American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [50]
The next thing Joe knew he was leading her off the dance floor. She was back against the wall. He stepped forward toward her, pressing her, and although they weren’t dancing they were still spinning. They were in the dark. There was no light here. She moved her head to the side trying to get away. She gripped his forearm as if to push him off her but he held it firm. She tried again to move her head away but he was coming closer. He could smell her. She was wearing a sweet languorous foreign perfume. She closed her eyes and leaned her head finally against the wall. Joe dropped his hands on either side of her ribs and he stared through the darkness into what he could see of her eyes. She didn’t say anything. He leaned into her against the wall and ran his tongue along the corner of her mouth. He pressed against her and his legs wanted to bend crookedly to the floor and collapse but somehow he held them straight. The music had swung them here and it went on blithely swinging and it occurred to him that this happy romantic rhythm would kill them both. The lights changed again and he could see her eyes.
We should stop, Joe, she said.
We should go someplace else. I know where.
And they left Roseland.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It happens every night: the sound of cymbals reminds him that it is impossible to keep time.
The Count and the reflections of the Count on the instruments sway slightly when he lifts his hand. He turns in time to the beat and his image dances along the line of brass, so that although he is gracefully and confidently conducting his orchestra, he appears to be imprisoned inside the music.
He nods his head. The room swings.
Usually, his band is vibrant and unafraid, but tonight they are overtired and underrehearsed. He hears the inevitable imperfection in their playing almost as soon as they take the stage. A subtle shift in tempo, an awkward note. When the illusion that his ensemble operates as a single consciousness is broken, he feels a sadness that verges on desperation, a deep disappointment with humanity. But then as quickly as the trombones swerve direction or the trumpets lunge, he forgets his philosophical troubles.
His mind itself swings. Like a screen door his mother used to say. Like long hair on a lazy girl.
He is a perfectionist in his head but a pragmatist at heart. He has them, for a moment he holds them in his spell. He feels the room lighten, as if the people on the dance floor had levitated to the height of the chandeliers, bubbles in a glass of champagne. He has them and he feels that as long as there is music playing, it is possible to forgive the world.
It is 1936. There is much to forgive. But he is lucky, he is making his New York debut on Christmas Eve at the Roseland Ballroom.
Just then, as suddenly as he recaptures the flow, the band loses it, and he is thrown back to the beginning. He knows now that they will have a rough night. There are critics here. The reviews will be mediocre.
He notices a beautiful face in the crowd. A dangerous face. There is always one of those.
But by the time the articles go to press, he won’t care about the critics. He will have ridden the crashing waves of cymbals a thousand times, and he will have lost himself over and over again, perspiring so much that it will feel as if he had literally been tossed around in the ocean. And then, finally, he will have found a kind of safety. A safety in loss, a safety in losing. Losing control and keeping it, the essential mystery of swing.
The face dissolves and resurrects itself behind a column. There is a body, too. Always one of those.
•
Years later, he will remember this night