Memphis


Downtown Memphis at 1:45 in the morning and Brian Brooks was hungry. Denny’s was the only option and Darius and I had just gotten in from the festivities at B.B. King’s, where the cast of “The Color Purple” had just received our second after party this trip.

We sat there in the Denny’s, meals consumed. A long, thin black woman with ochre skin and matching weave approached the table, a pack of Newports in her hand, tight but not inappropriate jeans on.

“We spoke earlier tonight?” she said to me.

“Did we?”

“Yes, you’re the bass player right?”

I considered that after the show, I’d signed posters for a group of kids on the bus parked outside the stage door and accepted congratulations from a few audience members. She must have been one of them.

“No, dancer/ensemble. The Color Purple right?”

“Yes, I was wearing violet.”

This is when we knew we were in trouble.

“Oh you guys aren’t from here are you?”

The three of us gave our varying concise versions of no, we’re not.

“Well I’m from Eerie, Pennsylvania and I just moved here last year to be with my family over there, my kids. I have a son who’s 23 years old and he’s in the air force and a daughter who’s grown too. Where are you guys from?”

“New York,” I said.

“What part of New York?”

“Brooklyn.”

“Oh yeah, that’s not far from me, that’s just 45 minutes from me. Yeah, because Rochester…”

Here she took a long pause. “Yeah, 45 minutes because Eerie. Then Canada.”

She was a 70’s cigarette commercial Tweet with Sarah Palin accoutrements. At this point I decided that the constant digging into my salad in an effort not to laugh was not going to cut it. I couldn’t at all look at Darius, who sat to my right and shook. Brian managed to maintain composure throughout, working very hard to show the woman his lack of interest in her story.

I motioned for the waiter.

“Excuse me, could I have another cappuccino?”

She obliged as the Tweet Palin woman continued talking throughout. Until the waitress brought the cap and set it on the table.

“Here you go,” she said.

“Thank you.”

And these small moments of talking were very important, loud even. The effort to introduce anything to sever this woman’s train of thought was clear.

To everyone except her.

“Okay I want to get back on track with you. I hope you’re having a good time here in Memphis. The black people here are, well it’s not that they’re…illiterate per se. They just don’t have a lot in their brains.”

“Yes, uh hmm,” Brian offered.

“It’s really bad. And I’ve never seen homeless people in the street…”

At this point, the tears were welling in the corners of her eyes. I struggled not to laugh at this woman’s journey. “I’m sorry I’m just leaning all over your drink,” she said, then spread her fingers like spider legs over the top of Brian’s hot chocolate mug as if to pick it up, “do you want me to buy you another one?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Oh okay.” When she pulled her fingers up, the whipped cream was foaming on them.

Somewhere over the next few sentences, Darius turned away, shifted his body, something (I was determined still not to actually look at him). She reacted instantly.

“Oh, I’m sorry did I interrupt you guys? I don’t want to disturb you. What is your name?”

Darius and Brian gave up their names. Real ones at that.

Before she could move on with the very important conversation she had for us, a rotund but confident woman in a striped mu-mu shirt yelled from across the Denny's floor, “Denise, what the fuck do you want to drink?”

“Coffee,” Denise yelled back.

“You want some of the blue stuff in it right?”

“Yeah, I want a hot toddy.” She turned to us. By this point, one of the other family members had made it to Denise's side.

"This is my other cousin. She's a real sweet woman and she's a good person. She's the big cousin."

“I am not the big cousin,” the woman said. She rolled her eyes and left the table.

“Well you guys enjoy your time here in Memphis and try to be careful.”

“Okay, you too."

“I have my family here in Memphis and over there I have my cousin and my nephew…” Had she not left? What was happening?

Brian was through by this point and began an under-the-table assault on my foot. I’m not sure what he expected me to do but I started the mental rummage. The woman rambled on.

“So listen those are your family members over there?” I asked.

Brian looked me square in the face with horror etched around his eyes. With no concern about the audibility of the action, he massacred my shin with his shoe. Repeatedly. I understood what was going on. He anticipated that I would do something vile like this, invite this insane, drunk Sarah Tweet to involve herself further in our table goings-on because I was intrigued with her character, found some kind of literary value in it. He knows me well enough to know that Denise would make it to the page somehow and Brian was livid that he and Darius would have to suffer as casualties.

He didn’t give me enough credit. I had a plan to remove her from the general space.

But the woman took that question as her opportunity to sit down. Beside Brian.

“Yeah because see my sister, excuse me baby,” she said, making herself comfortable.

Brian was undone.

“No, no, I was hoping you would take me over to meet them,” I said, ushering Darius out of the booth.

“Oh yes. Here I’ll take you over there right now.”

The journey to the other table, across the Denny’s floor, felt very much like the trek to the edge of the plank into the ocean at swordpoint.

I tried to lead the entire affair, introducing myself to the rotund cousin first.

“You said your name is Jamal? You look just like that guy on television.”

“Who, Gary Dourdan?” I said.

“No, no, Lenny Kravitz.”

“Yeah you could be his son because you’re not as wide and your face isn’t as big,” Denise said. She continued talking and since the introduction to the cousin was not complete, I continued to hold the woman’s hand.

“You still got my hand,” she remarked. “You maybe shouldn’t do that.” She then moved my hand to her breast.

Now, you have to understand that her breasts began at her neck and traveled down the length of the space between the booth back and the table, sloping underneath the edge of it and into the negative space above the floor. They seemed endless in volume. They engulfed the striped garment over them. I was instantly nervous.

I moved the introduction along.

“Now this is my nephew Johnnie and he plays drums. He’s good at what he does.”

“Yeah he is.”

The youngster, gave me his hand, thoroughly embarrassed and utterly sober amidst his finished family members.

“Now, I know you were on television last week and you know Puff…P. Puff Diddy? You can call him.”

“No I don’t know him actually.”

“You’re the bass player right?”

“No, but I’m sure I know somebody.”

“Yeah I know you know. Because I know P. Diddy.”

By this point, the teenager was laughing, the menu held over his face in a flimsy effort to conceal it.

“Now when do you leave?” Denise asked.

“Tomorrow.”

I felt throngs of wrong for the lie.

“Sometime before you leave you have to hear him play.”

“Well, I…”

“No, no you have to hear him.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, as soon as I get done over there I’ll come back and talk to you guys.”

When I escaped the table, Brian reviewed the steady list of things he was prepared to do in the event that Denise had lost more of the mind that was missing parts. He could grab her by the healthier portion of her weave and yank her into the table. Or throw her across the empty one in the center of the space. Just beyond it was another party of three, except these were drunk white boys too incapacitated to stay awake. One had his head on the table. The other two were vaguely coherent. They looked as if they were conducting a séance.

The cousin with breasts in lieu of a torso made her way to their table and sat.

“How are you?” one of the boys asked.

“I’m fucked up,” she said.

This is when we realized we had to make an exit. Right away.