Gabe pulled Memphis into a corner. “Brother, when I said you should find yourself a girl, I didn’t mean a white girl.”
Memphis didn’t want to get into it with Gabe, so he just said, “It’s a free country.” He walked into the kitchen to buy a couple of drinks, and Gabe followed.
“No, it isn’t. You know that.”
“Well, it should be.”
“Should and is aren’t the same thing. What happens when she gets tired of you, or worse, accuses you of something? You remember Rosewood?”
“Two beers!” Memphis told the man with the liquor. “Why you bringing that town into this, Gabriel?”
“That town got burned to the ground because a white woman said—”
“Gab-ri-el!” Alma called over the din. “You gonna blow that horn or run your mouth all night?”
“Don’t get hot, sugar,” Gabe called back, smiling. He dropped the smile as he turned back to Memphis. “It’s not enough they’re slumming it up here and taking the best tables in our own clubs when we can’t even get a table in theirs! Or that they’re trying to take over our business from the inside, like what happened with the Hotsy Totsy. Now you want to go and parade around with one of them?”
“I am not parading, Gabriel.”
“Brother, you are borrowing trouble. Do us all a favor: Escort her out front, help her to a taxi headed downtown, and say good-bye.”
“Don’t tell me how to run my life, Gabe,” Memphis snapped.
Gabe grabbed hold of Memphis’s sleeve. “I’m not trying to run it; I’m trying to save it. You get caught by the wrong people, and you won’t be able to heal what they’ll do to you.”
“Told you, I can’t heal anymore,” Memphis said through gritted teeth. He twisted out of Gabe’s grip, paid for his beer, and pushed his way through the dancing party to where Theta sat, swinging her leg along to the Count’s crazy piano rolls.
“You copacetic, Poet?” Theta asked.
“Me? I don’t wear worry.”
“Sure you don’t,” Theta said, watching his face closely. “Kind of smoky in here, huh? Maybe we should take a breather?”
Alma’s flat was jammed with people from where they sat to the door at the far end. It would take forever to try to get through. So Memphis nodded to the window, and he and Theta climbed through it into a neat square of garden crisscrossed with clotheslines hung with the day’s washing. The air was brisk but welcome after the close quarters inside.
“Where you from?” Memphis asked Theta.
“Everywhere.”
“But where are your people from?”
“People sure like to know where you’re from in this country, who ‘your people’ are,” Theta grumbled. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know. My father ankled before I was born. My mother left me on some church steps in Kansas when I was a just a baby. When I was three, I was adopted by a lady named Mrs. Bowers. She wasn’t what you’d call the motherly type. From the time I could put on tap shoes, I was on the Orpheum Circuit, eight shows a week.”
“I can’t imagine anybody ever leaving you,” Memphis said with such sincerity that Theta felt a catch in her chest.
“Careful there, Poet. I might start to believe you.”
“I’m a believable fella.”
“Yeah? Prove it. Tell me a secret about yourself.”
Memphis thought hard for a moment before answering. “I used to be able to heal,” he said at last. “They called me the Harlem Healer. Miracle Memphis. Once a month at church, I’d stand up at the front and lay hands on people, take away their pain, their sickness.”
“Are you pulling my leg?” Theta’s expression was very serious.
Memphis shook his head. “I wish I were.” He told her about his mother dying, about how he lost the gift that night and hadn’t ever gotten it back. “Just as well, I guess.”
Theta listened closely. She could tell he was on the level about all of it. She wanted to tell him about Kansas. About what she’d done, and why she’d had to run. But what kind of fella would stick around after he’d heard that?
“Come here.” Theta crooked a finger and Memphis followed her down the narrow alley between the two rows of laundry. Safely hidden, they shared a kiss while the night raged around them. Their mouths tasted sweetly of Alma’s coconut cake and home-brewed beer.
“This is happening pretty fast, isn’t it?” Memphis said. He could not remember a time when he didn’t know Theta, a time when she didn’t occupy his thoughts and dreams.