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

Man, he said, I think I told you about how old Sid and I used to hit those joints in the outlying regions and beyond every now and then. But nothing as close to the campus as the Dolomite, which, from what you tell me, must have really hit its stride during those three years you were down there after I took off. The only big outfits on tour that came through that way when I was there were booked in the gym on the campus by the recreation committee, and they played concerts in the gym, not dances. Of course, the Pit was a restaurant that started out as a barbecue pit stop out on the highway about a mile going west from Court House Square, where the old Confederate monument is.

Old man Johnny Reb, I said. And he said, Old man Johnny Reb Comesaw. Yeah, I can still see the old son of a bitch.

So anyway, like I said, he said then. In my opinion this could be just the thing you didn’t realize you should have been hoping and looking for just about now. And, of course, another thing I like about the whole deal is that it means that you’ll have to be making trips back up this way far more often as a routine part of the project than you’d get around to doing otherwise at your own personal expense. So I’m all for it, man, after all, as you know very well from firsthand road experience, travel expenses are just about the most routine budget item in the world these cats operate in. So take them up on it, man, and save yourself some round-trip expenses back up here and save me some long-distance phone calls.

So what did I tell you when you told me what you told me when this thing first came up, Roland Beasley said when I called him to bring him up-to-date on how things were getting under way. Didn’t I tell you I was not surprised that the boss and Old Pro had spotted my framemaker? Because they know one when they see one. So when one turns up, zap! They got him pegged. They can tell when you know where you’re coming from. Man, my guess is that old Joe States has known what this thing was leading up to all along.

And hey, man, he went on to add, from what you say about that Miss Hortense Hightower of yours just about takes the cake. That’s them cakewalking babies from home for you. That’s down home for you, all right. And there ain’t no such thing as up home. There is Philamayork. But it takes a lot of down-home stuff to get you there.

Speaking of expectations, there were also those of Gaynelle Whitlow and Jewel Templeton out in California. And as for the one and only Miss Slick McGinnis, she was the flesh-and-blood dimension of the actuality of the fairy-tale aunt that the real flesh-and-blood Miss Tee could not become, and that the official actuality of Miss Lexine Metcalf made taboo (but that Deljean McRae may well have turned out to be had she still been there as she had been early on).

The next time I saw Jewel Templeton after we said what we said and didn’t say what we didn’t need to say on the Côte d’Azur was at a party in one of the ballrooms at the Pierre two weeks before I pulled out to come back to Alabama. I was there backstage because two days earlier Joe States had called to give me the date and time that the band would be back in town to play a one-night stand in one of the ballrooms.

Get to me fast, my man, he said with his usual mock conspiratorial urgency. Let’s touch base before you split for the ‘Bam. This thing we’re booked into for just one night is a private shindig, and we expect you backstage as soon as you can get there because we’ll be pulling in just in time to set up to hit as scheduled. And we’ll be pulling out for Canada as soon as we can repack and hit the trail. So we expect to see you backstage as soon as you can make it after we pull in, if not before. Milo will have someone on the lookout for you.

That’s why I happened to be where I was backstage when one of the ushers came calling for me to tell me that one of the guests would be waiting to speak to me at the backstage exit to the ballroom during the first break. I said OK without asking who the guest was because I was talking to Old Pro, and when the time came we were there before I could guess who it could be. Eric Threadcraft came to mind, but I knew if he were in town, not only would he have called me, but also he would have found a way to get backstage on his own.

We were there then, and when I saw who it was, I was surprised, but not as surprised as I would have been if she had called me on the phone or even sent a letter or a postcard. But I was almost as surprised as I had been that Sunday night outside the Keynote Lounge on Sunset Boulevard waiting with my bull fiddle to take a cab back to the Vine Lodge when she pulled to the curb and offered to give me a lift.

So there you are, she said, extending her arms and initiating the old one-for-each-cheek routine that we had never done in public except on the Côte d’Azur. Then holding me at arm’s length she said, You look every bit as good as you should.

And I said, Hey, coming from a marquis-certified sparkling daughter, that’s enough to make brown sugar bubble.

A waiter came by then and she ordered a spritzer for herself and a vermouth