Trading Dreams at Midnight Read online

  She didn’t know what was happening anymore as she lifted herself up on the bar stool. Disoriented first over the fact that she was actually sitting on a bar stool, then over what Alfred had just said about some Frank? Kicking Frank’s ass? That she’d suggested he do it?! She tried to piece through the crowd to follow Alfred’s pin-striped suit jacket. Stopped herself suddenly, then swiveled around ever so slowly to see if it was there. It was. Brown-colored liquid in a short glass, no ice. His drink. She was staring down at his drink.

  She pulled back the clasp on her satin clutch purse and fingered the warm smooth glass of the vanilla extract bottle thinking this is too easy. She looked around her; the man on one side of her thoroughly engaged in loud talking about how a building had collapsed on him and he’d walked away unscathed, the man on the other side of her speaking love to the bowl of chitterlings he was gobbling. She put both her hands inside the purse to unscrew the lid but then she heard a voice say, Choose your poison, and she jumped and almost screamed. It was the bartender. “Whiskey sour’s on the birthday boy tonight. You want that or something more’n that?”

  “What’s on the birthday boy is fine,” she said as she closed her purse and thought it made a sound like a gun going off, then opened it again when the bartender walked away, hurrying to remove the bottle cap. She fitted the bottle in the palm of her hand and brought her hand up to scratch her cheek and in one quick motion lowered her hand and dumped the contents of the bottle into Alfred’s drink. She dropped the empty bottle back into her clutch purse. Alfred’s drink was now to the rim of the glass. It was too full. He would notice. She leaned her head in and gently raised the glass to soup up a bit. Her heartbeat was competing with the drums in here as she swallowed and then breathed deeply to try to settle herself though she felt the need suddenly to gag. The bartender returned and slid her drink down in the space next to Alfred’s. She almost drained her own drink in several swallows, trying to douse the urge to spit up. She was surprised at how easily the drink went down. She felt warm suddenly, and pretty. Stifled the impulse to giggle as she angled herself on the bar stool and crossed her legs and looked out on the party time glad that she’d added the touch of black lace to the hem of her dress. Dresses worn by half of the women in here could have benefited from a redesign, she thought. Smiling now that Alfred had told her to pretty up the area. She did giggle now and let out a small belch that made her laugh even harder. Saw Alfred walking back in her direction. Was certain his eyes went soft for her as she lowered her lashes Josephine Baker–style and when he was standing right over her she let go with, “Hey, good looking, what you got cooking?”

  “That depends, Miss Lady, what you wanting to be served?” he said as he reached in behind her and took his drink and held it in his hand.

  She leaned in close to him the way she imagined Dorothy Dandridge might do. She liked the feel of him standing over her, so strong and sturdy, the sense of mutual proprietorship as she told herself that he didn’t even need whatever were the contents of that vanilla extract bottle; hadn’t his eyes just gone soft for her just like they had the day she peered into his eyes through the window of Sam’s Delicatessen. She hadn’t done any hocus-pocus that day. He turned the glass up to his lips and she held her breath while he swallowed, despite what she’d just told herself about not needing for him to drink it; she felt her whole chest open up when he put down his glass, his glass empty. But now he grimaced and motioned for the bartender.

  “Why you watering down my Southern Comfort?” he barked at the bartender. “That’s right. And don’t look at me like I’m crazy. You the one crazy if you think I don’t know my own Southern Comfort.”

  Nan pulled at his arm. “You know, Alfred, it just occurred to me, I might have drank yours by mistake and you, well maybe you just drank mine.”

  The bartender slammed another short glass of brown-colored liquid in front of Alfred. He glared at Alfred, then said, “Just to keep the peace, my man,” and walked away.

  “Now you see, Miss Lady, that’s no respect.” Alfred talked in Nan’s ear. “Like Frank over there showing me no respect. I’m glad you called me back over here though, ’cause Frank ain’t worth me bruising my knuckles over. Though I did promise him he’s got an open invitation to meet my fist. What’s your name, sugar?”

  “Nan,” she said, confused again about him saying she’d called him back over as she watched him empty this drink too and then motion for another one. “You might remember me from a few Saturdays ago at the bus stop on Spruce. Your sugar was high and well, I got lipstick on your jacket.”

  He smiled. “Yeah? Lipstick on my jacket. What? Were we dancing?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “We were dancing. I’m sorry you don’t remember. You a good dancer, Alfred.”

  “Well, dance with me now. I swear on my dead momma’s grave I won’t forget this one.”

  He extended his hand to help Nan down from the bar stool. His hand, its vastness swallowed hers up and she felt dizzy from the heat of his hand, the heat of his entire large self as he covered her in his arms. He moved into her and then away, then back into her and she picked up his rhythm and followed him as if she’d been born doing this. The small space of a dance floor was crowded and they were jostled about but Nan barely noticed, so caught up in the feel of Alfred’s arms caging her like this. She understood the nature of sin right now, thought sin nothing more than pure pleasure stretched to its extreme. This dance with Alfred, she thought, the purest, most pleasing thing she’d ever done. She let her head press against his chest, her head swimming, her equilibrium nonexistent, her ability to stand up straight right now totally dependent on Alfred’s arms. She let herself go completely against him, was about to tell him that the room was spinning and she thought she might faint. Or fall. She was falling. She screamed and tried to hold on to Alfred but he was being pulled away and she ended up grabbing for the red and blue air. The air let her down. She hit the floor that pulsed like prairie land beneath a stampede. This was a stampede, she thought as she covered her face from the high heels and the thick leather soles coming down from all directions. Screaming coming down too practically doused by the heavy grunting sounds of men fighting, the umphs and ows and mother-fuck-shit-you-bast-I’ma-kick-your-ass sounds. A bar fight this was. She’d heard of such things from her unchurched cousins. Never imagined that she’d be caught up in one herself, praying for her life as she was now. Praying for Alfred too, hollering out his name. The floor quaked for real then. Alfred landed on his back next to Nan. A white balloon fell on top of him and bounced along his chest. It burst and Nan clutched at her heart and whispered, “Mercy Jesus.” Alfred stared up at the ceiling. He made a laughing sound and then he was out.

  Two ox-sized men dragged Alfred out of the bar by his feet. Nan followed behind yelling for them to watch his head, don’t bang his head. He had high sugar anyhow and the whole thing with Frank, she was sure, was a misunderstanding. They left him on the ground on the corner of the Bainbridge Street bar. The ground intermittently red and blue from the flashing neon lights of the bar. Nan sat down on the ground next to him and put his head in her lap. She loosened his tie and fanned him and called his name. She pulled her lacey handkerchief from her purse and wiped at the trickle of blood under his nose. His lips were busted, his eyes on the way to swelling shut. She needed ice, witch hazel. The Sun Ray across the street long since closed this late on a Saturday night. She thought about trying to hail down a red car but that could get him arrested for public drunkenness. A trolley pulled to a stop on the corner. Its squealing brakes sounded like silver pellets hitting the pavement all around them, then the rumble as it rolled away leaving people like tree branches shaken loose after a storm. The people walking past them now feeling the need to comment and Nan wondered what gave them the nerve as they said things like: One too many, huh? and I’d send that nigger back where he came from, and Damn, somebody got their natural ass kicked tonight.

  She rubbed his hair and kissed his
forehead as if he was already the acknowledged love of her life. He started coming to then, squinted up at Nan. “Hey there, sugar, what’s your name?” he asked.

  She just shook her head back and forth. Didn’t even matter that he didn’t remember her name. She believed he knew her name. Could almost hear him calling her name from some nonintoxicated place burrowed deep inside of him and covered over with so many layers that even if whatever she’d poured into his drink had any power, it was impotent in the face of what Nan believed to be his goodness. That’s what she thought she heard calling her name right now. His goodness.

  “Doesn’t matter what my name is,” she said. “What matters is why I’m here.”

  “Why you here, sugar?”

  “To help you change your ways.”

  “My ways are mine. Don’t concern nobody but me.”

  “Your ways gonna be the death of you, Alfred. I can help you. I can save you, I know I can. Me and Jesus can save you.”

  Through the slits his punched-out eyes were becoming he took in Nan, remembering the image of her on the bar stool, the scarlet-colored backless dress that formed her hips, the black seamed hose, the heart-shaped mouth, her hair unloosed around her face, and she bore, he thought, a striking resemblance to Lena Home. Looked like Lena Horne now with the blue and red light flashing down on her. No way he could deny Lena. No way he could continue on the route he was traveling either. She was right about that, it was killing him the hard way, over and over, every night a new awful death; every morning a head-in-the-toilet resurrection. He started to cry then. “Save me, Lena, please baby, save me.”

  Nan flagged down a cab and took him home to her apartment on Catherine Street that smelled to him of bleach and cake batter. She put ice to his lips, salve to his eyes, washed down the open cuts with peroxide. Then spooned him up the pot liquor from her mustard greens to help him fight off infection. No alcohol though. In the morning she left him a cup of strong black coffee on the end table next to the couch where he’d slept. Told him she was on her way to church, she’d be pleased to fry him a mess of eggs, when she returned, and layer it between buttered toast and salt pork, though she doubted he’d be able to keep it down. He confirmed that he wouldn’t by clutching his stomach and she hurried for a pot for him to vomit in. Though he could barely lift his head because of the feel of hammers falling alternating from the front to the back, he managed to motion for her to come closer, whispered out that he was thirsty, please, please, could she leave him something to drink. She produced a pitcher of ice water, pulpy orange juice in a glass bottle. No alcohol though. He touched his head, his barely opened eyes, his cheekbone that throbbed to the beat of the hammers in his head. Gasped out that he was in pain, could she leave a little taste of something for pain. She said of course, what was she thinking, of course he needed something for the pain. Promptly offered Anacin tablets in a tin, the tin opened to make it easy for him. No alcohol though. When she returned from church she fussed over him, checked his forehead for a fever one minute, brought him ice chips sprinkled with ginger the next. Even whipped up two pair of pajamas from leftover blue fabric from the choir robes she’d made so that when he sweated through one, there was a crisp clean pair for him to change into. No alcohol though.

  The second dry day at Nan’s, Alfred was sure he would go into the shakes and end up in a sanitarium as he maneuvered the hallway to enter the healing parlor she had set up for him in the back bedroom where he took to the four-poster bed and collapsed all over again. It was a cozy room the color of cream from the ribbed bedspread to the lacy coverlet to the tuxedo-striped wallpaper to the velvet fainting chair to the boxy victrola for playing LPs. The coziness was lost on him at first but by the third day his eyesight had cleared and his stomach had settled and his senses opened to the rhythms of the house, the clean and quiet order of things, the smell of bleach early morning as she washed down the concrete of the backyard, the early morning rumba sounds her sewing machine made. He became accustomed to her sweet comings and her goings when before she left for work she’d offer him a Bible to thumb through, a Tribune to read. In the evenings she’d prop on the edge of the fainting couch across from the bed as he ate the meal she’d prepared that had progressed through the week from clear brothy renderings to stewed chicken and dumplings with homemade applesauce on the side.

  She’d tell him about her day, how many sleeves she attached, the spats between coworkers. She’d relate the headlines, pieces of dropped gossip she’d picked up as she tunneled through the block home. Had only pieces to relate, not whole stories because she didn’t tarry as was her usual custom from house to house. Didn’t get her daily updates about the progression of this one’s pregnancy, that one’s mother-in-law travails, the other one with the bad-seed son. She was in too much of a hurry to get in her own front door. Enthralled as she was by the feel of opening her door in the afternoon knowing he was up here, the house seeming to know too the way the air sighed so contentedly from the living room to the kitchen, and especially as she’d move through the hallway and approach the back bedroom where he was tucked away, the pink pansies on the hallway wallpaper winking at her because his being here was a secret after all, not even Goldie knew that he was here.

  By Friday Alfred’s true coloring had returned and his robustness, Nan noticed as she sat on the edge of the fainting couch and chattered in a soft voice and watched Alfred enjoy the butterfish and rice. She was telling him about a dog she’d seen on her way to work. Described the black and white dog that she said had spooked her. Something about the dog’s stance, the way he tilted his head reminded her of her dead uncle. The dog even tried to follow her onto the bus and when she called the dog by her uncle’s name, said Uncle Latch, stay, stay, the dog put his head down, his tail between his legs, and slithered on around the corner. She said she practically cried the whole ride to work missing her uncle suddenly.

  What Nan didn’t say as she looked up at the frosted glass of the window with the hand-stained diamond in the center, keeping her focus on the sky-blue colored diamond instead of on him sitting up in the bed, his pleasing features having returned as the swelling went down, his manliness bursting through the hastily made pajamas, is how many times of the day she thought of him here, wanting to take her foot from the sewing machine pedal and rush home even as her workday was just beginning. Nor did she say right now that she guessed he’d be feeling his own strength soon enough and would leave here and head on home. Hoping as she thought it that he wasn’t strong enough, not that she wanted him weak, she just wanted him here.

  Alfred listened to the dog story; he was touched by the story. So much about Nan touched him since he’d been here. Strengthened him too. He even thought he might be able to tolerate a little jazz music this evening though he couldn’t remember enjoying music without a drink in his hand. Thought this would be his test of making it as an on-the-wagon man, his ability to enjoy his music through undiluted ears. He cleared his throat and asked what kind of music did she have around the house, and if she had none at all that was fine. Wanted to say that her voice was music enough though he didn’t say it; this too was something he was unaccustomed to doing without benefit of strong drink, acting on his impulse with a woman. Though he felt moved to be impulsive with Nan right now. That she wasn’t beautiful moved him most of all, the purity of that. No having to question a beguiling smile for authenticity, no distracting nymph-like frame all up in his face clouding his logic as his pants pocket were emptied of his substantial end-of-the-week wages, no knock on the door followed by a guilty expression because she’d gotten her times with her men mixed up. Not that there weren’t beautiful women who were honest and true, just that they had not been part of Alfred’s repertoire. Thought how calming it would be to spend man-woman type time with someone of Nan’s leanings as she left the room and returned shortly with half a dozen long-playing albums. The Dixie Hummingbirds was expected, Mahalia Jackson too, but glory, glory she had the Billie’s, Billie Holiday, Bill
y Eckstine. She put on “Everything I Have Is Yours” and Alfred drummed his fingers and craved a closeness with Nan. Though right now he also felt the craving for drink as an ant crawling up his throat trying to reach his tongue to incite his taste buds into a revolt. He swallowed hard to get rid of the craving but it caught in his throat and gagged him. Nan ran to get the pot that he’d used earlier in the week when he was in the throwing-up stage. He didn’t throw up now as Nan leaned over him with the pot. She was wearing a white cottony housedress trimmed in pink eyelet lace. Her innocence astounded him as he allowed her nearness, the effect her nearness was having on him to grow larger than the craving for drink. He stroked her arm. “I don’t need that,” he said motioning to the pot. “All I need is you.”

  “Well, well now, is that so?” Nan said as she stood straight up wondering suddenly what to do with the pot. The whole week he’d been here she’d imagined herself ripping through her handiwork of the blue pajama top to get to the broad thickness of his bared upper body, to rub big circles on his chest, to slide her mouth along his collarbone, to pull the pajama bottoms down and straddle him. And here he was stroking her arm, turning the skin on her arm to butter, melting her arm to cream with just the back and forth of his hands; his eyes were focused and starved for her; his manhood rising for her beneath the blue fabric. Here was the essence of her imaginings as she’d hit the pedal at work to start the sewing machine and twice almost lost a thumb, her concentration so fully on him. Here were the imaginings come to life, gathering sight and sound, smell and touch and taste for the culmination in real life and Nan was stymied. Though it wasn’t her religion stopping her right now, nor was it that the window was open to halfway and anyone happening to be sitting on the back steps of houses on either side of her might be privy to the Lawd, Lawd, Lawd sounds; she wasn’t even stopped by the fact that she had no diaphragm, no jelly, no rubbers; stopped right now by the simplest thing, the got-damned pot. Its speckled oversized circumference caught between the bed and the wall. She tried to keep her movements subtle to nudge it up or down and finally used her knee to pop it up, almost said Fucking pot, though she wasn’t the cursing kind as she flung it to the other side of the room. She never heard the cymbal-like sound as it clanged against the wall because Alfred took over once she was free of the pot.