“Hey, dudes, what’s happening,” Moog said, or something maybe even cornier, “Klook-a-Mop, my man,” he continued. He tried to rise and approach the dark corners of the room where the two men were playing what sounded like “A Night in Tunisia,” but Moog fell over on his back. Klook-a-Mop glanced up at the other man whose black velvet wings stuck out from beneath his armpits. He was going over some passages with a muted trumpet.
“You always was a corny Negro,” Klook said. Klook was also short and dark. He looked more like a church deacon than a jazz musician. He was wearing a rich Parisian silk scarf, navy blue double-breasted jacket and grey slacks. He was dressed like Jelly Roll Morton, in the famous photo where Jelly holds a baton as though it were a magic wand. “Look at that shit all over you, and that music these people in Hollywood got you writing sound like audio heroin or something.” The trumpeter wandered off into the darkness of the room, and played to himself, softly. “I remember you when you came into Dizzy’s band. You were seventeen then. You were writing these strange but fresh arrangements, and you played some good trombone, too. You lived in that dingy walk-up on the Lower East Side. You must have been about 140 pounds.”
“But I had to grow, Klook. I’m doing better than that. I’m rich and famous. They play my stuff all on the radio. I get a Grammy every year. I have a house that’s like the castle at Disneyland. I’m driving three Rolls Royces. One of them has gold wiring in it.”
“Yeah, but where are you in the music? Where’s Moog? If it weren’t for that synthesizer where would you be? Shit sounds tingly like the stuff they play in amusement parks. The music has as much sound as a toy xylophone, and has no personality, no individuality. And that boy. Man, you’ve ruined him. Sucker go around wearing an S and M mask with a zippered mouth, and spent five million dollars jetting his entourage to Australia so’s he could find a pygmy dinosaur. He wants to prove that the birds descended from the dinosaurs.” The musician in the shadows burst out laughing. “Ain’t nothing but a freak. I smell you all the way over here, you stink so. That free basing has brought you lower than a fucking sewer rat. Where’s your dignity?”
“You’re jealous, that’s all,” Moog answered, his speech slurred. “You went to Europe because you couldn’t make it here. I know all about you. You’re like the rest of them. Mad about my success. Those pictures I’ve made and—”
“Yeah. Those pictures. You and these black people down here in Hollywood do anything for cash, huh?” Klook shook his head. “No use trying to persuade you. Man, I feel sorry for you. All that talent. A musical cripple, relying on machines. I’ll bet you haven’t picked up your horn in years.”
“But this is the new thing. I mean, this is what’s happening. I don’t need no musicians. It saves money. Don’t you understand, money.” But nobody was there to listen. Klook and his trumpet-playing friend disappeared. And in his place stood Black Peter.
“Listen to him, Moog. He was trying to tell you something.”
“Who are you,” Fryer Moog said. Black Peter stood in the corner. “How did you get in here. I locked every door. So, you another nigger trying to give me advice. I don’t need no advice. I don’t need none of you niggers. I got Grammies and Emmies. I made one million dollars last year—”
“Yeah, and it all went to you and the free basing activities of your friends. Your brain has abandoned you. All it does now is turn tricks for hubba. You’ve given up your life and your career for a few hits of the pipe.”
Moog began to sob.
“If you took a CAT scan right now you’d discover all of the little strokes you’ve had. Do you know why you gave your computer away and forgot it, forgot about your bills — it’s because you don’t remember things with that bile in your brain.” Black Peter flashed an image to the wall. It was Fryer Moog in one of the great 50s big bands, blowing a trombone solo that wouldn’t quit, as rich as Frank Rossolino’s, as sensual, humorous, and funky as Bennie Green’s, and as technically dexterous as J.J. Johnson’s, with Jimmy Cleveland’s speed and Kai Winding’s melancholy and irony.
“You remember all of the promise you had before you came to Hollywood? Man, jazz needs good composers, and you were one.”
Black Peter threw another image upon the screen. A scene inside one of those cheap funeral homes. The scene was holographic and Peter and Fryer Moog entered. They walked down the aisle and looked into the coffin. It was Fryer Moog. An old woman was the lone mourner. Her face was covered with a veil. She lifted the veil. It was his mother. Moog woke up screaming.
20
The New York literary crowd had turned out at the Algonquin to Cedric Longsfellow’s farewell party (that wasn’t his real name). But though he was the guest of honor, he stood in the middle of the room, ignored. Everybody surrounded Beechiko Mizuni, author of a new book that all of the critics were raving about: Intervention or Internment. The book, dedicated to all of the G.I.’s who guarded the Japanese Americans at Tule Lake, proposed that the American army had rescued Japanese-American women from the misogyny of Japanese-American men by placing them in the internment camps. She said that Japanese-American men who wrote fiction and nonfiction complaining about the internment experience were perfectly willing to indict the racism of the white soldiers but were not willing to face their own evil, their misogyny. She got her face on the cover of a big magazine, Sister. She was on the talk shows, and there was a big fight between Okra Hippo and Virginia over who would have her on which show. Okra won out, because her show had the biggest budget, and also, it could be added, the biggest tits, a fact that wasn’t lost on Mr. Whyte, producer of “Whyte B.C.” It was said that on an especially windy New York day, she had to be held down for fear that she might float off somewhere, her tits were so big. Beechiko said that the internment provided her with the best years of her life; her Japanese male critics’ criticisms were traced to jealousy. They were accused of temper tantrum throwing. James Globe, the new editor of Organic Society, a magazine that Cedric Longsfellow had founded in the 1940s, had been brought in to manage the magazine by its new owners, the Slutts, a Midwest family that had made its fortune in mattresses. They too wanted to make Chicago the Athens of America. Globe was a member of the National Critics Society and had already nominated Beechiko Mizuni for a Book Award. He was dressed all in black leather and his Harley Davidson was parked outside. Nobody noticed Longsfellow when he went to the cloakroom. He was about to leave when Beechiko approached him, after breaking through the circle of her well-wishers.
“Mr. Longsfellow, please wait.”
“O, Beechiko,” he said, putting his arm about her tiny waist.
“Mr. Longsfellow, I apologize for the way you were treated.”
“The crude way they fired me, don’t worry, Beechiko, it’s just the sign of the times. Everything, values, culture, are oozing back into the primeval slime. People hate excellence. Well-rounded characters. Characters that you can feel for, sympathize with.”
“You know how much I agree with you, Mr. Longsfellow. I, too, like characters who come alive on paper. Books with a beginning, middle, and an end. I learned all of this working under you. These people who’ve bought you out. The Slutts. They have no class, no culture. I loved that farewell piece of yours, Mr. Longsfellow. About there being no characters in contemporary literature that one could respect. I agree wholeheartedly with that, Mr. Longsfellow.” Mr. Longsfellow had been her mentor. She trusted him more than she trusted her father, a backward San Francisco realtor, who prayed to the false superstitious idols of Buddhism. She was mad at the Japanese for not producing a Tolstoy. A Rembrandt.