What’s Happening? (11 page)

Not only were the decorations on the walls of Johnson's always changing, so too were the waiters, cooks, and bartenders. When things got rough, regular customers, or other Villagers they recommended, changed their status and became employees, working their way through school, earning enough to take some lessons, or keeping from falling back into society's maze. Johnson's was in the Village, was part of the Village, and was the Village.

Just as the waiters and bartenders and cooks were replaced constantly, so were the people living in the Village. The values and ideals remained, the principles, the rules, the code of the revolutionaries, but the people believing in them varied. The people living there last week had gone away, perhaps to surrender and live home again, or to go to California to get away from the grind of the Village, or to paint closer to nature, or to tour with summer stock, or to live with someone who lives in another part of town, or to do any number of things in further search of peace. Their places were eagerly filled by others. Male and female flee to the Village attracted by the lure of excitement, of freedom, of tolerance, of peace and security, to escape from the harsh, unthinking world—but many leave very soon, most leave after a while, with more tolerance for the world, but some never go away and never find it.

“Hi, Rita,” said Sammy, aproned, standing behind the bar. Sammy was a rare Villager. He was the most constant feature of Johnson's beside Johnson himself, who was present seven days a week. Johnson was always there to keep his eyes open and the people drinking. He had to;half his profits were absorbed by other interests; those politicians who had to be payed off because they secured Johnson's liquor license; the hoods who had a death grip on all the clubs in the Village. The only thing sacred to Uptowners is money; that's why they're Uptowners; that's why there are Villagers. Sammy was always bartending at Johnson's, and the bar somehow never looked the same without him.

“Hey, Sammy, how're you?” Rita answered, smiling.

“Fine.” He nodded slightly, drawing his thin lips back over his teeth. He had a way of holding his mouth so that even when he wasn't smiling he looked as if he were. He was Negro, with a soft voice and smile. Sinewy biceps bulged at the edge of his short-sleeved shirt. Contrasting against the dark skin of one hand, the overhead yellow lights reflecting on it, was a large, silver ring, hand wrought in the Village. It looked like silver worms entwining Sammy's finger, holding up a green stone.

“Hi, Tom, Stan, Jeannie, Laura.” Sammy nodded to the rest of the group.

“Say, Sam. How about five beers? You want glasses?” Stan asked the group.

“No,” said Jeannie. Rita shook her head negatively. So did Laura.

“I'll take a glass,” said Tom.

“See that! Anything to be different, hanh, man?” Stan shook his head woefully.

“Will you come off it, man? Do you mind if I drink out of a glass?”

“Yes, yes, I do mind,” Stan taunted playfully. “You think you're better than anybody here, don't you? Well, you're not, man, … you're not. You're just like everybody else. What was good enough for my father is good enough for you” … Stan began to laugh; he fought down the laugh “… and you're going to drink out of a bottle like a respectable person. Got that, man?”

“Yeah, Pa.” Tom shook his head sadly. “This is too much. This boy is really sick. Sam,” he said deliberately, smiling, peering at Stan from the side of his eyes, “five beers, one with, please, … even if my father objects.”

“Right you are. Come on, Daddy, … get hip,” Sammy admonished Stan. He slid the cooler door open and lifted out five bottles.

“You guys always come on like this?” Rita asked amused.

“Yeah, man, like you guys are bugged, you know,” Jeannie added. “Like you're flying.”

“Are you turned on, or what?” asked Rita.

“You fly, man?” Tom whispered, feigning mysteriousness.

“Once in a while,” Rita replied.

“Talking about flying—we went to a party the other night, oh wait, listen to this.” Stan recalled a story. He put his hand up to ward off other conversation or interruption. “I got a date with this chick, and I go to pick her up at her old lady's pad, you know? She's a model, you know, a real nice-looking chick. Her old lady's one of these real watchful-type old ladies, you know? She always wanted to be an actress or somebody and she never was—but she's gonna make sure this chick is, whether the chick wants to or not. So, the old lady makes sure the chick gets home early, and if she does this, and takes care of her career, and takes care of her clothes, and if she goes to the bathroom regularly and all that kind of crap.”

Sammy put the beers on the bar. One of the bottles had a glass inverted over its neck. Tom grasped the five bottles and carried them to a table opposite the bar.

“Let's sit over here,” Tom suggested.

They all walked over and sat around the table, the girls on a bench built into the wall, Tom and Stan on chairs.

“Well, anyway, to continue …,” Stan said after taking a draught from his bottle. “So I go to the door and I say, ‘Is Sally home?' And the old lady tells me, Sally's not here. ‘Wait a minute,' I say,” he recounted with a chuckle of surprise as he re-enacted the scene. “‘This is Sally's house, isn't it? She lives here doesn't she?' The old lady says, ‘yes.' ‘I don't think you understand,' I tell her. ‘I have a date with Sally. She told me to pick her up here at eight-thirty … That's what time it is now. She's got to be here.' The old lady smiles a little, you know, a little whimper of a smile, and tells me she's not. So you know, like what can you say? Anyway, it turns out …” He bent forward, emphasizing each word “… the chick meets me a few days later and tells me she was hiding in the bathroom because her old lady wouldn't let her go, on account of some modeling job the next day, and she was so embarrassed, like she couldn't face me. I mean, is that wild?” Stan concluded with a laugh. “How much can an old lady want a career?”

Everyone laughed.

“Anyway, I go to this party myself,” he continued. “Well, Tom was with me, but like that's as good as coming on by yourself.” He snickered. “Anyway, I meet another chick there … with an English accent.” Stan now assumed a haughty British inflection. “And she says, ‘You have a mini docka?' ‘Got a mini docka,' she says. ‘I like to fly a bit you know.' Man, she was out of her head, this chick. You know, a real couk. Anyway, she got high and started cursing out this guy she was with like mad because he didn't come through or something. And I mean, real swinging talk, I tell you. And this guy she was with was a little guy … embarrassed … he had to hide in the bathroom until they threw this chick out. She had a knife in her hand and all … Talking about flying reminded me of the party … and like that.”

Tom looked at him perplexed. “That's a nice story, Stan. Remind me to take you to my next party so you can entertain the guests with your great stories.”

“I'll be there.”

“What's a mini docka?” asked Rita.

“A little pot, man, you know, pot?” Stan suggested.

Rita nodded.

The juke box started to push a calypso chant and beating drums into the room. This music wasn't popular anywhere else, but the management put its own selections on the juke box to please the unorthodox tastes of the customers. Their appreciation was wide, restricted only by imagination and a loathing for popular demand.

Raoul Johnson, the owner, had been standing in the back, talking to a tall, thin, specter-faced girl whose blond hair cascaded to her shoulders. Now Johnson started to chant loudly with the jukebox. He was a tall, light-complexioned, blue-eyed, handsome Negro. His clothes were form fitting. He wore them as much to be noticed for their difference as to be clothed in a style that he liked. Precious few act merely for an enjoyment of the thing done. Fads and fears trammel discretion, replacing it with stock solutions to the desires of life. Individuality only adds confusion and responsibility to the mass that progresses intellectually only far enough to realize that everything must be convertible to material reality to be worthwhile.

Johnson, in tight white pants and light green shirt, danced forward from the rear of the cafe. He called for a pair of maracas. Sammy pulled two pairs off the wall behind the bar, handed a pair to Johnson, and took a pair for himself. Both rattled them loudly as they sang with the jukebox. All the people around the bar joined in at the chorus. The place overflowed with mixed singing voices. Johnson danced solo in the center of the space between the bar and the tables. He had a supercilious smirk on his face; his eyes narrowed to slits. He knew everyone was watching him. This was the same look he effected when there was a girl he wanted to impress with the fact that he was Raoul Johnson, man,
Raoul Johnson
. When he approached a girl, he'd shrug his shoulders, and say softly, with a sly smile on his face, a flutter of eyebrow, ‘hello, baby … what's happening?' Or, if she was with a guy, he'd start singing loudly to attract her attention, and then he'd give her a sneering once-over and perhaps pucker a kiss for her when her boy friend wasn't looking. The girls from the Village had become hardened to his passes; they ignored him for the most part. Girls from Uptown got a big, exotic charge out of it.

The chant from the jukebox ended in drumfire. Johnson ended his dance next to the table where Rita and her friends sat. Looking down, he contrived surprise at seeing Rita.

“Hello, baby,” slid from the side of his mouth. His eyes fluttered as he gave her the once-over, or as much of a once-over as possible, considering she was seated. He wagged his head slightly, his eyebrows raised, a leer in his eyes. This was to convey that he was appraising her sexually. “Baby, let me tell you I dig you.” He took her hand in his and kissed it very slowly, raising his eyes to peer into hers in the manner of the European. He had a penchant for trying to make white women. “Let's get together sometime when you're not busy.” He stood straight, his eyes still narrowed, and fluttered his eyebrows again.

“You're so full of shit, Raoul, it isn't even funny,” Jeannie remarked laughing. Everyone at the table laughed.

“That's right,” he snapped. His face suddenly hardened. “You ought to know better than to say Raoul Johnson is full of shit, baby. I spit on better white meat than you.”

“Well, why don't you just keep doing that then, man,” said Rita. “You certainly don't need us.”

“Listen, baby, forget it, you know?” he said with disgust. “You don't have nothin' special, you know. Hahaaaiii …” he cried out lustily in accompaniment to the new selection on the jukebox. He began to dance away. “C'mon, man, … let's swing tonight,” he called to the bar in general. “Hey'a, … c'mon.” He danced toward the back and the specter-faced blonde.

“That God damn clown gets on your nerves sometimes,” Rita commented, watching him dance away.

“He's a big man with the women, though, baby,” Stan added.

“So would you be if you made a pass at every and any bitch you saw in this bar. Big shit,” Jeannie discounted.

The front door opened and a girl that Rita knew walked in. Her name was Moira. She was one of the girls that went to acting class with Rita. She was dark haired, with a fleshy, aquiline nose. Her mouth was wide, her lips thin at the edges, so that the middle of her lips fell together in a mass, giving her mouth a pouting aspect. Her eyes were lined in heavy black pencil and deepened with greenish eyeshadow.

“Hi, Moira,” Rita called.

She turned, saw Rita, and smiled. She walked toward the table.

“I didn't know you came in this place,” Rita added.

“Hi, Rita. I don't usually, but I felt like it tonight. Every place else is dead.” Moira looked at the people at the table, smiling the slight smile of the unacquainted. Rita introduced her to the others. Moira smiled to them and stood by the table talking.

Johnson was now behind the bar, still smarting from the rejection. He saw the new arrival, whom he had met once before to his dissatisfaction.

“What are you drinking there, baby?” he called out.

“I don't want anything right now.”

“You can't come in here if you don't want to drink anything, baby,” Johnson called loudly. “What the hell do you think this is? I throw my own kind out; you think I'm going to leave you stay here standing around, sucking up the heat for nothin'?”

Tom twisted toward Johnson, his brow wrinkled. “She'll have a drink in a minute,” he said softly, determinedly. “Right now she hasn't made up her mind. Don't be such a bug, man. She'll drink when she feels like it. Don't worry about it.”

People at the bar watched silently.

“Listen, man, when somebody comes in here they gotta spend. If not, forget it.”

“We're spending,” Tom continued, staring at Johnson. “Sit down, Moira.”

Johnson looked at Tom viciously. Angrily, he turned to serve other people at the bar.

“You want a drink Moira?” Tom asked.

“No, I'm going to take off,” she replied, smiling thankfully. “I can't take that bastard too much.”

“Yeah, let's all cut out,” suggested Jeannie irritatedly. “Let's take off.”

“Let's go,” agreed Stan unconcernedly.

“I'm going to stay here a while,” said Laura as the others stood. She felt like a fifth wheel.

“Oh, come on. You're not going to start that?” said Rita, looking at Laura impatiently.

Laura appealed to her with her eyes. “Let me stay here. You cats go ahead. I'll meet you later.”

“Come on. There's no coupling here or anything,” said Tom.

“No, … I'd really rather stay here for awhile. Frankie, Frankie …” she called to the short Mexican who was standing at the rear of the bar. She wanted to assure them she wouldn't be alone. “I'll stay here, … and I'll see you later.”