I turned around and said, “Hey, Gracie. What you doin’ here?” I asked the question but really it seemed perfect that I’d see Grace Phillips at the Black Chantilly.
She almost smiled. The faraway look in her eye was way past alcohol.
“I’as jus’ talkin’ ’bout you t’Bertie,” she said. Her mouth gave up on each word before it was finished. “You know he likes you. ’Spects you.”
“He around here?” I asked, looking over her head down the stairs. There was a man coming up behind her but it wasn’t my boss. It was a cream-colored Negro in loose brown pants, cinched tight, and a coral shirt. Between his first two fingers was a burning cigarette; between the second and third finger was a fold of green, forty dollars I’d bet.
He popped his eyes and said, “Hi, Gracie,” as he went by. She turned away and looked uncomfortably at me, pretending to smile, until the fish-eyed man passed.
“Hey, Li’l Joe,” the customer said to the guardian. “How’s it goin’?”
Li’l Joe took the fold of green. He grimaced at the two twenties but smiled when he saw the extra two-dollar bill.
“Fine, fine, Greenwood.” He handed a key over and Greenwood sauntered and whistled his way up the stairs.
“I thought you straightened out, Gracie. Don’t you have a baby now?” I asked.
Grace smiled, accepting some imagined compliment. “They beautiful, huh, Easy? Babies the most beautiful thing in the worl’.”
Grace had on a darkish beige dress that made it down to about three inches above her bare knees. She was the kind of woman you could look at without embarrassment.
“A couple could go up there for just twenty,” she said.
“They can?”
“Uh-huh. The house only take twenty. The other twenty is for the girl.” She looked down at her chest and I did too.
Grace was a good-looking woman, and I could tell, by the way she nearly smiled, that time with her would be as far from death as a workingman could get. It would be as good as or better than Idabell’s soft embraces.
It was the thought of Mrs. Turner killed my ardor.
“I don’t think that Bert would look on it too kindly if I was to go up those steps wit’ you, Gracie,” I said.
“No,” she agreed. She smiled too.
“Why’ont we go downstairs,” I suggested.
“Could I borrah twenty dollars, Easy?” She didn’t trip on a syllable of that sentence.
“We’ll see.”
Hannah didn’t approve of Grace. She wouldn’t even look at me when I ordered the soda and scotch and soda for me and my friend.
“Grace, you should go home to your baby,” I said after she’d gagged on a gulp of scotch.
“I know,” she said. “I know. If you gimme twenty dollars I promise I will…. Bertie’d pay you back.”
“What’s Bert gonna do when he finds that you been out here in the streets?” I asked.
Her sneer would have dissuaded the bubonic plague.
“What he know?” she said. “Lea’me all by myself all that time. Sallie an’ all’a his friends wou’n’t say boo t’me an’ I had t’make it on my own. On my own.”
“You should go home, Grace.”
Just that fast she put me out of her mind. Her gaze swung left and then right, looking for anybody with twenty dollars in his pocket.
“You ever hear of Roman or Holland Gasteau?” I asked the back of her head.
“No.”
“If I could find out about either one of them it’d be worth twenty dollars.” I wasn’t really hurting Bert. I figured that she could do a lot worse for that twenty dollars than just talk.
“They come around,” she said, swinging back toward me. “But I heard sumpin’ happened with them. I’ont know what though.”
“You know’em?”
“Not really. Roman’s sweet to talk to. He’s nice. Holland’s kinda weird.”
“You know what kinda business they’re in?” I asked.
“Roman’s a gambler. I don’t know what Holland do.”
“They do anything together?”
She swallowed — twice — and then shook her head, no.
“You know I know where you live, Gracie,” I said.
“Then you should come by sometimes.”
“Can you tell me anything else about the Gasteaus?”
“I could ask around.” She got me with her eyes that time; almost, anyway.
But I pulled back. I hadn’t fallen that far yet.
I reached into my pocket for the money but before I came out with it I had a thought.
“You seen Bill Bartlett around anywhere lately, Grace?”
“Who?” she asked and I knew that anything else she told me would be a lie — or half of one.
“Bartlett. You heard me. The man tried to blackmail your boyfriend.”
“No. Like I said, Sallie’n his friends wouldn’t have nuthin’ to do with me after that thing wit’ you an’ Bertie.” She was looking at my pocket.
“You hear anything about’im?”
“You mean Bill Bartlett?”
“Yeah.” I let my hand rummage around in the pocket a little bit, to keep her attention.
“They said that he got a cook’s job someplace after you got him fired. I’ont know where though.”
I gave Grace two tens and she was gone from my table.
I went from there back up to the gambling rooms and dropped thirty dollars at blackjack. I asked the dealer if that was Roman’s game. He said that he’d never heard of any Gasteau. Sometimes a lie will tell you more than the truth. I took his lie and pondered it on the way downstairs.
A woman was crooning “I Cover the Waterfront.” Lips was seated at the window behind her.
His hands were on his thighs; his eyes were on the moon.
“Hey, Lips.”
“Easy.” His long-drawn-out voice was the human counterpart of his horn.
“How you doin’, man?” I’d known Lips since I was a boy in Houston.
“Oh,” he mused, “gettin’ kinda slow, man. Gettin’ kinda slow.”
“You sure sound good.”
“I did?” The orange in his brown skin was fading. His long hair had been so processed over the years that it wouldn’t lay down or stand up.
He sighed. “Used t’be I liked t’play, Easy. Get high, get me a girl for the night. But that’s all over now. My mouth ain’t right no mo’ but even if it was there ain’t nuthin’ new t’play. All people wanna hear is songs an’ they ain’t no jazz voice out there. They all wanna shout. They all wanna boogie-woogie. Shit.”
I felt for him but I had my own problems that night.
“What can you tell me about the Gasteau brothers?”
“That they dead. That Roman was all right. Yeah, he was okay. But you know Holland was a crusher, man. He always want the light on him. One night he even tried to get up here with me.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Got out his guitar an’ come up to play next to me. Shit. I had to sit down an’ wait till Rupert come.”
“Could he play?”
“Maybe, if he turn the motherfucker over an’ beat it wit’ a stick.”
I laughed so hard that tears sprouted from my eyes.
I waved at Hannah and pointed at Lips. She went to get his drink.
“Anything else about ’em?”
“Roman rode a big white horse into town.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. He was talk’ ’bout a herd.”
Hannah came up with his drink. She gave me a hard look and then made to move away.
“Hannah,” I said before she could go.
“Yeah?”
“You know Lips, right?”
“I don’t know him,” she said, slightly shy. “But I like his music all right.”
“Thank ye,” my old friend said.
I touched Hannah’s elbow. “I’ll still see you later, right?”
She smiled, forgiving me for Grace.
When Hannah left I asked Lips, “You gettin’ too old for that?”