Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

He turned, punched his fists into his pockets, and wandered off up the street into the cold afternoon.

I was shaking with anger and embarrassment the entire walk back through Montmartre. The flat was empty, and I come in banging my old axe. I sat down with a grimace, just sat there staring at the moulding on the walls.

There was a soft thump down the hall.

‘Lilah?’ I called out. ‘That you?’

‘I’m in here,’ she called. ‘I’m in my room.’

She was rolling on a dark stocking when I come miserably in.

‘So?’ she said when she seen me. ‘How’d it go?’

I shrugged bitterly. I just ain’t able to start in on it.

She come on over, wrestle me out of my old coat. She led me over to the window seat, sat me down in all that white sunshine, run a finger light over my temple like she brushing away cobwebs. ‘It can’t have been that bad,’ she murmured. ‘Come on. It can’t have been like that. How was Hiero?’

I frowned, leaned away from her. ‘Hiero? Hell.’

She pull back then. ‘Sid. What happened?’

‘It was bad.’

‘What was bad? You were bad?’

‘I wasn’t bad, girl. I was awful .’

‘I doubt that.’

‘You ain’t seen their faces, Lilah. Chip — he look ashamed .’

She arched a eyebrow.

‘What?’ I said.

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘But you goin to. You goin say somethin that’ll make me mad, girl. I know it.’

She stood up.

‘Where you goin?’

She snorted. ‘When you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, then we can talk.’ But she stopped by the vanity, and turning to me, give me a long careful look. ‘Well? Are you done?’

I sort of picked at my old calloused fingerpads. Shrugged.

‘Good.’ She sat back down, took a breath like she got something to say. But then she just put her hand on my wrist. It felt cool, soft. ‘I know Louis,’ she said at last. ‘He can spot a gate like no one I ever met. He’ll know how good you are, Sid.’

‘I wasn’t good, Lilah. It was like I was steeped in the rot.’

‘But you can be good.’

I shook my damn head like it wasn’t of no consequence.

‘Did Louis say you weren’t going to be on the record?’

‘No.’

‘Then stop with all this,’ she said, but gentle-like. She pulled my fingers towards her top button, slipped it real leisurely through its eyelet. ‘Now I need your help with something,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘Something I know you’re good at.’

‘Aw, Lilah,’ I said, ‘I ain’t in the mood, girl.’

But she was already undoing her blouse, slipping my hand inside it.

Louis ain’t said nothing more bout the record. Not to no one. Weeks bled by, soon the light in the alleys begun failing, and then we was crunching through a crust of snow on the cobblestones of them same dark streets. It was damn near November. The trees along the Seine gone to glass, shining white and delicate. And I got to thinking, maybe I had a chance yet. Maybe he like to forget what I’d sounded like.

The months, they felt like nothing. All Paris seemed drunk and sleeping it off, that slow false war that was like no damn war at all. The Frogs was still camped behind the Maginot. Their soldiers, pencil-moustached, natty in fatigues, had taken to playing football and breeding roses hardy enough to shake off the cold. Soldiers on leave drifted through the streets in the morning haze, shivering and grim like poets out of wine. Sometimes we seen them sleeping on park benches, huddled figures in the grey light. We slept like the dead those days.

Wasn’t no word from Poland. It was blanketed in darkness. I supposed the Krauts was devouring the west but we ain’t heard of no savagery. A cold wind was coming out of the east, and soon we was all shivering when we come in, huddling up together on the couches. The kid looked sort of haunted these days, hollow in the cheeks, his eyes yellow with weariness. Chip and me laughed uneasily, or not at all. We was all of us stretched too damn tight with nerves. And still Louis ain’t said nothing.

When word come over the wireless of a Russian assault in Finland, Hiero just shake his sorrowful head. ‘It winter,’ Chip said with a scowl, ‘they all like to be slaughtered.’ All of us huddled over the fireplace, its soft popping heat, our fists shoved up in our armpits, the wireless spitting and crackling in the corner like a second fire. And Delilah, with her beautiful head in my lap. None of it seemed real.

Then Louis, at last, was calling up his gates.

I sat at a table on the Bug’s patio, tearing off the crusts of a day-old twist, brooding over whether I ought to start in on the gin or the rot, when Chip come striding up out of the afternoon crowds.

He looked agitated. ‘ There you are,’ he said, out of breath. He got this feverish glint in his eye. ‘I was just bout to give up on you.’

‘What you on about?’

‘We got to go, brother. Louis just phoned. He wants to talk bout the record.’

I felt something surge in my chest. ‘What — now?’

‘Aw, not if it inconvenient for you,’ he said, smiling.

I was already standing, counting out some damn francs. I had a foolish smile on my face. ‘And he ask for me? He said I was still in?’

‘Why wouldn’t you be in?’

I stopped fidgeting with my dough. ‘What you mean. Louis ain’t asked for me?’

‘He ain’t asked for no one. He just phoned and said it was time. To get over to the damn Coup to meet the other gates.’

All at once that good feeling just drained right out of me. I squinted at Chip in the dark afternoon light. ‘But did he mean just you?’

‘Sid,’ said Chip, frowning. ‘I ain’t asked him. He ain’t said. Now you comin or what?’

‘Son of a bitch,’ I muttered.

‘Brother, he heard you on our damn records. He know how good you can play.’

‘What he say? Tell me what he say, exactly.’

Chip give me a sour look. ‘Alright. And this is a exact quote. He said, Chip, get on over to the Coup. Oh, and be sure and tell old Sid his mama is one damn honey in the mornin . Man, you a ass. Come if you comin.’

Then he was rushing off and I couldn’t do nothing but follow.

They was at Café Coup de Foudre, sitting in the window. Two of the damn tables been shoved together to fit them all. I seen them through the dirty glass even before we done crossed the boulevard. We punch open the glass door, wade in through all that smoke, breathing hard from the walk over.

Armstrong give us a odd look as we come in. He was waving us over. I thought, Hell, Sid, don’t you be crazy now. That look wasn’t nothing .

But I wasn’t crazy. It was a odd look.

‘Hi Sid,’ Armstrong said to me in that gravelly voice.

He turned to the gates leaning up among the tables. All of them grim-faced, etched, like gangsters in a moving picture. ‘Boys, I want you all to meet the Fifth Column. This here Chip Jones, the hide hitter. He look and sound American, sure, but he straight from Berlin. His friend is Sid Griffiths.’

‘Aw, I know some of these boys already,’ Chip said, grinning. ‘I taken their money at dice.’

‘You keep talkin, brother.’ A tall dark gate with a thin moustache laughed.

‘Bertie. How you wife? She still tired from last year?’

I ain’t joined in. My mouth like to be stuffed with dry crackers.

‘Where Little Louis?’ Armstrong asked me.

I shrugged.

‘We ain’t seen him,’ said Chip. ‘But if he get you message, he goin be here.’

One of the other gates, a short thick fellow with blond hair, muttered something in Frog to Louis. The others laughed.