She looked good in certain shades of green, too, come to think of it, maybe she should have dressed all verdant and vernal tonight. But it wasn’t easy being green, you could so easily slip into looking like an uptown ho. Anyway, how did this get to be all about color? But that’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? About whether there was anything more to this besides his being white and her being black and maybe being attracted to each other only because he was white and she was black. It certainly wasn’t about him being Fred Astaire.
The band was pretty good, considering half the musicians in it were white, including the bass player, who she always figured was the very heart and soul of any band. Six pieces up there on the bandstand in this small place down in the Quarter, a bit too smoky for a surgeon’s comfort, but he seemed as much disturbed by the air quality as she was. Maybe the smoke was affecting his dancing. Something had to be affecting his dancing, because in all truth she had never known a man or boy who was quite as stiff and awkward as he was. Was he counting inside his head? Was that it? She was afraid to speak for fear she would throw off the count, welcome to Transylvania. She was wearing high-heeled blue shoes fashioned almost entirely of straps. A single wafer-thin sole and then straps, straps, straps. Showed off her legs to good advantage, she felt, come step into my parlor, let me bite you on zee neck.
She thought it was very cute that he was such an awful dancer, but she wished he wouldn’t step quite so often on her feet in their strappy shoes. “Ooops, sorry,” he would say each time, and she would say, “No, my fault,” and then she began wondering if he really thought it was her fault, if somehow he believed that she was the lousy dancer.Well, no, surely, he had to know how clumsy he was. But then why had he asked her to go dancing?
At the table again — smoke drifting their way, the band playing a soft slippery tune that slithered on the air, low and rife with funky tenor sax riffs — she put it in a kinder, gentler way. Didn’t say How come you chose to take me dancing of all things, you endearing oaf? Said instead, “How’d you happen to pick this place?”
“I thought it might be fun,” he said, and gestured around vaguely to include the entire room, which — she now noticed — was populated with an uncommonly high mix of salt-and-pepper couples. Had he known this when he chose the spot?
“Where’d you learn to dance?” she asked.
“Oh, a bunch of guys used to… this was when I was a kid, you know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I grew up in Riverhead. When the neighborhood was still good.”
Meaning what? she wondered. That it was now black? And therefore no good?
“This guy Frank had a big basement in his house, a finished basement, and we used to go down there and dance.”
“Boys and girls, you mean?”
“I wish. No, it was just the guys. Frank was a very good dancer, he was teaching the rest of us to dance. We took turns leading and following. It was good training.”
Yes, I can see the results, she thought.
“Where in Riverhead?” she asked.
“Cannon Road. Used to be black, Irish and Italian when I was growing up. Never any trouble there. Even when there was rioting in Diamondback, we all got along fine in Riverhead. No more. That’s all changed.”
She nodded.
“I can remember my father telling me… this was at the time of the big riots, I was just a little boy… I remember him saying, ‘If you spread any of this filth, you won’t be able to sit for a week, Bert. I’ll fix you so you’ll be lucky if you can even walk.’ “
Is that why you’re with a black woman tonight? she wondered.
“What happened Saturday was nothing compared to the trouble back then,” he said. “I’ll never forget it.”
“Do you still live in Riverhead?” she asked.
“No, no. I have a small apartment right here in Isola. Near the Calm’s Point Bridge.”
“When did you leave?”
“Riverhead? Right after the war. When I got back from the war.”
She did not ask him which war. In America, there’d been a war for any man coming of age at any given time. Most of these men were trying to forget whichever war had occupied their time and consumed their youth. She had never once met a man who wanted to talk about his wartime experiences. Which said a lot for recruiting posters.
“You’re a good dancer,” he said.
Us folks who has rhythm, she thought.
“I’ll bet you could teach me more than Frank did.”
“Maybe I could,” she said.
“Next time we go out there,” he said, nodding toward the small dance floor.
“Okay.”
The waiter brought a fresh round of drinks. There was a two-drink minimum in the place. Plus a cover charge. She realized this was costing him more than he could easily afford on his detective’s salary. Everywhere around them, mixed couples drank, and talked, and danced, and held hands, and occasionally kissed. She wondered again how he’d happened to choose it.
“How’d you know about this place?”
“I asked Artie.”
“Who’s Artie?”
“Artie Brown. One of the guys on the squad. He’s black.”
“Brown is black, huh?”
“He thinks that’s how his great-great-grandmother got the name, in fact.”
“How do you mean?”
“She was a slave. He thinks her master gave her the name Brown because of her color. It’s just a theory, he doesn’t know for sure.”
“When did you ask him?”
“I never did. He just happened to mention it one time.”
“I meant about this place.”
“Oh. Yesterday. I told him I was dating a black girl, and I asked him if he knew anyplace where we’d feel comfortable. While we were getting to know each other.”
“What’d he say?”
“He recommended this place.”
“And do you feel comfortable here?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Do you?”
“I don’t know. It seems to be trying too hard, maybe.”
“Maybe so.”
“How’d he feel about your dating me?”
“Artie? How should he feel?”
“The black-white thing, I mean.”
“It didn’t come up.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“The black-white thing?”
“Yes.”
“I’m hoping it works for us.”
She looked at him.
“I’m hoping we can one day go wherever we want to go, and just be us, without having to worry about looking like everyone around us.”
“Is Brown your partner?”
“Sometimes. We work it a little different at the Eight-Seven than in some other precincts. We team up with different people all the time. Makes it more interesting. Also, it gives us an opportunity to exchange information about the bad guys and what they’re doing.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’ll tell you the truth, Shaar,” he said, shortening her name, rhyming it with the first syllable in Paris, “I thought you might feel uncomfortable in a place where there were only white people.”
“How about a place where there are only black people?”
“Like in Diamondback, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I think I might feel uncomfortable in a place like that,” he said.