every word. “Esther’s a damn fine-looking woman. And she can sing. Whoa, baby, can she sing. Great choice. But if you marry Esther, you aren’t just marrying her voice and her pretty face; you get that, right? You’re marrying all of it. Her history. Her brothers. Gloria and Arky. You’re marrying her problems. You’re marrying her temper. You’re marrying her world. And I don’t think you can handle it.”
“What do you want from me, Money? What the hell have I ever done to you?”
“It’s not what you’ve done. It’s what you’re going to do.”
“Oh yeah? What am I going to do?”
“It’s gonna get hard, and you’re going to walk.”
“It’s already hard, Money. And you make it so much harder.”
“I don’t trust you. You say you love her? Great. Wonderful. That’s just beautiful. But family ain’t about love. It’s about commitment.”
“You sound just like my pop,” I said.
That shut him up. He frowned at me, and I glowered at him.
“I think you’ve got it twisted, Lament. The people you choose? Screw that. Family isn’t the people you choose. It’s the people you’re stuck with.”
That almost made me laugh. It was so goddamn true. Money saw the quivering of my lips in the face of his accusations, and it took the fight out of him. When I didn’t argue, he rose from the chair, tossing up his hands like he’d had enough. He walked to the kitchen sink and downed a big glass of water like he was dying of thirst, like I’d dried him out completely. Then he walked to his bedroom and shut the door. I don’t think he heard my reply.
“I do, Money. I’ve got it twisted. I’ve always had it twisted.”
Alvin was dragging the next morning, but he wore his new glasses and swallowed a gallon of water followed by a steady stream of coffee and was his optimistic self by rehearsal time. Money was watchful, Lee Otis resigned, and Esther had the look of a woman in love. I had to keep my eyes averted just to keep my head. We didn’t touch and we hardly talked, but we were never far apart.
We didn’t get much time on the stage—the roster was crowded with five other acts—but the time we did get was well spent and productive. Berry had changed his mind about the order of appearance several times, finally deciding that Minefield would lead out on the first show and end the second. I think part of him was afraid of a repeat of Pittsburgh, and that we’d be dragged off at some point. Having us lead off the night upped his odds of having us perform before all hell broke loose, and putting us at the end of the second show meant the least amount of chaos if we couldn’t go on; the show would be over before the audience realized we weren’t performing.
Berry had managed to have a thousand vinyl singles pressed in the ten days since we’d recorded “The Bomb Johnson.” We’d recorded it first, just to get it out, and Berry’s local contacts had delivered. We put “The Bomb Johnson” on the A side and “Any Man” on the B side, since we knew it was what people would want to get their hands on. We had nothing left from the original New York batch of “Any Man” singles, and the rest of the album would take a while. We spent the downtime before the first show labeling envelopes containing singles to every deejay Berry and I knew. He had a table set up for sales in the main lobby of the Fox Theatre, along with a team to staff it.
“I’ll take a cut, but only enough to pay the help. You’ll make a little green tonight,” he said. “We’ll get everything else out tomorrow. If the singles sell like I think they will, we may need to cut some more for Chicago and the eastern tour, but I’m on it.”
He was on it. They all were. The security in the building was thick, the sound dialed in, and the performers ready to go. The Gordys ran a smooth operation. If it weren’t for what awaited me in Chicago, I would have been looking forward to everything that came next, to watching Berry and his artists work, and to tagging along at their heels. But Chicago was a pulsing red light in my head. How could I feel anticipation when every step forward seemed to trip a wire?
Sal, Theresa, Carla, and Bo