sounded as if we had been raised in the same block. I could sense Shorty's genuine gladness,
and I don't have to say how lucky I felt to find a friend as hip as he obviously was.
"Man, this is a swinging town if you dig it," Shorty said. "You're my homeboy-I'm going to school
you to the happenings." I stood there and grinned like a fool. "You got to go anywhere now? Well,
stick around until I get off."
One thing I liked immediately about Shorty was his frankness. When I told him where I lived, he
said what I already knew-that nobody in town could stand the Hill Negroes. But he thought a
sister who gave me a "pad," not charging me rent, not even running me out to find "some slave,"
couldn't be all bad.
Shorty's slave in the poolroom, he said, was just to keep ends together while he learned his horn.
A couple of years before, he'd hit the numbers and bought a saxophone. "Got it right in there in
the closet now, for my lesson tonight." Shorty was taking lessons "with some other studs," and he
intended one day to organize his own small band. "There's a lot of bread to be made gigging right
around here in Roxbury," Shorty explained to me. "I don't dig joining some big band, one-nighting
all over just to say I played with Count or Duke or somebody." I thought that was smart. I wished I
had studied a horn; but I never had been exposed to one.
All afternoon, between trips up front to rack balls, Shorty talked to me out of the corner of his
mouth: which hustlers-standing around, or playing at this or that table-sold "reefers," or had just
come out of prison, or were "second-story men." Shorty told me that he played at least a dollar a
day on the numbers. He said as soon as he hit a number, he would use the winnings to organize
his band.
I was ashamed to have to admit that I had never played the numbers. "Well, you ain't never had
nothing to play with," he said, excusing me, "but you start when you get a slave, and if you hit,
you got a stake for something."
He pointed out some gamblers and some pimps. Some of them had white whores, he whispered.
"I ain't going to lie-I dig them two-dollar white chicks," Shorty said. "There's a lot of that action
around here, nights: you'll see it." I said I already had seen some. "You ever had one?" he asked.
My embarrassment at my inexperience showed. "Hell, man," he said, "don't be ashamed. I had a
few before I left Lansing-them Polack chicks that used to come over the bridge. Here, they're
mostly Italians and Irish. But it don't matter whatkind, they're something else! Ain't no different
nowhere-there's nothing they love better than a black stud."
Through the afternoon, Shorty introduced me to players and loungers. "My homeboy," he'd say,
"he's looking for a slave if you hear anything." They all said they'd look out.
At seven o'clock, when the night ball-racker came on, Shorty told me he had to hurry to his
saxophone lesson. But before he left, he held out to me the six or seven dollars he had collected
that day in nickel and dime tips. "You got enough bread, home-boy?"
I was okay, I told him-I had two dollars. But Shorty made me take three more. "Little fattening for
your pocket," he said. Before we went out, he opened his saxophone case and showed me the
horn. It was gleaming brass against the green velvet, an alto sax. He said, "Keep cool, homeboy,
and come back tomorrow. Some of the cats will turn you up a slave."
When I got home, Ella said there had been a telephone call from somebody named Shorty. He
had left a message that over at the Roseland State Ballroom, the shoeshine boy was quitting that
night, and Shorty had told him to hold the job for me.
"Malcolm, you haven't had any experience shining shoes," Ella said. Her expression and tone of
voice told me she wasn't happy about my taking that job. I didn't particularly care, because I was
already speechless thinking about being somewhere close to the greatest bands in the world. I
didn't even wait to eat any dinner.
The ballroom was all lighted when I got there. A man at the front door was letting in members of
Benny Goodman's band. I told him I wanted to see the shoeshine boy, Freddie.
"You're going to be the new one?" he asked. I said I thought I was, and he laughed, "Well, maybe
you'll hit the numbers and get a Cadillac, too." He told me that I'd find Freddie upstairs in the
men's room on the second floor.