Read Online Honky-Tonk Girl by Jr. Charles Beckman, Jr. - Free Book Online Page B

with me. There’s nothing wrong with my playing. If you want a ride home, okay. If I want advice from a bobby-soxer, I’ll ask for it!”
    Her blue eyes flashed and her chin went up. She looked mad and cute. “Oh, you and your damned precious musician’s ego. You can’t face it, can you, Johnny Nickles? You won’t admit, even to yourself, that your playing stinks these days. You have to blame it on a poor old blind Negro who could play more with one hand than you ever—”
    The slap of his palm across her mouth was loud in the small car. A choked scream worked free of her throat. Her eyes were blazing as she yanked open the door. She half-slid out of the car, twisting the hem of her skirt above her stocking tops.
    Johnny swore and pulled her back into the car. He slammed the door shut and threw the car into motion. “You can’t walk home from here. You’d drown. Give me your address and shut up and I’ll take you home.”
    She gave him her address and shut up. They both shut up and Johnny drove on with the bottle in one hand, taking a swallow from it every few minutes.
    Then he began to talk—softly, half to himself. “...okay, so I’ve had a lot on my mind. Everybody has an off night now and then. I still play the best horn in town....”
    They pulled up before the address she’d given him.
    She sat silently for a moment, stiffly. Then she said, keeping her eyes straight ahead. “I’m sorry, Johnny. I’m sorry I said that about you.” She turned to open the door.
    She got out and stood on the sidewalk in the rain, then impulsively ducked her head back into the car. “I’d like to come around to where you play, Johnny. I want to dig your band—it would help my research for my thesis. Can I? If I promise no more advice?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t own the place.” He lit a cigarette. A terrific struggle was going on inside him. Finally he said, “Look, you’ll be seeing Mamba before he leaves town. I—I wonder if you’d tell him—”
    She smiled softly. “I’ll tell him, Johnny.”
    * * * * * * *
    Ruth Jordon came down to Honky-Tonk Street pretty regularly after that. She would sit at a corner of the bar at Norman’s Sho-Tune joint and make notes in a little book. She really ate up their kind of music. Her fingers tapped the edge of the bar to the rhythm of Miff’s drums. Her eyes shone and she laughed aloud when they slid into a real solid ensemble and Johnny rocked back on his heels and punched out the hard, driving licks with his horn tilted to the sky.
    During intermissions, she’d ask the guys all sorts of questions about music.
    Johnny didn’t think it unusual that she’d been in Miff’s apartment the night he was killed. He didn’t think there’d been anything romantic going on between them. Miff wasn’t her type. She often called on the fellows in his band to get information for her thesis. She had probably gone up to Miff’s Monday night with her notebook simply to ask him some technical questions about the place of the percussion instruments in the Dixieland jazz band ensemble. That’s the way Johnny figured it.
    And he told himself as much for perhaps the hundredth time as he parked in the hospital driveway, climbed out of his car and walked up the dark, wet steps. The halls were dim and silent at that hour of the night. A nurse on night duty at the front desk told him in a whisper where he could find Ruth Jordon’s room.
    On the third floor, he saw a uniformed police officer dozing on a chair propped next to one of the doors. The cop straightened up as Johnny neared him and his features grew suddenly belligerent. When Johnny told him who he was, they went down to the office together where Dr. Ed Nathan okayed Johnny. “Just talk to her for a minute, Johnny,” the doctor said softly. “And when you finish, stop