What’s Happening? Read online

  What’s Happening?

  A Novel

  John Nicholas Iannuzzi

  A MADCAN Book

  Lovingly, this book is dedicated to:

  my Mother and Father,

  without whom I could not have been;

  the selfless few, particularly my wife,

  without whom this book could not have been;

  the folly of man,

  without which this story could not have been;

  and to Charles Criswell,

  who, I am sure, would have agreed with me.

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  Glossary

  1

  It was two a.m. Tinkling voices drifted from somewhere amidst the night-shrouded buildings and deserted, narrow streets. Though the evening’s performance of Blood Wedding had long since ended, a clump of chattering shadows pressed the entrance of the Seventh Avenue South Theatre.

  Within, the part-time cabaret-theatre, which had tables and chairs in place of rows of seats, throbbed with the clamor and din of revelers who did not want to go home or who had no home.

  The room was dimly lit, almost dark. It seethed with smells: dust, beer, summer heat, perspiration. Hollow thunderclaps exploded from the stretched skin of a tall conga drum and crashed against the walls. Two spotlights in the ceiling, emitting vague green and amber beams which strained through undulating strata of cigarette smoke, tempered the darkness.

  Men and women, racially interlaced like pawns on a chessboard, were crammed about tables covered with red-checked cloths. The entire room rumbled with conversation which spasmodically burst into laughter. Some people sat on isolated chairs in the aisles. Others stood in the back against the wooden bar which was illuminated from behind by a dim red bulb.

  These were the Villagers. They were veiled in a face-absorbing dimness. Lenses glinted occasionally; many people wore sunglasses. Light-colored clothing and jewelry appeared through the cloaked atmosphere. White pants and shirts could be distinguished; so too tennis sneakers on feet resting on chairs. Many women wore long, silver earrings and twists of silver around their fingers. The men wore tight pants; some had beards.

  The rhythmic charivari of the drum was intensified by piercing tribal shrieks from a writhing drummer standing in the shadows of the stage. His Negroid features were transformed into a grotesque African death mask by a light from inside the drum which shimmered a deathly white pallor over his chin and jaw, while his eyes stared glazedly from shadow-obscured sockets. The “yawl” of a French horn, the tinkle of a piano, the blare of two trombones further saturated the room. Pounding feet and hands resounded the beat of the drum, pulsating the very floor of the theatre. Glasses and half-empty beer bottles, their contents churning foamily, bounced and swayed on the tables.

  Onstage, two couples wiggled through an Afro-Cuban mambo. Their bodies jerked and twisted, their shoulders trembled, their faces froze with bared-tooth effort, their arms stretched sideways. They danced into and out of the beams of light—from blackness to vague light and back again—living out their frenzied dance.

  This was the Seventh Avenue South Theatre every night. As soon as the performance ended and the cabaret opened, droves poured in. When the place was filled, people queued outside. Everybody wanted to be on the inside living it up. The real attraction of the theatre was that one could sit at a table all night without buying a drink. Several people would chip in for a bottle of beer, used glasses were taken from other tables, and a small amount of beer poured for each person. This way everyone looked as if he were just finishing his drink.

  “Man, you know, that chick Rita dances real smooth,” commented a blond reveler sitting in the back of the cafe, his chair tilted against the huge air conditioner. He gazed forward, speaking from the side of his mouth to another white fellow sitting next to him. Their feet rested on the seat of a chair in front of them. The blond wore low sneakers without socks, tight white pants, and a basque shirt purposely tight to display bulging muscles. The other fellow had on ankle-high animal-skin shoes casually splattered with paint, rain, and dust. He wore tight jeans and a collarless orange shirt unbuttoned to the breastbone.

  “I’m hip, man.” the other answered slowly, not turning his gaze from the dancers. A pleased, almost other-worldly smile creased his face. All the while, his hands fell softly on bongo drums between his knees. “She’s got beat, … you know, man?” His head tilted back, physically accompanying the drum beat; his eyes closed contemplatively. “Real natural beat.” He opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling thoughtfully. Then he slowly lowered his gaze and both men continued to watch the dancers.

  Rita’s long hair flew out from her head as she twisted. Her face, contorted into a strained, wide smile by the dance, was a familiar face in the theatre. Her partner was a thin, white fellow; his face was new to the theatre. It was bony, capped with flat, dark hair. They weren’t holding each other as they danced. Their bodies swayed separately and smoothly in unison as they moved through the light beams. Rita’s body swayed quickly, her hips snapping, her bare feet flying. She smiled to her partner and her white teeth shone through the half dark. Her eyes glistened with the reflection of the spotlights. Both abandoned themselves to the pounding that surrounded and filled them. A final drum beat swelled from the stage, leaving the theatre vibrating with a hollow resonance. Rita and her partner swirled together, stopping in front of each other with a melodramatic flourish.

  “Hey, like, that was crazy,” exclaimed Rita, her smile bursting widely, revealing deep grooves of dimples in her cheeks. Her chest convulsed as she tried to catch her breath. She pushed back hair that had fallen over her face; little slicks of moisture glistened on her forehead and down the side of her neck.

  “Yeah.” Her thin partner panted, smiling enthusiastically. “That was really fine.” He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. His clothes were different from the clothes of the Village regulars. He wore a sport shirt, tapered, sharply creased slacks, and highly polished loafers. He looked as if he came from “Uptown” and had strayed in from Louis’. “Uptown” to the Villagers meant anywhere in the world outside their own milieu. Louis’ was a tavern around the corner from the Seventh Avenue South and the mecca of the Village-goers from Uptown. They came to the Village in suits and silks to indulge their wild spirits in this legendary, off-beat world, but they went to Louis’ and not the Seventh Avenue South because the revelers were too drab and unglamorous, too depressingly seedy for Uptown’s sensational concept of the Village.

  “I don’t want to sound personal or anything,” remarked the thin fellow, breathing more easily, “but what’s your name? Mine’s Bill.”

  “Rita.” Between her hands, she held her flowing, long hair away from her neck.

  “Okay, Rita. Why don’t we sort of sit this one out?”

  “Great. I couldn’t make it again if I wanted to.”

  They smiled into each other’s eyes. For an instant, the clink of glasses and ash trays and the heralds of mirth became inaudible as each of their smiles deepened in the warmth of the other’s; each searched the other’s face. It was warming, pleasant to see a friendly, real smile. Noise besieged them again suddenly, as they became self-conscious. They turned and made their way between chairs and people toward the the table at which Ri
ta had been sitting. It was one of the tiny red-checked squares in the center of the room that was a table for four. A dozen people surrounded it unevenly like spokes from the hub of a shattered wheel. It instilled a feeling of belonging and confidence to sit with a group, although a glass with a single sip of beer was all that was on the table before each of them. Rita sat. Bill took a chair from the next table and sat down behind and a little to the side of her.

  “I’d like to buy you a drink, but like things are kind of rough these days.”

  “Oh, come on,” Rita protested, dismissing the need for popular concepts of social etiquette. “I’ve got a beer some munificent friend bought me. I’ll share it with you.” She smiled at him generously and sincerely, her eyes twinkling.

  “Hey, that’s great. I don’t have a glass though,” he replied, posing another problem in jest.

  “Here, I’ll fill my glass and you take the bottle.” She smiled slyly, her eyes flitting away and then back to him as she poured the amber liquid into her glass.

  “You know, baby? I dig you. Like, you’re very all right. You come here all the time?” Bill talked hip if he didn’t dress hip.

  “When there’s nothing else to do. We drop in almost every night.”

  “Say, Rita …” One of the white fellows who had been lounging against the air conditioner leaned past Bill, his hand resting on the back of Bill’s chair. He glanced at Bill momentarily, and, not recognizing him, looked back to Rita. “Rita, baby, like, your swaying body has moved me no end, and so I just had to get up and dance with you.” He smiled, wanting to look self-assured and evil.

  Rita smiled. She was pleased by the notice she had gathered.

  “I’ll be right back, Bill. You won’t go away, will you?”

  He smiled resignedly. “Are you kidding? … only I’m jealous.”

  “I’ll only be a minute,—and then I won’t leave you for the rest of the night.”

  He stared into her eyes. She still smiled at him, her eyes steady and warm, then turned to make her way toward the dance floor.

  “You won’t?”

  “Of course not,” she answered playfully, her greenish eyes flickering with a warm, meaningful look.

  Perhaps it was the smile in her eyes, or the duration of that look, or the attitude which accompanied it, that captured Bill’s attention. Whatever, it was discernible, and they both realized it and were warmed by it.

  Bill concentrated on her now as she walked to the dance floor. She was not tall or slender. She was a full woman, with a body that rounded her dark, sleeveless, full-skirted dress in gentle undulations. She turned to her new dancing partner, and, without holding each other, they began to sway with the music. Her full breasts swayed beneath her bodice as she twirled to the beat. Bill watched the two people move in and out of the shadows. It didn’t matter that Rita danced with someone else; she and her look were with Bill at the table. The dancers fluttered and dipped and turned. Rita glanced over her partner’s shoulder, smiling faintly, momentarily at Bill. They twisted away and were again hidden behind other dancers.

  “Hello,” announced a small, thin voice from a small, thin girl who sat two chairs from Bill. It was a squeaky, inquisitive “hello,” as if the girl who said it wasn’t sure Bill would talk to her. “I’m Rita’s roommate,” Laura announced meekly. She was thinner than Bill. Bill looked like a little frail rich boy whose mother always made him wear his raincoat and rubbers in the rain as she walked him to school holding an umbrella over his head. Laura was frail too, but she didn’t look as if she had ever been rich. She had closely cropped hair, like the Dutch Boy in the paint ads, but hers was a lusterless brown. She was pale, her eyes lifeless and nervous. Her nose was short and upturned. Her mouth, thin lipped and liquid, twitched occasionally, as if to distract from and cover her high-voiced comments. Her clothes—pants and a man-tailored jacket—were dark and plain. She wore no make-up, and her fingernails were pale and unpainted. She seemed sad and lonely—alone and lonely in a room filled with people.

  “You two girls live down here?”

  “Yeah, on Christopher Street, … but there are three of us. Jeannie.… Jeannie!” Laura called across the expanse of bottles and glasses on the table.

  A wide-jawed girl with short, black hair turned from a light-complexioned Negro with a shaved head to whom she had been speaking. The wide-jawed girl’s face was made up very starkly, pale, in the vogue popular in the Village.

  “What?”

  “Nothin’. That’s okay.” Laura said, shrugging, an apologetic smile creasing her face. She turned back to Bill. “That’s the other girl that lives with us.”

  Jeannie looked at Laura and Bill inquisitively for a moment, then, with a shrug, turned back to her friend.

  “That’s a nice little group you have.”

  “Yeah. They’re fun most of the time.”

  “You mean, like sometimes it gets to be a hassle?”

  “Yeah, … well, it’s all right. Just sometimes it’s not.” Laura fell silent. She lowered her head, then glanced across the room. Her eyes roamed the room watching other people, glimpsing at Bill only occasionally through uplifted, frightened eyes. She scrutinized the medal Bill wore around his neck. Bill sipped at his beer. Laura still stared at his medal.

  “Want to dance?” Bill asked to break the tense silence.

  “No. I don’t dance much. What’s this?” She prodded the bright, silver medal.

  “It’s Saint Christopher. He protects me, like when I’m in the car.”

  “Are you Catholic?” She looked at him meekly from the corners of her eyes.

  Bill, somewhat perplexed, nodded.

  “That’s good. I’m Catholic too.” An embarrassed smile flickered across her mouth.

  More than perplexed now, he asked, “What’s so good about me being Catholic?”

  “You don’t meet many Catholics down here. If they are they don’t say so anyway,” she surrendered.

  “I’m not the best Catholic in the world.” He smiled a little with embarrassment.

  “Oh, that’s all right. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

  “Well, I’m glad we met each other,” Bill said in an attempt to turn the onrushing silence. He tried to peer beyond her face, into her eyes. Laura looked at him furtively, conscious of his stare. She stood upright in place, her eyes frantically scanning the dim room.

  “Hey, Bob! … Bob!” she called to a fellow across the room. “Wait a minute. I’ll be right back … in a minute … okay?” Laura asked Bill, her eyes searching his face. Without waiting for an answer, she turned toward the other side of the room.

  “Sure, sure, … go ahead.”

  Laura scampered through a maze of people and chairs. Bill watched the little figure squeeze between the chairs and saw her start to speak to a fellow on the other side of the room. She glanced back as she spoke. Bill turned back to his beer and the group of people he didn’t know. They were sitting in various attitudes of relaxation. On Bill’s left, a bearded Negro wearing smoked glasses watched the dancers and listened to the music. A large, round, copper medallion hung from a thong around his neck. He beat the table in rhythm with the drummer on the stage, chanting softly, “bam, bam, ba, ba, bam, ba …” Occasionally he looked around the room at the other people or lifted his sip of beer and feigned drinking, perhaps to appease his own feelings.

  “Say, man, you got a match?” Bill asked, an unlit cigarette between his lips.

  “No, man, sorry.” He didn’t turn his gaze from the stage. “Bam, bam, ba …”

  Bill looked across the table. “Say, Jeannie, you got a match?”

  Jeannie turned and looked at him. “No, … sorry. You have a match, Josh?” she asked her Negro companion. His head was completely shaved and smooth. A small square of gold pierced the lobe of his right ear. He tapped his pants pockets under the table.

  “No. I’m sorry, I don’t,” he said through mobile, thick lips.

  “Well, I guess I go without a smoke. Th
anks anyway.” Bill smiled absently.

  The drum beats rose to a crescendo, flying up from the background again, filling the room with their explosion. Suddenly, the air was still. Another beat; three more rapid beats and the music ended. The murmur rose again from the dark depths of the room.

  “Yeah! Yeah!” the darkly bespectacled Negro on Bill’s left shouted as he applauded. “Man, those cats can really wail, can’t they?” he remarked to no one in particular.

  “Yeah, they really move,” Bill replied.

  “Hello, lean one. I’m glad you waited,” a female voice close behind Bill said softly.

  He turned. Rita’s eyes studied his face. He thought her long black hair and fair skin were a contrast in loveliness.

  “Hey!” He smiled. “I almost forgot we had a big thing going. You were gone a long time.”

  “Don’t worry, I didn’t forget us.” She smiled and sat down.

  “You dance pretty wild. You a dancer?”

  “No.” She was pleased. “I go to acting class, but like all the cats that I hang around with are dancers. You know, I sort of pick it up.”

  “Very smooth indeed. This is a pretty nice place here, you know?” He looked around the club. “It’s kind of groovy—it jumps.”

  “It’s all right. It gets to be a little much after a while … the same things, the same faces all the time.”

  “Hey, man, dig these cats cuttin’ loose on the floor,” the bespectacled Negro on Bill’s left called loudly. He nodded toward the dance floor. Bill and Rita looked up. A couple was writhing to the music. The male partner had long, curly blond hair that fell over his forehead as he danced. He snapped his curls back into place with a gentle flick of his head. He wore olive pants, sandals, no socks, and a boat-neck, sleeveless shirt. He danced with a dumpy, bespectacled Negro girl. She wore a pair of pedal-pusher pants and a sailor cap with the brim turned down all around so that it looked like a white football helmet. Her blouse was coming out of her pants as the two of them bounced and swayed and twirled to the brassy music. He twirled and twisted on his toes, kicking his legs, quickly and snappily, high into the air. His face was stiffened into haughty indifference, save that he glowed as the laughing crowd jeered him on. The girl bounced and twisted, a far-off look in her eye. She was just somewhere, bouncing up and down, not really knowing or caring exactly where. The blond smiled broadly as an extra high kick was greeted by extra loud applause. The crowd laughed even louder, moving the blond to almost frantic twisting and bouncing.