Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

I felt sick, disappointed, somehow. ‘You want to go?’

‘Yes. I’m done.’ She folded her fork and knife on her plate with a click. Girl ain’t hardly touched her food.

We made our way out into the dusk of emptying streets. There was so much running through me, so much I got no intention of saying or couldn’t even think how to express. I looked off down the avenue, at the bright brasserie teeming with people, the plaza with its thin traffic, the awnings under electric lights with their soot and birdshit.

We walked a while, not touching. Then she took my arm. I felt the old electricity running along my elbow and through the muscle, and I shivered, everything going quiet in me. We was crossing the bridge over the water when she slowed, glanced over the stone railing.

‘Whatever happened to Dame Delilah the Second?’ she said.

‘The Dame? Tossed her back in the pit.’

‘For real?’

‘For real. Kid dumped her back in the wall. It was either there or in the streets.’

‘Sid,’ she said abruptly. ‘I can’t be with you. Not like before.’

‘It alright.’ I felt sick. ‘I understand.’

But she let go my arm and stood staring me down. ‘You understand ? You’d let it go? Just like that?’

All a sudden I wasn’t sure just what I supposed to say.

‘No?’ I said.

‘No what?’

I was watching her for some clue as to what the right thing was.

‘No, I wouldn’t?’ I said at last. And then, in a softer voice: ‘I thought you brung me out here to say goodbye, I thought that’s what you been sayin all night. Ain’t it what you been sayin?’

She was silent a long time. The streetlights over the Seine slid over the oily scum and we watched a long, dark barge drift past, cut across the lights, vanish again downriver. A man was walking across the far bridge, his footfalls in three-quarter time. I took off my jacket, draped it over her shoulders.

‘You cold, girl? You want to be gettin back?’

She looked up at me. She was shivering. ‘Tell me you love me.’

‘No.’

‘Tell me.’

I smiled, sort of sad-like. ‘Aw, girl. You goin break my heart.’

She rested her head against my chest, looking out at the slow waters, and I thought, very suddenly: Sid, brother, anything true got to always be this simple, this clear.

That night we made love in her room. It was only the second time. Afterward, I slept uneasily in her narrow bed, her hot back pressed up against me. In the morning, when the cold light poured in through the dirty glass, I couldn’t remember my dreams.

The day finally arrived.

I come in late, banging my old axe through the door like I already into the rot.

‘Hell, brother, you ain’t too tired for us?’ Chip called from the stage. He turn to Armstrong. ‘Poor boy ain’t been sleepin well.’

Hiero was smiling at me slyly. The son of a bitch.

‘It must be catchin,’ Armstrong laughed in that low rumble. ‘All I hearin bout be this awful damn insomnia Delilah been sufferin. You know anything bout that?’

I flushed. ‘Where all the other gates? It ain’t just us?’

Chip give a little soft shoe shuffle. ‘It just us. Just the stripped down set.’

‘I thought we’d just start out clean,’ Armstrong rasped. ‘Thought we’d just get to know each other in a intimate way.’

‘Sid likes intimate,’ Chip smiled. ‘Sid likes stripped down.’

‘I’m sure he don’t know what you talkin bout,’ Armstrong grinned back at him. ‘I’m sure he just don’t have a clue.’

I come on up that stage filled with dread, my old shoes dragging. Louis Armstrong, brother. That gate cast a shadow even lying down. And here he was jawing with Chip like their mamas used to knit together. Hell.

It was a small basement lounge, with the houselights up in the back and the floor unlit and the tables shoved aside, the chairs balanced upside down on the white cloths. The floor done been swept, and small piles of rubbish and dirt stood along one side of the room.

Chip drawn out a few quick taps, testing the snare. I give Hiero a savage look. He was holding old Armstrong’s second horn loose at his thighs, his long thin pinky sharp out at an angle from the pistons.

Armstrong give us a look. ‘Old Town Wrangler? B-flat?’

Hiero shrugged.

‘You ready, Sid?’ said Armstrong.

All a sudden my throat went real dry.

‘Aw, he ready,’ Chip smiled. ‘Count us in, brother.’

And with just a casual nod of the head, without even saying a word, Armstrong bring us slowly in. And then we was off. Chip’s kit was crisp, clean, and I could feel the lazy old tug of the bass line walk down into its basement and hang up its hat, and I begun to smile. Then the kid come in. He was brash, sharp, bright.

And then, real late, Armstrong come in.

I was shocked. Ain’t no bold brass at all. He just trilled in a breezy, casual way, like he giving some dame a second glance in the street without breaking stride. It was just so calm, so effortlessly itself. Give me a damn chill.

Cause he done completely shift his gears. No longer the high-C hitter, that crazy showman fluttering so tight on the high register he sound like a flute. He’d calmed down, grown up, bleeding a lyricism so pure it like the voice of a old, old gate — burned of excess, holding nothing but just what he needed for each single note.

I ain’t hardly believed it. Hiero, Chip and me was so harmonious, so close in tone colour, it sounded like the same gate squawling on three different instruments. Man, it was smooth.

But then it started.

I wasn’t sure what it was, at first. A late buzz on the bass, maybe, a sluggish tap of my old toe. But there just wasn’t no crackle in the gut, the bass just walking real flat-footed along them lines. I start messing it up, trying to find some blood in it.

Chip give me a sharp look from behind his kit, like to say, brother, you playing like you got twelve thumbs. And I was. I could hear it. Then I was back in time and holding the colour just right, and all of it gelled again. Armstrong lift up his horn, look at the kid, trill lazily away. Hiero punch out a brassy reply. Chip, he was brushing them skins so sweet it like he talking to a jane.

And then, just like that, my damn fingers stumble again.

‘What you doin ?’ Chip hissed at me over his kit. ‘Get youself together now. Hell.’

I could feel the sweat dripping into my eyes. I give my head a slow shake. Armstrong give us a look, then just keep on going.

When we broke, Armstrong walk over to us wiping his forehead with a white kerchief. Turning to us, he grunted, giving us a sharp look over.

The blood rush to my face.

‘Now that was OK,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘That was good. I reckon we got to reshape it a little though.’ He turn to Hiero. ‘You, though — man oh man. Little Maestro? Can that. You Little Louis , pure and simple. Little Louis, boy. And don’t you change a thing. You the stuff . You perfect.’

‘Kid was swingin alright,’ Chip smiled.

‘You was swingin youself, Pops,’ the old titan said. ‘Like you rubbin you own belly over there.’

‘Aw, when we good, we good,’ I chuckled.

But Armstrong just grunted to hisself and stepped off the stage, over to the bar.

Hell. I was smiling this sick smile and just wasn’t able to stop. I leaned over my old axe. But my hands was trembling.

‘Now tell me, boys,’ called Armstrong from down at the bar. He was holding a cold glass to his forehead. ‘Tell me bout this caveman with the clam moustache been barkin speeches all over Germany.’