On Sin Street tonight, the clubs are the only places in the city where you can still get booze, no curfew here, money buys anything. Monk passes Club Alabam, a few hookers testing the club’s Fruits of Islam bodyguards at the front door. On the corner, the DownBeat is jumping; a huge black man in a porkpie hat and gold vest stands toting a sawed-off shotgun at the upholstered doors.
Monk walks a block. Ivie’s Chicken Shack is jammed with people; men drink beer on curbs. There’s the old Dunbar Hotel, brownstone rising into the night, its olive canopy over the sidewalk, neon signs splashing rainbow lights.
Two doors down is the Congo Club. This is the joint—and some of the others down Sin Street—where his father played, Damon “Pocket” Monk. A thin, tall man with a big stand-up bass sticking out of the backseat of his DeSoto, always on the road to the next gig. Monk only knows him from a few sepia-tone photographs his mother kept in a dresser drawer. Mother once told him his father had his own name tattooed on his chest so that the image in every morning’s mirror would reflect his creed of the open road: nomad. In his lost notebook somewhere, Monk long ago scribbled an aphorism from some ancient scribe: The son can never know the father.
The sign blinks in yellow neon sizzling above Monk: TALL TAN TERRIFIC COPPER COLORED CHORUS GALS. Bamboo walls and fake palm trees line its facade; coconuts and Christmas lights loop over windows and the black padded doors. FOI bodyguards are stationed in the shadows of the jungle canopy. On each side of the upholstered doors, big wooden speakers blare jazz music. There’s a cymbal crash as the song ends, then that radio voice he’s come to recognize: All right, Sir Soul back here with you, baby. Now, as I promised, I got a special guest DJ tonight … Miss Compton Eve. Now a woman’s voice, slow, sultry: Good evening, this is Compton Eve … to all my brothers and sisters out there … tonight I want you to love … and burn … baby, burn … Monk feels electricity jolting down his spine: Good evening. He knows that voice too … vinyl records spilling on the sidewalk … the record jacket with the black-and-white photograph of Coltrane … Eve for Iva … Tokyo Rose. Brothers and sisters, they have oppressed you too long. Words change nothing, only action brings change. Let the fires consume all the symbols of their slavery and lies … let your children build from the ashes … burn, baby, burn … A gong booms sonorously as Coltrane blasts four piercing alto saxophone sonic notes, then his band lays down the rhythm as the sax blisters into a solo.
The black doors open, spilling Monk in blue light. Saxophone and piano and drums and bass thump and wail from inside. Monk cranes his head over a few Islam fezzes, trying to catch a glimpse of the old paternal haunt, then slips into the deep blue jazz interior.
Black men and women are drinking, laughing shoulder to shoulder, dark forms in clouds of cigarette smoke, beyond teak African masks frowning from walls and green jungle vines swaying in the smoke. Monk finds an empty stool at the jungle bar, next to a fat black man in sweat-drenched cream pants and open lime silk shirt, black sunglasses reflecting Christmas lights. “Coca-Cola, please.” Monk’s already sweating. At the corner of the bar, a pretty black waitress in a grass skirt and khaki blouse smiles at him as she sets drinks on a tray.
“Ain’t you,” a fat black man’s deep baritone voice, “Monk’s kid?”
“Yeah. My dad used to play here, back in the fifties.” He pulls out a crumpled dollar bill.
“Tha’s reet, no sheet,” the big black man laughs like a great bellows. “Chu ‘Hurricane’ Reed.” He shakes Monk’s hand. There’s a silver number five reed strung on a chain around his thick sweaty neck. “Well, I’m glad I hungover my hangover on this here stool, ’cause look who I bumped into. White man’s money is funny here, lock it in yo’ pocket,” Chu pushing the dollar back into Monk’s palm.
“Americo Monk, pleased to meet you, Mr. Reed.”
“Americo?” He grins, sips beer. “That’s beautiful. Call me Uncle Chu, please. He slides a bill toward the bartender: red paper, the number one above the words One Skrill printed in blurred black ink, two illegible signatures under an oval-framed silhouette of a man crowned with a huge Afro. Chu catches Monk’s quizzical look. “Nigger Tender, Soul Specie, Ghetto Gold, legal tender wherever the lender o’ presenter is black, brown, o’ renowned. Got denominations for a new black nation. Brother Bucks, Watts Wads bearin’ the glims of the founding hims: Booker Ts, John Browns, Lincoln’s on the ten bill, got Carver—we call him Peanuts—Thurgood, you can really swing if you got X and King … all part of the movement … out there ev’ry night,” Chu hooks a thumb toward the front door, “fightin’ for the right, that uprising before the sun rising, fire ’n’ pain to get on the soul train to a future black domain, to indehipendence.” Chu sips his beer. “I hope it takes this time, cuz after the fires comes the liars.”
“The riots?”
“I’ve peeped all this shit before. You wasn’t even a gleam in yo’ daddy’s bloodshot eye. Before I hooked up with ol’ Monk. Back in ’43, I was livin’ in Detroit durin’ the war, a young man, ’bout yo’ age now. All this killin’ and burnin’ out there? Same gory story in Detroit, only ’round twenty years ago or so, seems folks forgot or like to pretend they forget.”
“What happened?”
“Déjà voodoo. There was this project the government built, Negro housing they named the Sojourner Truth projects.” Chu laughs. “It was supposed to be for black people but whites thought the neighborhood should stay soul-free. So one hot summer day fistfights turned into street brawls turned into burning city blocks, just like out there. Rumors spread like fevers … white men throwin’ black mothers and babies into the river … white mobs with guns drivin’ in from the hills … black gangs stalkin’ white women in the ’hoods … lootin’ and burnin’ for days until FDR called in federal troops. Sound familiar?”
“Shit, I never knew.”
“I know.” Chu grins. “Like I says, folks like to pretend to forget. But, dig, Americo? That ain’t even the evil of it out there. The evil comes later, the liars after the fires. Back in ’43, the cops, the white people, newspapers, the city leaders and their so-called investigations. They discovered the shockin’ truth, the riots was instigated by uppity, unemployed Negroes … and black and them Mexican zoot-suit gangs … now, you dig ol’ Chu, same thing gonna happen in yo’ time. Fires, then liars.”
“But that’s bullshit.” Monk glowers across the bar, thinking of his notebook.
Reed shakes his big head, grinning. “Time will tell. You sound just like yo’ daddy. Look like him too. Yo’ pa was cool drool, a fucker of a plucker. I conked with Monk back in nine an’ fifty, real nifty. He was a gone bass ace, you prob’ly a chip off the ol’ wick wherever he dipped.”
“I don’t remember him.”
Chu’s big face winces with pain. “Well, I’m on my break, so fade ’n’ I’ll have another brew ’n’ tell you true.” He’s nodding to the bartender, who slides a cold mug of beer across the bar top. “Yeah, I remember pickin’ up Monk—yo’ daddy—a few times at his house. You was a little boy, frowning behind that little beat-up Wurlitzer piano.”
“I was eight. Dad made me take lessons.”
“I know. It’s a foundation, he’d say, you can build to any instrument from piano.”
“More like an off-key hell than a foundation.” Monk laughs. “I don’t know how my mom put up with it. Dad hired this white woman to teach me, a German lady, Mrs. Von Walpurgis or something like that. Man, she hated teaching me those scales as much as I hated doing them.”
Chu sips beer. “I remember one gig yo’ daddy was mad as hell, said you wrote stories and drawings all over the sheet music.” Monk smiles, nods his head. “You still writin’?”
“I was,” he says bitterly, “in a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Well, tha’s good.”
“Dad wanted me to be a musician. I think Mom was relieved it didn’t take.”
“Life on the road ain’t for married men. Now, old Chu’s single and likes to mingle. Yo’ old man and me, see our generation, well, there wasn’t a whole lot a options for us … but if you could play an instrument, that was a golden ticket out of the ghetto. Sure beats bein’ a Pullman porter, or if you was real lucky, working at the post office.”
Chu extracts a canary-colored joint from his shirt pocket and a chrome Zippo lighter. “When we played together, Monk talked about you many times. He was torn. He felt bad, knew he wasn’t doin’ the right thing as a father, but he was proud to be a good provider, making sure you and yo’ mother had money. Some cats I know blow all their wad on libations and sensations.” Hurricane lights up the joint. “Back when we was playin’ together in the fifties, you had to look hip, zoot, all reet. Monk spent half his paycheck at the barber’s and cleaners, but man, his drapes were shaped, put the dares to the squares.” Chu exhales a cloud of cloying reefer smoke over Monk’s head. “A few years back, one gig Monk showed up after sleepin’ in his swing suit, then for a while after that, all these folks would show up at the clubs with these copy-cat threads all wrinkled and frazzled on purpose, ’cause they Einsteined Monk must be settin’ a new style profile with his dweezled front, when all he’d done was cop some doss after passin’ out in his drapes.” Chu laughs.
Monk nods as a vivid memory flashes through his mind: his father picking him up from Grape Street Elementary School, mothers and annoyed-looking fathers in dirty work clothes and all the other kids staring up mouths agape at the handsome, rail-thin black man in his sharp black-and-white silk suit, polished indigo Florsheims, pomade, conked hair, the thin mustache that looked too perfect to be real.
“Those early days, ’50 or ’51, us and the band, we’d play anywhere. Monk always made sure we had money. Shit, we’d play the Elks Hall down Central, or the Masonic Temple on Fifty-fourth. White folks’ skiffles on the other side of town, where the white ho-dads had a two-bits-a-head invite to hear some race music.” Chu grins. “The ho-dads grooved to the found sound and dug us Negroes with Happy Feet that like to groove all dim long.” Chu speaks in this pinched nasal, accent-free white man’s voice: “See Arnold, how happy they are. Why yes, Bob, so poor and not a care in the world.” Hurricane laughs, returns to his thick baritone. “Sheeeet, regular Negrotarians … the hos never copped that all we wanted was their cabbage to keep another month off the agate.” The unctuous white man’s voice: “Why, Bob, don’t you find their jive language just marvelous?”
Monk almost spits Coke, he’s laughing so hard.
“We even played for the Mexicans at their parties in Boyle Heights, Pico Rivera.” Chu drinks beer. “Every damn time those Mexicans would start drinkin’ tequila and there’d be a fight and we’d run to the car with my horn and his ax, then we’d have to run back, dodging flying beer bottles and brawlers, to help Tritone Cootie lug his drum kit piece by damn piece to the car. Have a brew on ol’ Uncle Chu?”
“Okay, Mr. Reed. Just one.”
Chu signals the bartender and a frosty beer mug slides before Monk. “Yeah, yo’ daddy and me, we played all the clubs on Sin Street. The Alabam down the street, Memo’s, Honey Murphy’s, the Plantation Club. Monk was—is one ace of bass, yes sir, wherever he is, Chicago, New York … you ever hear from him?” Monk shakes his head. “Not even a postcard?”
“Nope.” Monk sips beer.
“Tha’s a shame.” Chu sucks a deep drag from the reefer. “Yeah, we played with the best, Bumps Myers, Joe Comfort, Pee Wee Crayton … that was the twilight of bop. There used to be four times the clubs then as now, all the way from Washington clear down to Manchester. The Congo’s the last of the sweet spots. The combo deck is good, the boogfloor is fungshun, craps tables in the back are still rollin’ the bones and the usual African Dominoes action, upstairs might still even be a bordello or two, so I’m told.” Chu slips down his sunglasses and winks a bloodshot eye. “Yeah, used to be Charlie Parker, now it’s goddamn Chief Parker, messin’ with folks in front of the clubs, searchin’ brothers for drugs, any excuse to close down the clubs. You know what really made the cops crazy?” Monk shakes his head. “All the ofay college girls flocking like fine white birds into the clubs … that drove those cracker cops nuts. All these luscious girls chasin’ after us jazzmen like yo’ dapper dad and yo’s truly, the man with the big horn.” Hurricane grins. “Syncopation and fornication. Now, yo’ daddy wasn’t a bad man, he was just a man, and like I said, a wife and the road life don’t groove. Women were everywhere, black and white. Hell, they still are. Those days the band, all the Negro bands had these groups of young fade chicks followin’ us around, we called ’em our bopsicles, these groupie girls. You dig, Chu’s an old cherry picker from way back, but Monk was quiet.” Chu shakes his jowly head. “Jazz hounds, picture snatchers, autograph scratchers. Studyettes from every college of knowledge. Diggin’ Negro blues, tryin’ to be cool, or researchin’ in Negro Heaven, scratchin’ terminal term papers like ‘Dionysian Ethno-eroticism in Race Music.’” Monk laughs. “It’s hard to say no to the rabbit habit. So we dug the tails of these nightingales.”
“When’s the last time you played together?” Monk sips beer.
“Last chime we grooved was the last bright of the last decade, before the sixties and hippies.” (December 31, ’59, an auspicious year: on 113th Street, under cover of darkness, Elgin Q. Boyd slips his suitcase onto the seat of his station wagon and drives out of Watts, the Last White Man to leave the city.) “It was the twilight of bop, it was the hep of chimes, it was the bummer of chimes.”
“I’d like to hear about that, Mr. Reed.” Monk grins, for once not dwelling on his notebook.
“Tha’s Uncle Chu, please. It was right here, in the Congo Club. We tore up the joint. No one played bass like Monk, maybe Big Jay McNeely or Mingus. That was the last time I saw him, said he had a gig in Detroit, I think. A little reefer madness?” Chu offering the stub of joint to Monk.
“No thanks, I’m good.” Monk smiles, sips beer.
“I feel bad, I’ve probably spent more time with yo’ old man than you.”
“That’s okay. I’m grown. My mom’s around, she’s cool.”
A young white girl approaches Chu, black hair in a ponytail, wearing plum culottes and a crop-top pink blouse. “Mr. Reed, could I have your autograph?” She nervously offers a pen and this blue album cover that reads City Blues.
“Sure, baby.” Chu takes the pen and album. “What’s yo’ name?”
“Carla,” in a small, nervous voice. Chu scribbles words on the cover. “Mr. Reed, my friends and I have a bet. Should bop be called colored or Negro music?”
“You call it whatever you want, sweetie,” handing her the pen and album. “To me it’s just jazz.”
“Thanks!” Clutching the album to her chest, she disappears into the plastic hanging vines and the dark tables across the club.
“See what I mean? Cute but a real cube.” Chu sips his beer. “I wish you coulda seen the good side of Monk. This one time, I think it was over at the Finale Club, this young cat, a real gone sax player, Local 767 pulled him off the stage, that’s the musicians’ union, ’cause he didn’t have no damn union card. So Monk paid his membership fee right then and there so this young man could play and get paid. Another time, I forget what club … I got to quit smokin’ this shit,” Chu laughs, stubs out the reefer in an ashtray. “We all got thrown out of this club ’cause he refused to use the segregated Chamber of Commerce.”
“Chamber of Commerce?”
“Tha’s what we call the toilet … as many an illicit transaction takes place inside and around the porcelain chamber.” Chu laughs. “Now where was I?” Chu slips his dark glasses on. “Yeah, ol’ Monk was one of a kind. Soul solfeggio.”
“Soul what?”
“Solfeggio … he played only by ear. Couldn’t read music. Tell you a little secret. In his bass case, he had a notebook of sheet music. But the sheets, they were all drawn on with cartoons and designs, and all these notes and stories about life and people.”
Monk stares in awestruck silence at Chu’s jowly grin under the Christmas-light sparkles reflecting in his dark glasses.
“I’ll tell ya somethin’ else too, Americo. Yo’ daddy was an outsider … that’s what we call a cool cat who plays against the melody, outside the notes. He had a vision … a kind of way of seein’ how everything in his pages, in his notes, connected in the future. ’Course, in his case he didn’t see the patterns, he heard ’em.” Chu grins, his sunglasses locked for a moment on Monk. “Well, I got to go on, nice seein’ you, kid.”
Chu Hurricane slumps from the barstool like a dark mountain. Monk watches as Chu picks up his sax from its stand on the stage; three band members wait behind their instruments. Chu slips a silver reed into his saxophone, the notorious number five reed, which only the mightiest wind wailers can master. Behind the drums there is a small stack of nutmeg cans, the drummer’s addicted to the stuff, Chu grinning as he remembers some girl last night remarked, Look at all that nutmeg! You boys sure must bake a lot of pies.
Up on the stage, a spotlight shines a dusty cone of light down at a black man with a red bow tie, white vest, silver suit. “Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is your master of ceremonies, Pigmeat Markham. I have good news. I’ve agreed to stop performing stand-up comedy, and so the riots have officially ended.” Laughter, a drumroll and cymbal crash from the drummer on stage. “I just came back from performing in Vegas … to a riot! Sinatra and the Rat Pack were at the club. Sinatra saved my life. After the show, two big guys were beating the shit out of me. Sinatra saw what was happening and came up, and he said … that’s good enough for now, boys.” Scattered laughter. “I bumped into Sammy Davis, Jr. too. Man, his hair reminded me of my wife … both used to be kinky.” More laughs, snare drum and cymbal crash. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it for mister embouchure, the king of winds, hittin’ another homer outta the park, Chu ‘Hurricane’ Reed and his band!”
Chu takes center stage, red and blue Christmas lights shimmering above him like stars suspended in a firmament of cigarette and reefer nebula. “What’s the word?” Hurricane calls out to the crowd.
“Thunderbird!” the audience shouts and claps. The band thunders into the bop assault of “Good Sauce from the Gravy Bowl.”
Chu stares down into the copper gleaming funnel of the horn, as if falling down into its golden vortex. He’s got to get outside, away from the melody, perhaps time itself, as if to find a key to somehow stop the madness and violence and hate outside, beyond the sound.
Hurricane’s fat black Buddha’s face is pale as his fingers blur and poly-chords ring the night, the S of the horn’s piping a brass-plated serpent screaming, ascending toward some millennial key. The black ballooned mouth breathes life into the reed, into the recondite brass chambers and flanges: eerie chords that glissando higher, ninths to shattering elevenths. Chu’s face is a black sweating mask about to explode as he inverts the notes and breaks through, moving outside, a long arpeggio anviling each screaming note higher. He’s skirting the edge, a Bop Gabriel wailing toward a crescendo that not even he can transcend: a splintering twelfth note sustained for an infinite moment at perihelion before the sound and the solo finally diminish with Reed’s last mighty breath: he leans against the piano, bellows cheeks gasping in air as the audience applauds and cheers. Outside, in the streets filled with blood and fire, has the sound, the soul, the energy they’ve released made some kind of difference?
“Bathroom?” Monk inquires toward the faint wisp of the bartender.
“Upstairs to your right.”
Monk climbs a rickety staircase garlanded with vines and ascending African masks; below, the crowd yells and applauds as bass and drums play solo riffs. Monk brushes away vines. Can’t a brother just get home? The dim hallway is shadow-suspended with smoke drifting from downstairs. Where’s that bathroom, left, right, fuck. He lurches through a door. Rusted iron cargo walls, welded rungs fading into cigarette smoke, Motown music blaring from a scratchy phonograph. Karmann backs under blinking painted electric bulbs casting pastel shadows. Marcus and Dalynne sit kissing, coiled in piles of blue and purple pillows. Slim-Bone, Felonius back Karmann toward the pillows: she cups her hand protectively around the swell of her belly, dark wine splashing from her plastic cup … Monk grabs Felonius, they topple over strands of lights, the phonograph screeches, bottles of wine clatter from a table, rainbow lights flicker to darkness—
Monk opens his eyes: citrine waves and foamy surf ebb and flow above him, a marine-themed ceiling. He’s lying on a bed. Monk bolts, sitting up. A white cat springs from the lap of a girl sitting beside him on the bed: raven hair laced with deep green strands like seagrass, so long it cascades and disappears under aqua silk blankets and frilly cream sheets like sea foam. Hyacinth eyes, black lipstick, a delicate child’s face, pale, made translucent by the dark counterbalance of black hair. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m C.C.” Smiling, a black lacquered fingernail tracing down his sweaty arm.
“Oh shit, is this, ah,” watching the ivory cat stretch its nails into a teal carpet, “a cathouse?”
“I prefer the word brothel.” She sits up, tiny rose nipples under diaphanous green and gold.
“Oh shit … did we, did we—”
“Not yet.”
“How old are you?” Monk scoots to the edge of the bed.
“Age is such an arbitrary concept,” then laughter, deep like a woman but trailing disturbingly into little-girl giggles. “Don’t be so … insular.”
Monk’s gazing around, blue-green submerged light splaying from a lamp: a dresser and a table with tiny fountains, a water wheel and a water clock all softly dripping and tinkling; a wall is centered with a great saltwater aquarium, bubbles glistening up in waters suffused under indigo electric bulbs, golden seahorses suspended in glowing space.
“Relax. You came in and had some kind of fainting spell. Kept mumbling ‘Karmann’ and something about a notebook. Is she your girlfriend?” That ebony fingernail gliding over his collarbone.
“Man, that dope downstairs is something else. You’ve got an interesting collection of, ah, water apparatus.” The room seems almost misted with the cool negative ions of the water clockworks, wheels, tinkling fountains, gurgling ladders.
“Well, in a brothel time is money. I’ve always been interested in horology—no wisecracks, that’s the study of time.”
“C.C. What kind of name is that?” shrugging away her hand.
“Canadian Club. Would you like some?” She stands, sways toward the dresser, beautiful buttocks shimmering under the gown, but there’s a hint of adolescent, jiggling baby fat.
“No thanks. Just had a couple of beers with Mr. Reed.” Seahorses stare dolefully out at Monk in their heliotrope sea, tiny fins flapping, like limpid, yellow changelings.
She laughs, pours a shot of whiskey into a dusty tumbler. “Yeah, he’s a live wire, Sir C—that’s what we call him, C for ‘Chu.’” She sits next to him on the bed, too close, scents of brine and lilac and honey wafting into his nose.
“Is he your—”
“Pimp?” More laughter, she drains the tumbler. “No. All us girls up here are independent contractors.”
“Well, I have to go. Sorry I barged in on you.” Monk stands but her little hand squeezes his.
“What’s your rush? Stay a few minutes. You look a little wobbly to me. I won’t bite you … unless you want me to.” C.C. takes a pearl seashell brush from the nightstand and slowly combs her long thick strands.
Monk rubs sweaty palms on his pants legs. The seahorses curl and float in their purple world, snout mouths pulsing, perhaps silently warning him? “Maybe just a few minutes,” he croaks, light-headed, gazing around the watery den, tongue thick. “I’ll take that CC now, please.”
She saunters to the bureau, chinks a good shot in the tumbler. Monk drinks it down, opens his eyes: she’s standing before him, budding nipples inches from his sweaty face, dark thatch shadowed between her legs under shimmering chartreuse, brine, lilac, honey. “You came here for a reason.”
“I was looking for the bathroom. Besides, I have a girlfriend.”
“You don’t understand, Monk,” sitting down next to him.
“How’d you know my name?”
“You were saying all sorts of things in your little nightmare. Monk, Felonius, a notebook lost in a … trench? And Slim-Bone—I’d like to meet him,” giggling. “The Congo brothel is … different. There’s a lot of rooms up here, and each room is different, with a different girl and john.”
Trench. Monk frowns. “Are they all—the rooms, I mean—as unique as yours?” The whiskey warms him.
“Some even more startling,” C.C. laughs. “This place exists on many levels … for the hedonists, for those on the physical plane, there are the usual rooms, girls, and kinks … there’s interracial for the hip, there’s segregated fun for the squares … even segregated love-ins. But when the johns’ proclivities explore more, how should I say, more cerebral, philosophical levels, that’s when us girls really start the meter ticking. The man in the room for the love-in can’t face just a single girl, but needs multiple girls because he himself is fragmented … there’s a gent in Talia’s room, she’s tied him up, wants to know if the universe has a purpose? When his time’s up he’ll come out spent, exhausted, on the verge of belief in an extrinsic or intrinsic finality or purpose in all matter … in Mona’s room—you should see Mona’s room—an old man’s crying in her naked arms, having experienced with—through—her a panpsychism breakthrough, now he sees all matter as sentient.”
“What kind of whorehouse is this?” Monk wants to go but her legs, her breasts, the brine and lilac, the child’s face with the dark eyes of an old sea nymph …
“This is a metaphysical brothel, honey.” She pours another shot in the glass, Monk hypnotized by every curl, wisp of childish nakedness under diaphanous turquoise spangles. “You put your money down and we strip—strip you of any illusions or hang-ups or shaky worldviews. We’ll give you the best fuck of all time—a mind fuck.” C.C. sips whiskey, presses the tumbler into his hands, squeezes his trembling fingers. “Daphne’s in her room, dressing, undressing herself. Is she the same girl or is she different each time? Her john’s an endurantist, thinks objects never change, but she’ll take off the leather pants, a painful bruise where she’s laced them too tight, and john’ll leave tonight, a perdurantist, every curb he crosses, every mailbox, every wall now in a constant state of riot and change.”
“Until he gets Mona the next time.” Monk sips whiskey: the wheels drip and turn, water time splashing by in echoing streams and gurgling mysteries. “Mental whores.”
“You’re beginning to dig,” C.C. raking black nails over his thigh. “We know what our johns need, not what they think they want. You should see Theda’s room. All white, no bed, furniture, zero. They come in and leave later with the greatest sex experience of their lives, because it all took place only in the mind. Her johns lie there, fully dressed, and Theda puts them in a mental construct of ecstasy. She’s an idealist, the world only exists in the mind.”
“Who’s the object, the whore or the john?” Monk grins. “Who is the whore, what is the john?”
C.C. smiles, nods, then her black lips frown and in the aquatic lamplight she looks ancient and wise. “I’m afraid we’re the whores, incorporeal yet objects at the same time. We have no metaphysical identities of our own. Empty vessels, reflecting only the strengths or cracks in each john’s philosophy. It’s not all fun and games. Some of the johns, they come up here all liquored up, you know, start acting like swines … then we become a kind of mirror. Be careful, there is danger. There is a … a cosmic mechanism that sometimes must be invoked … Last night, in Lara’s room, her john had his cosmological thrill. Is the universe finite or infinite? She says, ‘Imagine the edge of a finite universe,’ but he can’t, no one can. He jumped out the window. One time, a group of drunk white sailors came upstairs, wanted black girls to dress up like slaves. Sir C and the boys downstairs slipped a Mickey in their booze, shanghaied them. They woke up in the pitching shadows of an oak-and-pine hull, ankles chained to tarred floorboards, above them, through the iron mesh of rusted deck grates, Negro mariners marshaled the sails of their barque toward the port of Sofala, and the African markets that awaited their cargo of white slaves.” She guides his hands over her tiny breasts. He can feel her heartbeat, her black lips part in a sigh, lilac warmth bathing his face.
“I gotta go.” Monk pulls his hands free, trying to ignore the bulging heat beneath his pants.
“No, you can’t go, I won’t let you,” she hisses. “Just a little longer, please?” Her voice is low and sweet, pale angel’s face glowing up into his tired eyes. Only her spidery hand rests gently on his knee, but Monk feels as if an impossible weight holds him down, as if the gurgling and wheeling water machines themselves exert the gravity of submerged fathoms pressing against him.
“This is just a misunderstanding, please let me go.” On the dresser, the ivory cat sits, jade eyes mesmerized before the purplish aquarium, studying the seahorses congealed in their violet, watery prism. What’s she doing? Some kind of hypnosis—
“Don’t be gauche. You’re in a metaphysical brothel. There are no accidents. What’ll it be, big boy,” C.C. slipping a pale leg over his lap, “determinism or free will? You think your journey has been one of free will but every step has already been determined.”
“Please, I have to get home.” Tell her she’s too late, the notebook is gone—
“No! You can’t leave!” Hissing, her cinder eyes reflecting dangerous depths. “Once you taste me, you’ll forget about her.” She squeezes the hardness beneath his jeans. Monk closes his eyes, a powerless dread swooning over him. C.C. pulls his hand to her black lips, kissing his fingers. “Bitch!” Slapping away his hand, she jumps from the azure satin bed. “Moly.” Tears flood her mascaraed eyes.
“Who?” Monk opens his eyes, an invisible weight seeming to lift from paralyzed limbs.
“Not who, what!” C.C. screams, stamping a naked foot. “An herb, your fingers stink of it!”
The gris-gris. Monk wobbles to his feet: the tinkling water wheels have stopped, one or two final drops plinking in their dark pools.
“You’re under her protection, you can split now.” She sits on the bed, a little girl, wiping mascara from her eyes. Seahorse eyes follow him. He walks, each step a little lighter as if he’s emerging from invisible depths, and he’s out the door, down the staircase, and into the smoke and vine-tangled light and the reassuring throb of the Congo Club’s saxophone and thumping drums.
The club’s almost empty, the jazz piping from radio speakers. Reed and his band are gone, the bartender’s wiping down the empty bar top, waitresses filling trays with empty glasses. Monk sprints out the padded doors, bathed in lemon neon blinking lights as he jogs down the street to the Finale Club. He sees a couple of parked cars but no burgundy Corvair convertible, no ride home.