What’s Happening? (26 page)

Johnson's was jam packed; people were wedged from one end to the other. This was usual on Friday and Saturday night. Rita knew the Negro fellow stemming the tide of humanity at the front door. He smiled and let her squeeze in, then shut the door behind her. Despite the rotating fan overhead, the place was stifling. Patrons standing in the aisles were so tightly packed from one wall to the other, from the bar to the tables, that one had to climb over people in order to move. They all clung together, each leaning against the other. Those seated at the tables could not stand because of the crowd packed around their tables. Arms and backs and sides and legs, white and colored, in all varying shades between the two extremes, were pressed together—a hand with a drink in it here, a red shirt there, a grey sweater near the bar, suits from Uptown at the tables, a blond girl, a beard, a colored Villager, a laughing mouth, two colored fellows in suits looking around at the sights, silver earrings, four more girls, more heads, arms, flashing teeth, legs, mouths, ears, eyes, noses, smells, laughter, teeth, chatter, tongues, yelling, and drinks and much noise and shouting, pulsating in the air, everywhere. The background overflowed with bouncing jukebox music.

Rita squirmed between people, making her way toward the back. A fellow was making his way toward the front. His arms and shoulders were thrust in an interstice between the mob, while the lower half of his body, fighting its way forward, was still wedged behind. He looked up and saw Rita struggling toward him and stopped where he was resignedly while she squeezed sideways past him.

“Excuse me … excuse me … pardon me …” she repeated over and over, shuffling toward the back, squeezing between people, watching the faces surrounding her as she went, feeling their breath and body heat as she passed them. She was looking for one in particular. As she edged toward the back, she stepped on feet, felt legs push against her, suffered hot breath of alcohol in her face, was prodded by stomachs, backs, rear ends, thighs, hands, elbows, knees …

“Hi, Rita,” called Josh. He was standing at the bar with a white girl. He was laughing while the girl, who looked as if she came from Uptown, was cooing as she touched his gold earring. Rita was separated from Josh and the girl by a row of chattering people.

“Does it hurt?” Rita heard the girl ask.

“Only a little at first.” Josh burst with laughter.

The girl snickered awareness.

“Hi, Josh,” replied Rita. She continued back, and was jostled and pushed out of the way by people who wanted to get through.

Near the jukebox, the wall was lined with men drinking from beer bottles. Rita reached the space at the end of the bar. Here the crowd was spread a little thinner.

Someone in the third row from the bar was lifting a bottle of beer from Sammy's hands over the heads of the people in the other two rows lining the bar. The fellow with the beer reached a hand with a dollar bill in it up into the air; the bill was snatched from his hand by one of the people behind the bar.

Another fellow, in the second row of people, was just putting his drink to his mouth when someone from the bar, clutching four drinks between his hands, stepped backwards in an attempt to return to his table. They collided. The fellow in back jumped back choking, beer dripping on his shirt and jacket sleeve.

“Sorry, man,” the fellow who had bumped into him said over his shoulder, his hands wet where the drinks had spilled.

The victim, beer dripping from him, just glared and wiped the beer from his suit with his hand, flicking it onto the floor. Someone from one of the side tables stood up, bumping into him from the other side.

“Hey, come on, knock this shit off!” the sopping one blurted angrily.

“Hey,” called Sammy from behind the bar, looking disapprovingly over the heads of the people at the bar. “Take it easy there, man.”

“God damn it. You get pushed around here and you got to pay for it too.”

“Listen, man,” Sammy said in his quiet way. “Nobody sent for you. I didn't ask you to come here, you know? If you don't like it, like you can split anytime.”

The fellow, unconsciously continuing to rub his wet shirt, became quiet, feeling the eyes of the people around the bar on him. Sammy, satisfied that the fellow would be no more trouble, began to mix some drinks.

“Hey, come on. Get your Louis Burgers right here. A Louis Burger is good for you,” shouted Louis Jackson from behind the grill counter in the back. Louis was a tan Negro with long, black, curly hair, who always wore faded jeans low on his hips, the material gathering in baggy folds at the seat. He had named the special burger made with lettuce, tomato and onion, after himself.

“Here you go … They're delicious,” he called, as smoke and spattering grease intensified the stifling atmosphere.

Rita saw Frankie the Mexican sitting at a table against the wall. At the same table was another fellow Rita had seen around and three girls that she had never seen before.

“Hey, Rita, here's a chair for you,” called Frankie, pointing at an empty chair at the table.

“Okay, Frankie, I'll be there in a minute. I'm looking for somebody.”

Rita was standing log-jammed in the middle of the gap between the tables and the jukebox. She scanned the faces around the cafe as people on all sides of her pushed and touched shoulders constantly. Others kept squeezing past Rita, making their way to the rest room in the back.

“Hello …,” said a white fellow as he squeezed his way toward the front of the cafe. His face was inches from Rita's and he stared at her as he squeezed past.

“Hey!” yelped a girl at the bar alarmedly as the staring fellow bumped into her, spilling part of her drink over her dress.

“I'm sorry,” he said, turning to the girl. “See what I did on account of you,” he said playfully as he turned back to Rita.

“I didn't make you do anything,” she said curtly, moving away from him. “Don't blame me if you're sloppy.”

The fellow shrugged and continued worming his way toward the front.

Louis came from behind the grill and squeezed next to Rita.

“Listen, baby, come over here.” He took Rita by the arm and led her up to a fellow she had never before seen in the Village. The fellow was dressed in a three-button suit and a tab collar and striped tie. With him was a girl dressed in a very ordinary Uptown fashion. She wore a light-blue dress and hanging silver earrings. Her hair was a tinted reddish affair outlining a face with a small nose and brown eyes. Her dress was cut deeply in front revealing a heavy portion of chest fat.

“Talk to this cat,” Louis whispered to Rita from the side of his mouth as they stopped in front of the standing couple.

“Bill … Bill, I want you to meet Rita. Rita, this is Bill and Audrey. They just came down to the Village and I thought we could make them feel right at home. Rita is my girl,” said Louis turning toward Rita. She noticed a brilliance of amusement in his eyes, while his mouth and face remained calm.

Rita knew this bit. It was Louis' specialty. He would introduce a fellow to another girl, under the guise of friendship, and while everyone was talking, he would try and take the fellow's girl away from him—even for a short time.

“Do you live down here?” Bill asked Rita, whom Louis had stood directly in front of Bill. Louis stood next to Audrey. Rita felt rotten and low as she began talking to Bill. Out of the side of her eyes she could see Louis talking to Audrey. Now and again, Bill would say something to Louis, and Louis would answer quickly, unconcernedly. Then his conversation with Audrey would continue. Louis was monopolizing Audrey, and Audrey, thrilled by the perverse, savage, sinful feeling of flirting with a Village Negro, liked the situation.

Bill talked to Rita about acting, and the Village, and his college, and the new motion pictures that each had seen. Bill bought a round of drinks. Louis accepted readily. The whole bit made Rita feel a little lousy.

Every once in a while, Audrey would glance out of the corner of her eyes to see if Bill was watching the conversation between Louis and herself. When she looked, Louis too would look, reverting his eyes to her when he was satisfied that all was going well. When the girl's eyes would return to Louis, they would take on a playful glow. She passed her tongue over her lips, perhaps to moisten them, perhaps to show Louis her tongue.

In the Village, in order to manifest a differentness from Uptown, people have no taboos about talking with or asking another fellow's girl for a dance, even if they don't know either of them. Usually the man wouldn't say anything, because he figured,
In the Village
… and this was it. Rita had often seen a Villager giving a girl the eye while her date had his back turned. Often she had seen a fellow innocently ask another if he could dance with his date, and when they did dance, he would hold her close to himself and she would cling to him as her eyes had indicated she would even before he had asked her. People came down to the Village to allow things to happen to themselves, and when they'd go home they'd say it was the people in the Village that had done it all. The girls went down and looked for the mad, captivating lovers that they'd heard about; the fellows came down for the nymphomaniacs they'd heard were around, and when they left they would bring stories of seduction or near seduction home with them for the ears of the soon-to-follow sensation seekers of their neighborhood. What boring lives these people lead; what shallow minds, to think that this little plot of ground on Manhattan Island is so intriguing. It's not the place, it's the people … and not the people who live there so much as the people who go there, who use the place for an excuse to do things they want to do anyway.

“Let's get a breath of fresh air,” Louis suggested innocently to Audrey, ignoring Bill.

“Yeah.… whewww, … it's hot in here,” Audrey said unconvincingly, moving her hand across her forehead. Louis' eyes riveted questioningly on Rita.

“I'll wait here for you,” Rita said by rote. “I don't want to go through that crowd again.”

Louis and Audrey started toward the door. Rita remained.

Bill shrugged. “I guess I'll stay here then. You get some air. I'll wait here.”

“Okay, honey, would you mind my bag? I don't want to carry it through this crowd.” Audrey handed Bill her handbag.

Rita watched them start to make their way through the crowd, then turned to Bill.

“Anyway,” she said, trying to catch Bill's interest again. Rita knew that once Louis and Audrey were caught up in the crowd Bill was powerless to recall them.

Bill watched the two make their way through the tiderace of people gushing against the sluice gate at the front of the bar.

“Bill, Bill, you're not listening.”

“Hhmm, … oh, I'm sorry, Rita; what were you saying?”

“I was saying that it seems the abstract painters today don't really have an art, but more a technique.”

“I don't know, I think a lot of their stuff is interesting.”

Slowly, Bill became engrossed in the conversation; and Rita knew she had succeeded. She felt nauseous.

Rita had been speaking to Bill for many minutes. Suddenly, as they spoke, Bill stared toward the front of the bar. Rita turned. A small colored person, dressed in slacks and a man's sport jacket had entered the cafe. It was really hard to decide if the person was a girl or a boy. It had short black hair, cut in a man's style, but the face was soft, and sweet looking, and had a smooth, made-up texture. Bill said it was a girl. Rita said it was a boy, … no, a girl. She couldn't tell if it were a Lesbian or a fag.

The indistinguishable individual came quite near to where Bill and Rita were standing, and looked about the cafe. Johnson, just then, came in from the outdoor garden; Rita hadn't known the garden was open. Now as she looked back, she noticed the door open and the lights in the garden shining. Johnson stopped short, his brow furrowing as he saw this unknown quantity standing near the jukebox. Johnson studied the person searchingly.

“You a boy or a girl, man?” asked Johnson.

“A boy.”

“Well, get the hell outta here. I don't want you guys in here. Go on, get outta here.” Johnson twisted the little fellow toward the door, and gave him a little impetus.

The fellow started to make his way back through the crowd.

Johnson snickered. “Got enough trouble around here without him.”

Johnson turned and started to make a selection on the jukebox. He pressed several numbers, and the little green light that signals when a selection can be made went out. He reached behind the machine, tripping a device, and the little green light on the selection board lit up again.

“Hey, yure Raoul Johnson, aint 'cha?” asked a white fellow standing against the wall with several other white fellows. All of them were dressed in a style that was popular in the hood neighborhoods of the East Side. They had long hair, combed high on their heads and ending in a D.A., pegged pants, and sport shirts with the collar turned up. They slouched near the wall in a semi-circle, looking at Johnson as if he were a demi-god. They stood off and admired this romantic figure whom they considered a really exciting personality. After all, he owned this bar in the Village and was a sharp guy, and his photograph hung on the wall.…

“I seen you in pitchers, ain't I?”

Johnson was looking down at the jukebox listings. His eyes flitted over to the fellow quickly, a slight smile playing in them, then he looked back at the listings.

“Sure,” said Johnson pressing another button.

The fellow looked at his buddies and nodded to check if they had heard.

They nodded in reply.

“Who's dis guy here?” the fellow asked Johnson with the rapidity of trepidatious humility, pointing to a picture of Louis Jackson which hung on the wall.

“That's Louis Jackson. The guy that's in the back by the kitchen,” replied Johnson, still pushing buttons on the jukebox.