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Milk-Tea And Scotch

The dancers floated about the sparkling center stage, spinning in unison to the thousands of Egyptian cat eyes that crept silently along the velvet walls. A mighty ballroom mirror hung like a stellar chandelier, suspended above everything, casting it's tear drop spells upon the whirling couples. Some would later steal away to secret tristes in the ornate bathroom of a private lounge, while others enjoyed their momentary seduction only on the dance floor. By the next song they would change partners as well as fantasies.

Surrounding the dance floor in rising levels of seclusion were dozens of imitation Louis XIV lounge sets, trimmed in gold, each holding a group of wealthy middle-aged men and four or five delicate young hostesses. Each hostess was framed in long black hair, accented with cosmetic rubies and diamonds. Their faces, perfect ovals and fragile to the point of exaustion, were lit up by youth and amphetamines. Eyes that slightly lifted upwards were painted in the season's latest pastels, and darted about flirtingly, enticing each man to say something witty about nothing.

I had been watching them all night, and knew the routine. Each hostess would periodically kneel down on a small red cushion to pour drinks, noticably cognac, and arrange whatever little treats there were to eat on the table. From where I was standing, I could trace the flowing outline of each in her water tight blue silk chi-pao.. Every movement would reveal yet another intimate impression or curve, and upon kneeling, the slit alongside the impossible dress parted to the hip, filling the patron's eye with youth and desire. I now realized why all these old men would spend a normal man's monthly salary for an evening drinking and being petting by these delicate painted young ladies.

As the pattern of the evening grew into fresh squeezes and giggles, my attention slipped away like a dancer, escorted by the click-click-click of the music, a quick cha-cha, into a freshly cut backyard filled with azaleas , rose bushes, Sears and Roebuck lounge chairs, and Peppy, who grandma always mistakenly called Tricky, after her last Manchester Terrier , twenty years before, who I was told could roll himself up in his little doggy blanket by tugging on a corner and flipping about until he was wrapped up like a hot dog. We still had Tricky's worn out wicker dog bed, which Peppy now occupied. Peppy never managed to entertain grandma the same as Tricky did, but he did manage to get her attention once when he gobbled up all of her Valentine's Day brandied cherry chocolates off of her sewing table.

The day he came into my life was a particularily cold and dreary autumn day, the wind spinning the leaves from the elm trees around the house like an old woolen shawl. Grandma had found an ad under the classifieds in the Rocky Mountain News which read: Classifieds, 6130 Pets: Dogs. Wanted. Good home for 4 year old Manchester Terrier. Likes children. Free to a good family. She silently got up from her end of the sofa, putting her most recent needle-point aside, and called. It was unlike grandma to make many phone calls. Usually that was grandpa, who dialed time and temperature regularily throughout the day to check the latest thermal variation. "Sure getting cold out. Says downtown temperature is 37 degrees." He'd check his watch, then settle back into his chair to finish the newspaper. Sometimes he would call one of the neighbors, or get up to answer a wrong phone number, but today it was only grandma who went to the phone and called. We both looked up amazed, wondering what was going through her mind. "Who you calling, Eva?" he asked. "None of your damned business." she puffed, marking the spot where she had just found her new Tricky. "Every boy need a dog. It's about time our grandson learned how to take care of an animal."

"Oh Jesus, Eva, we don't need no damned dog around here. Look at these Karastan carpets we have now."

"I don't care. The boy needs a dog."

So she called. Later that evening a lady came to our door with a frightened little terrier in her arms. "I'm moving to St. Louis, and I can't take him with me." she said. "My kids just love him, but Roger's company said no pets. It's sad, but we just have to let him go." I noticed she was crying as she held him up by the front legs for us to see. Grandma let her in, took her coat, and told me to fix a cup of tea for the lady. I never did hear her name mentioned, but she sat down and told us all about how smart Peppy was, and protective of her kids. He looked like a fat miniature doberman pincer to me, and when I tried to pet him, he shooed away to where the heat was coming up. Downtown temperature was now 34 degrees, and he knew it. I chased him around the house as he smelled out every possible place to urinate, the leg of a chair, the bottom of a curtain, grandpa's loafers. The little dog squeezed behind grandpa's chair, who was still reading the newspaper, unpreturbed by this latest turn of events. The creature then scurried under the couch, around into the living room, ate something from under the table, slipped into Uncle Mills's old bedroom, sniffed around grandpa's shoes again, back out into grandma's room, then into the back kitchen. When he reached the end of the house, the steps to the basement, he stopped dead in his tracks. A knowing stop as if some unseen demon was waiting below to devour him. He peered into the void that made up the basement, full of linen closets, modelling paint, musty old Indian carpets, a tub washing machine, and my own bedroom, but would venture no further. Actually the poor animal never once did go downstairs in the twelve years he lived with us, perhaps terrified by the dread of the unknown, or by the steep linoleum stairs.

Peppy's backyard kingdom was marked off by an old swinging bench next to the back door, the long south side of the house, and the never-play-ball-by-my-flowers tulips patch, which grandma dutifully replanted each fall, and which ran parallel along the fence we shared with Mrs. Norman. Every September, grandma and Mrs. Norman would begin their tulip planting competition, starting at around 8:30 in the morning when the dew finally dried, crawling around on their knees pulling weeds, and planting next season's bulbs. This lasted weeks. They worked in tandom, face to face, poking, pulling, then stopping a spell to talk recipies through the wire fence. Shifting one position right like offensive linemen , they would each wipe their forehead with the back of their hand, then proceed back to poking and pulling and gossiping.

My own domain was clearly marked off from the garage door to the cement bird bath, and over to the white wrought iron table which was firmly placed under the twelve year old maple tree grandpa planted when they first moved to the Washington Street house. For an eight year old, summer afternoons in Denver sang a brilliant tune of Kentucky bluegrass , languishing beneath the small maple tree, plucking dandelions from nowhere, and dizzying hours lost counting the parade of circus balloon clouds floating from the west. West was always where the mountains were. West was where the flat orange met the bumpy brown on the globe. It was the spinal cord that ran down the back of the United States, or that was how I remembered it when Miss Porter pulled down the geographic map in full color for all the class to see. It was also where they made Coors beer . Made from "Pure Artesian Spring Water." Miss Porter took the second grade class to visit the brewery once, and I remember getting to ride with her all the way to Golden, forty miles away, in her candy apple red 1965 Ford Mustang. I still remember her tight sleeveless top, blue denim mini skirt, and white go-go boots climbing up miles and miles of stockingless leg. The car was nice too. 2-dr fastback , Naugahyde bucket seats, 289 V8 , four on the floor . Posi-traction , and of course mag wheels with raised white lettering. As every healthy boy, I came to appreciate the virulant masculinity of fast cars, and began wondering about the mysterious feminity that existed in that space between the top of a woman's knees and the bottom of her skirt. Miss Porter had gone to great efforts to make this magical distance as pronounced as possible, without of course letting anyone actually see it. It. Nirvana. Axis-mundi. The Secret Place.We all tried to see it, understand it, experience its eternal mystery, whether it was a sudden Chinook wind blowing up Jennifer Boucher's red gingham skirt, or chancing to be below the rings in the playground while the girls were on it, or sitting at just the right angle when Miss Porter picked up a piece of dropped chalk, and I suppose on that fine afternoon ride up to the Coors brewery, nestled back in Naugahyde black bucket seats, I got as close to seeing it as anyone.

"Play something!" Lin-Chang barked from behind his Fender bass. "Don't just stand there!" I knew that something had suddenly changed. Was it the color of the periwinkle blue sky through the tinted windows of Miss Porter's Mustang, or had I missed something? All my years of musical experience told me to do something LOUD and NOW, so I picked up my saxophone and BLEW. And did I blow. I blew the changes to some long forgotten 1930's jazz standard. I blew the introduction to Carmen . I played an old John Phillip Sousa march I hadn't thought about in fifteen years. Then it occured to me that the band was actually playing a tango, or country swing, the two sounding so remarkably unlike what they were supposed to sound like that they now sounded like each other, and I played the accordian solo to that as well, finding my place in the music, throwing the Twin Filipina singers sparkling choreography into chaos, leaving them stranded in the middle of the dance floor, strutting, smiling, looking over their sequined shoulders at me, wishing time could hurry up and join with where they were supposed to begin singing again, wishing I would just stop playing, but I couldn't. I played for Miss Porter, for it, for Peppy, for grandma's brandied cherries, for the concrete birdbath in the backyard on Washington Street, for next season's tulips, but mainly I played because I didn't know what else I should do, having suddenly been awakened from the 7 night-a-week, five hours-a-night comatose existence my late night musician friends were dragging me into, until I too, like Lin-Chang, would someday be the leader of a nightclub band, counting time as fifteen minute milk-tea and scotch breaks, getting phone numbers from the hostesses, and talking about last night's NT$1000 tip. In between the notes I played, I weighed all this like small gold coins on a scale, and realizing that I would never be a part of this extraneous underworld, I kept blowing, WRONG and STRONG, as I had been taught by all my jazz teachers, letting the band know who to listen to. Finally, miraculously we all stopped together, and like a puppy who continually shits on the carpet, they all looked over at me, the new guy, the saxophone player who had just arrived, the substitute call. And while the last chord was still curling like a question in the cigarette smoke, they launched quickly from the stage to enjoy their brief fifteen minute milk-tea and scotch gossip break, leaving only myself and Lin-Chang on the bandstand. Lin, who spoke good English, set the bass down, walked over and put his huge hand on my shoulder. I knew I had been canned . My first night with an all-Taiwanese nightclub band.

"Do you want to play again tomorrow night?" he asked.

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