Shadowbahn(24)

So one day I just

take off and spend a couple of months holed up with a little fr?ulein who’s having her prussian way with me, ripe little animal with juices flowing and well-placed enormities and, uh, wait . . . what? Well I believe I near got myself mighty sidetracked there, nothing you want to know about all that, I’m sure. Suffice it to say I decide to move on undercover of some night, find a boat that will sail me back home. So I firefoot it north, which winds me up in Hamburg where I hear the Silvers at one of those venues, the Kaiserkeller or Indra or Star-Club, in their early novelty anglo-blues period. Then one afternoon, lounging in one of the bars, I take note of a blonde at a nearby table dressed in black, not one of the working girls of the neighborhood, hair cut short and camera on the table next to her, and only when my eyes drift over to the gents with her do I realize they’re two of the Silvers, including the one who later will suddenly drop dead like I mentioned before and who now, this afternoon in the Hamburg café, goes off with the blonde, leaving alone at the table Doctor O’Boogie, and I suddenly become aware that as I’ve been watching the blonde, he’s been watching me.





He’s giving me a penetrating

look that makes me uneasy, cursed as I am with the beauty of the spheres. But that’s not the way the good doctor is conjecturing me. His mouth is smiling but his eyes are thunderin’. He’s got a beef with me, and since we never have met as far as I can recollect, I can’t imagine what it might be, but it seems we’re going to have words and the only question is who’s going to meet this tête-à-tête head-on. So I scoop up my beer and saunter over and say, “How ya doing?”

“Yeah,” he says, which doesn’t exactly sound like an answer to what I asked, “have a seat, mate,” indicating one of the now unoccupied stools at the table, “why not?” and the way he says it is a bit hostile to tell the truth, and I’m wondering what’s his querulous quandary. I sit down anyway, decide I’ll enchant the son of a bitch. “Been seein’ you around the clubs,” I say, “gettin’ a big kick outta what you and your pals are up to there.”

“Is that right?” he says. “Well then I guess it’s all sorted, innit,” and everything he says is sarcastic like that, “because you get a big kick out of it,” and I’m a bit steamed but keeping up the enchantment offensive as best I can.

“Maybe make yourselves some records,” I suggest, “bet you could do all right.”

“Oh you think so, do you?” he says. “Think we could cut some records, could we?”

Yeah, I just said that, *. But “why sure I do,” all Mr. Southern Charm.

“Well we’re on our way then, there’s nothing to worry about, is there?”

Uh, “Okay.”

“Because you think we could do all right if we make a record, yeah.”

“Look here, pal”—I had me enough—“I don’t know what exotic brand of national-socialist insect got up your anus but I’m just trying to be friendly-like, figurin’ I wouldn’t mind talking to somebody for once who can say something I understand, and seeing as how I caught some of your act. What did I ever do to you anyway?”

And he leans across the table as far as he can, so as to get his face as close to mine as he can, as if just asking me to take a pop at him, and looks me in the eye and says, “You were fookin’ born, mate. That’s what.”





I can see now this is

the way it’s going to be with the good doctor. “Well, sir,” I say, “not much I could have done about that, no.”

“That’s debatable,” he says.

“Not really,” I shake my head, even laughing a bit, can’t help it, and all this time he’s got that smile that doesn’t go with anything else about him. “Let me ask you,” he says, “can you sing anything?”

“Why of course I can sing,” I say, “any Southern boy can sing himself up a storm. I’m a fine singer.”

“Right, well then”—he leans back on his stool, finally pulling his face out of mine and folding his arms across his chest—“let’s hear something.”

“How’s that?”

“Sing, It’s one for the money, two for the show.”

I clear my throat, give my tonsils a bit of a warm-up—“Mi mi mi mi mi”—clear my throat again. “It’s one for the money!” I let go with it. “Two for the show!” Everyone in the bar turns to look and for a second he just sits watching, smile never changing, eyes never changing, arms still folded, and I figure he and everyone else are just trying to comprehend how the mellifluosity of my tone can match the splendor of my visage. “Oh brilliant, that was,” he finally says.

“I told you,” I agree triumphantly, and only then realize that he doesn’t think my singing was fine at all! He leans back over the table again and hisses, “That’s a sodding disgrace,” practically spitting in my eye. “We gave up him for that?”

“Uh,” I say, telling myself I’m confused but maybe not so much, “‘him’ who? And who’s ‘we’?”

“We is the bleedin’ human race, that’s who.”