November 25, 1927
Go!” bellowed a furious, burly man with a pencil tucked behind his ear, slamming the front door. “Don’t come back!”
It was a testament to how loud Mickey Macchione was that Breeze Walker could hear him across the nightclub (and in the middle of band rehearsal, no less). Mickey was head manager of Harlem’s swankiest new cabaret, Eden Lounge, and he had a business to run! But he kept getting interrupted by a pushy loser banging on the front door.
It was 6:00 p.m. on Friday, and Eden Lounge was gearing up for the greatest Thanksgiving shindig Harlem had ever seen. Doors would open in two hours.
From Breeze’s vantage point on the bandstand, he could see Mickey’s portly, squat frame waddling through the club in his direction.
“I’m trying to work!” Mickey’s voice was blaring. “And here’s dat filthy hobo again, knocking down the door asking for Breeze. I got a show to put on!”
No, Breeze had a show to put on. But true to his name, he never got ruffled. He couldn’t. As the bandleader of the house band, he had show-day multitasking down to a science. Whether he was hand-holding a clarinetist whose wife had put him out or chatting up the newspapermen who swarmed Eden Lounge before opening hours, keeping cool was key.
Breeze Walker and the Friday Knights were Eden’s main attraction. Well, after the showgirls, who were a mix of great beauties with iffy talent, great beauties with other talents, and elite dancers ousted from Cotton Club auditions for being over twenty-one, under five foot six, or unable to pass the “brown paper bag” complexion test. Was Eden Lounge ashamed to pick up the Cotton Club’s castoffs? Absolutely not.
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.
The city swallowed her whole, thought Breeze. But he was playing on a level too clever for New York to catch him. He shut his eyes, taking in the melodies, the laughter, even the smell.
When he’d first started at Eden Lounge, Breeze hadn’t known why Eden Lounge smelled so intoxicating—he’d just known that every night, he’d head home in his tux, steeped in a potent floral scent. Finally, he’d asked Mickey what it was, and he’d pointed out the vases full of night-blooming jasmine he put on each cocktail table every night. It was a special blossom, one that was closed during the day and awoke at night, exuding a heady scent into the dark. Who knew that Mickey Macchione’s favorite hobby was flower gardening?
Just then, a tap on his shoulder shook Breeze out of his momentary reverie.
Appearing before him was a serious-looking blonde, maybe twenty-five, with clear green eyes. She had the carriage and demeanor of a well-bred exclamation point. Her visual opposite, Mickey, stood next to her with a big grin.
“Hey, Breeze, this is Miss Olive Randall of the Times. She’s got questions for our maestro.”
Breeze tipped his hat and offered her a pleasant smile. “Welcome to Eden, ma’am.”
“Oh, I’ve been here before, Mr. Walker. Many times.”
He gestured for the clarinet player to fill in for him, then led the reporter to the bar. She followed him, notebook-first.
Breeze pulled out a barstool for Olive. Without asking, the bartender slid him a seltzer.
“What’re you having, Miss Randall?” asked Breeze, taking a seat.
“Just a Jack Rose, no ice. And do call me Olive. Please. No need for formalities.”
Okay, thought Breeze. She’s liberated and liberal and wants me to know it.
“It’s such an honor to meet you, Breeze Walker,” she gushed, tapping the eraser of her pencil on her pad, ready to roll. “I listen to your orchestra every Friday night, when Eden Lounge broadcasts on the radio! How did you get your start? Sources say you were discovered at a speakeasy about five years ago?”
He sipped his seltzer, nodding. “The Nest. I won a piano cutting contest and met Duke, who taught me how to write and read sheet music. Through him, I met this Brooklyn kid who’d written a few compositions for Broadway, George Gershwin. He gave me my first break. We collaborated on music for a show featuring a hoofer named Frank Astaire… no, Fred.”
Poor fella, thought Breeze. He wanted to work in Hollywood, but the studios said he was too bald to star in pictures. Hope he gets his chance.
“After that, I made a name for myself playing the Swing Street speakeasies, and—”
“And the rest is history!” Olive tucked her fashionable bob behind an ear, her eyes scanning the room. “I love all your songs—‘Hotcha Gotcha,’ ‘Midnight Jasmine’—but ‘Happy Sad’ is wild. Reckless. It taps into something primitive, wouldn’t you say?”
Breeze would not, in fact, say “primitive.” So he changed the subject.
“Can I ask why you’re writing this article?”
“Well, because I love the scene, the art, your music. Up here, it’s the only place I feel alive!” She stared up into his face earnestly. “Your music has lured whites up to Harlem. That act alone will change the world. It’s revolutionary.”
I don’t have the heart to tell you it won’t, thought Breeze. It won’t change the fact that where I’m from, we’re hunted for sport. Won’t change that left of Lenox, landlords charge us triple rent for infested slums ’cause they know we’re so desperate to escape Mississippi, Alabama, or Tennessee that we’ll work ourselves sick to pay it. Won’t change that Harlem is a Band-Aid on cancer and that the hobo who keeps banging down Eden Lounge’s door is most definitely my cousin Sonny, who destroyed himself with dope to forget what he’s seen in our hometown. The world won’t change simply ’cause you ventured uptown to have a good ole sexy Black time. All it means is you have good taste.
Breeze was so tired.
On some days, the bad days, every step, breath, and note weighted him down, like shackles. And so he poured it into his music. The papers wrote things like “Breeze’s sound is tailor-made for crowds heady with hedonism!” And “Wild music for wild times!” And “Breeze Walker captures euphoria in a bottle!”
What they heard as frenzied abandonment was the sound of his rage. Their joyous release was his escape, his chance to outrun the memories that stalked him. Jazz was freedom. But grief was his fuel. It was that simple and that terrible.
Breeze missed his family with a blazing ache. He’d make himself feel the memories and then pour their bitter taste into music. Into something good.
He remembered chaperoning his sister, Minnie, on dark country roads, her chatting relentlessly while they walked her pet bunny, Hops. (The walks were largely pointless, as Hops was made out of a flour sack and straw. But, as his dad had drilled into him, It don’t matter the why or when; always be a gentleman.) He remembered that late at night, when he couldn’t let go of whatever new song he was trying to master, his mom had calmed him by reciting recipes for collard greens, stewed okra, and shortbread, the singsongy cadence of her native Gullah dialect soothing him to sleep. He remembered the way his dad had hugged him, abrupt and fierce, at the depot before Breeze shipped off to war. Big Ezra did not hug. In fact, it happened so fast that for weeks after, Breeze thought he’d imagined it.
Without his family, he didn’t belong anywhere in the world. He was furious about the way they’d died. In terror. Who sets a church ablaze? What kind of people can do that and walk away feeling… right? That was what seized him with rage. Breeze knew that in the stories these people told, they were right. That fire was justified to them; it was entertainment. The sheriff’s wife had even taken photographs! Breeze heard they’d been passed around dinner parties at the finer Fallon County homes, until the postmaster ruined it with spilled gin.
Eight years later, the blaze was surely forgotten. That mob’s grandkids and their grandkids’ kids wouldn’t even know their forefathers were monsters. And Breeze knew that what you haven’t reckoned with, you’re doomed to repeat. America was a ghost story with no end.
But Breeze was also lucky. He had a gift. He was lucky to be discovered at the right speakeasy by the right people. To be a man with no wife or children depending on him—he just had endless time to tinker with the notes that would blanket his brain.
Breeze knew he was lucky when he talked to the chorus line understudies and learned about the overtime work they did to stay afloat. When he thought of their mothers, rising before the sun to walk in a grim, humiliating parade down Fifth Avenue in the 1850s and ’60s, calling out to the white women of the houses lining the block in hopes of being invited in for a day of cleaning, cooking, or babysitting. A modern selling block, to be sure.
My thoughts are a graveyard, he thought.
Sometimes, Breeze dreamed of drinking, smoking, or shooting up to forget. But he had no vices. He was too lucky to justify them. The least he could do to honor his fallen family was to feel their loss. To remember.
But Breeze didn’t tell Olive any of this. He was sad and angry—but not insane. Instead, he finished his seltzer and said gently, “Please take no offense, but our music was revolutionary before whites liked it, and it will be after.”
Olive’s eyes widened with surprise.
“Enough about me,” said Breeze with an affable grin. “Let’s talk about Eden Lounge.”
“Are you telling me how to do my job, Mr. Walker?” she asked with a combative spark.
“Me? Never. I can’t tell a writer what to write. I named a song ‘Hotcha Gotcha.’”
With a yelp of amusement, she continued jotting down notes and moved on to her next batch of questions.
A few minutes later, Breeze heard the BANG, BANG, BANG at the back-of-house door, and he jolted upright. Apologizing to Olive, he headed backstage in a flash. Winding past instrument cases, costume racks, and understudies smoking in huddles, he made it to the door, pushing it open against the brisk November winds.
It was Sonny. A gaunt, haunted figure with two black eyes, and the knee ripped from his trousers. No coat, no hat. He looked predictably ragged. But this time, he had shown up with something new: a mangy mud-colored terrier with eyes as hollow as his. He sat at Sonny’s worn shoes, looking miserable and panting erratically.
“Ezra. Breeze. Cuz. Help me, please. Just a dollar. Fifty cents.”
Breeze peered behind him to make sure no one could hear Sonny in this state. Everyone knew his cousin had turned into a dope fiend. Sonny was past caring what people thought, but Breeze always wanted to protect him.
Last year, Sonny had been caught necking with a white woman, parked in his new Model T Ford down in Brooklyn. Some Irishmen ran out of a bar with bats, bashing the car and then Sonny. But first, they made him take off his clothes. They left him naked, bloody, and humiliated in front of his woman and the cops, who threw him in jail. For a man like Sonny, the incident was akin to death. The attack hadn’t truly killed him, though, so heroin was the next best thing.
They wanna be us, Sonny had once said with faulty confidence. But Breeze knew different. Yeah, they want to dance, dress, and talk like us. But inhabit our skin? Nah.
Breeze had moved Sonny in for a time, but Sonny kept disappearing. One day, he never returned. But sometimes, he’d show up to Breeze’s gigs like this, begging. Breeze handed him five dollars from his billfold, the way he always did. His cousin grabbed it with his scarred right hand—the constant reminder of his status as the only survivor of the Fallon County church fire. “Survivor” was debatable. Yes, he’d been the only person to walk away from that fire, but the Sonny that Ezra knew from before had faded to an almost-unidentifiable cipher. Yet another family member lost.
In thanks, Sonny held the cash to his heart. Before he scuttled off, Breeze grabbed his shoulder.
“Hey, remember what you told me?” Breeze asked, his voice unexpectedly cracking. “Ain’t no place in America for a humble Negro. Remember who you used to be, Sonny. He’s still in there.”
Sonny chuckled sadly, most of his teeth missing. “He’s been humbled.”
And then he was gone.
Breeze stood there for what felt like an eternity. It wasn’t until he heard the low, hungry rumble by his feet that he realized Sonny’d left his dog behind.
An hour later, Breeze sat at the bar, fighting off a numbing melancholy and wondering what the hell he was going to do with a dog. The mutt hadn’t left his side since he’d tossed him some bacon from the kitchen.
Breeze didn’t believe in pets. It seemed unnatural to keep an animal inside the house, anthropomorphizing it. But then he looked down into the dog’s watery, soulful eyes and folded.
All right, then. I guess you’re mine now. I can’t save Sonny, but maybe I can save you, he thought with glum resignation. But I still hate dogs.
The band was changing into tuxedos, and the chorus line was pounding out one final rehearsal. Breeze noticed a lead dancer suddenly grab her ankle and limp off the floor. Within seconds, an understudy ran out from the wings, taking her place.
His eyes followed her. The dog perked up his ears.
The understudy was not the best dancer. Nor was she the prettiest. But she was attacking the choreography like she had a point to prove and wrongs to right. She was on fire and impossible to ignore. Breeze glanced around the room; everyone’s eyes were on her.
But her eyes fell on him. Her gaze bore into the hollow left by Sonny.
After rehearsal, the new dancer lingered behind. She took her time walking off the dance floor, going out of her way to pass Breeze at the bar. Pausing, she plucked a flower from a bouquet. Bringing the jasmine just under her nose, she inhaled luxuriously, staring at Breeze with unadulterated hunger. Carelessly, she dropped the flower and kept walking, its tender petals smashed under her heels.
The gesture was dismissive, ruthless—destroying such delicate beauty like that.
Her brand of destruction was exactly what Breeze needed.