I walked into the bar, my entrance much like that clichéd scene in old Westerns where the stranger pushes open the swinging doors of a saloon as the music stops and the patrons stare. The record that played inside the lounge hadn’t stopped, but instead skipped so that Otis Redding sang, Sit—sit—sitting on the dock of the bay. And each counter dweller had turned with cursory glances. I was the only white woman there—the only white as well as the only woman—and I was significantly underdressed. Those seated at the counter were all older black men expensively clad in three-piece suits with colorful dress shirts and matching carnations, alligator shoes that shined beneath their slacks, and fedora hats complete with a feather. I had only been allowed one bag in my travels with AmeriCorps, leaving little room for anything other than the uniforms and the steel-toe boots I had to wear. I had, in fact, only packed two civilian shirts, one of which—the faded and ripped Sex Pistols shirt—I wore to the bar.

There was one available stool at the counter, hidden between the overcoats and the suit tails of those squeezed on either side. I snuck in, my legs pressed against the men beside me as we sat elbow-to-elbow like the paper chains of cutout people that children make. The bartender stood at the opposite end of the bar, his back to me. I waited, tapping the counter as Otis sang of loneliness, feigning disinterest in the man at my left. He had been staring. My acknowledgement of his look, I imagined, would incite him to perhaps say, You’re not welcome here, as his friends gathered behind him, a throng of tense faces centered on my leaving. He cleared his throat, and I braced myself for my impending exit.

“This is a bad area,” he said. “What are you doin’ here?”

“I live here,” I said. The AmeriCorps apartment was only eight or so blocks away, in a section of the city known as the Historic Northeast. The streets therein were lined with garbage and glass that spilled across the sidewalks from the dirt yards of the ramshackle bungalows where snarling Rottweilers were roped to chain-link fences and Mexican men sat with paper-bagged liquor. The local drunks congregated in the parking lot of a bodega across the street from our apartment, their brawls and bottle-breaking as familiar a nightly noise as the violent vomiting from whoever resided on the other side of our walls. “My team is stationed here for an AmeriCorps assignment,” I added.

“Stationed? You with the government?” He straightened the lapels of his mauve suit and pulled on its sleeves, a nervous action that seemed to suggest either a mistrust of the government, or a mistrust of me.

“Not really,” I said. “You ever hear of the Peace Corps?”

“It’s like that,” I said. “We’re building an urban shelter over on Benton Boulevard, doing drywall installation and some pretty heavy demolition work.”

I didn’t want to talk about AmeriCorps anymore. I had come to the bar hoping for word on a traveler’s starting points in exploring one of the city’s highlights—jazz or greasy barbeque. I asked this man, who had introduced himself as Artie, for recommendations on the first.

Cortez combed back the gray hair from his temples and said, “75th and Troost.” He wore gold in his mouth and had a dozen or so chains around his neck.

“75th and Troost,” Artie repeated, his suit slacking as he rose from his seat.

I sat in the back of a pink Cadillac with tinted windows, only seeing their faces when they turned to talk to each other in conversation that was muffled by the loud Motown blaring from the stereo. I strained to hear the fragments of their talk, becoming more uncomfortable with each imagined word between them. The best way to escape hitched rides, I had learned, was to fake nausea. The drivers would pull over, and before they could worry about the mess I might make, I would already be running down the street and disappearing around the corner. I wondered if I could outrun Artie and Cortez.

We had been traveling south on Brooklyn Avenue, but then Artie made a left and turned again, and again, and I lost track of where we were. I squinted through the tinted windows, trying to locate street signs or landmarks. Cortez looked at Artie and pointed past me to the street we had left behind. Artie sneered. Or maybe he didn’t. It was dark. I waited, watching the back of their heads, tapping my sneakers against the floorboards. Then I had a ridiculous thought: It’s unfortunate they’re going to kill me. I would have really liked to listen to some jazz tonight.

Artie pulled over. It was abrupt. I was not prepared. They both turned to look at me.

“We as in me and you,” Artie said. “Just for a minute. It won’t take long.” He stepped out of the car. Cortez waited outside. It was too late to try anything. I couldn’t outrun them both. There were no streetlamps along this stretch of road. I could only vaguely make out the shapes of the houses—all narrow places squished together like books on a shelf. Artie walked toward one. Cortez was behind me, leaning against the side of the car and shooing me forward. “Go on,” he said. I walked along the broken sidewalk, sidestepping the garbage. A stained shirt. A cracked hairdryer. A scratched record. Three concrete steps led to Artie’s front door. It was dark inside his house. More steps. I stumbled, my footfalls heavy.

“Sorry it’s so dark,” Artie said. “That hallway light’s been out and no one wants to fix it.”

I followed Artie’s fedora, as the feather and brim had picked up some stray light, down the hallway until he flung open a door, hurrying me inside. He quickly ran off into another room, leaving me alone by the door, and I turned and grabbed the knob until I remembered that Cortez was waiting outside. I was trapped. I needed a weapon.

A wooden coffee table with a missing leg was propped against the ripped and discolored couch behind it. Its surface was covered with junk that I soon searched through, pushing aside issues of Esquire and Jet until I found a pencil in the pages of a crossword book. I snatched it and continued to explore, hoping for something more threatening.

“Take off your sneakers,” Artie yelled, his voice coming from the other room. I held up my pencil, the sharp tip facing forward, and crept slowly toward the other room, but then Artie came stumbling out, his arms supporting a tower of boxes higher than his head—boxes that soon toppled over, spilling out and covering the floor with shoes, shoes everywhere.

“You can’t get into the club with sneakers on,” Artie said. “What size are you?”

“Nine,” I croaked, tightening in embarrassment.

He kneeled and sorted through the shoes. “See if you can squeeze into these,” he said. He handed me a pair that were bone-colored with rows of square scales that looked like unbrushed teeth. I squeezed my feet inside and tied the thin, leathery laces. My baggy jeans covered most of the shoe so that only the pointy tip showed.

“See if you can walk in them,” he said.

I walked over to the other side of the room and back—a short walk yet one which assured me that I would have bleeding feet by the end of the night. My toes felt as though they were being compressed in a vice grip. “They’re great,” I said.

He stared at my shirt. And I knew what he was thinking. I, too, understood how ridiculous I looked wearing shiny alligator shoes with my Sex Pistols shirt.

“We might have a problem,” he said. “This stuff is Dorothy’s. She stays here sometimes. But her clothes, well, she’s a lot smaller than you.”

“I should be okay with just the shoes, right?”

Artie ran back into the other room, hollering for me to follow. The bedroom was covered with clothes and shoeboxes and hangers. Trying not to step on anything, I tiptoed across the room, stepping from one patch of uncluttered carpet to the next. Artie reached into the closet and pulled out a fur coat. “Here you go,” he said. I slipped my arms into the sleeves and pulled the heavy fur on, feeling as though I had metamorphosed into a bear. It was quite unnerving to see myself in the mirror donned in animal fur and alligator skin. The coat hid my Sex Pistols shirt, hid my baggy jeans, made me someone else.

The club was sixty or so blocks south from the area I had met them in. I had never taken a ride that far, not without a known bus route or other such escape. To trust was to be vulnerable, and there was nothing more dangerous than being vulnerable.

When we parked, I asked them which part of Kansas City we were in.

“The black part,” they said, laughing. The street seemed empty but for shadows cast by figures I couldn’t see, not until we walked around the corner where a long line of people waited, stretched down the street like grapes along a vine, the tendrils climbing down the sidewalk, along the walls, twisting around the bends of the blocks. At the head of the line, standing before the entrance to the club, was an imposing man in dark sunglasses. He nodded to Artie and Cortez, gesturing them ahead of the crowd and into the club before stopping me with a hand to my chest.

“She’s with us,” Cortez said.

We were two steps inside the dark entryway when another man lowered his arm before me. “You carrying any guns, knives, mace, or any weapons of any kind?”

I thought about the pencil I had pocketed. “No,” I said.

Artie and Cortez made their way through the club, mingling with friends in the corner. I stood near them, clutching the fur closed so that my clothes would remain hidden, turning with the laughter heard in every direction. Artie and Cortez saw me and led me to one of the tables where we sat, resting our elbows on the white linen tablecloth. After the waiter took our drink order, Artie looked around, smiling, and said, “There’s a good feel here.”

I was being watched from every corner of the club. I glanced around at the black faces looking at me from the bar, from the tables, from the aisle—the aisle, where one look was harsher than the rest. Her mouth was seized in scorn, her eyebrows crooked in anger. She walked toward our table, faster, her eyes centered on me. No one seemed to notice her, as though she and I were the only ones in the jazz club, like those scenes from old romance movies where the dancing crowd disappears around the two stars. I clutched the pencil in my pocket.

The woman grabbed Artie’s shoulder and turned him around in his chair so that he faced her. She snarled, “Who the fuck is that?”

Artie looked at me and then back at the woman. “Baby doll, that ain’t nobody,” he said. “We met her at the lounge. She ain’t never seen jazz before.”

The woman looked at me. Artie looked at Cortez. Cortez looked at the woman.

“Hey, Dorothy,” Cortez said. “You lookin’ good. You done something with your hair?”

Her neck muscles seemed to spasm. “Why’s she wearing my coat?”

Artie pulled Dorothy close to him. “She ain’t from around here,” he whispered. “She’s a construction worker. For the government.”

I slipped off the coat. “I’m sorry,” I said. “They let me borrow this so I wouldn’t stick out more than I already do.” I went to hand Dorothy the heavy fur, but bumped into the waiter; his tray fell to the floor, the beer bottles shattering. Every pair of eyes honed in on our foursome. Then, a man approached the microphone on stage. As feedback overwhelmed his opening line, Dorothy plopped into a seat beside me and folded the fur coat on her lap, her arm strapped across it. When the feedback diminished, the man began again.

“I want to thank y’all for coming out tonight. Look at this beautiful black crowd.”

And then he saw me, de-costumed in my old jeans and ripped Sex Pistols shirt.

There were shouts then, shouts of “Hell, yeah,” and “That’s right.” I looked around and saw that their faces were no longer sculpted in skepticism, and I knew that I had imagined it all, that I had confused their laughter for derision, their smiles for sneers. And I thought about my teammates inside our apartment, turning the volume of their reality shows up to hide the noise of the neighborhood.

The jazz ensemble had taken the stage, the saxophone soloing in diversiform beauty, soaring into the upper registers. The pianist added subtle touches, shy, rising in comfort, then louder. And the bassist, and the drummer, the rich tones and steady pulse of their instruments uniting and conversing with the others. I looked at Artie and Cortez. They were swaying, smiling, tapping. I looked at Dorothy. She was swaying, smiling, tapping. I, too, swayed, and I smiled, and I tapped my alligator shoes.

					End