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“What about the Countess?” Jericho offered.
Lupe reared back slightly and put a hand to her chest in mock-surprise. “He speaks.”
“Don’t be mean, Lupe,” Alma chided.
“Who’s being mean? I like the sound of his voice very much.”
“The Countess,” Alma said, mulling it over. “I like it. It’s high-class. The Countess is mysterious.” Alma threw a hand across her forehead like a silent film star. “She is the blues. She is…”
“Talking about herself in the third person,” Jericho said, making Alma giggle and Ling jealous. She wanted to be the one to make Alma laugh.
“Do you have a name for me, Big Six?” Lupe brushed up near Jericho and poked at him playfully with one of her drumsticks.
“Mm-hmm,” Jericho said.
“Well, what is it?”
“Lupe,” Jericho said. “Have a good show. I’ll be in the back if you need me.”
Lupe fanned herself. “Whoo!”
Alma shook her head. “Don’t start, Lupe. You remember Billy?”
“And Marvin. And José,” Babe said, rolling her eyes.
“Charlie. Jenks. Salvatore,” Eloise added.
“Jealous?” Lupe said, fluttering her long lashes.
“Save that eyelash batting for the paying customers,” Alma said. “We’re on.”
The Harlem Haymakers marched onstage single file and took their seats.
“Ladies and gentlemen, what a treat we have for you tonight. An all-lady orchestra, all the way from New York City! And I hear they play almost as good as they look,” the emcee said and laughed. The audience laughed, too. Ling could see that Alma was irritated. Behind the drum kit, Lupe began to play a beat, drowning out the emcee, who didn’t care to be so rudely dismissed.
“Let a man finish!” he barked into the microphone, making it squeal with noise.
“I try, but they never do,” Lupe said, giving herself a rim shot. The women in the barn-turned-nightclub cheered at this, and there was nothing for him to do but turn it over to Alma.
“Please welcome the Harlem Haymakers, led by Miss… uh…” He looked over to Alma.
“The Countess!” Alma said, curtsying. Ling felt nervous for all of them. She’d freeze in the glare of all those lights.
But Alma shone. “Good evening to you all. We are the Harlem Haymakers, so I hope you’re ready to make some noise out there tonight! This is a song we brought all the way from New York City. It’s called ‘Sweet-Talk Me, Daddy, Like You Used to Do.’ Let it fly, ladies!”
The Harlem Haymakers launched into a swinging jazz number. They were good. Really good. Ling enjoyed seeing the doubt on people’s faces turn to surprise, followed by delight. Alma sold it for all she was worth, and when she broke into her dance, she was every bit as talented as the Thompson Brothers, who watched her from the back of the club, shouting, “Whoo! Get hot! Stomp it, Countess!”
Ling had lived her whole life in the roughly six blocks of Chinatown. She loved those streets and the people on them. But being here in the Centurion with Sally Mae and Sadie’s trumpets blowing loud and Lupe grinning while she kept wild time, with Alma’s shoes tapping out a beat on the rough-hewn wood stage and the whole barn shaking from unrestrained joy, made Ling feel alive in new ways. There was a whole world out there she didn’t know about. It was high time she did.
But first, she and the Diviners would have to save it.
Folks at the Centurion told them about a boardinghouse out on an old farm road that welcomed TOBA performers, and once they’d secured lodgings, with the girls taking up two rooms and Doc and Jericho taking up another, everybody stumbled toward bed, half-dead but still vibrating from the night’s success.
“Good night, Farm Boy,” Lupe said and blew Jericho a kiss.
“Good night,” Jericho said, blushing.
In his room, he dropped to the floor and did one hundred push-ups without stopping.
