Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

And he grinned this gruesome toothy grin.

‘I’ll get right to it. Charles, you ain’t half bad. You ain’t half good, neither. Not yet. But that old crowd loved seeing you up there. Like a dog driving a automobile, I guess. If it was up to me, I’d have you in here gigging with us every Saturday. How that sound to you?’

Chip’s old eyes was near wet with excitement. But his voice sounded steady.

‘Saturdays?’ he said, as if checking his schedule in his head. ‘Saturdays? Well, I guess that could work. Okay. I guess it sounds pretty good, Panther.’

Panther’s eyes flicked to me, then back to Chip. He got this little old smile creeping up under that pencil moustache. ‘How old’re you? I don’t mean in dog years.’

‘Sixteen,’ Chip said.

‘Thirteen,’ I said.

Chip kicked me hard under the table and I gave a start, reach down, rub my damn shin. But Panther wasn’t looking at me.

‘Thirteen,’ he said quietly. ‘Thirteen. I figured you just a bit younger.’

‘Younger!’ Chip shouted.

Panther started to laugh then, from deep in his chest. ‘Easy there, son. Ain’t no way you boys coming in here regular anyhow. Even sixteen. We get shut down for sure, we got kids in here. You understand?’

Chip said nothing. His eyes got real small, real mean.

‘Look, kid, don’t be sore. You hit them skins good for you age . But playing good for you age don’t mean you playing good for the ages. ’Less you a Bolden, or a Jelly Roll or something. And they don’t come along but maybe twice a century . Listen, jazz, it ain’t just music. It life . You got to have experience to make jazz. I ain’t never heard no one under eighteen even sound like he know which end of his instrument to hold.’

‘I know what I’m doin,’ Chip said.

Panther held up his hands. ‘I know you do, kid. I know.’

The scotch and lemonades arrived.

‘Here you are, sugar,’ the barmaid said, giving Chip his glass.

He ain’t said nothing.

Panther gave him a long appraising look. Then he lifted one long bony arm and snapped his fingers. A lady walked up, her friend lagging behind her. They looked old, man, maybe even old as twenty. Their chests popping out the tops of them dresses.

‘Gals,’ said Panther. ‘You be sure to take care of these boys here.’

‘Sho thing, Panther,’ the first one said. She gave a sort of seductive smile, her upper lip hitching up.

I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t think of nothing to say.

Panther looked at Chip with this suddenly cold, ferocious glint in his eye. ‘I see you around, kid,’ he said. ‘You keep at it, now.’ And then he stood from the table, took his glass, was gone into the smoke.

‘ Ass hole,’ said Chip loudly.

‘Honey, I thought you played real fine up there,’ the first woman said to Chip.

He gave her a look.

‘What’s your name, sweetie?’ the second one said to me.

‘Sidney Griffiths, ma’am,’ I said.

‘I was the one played,’ said Chip, giving me a look. Staring at his tiny smug eyes, I wanted to slam my heel down on his toes.

‘And you was real fine, honey, real fine,’ the first one said again.

‘I bet you be just as good, you gave it a whirl,’ the second one kept on at me. Well, holy mother. I seen I’d scored the prettier of the two, with her slanted seed-like eyes, her toffee skin, her lips like split fruit. Wasn’t one piece of her didn’t remind me of food.

‘What you boys drinking?’ the first one said.

‘Lemonade,’ I said.

‘ Strong lemonade,’ Chip cut in.

The second one giggled. ‘Why don’t you get us some drinks, sweetie? Two sidecars.’

‘Now you on the trolley,’ grinned Chip, like he’d thought of it himself. ‘Sid, go on over the bar get us somethin put some hair on you chest.’

‘Why don’t you go?’ I whispered at him.

‘Go on ,’ he hissed. ‘They lookin at us.’

Took me three weeks’ allowance to buy them drinks. And the bartender near laughed himself stupid, pouring them out for me. I was stumbling through veils of smoke back to the table when my cat-eyed girl met me halfway. Taking the two drinks from me, she set them on the nearest table, so that half the liquor splashed out.

‘Aw, what you doing?’ I said. ‘Ain’t you going to drink it even?’

But she just grabbed my hand, led me through humid bodies to a stairwell dark as a heart chamber.

‘Where’s Chip?’ I called ahead to her. ‘We got to tell Chip where we going.’

She waded through groups of groping couples, to the first landing, where she thrown open a door and pushed me in. Well, knock me down with a feather. It was a bedroom . I stared at the yellow satin sheets, torn and stained in places, the windows dimmed with what looked like grey paint but was probably just years of tobacco smoke. My heart begun stuttering in my chest.

‘You live here?’ I said in surprise.

She closed the door, then come around and grabbed my front collar so hard she almost choked me.

‘Hey,’ I shouted. ‘Hey, what you doin? Don’t you try nothing or I call Chip.’

‘Aw, sweetie,’ she smiled.

And then she leaned down and kissed me.

Well, son of a bitch. It wasn’t no sort of ordinary kiss neither. Her tongue got in my mouth, sent blood rushing to every damn pocket of my body. Her lips was hot, like the ridge of a cooking dish, her breasts all pressing up against my chest. She smelled just like almonds, even her hair.

Then she pulled back, gave me this sly look.

I didn’t know what to say. ‘You real pretty,’ I whispered.

She smiled. ‘Think so?’

I nodded.

I didn’t understand when she sunk to her knees. I started to drop down too, but she stopped me, pushed me up again. She kissed my button fly, then tugged the buttons open, yanked my pants down, my drawers. Before I known what was happening, she had me in her mouth, all hot and moist and velvet. My skin tingled all over at the impossible softness, like being hit with hot and cold water all at once. It almost hurt.

Afterwards, I didn’t know what to do. I felt sort of embarrassed, ashamed. Breathing hard, I kneeled before her on the floor, putting my hand up her dress, wanting to please her.

She pushed my fingers gently away. ‘That one be a freebie, cause you so cute, honey. But you want to jass, you got to pay up.’

I ain’t understood. The truth come to me slow, as if through layers of smoke. ‘You a whore ?’ I said.

She frowned, leaned back on her haunches, gave me a cold look. ‘You going to use that language in here? After what all I just done for you?’

I blushed. I ain’t known what else to call her.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘You real young, kid. I thought you was older than that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, trying to make it better.

Frowning, she got to her feet. ‘Call me a whore and I sure as hell gonna act like one. Cancel that freebie. Pay up. Pay me now or I callin Vaughn.’

Hell, where’d this come from? Everything turned suddenly ugly. I ain’t never in my life been in such a fix. Panicked, I scrambled into my pants, dove wildly across the room for my coat.

‘Don’t you bolt, fucker,’ she said, her wet lips all twisted up.

‘I got to get my wallet,’ I said, knowing damn well that while my wallet may be in my coat, wasn’t no scratch left in it.

I buttoned my fly, straightened my shirt. She watched me with a hawk’s eye. Reaching into my pocket, I got hold of the door at the same time and thrown the goddamn thing wide open. Scrambling down them stairs, my heart slamming in my ears, I heard her yelling, ‘Stop that nigger!’ But I could be a real jack-rabbit in a crisis, and I was too quick to be caught by no one. Knocking folks down right and left, I burst outside, my breath catching on the muggy air. I run down South Broadway, turning onto East Pratt then zigzagging back to South Bethel and Eastern Ave. Only when I stopped to get my breath, cars all blaring in the streets, did I reckon I’d forgot poor Chip. ‘God damn ,’ I hissed under my breath. Sighing hard, I started running on back.