“How was the prom?” one of the boys asked Artie, and Artie said, “A big drag.”
“Here’s the piano, Artie!” someone shouted, and Artie shouted back, “Where’s the juice?” and the boys in the band drifted over to where the bottles and the setups stood on a long table. Andy mixed himself a strong Scotch and soda, handing one to Carol, and then toasting themselves, and then drinking. Ox, who’d joined the Parker band along with Andy, said, “I didn’t think the prom was such a drag. I thought it was fun.”
“If you thought that was a good job,” Andy said, “you should come along with me next week.”
“Yeah? What’s doing?”
“My uncle’s holding one of his balls,” Andy said.
“Oh, Andy,” Carol scolded, unable to keep back the giggle.
“I got a card from the Banner today,” Ox said, not having caught on to Andy’s gag.
“What does the old Arab have to say for himself?”
“They’re putting him in a band down in Miami. ComServPac or something. What does ComServPac mean?”
“That’s Latin for ‘To the victor belongs the spoils.’”
“Really?” Ox asked.
“Sure.”
“How do you like that?” Ox said, digesting the information. “But how come Tony gets put in a band, and Bud and Frank don’t? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Piano players and drummers are a dime a dozen.”
Ox nodded sadly. “So are sax men.”
“No, it’s not as bad with sax men. So they send Frank to quartermaster school, and they try to make Bud a signalman. That’s life.”
He waited for Ox to say, “What’s life?” but Ox didn’t. Ox merely kept nodding his head sadly.
Artie Parker was heading for the piano with a full fifth of Puerto Rican rum in his right hand. He uncorked the bottle, took a long swallow, and then began playing. Andy danced with Carol for a while, and when he heard a tenor sax join the piano, he picked up his trumpet case, took out his horn, and joined the session. They blew for fifteen minutes straight, blasting away at “One O’Clock Jump.” He lost himself while he played, knowing he sounded good, but wanting more than he was getting, and trying desperately to get that more, and thinking of other things while he blew, not consciously thinking of the music he was making.
He’d never really tried to pin-point how he’d got involved with the Long Island set, but he supposed it was because June Tambeau was Artie’s girl, and June was part of that set. Artie had met June at one of the dances they’d played, and the piano player had been whisked into the crowd, and one night June had asked Andy and Carol to come along to one of the parties, and that had been the beginning, he supposed.
He had to admit these kids knew how to have fun, a more sophisticated kind of fun than the old Tony Banner Boys had. Oh, sure, they did a lot of the same things — like going to Coney, things like that — but a lot of the other things they did were pretty damned different, and the Tony Banner Boys’ fun was sort of kid stuff in comparison. Like when the Tony Banner Boys drank, well, they usually drank beer, and beer was strictly for the sparrows in this new crowd. Whenever there was a party, the liquor flowed like wine, and there was good stuff too — stuff he’d learned was good — like Canadian Club and Haig & Haig pinch, and Gordon’s, and even milder stuff like Cherry Heering. And the things they did were more casual and more sophisticated, as if they didn’t have to try so hard to have fun, the fun was already there and all they had to do was pick it up and enjoy it. And they all had their own cars, not beat-up old rattletraps like Frank’s car, or like Bud’s father’s car. They drove convertibles or souped-up sedans, and one of the guys drove a red MG that positively knocked your eyes out. So the new crowd was a lot of fun, and he guessed he liked it a lot, even though he of course missed Bud. Naturally you’d miss your best friend. And this crowd all liked the way he blew that horn of his, and that suited him fine, and so he blasted away at the music, standing near the piano and listening to all the voices around him.
Artie drifted into “Summertime,” and Andy picked it up and began blowing, with the tenor sax giving him a nice hunk of harmony. It was winter outside, but inside that living room the magnolias began to open and their heady aroma wafted on the air, and the sky turned velvet black, and the moon turned big and orange, and you could smell freshly cut grass, and you could see little colored kids running over the fields barefoot, and you could hear watermelons popping open, juicy and red, and you could hear the sound of voices around a lake and the lazy whisper of leaves on countless budding trees. It was winter outside Buff Collier’s house, but the breeze inside was warm and sweet, captured in the bell of Andy’s horn, and the kids swayed with a dreamy look in their eyes, listening to the horn, caught in its golden mist, and they weren’t in suits and gowns any more, they were lounging around in tee shirts and shorts, lounging on the bank of a lake, watching a big summer sky and dreaming. And the biggest dreamer was Andy, standing there on top of the world with the clouds licking at his face, and the moon smiling, and the stars winking at him, and “Summertime” flowing from his lips and his fingers and his lungs — and his heart.
Artie modulated into a rumba, and then another slow ballad, and Andy rested, blowing a muted background for the tenor sax, and then Artie did “Smoke Rings,” along about which time June Tambeau discovered an unoccupied bedroom somewhere in the house. This was about two in the morning, and she yanked Artie away from the piano, and the band’s bass man, a kid named Fletcher Wright, took over the piano, and the session went strong for another half hour.
Along about three some of the kids decided it would be fun to set fire to the living-room drapes, and Buff Collier thought it would be grand kicks, too. They formed a ring around the drapes, all the kids holding soda squirt bottles, and Buff herself put the torch to the heavy velvet material, and it looked as if it weren’t going to catch for a minute, but then it did and the drape began burning up toward the ceiling, and everybody turned his squirt bottle on, and the fire was out as quickly as it had been ignited, with smoke pouring into the room and making everyone cough.
They opened all the windows, and since it was damned cold outside, it pretty soon got damned cold inside, and though they were still laughing over the sport of setting Ere to drapes, they began to realize that their ears were getting slightly frostbitten.
A girl named Alice suggested that they all go upstairs to the master bedroom and get some blankets, so they all started upstairs for the master bedroom and surprised a kid named Warren Dawes and another kid named Francine Billis (the girls all called her Bilious) in a somewhat compromising position. When Francine had put on her underwear again and pulled the blankets to her throat, the other kids piled into the bedroom, and a guy and a girl hopped into the bed Francine and Warren were sharing, and four other kids piled into the second twin bed, and the rest of the kids dropped to the rug-covered floor and smothered themselves with blankets.