by Jim Fusilli
“I look at you and I see somebody. A young man with dreams and talent. You’re impatient. Impetuous, I’d say. What you want, you want now. I’ve a feeling you found out it’s not going to come that easy. But you know what, Bill? You can do it. The voice, the look, the will—what else do you need?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Come here, Bill.”
Marsala dropped his head into her lap and curled up his legs until his knees met his chest.
She stroked his hair.
In the silence, they could hear the river run.
The world suddenly at bay, Bebe sighed.
“Love is what you need,” Rosa whispered as she comforted him. “You need to know someone loves you.”
“Do you, Rosa?” he asked, his voice soft and small.
“Of course I do, Bill. Of course I do.”
“I long for it…”
They kissed.
Spindly trees at the roadside seemed to sway in the light. The river continued without pause, patient and assured.
Then Bebe got his shot.
January, February and into March, he waited tables at the Lakeside like a son of a bitch and when it was his turn to sing, he showed the kind of enthusiasm that would’ve impressed Jolson. “Hey, folks, join in on this one, will you?” he’d say. Or “Here’s one I know you love. What do you say?” On the one ballad he was permitted per night, he’d bring the microphone toward tables where, moments earlier, he delivered steaks and chops. He sang to the women, the men amused by the kid’s nerve. At the end, he’d throw it back to the band, thanking them for their support. Then he’d trot to the wings where he’d slip back into his waiter’s jacket to retrieve the bones, empty glasses, the butter-smeared bread dishes.
Mid-March, Moran asked if he could fill in on a Friday night. Two sets. The bandleader Mel Keenan would pick the tunes. Forty minutes on, 20 off.
“I’ll do sixty straight for you, Eddie,” Bebe said.
“Forty is fine, Bill. Get together with Mel.” There’d be no time for rehearsal.
Rosa came up with Hennie. The Ear understood their enthusiasm and moved to a table at the edge of the dance floor.
The band warmed up the audience with a couple of tunes, and then Bebe bounded from the wings to a nice round of applause, the Friday night crowd greased and gay. “Deed I Do” was the opener, followed by “That Old Feeling,” Bebe straining, the arrangement in a key a bit higher than he preferred, but all right, all right, the crowd had spirit, they were on his side. The first ballad, Crosby’s “Soon,” went over, too. His feet under him now, Bebe talked to the audience, praising Moran and the room’s cowboy theme. He turned to Keenan and talking into the mic, he said, “Mel, how’s about we do one for Eddie?” The band played “Don’t Fence Me In,” Bebe pretending to ride a horse, the drummer making clip-clop sounds on the wood block. The audience howled. “Can you believe Cole Porter wrote that one?” Bebe said when it was done.
The second ballad, “I Surrender Dear,” Bebe dedicated to “my two best girls, Mama and my special honey, Rosa. Stand up, ladies. Say hi to the folks.”
A couple up-tempo numbers, and then it was over.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t forget to drink up! Oh, and tip your waiter. Big!”
As the audience laughed and applauded, Bebe hurried to the corridor, expecting Moran to shake his hand, tell him to go out and do one more, saying he was better than fine, quality all the way, a pro.
But no Moran.
Stubby Wilson, the bouncer, told him Moran was in his office. He hadn’t seen the set.
Moran stayed in the office for the second set, too.
“Don’t take it personal, Bill,” Wilson told him as the band packed for the night. “Eddie runs a business, don’t forget.”
The bouncer was aware that Marsala could slide into a dark mood. “He’ll hear from the regulars,” Wilson said. “Hell, I’ll tell him myself how you set ’em up and knocked ’em over.”
The following week, Marsala was back on the midweek shift, where he stayed. Three songs, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays. March, April. He simmered, tossed and turned. He was furious and inconsolable. Feeling foul, he picked up a ditz at a bus stop in Narrows Gate, fucked her standing up in a parking lot behind a diner, then dumped her back on the corner. Then he began to mope. He sat silent in Hennie’s kitchen for hours, his aunts tending to him with homemade pasta and pastries.
Anger and arrogance returned in May. He decided to confront Moran. On a late Monday afternoon, the sun hovering above the Palisades, Terrasini, who was driving, tried to provide counsel. It wouldn’t take.
Marsala said, “I give him the best Friday he’s had in a year, two years, and what? No ‘Thank you, Bill.’ ‘Nice work, Bill.’ Nothing.”
“All right. Nothing,” Terrasini replied. “But the point is to find out where you stand, not to make the guy know you think he’s shit. You say, ‘Eddie, what did you hear about me? Did I give you what you wanted? How can I improve?’”
“I grovel, in other words.”
“See, that’s all in your head, Bebe.”
Leaving River Road, they caught a red light on a hill, Terrasini struggling to keep his car from rolling back.
“Maybe you ask him, ‘What did you hear?’ and he says, ‘I heard you were phenomenal.’”
“Phenomenal? Then why doesn’t he tell me?”
“Bebe, you know these club owners,” he said as they drove on, entering Fairview. “They think if they praise you, you’re going to ask for a raise. Besides, you say you did fine. Why isn’t that enough?”
“Because I’m still singing between delivering soup. Jesus, Nino, what’s the matter with you? You take his side.”
“I’m not taking nobody’s side. I’m saying if you did fine, you did fine. Put in your time and if the guy don’t come through, you move on.”
“And what? Leave the Saturday Dance Cavalcade for some other singer? Fuck that. I earned it. It’s mine.”
Marsala rolled down the window and flicked out a half-spent cigarette.
“Bebe, I know you. Right now, if the world don’t bend over for you, you think it’s shit. Next week, you’ll be happy as hell to have the steady gig. You’ll regret—”
“No regrets, buster. Never a regret.”
“Look, I’m telling you to play it smart, that’s all. Play it smart.”
“Moran’s going to tell me where I stand,” Marsala replied stubbornly.
“And if you don’t like what you hear?”
“You let me worry about that.”
Have it your way, Terrasini thought. They proceeded in silence and minutes later pulled into the Lakeside’s gravel lot. Terrasini parked near a side entrance.
“Bebe—”
But Marsala hopped out and slammed the passenger-side door.
Moran was behind his desk, gooseneck lamp shining on a stack of bills of lading for liquor, cigarettes, gas and electric, maintenance, the band. He had an adding machine at his right hand and a pencil between his teeth.
Bebe stood in the doorway. When Moran failed to look up, he rapped the frame.
“Oh, hey, Bill,” Moran said, emerging from a head full of numbers and calculations. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve got something to say.”
Moran waved to a soft, cracked leather chair in front of the desk.
“How come I never heard anything from you after I filled in back in January?” he said, still standing.
January? Moran thought. He’d met the payroll a dozen times since and hadn’t shorted a vendor. The business was standing on steady ground, the Saturday Dance Cavalcade making the Lakeside Inn the number-one nightspot in North Jersey.
“What did you want me to say, Bill?”
“What could you say? You didn’t bother to listen.”
Moran raised a finger and pointed to a speaker on the wall. “I heard.”
“Yeah? So?”
Moran sat back.
/> Marsala said, “You can’t say the crowd didn’t go for it.”
“No, I won’t say that.”
“I think I earned another shot.”
“We haven’t needed a fill-in.”
“Maybe you need to move things around. Keep things fresh.”
“You telling me how to run the club, Bill?”
“I’m saying talent is hard to come by.”
Moran reached into a drawer and pulled out a small stack of acetates, each with a song from an aspiring singer, and a pile of letters, maybe 50, held together with a rubber band. He put them both on his blotter. “These are from this month alone, Bill. Sixty, sixty-five, seventy singers a month.” To make his point, Moran punched numbers into the adding machine and pulled the handle. “Seven hundred and twenty a year, minimum. Two a day.”
“I mean talent like mine, Eddie. Talent like mine.”
Moran stood and came around the desk. “Sit down, Bill.”
Defiant still, Marsala didn’t budge.
“Bill,” Moran said gently. “Sit.”
Annoyed, Marsala sat, the cushion wheezing. “I’m sitting. What’s it mean?”
Moran perched on the edge of his desk. Big with too much weight in front, he had thick lips and the gray pallor of a man who worked long hours indoors. But his eyes conveyed a compassion necessary in a profession where fantasy and reality conflicted. Moran knew there was little glamour in show business, at least in proportion to the vast landscape littered with broken hearts and shattered dreams. If he had children, he’d advise them to do anything but try to succeed as an entertainer. The odds were astronomical, the pain very rarely worth the struggle or the goal.
“Bill, you’ve got something. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t,” Moran began.
Teeth clenched, Marsala stared up at the club owner.
“But you’re not ready—”
“That Friday crowd didn’t agree.”
“Bill…”
“The midweek crowd goes for it, too.”
“Bill, listen. You do fine. Is that what you want me to say? You do fine. The crowd, sure, they go for you.”
Marsala nodded in satisfaction.
“You’ve improved. That’s a fact.”
“But I still sling hash. I still count tips.”
“But you’ve got room to grow.”
“You just said they go for it. If they go for it—”
“Bill, you’re not listening. I’m here to tell you that you’re not ready. I put you out there now and I’m hurting you.”
“I’d say that’s my call.”
“No. It’s mine. You fail and I’m the guy who sent out a kid before his time. My reputation gets clipped.”
Marsala lifted from the chair and began to pace. “Tell me how I’m not ready. I know you’re wrong, but go ahead. You tell me.”
“It’s a matter of seasoning, Bill. It comes from getting up there night after night, year after year.”
“Eddie, you forget I was on the road with Captain Bridges. I’ve been playing bars since I was a kid.”
“You’re still a kid,” Moran said, not unkindly. He’d been through scenes like this before. Sometimes his advice took, other times no. Usually, it was a matter of maturity, of understanding the nature of the job.
“Bill, your show is all energy. It’s shtick. It plays in spurts. The ballads—that’s something else. You’ve got a feel for them. But your voice isn’t there.”
Marsala stared at Moran, incredulous. “The voice isn’t there?”
“It’s pleasant enough, but it drifts between tenor and baritone. You can’t control it at the bottom and it’s ordinary in the upper register. When you sing a ballad, Bill, you want it to shake a woman down to her soul, like a tenor solo by Coleman Hawkins or that kid, Webster, with the Ellington band. You want to drive a man into a mood.” Moran shook his head. “Your voice…Not yet.”
Marsala was stunned. He searched for a way to deny what had been said, but he found no rebuttal.
Moran said, “A couple of years and that baritone will be burnished and you’ll have a shot. You keep working, you learn your stagecraft, find the right material and you’ll have a shot.”
Marsala returned to the chair and sat on an arm.
“You’re not there yet, kid,” Moran added. “You try, but you’re not there.”
Bebe burst in, said nothing to nobody, raced upstairs, slammed the door to his room and threw himself on his bed. Drowsing on the sofa, Vincenzo spun upright, alarmed. Eyes glazed, he stared at his wife. Before he could speak, Hennie slid her glass next to her ashtray and wriggled out of the chair. “I’ll take care of it,” she muttered, housecoat stretched across her jiggling frame.
The stairs moaned under her weight.
“Bebe,” she said, knocking on the door. “Bebe.”
He was crying. “Go away, Ma.”
“Bebe, don’t make me get the key. Bebe.”
When he didn’t reply, she pounded the door with the side of her fist. “Bebe, open up, goddamn it!”
Bebe opened the door a crack.
Hennie saw his waiter’s jacket on the floor behind him.
“What happened?” Her hands were on her hips, her voice graveled and phlegmy. “Look at me. What happened?”
“I’m out. I’m never getting Saturday night.”
“The Ear said this?”
He nodded, his blue eyes ringed red. “He’s not putting me on the radio.”
“That son of a bitch. Who’s he bringing in?”
“I don’t know, Ma,” Bebe replied mournfully.
“Who’s he think he is, this stuck-up prick.” Hennie calculated. Bebe had a mouth on him, but he wasn’t so stupid to throw away a job that could’ve put him on a radio program popular all over Manhattan. “Sit down, Bebe,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
He did, dropping Moran’s kind words and fatherly tone.
Hennie calculated. Finally, she said, “That fat bastard slugged you, didn’t he?”
Bebe shook his head.
“He say anything about us?” she asked. Up in Bergen County, far from the waterfront’s grime, they looked down on Narrows Gate and the rest of Hudson County.
Bebe sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his shoes.
“Listen to me,” she said angrily. “He gave you a whack and said the guineas from Narrows Gate are scum. Ain’t I right, Bebe?”
“Ma…”
“You want to throw this away? Do you?”
He looked up. “Throw what away? It’s over. I’m not putting in five more years as a waiter so I get a few songs a week.”
“So you give up.” She snorted derisively. “Ain’t that you in nutshell?”
“I saw him. I confronted him. What more do you want me to do? You want I should show up on Friday and knock down the Okie?”
She leaned over him. “I want you to fight for yourself.”
“How? How do you fight the guy at the top?”
“Moran hit you, didn’t he?”
“Ma…”
“Say it.”
“Ma, for Christ’s sake.”
“Bebe, goddamn it.”
He stood. “All right. Moran hit me,” Bebe repeated, touching the side of his head. “What good does that do?”
“He said the guineas from Narrows Gate are all scum.”
“Sure. We’re scum. So what?”
“He’s going to put the Saint Tropez out of business. He said that, right?”
“All the time,” Bebe lied.
“What did he say about Don Carlo?”
Bebe said, “Hey, you go too far, Ma.”
She reconsidered. “Maybe he says Mimmo is an idiot. Yeah, he tells the vendors that Mimmo’s an idiot.”
“Make it the customers,” Bebe said. “The vendors would say something to Frankie Fortune.”
“You tell Rosa?”
“That Mimmo’s an idiot?”
“No, what happened with Moran. I don’t want
her contradicting me.”
“I didn’t see Rosa.”
Hennie stepped back. She smelled a woman on her son. “You went to Fairview, didn’t you?” Hennie charged. “You went to that puttana.” She reached up and smacked him on the side of the head.
He recoiled.
“What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you?”
“I needed a break—”
“Mimmo should break your fuckin’ neck.”
Bebe grimaced. The last thing he was thinking about when he was in Fairview was Mimmo. Or Rosa, for that matter. He was thinking of his career in ashes and seeing himself a nobody again. The girl in Fairview didn’t know better. She thought he was all right.
“Stay here,” Hennie said, lumbering away in disgust. She went for her shoes and coat.
One o’clock in the morning, and the candy store had that muscle-bound monster Boo Chiasso standing guard.
“I need Mimmo,” Hennie wheezed.
Chiasso held up a finger and left her under the stars as she coughed violently, out of breath from the short march to the end of town.
He returned and waved her in.
Mimmo was sitting at a table near the pinball machine, the money tallied and tucked in a drawer. The lamp dangling above him, the only light on in the store, shone on his thinning hair, his odd-shaped head, his smoky sunglasses.
“We got a problem, you and me,” she said. “Moran up at the Lakeside Inn, the Ear, he smacked Bebe around.”
Frankie Fortune appeared from the back storeroom. “Maybe he had it coming,” he said in Sicilian, leaning against the door frame.
She shivered. Fortune scared the shit out of her. Still the best-looking man she’d ever seen, he wrapped it in style, but there was nothing behind it, like they had shipped him from the factory before they put in a soul.
“Frankie,” she said with a nod.
“Smacked him around,” he repeated.
She calculated. “He said he didn’t want nobody associated with Mimmo in his joint.”
Mimmo turned and looked up at Fortune.
“Is that a fact?” Fortune asked.
“I know,” she said quickly. “Bebe shouldn’t have mentioned you guys, but you know Bebe.”