The Game of Love and Death(39)

Flora, who knew better than to stick up for Joe Louis in front of Sherman, changed the topic before an amateur backyard boxing match could break out. “A month off won’t hurt the club,” she said. “That gives us time to find a new bass player and do it right — work on our sets, learn some new numbers. Don’t you boys want to take a vacation?”

“Music is my vacation,” Harlan said. “I get bored without something to do.” He drummed the table with a spare pair of sticks.

“So we practice,” she said. “We just don’t perform.”

“You know who’s good?” Palmer said, rubbing his whiskery chin. “That new fellow they have at the Majestic. What’s his name? You know, Peaches Hopson. I say we try to recruit him.”

Sherman clinked ice tea glasses with Palmer. “Now you’re talkin’.”

Something brushed against Flora’s ankles. The cat, looking for a handout. She dropped a scrap of chicken. The cat’s teeth made a wet grinding noise against the meat.

“That animal is playing you for a sucker,” Sherman said.

In no mood to be conciliatory, Flora reached for an entire leg. She dangled it between her thumb and forefinger.

“Don’t!” Sherman said. “That’s my favorite part.”

Flora tossed it beneath the table. “I can’t believe you’re talking about stealing Peaches from the Majestic. They’re our friends,” she said. “How’d you feel —”

“They’re the competition,” Sherman said. “It’s business. Doc’ll understand. And I thought we’d agreed after that tax situation that you’d focus on the music, and I’d focus on everything else.”

Flora was in no mood to be reminded of what had happened with Mr. Potts. “The union might have something to say about the scheme you’re cooking up.” They were all members of the Local 493. “We’d do better to take out an ad. We could put one in papers from here to Los Angeles. Bound to find someone who wants a new gig. And then we could use that as a reason to draw people in. Besides, the bass player is the music.”

“Girl has a point,” Harlan said. “I wouldn’t like it much if Doc tried to pirate Palmer or one of the Barker twins.”

Palmer laughed. “No one but us would take Chet and Rhett.” Chet and the trombonist, Sid Works, had pinned Rhett to the lawn with croquet wickets around his ankles, wrists, and neck. “Not Sid either.”

On the street, someone killed a car engine. A door slammed. The cat scrambled away.

“Rotten thing didn’t even eat the whole leg,” Sherman said. “What a waste of tasty.”

Flora smiled despite herself and took a sip of ice tea. “So we take out an ad, then. Do a search in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans. We could look in Chicago and New York too.”

Sherman rubbed his face with his palm. “Sounds as much fun as clipping my toenails with an ice pick. I still think we ought to just liberate someone from another club. Be done and open again by next week.”

The screen door leading to the backyard slapped open, and Nana poked her head out.

“Sherman,” she said. “Can you step inside?”

Behind her stood a figure silhouetted in the afternoon light. Sherman let the screen door bang behind him. Flora cocked an ear — it sounded like he was giving the heave-ho to a traveling salesman. They were always trying to get Nana to buy their encyclopedias, knives, brushes. Nana hated saying no, and she made Sherman do it whenever he was around.

There was a bit of chatter and then Sherman’s voice. “More likely to find an Eskimo Pie in hell.”

“Oh, Sherman.” It was Nana’s voice. “Are you certain? What would it harm?”

“You know what he’s probably really after, don’t you?”

“Don’t be silly, Sherman.”

Flora wondered what the salesman was offering.

More murmuring, and then, “Talk to her?” Sherman’s voice carried. “How’d you say you knew her? Say, aren’t you that boy who’s been sniffin’ around the club? I didn’t recognize you in the daylight. Now you get going before I take out my foul mood on you.”

“Sherman!” Flora realized who was standing in her house. She didn’t want to face Henry just then, but she didn’t want her uncle being rude to him either. She raced up the steps. Henry didn’t seem like the sort who’d sell things door-to-door. He might have come calling for a different reason entirely, a reason that made everything worse.

Red-faced, she pulled open the screen door. He wore a clean shirt and had just shaved — there was a tiny cut on his chin still red with blood. He’d combed his hair until it shined. And by his side, in its case, was a bass.

“Henry,” she said.

“This slice of white bread here says he wants to be our new bass player,” Sherman said.

Since when did he play music? And since when could someone like him play her kind of music?

“I — I just heard you were looking,” Henry said. “You are, aren’t you?”

“As it happens,” she said, “we are. But —”

“I’m interested in the job,” Henry said. “Baseball’s nearly over. I could rehearse after school. And then I graduate next month and will be looking for work.” He turned to unlatch his case.