“No. I’m fine. What do we do now?”
Esme pulled her to a table with a couple of free seats. A waiter wearing a long white apron, a white shirt, and a thin black tie whispered something in Esme’s ear. She touched the inside of his wrist with her finger, laughed at what he’d said, and ordered them a couple of whiskey sours.
“Now we drink. You’ll feel braver if you aren’t sober.”
The noise level in the room astounded Darby. Even though two walls of the room had been draped with Moroccan rugs to absorb the sound, they weren’t very effective. The two other patrons seated at the rickety table didn’t bother interrupting their loud conversation to acknowledge them. Darby took a sip of her drink and glanced around. The decor was minimal at best. One long wall consisted of exposed, chipped bricks. Behind the stage, old playbills had been plastered up as a kind of backdrop, their corners curling and frayed. A layer of dirt, grease, and cigarette ash covered the floor.
The audience began to complain, calling for Stick and slow-clapping. Finally, four musicians stepped onstage. One slid in behind a set of drums and took a seat, another hooked a saxophone to the cord around his neck, while the third heaved a bass upright. A trumpet player stepped up to the microphone.
“Sorry, Stick’s not here yet,” the trumpet player announced.
The audience booed, but the musician was undaunted. He held up a hand above his eyes, blocking the lights, and looked out into the audience. Beside her, Esme sat up tall, as if a jolt of electricity had suddenly passed through her.
“Where’s Esme?” the man called out.
Esme turned and smiled at Darby, and suddenly she was up onstage, adjusting the mic and smiling out over the crowd.
“I know you want your Stick,” she purred into the microphone, “but stick with me for now, all right?”
The audience gave an interested grumble. Then Esme began to sing. Her voice was edgy and low and at first Darby strained to hear, worried that Esme wouldn’t be able to fill the space. But after a crescendo at the end of the second verse, she let it rip and her voice soared out.
Esme had a smooth, sexual presence onstage, her hips moving in time with the music, and her shoulders responding a moment behind the beat, in a slinky, slippery motion. When she finished, the crowd clapped and whistled. Darby hoped she’d sing more, but a movement at the front door caught her eye. A man sauntered through the tables, shaking hands and nodding. Stick had arrived. Esme quickly jumped off the stage and slid back into her seat.
“You’re so talented, Esme,” said Darby. “You can really sing.”
“Wait until you hear this. My singing is nothing compared to this guy’s playing.”
A few moments later a waiter came over with a couple of drinks. “From the gentleman over there.” He pointed to a man sitting alone two tables away, his table an isolated island in the middle of a sea of people pontificating and gesticulating wildly, cigarettes in hand.
Darby took a sip of her drink. A martini. She’d never had one before, and only knew it from the shape of the glass.
“Don’t do that.” Esme grabbed the drink from her hands, spilling some on the floor.
Darby was too surprised to speak.
“Trust me, you don’t want to take anything from that guy.”
“Why?” She stole a glance in his direction. He watched them, an amused expression on his pockmarked face. His eyes were enormous, like a basset hound’s, with dark bags underneath. She’d never been sent a drink before and was unsure of the protocol.
“He’s an undercover cop. Named Quigley. He’s always sniffing around, trying to find out what’s going on.”
“Is something going on?”
“Of course not. It’s folks drinking and listening to music. What harm is there in that?”
“Then why is he here?”
“The cops are all over the jazz clubs, looking for horse. If you take a drink from him, he’ll think you’re willing to talk, and all the musicians will hate you.”
Darby didn’t understand what she meant. “Looking for a horse?”
“No, chica. Heroin.”
“Oh.”
“A lot of the musicians say that it’s the only way to channel the music. If it worked for Bird, they want to do it, too.”
The names were like a secret code. “Who’s Bird?”
“Charlie Parker, alto sax player. Got the nickname when he made his band stop a car on the way to a gig so he could chase a chicken. Ate it for dinner that night.”
“Have you ever done horse?”
Esme looked at Darby as if she were crazy. “Are you kidding? I have bigger things in my life than dozing off.”
“Then how does it help the musicians?”
“It makes them more creative, gives them ideas while they solo, I guess.”
Darby looked over at the policeman again. “Does everyone know that he’s a cop?”
“Sure. It’s a game we all play. We pretend not to know; he pretends that we don’t know. My guess is he just likes the music. But you don’t want to encourage him.”
Stick sat on the piano bench and counted off the beat. He wore a scraggly beard and a shiny black suit. While the other musicians played, he rocked back and forth for a minute, then got up and started to dance a kind of jig, one hand on the top of the piano. Finally, he dashed back to the bench, and his hands slid across the keyboard, barely touching the notes, while his loafered feet tapped out a beat of their own on the floor. The sounds were strange and haunting. Fast, furious playing that sometimes sounded wonderful, and at other times off-key.
Darby took another sip of her whiskey sour and almost choked as Stick performed a set of arpeggios so fast his hands were a blur. When he finished, the audience rose to their feet, demanding more.
The next song featured the horn player, and the sound came out thick and sad. When he seared out a solo, the intonation penetrated into Darby’s body, like a musical bullet. She was reminded of the sound of the wind the night before Daddy died. A thermal had risen in the afternoon, the first strong, warm breeze after a long winter, smelling of mud and new growth. By the evening it was howling around the house.
“God sweeping away the cold,” Mother had said, to no one in particular.
Darby heard Daddy moan in pain upstairs, and she looked up from reading her book at the kitchen table. “Do you think we should give him something, or call the doctor?”
“Nothing to be done. The doctor can’t help him. I can’t help him.”
The last time Daddy was on the road, Mother complained about his absence, then turned on him viciously when he returned home and announced that he’d been fired. In a quiet moment, Darby asked him what happened. “I’m too likable,” he’d replied. “The boss considered me a threat to his job. And he was right.”
That winter, before he’d weakened, he bought a used sailboat and took to restoring it in their barn. Mother was aghast at the expense, and Darby could hardly blame her. The only water was the Maumee River, which wound its way through town. No one sailed there, too many rocks. Why buy a boat that you could never use?
Whenever the atmosphere in the house crackled with tension, Darby headed into the barn. Together she and Daddy planed the plywood hull, breathing in the scent of wood chips and varnish and shivering in the drafty space. Or she stuffed putty in the screw holes, then sanded them smooth while they compared their favorite Shakespearean characters. His was Falstaff. Hers, Cleopatra. When a waltz came on the transistor radio, he would grab her and they twirled around the barn together, and as the music ended, he’d bow low and call her Lady Darby.
His last night alive, Darby sat with him, reading aloud from Henry V. After he stopped breathing, she placed his hands on top of his chest like she’d seen in the movies and woke Mother at dawn with the news.
Mr. Saunders came calling for Mother shortly after. As soon as they married, he began taking digs at Darby. Most evenings she snuck out to the barn and sat in the unfinished boat and read, remembering Daddy’s whistle and the way he’d laughed and praised her handiwork. Until one day she came out to discover Mr. Saunders had smashed the boat to bits with an ax.