The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup

by Susan Orlean

  Jill was fretting that day over Lucy, a customer of hers who worked in film production. Lucy had been looking for an apartment for two years. Jill wanted her to buy the Eleventh Street apartment but despaired that she couldn’t commit. “Lucy really needs to get focused,” she said, sighing. “She’s backed out of a few deals already and she just puts herself through agony every time. We had a talk one day about whether we should keep working together, and whether our relationship was getting to be too much of a burden, but I think we worked it out.” Bertram, an architect who’d been looking with Jill for a year, was “a perfectionist, and very apprehensive,” Jill told me. “He thinks he wants to live downtown, but I think he should really be looking in Chelsea, considering what he can pay, so we’re working on that.” Bertram had an accepted offer on a place in Chelsea, but Jill knew him well enough not to consider it a done deal. While she was waiting for another broker to show up at West Eleventh, she checked her voice mail. There was a message from Bertram saying he’d decided to withdraw his offer on the Chelsea place, because he’d heard from a resident of the building that another apartment there had just sold for less than he was offering. “I knew it. He got stressed out,” Jill said. “He was so nervous anyway.” She also got a message from a customer telling her he’d decided he could spend more, so she could expand the price range as she searched for him; a message from a customer who was preparing his board package and had forgotten to get letters of reference and was in a panic; and a message from an art dealer who had read about Jill on the Corcoran Web site and was interested in the Eleventh Street place.

  The Corcoran Group is now selling an apartment a day through its Web site. Barbara Corcoran believes that the Internet will eventually replace much of the work now being done by brokers. A typical person buying an apartment in New York City calls in response to a newspaper ad and then sees an average of fourteen apartments before buying; someone real estate shopping on a computer sees floor plans, photographs, long descriptions, and a biography of the broker before making a call, and then seems to need to see only four apartments before buying. Instead of making brokers obsolete, Internet real estate shopping will make the marketing part of their job more critical, and waste less of their time dragging customers around town. In the meantime, though, being a broker remains a full-time—even a day-and-nighttime—job. As the next broker was heading up to see West Eleventh Street, Jill mentioned that she’d had a terrible dream the night before. She dreamed that she had run into a friend whom she’d been showing apartments to—a real person, whom she really is showing apartments to—and the friend told her that she’d just bought an apartment from another broker. The apartment was in the West Fifties. “It was just awful!” Jill said. “I’ve been showing her apartments forever. I said, ‘Lil! You told me you would never live in the West Fifties!’ I couldn’t believe it. I think that when I see her I’m going to feel really upset, even though it was just a dream.”

  THERE WERE TWO BIG STORIES in New York real estate that week. One was that a four-bedroom duplex loft that had been on the market for seven years—an unofficial record for longevity—and had been handled at one time or another by every broker in town (including Jill) had finally been sold. The other was that at a recent closing the attorney had threatened to withhold twenty-five thousand dollars of the broker’s commission, so the broker grabbed the contract away from the attorney, which compelled the attorney to smash the broker’s arm onto the table, bruising it severely and breaking her watch. A few brokers who had heard this tale suggested that in the future all closings be moderated by a therapist. Iva once remarked that she became the center of attention at any gathering as soon as she mentioned she was a broker; everyone had a horror story or a happy story to recount, and wanted to know whether the market was going up or down and whether a person had gotten a good deal or had been ripped off and whether she knew about Building X or Apartment Y. The experience, she said, was sort of like telling people at a dinner party that you’re a doctor, and finding yourself besieged with moles to examine and surgery stories to hear.

  “Shopping for apartments, I think, is horrible for most people,” Jill said. “They get very emotional.” We had taken a break from West Eleventh Street and were walking back to her office. The air was fresh and sweet and cold, and the sky was as blue as a swimming pool, and all the buildings on the block glowed a little in the afternoon sun. We passed a brownstone with wide stairs and a handkerchief-size garden. “Really nice inside,” Jill said, nodding toward it. “I showed it to some people last year, and they almost bid on it, but they were thinking of starting a family, and it would have been too small.” This made her think of Vivian, who is currently single but wants a two-bedroom. “She’s so lovely,” Jill said. “And I guess she’s optimistic, even though she complains to me how impossible it is to meet men.” That made her think of Greg, who is also single, and whose loft she had just gotten as an exclusive, because his next-door neighbor’s daughter went to school with Jill’s daughter. And that made her think of an apartment for sale on the Upper East Side that Greg might like to buy after she sold his loft. And that made her think of Lucy, for no particular reason except that she thought about her often, and decided she would take her back to see something at London Terrace, a large prewar complex in Chelsea, because, even though Lucy had bid and backed out on something there before, Jill thought she might have finally reached the point where she would just buy something halfway decent, so she could stop looking. Around every corner we turned was another building that Jill knew or had sold something in or had handled in some way. It was as if to her the city’s buildings all quivered with change and movement: Her view was like time-lapse photography that reveals commotion in something that otherwise, in quick glances, appears to be entirely still.

  A few days later, Jill sent me a message saying that she’d sold the West Eleventh Street apartment to a couple—a film editor and a network news employee—for $270,000; that Vivian had decided not to bid on the loft with the dungeon; that Lucy had agreed to look at London Terrace again; that the art dealer who came to her through the Web site hadn’t bid on West Eleventh but wanted Jill to take her around. She had gotten a number of new customers who had answered the ad for West Eleventh, and would lose a few old ones, at least temporarily, once they’d found a place, bought it, and moved. It was business as usual.

  DEVOTION ROAD

  THE BIGGEST, NICEST THING A TRAVELING gospel group might pray for is a bus. Usually, gospel groups consider themselves blessed if they book a show, and truly blessed if they can also find a way to get there; sometimes they get the call but they don’t have a ride. Flying is rarely an option, because it costs too much, and because gospel concerts are often in places that are underserved by airlines, like Demopolis, Alabama, and Madison, Georgia. The Jackson Southernaires, who have been singing in gospel programs around the country virtually every weekend for the last fifty years, used to travel from show to show crowded into whatever car they could get their hands on, and they thanked God if the car got them to the program and back before it broke down. In 1965, they sang in a gospel competition in Detroit, and a fan of theirs bet a fan of the Mighty Clouds of Joy that the Southernaires would win. The Mighty Clouds were heavy favorites but the Southernaires prevailed, and their fan was so grateful that he bought them a bus with some of his winnings. The Southernaires are now on their third bus. In a previous life, their bus worked for Trailways; now it is painted silver and white, has a license plate that says BUCKLE UP WITH JESUS, and has THE JACKSON SOUTHERNAIRES stenciled in large, loopy script on the back and both sides.

  The bus attracts attention. Once, at a diner in Florida, a truck driver who was hauling a carnival ride from Tampa to Birmingham came over to the Southernaires’ table, introduced himself, and said, “I heard you-all sing thirty years ago, in a union hall in Suffolk, Virginia, and I been dreaming of meeting you ever since.” Then he clapped his hands to his chest and exclaimed, “Thank Jesus for causing me to
see your bus!” Another time, in Jackson, Mississippi, which is the group’s base of operations, Mack Brandon, the Southernaires’ driver, was outside checking the engine and the tires, and a woman pulled over to take a picture of the bus for her gospel scrapbook. She asked Mack to pose beside the front tire. He was in work clothes and didn’t feel photogenic, but she persisted. Not long ago, I asked him if he had ever seen the photograph, and he said, “And how! That lady and me got engaged.”

  Sometimes the bus becomes a source of problems. Once, the Southernaires broke down somewhere between Nashville and Louisville and needed three days to raise the money for repairs. Another time, in Richmond, Virginia, the transmission blew up, but, fortunately, Willis Pittman—the lead singer in Willis Pittman and the Burden Lifters—lives in Richmond and is a mechanic, and he fixed the transmission for free. One night, in the middle of Ohio, a tire blew out and they ran out of gas at the same moment. A farmer heard the commotion and came out of his house, then went into his barn, found a tire that fitted the wheel, filled a can of gas, jacked up the bus, replaced the tire, filled the gas tank, pulled them back onto the road with his tractor, and then showed them his Ku Klux Klan membership card and asked them to be on their way.

  THE GOSPEL AUDIENCE is probably the poorest of any mass audience in the country, and there are a thousand ways, like working at a Kmart or doing construction, that most gospel singers could make more money than they do singing gospel; and most gospel singers don’t make enough from their music to live on. It is a matter of devotion. Gospel music has complicated origins, but it primarily came out of the Southern black Church of God in Christ and the Holiness movement of the Methodist Church; musically, it is a union of English revival hymns and African song styles—call-and-response, moaning, shouting. In the thirties, gospel singers started traveling a circuit of auditoriums, churches, Grange halls, and tent meetings, and through more than half a century the gospel highway has hardly changed. There are gospel records, but for most of the audience gospel is more a form of public worship and performance than something you listen to at home.

  Over the past year, the Jackson Southernaires, as they have for most of the last five decades, left home nearly every Thursday and spent the weekend on the road. They sang in almost every state and in Ontario, in places as tiny as Blytheville, Arkansas, and as big as Brooklyn; they sang in half-empty church halls and in packed theaters; and last year, for the first time, they sang in France and were treated like stars. Not long ago, I traveled with the Southernaires on the gospel circuit. The first night on the road, I couldn’t sleep, so I sat on the steps at the front of the bus and talked to Mack. We were on our way to Demopolis, Alabama, a run-down town in the center of the state. Mack said, “We’re going way out in the country. You wait and see—people’ll be coming to the show on mules.” Mack has been a gospel bus driver for twenty-five years. He started with Reverend Julius Cheeks and the Sensational Nightingales, and then he drove for Willie Neal Johnson and the Gospel Keynotes, and then, four years ago, he joined the Southernaires. Until 1965, he drove for Trailways. His home is in Roxboro, North Carolina, but he often stays at the Stonewall Jackson Motel, in Jackson, Mississippi. He said that his professional zenith was in 1981, after Willie Neal was nominated for a gospel Grammy, when the Gospel Keynotes rode to the ceremony in a limousine. “It wasn’t just the limousine,” he said. “When they came to pick me up, I opened the door, and there was Dionne Warwick. It was a completely beautiful experience. I opened the door, I saw Dionne, and I wanted to die.”

  When Mack gets tired, James Burks drives. That’s his No. 2 job with the Southernaires; his No. 1 job is to play bass guitar and sing backup. Everyone in the group doubles up. Granard McClendon, the guitar player, who is slim and glib and is a sharp dresser, negotiates for the motel rooms when they pull into a town, and he also chooses which of their six sets of matching uniforms they will wear each night. During my trip with the group, Melvin Wilson sang tenor (“high”) and falsetto (“top”) and was also the sound engineer. He has satiny dark skin and a plump, pumpkin-shaped face. When Melvin was a teenager, in Robersonville, North Carolina, his father managed a gospel group called the Dynamic Powell Brothers. No one knew that Melvin could sing—not even Melvin. One day, he was riding home with the Dynamic Powell Brothers from a show and he just opened his mouth and let go. His voice was as cool and clear as water; the Dynamic Powell Brothers hired him on the spot. When I traveled with the Jackson Southernaires, the keyboard player was Gary Miles. (Melvin and Gary recently left to join another group, and have been replaced by Tony Nichols and Daryl Johnson.) Gary also hauled equipment out of the bus for shows and hauled it back afterward. In his off-road life, he is an actor. He has been an extra on Murder, She Wrote and Magnum, P.I. Both times, he was cast as an officious waiter. He has skinny arms, a wide trunk, a nutty laugh, and an air of astonishment.

  Maurice Surrell drums and sings and is the Southernaires’ enforcer; that is, he writes up members of the group when they infract Southernaire rules. The rules take up fifteen typewritten pages. They were established years ago by Luther Jennings, one of the original Southernaires, who is now retired from gospel and teaches math at a high school in Jackson. Luther wanted the Southernaires to be known as the gentlemen of the gospel circuit, so his rules are strict and the fines are steep: twenty-five dollars for a wrinkled uniform, twenty-five dollars for unshined shoes, a hundred dollars for cursing, a hundred dollars for bringing a young lady to the restaurant where the group is eating, twenty-five dollars for hitting the wrong note in a song. Luther did not believe in leniency; if he transgressed, he fined himself. Luther was also the Southernaires’ debt collector. Sometimes concert promoters were so moved by the Southernaires’ performances that they misplaced the money they owed the Southernaires. This had a way of irritating Luther, so he usually carried one or more of the guns he owned—a single-action revolver, a bolt-action rifle, a .22, a .32, a Winchester, two .25-caliber revolvers, some twelve-gauge shotguns, two .357s, two .45s, and a couple of dainty handguns—which he could lay down, as if he were setting the table, when he went to collect from the promoter at the end of a show.

  The Southernaires have two lead singers—Roger Bryant and Huey Williams. Roger is an ordained minister and an emphatic public speaker, so he is responsible for going onstage before each concert and urging the members of the audience to buy a Southernaires record or video before they leave. He has full cheeks, gap teeth, a sidelong glance, and parchment-colored skin. His hair is puffy and moldable; it looks different every day. His voice is choked and explosive. Onstage, Roger is a pacer, an arm swinger, a hip slapper, a fist shaker, and a screamer. He is now thirty-nine years old. When he was small, he was in a group called the Sunbeam Jrs. His father, a foundry worker and preacher in Saginaw, Michigan, would stand him up on the kitchen table and beat him to make him sing.

  Huey Williams is fifty-five. He has been with the group for twenty-nine years, and now when people think of the Southernaires they mostly think of Huey. He grew up in the country south of Jackson. Before he became a full-time gospel singer, he did construction work in Detroit and in New Orleans, but his enthusiasms are strictly rural. He once told me that people refer to him as the coon-hunting gospel singer. Currently, he has six Walker hounds; they live in big dog pens behind his house, in McComb, Mississippi. On his days off, Huey usually takes the dogs hunting or attends to hunting-related errands. One time when I visited him in McComb, we spent the day driving across the state to the taxidermist, to pick up a bobcat Huey had shot. Huey is a tall man with a broad chest and the steep cheekbones of a Cherokee. He has big dimples, blue eyes, and a thin mustache. He wears two chunky gold rings and a thick gold cuff; his hands are long and elegant, and his nails are smooth and shiny. The first time I met him, he took my chin in his hands, tilted it toward him, and said, “Take a good look at my face. Have you ever in your life seen blue eyes on a black man?” His speaking voice is sometimes brisk and commanding and sometimes whispery a
nd intimate, and always tonic. I have heard him sing in a bass voice, which is so deep that it sounds like burping, and in a shrieking, afflicted tenor, and in a buttery, pliant baritone. When he was around thirty, his voice was so supple he could do anything with it; he believes that at the time he was simply the best singer in the whole world. Before a performance, when he is encircled by his fans, he walks around like Goliath. In the morning, when he wakes up hoarse from the show and creaky from sleeping on the bus, he looks like someone who thinks a lot about retiring. His wife, Mamie, who is a machine operator at a General Motors plant in Mississippi, says, “I’m so used to him traveling I don’t know what I’d do if he were here. He’s got his dogs, I suppose. But, with him always being away, we don’t have time to get into each other’s hair.”