by Ed McBain
“Yeah,” he said. “None of this is arranged, you know. He’s making it up as he goes along. What they do is there’s chords in a song, and they just take the chords and make up their own melodies. That’s the beauty of it. This is all being made up as they go along. They could play this same song two nights in a row, and it’d be different each time out.”
“Improvisation,” Jessica said.
“Right, improvisation, that’s the word. Listen to what he does here.”
“Yes,” Jessica said. “My husband plays the piano, you know. But not jazz piano.”
“I didn’t know he was a musician,” Alex said.
“It’s just for his own amusement. He’s not a professional.”
He was not too pleased that they were talking while the record was on, you weren’t supposed to talk when you were listening to jazz, you were just supposed to listen to it. She opened her eyes now, and uncrossed her legs, and leaned forward to take a cigarette from her bag. Lighting it, she blew out a stream of smoke and then cocked her head to one side, as though paying strict attention to what was coming from the speakers, but he knew she wasn’t digging it at all. When she said, “This must be difficult to dance to,” he wanted to say You’re not supposed to dance to it, you’re supposed to listen to it, and you’re also not supposed to talk, but he didn’t say anything.
She finished the Grand Marnier, and then said, “I haven’t danced in ages. My husband didn’t know how to dance. Do you mind if I help myself to a little more of this?”
“I’ll get it for you,” he said, and started out of the chair, but she was already up and walking toward the bar. As she poured from the bottle, she said, “It’s funny how little you know about a man before you marry him. We lived together for a year before we got married, and I never knew he couldn’t dance.” She put the stopper back on the bottle and then instead of going back to the couch, she did several pirouettes across the room, almost spilling her drink, and laughed, and said, “This is very difficult to dance to,” and then went to sit in a chair near the speaker on the left.
“Now this cut,” he said, “is the Charlie Parker Quartet he had in 1948, the fall of 1948. This is called ‘The Bird,’ that’s his nickname, Parker’s nickname.”
“Um-huh,” she said. “I didn’t have a record player when I was growing up. I used to listen to the radio a lot. I listened to Country Western, that’s what we had out there. I lived on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, my father still has it out there. I had a cow when I was a little girl. My own cow. I’ll bet you didn’t have a cow of your own when you were growing up.”
“No, I didn’t,” he said.
“Daisy. I named her Daisy.”
He almost said he knew a one-legged whore named Daisy, but he caught himself in time.
“Used to feed her, milk her, I took very good care of her. When I went off to college, my father just put her out to pasture. She was too old to give milk anymore, but he didn’t want to sell her for slaughter because he knew how much I loved that old cow.”
Alex figured there was no sense trying to get her to listen to the record. If she wanted to talk, he’d let her talk. Slow and easy, give her enough fuckin rope. “Where’d you go to college?” he asked.
“UCLA. In Los Angeles. I was an English major. My husband was there at the time, my then future husband, that’s where I met him. He was going for his master’s in educational psychology. We dated a few times, but nothing came of it, we went our separate ways. I met him again after I came to New York. I was doing some work for Random House, and they had this huge cocktail party for a writer whose manuscript I’d copyedited, and there was Michael. My husband. He’d written a book Random House was supposed to publish. They asked for a lot of revisions later on, and he told them to go to hell, but at the time he thought he was going to be on their list, and there he was, there I was, and we met all over again. We started seeing each other a lot, neither of us were kids at the time, this was seven years ago, I was twenty-two and he was twenty-six, so we figured we might as well move into the same apartment.”
She was toying with the hem of her skirt as she spoke. She held the brandy snifter in her right hand, and with her left hand she plucked at the hem of the skirt, almost rhythmically, though not in time with the music that was still coming from the speakers. “We lived together for a year,” she said, “and then decided to get married. We were happy at first, I suppose. I think we were. In fact, I guess we were happy until our son was born, and then Michael began playing around with other women, one that I knew about for sure, an older woman who was a physics instructor at Columbia, where he was going for his doctorate nights. In the daytime he was teaching at CCNY, and between lessons plans for his ed psych classes there and the assignments he had to do for his classes at Columbia, not to mention his playing around with the physics instructor and Christ knew how many other women, I hardly ever got to see him anymore. Even before we were separated.” She drained the snifter, and said, “I love this stuff, I could drink it all night long.”
“There’s plenty there,” Alex said.
“The only good thing about Michael,” she said, somewhat wistfully it seemed to Alex, “was that he was good in bed.” She laughed, and then said, “Of course, I never had any basis for comparison.”
“Do you miss him?” Alex asked.
“Miss him? I hope the bastard gets hit by a bus,” she said, and laughed again.
“Listen,” Alex said, “if you want to dance, I can put on …”
“No, that’s all right,” she said. “I like what you’ve got on.”
“Well, I saw you twirling around the room there …”
“Oh, that was just … Do you want to dance?” she asked.
“I’m not a very good dancer,” he said. “But if you want to dance, I can put on the flip side. There’s a lot of stuff there he did with the strings. If you want to dance.”
“I’m probably very rusty,” she said.
“Should I turn the record over?”
“Yes, I’d like to hear it,” she said, “but we don’t have to dance if you don’t want to. Would you mind if I called downstairs again? I just want to make sure he went back to sleep all right.”
“Go right ahead,” he said. “Did you want me to fill your glass again, Jess?”
She was already on her way to the bedroom, and she stopped and turned to look at him, and very softly said, “Why’d you call me that?”
“Huh?” he said. He didn’t know what she meant. Called her what?
“Jess,” she said. “My father used to call me Jess.”
“I don’t know, it just came out,” he said, and shrugged.
She smiled, and nodded, and then went into the bedroom. He heard her dialing as he turned the record over. He moved the arm to the second cut, because the first cut on this side was “Passport No. 2,” and he knew she wouldn’t dig any of the small-group stuff, and probably wouldn’t recognize that the tune was based on the “I Got Rhythm” chords. He went to the bar to refill her glass, and when she came out of the bedroom again, he said, “Everything okay?”
“Yep,” she said. “Got him changed and tucked him back in. All quiet on the western front.”
“Good,” he said. “Now this is Charlie with strings,” he said. “He’s got Mitch Miller on oboe in there. You know Mitch Miller, don’t you?”
“Oh, sure,” she said. “I used to watch him on television.”
“And also Buddy Rich, he’s a drummer.”
“I’m not sure I recognize the song they’re playing,” she said.
“That’s ‘Just Friends,’ it’s almost over. You’ll know this next one, it’s ‘Everything Happens to Me,’ that was a very popular song.”
“Oh, it’s nice with the strings,” she said, and began swaying and lazily tossing her head. “Mmm, I like that.”
“Do you want to try to dance to it?” Alex asked.
“Let’s just listen for a while, okay?”
“Sur
e,” he said. “Here’s your drink, if you want it.”
“Thank you,” she said, and took the snifter and sat on the couch and crossed her legs. Her skirt rode up again, but this time she did not move to lower it. “I think I like the strings much better,” she said.
“Well, jazz experts don’t think too much of this band he had with the strings. But I suppose it’s easier to dance to.”
“Mm,” she said. “It’s very lush. And sensuous.”
“Yeah,” he said.
They listened in silence to the next two cuts, and when “Summertime” came on, she said, “Ahhh, ‘Summertime,’ I love this song. This I want to dance to. Shall we try it, Alex?”
“Sure,” he said.
She got off the couch, and he moved to meet her in the center of the room.
“I’m probably very rusty,” she said again.
“I won’t be able to tell the difference,” he said. “I’m really a lousy dancer.”
He took her into his arms, but he did not pull her in tight against him. The dress she had on was made of nylon jersey that felt smoothly electric to his spread fingers, where his hand rested on the small of her back. As they circled the floor, he kept a circumspect distance between them, telling himself that the only way to play this was slow and easy. He felt that things were going along nicely, but he didn’t want her to spook. He kept the distance between them, the only points of contact being her right hand in his left hand, his other hand on the small of her back.
“You’re a nice dancer,” she said.
“Oh, sure.”
“Honestly.”
“Well, thank you,” he said. “But I know I’m not.”
“Mmm,” she said, “that’s beautiful, I love that song,” and suddenly eased in closer to him. Just the top of her body. Just pressed her breasts, naked under the clinging fabric, against his chest, leaning into him, but keeping the lower part of her body away from him. He responded to this at once, automatically and involuntarily, a sudden aching twinge in his groin. But he did not pull her in closer, kept his hand just where it was in the small of her back, did not in any way reveal to her that he knew what she’d done and was already responding to it.
“Mmm,” she said.
“You’re not rusty at all,” he said.
“I haven’t done this in a long time,” she said, and then moved in gently against his thigh and put her cheek against his. But still he did not tighten his arm around her, waiting instead for her to make the next move, waiting for her to slide off his thigh and around front, just to the left of where she was rhythmically pressing against him.
The song ended, and she moved abruptly out of his arms, and said, “That was nice,” and went immediately to where she had put her drink down on the coffee table. He turned away at once, not wanting her to see how excited he was and went for his own drink, forgetting for a moment where he had put it down, and then finding it, and shifting his jacket slightly in an attempt to cover himself. When he turned back to her, she had taken off her shoes and was sitting on the couch with her legs tucked under her, the green dress pulled back over her knees. Her knees were smooth and shiny, he wanted to touch them, wanted in fact to thrust his hands up under the pleated skirt, but instead he sat on the opposite end of the couch and she turned slightly to face him, the knees pointing toward him.
“Where’d you learn to dance?” she asked. There was a slight tremor in her voice and her cheeks were flushed. He saw, too, that she could not seem to sit still on her end of the couch and kept shifting her knees in an apparent effort to make herself comfortable.
“At church socials,” he said. “When I used to live in the Bronx.”
“Where’s your bathroom?” she asked abruptly, and smiled.
“Just off the foyer there.”
“Same as mine,” she said, still smiling, and started to get off the couch, unfolding first one leg and then the other from where they’d been tucked under her. There was the briefest flash of nylon, she was wearing only panties under the green dress. She rose from the couch and walked swiftly across the room. He watched the deliberate sway of her hips—she knew his eyes were on the tight jiggle of her ass under the clinging jersey.
He was encouraged by the fact that she had to pee. It was only a matter of time now. When a girl had to pee, she was excited. This one was excited, this one was in heat, in just a little while she’d be spread under him on the bed in the other room. He tried not to think of this because he wanted to get control of himself before she came back, wanted to hold her off as long as he could till she built a real fine head of steam that either had to explode or be taken care of. He was going to take care of her real fine. He was going to hump her clear through the bed, and down through the floor, and also the ceiling of the apartment downstairs and through that floor and also the ceiling till they ended up humping in her own apartment two flights down, came crashing through the plaster ceiling and kept right on humping while Felice’s eyes bugged out of her head.
When Jessica came out of the bathroom, the first thing she said was, “I didn’t realize how late it was, Alex.”
“It is getting kind of late,” he said, and smiled knowingly.
She sat on the couch again, and he expected her to tuck her legs up under her again, expected her to point those smooth knees toward him, maybe open her legs just a trifle so he could see her panties again, maybe she’d even taken them off in the john. Instead, she put on her shoes, and then stood up, and picked up her handbag, and very matter-of-factly said, “I have to go.”
“Go?” he said.
“Mmm,” she said, and smiled. “I’ve had a lovely time, Alex, but really it’s getting very late.”
He looked swiftly at his watch. Panic was rising in his throat, he did not want her to get away, not now when he was so close. “It isn’t even midnight,” he said.
“I know, but Peter wakes up at six. I really have to go. And Felice is only fifteen, you know, I don’t want to keep her up too late.”
“But it isn’t even midnight,” he said again.
“Cinderella,” she said, and smiled, and kissed the tips of her fingers and pressed them to his cheek. “Thank you, Alex, I’ve had a wonderful time, really.” He started to get up, and she said, “No, please don’t, it’s only two flights down,” and smiled again.
He followed her to the front door anyway, and took her topcoat from the closet. She draped the coat over her arm, looked around as though she had forgotten something, and then said, “Good night, Alex.”
“Good night, Jess,” he said.
“Jess,” she repeated, and looked tenderly into his face, and then turned away, and opened the door and went out. He closed the door behind her and double-locked it, and then went into the living room and stood staring down at her lipsticked cigarette ends in the ashtray on the coffee table. Behind him, the Charlie Parker record clicked emptily in the retaining grooves near the center of the disc. Impulsively, he picked up the ashtray and hurled it at the wall in the entrance foyer.
“So how’d you make out last night?” Archie asked.
“Great,” Alex said.
They were in Archie’s car, a ’72 Oldsmobile, and they were driving toward Stamford on the Merritt Parkway. The day was sunny and bright, the road thronged with Sunday drivers. Archie kept the speedometer needle at a steady fifty miles per; if there was one thing he didn’t need, it was a bullshit traffic violation.
“Who is this chick, anyway?” he asked.
“She lives in my building,” Alex said. “She’s separated from her husband. I think last night was the first time she’s been fucked in six months. She was really something, Arch. Couldn’t get enough of it. I woke up this morning, she had my cock in her mouth again, I thought she was going to swallow the fuckin thing she had it in so deep. I finally got rid of her about twelve o’clock, just before I called you.”
“She white or black?” Archie asked.
“White. Why?”
“White ch
icks dig suckin, that’s a fact. That’s cause suckin’s sophisticated. You get your down-home girls, they don’t know suckin from callin in the hogs. Unless they’re hookers, you know, that’s a different story.”
“Yeah, well this one dug it all right.”
“Where do we get off?” Archie said. “You got the map there? I marked it on the map. What does it say there?”
“Exit 35. Is this it?”
“Yeah, where I marked it.”
“That’s right, exit 35.”
“Daisy never takes the Merritt up, they don’t allow taxis on the Merritt. But she says this is the quickest way.”
“What do you think of this thing, Arch?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Well, from what you told me, Daisy doesn’t know too much about the setup. We liable to go in there and find only a piano and a floor lamp. She’s never been inside the house itself, ain’t that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Also, I don’t believe this business about there being five in help, and all of them being off on Thursdays. That don’t sound right to me, Arch.”
“I talked to her about an hour yesterday, Alex. She says the guy wouldn’t chance bringin her out there if everybody wasn’t off. That’s what she says.”
“What’s the guy’s name again?”
“Harold Reed. The Third.”
“Shit,” Alex said, and began laughing.
“Ain’t that something?” Archie said, and laughed, too.
“Harold Reed the Third, and he brings a one-legged whore out there to fuck in his barn.”
“His studio,” Archie said.
“What’s he do out there in his studio,” Alex asked, “besides fuck one-legged whores?”
“He’s an artist. He paints out there.”
“And he’s a millionaire?”
“He made his money in supermarkets or something. The painting’s just a hobby.”
“Did Daisy say what this five in help was?”