Streets of Gold (17 page)

On the night of her sister’s engagement party, Stella was wearing a red-beaded dress with black fringe and plunging V neck, breasts bound in the flapper style, stockings rolled below her rouged knees, red satin slippers. She had had her hair shingle-bobbed two months before, in the current vogue, and she was wearing golden hoop earrings and carrying a black-beaded bag with red fringe. A package of Sweet Caporal cigarettes was inside the bag. She wouldn’t have dreamt of smoking in her father’s presence, or even in public, but whenever she was in the bathroom alone, she puffed away like a steam engine. (She once caught Cristie smoking, and swatted her, telling her she was too young.) Dancing with her brother Luke to the miserable music Mr. Jimmy Palmer and his five specters were making, she felt sophisticated and chic and svelte and gorgeous and desirable, and she had no idea that Jimmy Palmer himself, watching her through the holes in his hood while banging away at his drums, was thinking the exact same thing. Her chubby brother Dominick came waltzing out onto the floor in a wise-aleck, fifteen-year-old solo imitation of his older sister and brother, and Luke kicked out at him playfully with one long leg, and Jimmy Palmer watched Stella’s backside as she bumped it in disdain at the younger boy, and saw, as Luke turned her in his direction, the creamy white expanse of throat above the V-necked yoke of the red dress, and not bad gams either, altogether a very spiffy dish.

God knows what music he was playing in those days, or how he could possibly concentrate on it while simultaneously watching Stella through the holes in his hood. He was not to form his own Dixieland band until 1924, following an already well-established trend. But jazz had found its way from New Orleans to Chicago in 1917, and men like King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton were beginning to be imitated in black Harlem and elsewhere in New York as well. Chances are, though, that my father’s band was more influenced by Paul Whiteman, who called himself the King of Jazz, but who played the sort of music I don’t even like to think about, much less dwell upon. The Phantom Five undoubtedly played a great many fox trots, tangos, and two-steps, the craze for such lunatic dances as the bunny hug, the turkey trot, the kangaroo, the snake, the grizzly bear, the crab, and a veritable zooful of others having all but vanished during the war. And possibly, just possibly, one or another of his musicians might occasionally have tried a lick in emulation of what they considered to be real nigger funk, but their stuff was mired, man, it had to be. I heard many of my father’s subsequent bands when I was growing up, and I would say that Stella’s assessment of the Phantom Five in 1922 was probably accurate: they were lousy. (My father claims, however, that Mike Riley, the trumpet player who coauthored “The Music Goes ‘Round and ‘Round,” a resounding hit that all but smothered the airwaves in 1935, had played in one of his early bands. I guess it’s true. My father has a way of hitching his wagon to any passing star. He claims, for example, that James Cagney grew up in his neighborhood. “Oh sure, I knew Jimmy when we were kids.” I am his most recently passing star.)
Whatever
he was playing in that hot and smelly hall on 116th Street, he played it without benefit of sheet music; my father never learned to read a note of music, and could not tell a single paradiddle from a double.

He made his move during a ten-minute break. Munching a ham and cheese sandwich on a soggy roll, his hood tucked into the white cord sash at his waist, he two-stepped over to Matty Diamond, who was said to have connections and who had recommended the Phantom Five to the girl’s father. Matty was standing at the makeshift bar, wooden planks set up on horses and covered with a long white tablecloth, in deep and serious conversation with his future father-in-law. Both men were pissed to the gills. Francesco had a glass of red wine in his hand. Through a pair of twisted straws, Matty was sipping homemade gin from a soda pop bottle.

“How’s it going, Matt?” Jimmy asked.

“Fine, who’s that?” Matty said, and turned away from the bar.

“Me. Jimmy Palmer. Music okay?”

“Beautiful,” Matty said, and put his arm around Jimmy. “That is some beautiful music you fellows are making. Where’d you learn to play that way, huh?”

“Oh, I been playing drums a long time now.”

“Well, it certainly shows, the way you play them things,” Matty said. “Papa,” he said, and turned to Francesco, “I want you to meet Jimmy Palmer, he’s the leader of the band there.”

“Piacere,”
Francesco said, and held out his hand. The ensuing handshake was a bit awkward in that the hand Francesco extended was the one holding the glass of wine.

“Nice to meet you,” Jimmy said.

“Conosce ‘La Tarantella’?”
Francesco asked.

“Oh, sure, would you like to hear that?” Jimmy said.

“He likes all that greaseball music,” Matty whispered.

“Well, we like to play to suit everybody,” Jimmy said. “Say, who’s the...?”

“Why do you fellows wear them things, them costumes?” Matty asked.

“Just an idea,” Jimmy said, and smiled.

“It’s a good idea,” Matty said. “It makes you look very good, them costumes.”

“Thank you. Matty, I was wondering if you knew...”

“Listen, I think maybe you ought to figure on overtime,” Matty said. “Papa, I think maybe the band ought to stay past twelve, don’t you think?”

“Cosa?”
Francesco said, and belched.

“How much you fellows charge for overtime?” Matty said.

“Well, overtime’s more expensive,” Jimmy said.

“Sure, how much, don’t worry about it.”

“We get six dollars a man for overtime.”

“That’s an hour? Six dollars an hour?”

“That’s right.”

“What does that come to for all of you fellows?”

“Thirty dollars. It’d cost you more with a union band.”

“Oh, sure. Papa, they want thirty dollars more if they play after midnight.”

“Cosa?”
Francesco said.

“It’s okay,” Matty said. “Don’t worry about it, Jimmy.”

“Who’s the girl in the red dress, would you know?” Jimmy asked.

“Who?”

“Over there.”

“What girl?”

“In the red dress.”

“The girl in the red dress?”

“Over there. The beaded dress.”

“Oh, yes,” Matty said.

“Who is she, would you know?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, who?”

“That’s my sister-in-law. My future sister-in-law. Stella.”

“What’sa matta my Stella?” Francesco asked.

“Nothing, Papa. This man here wanted to know her name.”

“Stella,” Francesco said, and nodded in agreement. Stella was most certainly his daughter’s name.

“Well, I’ll see you around, huh?” Jimmy said, and put on his hood, and walked over to where Stella was talking to her sister. “Hi, Stella,” he said. “How do you like the music?”

Stella turned to look at him. She had green eyes. He did not know any girls with green eyes.

“The music is absolutely the cat’s meow,” she said sarcastically, but her tone was lost on him. He was drowning in her eyes.

“Glad you like it,” he said. “I’m Jimmy Palmer. It’s my band.”

“You’ve got
some
band there, Jimmy Palmer,” Stella said. “All you need now is some horses, and you could go out burning crosses on niggers’ lawns.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jimmy said, missing the allusion to
Birth of a Nation
, which Stella had seen four times. “You know any horses can play saxophone?”

Stella laughed and looked at him more closely. Or, rather, looked at this hooded and sheeted person, brown eyes showing in the holes of the hood, some two or three inches taller than she was, a nice voice, he seemed to speak English very good. “Jimmy Palmer,” she said. “Is that an Italian name?”

“That’s the name I use,” he said.

“Use for what?”

“For when I’m playing. We play all over the city,” he said.

“What’s your real name?”

“Jimmy Di Palermo.”

“Are you from the other side, or were you born here?”

“Here,” he said. “On a Hun’ Third Street.”

“I was born here, too,” Stella said, and smiled.

“You got any requests or anything?” Jimmy said.

“Yeah, I got one request,” Stella said.

“What’s that? We’ll play it in the next set.”

“It’s not a song,” Stella said.

“What is it, then?”

“Why’n you take off that thing on your head and let a person see what you look like? That’s my request.”

“Sure,” he said, and took off the hood.

He was not a bad-looking fellow. His eyes, as she already knew, were brown. He had a longish, thin nose, not unlike her father’s, black hair combed back straight from his forehead sort of like Valentino’s, though of course he wasn’t half so handsome. He had a nice smile and good teeth. She wondered what he was wearing under that sheet. He probably dressed like a greenhorn.

“Il fait très chaud aujourd’hui,”
she remarked, and much to her surprise, he answered, “Oh,
beaucoup, beaucoup, mam’selle,
” and she said craftily, “Do you know what that means?”

“Oh, yes, I picked up a little French when I was over there.”

“In the war, do you mean?”

“Yes, I was with the 107th Infantry Regiment, 27th Division, and I picked up a little French.”

“We must have a talk sometimes,” Stella said.

“Comme vous voulez,”
Jimmy said, which he had picked up from a little French hooker he had picked up. “Are you sure there’s no request you’d like to hear? We can play almost anything.”

“I don’t suppose you know my favorite song,” Stella said.

“What song is that, Stella?”

“It’s ‘The Sheik of Araby.’ ”

“Oh, yes,” Jimmy said, “we can play that. My piano player has the sheet music. Lots of people think that that particular song was written for Valentino, for the piano players to play in the movie houses, you know, when they’re showing the picture. But that’s not true, Stella. Actually, it’s from a Broadway show. There was a show last year called
Make It Snappy
. That’s what The Sheik of Araby’ is from. It’s printed right on the sheet music.”

“I didn’t know that,” Stella said.

“Yes, it’s true.”

“I do love the song, though.”

“We’ll play it for you in the next set.”

“That’ll be the berries,” she said.

“I do a lot of cymbal work in it, makes it sound more like the desert. Stella?” he said.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know whether we’ll be playing overtime or not, that hasn’t been worked out yet, Matty’s still talking it over with your father. But even if we do play overtime, we’ll probably be finished along around one o’clock, maybe one-fifteen by the time I get the drums packed and pay the guys...”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering, I know it’ll be kind of late, but I thought you might like to take a ride over to the West Side, there’s some nice jazz clubs there with nigger musicians, it’s a lot of fun and perfectly safe, otherwise I wouldn’t even be asking you.”

“Oh, do you have a car?” she asked casually.

“No, but my trumpet player has one, and him and his girl’ll be running over there afterwards — she’s the little blond girl sitting there near the bandstand, the one with the green beaded dress, do you see her?”

“Yes, she seems very nice,” Stella said.

“Oh, she is, a very nice girl, they’re keeping steady company, they expect to get married sometime next year. We made that dress for her.”

“What do you mean? Who did?”

“Me and my mother. We have this crochet beading and embroidery business, I make all the designs, and we’ve got these girls for us who do the work. That’s a very spiffy dress you’re wearing yourself, Stella, I meant to compliment you on it.”

“It was in
Vanity Fair
.”

“I’m sure of that, it’s very swanky.”

“Though it’s just a copy.”

“It’s a very good copy, though. And the color is beautiful with your eyes and hair. You have very pretty eyes, Stella.”

“And you’ve got a very pretty line,” she said, and smiled.

“No, that’s no line. I saw those eyes and I couldn’t believe you were an Italian girl, I’ve never seen eyes like that on any Italian girl I know.”

“Well, I’m American, don’t forget,” Stella said, bridling for just an instant.

“Oh, naturally, can’t I tell that? I’m only saying those are really beautiful eyes, and I’m not trying to be fresh, I honestly mean it.”

“Well, thank you,” Stella said, and didn’t know what to do with her suddenly really beautiful eyes, so she lowered them.

“So what do you think? Would you like to come along with us when we go over there?”

“Well, I would have to ask my father,” Stella said, and glanced at Francesco, who was sitting at a table with Pino, his head on his folded arms. Pino was singing “
Pesce Fritt’ e Baccalà”
at the top of his lungs. His eight-year-old son, Tommy sat stiffly beside his father, looking terribly embarrassed. “Or my
mother,
” Stella amended.

“Well,
could
you ask her? We’ll only stay an hour or so. You could ask your sister and Matty to come along, too, if you like. There’s plenty of room in the car, it’s a Pierce-Arrow.”

“A Pierce-Arrow,” Stella said, “I’m
sure
my mother will say okay.”

“
Au ’voir,
then,” Jimmy said, and went back to the bandstand.

As the Phantom Five played “The Sheik of Araby,” which had not been written for Rudolph Valentino, but instead for a Broadway show called
Make It Snappy
, and as Pino Battatore sang another chorus of the song they had learned together in Fiormonte, Francesco sat at the table with his head on his folded arms and tried to understand why he’d been crying just a short while ago. He had cried when news of his father’s death first reached him, and he had cried again when his mother died, and again when his sister Emilia had written to tell him of Maria’s illness and subsequent death; he had thought he’d cried for all of them when it was necessary to cry, and appropriate to cry, and timely to cry. But tonight, at his daughter’s engagement party, his darling angel Cristina, who was to marry a fine and handsome boy, he had cried again, and he could not understand why. And so he listened to Pino’s rasping off-key voice beside him, and heard Tommy pleading with his father to be still, and off at the other end of the room the Phantom Five went into another chorus of “The Sheik of Araby,” with Jimmy Palmer doing a lot of cymbal work to simulate the mood of the desert — and suddenly Francesco knew.