think.
I didn't know what to do. I wanted her desperately at this point, but I could hardly ask her to leave her husband for me, nor could I even suggest some sort of clandestine affair, which would have been even worse. I had to leave it in her hands-hers and Eric's.
I don't think Eric knew, but maybe he did. Maybe she told him what had happened, using me as a weapon in one of their spats, because who knows what went on between two people locked in a troubled relationship? It seemed to me that his attitude towards me changed, but not in the way I'd expected. If anything, he seemed friendlier and more indulgent, intentionally throwing Ellen and me together and referring to us as 'you two'. Maybe he knew and was just as capable of using me against Ellen as she was in using me against him.
All I knew was how it affected me, and that was totally unexpected. Suddenly I was seized by the urge to get to work, to throw myself into my collecting and trading, to start wheeling and dealing as ruthlessly as Eric and resume the hunt for rare disks, a search I'd given up years ago as no longer worthwhile. I didn't really think I could somehow buy her from Eric, but I instinctively knew I needed something with which to deal. I needed to find something he wanted.
I began hitting the garage sales, the flea markets, getting up at three or four in the morning to get there at first light. I started canvassing the old, black middle class neighborhoods where I'd had success some years before in finding old 78's, going door to door and handing out cards, offering top dollar for old records.
On a bright Sunday October afternoon I came into their shop at a casually late hour and took a black-labeled Vocalian record from my briefcase and slid it under Eric's nose.
'What's this?'
'A lost recording of Robert Johnson doing 'Hell-bound Train'.'
Eric slid the record from its sleeve and held it to the light to see how badly it was scratched.
'The only one in existence,' I added.
That got him. He eased the record back into its jacket and looked at me to see if I was serious. Ellen came over and looked down at the record in shock. Unlike Eric, she knew what it meant.
'Oh, James!' she said breathlessly. 'Are you serious? Oh my God!'
Eric looked at her, then at me. 'What's it worth?'
'There's no telling.' I said. 'Ten thousand, maybe twenty, maybe more.'
'Jesus! Where'd you get it?'
That last question was always meant to be rhetorical amongst collectors. No one ever told.
Eric looked up at me, a bit nervously now. 'You shouldn't be carrying this thing around. You want me to put it in the safe?'
'I'm giving it to you,' I said. 'I mean, I'm splitting it with you. Same deal as always. A third for each of us.'
He put the record down and looked at me. He didn't think much of my business sense, but even this was hard to accept. He knew damned well I didn't have to cut him 22
in on anything. There was nothing in our agreement to keep me from selling the record myself and keeping it all. I didn't owe him a thing.
'I know four collectors who'll be willing to bid against each other for this. Plus there are the reissue rights. I haven't contacted any record labels yet about that. I'll leave that all to you, and in return we split it three ways, just like we've always done.
Partners, right?'
All that stuff was just busy work designed to make Eric feel like he was doing something to earn his money. He knew as well as I did that I was just giving him several thousand dollars.
Ellen knew it too.
There was a moment when we all three stood there, Eric and I looking at each other, and Ellen looking at the both of us, each of us calculating the terms of the deal in our heads.
'Who is this guy, Robert Johnson?' Eric asked.
I couldn't believe he didn't know. I thought everyone knew.
Ellen spoke up. 'He's a great legendary blues guy. Maybe the greatest ever, but no one knows much about him but legends. He's the one who supposedly made a deal with the devil at a crossroads one night-his soul in return for the ability to play the guitar like no one else.'
Eric smiled. He understood deals.
'He made twenty-nine recordings in the thirties, and that's all,' I said. 'There've always been rumors that he made one or two more that were lost, but no one could ever track them down. Not until now.'
'And this is it?' Eric's eyes got that gleam in them. 'Jesus!'
Ellen didn't tell him the rest of the story-how Johnson died. A hard-core womanizer, he was murdered one night by a jealous husband who put poison in his whiskey. Strychnine, that was the rumor. He died in agony, and they said it was because he could see the devil standing at the foot of his bed, waiting to collect.
Eric laughed. He picked up the record and shook his head and laughed again.
'I'll be damned,' he said. 'I'll be goddamned. And you're splitting it? Jesus. Let me go get a Mylar bag for this. You shouldn't be carrying it around like this.'
When he left, Ellen gave me a look that asked me if I knew what I was doing, and for the first time since that night I looked back at her and met her eyes. I wasn't being decent-James anymore. I looked at her in a way that told her what I expected in return.
Eric walked back into the room and his smile had taken on that predatory edge again.
'Come on, you two. Let's close up early. I want to put this in the safe at home, and then we're going out. We're going to celebrate. Ten thousand dollars! Goddamn!'
We all went home and changed, and I broke out the suit I hadn't worn in almost a year. We met at La Tour, a beautiful and expensive French restaurant on the Near North Side where we were lucky to get reservations. Ellen was gorgeous in her little black dress and for the first time in as long as I could remember, there was no friction between them. It was as if something important had been decided to both of their satisfaction, and the mood was expansive, even joyous. Eric fought me for the check, but considering what I'd just given him, I had no scruples about letting him pay.
We had coffee. We had brandy and cigars, and when I finally rose to say goodnight, Eric stopped me.
'You can't go now,' he said 'You're coming over to our place. Don't you want to hear it?'
'You're going to play it? Tonight'
He nodded. 'Why not. I'm dying to hear it. Besides, it's too early for us to break up. This is a very special night.'
I sat up. Ellen was looking at me expectantly, but there was something else in her eyes too, a kind of openly seductive look that surprised me. I'd never seen anything like that.
'This is probably the biggest find you'll ever make,' Eric went on, and he was right. He picked up his wine glass and said, 'To us!'
We all drank to that.
I should have known something was up. Ellen took both our arms as we walked to the car, holding us close, and when we got to their apartment and Eric went off to get drinks, she told me where to sit. She sat down on the sofa, right across from me, knees together, looking at me with that knowing look, not saying a word.
'Are we ready?' Eric came back in and handed out the drinks, then put the record on.
He turned off the lights so that the only illumination was from the bridge lamp at the end of the sofa. The needle scratched in the groove, and sounds that hadn't been heard in eighty years filled the room.
Johnson's playing was primitive and haunted as usual, his voice a plaintive wail at the very top of his register. His slide work was dark and rough on the old lacquer disk, but sounded as modern as anything you might hear today, not a note wasted, as if he'd paid for every one with his own blood. The music carried me away and wrapped me in its own world, and the only light I saw was the light in Ellen's eyes, which were looking straight into mine across the gulf in time, across the steamy loneliness of that west Texas night in 1937.
The song ended abruptly, as so many early recordings did, and then there was just the hiss of the needle in the groove and Ellen's eyes locked on mine.
Eric got up and turned off the stereo and turntable, put the record back in its sleeve and came back and sat
