TIL MORNING

Chapter Four

Johnnie

            By the time we arrived at the Copa, I was higher than Mount Everest. Brilliant lights dueled the black sky as we glided under the marquee. Inside, a hatcheck girl took Kilgallen’s ermine and my topcoat. I scared up Umberto, the maître d’, and he threaded us through the crowd. I held Kilgallen’s hand, wondering who was pulling whom. Heads turned, mostly because of me at first, then her, the fact that we were obviously together, an item, as Dorothy herself would report it.

            I faded back and watched her pass ahead of me, smooth power in her carriage, moving as if she were sure of herself. Basie’s band rocked the six hundred-capacity room by its subterranean balls and swayed its ten-foot palms.

            She slid into a crimson banquette. I started to follow, then she stopped me with her hand and said something about dear friends. A couple crossed the sunken dance floor. Pals from her privileged status in New York society’s Four Hundred, not mine. It showed all over this pair. She presented them. “Clarice and Roland Fairchild.” That was all I heard as Basie pushed the beat. The woman looked fortyish like Kilgallen, only her curves had flattened. Roland was fat, with a round face full of barracuda teeth.

            He ignored my hand. “Dorothy,” he said. “People are staring.”

            “Nice to meet you,” I told him. “Getting stared at is nothing new to me.”

            “Nothing new to Dorothy either.” Roland flashed his sharp fangs. “But she needs to be careful of the company she keeps.”

            “That’s up to the lady,” I replied, and started to walk on past.

            Kilgallen popped up Irish angry, which surprised even me. “That’s enough, Roland. You’re way out of line.”

            Clarice tried to apologize. Roland flung a right cross. I ducked and came up smiling. I read in him every heckler who’d pitched me a bitch in every joint from Detroit City to Sydney, Australia.

            Umberto stepped in like a ref and attempted to escort Roland to a table. Clarice helped. Kilgallen bristled. I played the whole scene like a journeyman.

            “Fuck him,” I told those within earshot. Then I joined Kilgallen in the booth and sent a thumbs-up to Basie.

            A server brought us a bottle in a bucket of ice and presented the booze for my inspection. “Your brand, Mr. Ray.”

            I smiled at Kilgallen. “Hope it ain’t grape.”

            “Potato,” he said, and poured us chilled vodka, straight up.

            The Count took a break. After the applause, Kilgallen launched into an apology for her friend’s behavior.

            I held up a hand. “No need,” I told her. “I get that stuff all the time.”

            Her eyes grew moist, like in the movie earlier. “Yes, I guess you do.”

            “I’ve always been the weird kid,” I added. “Even before the blanket toss.”

             “Blanket toss?”

            I pointed to my hearing aid. “I was twelve, in the Boy Scouts. Landed on my head when someone dropped his corner of the blanket.”

            Her hands fished through her purse. She lit a cigarette, then found a pen and began taking notes on a Copa napkin.

 “Don’t do that,” I told her.

The pen and bunched napkin flew back into her purse. “Sorry,” she said. “Force of habit. From now on, everything is off the record.”

“Then I might tell you my awful secret.”

She waved away smoke and watched me. “Knowing you’d never ask, I feel I better tell you,” I said, reaching for her hand. “I’m not really from Dallas, Texas.”

She gave me a relaxed look. “No?”

“I’m from Dallas, Oregon.”

“You sly bastard,” she said, and changed her eyes again. “Next you’ll be on I’ve Got a Secret.”

We drank hard. She scoped the place and spoke of the patrons with a razor tongue. I lit a filter, tried to act cool, and began to feel the booze.  

Basie returned to the bandstand. When I saw his vocalist dawdle and grin at me like he didn’t mean it, I felt a storm of adrenaline hit and knew what was coming. In the back of my mind, I heard Morrie say, “No! Last time we stepped on contracts in that room, Frank Costello’s Mafia was all over me and so were the musicians’ union goons.”

“See a friend of mine out there tonight.” Basie growled into his mic.

Kilgallen brightened under a spotlight.

“I’ve been jammin’ with the Count now and then,” I let her know.

“Ladies and gents,” Basie announced, “let’s hear it for the incomparable Mr. Johnnie Ray.” Basie’s drummer laid down a soft roll. “Get up here and acknowledge your fans, man.”

Now the applause was deafening, and don’t ask me about deafening.

“Johnnie,” Kilgallen said, “Do something.”

Trembling like a rabbit, I attempted to scoot out of the booth, stumbled, but finally gained a bit of composure on my way up to Basie.

On stage, I gave the vocalist, a new cat Basie had been working with, a palms-up gesture.

“I’m cool with it,” he assured me.

To Basie, I whispered, “I’m awfully drunk, man.”

“Ain’t you the cat who never drives sober?” He jabbed my stomach with a huge fist. “Give ’em the Mary Jane song, then Whiskey and Gin.”

“Mary Jane?”

“The boo song, marijuana,” Basie said.

I nodded my head up and down, grabbed the stage mic and waited for the big man’s soft, single notes to form an intro. Most of the band had been on this trip with us before, and they chipped in.

So I squared my shoulders and gave them Sweet Lotus Blossom impersonating Billie Holiday’s voice. Basie dug it. The crowd wasn’t so sure.

When I finished, the mob, if they were truly around, hadn’t started to riot. I turned to Basie. “They want some blood and thunder, Count.”

He nodded and began to bring up Whiskey and Gin, a song I wrote. I started it torchy and then let it go. The crowd and Basie’s musicians felt it. In order to gratify the beast in most, I  offended some, and that’s when I broke the thermostat. I peaked the vocal while jumping off the stage. Then I strutted over to kiss the cheeks of Clarice and even the asshole Roland, both of them shrieking now with the rest of the crowd, born-again fans. Having wrung the song dry, I finished up in front of the mic.

I threw Basie a hand, fiddled with my hearing aid, and groveled my way to the booth.  Kilgallen stood, applauding, her small hands in a frenzy. There was something in the proud way she held her head, a grandeur about her posture that made me lightheaded. Sweat dripped off me as if I’d tried to drown myself in the East River.

The lady put her arms around me and drew me close as if I belonged to her alone.

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