Looking fine and ready to find me a woman, Mike thought to himself as he did up his tie. Ain’t an old man yet; still got plenty of living to do — and not just any kind of living, the kind that’s joyful and carefree. And why shouldn’t he? Living alone with his mother in this apartment in Harlem, he’d die of boredom if he stopped going out. His mother liked to watch TV on a Saturday night. She couldn’t understand that he might want more out of life and tried every time to stop him from going out. She felt alone when her son went dancing. Here she came, into his bedroom:
“Where the heck are you going at this hour?” demanded Gladys.
“There’s a dance on at the Savoy Ballroom. I'm going to meet some friends,” Mike answered, not taking his eyes off his reflection.
“Honestly, still dancing at forty years of age! Going to the Savoy Ballroom with his friends like he’s still twenty!”
“Mom, leave me alone!”
“You’d better not be late for church tomorrow after all your tomfoolery!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there to sing with you.”
Located on Lenox Avenue between 140th and 141st street in Harlem, the Savoy Ballroom could hold over 4000 people. Tonight its neon lights flickered; Saturday, the big one. It was the finest dance hall in the world, the soul of the coolest, most hot-dancing and footloose neighbourhood that ever was. The poet Langston Hughes once said that the Savoy Ballroom was Harlem’s heartbeat, always pounding. That heartbeat was black, soulful, full of rhythm and full of blues. Entrance to the dance hall cost less than a dollar, but you had to look the part: if you weren’t wearing a jacket and tie, forget it. Mike joined the line. It looked like he was going to be waiting for a while. But the atmosphere outside was almost as jumping as the dancefloor; people passed around bottles of whisky and reefers, and even bumps of cocaine, turning their heads to sniff discreetly off the back of their hands. Mike looked with disgust at the man beside him rubbing the powder into his gums, his fat gold rings scraping against his lips. His watch wasn’t bad — a bit flashy, but definitely eye-catching. Two chicks in frilly dresses were clamouring about him, looking to score a hit. Behind them, a group of teenagers were giddy with excitement; it was their first time coming to the Savoy. One of them was boasting about how good he could dance. He’d been practising all week long. His friends were ribbing him, “Maybe your mama says you dance like a god, but let’s see what these people in here think,” teased his girlfriend, who was easily a head taller than him. Mike found the couple amusing. He imagined himself with a tall, curvy girl by his side, wearing her bell-bottom jeans and a scarf on her head, the kind of girl who’d tell him to get lost when he needed to hear it.
The doors of the Savoy Ballroom opened wide, giving a view of the crowd jumping in front of the musicians. The jazz band were dressed to the nines, in bell-bottom pants and perfectly coiffed afros. Their bow ties glittered under the moving spotlights that shone over the stage. They bounced around feverishly; they were the opening act, so it was their job to get the atmosphere going. The sax player moved to the front of the stage to play a solo, jamming on his own. The crowd went wild; the skinny little horn player had a crazy air. His lungs never seemed to empty, and he held the notes till they hit just the right peak. The pianist joined in, then the trumpet player and the bassist. The three backup singers took up the melody behind the soloist, a stunning babe in a tight dress, and began an energetic, syncopated improvisation, galvanised by the crowd. Mike moved into the crowd on the dance floor, allowing himself to be carried off in the rhythms. He danced like a free man, letting the groove take him. He tried some acrobatics but found he was stiff as a tree trunk. He admired a man with rubber legs swinging beside him — his style was a bit dated, but he had technique and precision; he was really old-school. Old cat must be sixty, still with his hat pulled down and a cigarette between his lips. He was somewhere else, in another time, probably reliving his youth when the Savoy opened in 1926. Suddenly, Mike met eyes with a woman. He asked her to dance; she accepted.
The band had moved aside for Louis Armstrong, the Savoy Ballroom’s greatest star. The music slowed; Armstrong’s towering, fairy-tale voice seemed to shake the very walls. Lost in the embers of that deep, crackling sound, Mike kept dancing. She smiled at him; he liked her.
“I see trees of green,
Red roses too,
I see them bloom,
For me and you,
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.”
Alan Alfredo Geday