“And Andy... I really do have a date for tomorrow. I’m not giving you the fast brush.”
“Oh, I didn’t think you—”
“I just wanted you to know.”
“All right,” he said.
“Try me next week.”
“All right,” he said.
“Is that a promise?”
“Yes. It’s a promise.”
Carol smiled, listening to the music that came from the phonograph. “Your friend is really Mama’s little helper, isn’t he? ‘You Made Me Love You’ again.”
Andy smiled and took her into his arms.
13
second chorus, ii
MARCH, 1944
The day that Tony Banner thought he’d achieved full stature as leader of the band was coincidentally — and perhaps consequentially — the same day that Andy thought he’d achieved full stature as a member of the clique. Neither could have been more sadly mistaken.
It was preceded by the news, on the Sunday before, that Tony had booked the band for its first paying job. The fact that the booker was one of Tony’s maiden aunts who’d finally managed to lure a man into marriage did not in any way detract from the joy with which the announcement was greeted. A wedding job was a wedding job, and who cared which slobs were tying the knot? The band was to be paid a total of fifteen dollars for six pieces. (“We’re asking twenty,” Tony had said, shrewdly businesslike, “but we’ll settle for fifteen.”) Of the fifteen, a five-dollar deposit was left with Tony, and Tony suggested that the total, when received, be used for the purchase of new arrangements. The band, quickly calculating that a division of the total would give them each only two-fifty, unanimously agreed to the suggestion.
Since the wedding would not come off until the Sunday after Easter, the boys had a fairly respectable amount of time in which to brush up on their music-making. They were eager to make a good first impression, but their eagerness was somewhat dimmed by the dimmed lights at Club Stardust. Knowing they could no longer rehearse there, they began avidly seeking a new rehearsal hall and were finally forced into giving up two fifths of the five-dollar deposit, a loss they suffered with pained souls. It was Tony who secured the new rehearsal hall, on the understanding that it would be a one-shot until they could get something better. Two dollars an afternoon was a little steep for the boys at this stage of the game.
The rehearsal hall was actually the gymnasium belonging to St. Joseph’s on Utica Avenue. The gymnasium was a monstrously large affair, built behind the pleasant stone-and-wood structure which was the church. It had large windows, a highly polished floor, and bleachers and basketball hoops, all of which combined to give the place exactly the atmosphere undesirable for a rehearsal. But it did have a stage at one end of the room, and the stage had a piano, and even though the price was two dollars, Mike Daley (a staunch Catholic) insisted it was for a good cause.
The rehearsal was called for Saturday, March twenty-fifth. On Friday, March twenty-fourth, the boys had made another sortie into Club Beguine, a sortie which had left Andy Silvera with his head in the clouds and his feet an appreciable distance off the ground. Carol Ciardi had agreed, on that Friday night, to accompany Andy to the movies the following Sunday. He could not have been happier, and his happiness led to a sort of cockiness which was perhaps responsible for what happened on the day of the rehearsal.
Considering the small rehearsal fee, the boys should not have been surprised to discover the gymnasium was unheated. They were, nonetheless, surprised. They were also a bit uncomfortable, mainly because the temperature on that March day — a March which five days before had boasted the crash of a bus in snow and sleet through a bridge railing in Passaic, New Jersey — inconsiderately dipped to a very low low. They were cold. They were goddamned good and cold. The gymnasium was a big echoing chamber, and the wind blasted at each of the long windows, and they felt the wind, and each time they complained about it, their voices bounced off the high walls and jeered back at them. They tried to warm up, both physically and musically, but their hands were cold and their horns were cold, and Frank’s bitter insistence that Tony Banner had pulled another boner did not help the situation any. Tony, in self-defense, suggested that the boys take a few laps around the gymnasium, and the boys, eager for any diversion from the cold, accepted his suggestion.
They ran around the long gymnasium grimly at first, their shoes clattering on the cold wooden floors.
“Hup-tup-tripp-fuh!” Reen bellowed, standing on the side of the room and clapping his hands over his head. “Hup-tup-tripp-fuh!”
The boys took up the chant, hup-tup-tripp-fuhing it around the room. Their voices bounced off the high ceiling, and their earlier sour mood slowly gave way to a sort of resigned joviality. Frank went to his drums and began playing a fast march beat, and the rest jogged along to the rhythm of the drums, their spirits and their body temperatures rising. By the time Andy arrived, the boys were all very warm, and they were in the process of warming up their respective instruments by marching around the room with them, blowing incessantly, tramping their feet.
Andy stood in the doorway and watched the exhibition, an amused grin on his face. Anything would have struck him funny on that day. He had still not adjusted fully to the miracle of Carol Ciardi’s acceptance of his movie proposition. Last night had been an altogether fine experience. He had loved being with her, and she had somehow heightened his confidence. He had felt extremely fast and witty, and he’d actually exchanged a good five minutes of repartee with Bud, whom he considered the master of the funny comment. The confidence had slept with him, and it had awakened with him, rested and much stronger. He felt he could match wits with the best of them. He felt he’d arrived, and it was unfortunate that his social arrival (for such was what he considered it) happened to coincide with his arrival at the rehearsal hall, a sub-zero rectangle of jogging, laughing, tramping musicians. He shook his head in amused amazement and walked over to the drums, where Frank excitedly kept up the march tempo.
“All we need here is a few hanging sides of beef,” he said.
Frank laughed aloud, absorbed in the rhythm, watching the boys jog along to his drumbeats. Andy appreciated the laughter, and he smiled contentedly, analyzing the humor in his comment. He had not said something as dull and plodding as “This place is like a refrigerator.” He had simply drawn a visual picture of a butchershop icebox, allowing Frank to draw his own conclusion from the inference. The result was excruciatingly comic, he felt, and — of course — there was also something riotously amusing about naked sides of beef. He was quite pleased with himself. Out on the floor, Ox was beginning to sound a little better. He started a Sousa march, and Tony joined in with him.
“Tony pulled a boner, all right,” Frank said, smiling.
If Andy was pleased before, his pleasure soared ecstatically now. Frank had provided him with a perfect straight line. And feeling like the gagman’s gagman, he immediately pounced upon it.
“Boner Banner,” he said, and Frank — vastly enjoying the excitement and vigor of the marching spectacle — laughed heartily. Andy, encouraged, laughed along with him and then put down his trumpet case and took out his horn. He did not take off his coat, and there was something paralyzingly humorous about the idea of rehearsing with your coat on. Damn, if this wasn’t the funniest experience he’d ever had in his whole life. Happily smiling, he rolled his mouthpiece around between his hands for a while, trying to heat it, and then he fitted it onto the horn and began blowing his long, low warm-up notes.