'Round Midnight Read online

  So she named a figure. An amount per week. Plus a percentage. She could feel Del about to protest, so she pulled his elbow tight into her rib, and they were friends enough, real partners, that he trusted her even though her number had surprised him. She added: “The offer lasts twenty-four hours. Come tomorrow if you want it.”

  June Stein. Barely twenty-seven years old. Too pretty and too featherbrained to have managed such a thing. In a crowded room, on the wrong side of town, with nothing but chutzpah to make her think she could do it. But then, she had also dived headfirst off the Haverstraw Bridge.

  And Eddie was there the next day.

  They pulled Mack off the kitchen, which badly needed renovating, and they put nearly the whole budget into the nightclub, into the lights and the sound and the velvet-backed booths around mahogany tables. June handpicked the girls who would serve the drinks, served some herself the first months, wearing a ten-inch silver skirt and a studded headband and a sort of bra made of a thousand tiny mirrors.

  The first time Del saw her in the outfit, he drew in his breath, and the sound of that breath played in her mind for months, even years after, because she could hear the desire in it, and because it told her that Del could feel that for her, that he could be knocked off his reasonableness, his deliberations, his kindness; if she had not been in the middle of the casino, with employees around, she could have had him on the floor, right there, her way.

  And they had all made money.

  The figure she named for Eddie was doubled in six months. Plus, he had a take. Which was easy because they liked each other. Sometimes it even seemed like Eddie was in it with them, that he was just as much a part of the place as she and Del were. They spent so much time together, into the dawn hours after his show closed, and at dinner, which was more like breakfast for Eddie, before the act started up again.

  Eddie liked to gamble, mostly on the Westside but sometimes at the El Capitan, at the back when the tables were slow. Negroes weren’t allowed to gamble on the Strip or downtown, they weren’t allowed in the shows, no matter who was playing. Once in a while, someone came in and said he was a friend of Eddie’s, and then Del told Leo just to seat him in booth nine, where he and June sat. Del got away with these things. They were done quietly, and he had grown up here, so he had a little room in which to work.

  And, of course, women liked Eddie. Sometimes he liked one of them long enough to bring her to dinner or for a drink after the show. They would sit in a private room at the back of the bar, June and Del and Eddie and whoever-she-was: a Jewish woman, a white man, a Negro singer, a colored woman. They would sit there, laughing and trading stories and sipping one another’s drinks, and maybe that’s why June didn’t understand how things really were in Vegas; what it really meant to be Eddie or the girlfriend or any of the people working in the back of the El Capitan.

  June overheard the doorman say that Vegas was the Mississippi of the West; she listened when the California tourist told his friend that even Pearl Bailey and Sammy stayed in a boarding house off the Strip, but she didn’t pay them much attention. Del had grown up here, and his closest friend was colored; he and Ray Jackson had lived on the same block on North Third Street, had gone to the same elementary school, had worked the same job hauling wooden crates at the back of a downtown casino when they were about twelve. When she and Del married, at the county office in the middle of the night, laughing and excited and with a little whiskey to make them do it, Del had stopped to make one phone call. June figured he was calling Cora, but he had called Ray, and Ray made it there while they were still filling out the papers, with a ring of his wife’s that he said June could borrow as long as she liked. So what the tourist said, what the doorman thought, it wasn’t the whole story. She knew for herself that Vegas was not as simple as that.

  Usually June’s new home made the rest of the country seem slow. Hung up. Here there was money and music and gambling and sex and drinking late into the night. And all of that was the center of town, was the domain of the prosperous, was what the town celebrated; it was out in the desert sunshine, not in the backroom alleys and dark bars of New York or Chicago or LA. To June, this world felt free and fast and stripped clean of the conventions that had closed in on her in New Jersey. Hollywood stars came to Vegas to play. The richest and the newest and the most beautiful, and they were there every night; they flocked to the big casinos, and they came to the El Capitan pretty often too.

  Las Vegas was the future. She saw this in the entertainment, in the way people lived, in the way the town kept growing; the future was there in the atom bombs and the magnesium plant and in the dam south of town. To see that dam, one drove a winding road up the side of a steep treeless mountain, and when June looked out the car window, down a thousand feet to an angry Colorado River, she imagined the people who had come to this desert before her: the ones who had taken the measure of Black Canyon, narrow and deep and forbidding, scorching hot, and decided that they could stop that river, they could turn it aside, they could conquer these sheer rock faces, pour three million cubic yards of cement in a raging river’s path. It was extraordinary, it was inspiring—surely humans could do anything. That was the lesson June learned from her new home.

  But then what about the Negroes? Cora said the bad times for colored people started when that dam got built, during the Depression. Workers poured in, from all over the country, but especially from the South: sharecroppers and farm laborers, some Negro and some white, and all dirt poor. Southern white folks brought their ideas about colored folk with them. A quarter century later, if you were Negro, you shopped and ate on the Westside, your kids went to schools without windows or floors or chalkboards, and you worked in the back of a casino as a driver or a maid or a janitor. Or your band played in a casino, for huge money, but you couldn’t spend it in Vegas, because there was nothing you were allowed to buy, no place you were allowed to go. It was 1957, and some people thought things were changing in the country, but in Vegas it had gone the other direction.

  Anyone could make it in Las Vegas, anyone could be a winner, just by being smart and playing the game the Vegas way. And most of the time, the Vegas way left tired old ideas in the dust, but not when it came to Negroes. When it came to Negroes, Vegas was worse than New Jersey, and June did not understand how that could be.

  But even so, she and Del and Eddie did pretty much what they wanted in their own casino.

  3

  Three months after Marshall was born, June and Del flew to Cuba. They brought along Cora, and she watched Marshall as June learned the mambo from some dancers she met at the Tropicana, and Del talked business. By day, they sat next to the pool at the Sans Souci, or on striped loungers dug into the white sand of the beach. The air was moist and salty, and the baby was happy in his little cave created of an umbrella and a towel. People called Havana the Latin Las Vegas, and Del was thinking about the growth of the El Capitan; to June, the whole world seemed open and lovely and possible.

  When they returned, Marshall got sick, and June stayed home with him and did not go to the casino at all for a week.

  Del walked in mad on Thursday.

  “Eddie didn’t get the house.”

  “What? I thought it was already done.”

  “Owner backed out. Said his kids had gone to school with the neighbors’ kids, and he just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t sell the house to him.”

  “Can he do that?”

  Del didn’t answer. Eddie wanted his own house. He was sick of paying rent for a shack made from wood stolen from Nellis Air Base; for the same money, he could own a new house almost anywhere in town. But every time Eddie tried to buy a house in another part of the valley, it went off the market. All his money couldn’t buy Eddie a house with hot water, or an indoor toilet, on a street that didn’t turn into a muddy creek in the August rains. “Negroes like to live together” is how June heard it said. Del said, “Negroes’d like to have hot water and a decent school.” But that’s all he said.
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br />   It had looked like Eddie was finally going to get a house. He’d told the owner he wasn’t the fathering kind, wouldn’t be having any kids to send to the schools, and maybe that’s why the guy had considered it long enough to tell Eddie he’d sell it to him, long enough for Del and Eddie to get the cash together. Cash deal. High dollar. But it still hadn’t worked.

  In the meantime, Eddie had taken to staying in the apartment at the back of the El Capitan. Del had offered it to him for nights when he didn’t want to drive home, but bit by bit, Eddie had started staying there most of the time, at least the weeks when he was playing. When he wasn’t playing, he was mostly out of Vegas. He flew to New York, he drove to LA, he liked to show up at a club in Baltimore, where friends from Alabama had a combo.

  And he talked about Cuba. He wanted to know everything about June and Del’s visit there, what they thought of the Sans Souci, who was playing at the Montmartre, what the people acted like, on the street, in the cafes, on the beach. Eddie liked to say that Cuba would be his bit of heaven.

  June figured that Eddie stayed in the apartment because he’d had too many girlfriends, and the ’Side was a small community. She’d heard some of the blackjack dealers grumbling about him being at the El Capitan; how a Negro shouldn’t sleep anywhere in a Strip hotel. But she didn’t say anything about this to Del, and the employees got quiet when they realized she was around, and soon she never heard anything said at all. It wasn’t worth telling Del and making trouble.

  Also, June liked having Eddie nearby, especially now that she had Marshall. She brought the baby to the casino every day. Del had suggested that maybe she would want to stay home, join a mothers’ group, meet some of the ladies in the houses nearby. And June had laughed. Having Marshall hadn’t turned her into someone else, hadn’t turned them into some other couple; she loved the El Capitan. So she and Del had switched offices, and she had set up a playpen and a basket and a little set of drawers in the larger one, and Marshall was growing up there with them. Several afternoons a week, when the sun shone straight in from the west and Marshall started to get fussy, she would head upstairs to Eddie’s apartment at the back. Usually he was just getting up.

  Eddie might not want kids, but he was a natural with a baby.

  “Eddie, you’re so good with him.”

  “Honey, I’m good with everybody. Babies, women, children.” He rubbed his nose on Marshall’s chin, and the baby laughed.

  “It’s a black thing? Black men are good with babies?”

  “Black men? We’re good with everybody.”

  June laughed.

  “Actually, I got four little brothers. And an older sister. You didn’t know that, did ya?” Marshall reached up and pulled at Eddie’s lip and ear. “Bertie helped Ma with the cooking and the washing, and I took care of the babies. We had some adventures, my brothers and me, because I didn’t have no sense with the first ones.”

  “You have four brothers? Are they all in Alabama?”

  “Most of ’em. We lost Jacob. He died just before I came out here.”

  June waited, wondering if Eddie would tell her, but not wanting to ask. Not sure she could ask.

  He lifted Marshall into the air.

  “How you doing, little guy? You gonna grow up in a casino, with your pretty momma and your rich daddy? You gonna run this place someday, Marshall Moses Dibb? You gonna be the rich daddy?”

  Eddie was talking to Marshall in a low rumble that was almost a croon, but he didn’t look at June. He didn’t offer any more information about his brothers, about Jacob.

  June sometimes thought that Eddie was probably just about as far from home as she was. Del belonged here. He grew up here, watching the casinos grow, seeing people move to southern Nevada from all over the country. So he was rooted in, part of the landscape, but she and Eddie, they had left different lives behind—so different that they were hard to imagine from here.

  “Vegas is really different, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not like home.”

  “I don’t know about that. Vegas is a hell of a lot like Alabama some days. A hell of a different, and a hell of the same. That’s what I think.”

  June was quiet. Vegas wasn’t like her hometown. She shook off the thought, and danced a few steps toward Eddie. “Want me to show you the mambo?”

  “You going to show me the mambo?”

  “Yeah. I got pretty good in Havana. At least, that’s what people said.”

  She smiled her devastating June smile, and Eddie laughed. He whistled a little mambo rhythm, and she took Marshall from him. The baby laughed and waved his arms wildly, trying to clap, or catch his fetching mom’s cheek. She rubbed her nose on his face, and he opened his mouth and slobbered on her chin.

  “Marshall, that move is not going to take you very far.”

  She held the baby in front of her and swung his feet from side to side as she stepped and turned. Eddie sang a few lines. June was happy.

  After awhile, she stopped dancing and set Marshall on her hip.

  “Let’s go home, baby man. Let’s go home and make some dinner for Daddy.”

  Eddie looked at June straight, held her eyes a minute, but she simply shifted Marshall’s weight, winked, and left.

  She and Del were working late when the call came in. The count was down at the poker tables, and Del was worried that someone was running a game while he was busy at meetings in Carson City; it would be bad if one of their own dealers was in on it. All this left Del quieter and cooler than normal. He wasn’t one to get worked up, but June knew he was bothered; that his mind was spinning. She had returned to the El Capitan after dinner to keep him company, and even though Marshall would have been asleep for hours by now, she was anxious to get home. When the phone on Del’s desk rang suddenly, she felt slightly irritated, not alarmed. Then she heard him telling the operator that yes, June was here, go ahead and put someone through.

  Del’s voice dropped lower. He was asking questions. He shot a look at her across the hall, and her heart dropped. Something was wrong.

  It was her father. Dead beside her mother in bed. Maybe a heart attack. Or a stroke. No sound at all. Her mom had just tried to give him a push, move him from where he had rolled in the center of their bed, and he was gone. Her mom was confused on the phone; she’d called the police, she was about to call June’s aunt. She said she could hear the siren coming down the street, and hung up before June could take the receiver from Del.

  June’s body turned to stone. Tears trickled down her cheeks as Del repeated what her mother had said. She concentrated on the possibility that this was not true. Her mother panicked easily—how many times had she panicked at something June had done?—so perhaps her father was not dead. When the ambulance driver examined him, perhaps he would be revived. They would laugh together at the fright her mom had given her.

  Del reached out to hold her, but June stood stiffly. To fold into Del would be to believe it was true, and she did not believe it. Her mom was in shock, it was the middle of the night for her, she had called before the ambulance even arrived. Del stroked her head. “June, I’m sorry,” he said, and then, “June, it’s true,” because of course he already knew what she was thinking.

  She stepped back then, and Del said he needed ten minutes before they could go home. He had to take something to the safe. He would make the flight arrangements from the house. June thought she could not bear to be alone, even a moment, but she nodded yes, and then she walked upstairs, to the back of the casino, and knocked on Eddie’s apartment door.

  He was getting ready for his late show, and a woman was with him. When June told him, he wrapped her in a big bear hug, and rocked back and forth. June shuddered there. She saw the surprise in the woman’s eyes.

  “You’re going home, June. You’re going home, but you’ll be back. You’ll be okay.”

  “He never saw Marshall.”

  She could hardly get the words out.

  Eddie held her. And he hummed as he did it. Just a soft hum
, and a rock.

  “I didn’t take him home, Eddie. We went to Cuba. But I didn’t take him home.”

  Eddie didn’t reply. Just the hum, the rock. They stood that way for long minutes, June collapsed into Eddie’s rocking, and eventually the woman looked away from them, and then she left the room. When June stepped away from Eddie, they were alone. She looked at him—the tears had swollen her eyes nearly shut—and Eddie looked back, his eyes moist, and June thought that if not for Eddie, maybe she wouldn’t have stayed in Las Vegas after all. Maybe she didn’t like running a casino that much, and what did it mean that Eddie Knox was the person who held her while she cried on the night her father died?

  4

  June and Marshall were in New Jersey for two months. Marshall learned to crawl there, and June tried to share this with Del.

  “How’s our little man?”

  “He wants to crawl. I’m trying to keep him from doing it. But if I set him on the ground, he rolls on his tummy, sticks up his bottom, and starts waving his arms and legs to get going. When I’m holding him, he flips down and reaches out to the floor. He’s just set on it.”

  “Why would you stop him?”

  “I want you to see it. I don’t want you to miss this.”

  “It’s okay, June. It’s good for your mom to see. And I’ve got a lot going on here.”

  Sometimes June wasn’t sure quite what Del meant. She tried to shake off the way her husband’s voice on the phone made her uneasy. Del loved her, he loved Marshall, they talked every night. But there was something in his voice; some distraction even when he was saying he loved her. What did Del feel?

  Marshall crawled across her mother’s kitchen, started to pull himself up on the chairs, grew out of the overalls June had brought with her. And still they stayed in New Jersey. Still Del did not insist they come home. Lying awake at night, with her son asleep beside her, June thought often of her father. She remembered how it had felt to hold his dry, bony hand, and how his brow would wrinkle when he asked her about what the teacher had said, about what the neighbor had reported, about what her best friend’s mother had suggested.