Nanette Hayes: Rhode Island Red Part 5

But by then Leman had gotten a good look at Aubrey. He went into a kind of moony paralysis. Which was, as Stevie Wonder said, just like I pictured it.

He sat directly across from Aubrey, his legs spread wide, ma.s.sive thighs outlined in navy blue gabardine, pinky ring flas.h.i.+ng-a real prince of the city. "Well, it's a good thing you wanted to meet uptown," he said to me-ostensibly to me-while he was eating Aubrey up, "'cause that's where I was today."

I didn't linger over his non sequitur. No use expecting a smitten man to make sense. Without further ado I merely placed a large, stuffed sweat sock on the little cigarette table in front of him.

"What is that?" he said.

"Money."

"Whose money?"

That's where Aubrey came in, as planned. "Look like it was your friend's," she said. "Officer Conlin. He put it in Nan's sax that night before they killed him."

Sweet, coming reluctantly back to earth, let out a long, low curse.

I allowed Aubrey to go on from there with her narration, describing how, after I'd discovered the money, I was terrified the police-namely Leman-would suspect me of something. How I'd been too scared to report it right away and had come to Aubrey seeking her advice.

At the end of the tale, Sweet took hold of the sock and shook it like a bull terrier with a backyard squirrel. The rolls came tumbling out.

"How much is here?"

"Thirty-five thousand," I spoke up quickly. "About that."

Leman looked at me. My body tensed, preparing for a lunge from him.

"What's the matter, Mr. Sweet?" Aubrey asked and leaned toward him solicitously. "You don't look too happy to find your friend's stash."

"Wasn't his stash. Supposed to be the Department's. G.o.dd.a.m.n, this ain't good," he said solemnly. "Not good at all."

"Why not?"

"There's twenty-five thousand missing."

"Oh my G.o.d! Oh, no!" Aubrey said. "What you figure happened to it, Mr. Sweet?"

Aubrey, crossing and uncrossing her legs, lighting his Newports, playing first the b.u.mpkin and then the s.l.u.t, got the story out of Leman Sweet. He told us about the failed under cover operation he and Charlie Conlin had been working on: It seems "the Dominicans" were starting to use street musicians and flower vendors to retail stolen tokens, money orders, pa.s.sports and even lottery tickets. He and Conlin/Sig had been part of a huge sting that had gone bust. The fortune that Conlin left in my sax case was so-called buy money. And Leman didn't know why Charlie had been carrying it around.

We all sat in silence for a few moments. Then Aubrey laughed obscenely. "Look like your partner was deep into something, Sweet."

He nodded.

"But you know," she continued, "a fella like that coulda spent sixty thousand just as quick as he spent that missing twenty-five. Your department probably figure the whole sixty already gone, right, Sweet? Right? I mean, ain't they already kissed it good-bye, Sweet?"

He said nothing, just twisted the sock until the contents were secure, and then pocketed it. Sweet leaned back into the sofa and lit another Newport, holding on to the paper match long after its flame had died.

I looked at him while he drooled. I looked at Aubrey looking at him. What a nasty little dance. It would lead nowhere, of course.

I had an absurd vision of Leman Sweet in a tight-fitting French navy uniform, walking all lovey-dovey with Aubrey through Ma.r.s.eilles. Then I cast myself in the female role, hanging onto his arm while I chatted over my shoulder with the odd fishmonger about the novels of Marcel Pagnol. It was almost enough to make me pull out my notebook and dash off a few lines. Needless to say, that poem would have been squarely in the surrealist tradition.

All that aside, I could feel my chest expanding with the sweet rush of a righteous act. I had done what I was supposed to do-give back that money. It may have been a little short, it may have been a little late, but I'd done it! Sweet seemed to buy our version of events. And Sig-in all his incarnations-would be out of my life forever.

Thank the baby Jesus, Leman Sweet left us at last.

Aubrey leaned forward and consulted the mirrored top of the little cigarette table. She freshened her lipstick, all the while shaking her head in bemused contempt.

"What?" I asked.

"Country n.i.g.g.e.r," she said low. "Where the f.u.c.k he get off hittin' you?"

CHAPTER 6.

Misterioso I stopped dreaming about Leman Sweet and his thunder thighs and his fists like dressed pork roasts. Stopped fearing that he was going to come and beat me up every time I watched TV instead of running scales on the horn; every time I said an unkind word about anyone or failed to sort the recyclables or ignored a phone message.

I threw away the Ma.r.s.eilles pimp poem.

Mom had an appointment with the rip-off contractors who do s.h.i.+t like aluminum siding. They were going to give her an estimate.

And, oh yeah: Walt and I reconciled, in the usual way. The s.e.x was still excellent. And he was for the most part on his best behavior-the upswing of the getting-back-together arc: dinners at those little places where he would take a client he was wooing; a fifty here and there to tide me over; always the movie I wanted to see.

He was empathy itself when I recounted the horror story about Sig being murdered in my place, palpably guilty that he hadn't been around to help me, suitably outraged over my treatment at the hands of the police. He did get a bit obnoxious with his jealous insistence on knowing what this long-haired white man was doing in my apartment in the first place. But I managed to make him feel like a petty lowlife for thinking about his d.i.c.k when my very life had been at stake.

So the sheets were humming and the Con Ed bill was paid. Walt and I were back on solid ground.

Except he didn't move back in this time. He didn't ask. I didn't invite. Despite the good times, there was still a diamond hard core of mistrust between us. I regretted that, wished it weren't true, but there it was. He knew my moods and he knew my body, just as I did his, but there was that vast campground of head and heart where we almost never met. Once again I knew the pleasures of that fevered stripping off of clothes and Walter's gorgeous chest and all the lovely wet stuff, the gla.s.s of cold wine and one of his cigarettes just before sleep and the so-long kiss the next morning. But I guess I'm just some kind of pervert when you get right down to it. It seemed I was genuinely happy only when I could nail him on some c.r.a.p he was trying to pull.

But while my love life had its limitations, my "professional" life was no less than blossoming ... leaping ... pumping ... hot. A highly respected musician who had made a good living in the New York music world for some forty years-a friend of a friend-had accepted me as a student. We were going to start working together in a month or so. Was I excited? No. I was more than excited-I was serious. Practicing my a.s.s off. For the first time in years, I was serious about something other than finding a bargain on red wine.

As a kind of homage to Sig, I kept to that same spot just off Thirty-fourth and Lexington, even though he had told me I could make more money west. After all, while I really was applying myself to my music, I realized, number one, that I was at heart a novelty act-a big girl with long legs and a bald head-and number two, most of the people playing for coins west of Fifth Avenue would have blown me off the sidewalk.

So what if I wasn't ready to play Body and Soul? I had my fans nonetheless. The tips in my hat were showing a steady increase, a few fives among the singles. And then, one day, somebody gave me something a lot more thrilling than five bucks.

I was blowing something playful-a 1950s thing called The Late Show-pretending that Dakota Staton was singing in my left ear-when I saw a strange looking shadow fall across the pavement. The shape turned out to be a young kid with a bouquet of flowers in his arms. I finished the set and bent to gather up my take. The boy went on standing there, smiling. Then he thrust the wrapped flowers into my hand.

"This is for me?"

"Yeah. With a note," he said.

I pointed down to my hat. He scooped up two quarters as his tip and was gone.

I undid the wrapping paper.

G.o.d! Long stemmed yellow roses. Nine of them. All perfect. A creamy yellow note card too, but nothing written on it. Instead, a twenty dollar bill paperclipped to it.

I looked around in wonderment. I looked up to all the buildings where someone could be standing behind a curtain, pining for me. I looked down the avenue and around the corner and at every doorway. It was such a crazy thing, getting those flowers, so moving and yet so weird, that instead of breaking for lunch I packed up my sax and went home.

The piece I wrote that night about the incident had the nine roses turning into eighteen, and the eighteen into thirty-six, and so on. Multiplying, dividing, trans.m.u.tating. You know ... roses, rose hips, my hips, hips, lips, yellow so yellow it's white hot, its intensity like the sewing needle my mother once used to take a splinter out of my heel.

Next day, it happened again. Only the delivery boy was different. And as for the new batch of roses-those love-some things-they were younger, a trifle smaller, their heads tightly curled back onto themselves and sitting atop pale green leaf collars-the yellow was even deeper. Impossibly deep, hypnotical yellow. I wanted to eat one. Could all but feel that color dripping down the side of my mouth like egg.

I finished out the afternoon, which, without my noticing, had turned to velvet. Blew nothing but ballads. Two hip-looking d.y.k.es asked for an encore of Don't Blame Me. Finished with Violets for My Fur. Sixty-two big ones in the fedora Ran home. Found second vase. Unplugged phone. Threw Lady Day on the machine. Poured drink. Long bath. No supper. m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed. Slept like top.

I decided to clean up my act a little the next day. I put on Monk's all-Ellington alb.u.m while I pressed a skirt lightly and scared up a clean s.h.i.+rt and made coffee and picked up a little around the apartment. Then dressed and hunted for that Indian fabric out of which I had fas.h.i.+oned a neck strap for the ax. Finally I was ready to leave the house. I'd walked half a block before I realized my telephone was still unplugged. I ran back and reconnected it and the answering machine, and, as long as I was there, put on a pair of earrings.

That was the day I caught him.

I arrived at the corner at an off time, about an hour later than usual. The flowers came right away. And across the street I saw a man watching the delivery. He was standing in the recessed doorway of a run-down apartment building, looking highly furtive. He had a Mediterranean aura-maybe he was Greek, or Lebanese ... Israeli? No. Whatever he was, he looked pretty unhappy in his expensive black overcoat and silk scarf. He was smoking furiously.

I watched him for a few minutes, waiting for him to make a move. But he stood his ground, lighting one cigarette after another. Well, maybe I was mistaken. Maybe he wasn't my secret admirer. I set up and started to play.

I saluted the new born season, starting with Autumn in New York. Then Autumn Nocturne, during which my old friend, the one-armed gambler, strolled by, tossing a few coins in the hat with an apologetic shrug. Then Autumn Serenade. I was just about to play Lullaby of the Leaves when the rose man crossed the street.

He took a few steps toward me, but then immediately backed away. I raised the sax to my lips and once again he stepped forward, this time muttering to himself. What the h.e.l.l was the matter with this guy? When he was quite close, I pointed down at the bouquet and smiled at him. It was a question.

He nodded, reluctantly at first, and then more vigorously.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Henry Valokus," he said with a half bow. "And I am embarra.s.sed at what I have done." He didn't have an accent, exactly, but he spoke English in this queer, slow way-with a kind of all-purpose, a.s.similated European lilt.

"What have you done, Henry?"

"The flowers."

"But they're exquisite. They don't embarra.s.s me."

"I have listened to you since you first came here. Listened to your playing. You are charming."

Now I was a bit embarra.s.sed.

"You've sent so many roses. I've run out of vases, you know."

"Ah," he said, "then I have done too much. I always do too much. It is my nature."

He stood there smiling shyly at me while I memorized his face. Every crag and culvert of it. And especially those black mourning eyes.

"I would consider it a great honor if you would lunch with me."

I hesitated.

"For instance," he went on, "we might go to one of the nearby Indian restaurants here on Lexington."

Mr. Henry Valokus had pushed the right b.u.t.ton. I love Indian food desperately. There was a time there, twelve or thirteen pounds ago, when I was eating it for breakfast.

"You have finished?"

I wondered if he was being sarcastic. I wasn't just finished, I was bursting. "Oh, believe me," I said, "I am finished."

He signalled the waiter and removed a silver cigarette case from his breast pocket in a single, fluid motion.

"It must be difficult to make a living as you do," he said sympathetically. "I wanted to make things nice for you."

I laughed and took one of the proffered cigarettes without even looking at the brand. "What a gallant you are, Henry. Do you make a practice of rescuing penurious lady musicians? Or am I special?"

"You are special," he answered immediately.

I let that one lay there for a few minutes. I blew across the top of my spiced tea to help it cool.

I hadn't even noticed him order the drinks, but a few minutes later two outsized snifters were placed before us.

"You appreciate cognac," Henry stated. "I am certain I have not guessed wrong about that."

"Henry, you have yet to hit a wrong note. But listen ..."

He leaned in close.

"... What, exactly, are you after?"

Mr. Valokus's face went a little red. After a minute, he said, "I will be totally honest with you."

"Okay. Honest is good."

"What I would like from you is ... is ... to ... well, to understand."

"Understand what?"

"Music. Well, not all music. One particular thing, I mean. Something-someone-that is with me like a ghost, like a memory. Except that I don't understand where it came from."

"Henry, you've lost me."

"Let me say it this way: if you were to come with me to my apartment at this moment-"

I burst into a guffaw, but when I saw the hurt on his face I stopped laughing. With a nod of my head. I signalled that he should continue.

"If you were to come to my apartment, what you would find is a kind of shrine I have created. Hundreds of recordings. Hundreds, I tell you. And books. And photographs. Posters. Posters everywhere. And all concerning a single musician. The one who obsesses me. And until I have a complete understanding of him and his music, until I have comprehended his heart and his soul, he will obsess me. As long as I live. Do you see, Nanette, what I am saying?"

"Not at all," I said. "But who's the musician?"

"Bird."

"Beg pardon?"

"Parker."