Take One Candle Light a Room

by Susan Straight

  “Okay,” I said softly. “I’ll be there.”

  “You gotta hurry,” he said, quieter now, his hand muffling the sound. “Lots of fools win tickets here and it’s too many of em walkin around. We gotta go soon.”

  Jazen and Alfonso were ready for trouble at four o’clock on a Wednesday? I closed the phone and said, “Rick, can you give me a ride?”

  DIMPLES

  THE CAR WAS A midnight blue Beemer, hot as dragon breath, as my brothers used to say. Rick opened the windows and pushed in a CD. Fela Kuti. He said, “So you didn’t drive downtown?”

  “I came in a cab, pretty much from the airport,” I said. The drums of West Africa knocked against my earlobes. I closed my eyes—for a moment, the rhythm sounded like the opening conga beats of William DeVaughn: Though you may not drive a great big Cadillac—diggin the scene with a gangster lean. Now Victor was riding in the Navigator, with Fifty Cent.

  “Where are we headed? I get to see where the famous FX Antoine lives?”

  “You know I live in Los Feliz,” I said. “I need to go to Burbank for my godson.”

  “You have a godson? He works for the studios?”

  Foolish to keep playing this game—a mysterious writer with no family. “He won concert tickets. The radio station’s off Hollywood Way.”

  Rick headed toward Sunset. “Ay yi yi,” he said. “Four twelve. Graves is reading at seven at that new bookstore downtown. I was going to talk you into coming with me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll meet you there after I get my godson—straightened out.”

  Rick squinted at the freeway on-ramp. “It’s a possibility.” The traffic was still flowing. He said, “What’s the concert?”

  “Dave Matthews.”

  “What—your godson’s forty?”

  “He’s twenty-two but he likes Dave Matthews,” I said. Even though he’s supposed to like Akon and Chamillionaire.

  The ivy covering the freeway bridge above us was dusty and motionless. A rogue burst of bougainvillea spilled over a retaining wall. I wanted to be alone for an entire day, with no phone or people. I saw myself beside the Limmat, in Zurich, yesterday. I wanted to eat Thai food and read my new book.

  I said, “I got this book by Tommaso Astarita—southern Italy. Between Salt Water and Holy Water—great title, huh? Maybe Tony and I could go to Naples.”

  Rick nodded. “Let me see who’s done Italy recently. Hey—the Golden State Freeway.” He pointed up to the sign. “I forget it’s called that. I’m always on the 101 or the 10. We could take this all the way to Oregon.”

  On my right was the Los Angeles River, the water like a metallic table runner stretched the length of the concrete channel. Closer to the Los Feliz exit, the sloping cement banks were decorated with so much graffiti they looked like crazy preschool rugs set down beside the river. “What if this ever flooded?” I said, looking at the sweep of shallow water.

  “It can’t.” Rick was squinting again at the signs above us. “It’s not like the Mississippi. We have to take the Ventura Freeway, right?”

  We followed the river companionably for a few more minutes, and then it ducked under the asphalt and disappeared. Rick said, “Warner Music Group—right there.”

  Off the exit, we were in a strange little residential area. Two gray apartment buildings with foil-covered windows, like spaceships baking in the heat. A few sherbet-colored stucco duplexes. Then we saw the huge brick buildings across Olive Street. ABC, NBC. Lots of parked cars, kids walking around. Rick said cautiously, “Can you find him?”

  “He’s probably waiting for me inside. Clear Channel—right there. Thanks, Rick.”

  “I’ll see you at the bookstore. Talk to Tony about Naples, the Dalmatian coast. You want to have breakfast at ten—the three of us? Finalize the next two assignments?”

  I closed the car door. “Sounds good. And you see if Jenny wants to go to the party, and take a look at your cool downtown loft.”

  Until he drove away, I held the phone to my ear and moved my mouth. No one did that in Switzerland, even in the big cities. Nothing was wrong there with walking, looking at buildings or trees or faces, just thinking about rivers. Being alone.

  I waited at the crosswalk. NBC Studios. Atlantic Records. Rhino Records. Where the hell was Dimples?

  The sun was glaring hot on the sidewalk. Two groups of teenagers gathered around me suddenly as a herd of antelope, moving me forward in the green light. “Armando, you serious—you takin Malia to the concert?” a girl said loudly. “That puta? After I drove your ass here?” Her brows were drawn on long and thin, and her shoulder said Payasa in green cursive. Clown—feminine version. She threw up her hand. “Look at this! She just texted me.” Her nails were wine-red claws around the cell phone she pushed in his face. “Get your own damn ride home, Mando.”

  The boy stopped in the stripes and said, “Just wait five minutes till I get the tickets—” but she started back the other way and he kept crossing doggedly, head down.

  Someone behind me shouted, “Marraine!”

  Down the dingy block I’d just left was a squat brown building with signs and appendages everywhere. Dimples Dance and Supper Club. I shaded my eyes. Showcase to Stardom! Who in the hell would believe that?

  SING FOR YOUR TAPE—FREE TAPES TO VIRGINS. A black sign with white letters, high on the roof. The other big roof sign shouted KONTINUOUS KARAOKE!

  When I crossed the street, along the exterior of the mud-brown wood-panel walls were black-and-white photos. The Beatles. James Dean. Elvis. A set of narrow stairs led to a dim second-floor landing with a door and another sign. SCREENING ROOM. Was this a joke? Would some girl really head up those rickety wooden stairs? I shivered, even in the glaring heat, thinking of the door opening to the janitor’s closet, the way Glorette had tilted her head up from tying her shoe. The cement at the base of the stairs was spotted with discs of flattened gum like black quarters.

  They waited on the sidewalk near the entrance. Jazen and Alfonso were both wearing huge jeans and heavy denim jackets in the August heat. Alfonso’s hair was cut to stubble, and a tattoo made a greenish shadow at his temple. He was prettier than his mother, Bettina, with caramel-bright skin and neat features.

  Jazen wore cornrows, stray hairs blurring the angled pattern. He looked like his mother. Juanita. I remembered her from freshman year, when she came from New Orleans. Jazen had glossy brown skin, what they called Chinese eyes, and a scar on his forehead. A thrown rock? A nail file? It was a small crater like a missing puzzle piece to his face.

  Victor—he usually said something funny right off, but this time his face was closed, held so tight all the bones showed. He was pale, and his cheekbones were like Glorette’s, sharp and distinct, small spades under his skin. He wore skinny jeans and a yellow T-shirt that said “Black Coral—Belize.” His dreadlike twists stood up like sun rays. His iPod was clipped to his pants, the earpieces dangling around his neck. Three black males, I thought, walking toward me. That’s what the cops see, and the corporate guy in the convertible stopped at the corner, and the kids gathering at the crosswalk. But Victor wasn’t dressed like a gangster.

  I saw the fear in his face, and the calculation in Alfonso’s, and the swagger undercut with uncertainty in Jazen’s.

  We didn’t hug. I had held him a few times the summer after he was born, when he was small and squirmy and froglike to me, before I went off to college; when I saw him next he was running and dirt-kneed and hard to catch, like all Sarrat kids. Years later, when his grandpère used to rescue him after Glorette was hospitalized or evicted, Victor would greet me gravely if I happened to come to Sarrat, but he never ran toward anyone for a hug or candy. Victor would sit on his grandfather’s porch, watching for a long time before joining the others.

  I said, “Nice hair,” and touched his shoulder when he got close enough. He was tall, about six-one, and reed thin. His shoulder bone was wide and knobby under my hand. His eyes were his mother’s—night-purple and sof
t.

  But he didn’t smile, casually, testing, as he usually did. His high forehead was grooved with three lines.

  I looked at Jazen and Alfonso. “Hey, guys.” Alfonso was from Sarrat—he knew old-school manners and said, “Auntie Fantine,” but Jazen merely lifted his chin at me.

  Victor propelled me forward into the dingy entrance, a long dim hallway lined by black-and-white publicity stills. “Appearing Nightly” was Tiffany, with the newest photo. Close to the street were blond girls, hair silver in the pictures, and that blond-girl look: pale blue eyes clear as water, teeth like baby refrigerators, boobs round and fake as grapefruit halves peeking out of camisoles. Aime. Angela. Angelle. But as we got closer to the door, the pictures were older and more faded. A Mexican-American girl. Conchita. I would have laughed, except then I saw the photo beside her. Browner with age, like those sepia portraits in a history book.

  Gloria and Glorette. Gloria—her Chinese bob and full red lips and fake lashes, like someone out of a James Bond film. And Glorette—her mouth open and uncertain, her eyes shining. She looked fragile and sexy—like she needed the person gazing at her to save her. Every boy or man who had ever seen her looked at her that way. I am the one, he thought. The one she wants. The one she needs.

  But she never wanted anyone except Sere Dakar. She loved Victor, this boy—the old word? Man-child?—standing with his throat so close to my temple, but he couldn’t save her, and she couldn’t save him.

  “How’d you find this?” I asked.

  “When we went by, I was like, I bet it’s nothing but white girls, and then Fonso came down here and was like, Two sistas! Oh, shit, it’s your moms.” He was still staring at the picture, a little leap in his jaw like a tiny fish swimming under the skin.

  Under the photo, white hand-inked words. Brown Sugar and Sweet Voodoo. Brown sugar—the two words I hated most. Just like a black girl should.

  “Who’s the other one?” he said. His voice was much deeper than his face and body—like his father’s.

  From the sidewalk, Jazen called, “We gotta go, nigga. I ain’t got all day.”

  “Hattie Jackson,” I said. “She was older than us. Her brother was Grady Jackson. He loved your mama. He married her after you were born.”

  He nodded. “Grady. Like Sanford and Son. This dude Chess always came to see my moms, and he’d talk about ‘your big love, Trashman Grady.’ ”

  I couldn’t tell him now. Not here. “She called herself Gloria. She wanted to be an actress, and she must have gotten your mama to come up here.”

  He touched the dusty glass. His fingerprints hovered like three dark new moons above his mother’s face. “They don’t need this picture. It’s like some historic archive. Like a museum.” He went out to the sidewalk. “See the sign? This place doesn’t open until six. But there’s an old guy upstairs. He wouldn’t open the door for me.”

  They’re still here because they’re black but light and sexy. I squinted in the sun. Brown sugar. Voodoo. Two hundred years of that shit, and it still works.

  I went up the wooden stairs, baking in the sun, and got dizzy. I’d gone up dank cold stone castle steps in Switzerland two days ago. Screening Room. The door swung in, and on a video screen a young blond woman was licking an ice cream cone like it was something else, while onstage people laughed and clapped. An old white man peered out at me. He gave me a big smile until I got closer to him, and then he looked straight at my chest, slid his eyes up to my face, and said, “Hon, no offense, but you’re a little long in the tooth. And the karaoke live feed doesn’t start till eight.”

  I held back a laugh. “No. I wanted to ask you about a picture.” I pointed downstairs. But I had to say the words. “Brown Sugar and Sweet Voodoo.”

  He squinted.

  I said, “The black girls.”

  He shrugged. “Too many girls. And that one must be from when we first opened. Back in ’83.” Then Victor was behind me, and the man lifted his chin. “No rappers!” he shouted, and slammed the door.

  Victor breathed hard. “He said ’83?”

  “Yeah.” The year he was born.

  “He said no rappers.” Victor held out his hands. “What—I’m DJ Scholaptitude?” He turned and headed down the stairs to the sidewalk. “Old white dudes all look alike.”

  On the outside wall, the last picture was Gwen Stefani. “Yeah, discovered here, no doubt,” I said to Victor.

  He kept his head down and stood beside Jazen at the signal. Jazen ran his eyes over me one more time, dismissing me as useless and old. I looked back at him as my father had taught me by example. Eyes level with his, like staring at a pit bull—they say it enrages the dog, but that if you do it properly, with a dog that isn’t insane yet, you have a chance.

  “Jazen,” I said. This was delicate. “You’re from the Westside, right? Didn’t your mama go to school with us?”

  He looked back—same level. I was not a mother. I was wearing a foreign-looking white shirt. My nails were not painted. I lived in LA. “My moms went back to New Orleans after I was born. I stayed with my gramma in the Villas.”

  The Rio Seco version of a project. I said, “I got a ride here from a friend, so I better call a cab, Victor, and get back to work.”

  Victor said, “Come with me to STAR 98 to get the tickets. Then we can give you a ride home. You live right past that mountain.”

  He pointed up at Mount Wilson and Griffith Park. Good memory.

  Joining us in the crosswalk were three business suits and two thirtyish women wearing dresses and heels and looking out of place. Jazen and Alfonso held themselves stiff as lost people on a train. They were gangsters—never walked, never touched shoulders with anyone, and they seemed to hate being in LA.

  “So we’re doing the Target Christmas ads today and Thursday?” one of the women asked. “Are the other singers already here? Are we late?” She had very thick legs, straightened blond hair, and red lipstick. Backup singer?

  One of the suited men said, “We’re never late. You’ll be fine. I can’t believe they want us to record on a Wednesday.”

  Victor looked at a small piece of paper. “STAR 98,” he said very softly. “Okay.”

  We were last inside. The elevator was half-full with the Target people, and we slid in beside them. They had watched us come with a mix of curiosity and dread that only three young black men can inspire.

  Did they think I was the mother? Our reflections were all blurred in the etched metal elevator door. The suited men breathed shallowly. Then the blond singer said with a friendly smile, “So are you guys rappers? From LA?”

  Jazen said, “Shit. Ain’t from no LA. I’m from Rio Seco.” His arms were folded, his legs spread wide, his jacket trembling in the jerky movement of the elevator.

  She was still game. “Oh, is that in Texas? We’re from Encino.”

  I said quickly, “Rio Seco’s about an hour from here. On the way to Palm Springs.”

  But Jazen was bothered now. He said, “LA niggas ain’t about shit.” The elevator bumped to a stop.

  In the silence before the door opened, Victor said, “Man, I’m sure she agrees, JZ, so chill.”

  He was too smart. No one got it. The door slid open and the women and I walked out first. Citrusy perfume and sweat. Then five wide jackets followed us. The men with boxy wool-silk coats; the boys with starched stiff denim, and Victor in his T-shirt. The right labels for each—Hugo Boss and G Unit.

  “Shit, I make more money in a week than LA rappers make in a month,” Jazen said loudly, recovered, but the Target group disappeared into an unmarked door.

  The glass doors adjacent were crowded with teens. I saw the boy named Mando sitting on a round ottoman. His huge jacket crinkled when he moved. He said into a phone, “No, ese, she left me. I need a ride. Come on, carnal. Go tell my brother Moses to come get me. He’s at my abuela’s. The corner of César Chávez and St. Louis.”

  Then he looked up at us and his eyes narrowed. “I can’t be hangin around, ca
rnal.”

  Jazen and Alfonso said, “Hurry up, nigga,” as if in chorus, and walked down the hallway to confer, glaring at the boy, while Victor pushed his way inside.

  Air-conditioning caressed my forehead. The boy named Mando sat with his head leaning into his hands. His hair was oiled and combed straight back, glistening black with deep furrows. I realized the top hairs were so long that if they hung down they would have framed his face like ponytails. The shorter hairs underneath were like baby bird feathers.

  Jazen and Alfonso leaned against the wall, staring with that odd insecure disdain. People avoided their eyes. They cared about nothing and no one not from their alley, their city, their car. In that, they were so much like my father and Gustave Picard that I wished I could have told them.

  Victor loved to talk to strangers. He laughed at something the woman said when he signed his name, and then she laughed, too.

  When he came out, holding an envelope with his name on it, he said, “Check me now. Victor Picard. Two tickets. Dave Matthews Band.” His entire face had changed from the way it looked in the doorway of Dimples—he had Glorette’s eyes, velvet and dark, but when she smiled, her cheekbones moved around her eyes, never changing them, and when Victor smiled big, like now, his eyes slanted up. He had his father’s perfect teeth, like white Chiclets.

  “Who are you taking?” I said.

  Then his smile went lopsided. “I want to take Mayeli. But her moms is pissed cause she saw me in Jazen’s car.”

  “Mayeli—the one from Belize?” He’d met her in college.

  He nodded. “Hey—I can take you! You’re not gonna trip on what it is.” He paused, thinking. “Hootie and the Blowfish got a brotha frontin, but they’re still whiter than Dave Matthews.”

  I said, “And you’ve been listening to Jimi Hendrix and The Who. You’re gonna get wrecked. Just like me.”

  He looked into my eyes. “Marraine. I’m already fucked up.” He held up his hands and bit his lips hard, so they nearly disappeared.

  “Let’s not put it that way,” I said.

  “You been drinkin the Kool-Aid?” he asked.