Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Billie arrived unfussed, plump and pretty in a blue dress with white polka dots. She sat down on the sofa, lit a cigarette, looked at Michael and crumpled forward. She leaned back, smiling, narrow-eyed and took one long draught of her cigarette as if it were a cooling drink.

'Oh, baby,' Billie muttered to herself. ' Man. ' She shook her head.

'What?' asked Michael nervously. 'What?'

Billie blasted smoke out of both nostrils. 'You don't even know what you want, do you?' Somewhere there were nerves; she suddenly reached up to tug on her hair. 'You going to offer the Lady a drink or not?'

'Sure. Um. Whiskey? Gin?' Michael tried to remember what he had in stock.

'A Grand Slam,' she said confidently.

'What's that?'

'Oh, man,' she groaned again. She strode into his tiny kitchen. 'Where do you keep the hooch around here?' She started to mix the drinks. It was Michael who was fussed. Michael fussed around the cabinet and the ice-cube tray.

'So. You don't know why you called me here.'

'I… uh… a friend suggested it.'

'Um,' she said, sounding completely unflattered. 'Maybe I ought to meet your friend instead.'

'I… I'm supposed to be exploring sex or something, and I guess I'm trying to do justice to women.'

'Justice to women. My, my. You reckon that's possible?' Billie unobtrusively took down another glass and started making him a drink too. 'Looky here. This is how you fix a Grand Slam.' She showed him, and passed him the glass. 'Here. You look like you need it.'

'Thank you.'

'You're welcome.' She said it because it was good form to do so, and comportment was important. 'So. What do I get out of this?'

'Well, some people think it's neat being alive.'

'I never did think that life was neat particularly. Death's part of the deal. Why should I be happy to be resurrected as a whore? Hmm? When I spent all my whole waking life trying to make myself a Lady?'

Michael coughed, with unease. 'Yeah. I… uh… I'm a bit English and to us a Lady is some old bat whose great great grandfather was good at railways or killing people and who lives in a stately home.'

Lady Day suppressed a prejudice of her own, visibly swallowed it. Who were more ofay than the English? Then something like sympathy swam into her eyes.

'A Lady is somebody with dignity. And nobody can take that dignity away.'

Sympathy swam up in Michael as well. 'Did you get there?'

'Yes,' she said in a determined voice. 'Yes, I did.'

And Michael wondered: how much of her future does this Angel know?

Lady Day was concerned about this present. 'So you see why I don't accept this situation. I was a whore at fourteen because my mama had just become one too, and it was the only way to put food on the table. I didn't want to be no whore, I was made to be a whore, and a stupid white judge put me into the workhouse at fourteen years old. She didn't jail the men who paid me that fifty cents. They knew I was fourteen. They didn't go to jail.'

Smoke poured out of her nostrils like scorn.

'Men like you. White men who would never have a black gal in their house.'

It was not often that an Angel expressed active, positive dislike. Michael wondered what to do. He could send her back, but that would be chicken-shit. So, Michael told himself, hear the truth, tell the truth.

'Not men like me. Those men were seventy years ago. And they weren't gay.'

'Gay?' She scowled and was bumped from behind by a chuckle. 'What, you a whore too?' Then she was bumped by the truth. 'Oh, I get you. You're a pansy.'

'Yup.'

'Aw hell, there was a pansy craze not so long ago. A lot of clubs had pansy comperes. A couple of guys in bands were like you and they were always pretty nice except Moose. He always used to get drunk and mean and call everyone else a sister. He hated women though he was one himself.'

Twang. Like a guitar string something snapped. Billie suddenly stretched out like a cat finding a warm place to sit. 'So. You been whoring around.'

Michael explained. 'It's like a gift. I can sleep with anyone I want to. Alive, dead. Except they're not real.'

Billie coughed a cigarette laugh. 'Man, you won the male jackpot.'

Truth. 'I'm impotent and it's ruined my life so far.'

'Ruined, how?'

'My boyfriend's left me, and I'm not concentrating on my work.'

'Sounds like life, baby.'

'No. Not when I can call dead people back to life.'

Billie thoughtfully plucked a bit of stray tobacco from the tip of her tongue. 'So. You got yourself a calling. Nobody said being called was any fun. I got myself a calling. It kept me alive a long, long time after all I wanted to be was dead.'

She managed a smile, held up her drink and toasted it, toasted her inhuman calling, toasted Michael's calling too.

There was this time, I was singing against Baby White at the Apollo. And all the Apollo wanted was fast-time stuff, and folks who sang like it was opera, and they thought I was just imitating Louis. So I got up there, and I dragged anyway. Dragged behind the beat. I did not knock 'em dead at the Apollo. Not 'til ten years later, anyway.'

She growled.

'And then, there was this session with Teddy Wilson? Now, Teddy Wilson didn't even like me. John Hammond made him do it and they fast-timed "What a Little Moonlight Can Do". What nobody knew is what I could do and that the session clarinet was a guy called Benny Goodman. He was a wild cat, in those days. They fast-timed and Benny and I just said to hell with it, let's cook. And we did. And I heard it slot together. I heard the angels turning the bolts. And I knew. I knew then I was the best, and I knew it was going to take time. That bitch Ella had a better voice and she left people happier. But I was going to be the greater singer. And I knew it would cost, I knew those bolts were just another jail. God was always going to want me for something.'

Billie took a deep breath. 'And now he's gone and done it again.' She smiled, drank in liquor and smoke and then announced, 'I know what you got to learn.'

Michael felt slightly forlorn. 'I wish I did.'

'You,' she said, bracelets clacking slightly against the glass, 'need to learn how to have a good time.' Her eyes brimmed with something like mockery, but it was not unaffectionate. 'Let's see. This is London, right? I bet you don't even know where the hot spots are.' When she said hot, she meant hot. This woman knew how to swing.

This is how it works,' she told him. 'You go to the swankiest place you can find where they play good jazz, because that is where jazz makes its money, honey. But you talk to the guys, and they get to know you, and pretty soon, you find yourself invited to where the action really is, where the guys go to jam afterwards. That's where you learn the music. That's where you learn the life.'

The only jazz place that Michael knew was Ronnie Scott's. He'd been there once in his twenties and his main impression had been that it cost a lot. There was a sudden blurring, and Billie's hair was suddenly conked and plastered close and she wore a clinging white satin dress, and round her shoulders a perfectly unfake fox fur.

'Where's the gardenia?' he asked.

'Gardenia?' Her face did a comic double take.

'For your hair. Um. They won't know you're Billie Holiday without it.'

'Gardenia, huh. OK.' And one appeared. 'Folks will just say she can't afford a hat.'

'It'll be your trademark.'

She adjusted everything, and turned, Lady-like, to be admired.

'They'll think you're a drag queen.'

Michael had to explain that drag meant something different these days. Lady was not exactly pleased to be told she could be mistaken for a man. 'So how come you got hair like Norma Shearer?'

'A lot of guys have hair like that now. In fact, it's kinda old-fashioned by now.'