Slumped on the divan, Mitzi listened, listened, and she rested her head against Maria’s hip.
She’s right, she thought. Ain’t it always the way?
Maria kissed the top of her hair, traced her ear with her thumb.
Mitzi heard Maria singing through the floorboard. Always something sweet, proud, and tragic. Always in Spanish.
Soon, they were spending afternoons in Maxie’s bed, Maria toying with the tufts of hair below Mitzi’s baby paunch, Maria exploring; the two of them soaking through the sheets. Mitzi arching her back, tingling like her soul was being stroked, smiling as she wiped away warm tears, as she met soothing kisses from Maria’s salty lips.
Later, after barefoot Maria slipped away, Mitzi quickly washed her face, washed under her arms, brushed her teeth with his Ipana powder. She sprinkled Pinaud talc on the pillows and opened the windows wide.
The rubes under the George Washington Bridge didn’t know a damned thing about much, most of all music, so he gave them some Van Heusen Sinatra brought to life. The rest of the time he riffed on the chords to “I Got Rhythm” and the I-IV-V blues Jay McShann showed him, figuring that right there covered most modern jazz.
When they applauded, he saw chimps, the kind they teach to roller-skate, to wear a fez and smoke a cigar.
He let his mind drift when he played, and he was back in K.C. with all that dough, telling them how he made it at the Three Deuces, up at Small’s Paradise, stared down the shadow of the great Tatum, knocked Al Haig on his ass.
He’d already decided it was going to be one of those banks, all marble, cathedral ceilings, gold-leaf lettering on the windows, pens on chains.
Payday, early, before they came by to cash their checks, while the vault still swelled with dough. And a crowd on the street so the weary ex-cop drowsing amid all that marble and all that money don’t come out blazing.
Every day he walked until supper, and in time he scoured the city.
And he found it: the North River Savings Bank, a block west of Macy’s and Gimbel’s, maybe a thousand people working between the two. The bank had a piano in the lobby, some heeb with glasses murdering Richard Rodgers.
Maxie followed the little guy home.
A stretch of cord flung like he was roping a calf. Stomped him into shock, his wrists wrecked, elbows all but ground to dust.
He quit the Continental, calling from a booth in the bank’s lobby.
Maria was looking to borrow the iron, and she knew Maxie was gone, hearing his brood steps on the stairs.
She let herself in, and she found Mitzi hunched over the bed, angrily cramming clothes into a cardboard suitcase. Crying like she should’ve known better.
“Margarita?” Maria said, shutting the door. “
“No, no…”
Maria turned her, wrapped her arms around her, waited until she lifted her chin.
“What? What did he do?”
“He-oh Maria, he-”
A man at the bank, a vice president, a sucker for redheads, always was. Liked a good time, and didn’t mind laying out for quality. Winked at Maxie when he said he liked to come and go, and Maxie winked when he passed it on.
“A vice president…” Maria thought about it. “That son of a bitch.”
Mitzi whimpered.
Maria never liked him. A musician who didn’t have records and didn’t play the radio, not even to study, did not love music and did not have pride for his own gifts.
Going after the money: it’s what they did when they knew their talent fell short.
“You are nobody’s whore,” Maria said, as she kissed her tears.
Not for a good long while, Mitzi thought. Not since Maxie.
Maria nudged her toward the divan.
Mitzi, one, two, three steps and everything moving under red rayon.
“You go no place,” Maria began, kneeling now. “Here is you home.”
She murdered English, but she was damned smart and she saw it in Technicolor. Jazzman takes a gig in a bank, cozies up to a vice president, maybe the one with the key to the vault, the combination. Mr. Moneybags.
“This vice president. He is a married man?”
Mitzi wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “I guess. Maxie says he’s got a pencil mustache.”
Maria looked into her hazel eyes, gave her nipple a playful twist. “It’s the woman’s curse. To fall for the stupid man.”
“Oh Maria,” she moaned, “ain’t I ever going to learn?”
“I tell you,
Mitzi leaned back, stared at the tin ceiling. She expected Maria’s hand on her thigh, thinking what a man might do, claiming his reward.
Instead, Maria stood, went for the bottle of rye in the kitchenette, the Hoffman’s ginger ale on the window sill.
Mitzi opened her eyes. “Maria…?”
“Margarita,” she said, “I tell you: Leave everything to me.”
He started showing up a half hour before the bank opened, and the tellers liked his serenade almost as much as his blue, blue eyes, and he brought black coffee for Puckett, knowing the ex-cop made him for the nasty bastard he’d become.
Puckett had to piss before he took a second sip.
“You holding out on me, Maxie?” asked the vice president, jaunty when he passed the Steinway. “Keeping that redhead for yourself?”
“Looking for twins, Mr. Minthorn,” he replied, toying with the waltz from “Carousel,” playing it in 4/4 time.
Maxie broke for lunch at 2 o’clock.
Maria walked in eight minutes later.
Seated beside Minthorn’s desk, legs crossed, with his eyes fixed on the underside of her brown thigh, she made her pitch.
“But a man like you knows this,” she added. “A man in your position.”
Flattery, and the way she said “position”: lips pursed, her tongue peeking between her teeth for the little hiss.
And Minthorn knew she was right. A bunch of people from Macy’s and Gimbel’s who cashed their checks were from the islands, janitors and bus boys and such, and they needed to bank somewhere. To have someone to greet them in Spanish, to help them, a gentle twist of the arm…
“Whatever it is you invest, you make back quick,” she said.
“And someone as lovely as yourself to grace our branch…”
Maria pretended to blush, bringing her tapered fingers to her throat.
He hired her immediately, hoping her sense of propriety would wither in time.
She waited outside the bank on Eighth Avenue, shivering as the lunchtime crowd rushed by, their shopping bags brimming.
Coming back from Child’s, Maxie turned onto the avenue, topcoat collar high, and he looked right at her as he pushed the revolving door to enter the heated lobby.
She saw he hadn’t recognized her, and she knew it was going to be all right.
Find where Maxie kept his gun, look at the spot every morning when he leaves for the bank, and tell Maria when the piece was gone. Find where Maxie kept the gun, look at the spot every morning, and tell Maria…
The butterflies in her belly, prickle in her neck and chest, the way time stood still when she was gone: They all told Mitzi that she’d do whatever Maria said.
