the store if I didn't want him to run me down.
'How'd ya like t'make twenty dollars fast?' he asked when the door swung shut behind him.
They were just throwing money at me that day.
'How's that?' I asked the drunk.
'I need to get in here … lookin' fer someone. Girl in there won't let me in.' He was teetering and I was afraid he'd fall down. 'Why'ont you tell'em I'm fine.'
'I'm sorry, but I can't do that,' I said.
'Why's that?'
'Once they tell you no at John's they stick to it.' I moved around him to get into the door again. He tried to turn and grab my arm but all he managed was to spin around twice and wind up sitting against the wall. He put up his hand as if he wanted me to bend down so he could whisper something but I didn't think that anything he had to offer could improve my life.
'Hey, Hattie,' I said. 'Looks like you got a boarder out on your doorstep.'
'Drunk ole white boy?'
'Yep.'
'I'll have Junior look out there later on. He can sweep'im up if he still there.'
With that I put the drunk out of my mind. 'Who you got playin' tonight?' I asked.
'Some'a your homefolks, Easy. Lips and his trio. But we had Holiday, Tuesday last.'
'You did?'
'She just come breezin' through.' Hattie's smile revealed teeth that were like flat gray pebbles. 'Must'a been 'bout, I don't know, midnight, but the birds was singin' wit'er 'fore we closed for the night.'
'Oh man! Sorry I missed that,' I said.
'That'a be six bits, baby.'
'What for?'
'John put on a cover. Cost goin' up an' he tryin' t'keep out the riff-raff.'
'And who's that?'
She leaned forward showing me her watery brown eyes. Hattie was the color of light sand and I doubt if she ever topped a hundred pounds in her sixty-some years.
'You heard about Howard?' she asked.
'What Howard?'
'Howard Green, the chauffeur.'
'No, uh-uh. I haven't seen Howard Green since last Christmas.'
'Well you ain't gonna see him no more—in this world.'
'What happened?'
'He walked outta here about three in the mo'nin' the night Lady Day was here and wham!' She slammed her bony fist into an open palm.
'Yeah?'
'They din't hardly even leave a face on'im. You know I tole'im that he was a fool t'be walkin' out on Holiday but he didn't care. Said he had
'Killed him?'
'Right out there next to his car. Beat him so bad that his wife, Esther, said the only way she could identify the body was cuz of his ring. They must'a used a lead pipe. You know he had his nose in somebody's nevermind.'
'Howard liked to play hard,' I agreed. I handed her three quarters.
'Go right on in, honey,' she smiled.
When I opened the door I was slapped in the face by the force of Lips' alto horn. I had been hearing Lips and Willie and Flattop since I was a boy in Houston. All of them and John and half the people in that crowded room had migrated from Houston after the war, and some before that. California was like heaven for the southern Negro. People told stories of how you could eat fruit right off the trees and get enough work to retire one day. The stories were true for the most part but the truth wasn't like the dream. Life was still hard in L.A. and if you worked every day you still found yourself on the bottom.
But being on the bottom didn't feel so bad if you could come to John's now and then and remember how it felt back home in Texas, dreaming about California. Sitting there and drinking John's scotch you could remember the dreams you once had and, for a while, it felt like you had them for real.
'Hey, Ease,' a thick voice crackled at me from behind the door.
It was Junior Fornay. He was a man that I knew from back home too. A big, burly field hand who could chop cotton all day long and then party until it was time to climb back out into the fields. We had had an argument once, when we were both much younger, and I couldn't help thinking that I'd've probably died if it wasn't for Mouse stepping in to save my bacon.
'Junior,' I hailed. 'What's goin' on?'
