Strivers Row by Kevin Baker Page A

mouth as they left the floor. Nobody looked at them twice, or said anything. The crowd around the dance floor only working itself up into a lather as they watched the jitterbuggers, still insisting on their favorite:
    â€œ ‘Flying Home’! ‘Flying Home’! Play ‘Flying Home’!”
    At last the band gave in. They swung almost casually into the number, as if it were no big deal, teasing the crowd some more— but the dancers wouldn’t let them get away with it. Malcolm could feel the floor bounce under his feet from the first note on Hampton’s vibraphone. Couples were running out onto the dance floor, holding hands, throwing themselves into the struggling, wriggling mass out there, the women throwing off their heels and whipping on sneakers in anticipation.
    He wanted to go out himself, he wanted to grab the girl nearest to him—one of those bare-backed, barely dressed cooks and maids all around him—but he held back. Still thinking of how it had been with Laura, at Roseland. His embarrassment as he saw how much better she was. Tripping over his own feet when she let loose—that demure, light-skinned girl. Who knew—
    He felt a hand slip into his own and turned, startled, to find a woman pulling him out to the floor. She was tall and lithe, with long legs and long straight hair, combed up with a single orchid in it that matched the color of her side-cut, lavender skirt. Her palm was soft and moist against his own, and she had a sensuous face—her lips and cheeks just slightly swollen. It reminded him overwhelmingly of someone, though he was certain he had never seen her before, that he could never have forgotten such a face. She was easily the most beautiful woman he had seen all night—and she was white.
    Still he hung back, as much as he wanted to dance, thinking of the disaster with Laura. The white woman still pulling him out, laughing at him—
    No, not laughing at him, he saw then. Laughing with excitement at the whole scene, the dancers throwing themselves wildly about all around them, the sweat spraying through the air like sea foam—
    He let her take him. Tripping on out to the floor as the tempo built, the drum pounding atop the bass line, then the trombones circling back to the theme again and again in long, dizzying loops, working the dancers harder and harder—
    Flying home,
    Flying home—
    She pulled him to her, but once he was out there she let him take control. He had never had a partner, black or white, who was so responsive. All it took was the slightest touch on her arms, her back, her high, slim waist and she would go where he wanted her to go. Spinning her away from him, pulling her back and turning her around. He felt infinitely powerful, half-afraid that he would throw her up so high she would hit the ceiling—
    Flying home!
    Then came the moment they had all been waiting for. Illinois Jacquet stepped forward again, a slim, scowling boy, barely older than Malcolm himself but almost regal in his concentration. Without any further ceremony he launched into the solo they had all been waiting for. He played it impossibly fast and hard, even faster and tighter than anything that had been played already that night. Breaking always on the same, single note— bop! —over and over again, an incredible twelve times in a row, stunning them into submission. Then doing it again —another twelve times, coming back again and again just when it seemed impossible that he could play it again.
    It drove them mad. The crowd chanting and counting out the number of times he hit that note. The noise welling up all around them, one couple after another falling out from sheer exhaustion well before the young man with the saxophone did. The dance floor was thinning out—and now Malcolm was aware of how many people were watching them , him and this mysterious woman, cheering them on. When Jacquet finally finished and turned it back to