CHAPTER 15

YOU’RE THE BEE’S KNEES, BREEZE

February 27–29, 1928

Leap Day

Breeze Walker and Felice Fabienne had been dating for three months. And it was a scandal.

Ordinarily, he was smart about women. It was tough to imagine that only five years before, he’d had to rehearse what to say to them. But back then, when he was a new émigré to New York City, everything made him self-conscious: his lack of education, his almost unintelligible accent. Not knowing the latest lingo or the right car to drive. But he was a quick study.

All those nights partying in Harlem, he quietly observed how people talked to each other: women and men, men and men, women and women. He noticed that when straight fellas spoke to ladies, they seemed to be talking to a different species. Once a man was attracted to a woman, she became a conquest, a challenge, an idea. Most men didn’t seem to like women very much.

He’d grown up with mismatched parents whose only commonality (besides music) was liking each other. Hazel Walker was the funniest person in Fallon County. A quick-witted spark who loved to dance and play the ukulele, she was not the person to sit next to at services if you hoped to keep a straight face. But Big Ezra Walker? He was a serious, burdened man who loved his family and his harmonica but had no use for levity.

Despite their opposing personalities, Breeze saw how his dad treated his mom like an equal, a person. A treasure. He pulled out her chair. He held her when her monthlies hurt. He sat on the porch with her, chatting into the night. This was rare. His cousin Sonny’s dad would come in from the fields, frayed, speaking with his fists and faithful only to the bottle. Breeze supposed it was hard to be civil when your own humanity was in tatters. Accordingly, Sonny’s mom wasn’t safe in her own home, but she swallowed her discontent. No one liked an ornery woman.

Breeze learned a lot about women at the speakeasies, but his education started back at home. Which was why his girlfriend, Felice Fabienne, was a curiosity. Quietly, he wasn’t sure if he actually liked her. She wasn’t particularly kind or sweet. She had mercurial, unpredictable moods, and she was motivated by money, fame, fashion, and social status. God help whoever got in her way.

But Felice was a game he was addicted to playing. Pleasing her wasn’t easy, and when he earned an approving smile, he felt like a king. Her greedy, spontaneous sexuality was a rush. She was gentle with Sonny’s hand-me-down terrier, Groucho Barx. And Felice depended on Breeze to help her navigate her new adopted city, which satisfied his caretaker spirit in intoxicating ways. For better or worse, he was swept up in her hurricane. She raged into his life at a dark, empty time, right before Sonny permanently disappeared.

With Sonny most likely dead—a thought that tore his heart to ribbons—Breeze was desperate to forget his pain. Felice’s black hole of volatility did for him what drinking and drugging did for everyone else.

Lo Ellis, Eden Lounge’s choreographer and Breeze’s best friend, thought he’d lost his damned mind. She told him so at the engagement party for W. E. B. Du Bois’s daughter, Yolande, and her fiancé, the famous poet Countee Cullen.

Lo was scandalized that Breeze was bringing Felice to the April wedding. It was sure to be the event of the decade! Yes, two socialites were marrying, but even more deliciously, the best man was Harold Jackman, an aristocrat known internationally as “Harlem’s most handsome man.” Unfortunately for the bride, he was also the groom’s boyfriend.

“I feel bad for all three of them,” said Breeze, tossing back seltzers with Lo at the engagement party. “Poor Countee.”

“What’s he supposed to do, marry Harold?” Lo was chic in a feathered hair comb and a beaded frock skimming her knees. She felt the lovers’ pain. If she could’ve married her ex-girlfriend, Behold, she would’ve a thousand times over. “He’d be a pretty bride, though.”

“Tell me again why I agreed to play at this farce of a wedding?”

Lo chuckled. “Cause Yolande invited twelve hundred moneyed New Negroes, they love your songs, and you love the attention.”

What I love, he thought, is that she didn’t ask Duke.

“Hey, if no one’s listening, I’m not eating.” He grinned. “Did you hear they commissioned Langston to write the wedding poem?”

Lo rolled her eyes. “How do I love thee? Let me count the gays.”

“Let me Countee the gays,” quipped Breeze.

“Don’t change the subject. We’re talking about you and Felice. Why her? She’s tacky.”

“She’s a chorus girl!” he retorted. “You were a chorus girl, too.”

“But she got the job through wickedness! She was an understudy. Out the clear blue, Edith, my star dancer, breaks an ankle during practice, and Felice muscles in.” Lo shook her head. “Ain’t no way. Edith’s so careful with her feet, she practically levitates around town. Never even stubbed a toe. Felice put the roots on her. Don’t fool with them Creole girls.”

“All right now, you ain’t gotta besmirch her character.”

“But what do you even know about her?”

Breeze knew a lot, actually. Felice was raised in Thibodaux, Louisiana, a moss-hung swamp that was more poverty stricken than poor. She and her mama lived in a cramped one-room tin-roof shack. The hovel heaved in strong winds and flooded in the rain. It was miserable, and so was Felice’s mama, whose fiancé had run off when she was seven months pregnant, leaving behind his Bible and no explanation. And her mama never recovered. Lost to blues, she couldn’t work, laugh, or even get out of bed on most days. Mama was a dried-up husk of a woman, and all because some lowlife wouldn’t marry her. Felice would never be that helpless.

Breeze also knew she’d been born with a gift. (Well, she was born with a caul over her face, which lent itself to a gift.) As a tot, she spent most of her time wandering the wild, swampy woods alone, teaching herself botanical magic. At first, Felice honed her root medicine skills on injured possums and rats, and by ten, she was a bona fide hoodoo practitioner, earning a living for her and her mama by curing colds and healing scrapes.

Until February of her thirteenth year. Felice told Breeze she’d been gathering comfrey for a black eye salve when she found an oddly shaped book with a muddy cover, nestled under a weeping willow. The title read Grimoire of Bad Work. In other words, a book of dark voodoo spells. Who left it there, she didn’t know, but after sitting in the dirt, reading it cover to cover, Felice had an epiphany. Hoodoo rootwork helped other people. But voodoo (the dark kind, not the good) would help her, specifically, to remove obstacles blocking her from her dream.

And that dream was Broadway. Felice was obsessed with dancing. Every Friday night, she’d practice the latest moves at the jook joints, where boys loved her, but girls accused her of terrible things: theft, drunkenness, and getting pregnant by some photographer passing through town. Well, that last rumor was true. Felice had a baby she’d named after her idol, the showgirl Adelaide Hall, who’d starred in the all-Black Broadway productions of Shuffle Along and Runnin’ Wild in the early ’20s. Adelaide was a petite beauty with a wide smile, just like Felice.

Last year, at nineteen, Felice escaped to Harlem, leaving her baby back home and planning to send for her once she’d hit it big. Until that day, she was on the rise, and woe befell anyone in her way. To hear her tell it, she had voodoo to thank. After eight months of diligently chanting and offering sacrifices to loa spirits, Felice had gone from an Eden Lounge understudy to a showgirl. Who was dating the bandleader.

Breeze didn’t believe in magic. But he was bewitched by her fantastical stories, and the fact that she believed them. Plus, when she was sweet, her Kewpie-doll smile softened every one of Breeze’s rough edges. And generally, he didn’t even mind her dark, stormy moods. Keeping up with her tornado-like disposition was a distraction from his own melancholy.

Lo was right; Louisiana girls did have a reputation: folks said if you cross one, prepare to be bankrupt and impotent. But Breeze thought her spells were a cute hobby. Like astrology.

And he told Lo as much.

“Listen, baby,” said Lo, taking an elegant drag from her cigarette holder. “Sex with deranged women is tops. But Felice’s wicked streak is not to be toyed with…”

Breeze stopped listening. He realized he had only thirty minutes to walk Groucho Barx before meeting Felice for their date. He couldn’t be late. When she was displeased, her sweetness curdled into something dark. He kissed Lo on the cheek and was gone so fast, her head spun.

The next day, after Breeze took Felice to see a matinee of the new Chaplin picture, The Circus, the two went for a lazy stroll down Lenox. The avenue teemed with bustling boutiques and restaurants, but no one really went to Lenox to shop. It was about being seen. Spats and hats, stoles and satin, the thoroughfare was a fashion magazine brought to life. Trends were born and died on Lenox. Breeze was dapper in a tailored pin-striped suit, and Felice wore a lilac drop-waist frock and a full-length silver fox coat, both gifts from her indulgent boyfriend.

The late-February afternoon was cold as hell, though. And if Breeze felt it, Felice must’ve been freezing. She wasn’t wearing stockings (because she was liberated) or a hat (because she wanted to flaunt her waves courtesy of Madam C. J. Walker’s salon).

“Are you warm enough, Felice?”

“I’m fine, sugar.”

“Well, my fingers are frozen. I got a rent party tonight, and I can’t play with Popsicles.”

Felice winked up at him. “I’ll warm up your hands real nice at the party.”

By 1928, Breeze was a staple at rent parties. When tenants were struggling to pay rent, they’d host parties in their private homes, charge a modest cover, and hire top-billed musicians to draw a crowd. Rent parties were not only a fucking great time, but also a lucrative source of backup income for established musicians, especially pianists, who set the tone on the dance floor. And extra cash was very important to Breeze, whose lady had expensive tastes.

For a clotheshorse and an avid traveler, Breeze was on the frugal side. He’d made only two truly major, life-changing purchases since he’d started making money: his brownstone in Strivers’ Row and his piano, an elegant Steinway constructed from rosewood. A square piano, ultra-rare and tuned to his precise specifications. That piano was his baby.

And because the hosts of tonight’s rent party didn’t own one, he’d hired a friend with a truck to drive his perfect piano to the house.

Breeze blew hot air on his fingers and kept strolling. Just then, three lookers on the chorus line with Felice, resplendent in cloche hats and sable-trimmed wraps, sauntered by Breeze, offering flirty hellos. Felice stood by his side, posed haughtily in her finery, and waited for an acknowledgment that never came.

The trio swept right by her. One of them even knocked into her, with no apology.

Cheeks aflame with humiliation, Felice lunged after them, words and fists flying. Quickly, Breeze grabbed her around the waist, half dragging her into a nearby alley.

“Felice! You dance with those girls; you can’t call them knock-kneed syphilitic whores!”

“Who can’t?” She was fuming. “Fuck them and fuck you, too.”

“Me?” Felice was cute, but he hadn’t escaped hell to be cursed at by a hotheaded hoofer in diamonds that he’d bought. “That’s enough, now. Simmer down.”

“Fine,” she huffed.

“There’s families and kids out there. You want folks to talk?”

“But those bitches cut me dead. In public, like I’m nothing. Who do they think they are?”

“Definitely not syphilitic whores,” said Breeze lightly. “Yeah, they were rude. But they won’t be the last ones to doubt you. Hold your head up. Remember who you are.”

Felice pulled away, her bottom lip quivering. “So, you haven’t heard?”

“Haven’t heard what?”

“About the photograph.” She pressed her fist against her mouth, choking back sobs. “The photograph of me without… without any clothes on. Somehow, it’s back to haunt me.”

“When did you take photographs without your clothes on?”

“I was a kid.” She was openly weeping now. “A New Orleans photographer was in town, and he saw me, and… well, I didn’t think it was a big deal. He said he’d show them to vaudeville producers who could get me auditions for blue shows. Dirty shows. I… I needed the money.”

Breeze was enraged. Young Felice had clearly been preyed upon, and he knew options were limited for girls like her. He’d never judge her for trying to improve her life. No one should.

“It’s all right. Shhh, don’t fret, now.” He wrapped his arm around her as she sobbed.

“Folks are talking. I went to two auditions yesterday? The directors wouldn’t see me.”

“On account of nude photographs? Half the showgirls we know have posed nude.”

“But when they do it, it’s art,” she said, sniffling. “It’s Van Der Zee or Van Vechten behind the camera. It’s fancy and scholarly, and Alain Locke publishes essays about it. But because trashy little Felice did it in a swamp, with a sleazy photographer who tricked a young girl, it’s bad.”

“I’ll talk to Lo,” Breeze assured her. “She’ll make sure the other dancers are nice to you.”

“Sure, Breeze, but you can’t strong-arm every casting agent in town. Maybe… maybe I oughta try Hollywood. Joanie Crawford did nudie pictures, and she’s a huge star now.”

“She’s not Colored, Felice. In Hollywood, you’d play her servant or her slave, if you’re lucky.” Breeze had heard that LA brothels were populated by white girls who were beauty queens back home but, after moving out west, were told they were too chubby, snaggletoothed, or uncharismatic for the big screen. What happened to Colored women who couldn’t find work?

“Tell you what,” started Breeze. “I know everybody in town; I’ll find out who has the picture and buy it. Then I’ll track down the photographer and buy the film. All right?”

Tears streaking her rouged cheeks, Felice fixed him with her fluttery-lashed smile and huge, pleased eyes. And just like that, her thunderstorm passed, and the sun shone bright.

“You’re the bee’s knees, Breeze.” She stood on her tiptoes and nibbled on his earlobe, her hand traveling down the front of his pants. “You’d do that for me?”

Of course he would. Why be successful if he couldn’t help people he cared for? He’d lost Sonny, his last surviving family member. Breeze no longer had anyone to help.

Just as he was about to tell her this, she got distracted. Gasping, she turned to face the sidewalk. “Is that… Oh my word… Is that…”

It was Adelaide Hall. The Adelaide Hall, of Broadway musical fame. Stopping to speak to a fan, she looked like the Platonic ideal of a modern woman, wearing a mink and a lacquered bob. Delighted, Felice clasped her hands together under her chin.

“Her gown’s by a Parisian designer, I reckon. Chanel? Lanvin? I wonder if it’s a Worth.”

“It’s a-worth plenty,” cracked Breeze.

Felice scanned her from head to toe, settling on her luminous four-strand pearl bracelet.

“Breeze, look! Why, if I had a bracelet like that, I might be the happiest girl alive.”

She purred the words with bald eroticism, reaching backward to rub her hand up and down the front of Breeze’s pants. Abruptly, she spun around and pushed him farther back into the shadows of the alley and up against a wall. Right then and there, Felice dropped to her knees and sucked him off, mere feet away from civilized café society.

God, he’d come so far from Fallon County. Getting head from a gorgeous cabaret dancer at 4:00 p.m. off Lenox? If that wasn’t cosmopolitan, he didn’t know what was.

And it was why, between dropping Felice off at rehearsal and prepping for the rent party, Breeze was inspired to visit a jeweler to buy a replica of Adelaide’s flashy pearl bracelet.

225½ West 137th Street. It was an odd address, neither here nor there. An in-between house definitely befitting a party starting at midnight on February 29, the weirdest day of the year. Leap day.

The tenants lived on the ground floor of a stone-gray brownstone with dramatic bay windows. The parlor was the scene of the soiree, and to make space for dancing, they’d moved all the furniture to a corner. There were buckets of bootleg gin and whiskey (Prohibition’s finest), a rug, and damn near fifty-five pairs of feet stomping the house down.

Breeze and his square piano were in the center of it all. For hours, he banged his keys with ease, pulling the strings of every flapper, cook, gangster, porter, and painter in the place. He had the crowd in a chokehold, providing the beat, the rhythm, and the throbbing undercurrent that stoked their Dionysian delights.

Happy! Sad! So good to be bad!

Breeze watched the ecstatic rush overtake the crowd, the wild abandon in their faces, pleased to be the architect of it all. It was 3:00 a.m., and the whole place smelled like gin, tobacco, reefer, Chanel No. 5, and sweat: Eau de Rent Party, 1928. And now Breeze’s hands ached. Good thing one of his Friday Knights was on hand to fill in for him while he took a break.

Felice was acting strange. Her dancing was frenetic, chaotic, like a conjure woman raising the dead. All night, she danced the Charleston madly through the crowd, pausing every so often to peck Ezra on the lips as he sat behind his piano. This was more territorial than anything else. When she kissed him, it was passionless, her expression terrifyingly blank. Every so often she’d stop dancing to lurk in a far corner, slowly peeling off her nail varnish, her eyes darting around the room as red flakes pooled around her feet.

Happy! Sad! So good to be bad!

She looked enticing, all gussied up with rouged cheeks, lips, and knees. But as with most things Felice-related, it was a cover. Something was wrong. He’d seen her act like this before, most recently after a white shopgirl ignored them at Lord & Taylor downtown. Felice had begun shaking violently with rage, breathing erratically, and muttering horrific blasphemies. Breeze had rushed her home, humming to her and rocking her in his arms.

Her manic episodes were scary, and Breeze feared she might hurt herself or someone else. But he felt for her, too. And maybe, deep down, he envied the way she felt everything. His feelings were tucked away, calcifying inside him. But Felice accessed her rage with a terrifying immediacy. She let it out. Her emotions didn’t eat her from the inside out, the way his did.

He came up behind Felice and kissed her cheek. “Let’s go to the roof for a minute.”

She beamed, all lashes and empty flirtation. “I thought you’d never ask.”

He grabbed her fur and his overcoat and hat, and they snuck out into the freezing February night. Breeze pulled down the fire escape in the back of the building and lifted Felice up onto it. Together, they climbed up to the flat unfinished roof. There was no railing, just a chimney pumping swirling plumes of smoke into the night sky.

The full moon was red. Fire red, and Felice was—as she liked to call herself—a voodoo chile. Ezra wouldn’t forget the vivid image of that moon as long as he lived.

She stood there, wrapped in her furs, hugging herself. Her face was curiously blank. She’d wrapped a piece of lace around her forehead, ornamenting it with costume jewels, as was the fashion. She could’ve passed for a child playing dress-up. At twenty, she’d lived enough lives to be forty, but at times, she reminded Ezra of a helpless kid.

Breeze stepped closer to her. “Felice, are you feeling poorly?”

Calmly, she averted her eyes and backed away from him. “I’m all right, why?”

“Good…” Ezra felt a foreboding sense of doom but carried on with his plan. “I wanted to give you something.”

He’d intended to give her the present after the party; it would be the perfect ending to a night on the town. But he’d decided now was better. A gift might shake her out of her state.

“Breeze!” Hope flashed behind her eyes. “How kind of you, darlin’. What for?”

He shrugged, turning on the charm. “Do I need a reason? You’re my girl.”

“My hero.” A tear tracked down her cheek.

Walking up to her, Breeze pulled a small box out of his coat pocket and placed it in her hand. Her eyes flew open, wide. “Open it.”

She did, hungrily. It was a four-strand pearl bracelet, just like the one Adelaide Hall had been wearing earlier that day. It was the most elegant piece of jewelry he’d ever seen.

He’d thought that giving her Adelaide’s bracelet would make her the happiest girl alive, just like she’d said. But she wasn’t happy. In slow motion, her expression sharpened. Her glare speared through him, like a knife.

“A bracelet?” she spit with palpable loathing. Her voice quieted to a dangerous whisper. “I thought it’d be a ring.”

“You… you don’t like it? It’s the one…”

“I know, the one Adelaide Hall was wearing. I know. I know. But I thought… I thought you asked me up here to marry me. Breeze, you don’t bring your girl to the roof in the middle of the night saying you have a gift, and then it’s not an engagement ring.”

He sputtered, confused. They were having two different conversations, on two different planets. “But we never talked about getting married. Were you expecting—”

“Why won’t you marry me?” She shrieked this at him, pacing maniacally. “You got another woman? I see how the girls at Eden Lounge hang on you. Those vultures, hungry for what’s mine. No one respects me in this town. Including my own fella. But I ain’t Mama. I won’t let a man ruin my life.” She stopped in front of him. “You’re a liar and a cheat.”

Breeze was neither of those things. He knew exactly what he was: a man who was smitten with his lady but had certainly never promised marriage. But Felice had a thunderous, unpredictable look on her face, and he didn’t want to worsen her mood.

“Will you take the bracelet?” Gently, he held her wrist and slipped it over her hand. The glossy pearls shone in the darkness. “See? It looks beautiful on you.”

She stared down at the bracelet, bitter tears streaming from her eyes.

“Breeze…”

“Yes?” He held his breath.

“Lo fired me from the chorus line. You told me you’d tell her to get the girls on my side. But she fired me instead, Breeze. She fired me!”

“Why?”

“One of those girls who snubbed me on Lenox? She… well, she fell down the stairs. Four crushed toes. She can’t dance for months. Lo said I hexed her with voodoo, and she fired me.”

Ezra’s stomach sank, a sense of doom overtaking him. He was starting to doubt that he could turn this night around.

“Please tell me you didn’t hurt her. Did you… push her down the stairs?”

“No, I used voodoo, just like Lo said.” She gave him a withering look. “That bitch had it coming.”

Breeze exhaled all the breath in his body. For the first time, he saw Felice clearly, without the haze of good sex and glamour. She was a little out of her mind. And he was a little afraid of her. Maybe he should’ve been all along. How had he been so stupid?

“I’ll talk to Lo. Let me fix it; I’ll get you back on the line.” He had no intention of doing this, but at this point, he had to say anything to calm her.

“No. Fix it by marrying me,” she stated flatly. “And take me back home to Louisiana. We could move to New Orleans. You’re Breeze Walker, Harlem’s own. You’d do so well there. We’d be a couple of swells, hosting grand parties and getting invites to the finest homes in town. And I’d get my baby back. I miss my baby so bad.

“I thought I’d be a star by now, but it’s ruined. I hate Harlem. I miss open spaces. Swamp sounds. I can’t see the stars here. Marry me,” she pleaded. “Marry me and take me home.”

Stunned, Breeze could only shake his head. Not only was he not marrying Felice; he also didn’t want to be with her. In this moment, he clearly understood that he wanted—no, needed—to be with someone he loved. He needed a woman who’d love him back, who would take care of him just as he would take care of her.

Besides, there was zero chance of him ever returning to the South. Breeze needed the crowds, the smoke-filled dance halls, the sound he helped invent. He was allowed to be a man in Harlem. In Harlem, he was free.

“I can’t do that,” he confessed quietly. “I won’t go back. I don’t belong there.”

“You don’t love me.” It was a question disguised as a declaration.

Much later, he would realize how much of a coward he was for not responding. Felice’s anger was eruptive, and he was terrified of pushing her into madness.

But Felice was already there. Her eyes had gone stormy. Gripping the bracelet tighter and tighter, she vibrated in full-bodied fury, rooted to her spot.

“I hope you die,” she said, in an eerily calm, measured hiss. “No, no, no. I hope you live. Ezra ‘Breeze’ Walker, I curse you with immortality. You will live forever, with no hope of escape. I know you don’t love me, but you will find true love one day. And then you’ll know the pain I feel. I curse you with this.

“Her face will haunt your mind until you find her, Ezra. And yes, you will find her and love her. But she’ll die just like me. On the very same day.”

And then, at 3:30 a.m. on February 29, 1928, Felice Fabienne flung herself off the roof of 225½ West 137th Street, plummeting four stories to her death.

She landed on the concrete outside the ground-floor apartment’s window. Inside, the partygoers raged on, unaware. Due to the brownstone’s shadow of tragedy, the owners moved out, it was boarded up and abandoned, and it stayed that way for over ninety years.

Eventually, the coroner packed Felice’s party dress, shoes, and bracelet in a box and sent it to her mother in Thibodaux, Louisiana. She was just one of the many starry-eyed small-town beauties who flocked to the big city, only to die unnoticed or fade into obscurity. Felice Fabienne was forgotten.

And this was how twenty-eight-year-old Ezra Walker became immortal.