Black Chicago Page 8

  I had zoomed in on her the minute she mounted the bar stool and the bartender whisked over with a glass of white wine. I have no idea what I would’ve done if she had told the waitress, “Tell him to get lost.”

  Cocoa colored ensemble, full up front and not too ample behind, sweet buttered thighs, regal bearing.

  “How did you know I hadn’t had dinner?”

  “My sensitive vibes told me, shall we start with dessert and go backward?”

  We wandered into holding hands after the salad, and was doing some serious knee to knee knocking by the time the steamed red snapper was placed in front of us.

  She called herself a “fun woman” who believed in the power of positive reaction and took herself seriously.

  “Who says you’re free if you behave like someone in jail?”

  We discovered that we were neighbors …

  “I live on the 14th floor.”

  She was an executive in the Urban League and had a healthy appetite … “Hmmmmmmmm that was absolutely delicious, thank you.”

  She signalled for the second bottle of wine; “This one is on me, do you mind?”

  It was, I felt, a moment stolen from a rare painting. We sipped our wine and explored each other’s minds and attitudes.

  “Please tell me your name. The man has paid for my dinner and I don’t even know his name.”

  I told her what my name was and asked for hers.

  “Rose Bahia LeVeau.”

  I sucked in a deep breath when she said it, never will forget it; “Rose Bahia LeVeau,” originally from New Orleans, Louisiana.

  She had a musical voice and loved laughing. I was enchanted by the lady. After dinner, the excess wine, a Venetian dessert, a superior cognac and wonderful espresso, we strolled around inside the South Commons Complex, enjoying each other’s company.

  “What now?”

  “Well, in the movies and in certain yuppie bars on the Near Northside, I would say—‘Your place or mine?’”

  She frowned for the first time that afternoon. I quickly cleaned up.

  “Fortunately, we are not movie stars and we are not yuppies in the bars on the Near Northside.”

  She flashed a smile at me and gave my hand a reassuring squeeze, we were going to play for the real stuff, nothing flaky, nothing dizzy, nothing simple, we were going to explore complexities.

  I was tempted to ask her if she wanted to be examined for AIDS and all other nastiness the following day, but I checked myself.

  I had already made a slight boo boo, no need to compound things. But I was anxious to let her know that my sexual history included condoms until it came down to a seriously worded agreement.

  She was obviously in tune with that, I could tell from the way she kissed. We took the elevator up to her place, we laughed at silly jokes, she rode back down to the eighth floor with me, I rode back up to her floor.

  We didn’t want to call the evening to an end. “Rose I can’t remember when I’ve had so much fun. Such a good time with someone I’ve just met. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I do know.”

  “Usually I’m the kind of guy who wants to turn his face to the wall because the pressure of getting to know some one …”

  “I understand.”

  The final kiss was understated, almost sedate

  “Hate to say goodnight, but I’m a working girl.”

  We made a til-death-do-us-part date for the following day, to continue our exploration.

  “What time?”

  “Same time.”

  “I may be a few minutes late, I’m going to change into something green before we meet.”

  “What’s green supposed to do?”

  “Green is for hope, promise, goodies …”

  He sat in the modified black barber’s chair that David had inherited from his history, mind spooling out fragrant memories of his recent honeymoon with Semenchuk, the Choctaw-Ukranian sister.

  He loved her because of the peculiar schizoidness that meshed in a way he had never thought about.

  The Choctaw gene gave her an aboriginal feeling for naturalness. He clearly imaged them stopping the car beyond Malibu, leaping out with two blankets, one to go under and one to cover.

  Sometimes they didn’t have a blanket at all. And there was her love of bread, salt, vodka and dancing, Ukraine.

  She gave him a lot to think about, the lake gave him a lot to think about, the miniaturized people scurrying around in the streets, being eight floors above the ground gave him a lot to think about.

  He spread the futon in front of the crystal ball picture window, poured a double Remy Martin, clicked off the lights and voyeured from one apartment window to another.

  They had become familiar strangers; the nymphomaniac directly across the concourse, holding her heels in the air as though she were giving birth to the shuddering man laboring between her thighs.

  The dancer on tippy toes, the closet transvestite, the bulimic, assembling a tray of food to feed on while she stared at the television. The odd couple, the after work party folk, the telescope addicts, the men and women who tripped thru their apartments naked, the desperate people sitting next to their telephones.

  He took a long sip of cognac and sprawled out to stare up at the stars. Rose Bahia LeVeau.

  Know how it is when you want something to happen sooner than its going to happen? It was wearing on me like that.

  I jogged myself silly on the track in the morning, showered and went back to bed. It was going to be a long day, I had to be patient.

  I woke up an hour later and read the newspaper … the Bush Administration was trying to push us back into chattel slavery. The talk shows on television were more pathetic and gruesome than usual; “My dad had kids by all his daughters. Yeah, I kinda think Mom knew, yeah, I think so.”

  What time are we getting together? 4:30-5:00? Twelve noon? I sat in the barber’s chair trying to read a book. Who in the hell could concentrate on the simple stuff in a book when the lake was right below you?

  Gorgeous Chicago stuffed full of people who would never be found in any other city on Earth. Where else could you find real Bohemians? Polish sausages from Maxwell and Halsted (enough cholesterol to blind you), Soul food in Glady’s Restaurant, southern friendliness in a northern city (counterpointed by Uzi bullets splattering around, if you happened to be on the wrong corner).

  The negative meant nothing to me. I didn’t want to pay any attention to the Mafia foundation, the insidiousness of the Irish political shenanigans, Jewish money manipulation, African-American consumership levels, Asian bullshit, none of that. I was focused on the absolute positive, Rose Bahia LeVeau.

  Funny how a woman can affect a man. He can be as stable and stiff as a brick ’til the right woman comes along.

  What happens? How do they do it?

  I spent an hour (from 1 p.m.–2 p.m.) pondering that one. I knew what a woman was/is. I’ve had friends, lovers, enemies, people who were women and I could never figure out what it was that made them women, that essence of something that is more than thighs, breasts and buttocks.

  I seriously considered going back down to the track for another workout, changed my mind and did sit-ups instead.

  The one thing I knew I didn’t want to do was start sipping on anything. If I got high, I wanted it to be with Rose Bahia LeVeau and we’d start from scratch.

  Three-thirty p.m., I settled into a tub full of Skin So Soft … I was goin to be smellin’ good, lookin’ good and feelin’ good when we met.

  The intended long bath was cut short by a phone. Rose? Had I given her my number? I splashed out of the tub and ran naked thru the front room. If one of the voyeurs was at work they’d have something to see.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, may I speak to Marvin, please?”

  “What number are you calling?”

  “294-7582.”

  “You’ve dialed the wrong number.”

  “This isn’t 294-7582?”

 
“Never was.”

  “What number is this?”

  “None of your business!”

  I slammed the phone into the cradle and stood there dripping and fuming. Always some shit waiting for you on the line I could smell the game coming up, somebody was calling to sell something or, in some way, trying to take advantage of the person answering the phone.

  What the hell, the rhythm of my bath was broken now, nothing to do but dress and get onto the scene a little early. I decided to go casual-California on her, aloha pau shirt, slacks, Spanish net loafers.

  I trimmed a few stray grey hairs from my mustache and beard, dashed a finger of Monsieur Houbigant on both cheeks and strutted out. I was ready.

  My plan was to go down to the Common Ground place an order for two Poulet Basque dinners and sit at the bar hunched over a glass of cognac, looking suave ’til the lady put in her appearance. I didn’t mind being early for Rose Bahia LeVeau.

  I hit the ground floor at 3:51 p.m. and started my cake walk to the cafe. I caught sight of the last three as they turned the corner.

  Was the brother carrying a Gon Bop on his head? I hurried around the corner to check out the procession,

  Yeahhh, he was carrying a drum and four other brothers in the procession were also carrying axes. One ol’ ugly lookin’ junjun but the congas were fiber glass and sleek.

  I have to call it a procession because that’s what the twelve of them resembled. They were dressed in various stages of African attire, Reeboks with caftans, stuff like that.

  I pulled up on the rear guard.

  “Uhhh, where you brothers going with the drums?”

  The young blood stared at me (none of them seemed older than twenty) like I had insulted him. I knew it was just a way of responding to a stranger and didn’t trip on it.

  The man strolling beside him answered, “We goin’ over here to git down.”

  Damn! What would be a better way to kill an hour than with a posse of cold blooded congueros?

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  The young blood that I had originally questioned relayed my request to the leader.

  “Hey Skull! He wanna know if he can git with this?”

  Skull grunted, “Ain’t no thang.”

  The telepathy operating had probably given Skull my name, age, time of arrival and possible proficiency on congas. I knew I could play them. Shit, I had jammed with Armando Peraza and Mongo Santamaria a few times, and had twenty years of practice behind me. I put out vibes for the quinto.

  We were parading past “Common Ground” before I fully realized what, “We goin over here to git down …” really meant. We were going across State Street and into the projects.

  It felt weird to be a part if this gang walking past the early cocktail types. I caught glances of pity, superiority, and class consciousness.

  We could have been a collection of homeless orphans, nasty ass criminals, ugly ducklings. My ambivalence was operating at a feverish level.

  I wanted to be inside the “Common Ground,” sipping my cognac and looking suave. But on the other hand I was with my people, we were going to play the drums. By this time the gang had somehow slowed down to suck me into the center of the procession.

  “Where you from, man?” Somebody asked me out of the corner of his mouth. My shoes, well tailored jeans and Kona gold shirt had already been properly noted and catalogued.

  “I’m from here.” I answered truthfully as we straggled into the ugly quadrangle that separated one civilian penitentiary sandwich box from the next one.

  We had never been forced to live in the projects, while I was growing up in Chicago. Blessed Lord, Thank Heaven.

  We lived in basements, in coal storage bins, in kleenex boxes turned upside down, but not the projects. Again Thank You Lord in Heaven above … made a quick, surreptitious time check—4:08 p.m. I had just about an hour top give whatever we were going to get into.

  Skull loomed in my face, a grimace on his face that I think he meant to be a smile.

  “You good?”

  “I know how to play.”

  “You wanna smoke some herb ’fore we git down?”

  I had to strain to hear him from ten feet away, the noise level inside the quadrangle was at a bedlam decibel.

  “Yeah, why not?”

  I didn’t feel I was in a position to refuse to smoke anything. I was beginning to feel like a captive-guest. A weirdly uncomfortable, feeling. No one had acted overtly hostile toward me but the vibe wasn’t cool. I was an outsider, inside.

  The quadrangle was many studies of madness; men and women screamed at each other behind the wire mesh that screened the porches from the top floor to the first floor.

  Drugs, drugs sales, drug use, all kind of drugs flowed back and forth in the quadrangle. Casual scenes of dumb-shit cruelty were everywhere; mothers beating children, children beating other children, teenagers battling each other.

  And above it all, the bedlam decibel level, everyone playing whatever they wanted to play, and we were going to add to the mixture with drums and cowbells.

  Skull motioned with his enormous head for me to follow him. It was pretty obvious why they called him Skull. Four of the gang fell in behind us.

  Where were we going to get high? Why did we have to go any place? Everybody was doing everything right there. Skull read my mind.

  “Were goin’ up to my pad I got my stash up in my pad.”

  We suddenly plunged into an opening and started up the grimmest stairs I’d ever seen. The piss stains and stench, relieved here and there by random piles of turds, vomit, raw garbage and stuff I couldn’t identify in the dim light littered the steps.

  When the person behind me said, “Watch yo step, there’s a section missin’ here,” I felt like a man on his way to be raped.

  I didn’t know where I was, I didn’t know these people, they weren’t my people, they were creatures from the projects, they knew their way up’n down stairwells like these.

  I had seventy-five dollars in my pocket. Should I just simply offer it to them? What were they going to do with me? Should I fight back when we reached the brutal section on the eight floor? He unlocked two locks to let us in, motioned for me to enter. I didn’t want to enter but I disguised the feeling.

  Crazy looking place. The walls were painted in red, black and green zebra stripes; garish paintings littered the walls and it stank with the odor of thousands of hours of unfumigated marijuana smoking.

  “Skull like that herb,” the brother behind me whispered. The four young brothers settled onto a rag-bag sofa, a mattress on the floor, I was left the place of honor, a collapsing dinette chair.

  A dim light glanced off the walls, it could have been midnight or midday. Skull disappeared for a moment and reappeared with a zip lock bag filled with greenish marijuana. He began to roll joints, glancing at me from time to time. I felt like raw meat. But there was another kind of feeling taking hold too. I was a survivor. I am a survivor. I had paid my dues. What the fuck was I feeling whimpy about?

  Raw joints, no sweet wine to go with it, no munchies stuff, no Trane, Bird, Diz or Miles. We wouldn’t have been able to hear nuances anyway.

  I grabbed the undecided looks they exchanged and decided to play thru them. They were shrewd, cunning maybe, but I was convinced that they weren’t smarter than me.

  I jumped out on them after three hits on this awful herb. It tasted like dolls hair and Camel cigarettes. O my goodness! Are we smoking PCP?

  “How long you been playin’?”

  “Years, since I was a young blood, like y’all.”

  “Why you wanna play with us?”

  O Father, spare me another hit on this terrible shit, I’d rather be drinking Old Grand Dad or something.

  “Cause when I saw y’all walkin thru South Commons with your axes I said to myself these have got to be some of the baddest young motherfuckers on the planet and I wanna jam with ’em.

  They released something like a collective burp, I
moved on as quickly as a dying stand-up comic. I rushed thru the history of Chicago conga drumming (57th Street/The Point/63rd Street/Beach/The Northside/Washington Park), I told nasty jokes, I detoured them away from the premeditated thing they had in mind and when I stood up and said, “Hey, lets git on with it! Skull was enthusiastic.

  “Yeah!”

  The treacherous part was negotiating our way back down that horrible staircase. I think, there were several times when I almost didn’t make it.

  Once, on the third floor, Skull suddenly remembered that he had left his last joint upstairs and wanted me and what’s-his-name to go back up with him.

  I pretended I hadn’t heard and kept the motion in place. Fifteen minutes to five by my watch.

  My heart felt like a drum by the time we emerged from the entrance. The brothers who had been left to mind the drums looked a bit surprised to see me.

  They were passing a couple quarts of “Bang” beer around and a joint. Yeahhh, I had escaped a set up but I wasn’t in the clear yet just because I was outside in the quadrangle.

  I could see, to my left, three people being strangled, to my right a man was having his throat cut with a butter knife. A twelve-year-old girl was having sex with a middle aged man at 12 o’clock high. Was it rape?

  It would’ve been impossible to imagine what was going on behind me. One of the brothers started up a question rhythm on a drum. I sat down behind the quinto to try to answer him.

  I received a few curious looks but nobody said anything.

  Skull lumbered up and asked, “You got the top?”

  I immediately pushed the quinto out to him, “Not unless you want it?”

  He struggled with the muscles in his face to give me a real smile, refused my offer and settled down beside me on the bench. Everybody moved over.

  A junjun, four congas, two cowbells and a fucked up looking chekere. We were going to take the neighborhood back home.

  A few natural music lovers circled us, dope, wine, beer, whiskey, gin bottles in hand. The junjun man struck a basic pattern, the bass conga (Skull) got with him and the other two drums laid in that solid foundation that causes people to dance.

  We had a serious problem, they couldn’t hold a rhythm. And the rhythm they were attempting to hold was so unimaginative I felt like screaming.