was?”
“Come on!” Weatherford laughed. “You think there are so many of us here? I knew you for fair soon as I saw you. Not Harlem, though—not from the look of you, or the way you talk. Am I right?”
“You are,” said Thomas, wondering what else about him showed. “I’m from Maryland, the Eastern Shore.” He was afraid to say Baltimore, in case Weatherford knew any musicians in the scene there. “A little place in the countryside near Easton.” At least that was true, for his grandfather’s farm was such a place, and a sort of home to him.
“Maryland! What’d I say?” Teddy exulted. “All-American, though.” Beneath his suit, congenially unbuttoned, Weatherford’s shirt showed spots of piano-sweat. “Let’s sit down,” he said, and they moved to an empty table. “Mr. Lin taking care of you?”
“Sure.” Everyone seemed to know Lin Ming.
“And you have somewhere to go tonight, for Christmas Eve? ’Cause you can go on out with us after midnight, if you want to stay around.”
“You’re very kind.” Thomas did not want to admit that he had nothing to do, that the only people he knew here were the fellows in the Kansas City Kings, none of whom had invited him over tonight. “I’m sorry—other plans. So tell me, where else do you play?”
“The whole circuit,” said Weatherford. “Here in the summer months, to the winter holidays. Then to the Grand Hotel in Calcutta, and the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. Midwinter’s the big season there. In between we go up the Malay jungle.”
“You mean to Singapore?”
“We sail to Singapore. But then we get in cars and drive up the jungle.”
“To where?”
“Big rubber plantations. British planters. Man, they give balls you wouldn’t believe! White folks coming from hundreds of miles around, gowns, tuxedos, diamonds, glamorous as you please, ballrooms with marble floors and great big chandeliers bigger and finer than what they got here—out in the jungle! They love the way I pound it!”
“So do the people here,” Thomas said, rounding up the ballroom in a glance. “What about the International Settlement, with the race laws?”
Weatherford shook his head. “Mr. Lin tells everybody to be careful, and I’ve heard of a few fights, but sure, you can go there. You might want to steer clear of the big hotels or restaurants, they won’t let you in the front door, but private parties are no problem a-tall. The Brits have villas out there with lawns and gardens out of a fairy tale.”
“What about Japan?” Thomas nodded toward a small group of uniformed soldiers, lounging on the edge of the dance floor.
The bandleader gave them a long look. “They like jazz, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve seen what they do when they take over. They seize Shanghai, we’re taking it right off our circuit, man. Just like that.”
“What have you seen? What do they do?”
“They take a city, they take over the nightlife and ruin it. They have this new drug they are pushing, heroin they call it, it comes from opium and they inject it with needles—that’s why they want nightclubs. Don’t do it. They take over, you get out of here. What?” He looked up at a signal from Darnell Howard, and drained his glass. “Sorry, man. I got to go beat out some blues.”
“Thank you,” said Thomas.
“To your sound,” Weatherford said with a salute, and Thomas smiled as he tried to quell his anxiety. He had no sound, and he probably wouldn’t be finding it in the next six days, either. The Kings had a sound, a big one; their songs rode on riffing, bluesy backgrounds, punctuated by spontaneous solos from the reeds and brass. Arrangements were already tighter now, under him, but as yet he had no idea what his piano could bring to it.
After the third stunning set he left, and stood shivering on the street, hand up for a rickshaw, thinking that he had work to do. This time he did not even blink at paying a man to haul him through the cold like a beast of