who they were. I was so upset I barely noticed them.” She touched her forehead and closed her eyes. “Wait. Wait a minute. Yes. One of the women, the dark pretty one, had been in the bar when I walked in. There was another woman with her at the counter who was short, a bit on the heavy side, light brown complexion with ahead full of thick hair that didn’t seem to do much for her face. I remember the hair falling over her face and practically covering her eyeglasses. Strange, the things you remember …
“The glasses had rhinestone frames, and I remember thinking how tacky they looked. Can you imagine thinking about something so insignificant at a time like that?”
“I can imagine,” I said. “Rhinestones can make a statement. Did you notice anything else?”
“No.”
“What about the other woman? The white one?”
“I have no idea who she is.”
Gladys rose to clear away the glasses and I looked toward the window. The sun had moved beyond the ridge of buildings across the avenue, and purplish shadows were easing into the room. Gladys pressed a button and plant lights flickered on in the window, bathing the front of the office in a surreal chalky white glow. In the artificial light, the fish in the narrow tank seemed to trail a bubbling phosphorescence as they moved through the water. The rest of the room remained in semidarkness. I checked my watch, a modest Timex, which read nearly 7:30.
“I suppose I’ll see you at the service,” she said.
Her voice had changed again, gotten softer, and I glanced at her and wondered how long she’d sit here after I left. Her eyes were still watery, but at least she had put the bottle back.
“Of course,” I said. “She sang with my father’s band.”
chapter six
O utside, the shadows gave way to vivid strands of pink and yellow and glimmered in an uneven wedge above the buildings’ silhouettes.
Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Parlor on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 125th Street was crowded. Across the street, the National Black Theater was open, and a few doors away on Fifth, people strolled in and out of the Africarts Gallery.
I turned at 126th Street and headed west toward Lenox Avenue. This block, like many others in Harlem, was a study in contrasts where magnificent four-story brownstones stood side by side with structures long vacant. On the top floors of the vacant buildings, ubiquitous “city palms” had somehow taken root and their thin trunks spiraled toward the twilit sky. The broad-leaved branches jutted out of the yawning windows, waving like tenants in the yellow flare of the streetlight. I wondered who owned these buildings and how muchlonger they would be held off the market. Trees took years to grow.
At Lenox Avenue I walked uptown, thinking of the view from Tad’s balcony in the Riverbend Apartments complex, seeing in my mind’s eye early-morning sunlight on the Harlem River and feeling the wind damp against my skin. I imagined the small whoosh of water rushing to close in on itself in the wake of a passing barge and the dark current settling into a pattern again, easing and ebbing and waiting for the next boat to disturb it. I needed to speak to him.
I paused at a bodega and waited under its Christmas-lit canopy for a young girl to run out of quarters and free up the phone. Her conversation must have taken a turn because her free hand flipped to her hip and her neck went into the classic swan boogie. “Listen, you think I’m sweatin’ you? Negro, lemme put this to you: By the time I get there you better have that bitch’s ass in the wind, you hear? Yeah. Tell me somethin’ new. She’d fuck a lamppost if it had a dick. Yeah … same to you and your mama too!”
With that she slammed down the phone and turned to me with a stare that could have cut stone. “Got that low-budget ho’ in his crib. Ain’t good for nuthin’ but chokin’. Lucky I got my fuckin’ other man.”
I shrugged in sympathy, remembering when my younger
“The glasses had rhinestone frames, and I remember thinking how tacky they looked. Can you imagine thinking about something so insignificant at a time like that?”
“I can imagine,” I said. “Rhinestones can make a statement. Did you notice anything else?”
“No.”
“What about the other woman? The white one?”
“I have no idea who she is.”
Gladys rose to clear away the glasses and I looked toward the window. The sun had moved beyond the ridge of buildings across the avenue, and purplish shadows were easing into the room. Gladys pressed a button and plant lights flickered on in the window, bathing the front of the office in a surreal chalky white glow. In the artificial light, the fish in the narrow tank seemed to trail a bubbling phosphorescence as they moved through the water. The rest of the room remained in semidarkness. I checked my watch, a modest Timex, which read nearly 7:30.
“I suppose I’ll see you at the service,” she said.
Her voice had changed again, gotten softer, and I glanced at her and wondered how long she’d sit here after I left. Her eyes were still watery, but at least she had put the bottle back.
“Of course,” I said. “She sang with my father’s band.”
chapter six
O utside, the shadows gave way to vivid strands of pink and yellow and glimmered in an uneven wedge above the buildings’ silhouettes.
Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Parlor on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 125th Street was crowded. Across the street, the National Black Theater was open, and a few doors away on Fifth, people strolled in and out of the Africarts Gallery.
I turned at 126th Street and headed west toward Lenox Avenue. This block, like many others in Harlem, was a study in contrasts where magnificent four-story brownstones stood side by side with structures long vacant. On the top floors of the vacant buildings, ubiquitous “city palms” had somehow taken root and their thin trunks spiraled toward the twilit sky. The broad-leaved branches jutted out of the yawning windows, waving like tenants in the yellow flare of the streetlight. I wondered who owned these buildings and how muchlonger they would be held off the market. Trees took years to grow.
At Lenox Avenue I walked uptown, thinking of the view from Tad’s balcony in the Riverbend Apartments complex, seeing in my mind’s eye early-morning sunlight on the Harlem River and feeling the wind damp against my skin. I imagined the small whoosh of water rushing to close in on itself in the wake of a passing barge and the dark current settling into a pattern again, easing and ebbing and waiting for the next boat to disturb it. I needed to speak to him.
I paused at a bodega and waited under its Christmas-lit canopy for a young girl to run out of quarters and free up the phone. Her conversation must have taken a turn because her free hand flipped to her hip and her neck went into the classic swan boogie. “Listen, you think I’m sweatin’ you? Negro, lemme put this to you: By the time I get there you better have that bitch’s ass in the wind, you hear? Yeah. Tell me somethin’ new. She’d fuck a lamppost if it had a dick. Yeah … same to you and your mama too!”
With that she slammed down the phone and turned to me with a stare that could have cut stone. “Got that low-budget ho’ in his crib. Ain’t good for nuthin’ but chokin’. Lucky I got my fuckin’ other man.”
I shrugged in sympathy, remembering when my younger
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