it some thought,” I said. “How long do you think it'll be before Aubrey's done?”

“A few minutes. Listen, why don't you go backstage to wait for her? I'll be back there in a few minutes.”

I grabbed my drink. “Thanks. See you later.”

It was nice and warm back in Aubrey's little room. I sipped my brandy and picked up her pack of Newports but threw it back down again with a snort of distaste.

I sat at her dressing table and surveyed the damage in the oversized mirror. Yeah. Magna cum laude from Ugly School. Top of the class. Makeup wasn't going to help much, but I picked up one of Aubrey's lipsticks and began to apply it.

No, I was right; it wasn't helping. Soon I had drawn a pair of terrifying clown lips over my mouth. I popped my eyes wide and sang in falsetto: “
Everybody dance now!”

I broke into crazy laughter then. It mounted higher and higher, until I became aware that someone else was in the room.

I heard the lifeless greeting: “Hey.”

Aubrey was standing behind me, staring at my reflection in the mirror. I whirled around to face her.

“Jesus, Aubrey, I'm sorry. I mean, not just for this. I mean I'm sorry period. About—you know—how I've been.”

She stared impassively at me for another few seconds, and then she too began to laugh wildly.

I gave her the short version of my earlier humiliation, replete with the frightened women on the sofa and the suede jacket landing on my face. As I should have known, she found that hilarious, too.

Justin found us collapsed in each other's arms.

“What kind of riot is going on back here, girlfriends? Can I get in on it?”

“Yeah, you can,” Aubrey said. “You know the party don't start till you come.”

He put his crazy cigarette down on the edge of the nearest surface, and then, with a devilish grin, revealed the object he had been concealing behind his back. “This is for you,” he said, looking directly at me. “Happy birthday, Smash-up.”

I looked down at it. A twelve-inch-high rag doll with dark brown “skin.” And speaking of riots: she was a portly old lady in a wildly colored pinafore and head wrap—jungle reds and yellows and oranges and zebra stripes. On her little face a mysterious expression was sewn in white thread. Her mouth wasn't downturned, exactly, but she certainly wasn't smiling. Her head wrap was color coordinated, to use the term loosely, tightly wound and towering high on her head. There was even a tiny ring in her left ear. And in one hand she held a little pouch with a drawstring.

“That must be where she keeps her voodoo medicine,” Aubrey snorted.

“That's right,” Justin confirmed, then turned to me to say, “She can put the mojo on that man who jammed you up. You'll get him back in a minute.”

“I'm touched, J. But we've got a few months to go before my birthday.”

With a toss of his head, he pressed the doll into my hands.

“What the fuck? It's somebody's birthday every day, isn't it? Here, take it. I have it on good authority that this lady will fix up your life, no matter what kind of blues you have. And let's face it, Smash-up, you could use the help.”

Like they say, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Though I never had an idea in hell what that old axiom meant.

“Thanks, J. That's really sweet of you. I think I'll name her Justine, in your honor.”

“Unh unh,” he cautioned. “She's already got a name: Mama Lou. You have to call her Mama Lou.”

“Okay. But why?”

“Perry Mason,” he said, as if that answered my question.

“Perry Who?” Aubrey asked.

Myself, I knew who Perry Mason was, but his answer still made no sense.

“You know that old TV show from the fifties,” he began to explain. “He was a lawyer that never lost a case. And my girl Della, his secretary, used to wear these kickass high heels without the backs to them.

“Well, when I first started working at Caesar's, my shift would start about two in the afternoon. So I would get out of bed about eleven or twelve. They used to show
Perry Mason
reruns every day on Channel Five. I would eat my breakfast and get ready for work while I watched it. Got to the point it would ruin my day if I couldn't see it. I saw most of the shows five … six … a hundred times.

“Anyway, they had this one story about this young white girl who had lost her parents, and so she was raised down in Haiti by this voodoo mammy they called Mama Lou. But somebody killed Big Mama. Man, that was my favorite
Perry
. The thing is, while I was watching it the power went out in my building, and I never found out who the murderer was. They never showed that one again, godammit. To this day, I don't know who killed Mama Lou.

“So there I am the other day, coming back from Armani on Fifth Avenue, and I cut down Fifteenth Street to come back over east. Right there at Union Square and Fifteenth where all those street vendors hang out—”

“
Armani?”
That was Aubrey's incredulous hoot, interrupting Justin's narrative. “Motherfucker, you don't shop at no Armani and you know it.”

He bristled and snapped at the air. “I buy my soap there, bitch. Everybody knows Italian soaps are the best. Anyway, as I was saying, there I am at that corner of Fifteenth and the park. And I look up and there's Mama Lou staring me right in the face.

“There's this woman who looks like she could be a voodoo lady herself. She sews these dolls and sells them on the street there. Got a whole table full of different kinds of dolls. She said all her dolls got magic powers. Hell, I can always use a little magic. So now you come in here looking like … well, like you're looking,” he said. “I figure you'll be a real good test of Mama Lou's magic. If she can help you, she can help anybody.”

I took the doll and held her close, swallowing hard. “From your lips, Justin.”

I looked over at Aubrey. “Are you still pissed at me, Aub?”

She didn't say anything, just plucked a few tissues from her table and began to wipe my mouth.

I smiled at the two of them. “Thanks, Mom and Dad,” I said.

CHAPTER 2

It's Magic

This fucking thing does
not
work! I thought bitterly.

I was pretty grim that afternoon. Two days since Justin had given me the Mama Lou doll and I was damned if I could see any magic changes taking place in my life.

So much for voodoo. So much for Perry Mason.

I had the doll propped up in my saxophone case, so that she could oversee and bless those bills raining into the case as the public showed its grateful appreciation for my playing. Ha. The previous day's take had been mediocre. Today's was downright lousy.

I was blowing in the Times Square station, where any number of musicians I knew from the scene told me they'd been cleaning up as of late. The pickings were supposed to be ripe in Times Square now, owing in great part to the Disneyfication of the area. Hordes of out-of-towners roamed there freely, taking the subways by day and night, no longer afraid of being held up, raped, carjacked, and so on. Little by little, New York is getting rehabilitated as a tourist mecca—that is, becoming a shopping mall, where the real Americans can feel at home.

Like all dyed-in-the-wool Manhattanites, I found the so-called clean-up of 42nd Street distasteful. What with the pimps, the porn movie houses, the touts for the live sex shows, the drugs, the parasites that hung around the Port Authority terminal, and all the rest of that scuzz, the old 42nd Street had been no picnic. But it was preferable to this version of Wonderland where everybody was buying inflatable Little Mermaids and queuing up for
The Lion King
.

I had had it with the Deuce, as they were calling Times Square in the seventies. I threw in the towel: packed up and rode up to street level on the spanking new escalator.

I'd locked Mama Lou inside the case with a cruel little laugh, hoping she'd suffocate in there.

I walked east, stopping at the main library on Fifth Avenue. I slipped into Bryant Park and crunched around on a few dead leaves, sat down on one of the benches for fifteen minutes or so. Then I went back out onto the pavement to try my luck playing again. Once more I propped up old Mama Lou, my supposed lucky charm.

I got a couple of bucks from some student types, a fiver from a European couple, and assorted coins from the sainted New York types who seem to give money automatically to anybody who asks for it.

After a couple of hours I headed downtown on foot, thinking evil thoughts about the corn-fed tourists in their K Mart jeans; the mayor and his fucking gated-community mind-set; lite jazz; turn-off notices; autumn in New York; my bloody karma; and, especially, Mama Lou.

I needed to stop off for groceries. Given the current budget, spaghetti sounded delicious. In the supermarket I walked past the lamb chops and straight to the pasta aisle.

At home, I looked at the Jack Daniel's bottle but didn't go for it. Instead I kicked out of my shoes and opened a beer. While I made supper, I listened to a Lady Day/Lester tape I've always been fond of, going over to the machine a couple of times to replay “This Year's Kisses.”

My tough guy pose had pretty much dissolved, helped along by that titanic crying fit the other day. I was beginning to feel a little more like myself, kind of human. But I was still broke and I was still sad.

No rush to hear my phone messages. What was the point? I had little desire to talk to anyone. Unless it was Aubrey, I did not plan to return the call. But, just before turning in, I did press the message button and listen.

The voice, a woman's, was vaguely familiar. Not until she said something about a $350 check did I recognize the voice to be that of the secretary at the travel magazine where I work periodically, translating articles from French into English. Apparently, through some computer mix-up, they had the wrong address for me. They had been sending me the same check, and getting it back in the mail, for weeks.

Money! At last, a piece of good luck.

I sent up a little prayer of thanks and a silent apology to Justin. If he had such great faith in the silly doll, then I guess I could give her a little credit, too.

Actually, Mama Lou was not the first doll I owned as an adult. I used to keep some little West African cuties on a shelf in the kitchen, but I ditched them when I last repainted the apartment—ended up giving them to a neighbor's little girl.

I used to tell all my secrets to my dolly when I was a kid. In fact, if memory serves, my father caught me whispering tearfully to her once. Naturally he insisted on knowing what I was telling her. I'm sure I lied to him. Daddy wasn't big on superstitions or black people who fell under their sway. Lucky charms, Friday the 13th, dream books, avoiding ladders and cracks in the sidewalk. All nonsense, he said. Work hard, eat right, do the honorable thing, and you won't need luck.