Taft Read online

  He wishes she could stay all night. When she's here, right in front of him, he knows she's safe. Somewhere from far away there's the lightest beeping sound. A car horn.

  "That's Chip," she says.

  "You ought to get back. And go right home. Just because you've checked in with me doesn't mean you don't need to go home."

  "I'm plenty ready," she says. "I've had enough of Chip."

  Taft walks her back to the car. Fay leads the way, taking the turns like she's been through a hundred times before. Taft sees an old red GTO sitting on the other side of the fence. There's a tear in the wire where Fay walked in. Taft makes a note to report that.

  "Okay," she says.

  "You get home safe."

  Fay hugs him. Puts her arms around his neck and goes up on her toes to be closer to him. She hugs him like she does on Christmas. She holds him there where Chip could see if he were looking and Taft puts his hands against her narrow back and presses her to him.

  "Don't worry," Fay says, and then she lets go.

  Taft smiles at her. "What makes you think I'm worried?"

  WHEN I SAW MARION the next day I had half a mind to tell her that Fay had asked me to marry her in Doe's. I wanted to tell her like it was a story, something that happened a long time before or to someone else. "You'll never believe what one of my waitresses said to me last night," I'd say. I wanted to see her not believe me, open up her mouth dumbstruck for a minute and finally say, "Get out of here." And then I would tell her it was true, every word of it. Marion and I had struck up a weird sort of friendship over the years, after we had loved each other and then hated each other. We were used to telling things. That was the way we fought. We didn't hold anything back.

  And what would Marion say, after she had laughed and acted shocked? What she would say after everything settled down would be, "Well? Are you thinking about it?"

  That's what I kept hearing over and over in my head.

  Of course I wasn't thinking about it. There was nothing to think about. Where did I even start with the reasons? She was way too young and I had hardly known her for any time at all. She was looking for somebody to be her dead father and those weren't grounds to be happy. I had Franklin and she had Carl and neither of them would be so pleased about it. I was black and she wasn't and while that wouldn't have been enough to stop me if there was nothing else on the list, it deserved mention. I like black women, always have. I could see myself showing up at clubs with my eighteen-year-old white wife and all the boys nodding their heads at me when we came in the room, saying to each other, Well, would you look at that? Nickel's gone and got himself a piece of candy.

  There were other reasons, hundreds of them, that made me so sure that all I was wondering was why I hadn't been more firm with her in the restaurant. I won't deny caring for her. I won't deny that the sight of her little hands folded over each other on the tabletop while she spoke thrilled me in a way I couldn't fully account for. But thoughts like that were not the kind that led a man to marriage. I was sure. I was flattered, but there was no doubt in my mind.

  Yet as much as I tried I couldn't stop Marion's voice from playing in my head. Over and over again she was leaning back and looking at me and saying, "Well, are you thinking about it?"

  "What're you chewing on this morning?" Marion said. "You've been quiet ever since you got here."

  I was sitting at the Woodmoores' breakfast table and Marion was pouring some coffee. "I'm just not getting enough sleep," I said. "I forgot what it was like to work all night and have Franklin in the morning."

  "Wears you down," she said and took a chair across from me at the table.

  "Might be more fair if we split the load. Sometimes I get up too early, sometimes you get up too early."

  She grinned at me. "Stop this," she said. "You're being terrible. I never should have told you I was even thinking about coming back."

  "Just stating my case," I said. I took a sip of the coffee. Marion always did a good job with the coffee. When I made it, it was too weak or thick enough to stand a spoon up in. "How'd things go over at the hospital?"

  "It's still there. I was sorry to see they'd been getting along so well without me."

  "But they missed you."

  She tilted her head and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. "They missed me enough, I guess. I've still got friends there. I talked to the head nurse, saw a couple of the doctors. The doctors here are nicer than they are in Florida. I don't know why that is. In Florida all the doctors think they're movie stars."

  Just then Franklin came in, and when he saw me he came over and locked his arms around my neck and stood there.

  "There's the doctor now," Marion said.

  I twisted around to look at him, but he stayed behind me. "You going to be a doctor?"

  "Drummer," he said quietly into the back of my neck. It gave me a chill the way he said it.

  "A drummer?" I reached back and got him by the waist and pulled him onto my lap. He was getting too big, but that didn't stop me. "Since when are you going to be a drummer?"

  "I don't want to hear about this," Marion said.

  "When did you decide you were going to be a drummer?"

  "Since always," Franklin said.

  "He's just started talking about this," Marion said. "It's just a phase. I'm praying to God every night he grows out of it soon."

  "I just told you about it," Franklin said to his mother. "I knew before."

  "He's making all this up to get in good with you," Marion said. "I think maybe he's been talking to his aunt Ruth too much." She was making it sound like it was all a joke, but I was holding him in my lap. I was looking at his arms all of the sudden, his hands. I was thinking about the way he walked. My heart was beating faster.

  "Who's the best drummer?" I said to him. His face wasn't four inches away from mine. Even if Marion was joking, Franklin could see my face. He knew I was serious.

  "You are."

  "You never saw me play."

  "Sure I did," Franklin said. He moved his face in. Marion wasn't even in the room anymore. I could smell the Cheerios on his breath. "I saw you all the time. You used to practice at home. You used to play with the headphones on."

  "You were just a baby then."

  "I remember. I sat on the floor. I saw you play at Muddy's when you were practicing. I sat with the waitress."

  "What's he talking about?" Marion said.

  "Nothing." But I remembered, even though I had forgotten. I used to bring Franklin with me to practice sometimes when he was little, three or four years old. Fd get in a hurry and there wouldn't be time to take him back over to the Woodmoores'. Marion was in school then. It was easy to keep things from Marion when she was in school.

  "I was going to be a drummer even before then." Franklin backed off my lap and went and opened up the silverware drawer. He picked out two spoons for himself and started tapping a beat against the edge of the sink. Not a wild beat, not thrashing around like a kid that age would do if he was talking about drumming. This was measured and even, perfect time.

  "He's been doing that lately," Marion said.

  "Why didn't anybody tell me about this?"

  "Tell you he's hitting spoons on the table? I didn't think there was any reason to tell you."

  "Who's the greatest blues drummer of all time?" I said to Franklin. A kid who could beat with a set of spoons had been listening to somebody.

  "You are."

  "Who else?"

  "Art Blakey," Franklin said, looking at me over his shoulder. "I want us to play sometime," he said.

  Art Blakey, exactly right. "Sure." My drums took up one big walk-in closet in my apartment. I didn't go in there much.

  "Your father doesn't play anymore," Marion said. The whole business made her nervous.

  "Yes he does," Franklin said. "Don't you?"

  "Sure I do." When I quit playing it had been to please Marion, to try and win her back. But that wasn't something I had to do anymore.
/>   I told them tomorrow I'd be able to take the whole day off. "I'm finally going to teach Wallace how to do the money tonight," I said. "I've been talking him through it, but tonight's the big night. After that, it'll be a lot easier to get away."

  "Can you take me down to Muddy's?" Franklin said. "We'll play."

  Marion was staring at me hard. "Let's talk to your mother about that later," I said.

  Even after I got to the bar I couldn't stop thinking about it. I knew I was going to be a drummer by the time I was Franklin's age. Besides, even if he was just saying it as a way of trying to please me, that was something in itself. I was going to get out my old records, make some tapes for him to listen to. I could put my drum set together, too. That was what he wanted, to be able to fool around on a real set, give up the spoons for a while.

  "It seems to me it would be against the law to just kick a person out of a bar that you didn't even own in the first place without any reason," Cyndi said. She had a bad habit of sneaking up on me when I was thinking about other things. And she always seemed to start in the middle of the conversation. With Cyndi there was no beginning.

  "We're talking about Carl now?"

  "You kicked out anybody else lately?"

  Cyndi was leaning on the bar rail, all of her weight shifted over to one side so that there was something tilted about her. "Listen," I said. "I figure you know why I got rid of Carl. I bet if you gave it any thought at all you'd see that I was a nice guy for not turning him in. Maybe even for not turning you in." I gave her a long look. My looks didn't work on Cyndi the way they did with other people. This girl wasn't afraid of anything. She held her wrists out in front of her.

  "Arrest me if you think you're so goddamned holy."

  "Go away, Cyndi," I said. "Go stand on the other side of the room. You're a good waitress when you feel like working and I know you need the job, and since I'm about thirty seconds from firing you I think it would be better for all of us if you just stayed away from me tonight."

  "Last time we talked about my job you were saying that I was going to get more responsibility. Now I hear Wallace is closing. When did that happen?"

  "I'm serious," I said. "Get away from me."

  Cyndi gave me a long, ugly look, one that made it clear how small and stupid she thought I was. "Nothing would please me better," she said, turned on her heel, and walked across the room.

  Wallace and Arlene came in first, then Fay and the new boy named Teddy I'd just hired. The weather was getting warmer, business would be picking up. The band that was coming in that night had a good draw. Things would be busy.

  "How's it going?" Fay said, coming up behind me.

  "Pretty good."

  "You been thinking?"

  "Now, Fay," I said.

  But she put up her hand to stop me and it stopped me. I remembered that she'd done that the first day she came in. "You're going to say that you've been thinking and you've decided it isn't possible. I withdraw the question so you can have a little more time."

  I had to smile at her. "That's a sharp way of putting things off."

  "We're not talking about it," she said.

  "How's Carl doing? Has he told your mother yet?"

  "Carl is sulking mostly," she said. "He's staying in his room. He's mad at me too now. I'm not sure why. I think he's just mad in general. The truth is, it's a little easier this way. I don't have to feel as sorry for him."

  "He's going to have to make his date at the police station," I said. "You don't want to blow those people off."

  "See," she said. "Now you've got it too. I call it Carl fever. You want to stop worrying about him, but you just can't."

  It would have been difficult not to think about Carl that night. It seemed like every time I turned around there was some stranger asking after him.

  "I'm looking for a friend of mine," a businessman said to me. He must have been forty years old. He was wearing an expensive suit and sunglasses to keep out the darkness. "Carl. Have you seen him around?"

  I wondered what the chances were of this man ever being friends with Carl. I wondered about them eating a meal together. When you call your dealer your friend the word is getting misused. "Carl's gone to prison," I said. "Busted for dealing. I hear he's talking a lot, too. They're planning on taking everybody down."

  And out goes the businessman.

  I must have told the story a dozen times. Wallace was pushing his own version, too. Every time I told it, it got a little better. Carl had an address book. He had written down every sale. Carl liked to make sketches of people, didn't he ever show them to you? He was awfully good. They got everything. The police got him at home. We were losing customers left and right, but as the crowd started thinning out I could see the people I knew. Things weren't so different after all.

  The band was good. They were locals. Most of the boys I'd known for twenty years. I knew them all in different circumstances, in different bands, but they sounded good together. When it got late they started playing a song that was so slow and sad that I had to stop what I was doing to listen. You run a bar for long enough, there's almost no song that can make you listen. Even Rose poked her head out from the kitchen door and stood there. The music had made her dreamy and for a minute she looked like what she was, a lonesome soul. Then from across the room I saw Cyndi put down her tray and walk up on stage, dead in the center of things. No one in the band seemed to mind her. Nobody said anything. Cyndi started to dance her hula dance. It was slower, sadder even than the song, and this time I didn't think about stopping her. Everybody in the bar quieted down to watch. She closed her eyes as her hands went out to the side and waved, one long, slow wave starting up in her neck and moving down her arms and out through her fingers. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said ELVIS in big red letters. She took the clip out of her hair like she was in a dream. Cyndi had beautiful hair, I admired it to myself every day that I saw her. It was heavy and black all the way to her waist. Her hips moved up and down in a slow response to her hands, and every now and then she turned a circle without hardly moving her feet at all. In those kinds of dances everything is supposed to mean something, and I wondered what Cyndi was saying with her hips. Maybe she was dancing for Carl. Maybe Wallace was right and there had been something between them. This could have been the dance the girl dances when the boy is thrown into the volcano. There was no way of knowing. The band kept playing, probably glad to have things so quiet for a change. They must have written the song, or maybe they were making it up as they went along. When they were finished they all clapped for Cyndi. She bowed her head a little and then walked off, picking up her tray and going to see who was running low on beer.

  The night went on and on, same as always. We had a hard time getting all the customers to leave. I flicked the lights and said last call, then drained out what was left of the small, wet ice cubes from the cooler. Once everyone was gone and things had been cleaned up, once all the chairs were upside down, Fay stopped by to say good night.

  "I'm not coming in tomorrow," I told her.

  "Maybe you'll come by," she said. "Bring your little boy. I'd like to see him again. I'm getting used to the idea." I started to say something, but she shushed me. "I'm going home," she said.

  "How are you getting there?"

  "Carl's at the Rum Boogie. I'll just go up the street and meet him there."

  I wondered if Carl was planning on moving shop to the Rum Boogie. I knew the people up there, they were friends of mine. Sometimes it seemed like dirt never got cleaned up, it just got moved from one place to the next. "Get Teddy to walk you." I flagged the new boy down. I hadn't thought about him all night. "Hey Teddy," I said. "Walk Fay up to the Rum Boogie. I've got to close."

  "Sure thing," he said.

  Teddy put on his jacket and waited for Fay by the door. He was a couple of years older than her, a skinny college kid. He was probably pretty damned pleased I'd asked him to do this for me. "Good night, then," she said.

  I told h
er good night.

  I watched the two of them head up the street. Wallace watched me watch them. I turned around and put a heavy hand on his shoulder. "This is a big night for me. You learning to do the money. Pretty soon we might be making you a manager or something."

  "I wouldn't mind that," Wallace said. "I've been in the market for a career."

  "A smart man like you, Wallace. You can come up with a better career than this."

  I took the drawer out of the cash register and we went through the kitchen to the office. I had him count all the money. He was quick. You could tell just by the way he was counting. He made neat piles out of everything, rolled the change. I counted along behind him. Everything was coming out right.

  I opened up the desk drawer and took out the deposit slips and the cash sheets I filled out for my own record. Carl's paper wallet was still in the desk. I hadn't decided what to do about it yet. I'd disposed of all the drugs that night, but the money puzzled me. I figured on giving it to Fay. It was more hers than anybody's as far as I could tell.

  "Now what?" Wallace asked.

  "You have to write everything down here, ones, fives, tens, twenties, all the way across, then total it up. That goes back in the desk. Then you do it again on the deposit and put that in the bag with the money."

  "Easy enough."

  "It kills me to think of all the years you were wasted being a bouncer," I said. "I could've had you running things."

  Wallace was just about to answer when we heard something downstairs. All the time there were noises, drunks banging on the door trying to get in for a last drink, somebody who forgot their jacket or purse and didn't want to wait until morning. "Let's go see," I said. "When you close, this is part of the job."

  We went downstairs and I was trying to remember if I'd locked the door. If it was a drunk it was a whole lot easier to tell them through the window that they couldn't come in for another shot. I was worried that it would be Fay, that Carl hadn't come for her. The Rum Boogie would be closed up too by now.