Shackling Water Read online

  Mona waited until she was sure Latif was done before she spoke. Let me ask you this, she said. Were you thinking that slavemaster's daughter shit just now when we made love?

  No.

  Would you tell me if you were?

  No. Maybe.

  Mmm. Latif watched Mona think, her eyes downcast and fingers rubbing at a daub of gray paint on the inside of her wrist. He hadn't noticed it before, but now he saw another, turquoise, just below her knee. I feel everything you're saying, she allowed, finally, the spot gone. Those are some of my reasons too. It's hard to cut through all of that, and I'm not dumb enough to think that just because I live in Harlem I know anything. But there's a flipside, Latif. I want you to understand that. I've got to wonder if you think I'm really thinking all those things.

  Oh, come on, he said. That's not the same. Feeling like a slave is not the same as feeling like the master.

  Of course it's not, she said but they're both pretty horrible. They're both pretty debilitating.

  Maybe so, Latif said with a patronizing smile. But one's a lot worse than the other, wouldn't you agree?

  Of course I would. But they're all twisted up together. Maybe you want a white chick on your arm like all those stuck-in-the-fifties musicians at Dutchman's. Maybe you think white bitches are stupid and naive and you can game me. Maybe you want to hurt me for what my people did in the past. Or in the present.

  Right, said Latif. And maybe you'd like that.

  Mona heaved a giant sigh and flopped face and pillow first onto his lap. She flipped around, circled her arms around Latif's waist, and looked upside-down into his eyes, suddenly playful, cute as hell. It bugged him out that Mona could backflip off a desert impasse and land in a waterfall like that; still in race mode, Latif reflected that only white people could switch vibes so quickly and wished he knew how to pull off such carefreedom. Even with his horn in hand, he never felt he had the luxury.

  Well, she said if anybody can survive a night in the haunted house of race it should be some young, sexy, unhorrified folks like ourselves. Right?

  You'd think so, Latif said flatly. He tucked her hair behind her ear. You'd think so. He continued playing with her hair and was not surprised when Mona fell asleep.

  TIME AND TIME AGAIN |

  TRANSLATIONS | MORNING

  Do you still like me? Mona asked by way of good morning, sliding a leg against Latif's as he blinked into waking. Her hair fell pretty, wavy, and her chin was hidden in a pillow, and Latif nodded a true yes, drifting pleasantly through the kind of half-rejuvenated body haze that follows a latenight of megawatt intensity. He generally experienced it after jam sessions: the feeling that he'd sacrificed today for yesterday and it had been well worth it. They'd gotten into some shit last night and Latif felt good about it, honest and invigorated. He rolled over onto his back and they lay flat and grinned with morning goofiness.

  After a small breakfast of tomato, cheese, and sourdough bread, Mona showed Latif her studio: a corner of the sunsplashed living room with cardboard duct-taped to the hardwood floor to catch paintsplatters; long looping strands of flesh and plasma, sprinkles of magenta, orange drips. An empty easel stood solo in the middle, surrounded by paint tubes, turpentine, brushes in metal coffee cans. Low jetties of finished canvases jutted from either wall, almost meeting to enclose the space. Latif asked what she painted and Mona buried her hands in her bathrobe pockets and looked out the window at the Harlem skyscape of decaying jack-o-lantern buildings, window caverns glaring like empty eye sockets. The tentacles of gentrification hadn't wound around this neighborhood and revitalized it by forcing folks to move out yet. Shit was straight ghetto. Latif was glad that he lived further west.

  You'll think I'm crazy when I tell you.

  Mona painted her mother. She said it with her eyes still on the view. She died when I was ten. She hated pictures. So I work from memory.

  Her gaze nosedived from the window to a portrait at the jetty's end. She moved to pick it up, then seemed to change her mind. She fingered a canvas edge, flossing her nail with a loose thread as she spoke. I remember her so clearly. The way she looked standing at the stove, chatting with me while I sat at the kitchen table doing homework.

  Mona looked up and Latif tried for a sensitive expression, something to show how closely he was listening. He was listening, but sometimes you had to dress the truth up or it didn't look right. Lotta tenormen threw in a little extra shoulder, a little legshake or backward bend or forward bow, at crucial moments. It started out as showmanship, a way to clue the audience in to how hard you were working, and soon it became habit. Latif clamped his teeth so his jaw flared. Mona dropped her eyes. Everyone says she was beautiful. But she liked to remember things her own way, and she said pictures ruined that. It took me three years to get her mouth right, but I did it. Now I'm working on her eyes.

  It must be frustrating, Latif said absently.

  No, not really. I'm in no rush.

  He pictured Mona standing there, paintbrush in hand, frowning at the slanted canvas night by night, and a quick gust of the tradition lifted him: Latif looked out the window and imagined New York and the world as nothing but a billion little woodsheds full of heads bent to the task, honing their craft and blazing midnight oil. Beautiful. But something about Mona's discipline seemed so methodical and lonely: all those solitary hours and no payoff, no interaction. You could lurk in the gallery and watch people scope your work, but come on.

  We're not so different, I think, Mona mused. We both change thoughts and emotions into something else, something abstract.

  Latif remembered the times he and Wessel had discussed such things, tipping backward side by side in folding chairs before a music stand in Teef's room, horns forgotten on their laps for as long as it took them to uncover whatever they were digging at. He loved this kind of contemplation and was glad to be doing it with Mona, excited to hear what she'd say and to drop some bad shit on her if he could. My sax teacher used to say that music and painting are first cousins, he said and writing is a cousin once removed. It's all translation, like you said, but colors and sounds exist in nature. Words don't; it's an artificial palette. It sounded vaguely like an insult, but Wess read more than anyone he knew.

  Yeah, but writing and painting are both solitary. I'm always amazed a whole band can communicate. It's hard to be close to even one person. It takes a lot of work.

  Well, you're really by yourself out there. Latif crossed the room, crouched on one knee, flipped through a stack of canvases and waited for Mona to ask him to stop. She didn't, but Latif heard the crack of her knuckles and knew he was making her uncomfortable. He smiled to himself and stood up. Her discomfort with her work pleased him, made him feel like the more serious artist.

  Do you ever worry about being understood? asked Mona.

  Latif shrugged. If you worry about that, you'll go nuts. Cats spent half Coltrane's career telling him how angry his music was, and this was the most gentle man since Jesus. He paced toward the window with hands pocketed, hoping to catch his reflection in the glass. He wondered if he looked as good as he felt, sharp and casual, wearing last night's jacket in his new lover's apartment, talking about art while coffee brewed.

  Not your music. I mean you. Do you feel like people understand you?

  Well, if they understand my music, they understand me. So I guess I concentrate on that.

  But you're more than your music. And you just said yourself that never happens.

  Well, not everybody understands. But some will. Those are the ones who matter.

  What about real life, though? The people around you?

  Latif crouched again, pretending to look at the back of a canvas. There are no people around me. He glanced up at her. I've always been kind of a loner.

  Me too. Mona sat on the floor; parallelism was important to her. Although not by choice. She was suddenly self-conscious. Maybe this is more than you want to get into right now.

  Latif lowered himself the final
inches to the ground and spun a few degrees to face her. He pulled his knees up to his chest, clasped his hands around them, looked her in the eye and tried to raise an eyebrow. He couldn't quite do it; his whole brow lifted instead. I don't think either one of us is much for bullshit conversation.

  Mona nodded, looking at the slats beneath her. This is the first place I've lived that's felt like home since I was ten, she said. She placed both palms and both feet flat on the wood floor. Can you play your horn in a way that feels like you're crying?

  I can make it sound like crying.

  That's not what I mean.

  Latif teetered. I don't know. I've never really tried.

  I cry a lot when I'm alone, said Mona. I wish I had somebody I could cry around.

  I don't remember the last time I cried, Latif said. It used to feel good, though.

  Don't you have anything to cry about?

  Latif raised and opened his left hand in vague confirmation. Who doesn't? I guess I'm no good at being sad.

  Do you ever feel like you're not in control, Latif?

  Of myself? He puzzled at the thought. Who else would be? Do you?

  All the time. Mona sized him up. Musicians sort of control the way their stuff's consumed, don't they? Not like staring at a painting or reading a book.

  Yeah, he said, relieved to return to a topic less—what? personal? How could music be less personal than anything? But time's controlling us, too. Somebody like Albert seems to have all the time in the world—even makes you feel like one note says it all, explains the whole song—but really he's working within a tight form. And the shit's not democratic. Good notes can't cover for bad ones. Not for long.

  I was wondering when we were gonna get around to Mr. Albert Van Horn, Mona said. Then, teasingly Is he your hero?

  Nah, said Latif, sliding backward on his ass. My hero is Blade. Nigga kill two hundred vampires in three minutes and ain't afraid to walk around Manhattan rocking body armor. She looked at him like he was twelve years old, which was exactly what he wanted. He liked women he could be a kid around; Latif hadn't been twelve since he was eight.

  Alright, he amended, growing up. Yes. Van Horn is the reason I came to New York, on some old corny forties hear-Bird-on-the-radio-and-pack-your-bags shit. Great man, Van Horn.

  Mona walked over and leaned against the back of the couch, legs crossed.

  Great man or great musician?

  You gotta be the first to be the second, Latif answered. You're drawing on love, on the whole range of what it means to be human. He spoke without considering the truth of his words, curious whether he believed the statement as he made it. He wondered what Wess would say. Or Spliff.

  So you've got to be emotionally in tune, Mona surmised.

  Well, on the bandstand anyway.

  And yet you never cry.

  Do I have to cry to make you cry?

  Mona shrugged and let it go. Is Van Horn very spiritual? she asked.

  I don't know. I've never met him.

  Mona looked surprised. Sonny's never introduced you?

  I won't let him. I'm not ready to know Albert yet.

  So until you are you're just going to play by yourself?

  I'll play by myself, said Latif until I play in a class by myself.

  Mona laughed, stood up, and flopped backward over the couch. She crossed and uncrossed her legs in the air. Okay, she said. So you're a musician and I'm a painter. Now suppose we tell each other what we do to make a living.

  Latif smiled. Fair enough, he said. You first.

  Former temp turned office manager. The hideous truth. Your turn.

  Drug dealer. Temp drug dealer. By now Latif was confident she wouldn't mind, that it would appeal to Mona's sense of the exotic. For better or worse.

  I thought so, Mona said, but I wasn't sure until you flipped out in the cab when I said “working.” You like it?

  He looked at her with grudging, smirky respect. It's alright. Good hours, good location. I won't be doing it forever. He spoke to convince himself, and he knew Mona knew it. How could he explain to her that he was beginning to dig the glamour of exchanging fraternal money-product handshakes with musicians, and that the fact shamed and disgusted him? How could he lay bare the part of him that was relieved to have been yanked out of the silence of the woodshed, grateful to be distracted from his own regimented intensity, the part foolish enough to be unafraid? He could stay out here, he found himself thinking sometimes, out in this world. Develop a taste for veneration and the trappings of the life. Learn how to tell good wine from rotgut and where to find the baddest split-toes. Play his horn just well enough to work.

  He tracked such feelings like a hunter, trying to catch himself in the act of bullshitting so he could squeeze the trigger, but they flitted past his scope too fast. They were small game, nothing to really sweat. He still practiced for hours every day; so what if he no longer picked up his horn as soon as he awoke but sat in bed and smoked a cigarette and replayed the highlights of the previous night first? So what if instead of immediate vigilance against a lover's potential to distract him from his music what was flaring up in Latif at this moment was big anticipation of the raised eyebrow Sonny would shoot him when he strolled into Dutchman's tonight with Mona on his arm?

  Mona laced her hands behind her head, still upside down, and Latif wondered how much of his inner conflict she could read from his face, how much she felt it was even her business to see. She didn't seem to miss much. Well, said Mona far be it from me to levy moral judgments. I just hope you're careful.

  Latif smiled, pleased at her concern and the fact that this was one fear he could comfortably assuage. All I do is man the store and ring up sales. He walked around the couch and knelt beside her. I've still got plenty of time to buy a certain someone drinks. They kissed.

  SHOUT CHORUS | RHYTHM CATS | MOVES

  Sonny Burma wheezed on smoke and passed his bass player the herb. This is too stressful. I feel like I'm fifteen again.

  Amir doublechecked the towel underneath the red lounge door and blew his hit up toward the narrow window crowning the unfinished cement wall. Really though. Smoking on the low, afraid somebody's mama gonna bust in on you, start whylin'.

  Wife, corrected Sonny. Someone's wife.

  Amir shook his head and handed Latif the joint. Wife, manager, judge, jury, and executioner. Damn, Marisol be trippin. I don't know how you cats put up with that shit.

  You'll learn. It's part of the gig. Wanna play with Albert, you gotta deal with Marisol. Sonny laughed. Besides, since your big country ass been in the band she's laid off me.

  Shit, I'm just glad we're in New York and she don't be around too much. On the road that woman gets all up in a motherfucker's ass. Bother you on the plane! Walk from first class back to coach and wake you up to tell you for the third time you gotta take your bass to the club before you go to the hotel. Talking that half-Portuguese half-English nonsense like somebody sposed to understand her.

  Well, said Sonny pensively she's kept Albert clean for thirty years. Until she starts calling set lists, I'm cool. Plus, that little Brazilian woman cooks the killingest soul food you ever tasted in your life. The killingest. Albert claims he didn't teach her. Who knows where she learned?

  Dutchman's had two dressing rooms, and if any smoke leaked from the rhythm section's down the hall to Van Horn's, Marisol would flip—pound the door and scream about professionalism, young musicians' ignorant, selfish, funky ways, the fact that Dutchman's would lose their license and fire the band if anybody in the club smelled weedsmoke. Which was bullshit, according to Sonny. He'd smoked hash with the owners in their office once.

  The first time Sonny brought him through that red door, Latif had feared he'd find himself grill to grill with Albert. But it didn't work like that; if Van Horn wasn't in the audience between sets, sipping a lightmixed Campari-and-soda and visiting with fans, he was behind closed doors with Marisol. She seldom left the dressing room even during sets, convinced someb
ody would break in and steal from Albert. It's still nineteen seventy-four to her, Sonny explained. She doesn't look at me and see Sonny Burma, honorable motherfucker. She sees Pete Crocker or Anderson Hainey or some other dirtbag musician who'd steal out her purse in a second to cop dope. Shit, Albert himself was nothing nice back in the day, and he and Murray and those guys dogged Marisol hard when she first started managing. They'd have her bring the drums down on the subway—make three trips for Murray's drums—and then go back up to the Bronx and bring Trey Valenzuela's bass down. She did it cause she loved Albert; same reason she does everything. I can't hate on her, though; she saved his life.

  And now she ran the show. Albert would drop by the band's dressing room ten minutes before the hit with a bottle of Merlot to run down set lists and bullshit briefly with the fellas, but for the most part if you wanted to hang with the man you had to come to him—and go through her. Murray Higgins, Albert's old friend and contemporary, moved freely between dressing rooms. Sonny and Amir and everybody else had to endure petty ungrammatical assaults on their manhood and musicianship from a woman who'd never played a note in her life. It was a roadblock cats lost patience with. They settled instead for Albert's company during designated hang times: airports, rehearsals, nights when Marisol stayed home and Albert was a font of jokes, wisdom, and stories, not caring who partook of what and even threatening to one day dig out, spark up and pass around an heirloom joint Dizzy Gillespie had given him.

  Tonight, though, the leader and the elder statesman of the rhythm section were both down the hall, entertaining each other by cannonballing over and over into the river of history which rushed beneath the stone bridge of their friendship. Marisol listened, laughed, played amen corner. She loved Murray because he was the only drummer on the planet who could do what Albert needed; she felt, watching them together in the dressing room, the way the world felt watching them together on the stage.