A disco floor, white shoes, the music slows, a meltdown of moves. Dust on the tables blown in an oceanic whoosh! from a spread brown collar and brown kidney lips. A Puerto Rican man sits back, arms spread. One on the table, one on the back of his chair. He laughs, his head thrown all the way back. A black man with a bushy black beard and black sunglasses exits to the back out a red velvet door, interspersed with buttons.
The street is wet. Sewers spit, cough cotton smoke. Nightclub lights, red-white-yellow script signs. Doors open, still in summer. Middle-aged black ladies in purple satin dresses sit on plastic seats at old bars, sipping drinks. His favorites are the caramel colored afros and pink lips, with a beauty mark just around them. In a thin hand, the cigarette they haven’t touched because they’ve been talking on end.
Clumps of people on the street, talking to each other or walking with heads down. Boots, shiny maroon, two inch heals, open white color and a bushy moustache. James’ creamy black face lifts a wide smile. Walking tall, walking fast, knows where to go. The bass strings play on his spine; he’s counting the beats. He jumps to touch a street sign, it rattles from his hand. The beat in his head on his way downtown, deep through the man’s hotels and restaurants.
He comes upon it and can’t believe it. His old club closed, his old club boarded up. The street people, like dandelions buried under brown winter coats, don’t know, just drop their worn chins into their chest. He tries to shake it off, his club being closed. The world starts swirling above the sign saying Shelby’s, it’s lights off and two bulbs shattered. He cocks his head upward at it and lets out a small cry.
He can’t see the street he’s running in. Can’t feel the blisters forming in his boots. He’s looking for Buggs, whose gotta be in Theo’s. Gotta be around 45th. At the green lamppost, his hand on a wire garbage bin, he can hear a horn. He sees a dove that he follows with his eyes. It could be a dove. Or a seagull.
He leans through suits and dresses, smoky circles and laughing. He starts running, people shout; one person even chases to no avail. The bird is fluttering, wavering. People keep shouting. One man in an orange hunting cap pulls out a gun and shoots. Misses. Loads again, aims a soggy green arm at the bird, his cigar burning at his feet. He aims, click, no chamber, he aims again but the bird has rounded the corner and so has our man, James.
Down 45th, collecting newspaper over his feet and legs like a cast. The bird slows and perches on a street sign. James reaches up and the bird jumps on his hand. He cups it, a seagull after all. He looks at its red eyes; they dart and dodge but don’t seem to feel anything dangerous in the air. It’s head punches up and down like it’s getting anxious so James tosses it upward to let it go. It flaps and flaps and flaps, a million times in two seconds and finally gets its squat ass moving. James hears a rumbling and turns around. A mob of musicians clambers after him, past him, toward the bird. One man in a stenciled moustache even stops long enough to say, "Look what you did, fool!"
Without thinking, James jumps in the tide and runs with the clatter. He doesn’t have his instrument so he picks up an empty bottle. He starts blowing to make some noise, trying not to step on anyone’s heals. The crowd soon disburses as nobody’s really sure which way the bird went or if it just went straight up. James stands in the middle of Madison.
There is a twitch in his haunches. It cramps up strong enough for him to sit down on a bus bench. He hears the motor of a bus rev up and looks up to see today’s headline on the side: "Jazz Is Dead." He melts like warm applesauce into the seat. The weight of the buildings above bears down on him. A policemen pokes him with his nightstick, then puts it under James’ chin and lifts his listless head.
"Another one," says the partner. "Might as well leave him here."
A slow beat issues from the road. No, the sidewalk. The grail or the subway? Something like a lazy cow snoring below the street. James, ever a man of action, gathers himself and hops down the subway, looking for any form of music. A little mulatto boy, hair jerri-curled and tight, is blowing into a broken piccolo. A darker boy, in a navy-hooded sweatshirt, blows into a bottle. James gets down on his hands and starts slapping a beat on the concrete floor. The subway is hollow except for the sound. Those people down there stare from behind pillars because they read the headlines.
James closes his eyes and purses his lips. His back makes waves and he can’t feel his fingers. They could go raw for all he cares. He only hears the sound, the most unusual sound he’s ever heard.
A policeman kicks James in the ass and he flies into the jerri-curled boy. James looks back at the moustache and shiny badge on the cap and hurries into an open subway door. The policeman gives one menacing look before taking the bottle and the piccolo away and smashing them.
"He liked that."
"Who?"
Nobody is there. Nobody who is talking to him at least. An old frail black man in a gray suit and black overcoat with a shiny gray hat, is sitting across from James. He stares at James and then curls his lips toward his nose, a skim of stubble over his cheeks and chin. He pulls his hat off slightly and gets off at the next stop.
James gets off, too, and finds another makeshift gig and this time more police to bust it up. There is a riot squad at the top of the stairs, holding submachine guns. "The Last Jazzman Is Dead," say the afternoon papers.
Inside the cell, five or six guys begin slapping a wall, real quiet and subtle. Some start humming in a corner, on their own, unconsciously attracted to one another.
"Quit that shit, man!" whispers someone from the front. "Can’t you see they’re watching us?"
One of them, as if just waken from sleep, says, "Sorry, man. Didn’t know we were doing it." And it’s true. James wasn’t even moving his lips or opening his mouth, his Adam’s Apple was stagnant, but his whole body hummed, construed of music. Soon there were more with him than against and the room took on that wavy shape the desert does to your eyes. When the police divide them up, they start up with new buddies on the cellblock. Anybody could hear the rhythm if they just let go. Sometimes it took a few minutes to bust through all the muddled and leaden feelings but everyone had a little music to give. There was a gun shot down the hall, a beeline of smoke from one end to the other. Mirrors snapped up from cell doors and there was the mayor, his heavy load under the big blue pinstriped suit, holding the smoking gun. A pair of lips parted somewhere between the greased white hair and nonexistent chin, asking anyone to come out if they dared. In a single sound, the cell doors slid open. Nobody knows how it happened, nobody said anything. The detainees walked in two single file lines out the front door. Walked right past the mayor. Didn’t touch him; left him in their wake. He fell like jelly to his knees and two guards swept him up and stuck him in a cell, sobbing, a custom wool blanket over his head.
Traffic started moving with life. Cars and buses had rounded doors and palpable windows and motors revving; people looked out, their skin mostly warm and tight. All the instruments were recovered from the junkyard. New sound came from them. The old clubs opened again. New clubs started in houses around old pianos. Everyone was blowing or strumming or tapping a drum. No way to concentrate on the recent economic boom but there was a new boom and it hailed from a higher order. The mayor in his gray cell could tell you all about that.
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