“Andy, really, I’ve got to—”
“Kenton is delicious that way. I know guys who keep a stack of Kenton records by the bedside, dropping on the turntable whenever they’re turned on. It’s the greatest — or don’t you dig distortion?” He laughed suddenly, as if enjoying a joke Bud did not understand, and the private laughter annoyed Bud immensely. He suddenly recalled his release from the navy, and that night on Fifty-second Street when Andy introduced him to the bop craze, when Andy kept referring to Bud as “my boy” when a friend of his had come over to their table. Bud had picked up the tab that night, flushed with his discharge money, but the “my boy” had held a sour connotation for him, and he’d been annoyed by it then as much as the private laughter annoyed him now.
“We’d better knock it off,” he said a little harshly. “I’ve got work to do. I’m serious, Andy.”
Andy seemed suddenly embarrassed. “Oh, sure. I’m sorry, Bud.”
“That’s all right,” Bud said, still miffed.
He walked back to the table, seeing Andy moving to the radio from the corner of his eye. Andy twisted the dial and then turned it up a little, and when the radio came on, it nearly blasted the walls loose from the ceiling.
“Jes-us Christ!” Bud exploded, and Andy turned down the volume instantly.
“It just—”
“All right, keep it soft.”
“Would you rather I didn’t—”
“Just keep the damn thing soft, that’s all.”
He sat down and tried to get back to the notes again. Behind him he could hear the radio softly insinuating itself on his ears and his mind. I’ll get by, as long as I, have you... why did disk jockeys rob graves for their early morning shows?... may be rain, and darkness, too... how could he ever get back to Milton?... I won’t complain, I’ll see it through...
“Is this disturbing you?”
“No,” he said.
“If it is, I’ll—”
“I said no.”
“Maybe I should go down and take a walk or something?”
“At this time of the night? It’s almost four o’clock, for Christ’s sake!”
“Is it? Well, that’s all right. I think I’ll go take a walk. I think I need a walk.”
“Where will you go?”
“Oh, just around,” Andy said. He turned his head, and his eyes avoided Bud’s, and it was suddenly very clear to Bud.
“You’re not going to try to get a shot, are you?”
“Me?” Andy said.
“Yes. Maybe you’d better stay here.”
“What for? I’m only going for a little walk.”
“I think you’d better stay here. You’ll be better off.”
“Man, you sound just like my mother. I’ll expect a lunch pail and rubbers any minute. I told you, I’m just going for a walk. Jesus.”
“You’d better stay here, Andy,” Bud said tightly.
“Doesn’t anybody trust me? I told you I was off the stuff, didn’t I?”
“Then why do you want to leave the apartment?”
“To take a walk. Besides, the radio is bothering you.”
“It’s not bothering me. I was going to knock off anyway. I’ll pick it up again after I get some sleep.” He paused. “We can both use some sleep.”
“I’m not sleepy,” Andy said. “I feel like taking a walk.”
“You can walk here, if you like.”
“I want some fresh air.”
“Stand near the windows then. Look, Andy, you’re not leaving this damned apartment. I didn’t ask for you here, but now that you’re here I’m going to see that you stay.”
“Dig the warden,” Andy said, smiling. “Okay, I’ll stay. But I wasn’t going to try for a cop, believe me.”
“I believe you.”
“Okay.”
“Come on, let’s get to bed.”
“You go to bed. I want to walk around a little.”
“All right. You can leave the radio on if you like. But don’t leave the apartment.”
“I said I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Bud said. He unbuttoned his shirt and then threw it over the back of the butterfly chair. He slipped out of his trousers and then kicked off his loafers and pulled off his socks. “If you need me — if you have to go to the john again — well, you can wake me.”
“I won’t need you,” Andy said.
“Well, if you should. Can I turn out the lights? You won’t mind, will you?”
“No, go ahead.”
He walked to the front door and locked it, and then he turned out the light on the end table and walked to his bed on the wall opposite the sofa and pulled back the covers. He went to the table then and turned out the light there, looking once at the open notebook before he did. He found his way back to the bed in the dark, climbed in, and pulled the sheet and cover to his throat.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night, Buddy.”
“You’ll be all right, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
He felt compelled to say something more. “Stick with it, Andy. You’ve almost got it beat.”
“I know.”
“Just stick with it.”
He made his head comfortable on the pillow, and then he stretched out his legs. God, he was tired, more tired than he thought. Well, he’d accomplished something at least. Tomorrow — well, it was today already — today, when he got up, he’d knock off the rest of the notes. Did Carol say she was coming again? Yes, with Andy’s horn and music. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, after all. He’d laid down the law, and Andy and he now knew where they stood. He didn’t quite know why he’d given a damn about Andy’s leaving the apartment, but he had. He’d been appointed jailer, much to his regret, and even if the job had been unasked for, it was his, and he couldn’t very well let Andy walk out and get right aboard the merry-go-round again. No, he couldn’t allow that.
The things Andy remembered — that time in the car with the windows rolled up, how had a thing like that stuck in his mind? And his references to Reen, now that was strange all right.
He lay back and stared up at the ceiling, the darkness closing in on him, and he could hear Andy pacing in the darkness, the barefoot, hushed slap-slap of his feet on the wooden floor, back and forth, like a tiger, like a tiger in a cage, probably wanting, wanting, that itch inside his skull, wanting to get out and find a fix, back and forth, back and forth. He listened to the slap-slap, and all desire for sleep suddenly fled.
The ceiling was a black vortex, and he found himself thinking of that time in the car — “Sing, Sing, Sing,” Goodman, Krupa, James, Goodman, Krupa, James, how long ago, how very long ago, with the ceiling a black vortex, a long, black tunnel, and the barefoot slap-slap, pacing, pacing down that long tunnel of blackness, until the room dissolved and there was only the blackness and somewhere far off the sound of music, distant and indistinct, music from a faraway phonograph, distorted, don’t you dig distortion, chorus after chorus of blurred, half-heard music, indistinct, far off down the long black tunnel.
4
first chorus, i
FEBRUARY, 1944
From where Bud Donato sat at the piano he could see all of Club Stardust, and through the rosily distorted cones and rods of his seventeen-year-old vision the place assumed a certain glamour. He wasn’t sure whether it was actually the place itself or just the idea of having a rehearsal hall all their own, but through Bud’s eyes the sign outside Club Stardust did not hang from a rusted bar on rusted hinges. The five-and-dime gilt dust which had been sprinkled onto the letters when the paint was still wet was not that but shavings of pure silver.