My spine snapped to attention. It was Jimmy and Otto. I was certain of it. (Brilliant deduction, right? I mean, am I a shrewd detective, or what?)
I was sitting there straight as a broomstick, staring into space, trying to figure out a good way to approach Jimmy and get him to make a full confession, when one of the waiters-a rangy buck with sandy brown hair and a very broad, decidedly uncool smile-suddenly appeared at my table.
“Can I get you somethin’ from the bar, Ma’am?” he said, sounding just like Chester B. Goode, Matt Dillon’s gimpy deputy on the popular radio show Gunsmoke. You could tell from the hick accent and the beaming smile he was new in town. Probably a student at NYU.
“Just a cup of coffee, please,” I said. I really wanted another Scotch and water, but I couldn’t afford it (money-wise or mind-wise).
“Somethin’ for your date?” he asked, taking for granted I had come with an escort.
“No, he’s not here yet, and I don’t know what he wants to drink. He was supposed to meet me here at eleven-thirty. I can’t imagine what’s keeping him.”
“Snow must have slowed him down.” The open-faced fellow was definitely from out of town, I decided. A born and bred New Yorker would have thought I’d been stood up, and said so.
“You’re probably right,” I replied. “I guess I’d better wait for him a while, if that’s okay.”
“S’just fine with me!” he said, with a grin so wide it literally wrapped around the sides of his face. “Sit tight. I’ll get you some coffee.”
He walked away and I sighed with relief, thanking the gods of Greenwich Village for small favors. If this had been an uptown nightspot, I probably would have been asked to leave.
The jazz quartet ended their set and stepped down from the stage, engulfed in a warm wave of finger snapping, handclapping, foot tapping, and low whistles. As the musicians made their way back to their tables and sat down with their friends, a rather large, clean-shaven man walked over to the mike, thanked the quartet for their inspiring performance, and announced they’d be playing two sets a night, at nine and eleven, for the rest of the week. Then he asked if there were any poets in the audience.
One hand went up. Guess who it belonged to.
“Uh-oh!” the man behind the mike exclaimed, peering toward the bar, holding his hand up over his eyes as if shielding them from the sun. “I see Jimmy Birmingham is here tonight-which isn’t so unusual since he’s here almost every night!” There was a round of cordial laughter and a couple of loud guffaws. “And from the serious look on his philosophical face,” the man continued, “I’d say he’s got something important he wants to tell us. Right, Jimmy?”
Jimmy shrugged, then gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod.
“So come on up, boy, and bring your pup with you. You’re both welcome on my stage anytime.” He motioned for Jimmy to come forward, then returned his gaze to the audience. “Let’s hear it for the Vanguard’s resident poet, Jimmy Birmingham, and his sidekick, Otto-or, as we say around here, the cat with the dog. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is which!”
There was more laughter and another round of polite applause.
Straightening to his full height-which I judged to be about five foot ten-Jimmy turned and picked Otto up from the barstool, tucking the dog’s tiny haunches in the bend of his elbow and bracing the rest of his slim, sausage-shaped body along the length of his forearm. Then, carrying his precious pooch in close to his side, as a woman might carry her favorite clutch bag, he sauntered along the bar to the peak of the pie-shaped room and stepped onto the stage.
As Jimmy moved into the amber glow of the single spotlight, I got my first good look at his face. He was unusually handsome, in a stark, intense, Tony Curtis sort of way, and his dark brown Vandyke beard-as well as the dark brown hair on his head-was sleek and neatly trimmed. He wore a black turtleneck over a pair of charcoal pants. As he grabbed one of the musician’s stools with his free hand and dragged it over to the mike, I saw that his body was strong and thin, and his coordination precise.
Propping one buttock and thigh on the seat of the tall stool and planting the foot of the same leg on the crossbar, Jimmy placed Otto astride his charcoal shank and gave one long, loving stroke from the top of his pointy-nosed head to the tip of his string bean-size tail. Then, seeing that his pet was comfortable and perfectly balanced, he leaned his agile torso forward, grabbed the mike with both hands and-in a surprisingly deep, burnished baritone-began to recite:
Here it be, where we are we, together in the degenerate hell of this life. So what? What are we to do about it? Maybe you can’t care. Even a snail eats. It’s our cause to complain. Surround yourself with your own orchestra because we will always survive the creeps, hear our own music, defeat the streets. Our jumbo world is ours. Inside we will stay, away from our enemies and the luster of injustice.
A few seconds of silence ensued, then-as Jimmy let go of the microphone, tucked Otto under his arm and breezed off the stage-the crowd broke out in restrained but rapturous applause. Heads were nodding in profound agreement and faces were awash in earnest reverence. Some people rose to their feet and signaled their approval by raising their glasses in a silent toast to Jimmy Birmingham’s verbal brilliance.
Was I the only one in the room who felt like laughing till my sides split open?
I was straining my ears, hoping for a concurring giggle, or at least one poorly stifled snicker, when the waiter appeared with my coffee and set it down in front of me. “Here you go, Ma’am,” he said, putting a small bowl of sugar cubes and a puny pitcher of cream down next to the coffee mug. Then he turned aside, hoisted his drink-laden tray back up to his shoulder, and began worming his way toward other customers.
As the waiter moved away, clearing my line of vision, I saw that somebody else had suddenly appeared at my table. It was a medium-tall somebody with dark brown hair, a dark brown beard, and an adorable dark brown creature nestled in the curve of his arm. It was the cat with the dog. And the way the cat was leering at me, I realized I was the canary.
“YOU LOOK LIKE YOU COULD USE SOME company,” Jimmy said, sitting down-uninvited-in the chair closest to mine. Cradling his little dog against his chest, he gave me a cocksure smile and said, “Otto saw you sitting here all alone, and he thought you were a real gone chick, and he told me he was itching to meet you right away. ”
“Maybe he just has fleas,” I said without thinking. Aarrrrgh! For a true crime writer whose main purpose in life, at that moment, was to find out the truth about a certain crime, I couldn’t have come up with a worse (i.e., less enticing and manipulative) reply. Jimmy and Otto had been dropped in my lap like a gift from the gods, and if I knew what was good for me, I wouldn’t make a stupid joke out of it. I would gratefully accept the gift, and use it in good health.
“Just teasing, Otto,” I quickly added, leaning over to pat the dog’s tiny head and fondle his warm, silky ears. “I’m sure you never had a flea in your life.” To prove the sincerity of my contrived (and, hopefully, conciliatory) words, I began rubbing the underside of Otto’s narrow chin and staring, like a lover, into his small, round, worshipful eyes.
Mission accomplished. Otto was in seventh heaven, and so-it would seem-was Jimmy Birmingham.
“He really likes you,” Jimmy said, lowering his deep voice to an intimate croon, writhing in his chair like a python, slithering so close to me I could feel his hot breath on my cheek. “And Otto’s the best judge of females I’ve ever known. He picks all the best tomatoes for me.”