When I stepped out of the shower and began getting dressed, there was the static blurred chatter that was the portable radio chatter that in those days was the equivalent of the New York tabloid newsprint, from which you could foretell the headlines and flash photos that you would see along with the bright covers of the weekly and monthly magazines on the sidewalk stalls on your way across Sheridan Square to the uptown Sixth Avenue bus stop.
We ate breakfast sitting on the high stool at the barlike sideboard shelf attached to the ledge of the wide window that overlooked the backyard patio four flights below and from which you could also see out across the rooftops of many of the old Federal period buildings in that part of town, which had turned out to be less than a ten-minute walk from the University Place and Washington Square corner of the campus.
All of the graduate school sessions for my course of study in the humanities were conducted in the evening in those days. And the special advanced seminars and laboratory sessions in Education for which Eunice had enrolled at Teachers College met in the afternoons. So there was no rush to be in place for morning roll checks, but we kept ourselves on a strict morning timetable anyway, precisely because of all the local attractions in New York City that were not there for you in any conventional university town, where campus activities were the main local attraction. Not that we passed up very many of the not-to-be-missed feature attractions that we could afford from time to time, but otherwise we followed our regular self-imposed Monday through Friday study schedule, even on the mornings we spent studying in the apartment and taking care of domestic chores.
Me and you, I said as I kissed her at the door on my way to the elevator, me and you, which she knew was a jive line that I had picked up from Joe States, the all-star drummer who was also from Alabama and who had become my self-elected mentor the day after I joined the band of the Bossman Himself as a temporary replacement bass player in Cincinnati the week after I graduated from college, because I had told her about him in the first letter I sent back to Alabama, and I began using it as a complimentary close before my initials on all of my letters and tourist postcards to her from then on. And her response when I finally came back south and said it in person was always a playful mock pucker as she kissed me back—as if to say, One jive gesture deserves another.
What she said this time was, See you back here for dinner at eight-thirty sharp, Rover Boy. Or for warmed overs if not too long thereafter. After which it’s leftovers—but of course there’s always the phone. And I said, Hey me, I did time helping to keep time for the Bossman Himself.
Which is why when I came on outside and headed for the bus that morning I was thinking about Joe States again. Good old Joe States from the ’Ham in the ’Bam. Who was to say what he was to say when the band came back into Manhattan several weeks later, and I took her backstage that first time. Hey, here he is, he said, coming toward us. What did I tell you about this schoolboy statemate of mine! Check it out for yourself, fellows.
And as I told her he would, the Bossman Himself said, He said you were most beautiful, but he didn’t say that you were this beautiful. And she smiled as he gave me an ever-so-father-caliber avuncular wink as he spoke and then he gave her the one for each cheek routine, and Joe States hooking his arm in hers took her in tow to introduce her to everybody else while I talked to the Bossman and then Old Pro, the chief arranger and straw boss in charge of rehearsals. Then there was Milo the road manager, also known as Milo the Navigator, who gave me the rehearsal schedule and address of the hall that they would be using before moving into the recording studio that next week.
Eunice Townsend, Eunice Townsend, Eunice Townsend, Joe States said again at the stage door leading back out into the audience as he had said when he first heard her name when I mentioned her to him shortly after I joined the band in Ohio that June after graduation, which is when he also said, Eunice Townsend. Sounds like it goes with somebody come from a family that stands for something very special, Schoolboy.
And when I dropped in on them by myself two afternoons later he said, Hey, she’s down home all right, Schoolboy. And Aladambama people to boot. How ’bout it, Bloop! And Her-man Kemble the big-toned tenor saxophone player from Texas said, Hey, Schoolboy, when you come up with somebody like that, man, you make us all look good and feel good, too. Just like when one of us hits that right note that sounds like something we were all waiting to hear without realizing it before we hear it.
Which ought not to be no big surprise to anybody in this outfit, Osceola Menefee the trumpet
