The Magic Keys Albert Murray (read novels website TXT) 📖

cri as the current fashion magazines. Certainly that was what this script called for. So what she had been hoping was that her haute couture designs would be obviously consistent with, if not altogether emblematic of, the contemporary American spirit as it was expressed in the music and the dance movements that she had become so fascinated by.

So when she and Eric Threadcraft were introduced to each other and he turned out to be a young American professional recording studio arranger and conductor of jazz-based popular music, she was pleased because she felt that he would be responsive to her conception of how her wardrobe designs and his score would go together.

Not only was he sympathetic, his immediate response was to invite her to come along as he made the rounds, dropping in on several of his after-hours spots, beginning in West Los Angeles and including a cruise along Central Avenue, depending on who was where. After all, in addition to the headliners in the glittering addresses along Sunset Strip, there was always a wider choice of first-rate professionals from every section of the country playing somewhere in or around Los Angeles just about every night, and he kept tabs on most of the best.

That was when I told Eunice what I told her about what he told me when he called from the Plaza that first time, and I met him at the Algonquin that morning. I said that was not the first time he had mentioned Celeste Delauny, it was also the first time he had ever mentioned anything about any date he had ever had with anybody, not only in Hollywood but anywhere else. I said I knew he was single and that my impresson was that he had never been married but had not mentioned having any special girlfriend even when I would say what I would say about Miss You-Know-Who from time to time when he and I made the rounds we used to make to nightspots from time to time. My impression on those occasions was that his interest was not social but musical, not with getting a date, but getting an invitation to sit in on piano during a jam session.

I said I had told him about us when I told him about the campus not long after Joe States had introduced us that night at the Palladium, but it was not until Joe States told him about me showing up with Miss Fine People Herself that he not only mentioned that he had met Celeste but also that he expected to see me soon because he was coming to New York to see her.

I didn’t say anything at all to Eunice about how upset he was when he and I met at the Algonquin that morning because just before leaving Hollywood he had found out that the studio’s background check report contained evidence that suggested that Celeste was being blackmailed by somebody in Paris.

I hadn’t mentioned anything about it to her at the time, and I didn’t say anything about it later on because he had not said anything else about it since he said what he said when he called when he got back to Hollywood. I wondered what happened between that call and the next, but I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell and I acted as if he hadn’t told me anything except how much he liked everything about her.

She likes him very much, Eunice said when she came back from the luncheon date in midtown and the afternoon visit to the boutique on Madison Avenue in the Sixties. She kept saying how très gentil he is and freshly American, not fresh in the down-home sense, but in the sense of being enthusiastic instead of laid back. But as excited as she seemed about how things have been going for her in New York and now also Hollywood, and as enthusiastic as she seems about dating your friend Eric, not only because he is so nice, but also professionally involved with the movies he’s involved with, I must say I don’t think she’s about to give up Paris for New York and/or Hollywood.

And I said, We shall see what we shall see. But as for him, I can see him giving up what he’s doing in Hollywood to take a band out of New York on the road for a while, but I doubt he’ll give up what he’s into in Hollywood for what he’s likely to be doing in Paris. But we shall see what we shall see about that, too, won’t we?

XXII

When Joe States called from Chicago that night and told me that the band would be back in New York that next week for a brief stopover en route to Europe, he said, Get to me fast, as he almost always did, but this time he also added, Even if you have to skip a class session or two. Details eye to eye. Just be ready to zip to me at the time and place I’ll give you a lead on as soon as I arrive and schedule my pretakeoff errands.

They were due in at twilight that next Wednesday with time off until the night flight to Frankfurt Friday, to open in Berlin that Sunday for a week before going on to Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and back Stateside by way of Amsterdam and London.

I was to pick him up at Gabe’s Barbershop up on Broadway between 151st and 152nd Streets, and when I got there he was in a barber’s chair with his back to the entrance, but we saw each other in the mirror at the same time, and he said, Here’s that schoolboy ahead of that tardy bell as always. What say, States? Hey, Gabe, this is my young statemate from the Beel I was telling you about.

And as Gabe, who was the barber serving him, turned the chair around and shook my hand, somebody in one of the other chairs near