Stella, at twenty, loved her sister dearly and wished her nothing but the best of luck, but she did think seventeen was a little young to be getting engaged, especially when the man in question was six years Cristie’s senior, and reputed to have lost two toes to frostbite during the war. (He certainly danced as though he had two missing toes.) She herself had been offered proposals of marriage by two different men in the past year, one of whom was a second cousin, naturally turned down since she didn’t want to have idiot children. The other was a rookie policeman named Artie Regan, whom she’d met at her father’s tailor shop, where he always seemed to be dropping in to pass the time of day with Pino and Papa until she got wise to the fact that he was really coming by to catch a glimpse of her. She had dated him on and off for more than six months until she realized he was serious. Her father had never shown anything but the coldest courtesy to Regan, and she knew that if she even mentioned that Regan “wanted her,” her father would take to the streets with a meat cleaver. An Irishman? The memory of the southern Italian is long, long, long. So she’d said so long to Artie, who really was a very nice and gentle sort of person for an Irish cop, and had decided she’d take her time finding the right man, even if Cristie was in such a hurry to get herself engaged to a fellow with only eight toes.
On the night of her sister’s engagement party, Stella was wearing a red-beaded dress with black fringe and plunging V neck, breasts bound in the flapper style, stockings rolled below her rouged knees, red satin slippers. She had had her hair shingle-bobbed two months before, in the current vogue, and she was wearing golden hoop earrings and carrying a black-beaded bag with red fringe. A package of Sweet Caporal cigarettes was inside the bag. She wouldn’t have dreamt of smoking in her father’s presence, or even in public, but whenever she was in the bathroom alone, she puffed away like a steam engine. (She once caught Cristie smoking, and swatted her, telling her she was too young.) Dancing with her brother Luke to the miserable music Mr. Jimmy Palmer and his five specters were making, she felt sophisticated and chic and svelte and gorgeous and desirable, and she had no idea that Jimmy Palmer himself, watching her through the holes in his hood while banging away at his drums, was thinking the exact same thing. Her chubby brother Dominick came waltzing out onto the floor in a wise-aleck, fifteen-year-old solo imitation of his older sister and brother, and Luke kicked out at him playfully with one long leg, and Jimmy Palmer watched Stella’s backside as she bumped it in disdain at the younger boy, and saw, as Luke turned her in his direction, the creamy white expanse of throat above the V-necked yoke of the red dress, and not bad gams either, altogether a very spiffy dish.
God knows what music he was playing in those days, or how he could possibly concentrate on it while simultaneously watching Stella through the holes in his hood. He was not to form his own Dixieland band until 1924, following an already well-established trend. But jazz had found its way from New Orleans to Chicago in 1917, and men like King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton were beginning to be imitated in black Harlem and elsewhere in New York as well. Chances are, though, that my father’s band was more influenced by Paul Whiteman, who called himself the King of Jazz, but who played the sort of music I don’t even like to think about, much less dwell upon. The Phantom Five undoubtedly played a great many fox trots, tangos, and two-steps, the craze for such lunatic dances as the bunny hug, the turkey trot, the kangaroo, the snake, the grizzly bear, the crab, and a veritable zooful of others having all but vanished during the war. And possibly, just possibly, one or another of his musicians might occasionally have tried a lick in emulation of what they considered to be real nigger funk, but their stuff was mired, man, it had to be. I heard many of my father’s subsequent bands when I was growing up, and I would say that Stella’s assessment of the Phantom Five in 1922 was probably accurate: they were lousy. (My father claims, however, that Mike Riley, the trumpet player who coauthored “The Music Goes ‘Round and ‘Round,” a resounding hit that all but smothered the airwaves in 1935, had played in one of his early bands. I guess it’s true. My father has a way of hitching his wagon to any passing star. He claims, for example, that James Cagney grew up in his neighborhood. “Oh sure, I knew Jimmy when we were kids.” I am his most recently passing star.) Whatever he was playing in that hot and smelly hall on 116th Street, he played it without benefit of sheet music; my father never learned to read a note of music, and could not tell a single paradiddle from a double.
He made his move during a ten-minute break. Munching a ham and cheese sandwich on a soggy roll, his hood tucked into the white cord sash at his waist, he two-stepped over to Matty Diamond, who was said to have connections and who had recommended the Phantom Five to the girl’s father. Matty was standing at the makeshift bar, wooden planks set up on horses and covered with a long white tablecloth, in deep and serious conversation with his future father-in-law. Both men were pissed to the gills. Francesco had a glass of red wine in his hand. Through a pair of twisted straws, Matty was sipping homemade gin from a soda pop bottle.
“How’s it going, Matt?” Jimmy asked.
“Fine, who’s that?” Matty said, and turned away from the bar.
“Me. Jimmy Palmer. Music okay?”
“Beautiful,” Matty said, and put his arm around Jimmy. “That is some beautiful music you fellows are making. Where’d you learn to play that way, huh?”
“Oh, I been playing drums a long time now.”
“Well, it certainly shows, the way you play them things,” Matty said. “Papa,” he said, and turned to Francesco, “I want you to meet Jimmy Palmer, he’s the leader of the band there.”
“Piacere,” Francesco said, and held out his hand. The ensuing handshake was a bit awkward in that the hand Francesco extended was the one holding the glass of wine.
“Nice to meet you,” Jimmy said.
“Conosce ‘La Tarantella’?” Francesco asked.
“Oh, sure, would you like to hear that?” Jimmy said.
“He likes all that greaseball music,” Matty whispered.
“Well, we like to play to suit everybody,” Jimmy said. “Say, who’s the...?”
“Why do you fellows wear them things, them costumes?” Matty asked.
“Just an idea,” Jimmy said, and smiled.
“It’s a good idea,” Matty said. “It makes you look very good, them costumes.”
“Thank you. Matty, I was wondering if you knew...”
“Listen, I think maybe you ought to figure on overtime,” Matty said. “Papa, I think maybe the band ought to stay past twelve, don’t you think?”
“Cosa?” Francesco said, and belched.
“How much you fellows charge for overtime?” Matty said.
“Well, overtime’s more expensive,” Jimmy said.
“Sure, how much, don’t worry about it.”
“We get six dollars a man for overtime.”
“That’s an hour? Six dollars an hour?”
“That’s right.”
“What does that come to for all of you fellows?”
“Thirty dollars. It’d cost you more with a union band.”
“Oh, sure. Papa, they want thirty dollars more if they play after midnight.”
“Cosa?” Francesco said.
“It’s okay,” Matty said. “Don’t worry about it, Jimmy.”
“Who’s the girl in the red dress, would you know?” Jimmy asked.