But then Mama Jane shrugged. “You can call her Davy,” she said. And I understood it was my name, not my face, he had problems with.
Nicky nodded. “Yes, yes, I’m liking that shit. But with an ‘ie’—like Billie Holiday and Stevie Nicks. Davie, what’s your last name?”
“Jones.”
Nicky laughed. “For real? Davie Jones? Like the Monkee?”
“And the pirate’s locker.”
He shook his head at me, smiling like he had finally gotten the joke. And it was a good one. “That’s it,” he said, pointing at me. “That’s exactly it.”
TEN
Taking my Caché dress with me when I hightailed it out of Mississippi had been an impulse decision, but it turned out to be a good one for my destiny because Nicky refused to buy me a dress until I proved that I could do what I did in the audition in front of a crowd.
“I like you,” he said. “But let’s not go crazy. You going to have to come up with your own dress for opening week.”
So we worked it out. I offered up my muddy yellow dress, and he agreed to pay for the dry cleaning.
I didn’t know how much dry cleaning cost back then, but from the sour look on Nicky’s face as he agreed to pay for it, I figured it must be a lot.
That was before I really got to know Nicky. I would figure out later that he just didn’t like to spend money. He wore the same sucked-lemon look when handing out paychecks and forking over cash for his purchases at the grocery store.
And if that didn’t make it clear enough, he barked at every Girl Scout, Salvation Army ringer, and homeless panhandler that dared approach him, “Move on bitch. You done asked the wrong brutha.”
It was real embarrassing if you happened to be with him when he said it. Outside of my mother, I don’t think I have ever met a less altruistic human being.
But at least Nicky gave me a chance to earn a living. There were worse things that I could be doing to get by than singing in a club owned by the cheapest man on earth. Much worse. I mean I passed by tranny prostitutes every day on my way in to work.
I was grateful for the opportunity, which is why I worked day and night the entire week between getting hired and the restaurant opening.
Nicky told me that he wanted me to sing ten songs four nights a week, and only three of them could be by Nat King Cole. And none of them could be by Tina Turner, which was the only other kind of song I had memorized.
So I borrowed four cassettes from Nicky’s office music collection: Billie Holiday Live, Peggy Lee All-Time Greatest Hits, The Best of Shirley Bassey, and Nina Simone in Concert/I Put a Spell on You. Then, every night for five days, I transcribed as many of the songs as I could while everybody else in Mama Jane’s Inglewood apartment complex was sleeping.
I had to push the rewind button a lot and usually my hand started cramping by the third or fourth song. I listened to cassette tapes on tinny earphones that I had picked up at the 99-cent store. That’s what dollar stores were called in L.A.—99-cent stores. And the penny difference was truly shocking, because everything else in the city was way more expensive than the stuff in Glass.
Around four a.m. I’d fall asleep, then I’d wake up at about ten a.m. the next day and practice for a few hours before I took two buses to the club, where I performed a couple of songs for Nicky.
He never said hi when I got there, just asked if I had completed the task that he had assigned the day before. “You got ‘Fever’ memorized?” or “You been walking in the high heels like I told you?” or “You watch that jazz documentary?”
I always said yes, even if the answer was “I don’t know” or even just plain old “No.”
And he’d always respond, “That’s what I’m talking about.” Then he’d take out his clipboard and wait for me to get up onstage and sing a few of the songs that I had committed to memory the night before.