The Devil Take the Blues--Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Beatrice

In the end, it wasn’t that hard to find Angelo, even in a city as big as New York. The opulence and ferocity of New York threatened to swallow me up, and indeed, even though I had never seen the ocean, I could imagine that was what it felt like—a fish in the infinite sea.

When I exited Grand Central Station, I gawked at the vastness, the immensity of the buildings, the sheer quantity of store—Dutch Master’s, Save More Mart, Mink’s Men’s Wear, O’Malley’s Meat Market, Hessen Tailor, Dr. Daly’s Drugs, Palais d’Or Hat Shoppe, Lingerie, Hand-Bags and Purses, Diane’s Beauty Parlor, Blackstone’s Barbershop, Dunbar National Bank, Cornell Shoes, Edwin’s Cigar Store, Burmand Realty Corporation, Steam’s Restaurant, a department store, a laundry store, a hardware store, a general store, and three dentist offices all in the same block.

I was a long ways away from my three friend chicken joints, five churches, and one stop sign.

But that was not what grabbed my attention like a hand around my throat. There weren’t that many. Probably fewer than one in a hundred. But in a city of five million people, it sure added up. Negro men walked arm in arm with white women. Even more startling was a white man with a Negro woman.

Anything is possible, I thought. Then: No, it’s not, just keep moving.

And I had to, just to keep my head above water. The street yawned its wide grouper mouth, and I didn’t have enough courage to cross the street by myself. Far too many cars raced across the black tar as if being chased by hell hounds. Motorcycles swerved up into the sidewalk, just to jump back into the traffic. While others strode naturally, weaving themselves in like the finest thread on a loom, I didn’t have the gumption to take a single solitary step off the curb. Finally, when others crossed, I clung to their side, a remora with a shark.

I wasn’t sure what I looked for until I saw it. At a news stand on the corner of the street, a photograph in a newspaper caught my eye. A boxer, with skin as black as the ink on the page, with a white woman fiancée.

The owner glared at me.

“Where is the best jazz club in the city?” Wherever the best was, that was where Angelo would be.

“Cotton Club,” he responded immediately. “Harlem.” He scribbled the directions on a piece of paper and handed it to me.

“Thank you kindly,” I said.

He just held his hand out for coins for the paper.

I started off, clutching the directions in one hand as if it could shield me from the ugly pigeons wallowing in the filth of the gutters, or the children shrieking, or the squealing breaks of the trolleys and trains. After 20 minutes of my eyes nearly busting out from the sockets, my ears bleeding, and my nose wrinkling in on itself, I expected to find the club, but I entered a large green area instead. I checked the directions for the tenth time.

“Walk through Central Park,” read the directions. “When you enter Harlem, turn left at 108th Street. Turn right on Broadway. Turn left at 125th street. Follow until you see it on the left.” Glancing up, I checked the cross street.

I’m only on 59th Street?

By the time I left the garden, my feet ached, and my throat stung from the grit from nearby factories.

All my life, I had lived on the banks of the murky Mississippi, where in its dun waters lived mudbugs and catfish.

But this neighborhood called Harlem was a coral reef. As I waded through the streets, Negroes strode in fine, brightly hued clothes, and shoes as polished as beach glass. A group of children were minnows darting by an old man with the ancient expression of a turtle. Women in jewelry and furs were ephemeral as jellyfish. A colored policeman—they allowed colored men to be police?—was a starfish with his arms out directing traffic. They drove sleek cars down streets of art galleries, banks, and museums. All my life, I had ever seen colored men and women dressed in ratty scraps of cloth, dirt-stained pants, their children in sewn flour sacks or nothing. This was still America, but surely, I was in a different world.

The Cotton Club proclaimed that they didn’t charge a cover, to which I was grateful for I had taken off foolishly without more than five dollars in my purse. I entered the dark club, weaving my way through tables and cigar smoke. Sure enough, Angelo was onstage, playing as though for his life. Sweat glistened on his forehead, which wrinkled in concentration. I took a table and listened to him the whole night. His creativity, his musicality opened something up within me. Watching his fingers dance over the keys, listening to him weave melodies on the fly, loving every moment of the act of creation. Creating music existed deep in his bones, as deep as magic existed in mine. He went somewhere else when he played, a world of his own, where nothing could touch him. Where the only thing that mattered was the music.

And as I looked around, I saw the power of the blues, of jazz. We still existed in a world where black folks and white folks couldn’t mix—and shouldn’t mix, from what I had been told all my life.

But there we were all, the same, still listening to the same music, enjoying the same thrill.

After his performance, I sought him out. He stood by the stage, saying goodbye to his fellow band members. He said nothing, at first, when he finally saw me, only gave me a sad smile.

But then, he said, “Long way from home, aren’t you?”

“Far enough,” I replied.

“What are you doing in New York?” He put his fedora on.

Success became him. From the velvet of his fedora to his now-real leather shoes to the gold rings on his fingers. He wore a suit that properly fit him. He had let his hair grow out some, and he had parted it to one side.

“Looking for you.”

“Didn’t know I was lost.”

“Do any of us know?”

And there it was; as if we had never fought, as if the time and distance meant nothing. Just a small gap in life. How easy it was to fall into our friendship. Perhaps it was a testament to his capacity for forgiveness. Maybe neither of us wanted to look to the past and see the pain there. We were both in the city, away from the horrors of rope and trees and men with guns. The only axes here were saxophones and trumpets.

“It’s real easy to know if you’re lost around here,” he said. “The city will swallow you faster than that whale did Jonah. Do you have a place to stay?”

We walked toward the entrance of the club.

“No,” I admitted.

“You’re pretty good at planning things out, I can see,” he said. “Well, why don’t you come back to my place. We can figure something out there.”

As we exited the club, I was nearly run over by dozens of people on the sidewalk. Angelo ushered me toward the curb and raised his hand. A taxicab materialized and we sped off toward his apartment.

I could not imagine that New York could be so big for such a long stretch, but it was. The sounds, the smells threatened to overpower me. I hated it. Angelo must have seen my face, for he said, “Yeah, the city is something, alright. You get used to it, though.”

We left the cab and entered an apartment that looked as though the Rockefellers and Carnegies created it for their own amusement. Gilded edges, glittering chandeliers, red velvet carpets. Busboys in hats. Angelo greeted several of them, but I wanted to duck and hide. We had the freedom to move, to be seen together. We didn’t have to hide. I could not get over that. Might never get used to it. Maybe the instinct to hide would always be there.

We entered his apartment, which was small but elegant. Brand new furniture dotted his living room. A piano stood proudly in one corner, its ivory keys gleaming under the light. The apartment even smelled new. Not of mold nor decay or anything that I had smelled my entire life.

“You played wonderfully tonight,” I said. He took my coat and hung it on the rack that stood by the door.

“Pssshhh, don’t try to butterball me. Tonight was lousy.”

I shook my head. “You were great.”

He sat down at the piano and played a progression. “Nah.” His words twanged the more we talked. “All those songs are what the club wants us to play. I got my own. Your…your husband put me in touch with the right people, and I’ll record those soon enough.”

He tossed the word my way, but I did not pick it up. “Really? What sort of songs?”

Angelo eyed me for a moment, suddenly appearing shy. He carefully placed his hands on the keys and played a tune.

Honeybee blues got me sad and mean

Honeybee blues got me sad and mean

Watch out for that queen bee, cause you’ll feel her sting

He stopped playing. “I came up with that on the train out of Azoma,” he said. He turned toward me, one hand on his leg, with his elbow propped out, in the way that men did. “Why are you here, Beatrice?”

I gazed into his deep brown eyes, wanting to drown. “It wasn’t him. The Axeman. He’s not the one who will kill Agnes. I don’t know what to do or how to find the person.” I told him all about the Ouija board, then the letter printed in the newspaper and how I thought it was Frank, then luring the real Axeman to the party and dispatching him.

Angelo played a series of notes across the piano, first a rich, lively tune, then it turned quieter. “Do you recollect how I told you about a man that my grandmother knew? I seen him fairly frequently growing up, but I haven’t heard from him in years. Remy Dupont. He’s deep into roots work. You could go to him.”

An idea struck me. “Could I place a hex on him?”

“On Remy?”

“No, on whoever will kill Agnes. Just—” I spread my arm out wide. “A blanket curse.”

Angelo suddenly stopped playing. “Ain’t no telling what will happen if you do. From what I’ve seen with my grandmother, hexes and curses always seem to bounce back toward the giver, and in full. What I meant was that if someone is going to murder your sister, chances are they’ve murdered before. Swamp is a good place to hide a body, and as far as I know, he still lives out there. Maybe he knows something.”

But my mind had latched onto the hideous idea of the hex.

“Why are you really here, Bea? You coulda just picked up the phone.”

“Maybe I’m just curious. Just need to scratch an itch.”

He stood up. So close to me that I could smell his cologne and aftershave. “Might be.”  

“Maybe I just want what I can’t have.”

“Could be.”

“Well, why haven’t you thrown me out? You’d have every right to.”

He tilted his chin. “Maybe I just need a way to pass the time.”

“You have your piano.”

“Maybe I just want a way to fill up the lonely hours between here and the end of the line.”

“Isn’t that what love is?”

“Maybe. Could be. Might be.” He took my hand. “Do you want to be lonely together?”

We were lonely together until the sun came up. At times he played the piano, at times not. At times we spoke, telling stories, and other times we were silent. We ate if we got hungry, drank if we thirsted. But otherwise, we stayed with each other. I told myself that it was nothing more than to ease the loneliness. Nothing more than filling a hole and calling it love. At times, I cried, for I saw how life could be. How exquisite we could make it. More lay beyond the boundaries I had drawn for myself, more than I could have ever imagined. At times like these, he wrapped his arms around me and rocked me gently. At times, the rocking was rough, but it was rocking all the same.

But by the morning light, when I was awakened by sirens and not roosters, I knew I had to go back. Back to Azoma. Back to Agnes. I just needed to escape for a little while. And I told myself that Angelo would never be anything more than an escape, no matter how much I wanted otherwise. When I went to New York, maybe all I needed was a change. I woke up realizing that sometimes, change is good; things don’t always have to stay the same old way, much as our little town wanted them to. But maybe change itself was like magic—neither good nor bad. Just was. Just inevitable. Might as well flow down the river with it. Even so, there was one thing that I still could not accept, and that was my sister’s fate.

This time, he walked me to the train station.

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