Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

She snorted. ‘When you weren’t sleeping it off in a park, maybe.’

‘Maybe we was on a bench next to each other.’

‘I was a sixteen-year-old girl from Montreal, Sid. I slept in the bushes . Terrified for my virtue .’ She laughed again, real soft-like. I studied her crooked little teeth, feeling this big welling-up of desire in me. Hell. What was wrong with me? She went on, ‘I was sure — sure — I just needed to find King Oliver, let him hear my voice, and it’d all start up for me. He’d just put an arm around me and introduce me to his Creole Jazz Band. Crazy, hmm?’

‘Aw, not so crazy.’

‘I thought, talent knows talent.’

‘Sure it do.’

She leaned back and studied me, laughing. ‘Look at you. I’ve got you tied around my little finger, don’t I?’

I flushed.

‘I’m teasing.’ She give me a strange little smile, glanced away. ‘I was so young.’ I seen her eyes drifting over to the kid. He was still sorting through that trunk. Chip had come out, standing in his stained and grimy shirtsleeves, his old skull swaddled in that bloodstained bandage. Jesus. He pulled out a long sequined gown, holding it up to the kid like to check his size. I heard the kid laugh.

When Chip turned round I seen last night’s dried blood crinkle stiffly on his back.

Delilah said, ‘One night I was outside Lincoln Gardens when Lil Hardin came out. Did you ever meet Lil? Oliver’s pianist? Well, it doesn’t matter. Lou lost his mind for a bit and when it came back to him he found he’d married her. Poor Lou. But that was later. So I saw her coming out and I got filled with all this arrogant hope. I thought Oliver might still be inside. So I slipped in.’

‘Sure. Shy sixteen-year-old jane from the provinces think her idol be inside, she just slip on in. I can see it.’

‘I never said I was shy,’ she smiled sly-like.

I laughed. ‘And?’

‘And he was in there alright. I guess he liked what he saw.’ She sat back, took a sip of her drink, the bangles on her wrist clacking softly.

I watched her for a moment, then leaned forward, shaking my head. ‘Aw, no way, no way, girl. You ain’t gettin off that easy.’

She laughed that dark watery laugh.

‘Go on, Delilah. What you say to him?’ Saying her name aloud like that felt so damn intimate, so soft, I start to flush again. I lowered my eyes, picked at a bit of dust floating on the surface of my drink.

‘You want to know what I said?’ she asked.

‘Go on. Tell me you secret.’

‘You’re really interested?’

‘In how a girl from Canada break the bigtime? Who ain’t interested?’

‘The bigtime ,’ she muttered, but there was a dark note to it. ‘My name doesn’t even reach from Paris to Berlin.’

‘Aw, girl. We livin in a soap bubble here. We ain’t get no news of the world at all. You know that.’

She look embarrassed then. Looked away.

‘Go on,’ I said again. ‘Tell me what happen with King Oliver.’

She start smiling soft, like she remembering something from a long time ago. ‘Have you ever seen King Oliver? I mean, in the flesh, up close?’

‘I was in his cab once,’ I said. ‘Well, he just gotten out of it one block back.’

She give me a funny look. ‘Well, he’s a big fellow. Very soft in the middle, sort of like your Fritz. The moment I came up behind them all standing there I knew it was him, I could tell just by the roll of his shoulders. But my god, he was so fat . I thought, Good god, he looks like a big ol’ baby .

‘When he turned around and saw me there, all of sixteen, he just laughed, and asked who let the baby in. And I said, I’d of thought you let yourself in, baldie .’

I grinned. ‘You pullin my leg. Ain’t no way you said that.’

‘Oh, it gets worse,’ she laughed. ‘He wasn’t offended at all. Oliver? He’s got a hide thicker than a kettle skin. He asked if I’d come in to eat or to drink, and I just gave him this long long look, and said, I’d say eat, but you look like you about cleaned out the place .’

I shook my old head.

‘The gate standing there with him started laughing and laughing. Well, that was Louis. I guess it must have been funny. I was just this tiny rail of a thing, talking big to old Oliver like that. Anyhow. Oliver didn’t know what to do with me, but Lou took me home with him, put some hot food in me, gave me a place to sleep. Like an older brother would do.’ She nodded, sort of thoughtfully, and stared down at the kid. ‘Old Lou saved me.’

I got this dark feeling. ‘So that’s how it’s done, gettin in with the bigwigs.’ I forced a smile. ‘You just talk rough to em. I reckon old Chip’s due for some big things.’

‘Chip? He’ll go far alright,’ she laughed.

I snuck a glance at her. She ain’t hardly touched her czech.

‘I always liked nightclubs after hours, after closing,’ she said after a moment.

I nodded. ‘When all the folks is gone. Sure. Chip always say they feel lonely, hopeless. I sort of think the opposite. Somethin so unexpected bout them.’

‘Yes. Like something could happen any moment. It’s all so possible .’

She smiled.

Then I wasn’t thinking anything at all for a long, long moment. She was so beautiful.

‘What you two doin up there?’ Chip called up. He and the kid was standing with hands pressed to their foreheads, staring up at us in the flies. Delilah give a little wave.

‘We hidin from the Boots,’ I said. ‘What you think?’

‘I think that ain’t what you doin,’ said Chip.

The kid start laughing.

I glanced over, embarrassed, but Delilah ain’t seemed to notice. ‘Why do you call him Chip?’ she said.

‘He hates Charles.’

‘Why?’

‘Aw, he reckons it makes him sound like a preacher’s son.’

She was silent for a moment. ‘What does his father do?’

I grinned. ‘He a preacher.’ Then I reached across, tapped her ankle. ‘Hey, girl, you want a laugh?’

She give me a suspicious look.

I smiled. ‘For real. You want a laugh, ask Chip what the C stand for.’

‘The C?’

‘In his name. The C. Ask him what it stand for.’

‘Charlie,’ she called down. ‘What does the C stand for?’

He look up, grimacing like he got a sore tooth. ‘Chip, sister. It just Chip.’

‘What does the C stand for, Chip ?’

I shook my head. ‘He ain’t told no one his middle name. Not ever.’

‘I can hear you,’ he called up at me. ‘You ain’t invisible.’ And then, to Delilah: ‘Girl, a man got to keep some things to hisself.’

‘Some men could keep even more things, if they of a mind to,’ I said. ‘I ain’t sayin. I just sayin.’

‘How bad can it be?’ said Delilah. ‘What is it, Clayton?’

Chip stared at her in disbelief. ‘Holy hell. You guessed it. First try.’

‘Really? It’s Clayton?’

He snorted. ‘ Clayton? I ain’t from Idaho , girl.’

Paul come up onstage, lift up the lid of his piano, start working the ivories real soft. He was watching me and Delilah up in the flies.

‘She askin bout his middle name,’ I called down to him.

‘Tell her to try Cecil,’ he said, dropping a register.

‘Paul thinks it might be Cecil,’ I said. ‘I always thought Chauncey.’

‘I ain’t no Chauncey, buck. You know that.’

‘Cecil,’ Paul said again. ‘I got a good feeling about Cecil.’

‘Chevrotain,’ Hiero said abruptly, his voice cracking.

Paul hit a sour note, stop playing. ‘ Chevrotain? ’ he laughed.