Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes
Page 19
“Curtains?” he said. “Whataya don’t like the color?”
“Make sure they’re not transparent, and that they close properly,” Gloria said. “And the counter.”
“You wanna see the counter, see it,” he said, gesturing to the machine.
Tremont closed and opened the curtains, then looked at the voting levers with the candidates’ names and parties. “I don’t see no zero,” he said.
“In the back,” Malloy said.
Tremont went to the back of the machine. “I still don’t see it.”
Malloy opened the counter’s cover. “Zeros. See that? All zeros.”
“Zeros,” Tremont said.
Gloria passed out coffee and donuts.
“Whata we got here, a coffee klatch?” Malloy asked.
“This isn’t done,” the Republican said.
Malloy handed the credentials back to Tremont. “You can stay,” he said, “but that don’t mean the rest of you. You’re lookin’ for somebody gonna pay five dollars a vote, is that what you wanna see? I been here all my life and never saw any of that stuff.”
“Anybody gonna do that,” the Republican said, “common sense they’d have done it last week.”
“Nobody said anything about any five-dollar vote,” Matt said.
For the first time Malloy saw Matt’s collar.
“You’re a priest?”
“A Franciscan, at Siena College. Matthew Daugherty, OFM.”
“What’s the Catholic Church doing in politics?”
“Hey, Pope Paul went to the U.N.”
“For peace,” Malloy said.
“And justice,” said Matt.
“You oughta be ashamed chasin’ politics, a priest.”
“God made us all sinners, and he included politicians,” Matt said.
“Shame.”
“I ain’t ashamed,” Tremont said. “It’s all legal. We got our rights to be here. You seen those papers.”
“Coffee klatchers outside,” Malloy said. “This guy wants to stay the chair’s right there. The rest of you get lost.” He motioned to the Republican and together they moved the metal fence behind which voters would line up to vote. The move pushed Tremont’s chair into a corner, as far from the registration desk as it was possible to be.
“I also got credentials,” Roy said.
“Is that so?” Malloy said. “What’re they doin’, passin’ ’em out with bubble gum?”
Roy offered his AG papers to Malloy who glanced at them but didn’t touch them. “One at a time is how it goes,” Malloy said.
“I’ll wait outside,” said Roy. “If Tremont has to leave I’m here.”
“You people got a regular army. Big stuff. But you ain’t gonna find squat. This is all on the up and up.”
The front door opened and a man walked in waving two letter-sized pages. “I got the dead list,” he said to Malloy.
Malloy snatched the pages from him and pushed him back out the door. “You fucking moron,” he said in a failed whisper. He turned to the others, holding the door open. “Everybody out.”
Tremont’s cheering section moved out onto the sidewalk into the frigid morning. Tremont sat in the corner with his coffee and donut and at 6:03 two voters came in and voted. They looked legal to Tremont.
At 6:40 Roy was on the corner alone, two policemen in a patrol car idling across the street. Quinn and Matt had gone to another polling place, and Gloria had left to drive Claudia to vote. She told Roy she’d be back. At 6:50 Tremont came out and told Roy a man had identified himself as Mortimer Monroe to the woman registering Democratic voters.
“He ain’t Morty Monroe,” Tremont said. “He’s white and Morty’s black. Not only that, Morty was shot in a card game. Morty’s dead.”
Roy went in and confronted the voter and Malloy.
“We’re challenging this man’s identification,” Roy said.
“On what authority?” Malloy asked.
“The attorney general, I’m a poll watcher. You know it. I showed you my credentials.”
“I never saw ’em,” Malloy said.
“Yes you did.”
Roy took his credentials out of his pocket and flashed them at Malloy, then moved toward the white Morty Monroe who was backing toward the door without having voted.
“Wait a minute, Morty,” Roy said. “You got a driver’s license?”
“You ain’t Morty,” Tremont told the man. “Morty’s dead.”
A uniformed policeman came in and he and Malloy converged on Roy, who countered with an elbow that put Malloy on his back atop the voting ledger in which Morty had almost registered from the grave.
One month later Roy was a public example of swift electoral justice in Albany: fourteen months for disorderly conduct and third degree assault. He served three months and, when his conviction was thrown out for insufficient evidence, Baron Roland welcomed him back to Holy Cross as a civil rights hero and put him to work with the Community Action group Better Streets. He shared a desk with Gloria.
After the election Alex found Gloria an apartment in an upscale Pine Hills housing development, in the same building where his seventy-three-year-old mother, Veronica Fitzgibbon, lived with an on-call chauffeur and a live-in maid. Alex visited Veronica almost daily, a dutiful son; and so any proximity to Gloria was unremarkable. He luxuriated in the frequency of love with Gloria. My gorgeous virgin, he would whisper.
“Don’t say that,” she said one day. “I was a virgin too long.”
“All your life you were a virgin waiting for me.”
“Somebody will catch us.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you being my mother’s neighbor. And it’s perfectly normal for your godfather to visit you.”
“What if they catch my godfather in my bed?” she said, thinking of Alex catching Roy in her bed, where he had been only twice, but twice is dangerous. The first was the afternoon she drove home to change for a fund-raising dinner at Holy Cross. Roy was with her, and leaving him in the car would have been rude, even racist. She should have dropped him someplace and come home alone, but there he was, so she said, “Come in.”
Whenever they were alone in the office Roy would touch her arm, or rub the ends of her long blond hair between finger and thumb, or run a fingernail lightly up her spine through her white cotton shirt, always backing off with a smile and an upraised hand, testing the wind, which proved to be fair. Now, as they went into Gloria’s apartment he ran a finger up her back. She turned to face him and found him unbelievably attractive. And there was the bed.
“I worry about your wife,” she said to Alex. “Doesn’t what we do affect her, even if she doesn’t know?”
“Don’t ever talk about my wife,” he said.
So she did not. But through the society pages she tracked her—Marnie Herzog Fitzgibbon, ash blonde from Boston whose grandfather had made a fortune in coal, who had gone to Smith, no nuns in her life, owned and rode show horses, golfed at Schuyler Meadows Country Club, handicap 15, raised funds for children of an African famine, and traveled often, unlike her husband who was moored to City Hall. Gloria clipped photos of Marnie in her lush gowns at balls, galas, and the famed parties she gave at Tivoli, the Fitzgibbon family estate. In early May Marnie came to visit Veronica and glimpsed Alex going into a first-floor apartment. She found that the apartment was rented to Gloria Osborne, about whom Alex sometimes spoke; something about Cuba. Marnie hired a private detective who discovered Alex’s repetitive, hour-or-more-long visits to Gloria. Also, when Alex took a week off to go trout fishing in Maine with his army buddies, the detective noted a visit to Gloria by a black man who arrived by taxi at mid-evening and stayed till dawn.
Gloria was naked in her shower when the doorbell rang. Roy, without calling? No. Alex? Never at this hour; he likes the afternoon, and afterward a whiskey before he goes back to City Hall. She called out, Just a minute, stepped out of the tub and wrapped herself in her terrycloth robe. Rubbing her hair with a small towel she opene
d the door to the face from the newspapers, Marnie Herzog Fitzgibbon, always three names.
“I’m the wife of your godfather,” she said. “May I come in?”
“Of course,” and Marnie entered the living room, bouncing slightly on her toes, feisty, her half-smile as aggressive as Mother Superior. Gloria followed, tension in her chest. MHF looked younger than forty-eight, tenaciously Junior League in a simple off-white summer dress, bodice stylish over those tiny breasts, but the short skirt doesn’t cover her knees and they’re not quality. Her hair was freshly coiffed—for this visit?—those waves much too tight, scold your hairdresser. MHF raised her hand toward the bedroom door, which was ajar.
“That’s the cozy corner, is it? I really don’t want to see it.” She touched the arm of the sofa. “I’ll bet anything you do it here too. It’s where he first did it in college.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Gloria said.
“Of course not. You are cute. So young, and a lovely figure.”
Gloria pulled her robe tight, accenting her formidable breasts. “This conversation is over,” she said.
“What a perfect thing to say. Lovely poise. I see what attracted him. I could give you the days and times he arrived and left, I could give you photos and tapes of your talks. I didn’t listen very long, but you do seem well educated for a little convent cunt.”
“I won’t listen to this tripe. Get out of my apartment.” Gloria, amazed with herself, opened the apartment door and raised her voice: “Out.”
“No, no,” Marnie said softly, and she did not move. “You’re the one who’s out. Didn’t you ever anticipate this? Probably not, innocent little puss.”
Vindictive bitch. Would she cut me? Hire somebody to do it? Disfigure. If Alex knew about this he’d have called. Gloria closed the door.
“Did you think you could just carry on and on without consequence?” Marnie said. “You’re finished at Holy Cross. The board of directors does not abide sluts. Was it those sweet little nuns who taught you how to succeed as a slut? You are quite achieved. I never did it with a Negro. I suppose I should have. Is your Negro larger than Alex? Alex would hate that. Oh, and he’s finished at Holy Cross, too, your Negro. No sluts, no pimps.”
Gloria screamed. Did anybody hear?
“Very strong voice,” Marnie said. “Are you in pain? I hope so.”
“Getoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetouuuuuuut!” And she screamed again.
“Excellent,” Marnie said. “I suppose it is time. Be smart. Take that sexy little ass of yours back to Cuba where it came from.”
Her impulse was to call Alex, scream at him, do you know what just happened, my godfather, my love? No, he probably doesn’t know. She would save it till later, relish retelling the pain. Call him anyway, am I his? And she picked up the phone, but it’s tapped, and she put it back in its cradle. She searched the room with the frantic eyes of the trapped fox. Take what?—the good jewelry, the Oshun necklace Renata gave her, the letters from Mama and Max, clothes, makeup, no, leave them, leave them. She couldn’t find the necklace. She put the letters in her purse and abandoned the rest. Alas Oshun. She drove to an outdoor pay phone on Madison Avenue and called him, can they tap City Hall? She got his secretary, tell him Gloria, and he said, Yes? And she said I’m coming to see you now, a disaster, your wife, I’ll be in front of City Hall. No, he said, yes, she said and hung up and double-parked on the corner near his office window. He came down the City Hall steps and bent to her window and she said your wife knows everything and has photos and tapes. He looked over at Academy Park, up toward the Capitol, looked both ways on Eagle Street, anybody could be on a bench, in a car filming this. I can’t talk here, he said, and she said I can’t talk anywhere, where do I go, what do I do? They’re firing me from Holy Cross. How long have you been seeing the nigger, he asked. Is that all you can say? And he said nothing. She stared at his mouth. Handsome mouth, betrayed, betraying, no reverence for what was and which now is without meaning. Sex is death and God is angry with Gloria. In hell you run in the putrid swamp, devils scourge you when you fall, and your blood colors the slime. She smiled at Alex, put the car in gear and turned on the radio. Aretha Franklin. My hero, she said to him, and drove off.
Traffic at the bar in the Havana Club had picked up and Roy was busy. Max was avoiding conversation with newcomers at the end of the bar, and George Quinn and his old friend and newfound blonde, Vivvie, were on their second beer when Cody Mason came through the door. He looked the place over and then walked directly to Max and shook a finger at him, “Hey, Mighty Max, where’d you come from?”
“Roy tells me you’re sick,” Max said. “You don’t look it. Sick—it’s your con, right? Tell ’em you’re sick and it’s a sold-out concert.”
“Yeah, man, and I get to stay in bed all day. Where you been?”
“Florida. Just passing through, but I had to see your club. People keep telling me about it down there, all the big dogs coming to see you—Lips and Trummy and Satch, and you got a new record coming, so I say, ‘Max, go say hello to Cody while he’s red hot.’”
“He says he knew you in Cuba,” Roy said to Cody.
“Right,” Cody said. “Max got me a job in Havana when I needed one and I stayed two years.”
“He packed ’em in, a jazz club in the Vedado called Night and Day. The Cubans loved him.”
George had come over from his table and was standing a few feet off, staring at Cody.
“Get lost,” Roy said to him.
Cody turned and saw George. “Georgie Quinn,” he said. “Damn, how you doin’, Georgie?”
“Don’t tell me you know this dickey-bird,” Roy said.
“More than thirty years. Since I came to this town.”
“Cody,” George said with a large smile, “what’re you gonna do when the shine wears off?”
“Son of a bitch mouth on this guy,” Roy said.
“Shine,” Cody said. “You remember, Georgie.” And then he said to Roy, “Shine’s a song, Roy, you know the song. Mills Brothers and Bing. Lotta people recorded it.”
“Shine’s a song,” Roy said. “Yeah, I did hear it. Shuffle stuff. Coon song.”
“Better than that,” Cody said.
Max pulled over an empty barstool for Cody.
“The piano,” George said. “I got Big Jimmy to lend us his little one. Ben whatsisname Bongo gave me three hundred to rent it for the night. Jimmy says to me, ‘Three hundred? Keep it two nights, keep it all week.’”
“Not Bongo,” Cody said. “Bingo. That was Bing Crosby. Bing.”
“Bing,” George said, nodding.
“That’s the piano he’s talking about,” Max said to Roy, pointing at the wall photo of Cody and Bing.
“Dickey-bird was in on the Crosby night?” Roy said.
“He got the piano and people to haul it,” Max said. “He knew Jimmy, who owned the bar where Cody was playing.”
“My first job up here,” Cody said.
George was looking at Max, trying to bring him back.
“I’m Max Osborne, George. It was nineteen thirty-six. I brought Bing down to Big Jimmy’s with Alex Fitzgibbon. You remember Alex?”
“Alex Fitz. The Mayor,” George said.
“You mean the Mayor was there too?” Roy said.
“He wasn’t Mayor yet,” Max said. “He was still in the legislature. He took us all out to his place that night, Tivoli.”
“Tivoli,” George said. “Greatest house in Albany.”
“I met Alex at Yale,” Max said. “I put him and Bing together on the golf course in Saratoga. They both had horses at the track that year.”
“Mayor Fitzgibbon is a fascist motherfucker,” Roy said.
“Sure he is,” Max said, “but what a nice guy. I told Bing how great Cody played and that he was a protégé of Fats, and Billie’s first accompanist. So Bing said if he’s that good let’s take a ride, and we all came down from Saratoga and found Jimmy closing the place.”
“Last call, people,” Big Jimmy said to the bar. “Party’s over. They’re closin’ me down and nothin’ I can do about it.”
“We just got here,” Bing said to Jimmy. “We came from Saratoga to hear Cody.”
“You got ten minutes, if he’s still up to it. He been playin’ three days and I never see the man sleep.”
“I sleep during the slow tunes,” Cody said.
So Cody played a few minutes for Bing, “Nobody’s Sweetheart,” his good luck theme, and Bing hummed a little. Cody would’ve played all week for Bing, but Jimmy hit the lights and two patrol cars were sitting out front and that was that. Alex the thinker then said, Cody, why don’t you join us out at Tivoli and play awhile. Stay overnight and we’ll get you anywhere you want to go tomorrow. But we need a piano. Cody was wrecked, but this was Bing, so he said okay, I ain’t really dead. George said Jimmy’s got a piano in the back room, and so it began: the coda to Jim’s open house: jazz all night and Cody playing himself into a lucky new day, with a promise at dawn from Bing that he’d try to work Cody into his next movie. Bing had just gotten Satchmo star billing in Pennies from Heaven, a first for a Negro in Hollywood.
Cody rising: He’d never tell it on himself but Max knew Cody when he was still Sonny, when somebody told him to go up to Pod’s and Jerry’s in Harlem where Willie the Lion was playing, but not for long, and see Jerry and tell him you want the gig. Sonny beelined it up and that night the club was thick with main men: James P. Johnson, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Bunny Berigan, and Sonny squirmed. But he sat there like Jerry told him to, watching Willie bust that piano. Did they love Willie? Oh, yeah. Then Willie stood up and he knew Sonny wanted his chair. So you play a little? he asked. A little, Sonny said, and so he did “Nobody’s Sweetheart,” which they liked all right, and then he did “Twelfth Street Rag,” eight choruses, eight variations, no repeats, and they loved it so much he did four more—no repeats—and they couldn’t goddamn stand it. He met all the main men and he felt bigger than he used to and along the way he really got to know Fats. Jerry said to him, all right, fourteen bucks a week five nights and you also play when the girls dance (you know those girls), five of them moving among the tables (you know how they move) and share their tips. So Sonny kept suspense in the tune; and when somebody put folding money on the table and a girl picked it up with her between and kept it, Sonny gave her achievement a little arpeggio. Then the other girls used their betweens, and Sonny’s arpeggios earned him eighty-four dollars, seventy-four more than he’d ever made in a whole week playing piano. Sonny bought a new suit. Great lookin’ devil, one of the girls said.