She Walks in Beauty

by Sarah Shankman

  “Well, okay.” He shuffled around, staring at the laces on his high tops. “Here’s one. First off, we buy ourselves a couple of hot dogs. We put lots of mustard on ’em.”

  He and Rashad had read about this gimmick that slick dudes did in New York. They were thinking about using it in a video Rashad had started working on, Junior providing the background music with his harmonica plus technical assistance. They’d finish it someday. Someday would be when they had some money, new equipment, better than Rashad’s old broken-down—

  Uh-huh, she said. He could tell she thought he was crazy, but she stepped right up to the counter and ordered the dogs.

  “Now grab yourself a whole bunch of napkins. Good, now give them to me. No, hey, wait, girl. You’re not eating that thing. Just come with me. Let’s stroll.”

  Off they went, down the Boardwalk. It was still early, a little after ten, but there were plenty of people all over the place because the Miss America show had just let out. People were dressed up like they were trying for Miss America. Women in spangles and pearls with fancy hairdos were giggling when their high heels stuck in the Boardwalk. Mixed in with the pageant crowd were the geezers from the tour buses who ate their dinners about five o’clock, then went back for some more gambling. They were out now for a nightcap: an ice cream cone and a little stroll. And there was that bunch of ugly girls with their stupid signs that showed up with that crazy Reverend Dexter Dunwoodie. There was the Rev now, with his fat-assed self and his silly, greased-up hairdo.

  Rachel Rose pointed at them. “Who’s that?”

  Junior pretended he didn’t know. It embarrassed him, explaining about a black man dragging this pitiful bunch of white girls around protesting the pageant. Now, did that make sense? Somebody ought to protest his ass. Ask him what he did with all that money he collected last year, his mama said every time she saw him on the local news, supposed to be building a special high school for street kids, help them out.

  They walked on past Eddie and Louie. Eddie, a huge man singing “I’m Just a Prisoner of Love,” had a soft, womanish face. His big old privates were about to fall out through a hole in the crotch of his checked pants. Louie was a 100-year-old twisted-up arthritic wearing a 1000-year-old Hawaiian shirt and playing the keyboard.

  Gathered around them were a circle of middle-aged white men in Bermuda shorts or baggy pants, those stupid white hats. Their ladies were dressed in colors like aqua and peach. But they weren’t who Junior was looking for.

  To do this right—and why not, if he was going to do it—he needed a nicely dressed couple. They’d be headed for one of those casino restaurants that didn’t have prices on the menu. You cared what it cost, forget you. They’d played some baccarat and were out for a breath of fresh ocean air just like the codgers.

  “What are we gonna do?” Rachel Rose whispered.

  “Be cool. Stop fidgeting.” He nudged her over to his left side. The ocean was on his right. They were walking up toward the Taj. He dropped a little behind her. She stopped, turned around, and gave him the big eyes. “Nope. Don’t look at me. Keep going. That’s right. You’re doing great.”

  I’m doing terrible, he’d said to himself. How’d I get myself in this spot? This isn’t a little shoplifting. This is Boardwalk robbery. I could get myself arrested for real. But he didn’t know how to back off without making a fool of himself.

  So they strolled on past Fred, a beggar who’d held out a cup so long his hand had frozen like that.

  There was no one who looked exactly right to Junior, who didn’t look like they’d scream and call the cops. Maybe he didn’t have the stuff it took to be a mustard chucker. Maybe he’d have to admit to Rachel Rose he was just jiving.

  Then, there they were: two white ladies loaded down with purses, jewelry, pearls, gold earrings, probably the real thing. They were yakking 90 miles a minute. One of them, the woman closest to Rachel Rose, was tall, very skinny, with lots of frizzy red hair. She looked like an old stork, except she was carrying a briefcase instead of the baby you saw in most pictures of storks.

  It was now or never, thought Junior, his heart pounding. Go, he said to himself, go! Quit daydreaming. So when they pulled just about even with the two ladies, Junior shoved Rachel Rose hard.

  “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry.” Rachel Rose sounded truly concerned. The girl was a natural. Of course, she didn’t know what was going on.

  The Stork Woman, staring down at her white linen dress splattered with mustard, teeter-tottered on the edge of tears.

  “Here, ma’am, let me help you.” Now Junior was Johnny-on-the-spot, wiping at Stork Woman with a handful of napkins, dabbing her this way and that.

  “I am so sorry,” Rachel Rose kept saying, wringing her little hands. “I feel so bad. Can I pay you for your cleaning?”

  Now, that was going too far.

  Then the Stork Woman’s friend pulled at her arm and said, “Come on, Mary Frances, let’s go back to your room and wash it off.”

  “Sorry, so sorry,” Rachel Rose echoed. Junior gave the ladies a last big so-sorry smile and pulled Rachel Rose on down the Boardwalk, which wasn’t easy with her spike heels.

  Then he pushed her through the doors of the Showboat, down the long center hall, past the band playing Dixieland, past the casino waitresses in those short little purple and black outfits that pushed their boobs up, the bottoms cut so high you could see their behinds, past security, giving them the eye. Junior gave the man back a big smile—though not too big. Actually, Junior was terrified.

  “What’s going on?” Rachel Rose sounded a little pissed. Then she turned and whispered to him, “When do we do it?” The girl really didn’t know.

  “We did it.”

  That stopped her dead in her tracks.

  Junior took her arm—he was afraid to stop—and led her out the casino’s back door, out onto Pacific Avenue. He turned left, heading back down past the back of the Taj, Resorts International, down toward the Monopoly, hurrying her along.

  On top of everything else, it wasn’t safe back here off the Boardwalk. Somebody could hit them in the head, take their stash. He didn’t want to tell Rachel Rose that.

  But then she stopped again, right in the middle of the sidewalk. “I’m not going another step until you explain to me what happened.”

  What happened? What happened, he said, was that she chucked the mustard on the Stork Woman, and he wiped it off her, along with—he held them up—her wallet and her miniature tape recorder.

  “Holy Jesus!”

  Junior grinned. “I wouldn’t go that far. Junior Sturdivant’ll do.”

  “My God!” She couldn’t get over it. “What if you get caught?”

  “You? Who’s this you? We did it.”

  Then the little girl threw her hands up in the air like somebody was holding a gun on her.

  “You were the mustard chucker,” he said.

  “The what? The what!” And Rachel Rose sat down, just like that, on the sidewalk. Her shoes fell off. She doubled over, holding her stomach. Junior thought she was having some kind of fit. But she wasn’t. The little girl was laughing her butt off.

  Well, hell, he thought, the deed was done. So he plopped down too, and before he knew it was wiping tears and snuffling. What he really wanted to do was cry, he was so scared inside.

  Then, just as it was getting good—Rachel Rose turned and threw her arms around his neck, she felt so soft, smelled so good—a car at one of the Monopoly’s service doors, he hadn’t even seen it before, someone slammed one of its doors, then after a minute, slammed the trunk, now a door again, and cranked up, flashing its brights.

  Junior froze, guilty, red-handed, feeling the loot still warm from the Stork Woman. Whoever was in the car had seen the whole thing—Junior holding up the stash.

  What? said Rachel Rose, nuzzling against his T-shirt, the one that said Shut up and kiss me. And she was about to, he could tell that, except he was so scared somebody, plainclothes probably, was about to g
et out of that car and slap the cuffs on him, he pushed her away so he could keep an eye on them.

  The engine roared. The driver slammed the car into reverse. It screeched back, forward, came on, blinding them, till Junior thought they were dead for sure. The sucker’s gonna squash us flat right on the sidewalk, arms around each other like Romeo and Juliet in the play Miz Abrams made us read last year. The headlights were dazzling, blinding him, he was going to die. Then they slid on by.

  Junior’s attitude did a 180-degree flip flop. He was mad as hell they scared the bejesus out of him, made him look like a fool in front of Rachel Rose who’d been about to lay a wet one on him. If he ever got his hands on…

  But the night was too dark, and the lights were too bright. Junior couldn’t even get a good look.

  If he had, it was Kurt Roberts whom Junior would have seen staring out of the passenger seat before he was jerked out and shoved into the trunk. Kurt Roberts, the very man who had pushed him into the pool. With dried blood on his face, eyes puffed and swollen into slits. His long, thin nose broken and askew. A couple of shiny white capped teeth were missing. His mouth gaped open and closed. He looked like a big fish who’d done battle with an outboard.

  Saying, Help. Help. Somebody help me, please.

  But Junior didn’t see him.

  *

  And none of that was what Junior told Big Gloria. How could he? She’d kill him. Instead, he made up this nice little story about running into Rachel Rose, did Mama remember her from yesterday afternoon, the pretty little girl by the pool?

  That didn’t make her happy either. What are you doing messing around with her? You’ll find yourself killed when her daddy gets ahold of you.

  There was an awful lot of threatening to kill his young ass around these days, thought Junior. Then he told his mama how he and Rachel Rose had played pinball, ate hot dogs, walked down the Boardwalk. He walked her home to her hotel. That was the end of it.

  Later, at school, Junior would think how stupid he was for telling her that much. Placing himself and Rachel Rose on the Boardwalk wasn’t the smartest thing he could do. You never could tell what might pop up. The Stork Woman could describe them, then the cops would come looking for them. But it was hard to lie to Mama. There was something about her that made you want to tell her everything, even stuff you were ashamed of.

  And Big Gloria would worry herself crazy knowing that Junior had told her some version of the truth.

  Gloria had spent her entire life listening to men tell lies, and she knew one when she heard it.

  What she wanted to know was, son of mine, only child of my womb, did that white man make you so mad, the one who pushed you in the pool, that you broke into his room, beat the tar out of him, killed him with your bare hands, and dragged him off somewhere?

  Son of mine, only child of my womb, could you do that? Did you do that? Have I already lost you?

  10

  After breakfast Sam and Harry had walked so far south on the Boardwalk, the casinos were huge ships in the mist behind them. It was a sweet time. They held hands and laughed, the color in their cheeks the same cherry red as Sam’s sweater.

  “Do we look like a television commercial?” she asked.

  “For some soft drink. The good life.”

  “Rather have bottled water.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You’re that one.”

  “Uh-huh. I bet you do have trouble keeping track of who you’re with—those cuties you’ve stashed all over the Quarter.”

  “One way to find out. Come live with me.”

  “In that tacky little place?”

  “You love my apartment.”

  He was right. She did. She loved his big brass bed upstairs in the tiny slave-quarter cottage overlooking a courtyard. She loved the jazz from Preservation Hall drifting across his little balcony, through his window, across their bodies, which always seemed to be naked, or semi-naked.

  It was a great place to visit.

  “Now what’s that you’re whistling?” she asked.

  “‘May I Have This Dance for the Rest of My Life?’” Then he took her into his arms and waltzed her around and around on the Boardwalk. “What do you think?”

  “Oh, Harry.”

  Suddenly a wolf whistle split the air, followed by a round of applause. “You two want a ride?” It was a young blond man pushing a wicker beach chair, Atlantic City’s version of a rickshaw.

  “Get out of here,” Harry waved him off.

  “Five dollars’ll get you all the way back to the casinos.”

  “Vamoose. Am-scray.”

  “Jeeszt. You don’t have to get hostile about it, man.”

  “Jeeszt, you don’t have to get hostile about it, lady,” Harry said to Sam as the man and his chair pushed on down the Boardwalk.

  “About what?”

  “About my invitations. Two. Living and dancing.”

  “Harry, dear heart—”

  “Special offer today. I don’t think you want to miss it.” That wasn’t Harry. It was another beach chair.

  “What’s with you guys?” Harry barked.

  “I’m no guys, sir. I’m your Super-Duper Buggy Pusher also known by the appellation of Rashad.” The young black man performed a deep bow in his white tie and tails—above a pair of cutoffs. “I’ve been employed in this profession only two days, so as you can see, I’m still fresh as the proverbial daisy—Chrysanthemum leucanthemum. I’ll perambulate you up and down, deliver you a son et lumière show—if that’s your pleasure, m’lady.”

  “Maybe we ought to, Harry.”

  “Are you nuts? I don’t want to do this.”

  “It’s part of the Atlantic City tradition,” said Sam. She’d read that in her press kit.

  “Perhaps you should listen to the pretty lady—meaning no offense, sir. Perchance she’s fatigued.”

  “She’s just old,” said Sam. “And she doesn’t want to be late.”

  “She wants to change the subject is what she wants,” said Harry. “You think this guy’s gonna push us faster than we can walk?”

  “I’m known for my speed,” said Rashad. “Faster than the proverbial bullet. But safe. Oh, yes, surety is my middle name.”

  “Surety, bull. Shuck and jive, you mean,” said Harry.

  “You’re being rude, darling.” Sam stepped into the rolling chair and extended a queenly hand to her consort.

  “Do you know the derivation of that phrase, shuck and jive?” asked Rashad from behind them once they’d both tucked into the chair and he’d headed north.

  “No, we don’t, and we don’t want to,” said Harry.

  “I’d love to know,” said Sam.

  “Well, you see, down in New Orleans, in the oyster bars, there are these good fellows who earn their livelihood opening the local bivalves—”

  “I’m from New Orleans,” Harry groaned.

  “Then I defer to your superior wisdom,” said Rashad. “You must certainly know the anecdote.”

  “Tell us the story, Harry,” Sam said.

  “I don’t know the damned story.”

  “Then hush. Go on, Rashad.” She sounded just like a contestant, with a smile in her voice.

  “These oyster shuckers, I met one, actually two, who were here in Atlantic City enjoying a weekend of recreation. Michael Broadway is in the employ of the Acme Oyster House—”

  Harry groaned again.

  “That’s right around the corner from Harry’s house. I’m Sam. He’s Harry.”

  “Charmed to make your acquaintance. And Harry doesn’t like New Orleans?”

  “Harry loves New Orleans,” said Harry. “Sam doesn’t.”

  “Sam loves New Orleans,” she protested.

  “But Sam doesn’t love Harry,” said Harry.

  “Sam loves Harry. Sam just doesn’t know if she wants to love Harry in New Orleans. Full-time.”

  “She’d rather love him from Atlanta,” Harry explained.

  “Long distance, as it were
,” said Rashad.

  “As it were,” sighed Harry. “Go on with your story, Rashad. You were at the Acme.”

  “The other bivalve professional was known as Robert Washington. He’s in the employ of Casamento’s—I believe he said.”

  “Out on Magazine. The little place with the great tiles,” Harry reminded Sam.

  “Robert Washington. Is he a cousin of Lavert’s?”

  “Probably. I think everybody’s a cousin of Lavert’s.”

  “Anyway, these gentlemen were telling me how they ply their trade.”

  “Are you an English professor in your spare time, Rashad?” asked Harry.

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “You speak rather precisely.”

  “Rather? What do you mean—rather? I thought I spoke precisely in the main.”

  “I think you’re shucking us, Rashad,” said Harry.

  “Or at least jiving,” said Sam.

  “Jiving is correct,” Rashad agreed. “Now, jiving is what I was attempting to explicate. As I was saying, I encountered these two bivalve professionals here in a local bar one evening, where they were attempting to explain to a local bivalve amateur how to properly open a mollusk.”

  “Which is?” asked Harry, finally loosening up a little. “I’ve seen it done a million times, but—”

  “That’s what Messrs. Washington and Broadway said. Seeing and doing are two different things. What they demonstrated went like this: Now, there’s a hole in the smaller end of the oyster, and that’s where you insert the tip of your oyster knife—which is not a sharpened blade. Then you lean all your weight on the oyster, not the blade, and twist your wrist.”

  “It’s all in the wrist action?” asked Sam.

  “As in many things,” answered Rashad, “it’s a matter of finesse. Then you peek inside the oyster and slip the knife around and cut that top muscle. Flop it over, cut the other. Wiggle the oyster around, get rid of the debris. The gentlemen made it look so easy, the same way a fine pianist does, playing the Moonlight Sonata or the dirty boogie with equal dexterity.”

  “Actually, we had a fellow who did that. Opened oysters, that is, in the movie I worked on recently. He shucked, I played the dirty boogie,” said Harry.