“And when you called the office you didn’t leave your name, either.”
That, of course, gave her pause. She said, “Now I don’t know how much fake you are and how much promoter. If there is a difference.”
“There’s this fool working at the office, at the recording place, and when you called up…”
“I’m just wondering who’s the fool around here.”
“Not you, honey.”
“Doris.”
“Not you, Doris.”
“Then why am I talking to you?”
“To get the true slant on everything, Doris.”
“And you have that.”
“As I will show you.”
“And what’s in it for you, promoter?”
“Your talent. And call me Jack.”
“I knew it would be. Or John. Something like that.”
“So I’d like to look into this, Doris. For instance, this evening.”
“Into what?”
“Your talent.”
“No, John.”
“Jack.”
“No, Jack.”
“Just to talk about talent.”
“You mean singing.”
“That’s right. Everything like that.”
“No. Not everything.”
“All right You want to limit yourself, all right.”
“My god. You’re compliant.”
“Just tired.”
“Do you often get tired like this, Jack?”
“Just afternoons. Then, comes evening time, and I’m a new man, mostly.”
“All right,” she said. “We’ll see. We’ll see what we’ll talk about.”
I said, “All right, we’ll see what we’ll talk about.” And for a fact I couldn’t think of something more definite. I was that tired.
I met her at nine that evening in a downtown bar and how tired I must have been to have left the topic so all up in the air. She had a dress on which did nothing to interfere with the girl underneath, and the girl underneath knew all this very well. When she saw me she smiled and the message was, maybe we’ll share the knowledge. I got up on the stool next to her and she said, “Hi, promoter.”
Her tone was an arm’s length tone of voice. Business was on.
I gave her hand a squeeze, sniffed at the glass she was holding. That was all business, too. Scotch and ice.
“Let’s sit in a booth,” I said.
“You can let go of my hand. No.”
“Scotch and ice,” I told the bartender.
She swiveled around a little, so we would face each other, and we composed smiles for each to see. What they looked like, I think, was friendly joy. What it covered in her case I wasn’t sure. I think it meant, caution, speed traps.
“You have the first requisite,” I told her. “The first requisite for a performer. You arouse interest, Doris.”
“You too, Jack.”
“Why, how nice. You want to sit in a booth?”
“No. For instance, what was going on this morning, at the Benotti place?”
“Benotti place? Oh, that. Haha. Nothing.”
She went haha too and nibbled at her drink. She finished and said, “What kind of a promoter are you, Jack?”
“I can demonstrate that better than I can explain it. For example, here you are, untrained talent. Now, what I do with a singer like that-Are you listening, girl?”
She was looking into her glass, the length of the bar, anything but listening to me.
“You said you can show me better than you can explain, and then you started to show me how you promote.”
I finished my drink and said, “Doris, don’t you want to be a singer?”
Now this, I felt, would bring her around to the subject This should keep her on anxious thoughts about her career and the standard reply should be, ‘Why, I’d do anything to get up there-’”
“I’d hate to get promoted into the wrong thing,” she said. “I can’t just entrust myself, my career is what I mean, to somebody I don’t know.”
“They told me at Blue Beat,” I said, “that you called.”
For just a moment that gave her pause. The fact that I knew about her call to Conrad gave me some kind of legitimacy. But then she passed right over that.
“Did you know somebody broke all those electrical things at Benotti’s while you took me out to coffee?”
I could see that it might take more than a drink or two before she was willing to change the subject. It might take all evening, which would he a shame.
“Dear Doris,” I said. “I am here to investigate you. I think you have potential. I think…”
“I know you think I have potential, Jack.”
“Yes. And all these little side issues you keep bringing up…”
“Like, who are you?”
I finished the rest of my drink and said, “May all my affairs go better than this one. All my business affairs.”
She didn’t drink to that but folded her arms on the bar and watched me try to get her off the Benotti tack.
“All right,” I said. “This morning. I was there to help out the recording place, to get their machine off that ramp.”
“You promoted that all right.”
“The rest, I wasn’t there.”
“And how did you know enough to worry about that mixer?”
“Rumor. Rumble. You know? You hear things. Besides, everybody knows Benotti is a gangster.”
“Like Lippit?”
I ordered another drink.
“I know nothing about any of that.”
“Then why are we talking here?” she asked me, and all that female suspicion was smiling at me.
My drink came and I picked it up.
“May all my affairs go better than this one.”
“You left out the part about business.”
“I wish I could.”
“But don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’ll keep reminding you.”
“I’m beginning to dread the rest of the evening,” I told her. “Don’t you?”
“I’m having a nice time,” she said. “You’re such a bad promoter, I don’t dread you at all.”
The compliment was so doublejointed I let it lie. I took it for its best possible meaning, said thank you, and tried again to talk about singing careers.
“When I handle talent,” I said, “first thing is, we show mutual trust. First thing is…”
“All I know is, your name is Jack.”
That’s when Lippit’s lawyer walked in. He came up to the bar, asked for a shot, poured it down, put his
