A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (85)
For a long time after he became a Perennial, he’d spy on his contemporaries. When he was in Harlem, he’d follow them around—on foot, in a car—wishing he could be living his regular life with them instead of watching them from blocks away. Or he’d track their progress in Ebony or Jet, filled with envy and longing. Lo opened a fancy dance studio—still one of the country’s finest—and moved in with a ballerina she pretended was her “friend” till they died of old age, six months apart. He saw Duke go from a glitzy upstart to Establishment to a well-paid nostalgia act. A brain tumor killed George Gershwin a few years after he composed Porgy and Bess. Mickey Macchione became a wholesale flower trader and never set foot in another cabaret after Eden Lounge burned down. As time flew on, Ezra saw Josephine’s, Bessie’s, Zora’s, and Langston’s names loaned to art schools and scholarships, their legacies now the subject of biopics and documentaries. Today, they were icons, but to him, they were people he’d traded dreams with, caroused with, borrowed and lent a few coins to, run into at the dry cleaner’s. Back then, they were all drinking from the same water. As time marched on, he remained frozen in amber, while they stretched and blossomed and, eventually, wilted. Like normal people do.
He ached to be normal with Ricki. To have a family, put down roots. Go gray, get paunchy, spoil their grandchildren. Sometimes, he even wondered what it would’ve been like if he’d met Ricki a century ago. Who would she have been?
“Who were you, in your heyday?” asked Ricki, mirroring his thoughts. “I’ve been stalking these vintage newsreel accounts on TikTok, hoping to spot you in the background of some glitchy black-and-white clip. I can’t imagine you living in such a buttoned-up, old-fashioned culture. Like, mayhem ensued when a lady exposed a knee!”
“It wasn’t like that, though,” he said, chuckling. “The teens and ’20s were decadent.”
“It’s wild to think of old people being young, doing young things.”
“Is it? Old people are always dismissed as neutered, benign. Like teddy bears. But when I pass an elderly lady on the street, I wonder who she used to be. ’Cause the women I knew?” His expression went wicked. “I could tell you some secrets about these memaws out here…”
Ricki yelped, nudging him with an elbow. “Spare me the details of your ancient ho-ing!”
“Are you really slut-bullying me in 2024? We’ve come too far as a culture.”
“Slut-shaming.”
“Whatever y’all call it. I’m just saying, every generation thinks they invented sex.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you’re saying.” Ricki propped her head on her hand. A quiet buzz of happiness thrummed through her. It made no sense. She was knocking on death’s door, staring into the barrel of a gun, but when she was with Ezra, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her demise wasn’t really real. Impassioned love never protected anyone, not really. But with Ezra, it felt like armor.
And it was a dangerous deception.
She chased the thought out of her head and instead soaked up Ezra’s utterly devastating face. How could she never have noticed how sensual the bow of a man’s upper lip could be? She swept across his mouth with her eyes.
“Tell me everything,” she said dreamily. “Were you at Studio 54 when Bianca Jagger rode in on that white horse? Where were you when MLK died?”
Ezra rolled over onto his back, tucking his hand behind his head. “I never went to Studio 54. I wasn’t a disco guy. In the ’70s, I was in London, jamming with British Jamaican reggae bands. I wasn’t in the mood for nightlife; nothing felt new. The ’20s was wilder than the ’70s.” He paused, chewing on his bottom lip. “Hmm. When Dr. King died, I found out on the car radio. I was driving my VW Bug to the Westbury Music Festival. I slammed the brakes, hard, and damn near broke my nose.” He closed his eyes, furrowing his brow a little. “I think Nina Simone dedicated her set to him at the fair. But that show’s a blur.”
“Because of the trauma?”
“No, ’cause I dropped acid,” he said. “I remember I’d just seen Planet of the Apes. The original one, with terrible 1968 special effects. And now I’m standing in this big ole crowd; people are mourning, singing, dancing—but I’m tripping something terrible. My brain was stuck on the visual of apes riding horses.”
“Honestly, that’s an image from hell.”
“Point being, folks are still folks, no matter what’s going on. You don’t perceive history as it’s happening.”
Ricki nodded. “One time, I asked Ms. Della what it was like to live through World War II, and she said her most vivid memory was the nighttime, when everything was quieter, and she was alone in her bed, worrying if Dr. Bennett would come home alive. Even during the biggest thing in the world, it’s about the smaller moment.”
“You should know how that goes. You’ve lived through history, too.”
“Have I? I guess I have. Obama. Katrina. The crash of ’08.” She paused. “106 & Park.”
Ezra laughed and then paused, mulling this over. “Actually, I’ll allow it. Now it’s my turn. I got a few questions.”
“Go.”
“What’s been your favorite moment? Of all time.”