Lovely War(108)
APOLLO
Aubrey and Colette auditioned at clubs and restaurants all over New York.
Owners slammed doors in their faces, or blew clouds of cigar smoke at them. A few places let them play sixteen bars of a song, only to determine their customers didn’t want Negro music, even if a white gal was singing it. Many proprietors had no use for foreigners or “darkies” at all. Even so, Colette received more than a few lewd offers to come back later on, sans Aubrey, to audition for roles of a different sort, and Aubrey was frequently told that the kitchen was hiring busboys and dishwashers if he wanted to do an honest day’s work. He never touched Colette in their presence, but he was warned more than once to keep his hands off her.
The rejection would’ve been too much for most people. It was almost too much for them. Until, one day, at an audition they went into halfheartedly, certain it was pointless, a café owner told them, “I think I could use you.”
* * *
I wish I could say it was smooth sailing from there.
They scraped together a band and played a few weeks at that café, then the owner canceled them after a night when two of their horns never showed up. But another club owner had dropped a business card into the tip jar on Aubrey’s piano.
Money was slim. Band members quarreled and quit. Audiences loved the music, or they hated it. Colette drew snide comments, and women warned her she wasn’t safe with black men.
Aubrey pushed his anger aside and wrote new pieces. The more he performed, the better he composed. The more she sang, the bolder Colette grew, and the more collaborative she became in writing lyrics and arranging songs. She trained with dancers and learned the fox-trot.
It was a hectic, chaotic, crazy, creative time. Aubrey flew high. Colette was the happiest she’d been since Germany invaded Belgium. She missed Hazel, and they wrote each other faithfully, but Colette was far from lonely. She adored Aubrey’s mother and his sister, Kate.
Then 1920 rolled around, and Prohibition became law. Restaurants and clubs struggled. Some became speakeasies. The Jazz Age began in earnest.
Aubrey and Colette’s band grew, their song list grew, and their reputation grew, and their booking fees rose. They went on a Northeastern tour, and then a Midwestern tour, and even an East Coast tour. That meant Southern cities. It meant the Jim Crow South.
Their booking agent mostly got them gigs in Southern venues where black musicians were welcome. But there were times where managers met them as they tuned their instruments, took one look at them, and sent them packing—unless someone other than Colette would sing.
“Around here,” one manager told them, “we like white bands, and we don’t mind black bands, but a white lady singing with a black band? You must be out of your minds.”
“Play without me,” Colette told Aubrey.
“No chance,” he said. “We play together, or we don’t play.”
They lost money on the canceled bookings. At other gigs, they learned to leave the club quickly, and all together, out the front door, despite the owner’s protests. The back door was what black musicians should use. Problem was, a handful of drunks—Prohibition or no—often waited for them outside the back door.
“I fought the Huns in France,” Aubrey told Colette bitterly. “This is worse. I’d rather fight the Boche than play for bigots. In combat, you know who’s your enemy.”
They returned to Harlem to studio recordings, albums, and sheet music sales. Soon they had their first radio gig. New York was beginning to know their names.
APHRODITE
“We’ve got a day off next Saturday,” Aubrey told Colette one morning over breakfast.
“I know.” She searched for just the right rhyme in an American English dictionary. “That would be a good day to go look for that new suit you’ve been wanting to buy.”
“Already bought one,” Aubrey told her. “I need it for Saturday.”
She tapped her pencil on the tip of her nose. “Romance, dance, chance, glance . . . what else is there?” She jotted down notes. “When did you buy a suit?”
“Prance.”
“Non, merci.”
“So,” Aubrey said, “want to get married Saturday?”
Mrs. Edwards, peeking in through the kitchen, held her breath and squeezed every muscle in her body. She never heard Colette’s answer, but she could fairly well imagine it. Not the most elaborately romantic proposal ever concocted, but no less loving for that. Mrs. Edwards immediately started planning a menu. Lordy, if that boy could give a mother a little more notice! The cake alone would take days to plan.
EXIT MUSIC
DECEMBER 1942
Closing Arguments
“YOUR HONOR,” Aphrodite says, from her new seat by the fireplace, where she has stretched out her legs before the embers, “the defense rests.”
It does, Hephaestus thinks. Beautifully.
“Can we leave off with all this sham-courtroom nonsense?” says Ares. “This ceased to be a trial before it even began.”
Apollo plays a riff on his piano. “Frog Legs Rag” by James Sylvester Scott. “As if you’d know,” he told Ares. “You were the one on trial, War. You’ve been convicted of being a Class A chump. Or did you never catch on?”