A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (24)

The Cotton Club had white patrons only? Eden Lounge was integrated. The Cotton Club boasted a tasty Chinese food menu? Eden Lounge served slap-yo-mama Jamaican food. The Cotton Club hired monster pianist, paragon of style, and lady-killer-about-town Duke Ellington to lead their house band? Eden Lounge recruited his only rival in all three areas, his buddy Breeze Walker, who, depending on who you asked, was even slicker than Duke.

And his band was tight, too. Breeze had just led the Friday Knights through a rehearsal of his latest hit, “Happy Sad,” but it felt… stiff. Humming to himself, he paced back and forth, tapping out the tune in the air and trying to feel what was missing.

“Breeze Walker!” hollered Mickey, red-faced and barging through the chorus line of twenty-five dancers shimmying in itty-bitty rehearsal rompers.

“Breeze!” He stood in front of him, meaty fists on his hips. “BREEZE!”

“What? I’m working!”

“You deaf? I been cawlin’ you! Some hobo keeps ringing the bell and fuckin’ up our rehearsal flow. I don’t got time for your demented fans.”

“They’re not demented. They’re dedicated,” he said cheerfully, adjusting the newsboy cap slipping off Mickey’s ham-hock-sized head. He motioned for the band to take five. It wouldn’t be the first time he talked his boss off the ledge.

Breeze was coming up on his fifth anniversary in Manhattan, and there was almost no trace of the wide-eyed kid who’d walked down Lenox with Sonny, gawking at cosmopolitan life in the big city. Today, he was impeccably tailored in a pin-striped navy three-piece suit (in the new fitted style as Paris dictated), silk pocket square, spats, and mother-of-pearl cuff links. He’d read Webster’s dictionary front to back at least six times, and he boasted a vocabulary that proudly masked his iffy education and country roots, except for when he was animated or angry. Then, folksy Fallon County–isms poured from him like heated molasses. He’d bought his brownstone in cash. When he cooked bourbon chicken, it was fresh meat from a gourmet market, not from a bird he’d killed out back (actually, he still wasn’t used to that one). He had heat in the winter, state-of-the-art electric fans in the summer, and a robust savings account. And his music—his magic—took folks to places that most pianists couldn’t find with a map.

And yet even with all the glitzy upgrades, Breeze Walker was still himself. His parents’ son and his sister’s brother. Fallon County and all its horrors were never too far from his mind. By 1927, twenty-seven-year-old Breeze had learned that the only antidote for grief was to keep moving.

He composed more songs than he knew what to do with. Rehearsed deep into the night. Partied to feel nothing, fucked to feel something, and said yes to every gig worthy of him, because he knew that the bottom could fall out anytime. Breeze loved his adopted city. But New York was a seductive trickster, insatiable and hungry. The key was staying one step ahead of it. Let something like grief slow you down, and the city would swallow you whole.

He’d seen celebrated musicians, artists, writers, singers, ascend to unscalable heights, only to vanish into oblivion in a blink. No one stayed on top forever.

The idea of becoming a footnote haunted Breeze. No, as long as music thrummed through him, he had to play. It was his spiritual nourishment.

“Demented, dedicated, whatevah,” grumbled Mickey. “Listen, that New York Times dame, Olive Randall? She’ll be here soon for the interview. She’s reporting on Harlem nightlife—you know da drill. Sexy sepia shenanigans.”

Breeze chuckled. “She should interview you, Mickey.”

“Nah, I don’t tawk good.”

“I don’t talk well,” corrected Breeze.

“Aw, don’t say that. You tawk great!” Mickey pounded him on the back and waddled off.

Shaking his head with amusement, Breeze turned to the Friday Knights.

“Band!” he called out. “What’s jazz?”

“Freedom!”

Breeze sighed with melodramatic disapproval. Taking a wide stance with his hands clasped behind his back, he repeated, “WHAT’S JAZZ?”

“FREEDOM!”

“Thank you,” he said evenly. “Jazz is freedom. Jazz is lawless. Jazz is a dare. So get loose, fellas! Y’all wound up tighter than a hair in a biscuit. We’re selling a fantasy. Never let ’em see how hard you work. Now, let’s cook.”

The Friday Knights, sufficiently energized, clamored into position.

“Clarence!” hollered Breeze. “Back up off that drumroll; this ain’t no magic act. Floyd! Five demerits for that uninspired bow tie. Stay clean, or don’t be seen.”

“Delroy! Look around, please.”

Delroy swiveled his head to the left and right, confused. “What I’m looking for, boss?”

“The jig. Where’s it at?”

Delroy mumbled, “Up.”

“Yup. It’s obvious you’re still abusing that powder. Up there playing triple time,” he scolded. “What’d I tell you? Do cocaine; don’t let it do you. You’ll be replaced tonight. Skedaddle.”

Breeze took the bench. He raised his right hand in the air and dropped it, and then fifteen of Harlem’s meanest jazz musicians launched into “Happy Sad.”

The leggy showgirls, led by famed choreographer Lo Ellis, erupted in a syncopated riot of nose-touching kicks and sinuous shimmies. Lo certainly knew how to create a showstopping routine. Lo and her girlfriend, Behold, had starred in a wild, drug-fueled vaudeville act since the early ’20s, but while Lo had gotten clean, Behold hadn’t been as lucky.