Walking with the Muses

by Pat Cleveland

  Miami wasn’t quite what we’d expected. It was autumn up north, and there weren’t many people around except for the elderly. The hotels seemed deserted, a bit like movie sets that had shut down for the day. Still, there was sunshine and a beach, and I was starved for both. Our hotel, the Seville, was right on the ocean, and the scent of sea air rejuvenated my spirits.

  The clerk at the reception desk told my mom that our room wasn’t ready yet, so Albert suggested that the two of us wait in the bar. “Don’t forget, showtime is at eight o’clock,” he added. “That means be backstage at six.” He tapped his watch and disappeared with the rest of the girls into the elevator. That left Mom and me alone, sipping our sodas and admiring the view.

  A huge man approached our table. “Excuse me, ladies, I’m here with the Champ,” he said, nodding in the direction of a group of men standing at the far side of the lobby. “He was wondering what you beautiful ladies were doing here at the hotel.”

  Mom craned her neck, trying to see whom the man was referring to, and within seconds, her face changed as from day to night. Her jaw dropped and her eyes grew wide, as if she’d seen a giant. She didn’t say anything, so I answered: “Yes, ummmmm . . . sir. We’re here to do tonight’s fashion show, and I’m one of the girls in it.”

  Mom didn’t speak. I’d never seen her tongue-tied like this. Usually, I was the silent one—seen but not heard, like a good child. Suddenly, she regained her voice. “That’s really the Champ?”

  “Yup, that’s him. He’s my boss. We’re down here training for the next fight.”

  “Maybe you’d like to come to the show,” Mom said. “It’s here at the hotel, tonight at eight.”

  “We just might, ’cause we’re off tonight. The boss is taking a little break.”

  “We can leave tickets for you,” Mom said, almost too eagerly.

  “That’s a great idea,” the man said. He pulled a calling card out of his pocket and wrote his room number on the back. “I hope it’s not too much to ask, but we’ll need five tickets.”

  “I’m sure it won’t be a problem when they find out who’s coming,” Mom said.

  “It’s a date! See you ladies tonight.”

  Mom took the card, and we watched the man rejoin his group. The man known as the Champ was extremely young-looking; in fact, he was just twenty-four at the time. He shot a look in our direction as the other men hurried him into the nearby elevators.

  Mom had a smile kind of frozen on her face. “Do you realize who you just invited to the show?” she asked.

  “I didn’t—”

  “You sure picked a big one.”

  “—invite him. You did.”

  That night’s show seemed to end before it began, and a sea of people poured out of the main ballroom into the hotel’s mezzanine lobby. I thought the crowd was for us, but in the middle of the throng, I saw the world-famous Champ. Worshipers crowded all around him, and he was signing autographs while his bodyguards tried to keep the multitudes under control.

  Mom and I were attempting to go to our room, but all we could do was move with the flow in the general direction of the elevators. Somehow, as we were swept along, I found myself shoulder to shoulder with the heavyweight champion of the world. (Though he had legally changed his name to Muhammad Ali by then, most people still called him Cassius Clay.) I tried to keep a polite distance between us, but it was no use; we were practically fused. He didn’t seem to mind and stayed close as several of us, including his bodyguards and a few other hotel guests, squeezed onto the elevator. Then he turned to face me. He was even better-looking in person than in photographs.

  “I enjoyed seeing you in the show,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said, elated. “It was fun tonight. The audience was really lively.”

  “Yeah, I like a good crowd,” he said. “When they scream for more, you know you’re giving them what they want.”

  “I know what you mean.” I laughed, thinking, Wow, this is almost normal, like a regular conversation between the two youngest people in this elevator. Half of me was oblivious to everyone around us; the other half was all too aware that we were being watched not only by bodyguards but by my mom. I felt embarrassed.

  The elevator stopped and several people had to get off. They were clearly excited to be near the Champ, but the bodyguards made sure they didn’t touch him as they eased out. “You’re the greatest, Champ!” they said.

  The Champ replied, “When you bet on me / You bet on the best / That ain’t no mess.” When the elevator doors closed, he said, “I love those people.” Then he winked at me.

  Somehow Mom and I missed our floor, and she said, “Oh no, we forgot to push our button.”

  Everyone was silent for a moment, and then the Champ spoke. “In that case, you should come up to my place. We’re having a little party, and I know everyone would like to meet you and some of your model friends.”

  The elevator stopped. “This is us, boss,” said one of the bodyguards.

  The doors parted, and the Champ said, “Are you coming?”

  I looked to Mom for the answer. She nodded, and in that split second before the doors closed again, I said, “Yes.”

  And so it came to pass that on a Sunday night in October 1966, I walked out of the elevator on the top floor of the Hotel Seville in Miami Beach, Florida, on the arm of perhaps the most famous man on the planet, who to me seemed like a sweet Southern boy next door. Mom and I called the other models and told them that Cassius Clay was having a party. They arrived in the blink of an eye. There was lots of picture-taking of them with the Champ, but I just watched.

  Then the Champ said, “I want a picture of me and this pretty lady.” He gestured for me to sit beside him. “Buzz,” he said to his bodyguard, “let her mom take the picture. I don’t want you to take it, ’cause your face is so ugly, man, I might make an ugly face just from looking at you.”

  “I’m with you on that, Champ. They’re a lot prettier than me—and you.”

  “Yeah, but between the two of us, Buzz, I am the prettiest, the greatest, the smartest, the best.” They both laughed uproariously as Buzz handed the camera to Mom. “I want twenty copies of this one,” the Champ said.

  I could see that the other girls were a bit envious of all the attention I was getting. When I went over to the bar for a ginger ale, I overheard one of them say, “There she goes again, hogging the spotlight.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” the other girl said.

  “That’s the problem,” said the first girl. “If she weren’t so innocent, he’d be paying more attention to us. We’re closer to his age. You know what I heard? She lied about her age to do the tour. She’s just fifteen!”

  “So? Who cares?”

  “She’s a baby. Nobody seriously wants someone that young. And guess who’s looking for a wife?”

  “Let me guess—the Champ?”

  “Bingo. Whoever gets him is sitting pretty for life. Somebody has to, and it might as well be me.”

  Just then the Champ came over and asked me to tour Miami with him the next day. I was excited about that but also exhausted, physically and emotionally. So I said good night, left the party, and went to bed.

  The next day, I woke at sunrise, put on my new bikini, grabbed a big towel, wrote a note for Mom (who was still sleeping), and headed for the beach. How I loved to be on my own, in nature, with no one telling me what to do. What a heavenly sensation—just sand and water for miles and miles, all for me, the lifeguard, and a few early-morning surfers. I went for a swim in the shallow surf and felt small salty waves tickle my body. I danced with the handful of seagulls and sang with my eyes closed, spinning round and round with joy.

  Then, out of the corner of one eye, I saw a man running toward me. As he got closer, I recognized the Champ, without his bodyguards for once. He picked up my towel off the sand and said, “You need this. You shouldn’t be out here in that bikini. I don’t want other men to see you.”

  Assuming h
e was joking, I laughed, and he laughed. Still, he wrapped the towel tightly around me. “If you’re gonna be my girl, you can’t be running around like that,” he said.

  What is he talking about? I thought. Men love women in bikinis!

  Then he said, “My wife has to be covered up.”

  His wife? I laughed again and didn’t say a word, but he looked at me sternly. Then he decided to change the subject. “Hey, you’re an early bird like me. Wanna have breakfast?”

  His room was humming with activity. “Hey, man, where you been?” his manager said when we walked in. “You gave us the slip again!” The trainer and bodyguards were there, too, naturally.

  “You expect to go everywhere with me?” the Champ said. “I know where I go / And when I go, I go / ’Cause I am the show.” The men looked offended, prompting the Champ to say, “You guys are so serious, I can’t even joke with you! No wonder I have to get away sometimes.” He asked them to find me a robe to wear.

  I called my mom to let her know where I was, and the guys ordered enough food for an army. The Champ and I shared a stack of blueberry pancakes, and he ate a steak with home fries, and fruit, and raw eggs mixed into a glass of orange juice. “I’m going into training, so I have to eat a lot,” he explained. “Right now I could eat a horse. I might even eat you.” He pretended to take a bite out of me. His physical presence was so overwhelming that I actually got kind of scared. I think he picked up on my fear, because he said, “Want to see what it’s like to stand in front of my fist when I throw a punch?”

  He placed me at arm’s length and jabbed out his fist, which looked like the front of a locomotive barreling into the station. It stopped about one inch from my nose. “Did you know my fists are registered as weapons?” he asked.

  “That’s understandable,” I said weakly, my knees buckling. I actually thought I might collapse, but he caught hold of me in the nick of time.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the Champ said, looking stricken. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’d never hit you.”

  I relaxed, and we joked and chatted with each other. He talked about his idol, Sugar Ray Robinson, and I told him that Sugar Ray’s son went to my school (I didn’t mention my crush, as I figured the Champ might be jealous). He even confided some of his doubts about the way his career was going. “Sometimes I feel like my life is not my own,” he said. “It’s like I’m owned by these guys who manage me. I get so sick of always looking at their bulldog faces.” He also told me I was different from other girls. “Maybe it’s because you’re so young, like me, but I get a really good feeling around you.”

  The Champ’s manager brought in the latest newspapers, all of which featured articles about him (“This town loves me,” he said). He asked me to read them aloud because he liked my “little-girl voice.” He put his big arms around me, and I read to him like it was story time.

  That evening the Champ, his crew, and I explored the city from the Champ’s car—a Cadillac convertible, with the top down. It was a sparkling Florida evening, and in the open air I felt on top of the world. People noticed us from the side of the road and waved, and I giggled and waved back. “If you think these people love me,” the Champ said, “I’ll take you to a place where they really love me.” He leaned forward and said to the driver, “Take me to my people.”

  We drove into the poorest part of the city and pulled into some sort of plaza where a bunch of young black men were hanging out. They looked at the car with curiosity, wondering what such an expensive car was doing in their neighborhood. When they saw the Champ in the backseat, they came running. Children and old people and everyone in between, even stray dogs, poured out of every building, street corner, and alleyway just to get a better look. “This is the heart of what I’m fighting for,” the Champ said. “And the people love me for it. And I love them. Watch—I’ll show you.”

  He asked the driver to stop. The car was surrounded by fans, like a swarm of bees materializing out of nowhere, covering a hive. He stood up on the backseat, lifted his arms into the air, and started flexing his muscles. Thrusting fists to the sky, he yelled out, “Who’s the greatest?” As if in a chorus, the crowd roared back, “You’re the greatest!”

  He bellowed back, “No, you’re the greatest!” He was about to get out of the car to hug his fans, but his bodyguard practically tackled him to stop him. The Champ started to beat his chest like Tarzan; the crowd jumped for joy and started to clap. Then he sat down in the car, and the driver started the engine, and we drove slowly through the crowd, the top of the convertible still down.

  The people just kept following the car, whistling. The Champ shouted, “Have no fear / ’Cause the Champion is near / And I’m gonna win / And knock that fool out of the ring / ’Cause I float like a butterfly / And I sting like a bee!”

  With those last two lines, the crowd started chanting, “Float like a butterfly / Sting like a bee” again and again. The Champ looked at me and said, “I love this stuff.” We slowly rolled out of that place, and I grasped what a profoundly powerful person I was sitting next to. He was like a combination of Little Richard and Martin Luther King, Jr.

  We finally got to our destination: the training camp. The Champ jumped out of the car and said, “No woman has ever walked past that door.” He pointed to the entrance of what looked to me like a broken-down, totally ordinary one-story wood building. “This is where Sugar Ray trained, and now it’s my turn.” He thanked me for coming with him, and I told him I’d had a great time. He asked to see me the next day, but I was leaving. He said we’d see each other before I left and instructed the driver to take good care of me. Then all at once Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali was surrounded by a bunch of big guys who threw a white satin robe over his shoulders. As he walked away, I saw “The Champ” stitched on the back in red. He shot me one final look before being swallowed up in the world of boxing.

  The next morning we got a seven o’clock wake-up call from Albert. The show clothes were already on the bus, as well as the wardrobe ladies and our personal luggage. A few of the models were still giving me looks, but most of them were too tired to care; they’d spent their night off out on the town. We all settled in our seats and Albert began roll call. Allene had just said, “Present,” when one of the girls in the back shrieked, “Look! Out the window! It’s him!”

  “He’s coming to see me,” one of the girls said.

  “No,” said another, “he’s coming to see me.”

  The Champ was running alongside the Hound and banging on it, signaling to Ben to open the doors. Ben couldn’t believe his eyes; he’d missed all the hullabaloo because he’d been away for the break and had just arrived back in Miami. He opened the door, and the Champ climbed on board. Girls screamed and sat up straighter in their seats. I sank down as low as I could. I didn’t want him to see me because I looked awful. He spotted me anyway and plopped into the seat next to mine. Looking pleased with himself, he said, “I told you I’d see you today. You almost got away from me.” He squirmed in the seat; it was too small for him. “This bus is uncomfortable,” he said, stretching his huge arms.

  “It’s not that bad,” I said.

  “Where are you going? I can take you there. I have a break, and we can have fun together. Stay with me.”

  Ben was watching us in the mirror with his mouth open, and I could hear the shuffle of the other girls working their way to where the Champ and I were sitting.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I might miss the show.”

  Ben’s voice boomed out over the loudspeaker. “Whoever is with the tour stays on the bus. Whoever is not with the tour, it’s time to say goodbye. We’ve got a long drive today.”

  The clock was ticking; already we were two hours behind schedule. I could see Albert in the front, mustering the courage to ask the Champ to leave. Sweating visibly, he took the mike in his hand and said, “Ladies, gentlemen, Champ. We’re glad to have you with the tour—”

  Ben loudly revved the motor. Meanwhile, Mom rush
ed up with her camera and said, “Smile!” That was the last thing I could do. I was in the middle of an existential crisis, with no idea what was going on or what to do. The Champ could see he was getting nowhere with me, so he asked my mom if I could spend the day in Miami. She made a kind of clicking noise and went to the front to check with Albert. That’s when the other models decided to make their move. They asked to be photographed with him, trying to take my seat. But he wouldn’t let them have it.

  Finally, Albert came over and said, “I love the idea that you would love to take our star here out for the day, as her mother just told me. But please understand, I’ve got a show to put on, and we’ve got to be on our way. So I ask you, please, whatever else you do, don’t take away our star, or else I’ll lose my job.” I blushed at that. I wasn’t the star; I was just part of the ensemble. The only special role I played was that of the bride in the finale, but that was because I was the only one the dress fit. Then again, Albert always liked to exaggerate. He was also, I see now, a master manipulator. He knew that the Champ would never want to be responsible for someone’s job loss.

  Albert turned and went back to Ben, who revved the motor even more. The Champ said, “I understand. That’s show business.” He took my hand and kissed it. “We have a lot in common,” he said. “I’ll be watching you.”

  “I’ll be watching you, too,” I said in the barest whisper. Then the Champ got up and walked off the bus.

  chapter 12

  ON THE ROAD AGAIN

  This shot of me appeared on the cover of Jet; it was taken backstage during the first show of the 1966 Ebony Fashion Fair.

  Courtesy Johnson Publishing Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

  From Miami we went to St. Petersburg. When we got to our hotel, there was a message from the Champ saying that he’d come to take me back to Miami, then bring me to wherever I needed to be next. After the show that night, I received another message saying that he couldn’t come after all because he had to train. He was as tied up with his work as I was with mine. Talk about a two-career couple! We were ahead of our time.