“I don’t have a wife.”
“A girlfriend?”
“No girlfriend.” I didn’t do relationships. I was terrible at everything but the sex part. Maybe I was terrible at that part too. I hadn’t gotten any complaints . . . but I hadn’t gotten many compliments either, come to think of it.
“No kids?” she persisted.
“No. No kids.”
“No family who depends on you at all?”
“Nope.” Just my pop. And a string of Vitales, but I wasn’t going there.
“So no responsibility whatsoever?” she asked, letting a note of disgust creep into her question.
“None,” I said.
“Well, it’s time you take some.”
“Some what?”
“Some responsibility,” she snapped.
“You’re no good at this, Baby Ruth,” I said, shaking my head. “I am not interested.”
“Yes, you are,” she insisted. “Pete told me you stayed for the whole set. He said I blew you away. I can sing. You know I can.”
“Maybe you better sing. Because you sure as hell aren’t going to shame me into this.”
“Sit down, please,” she said. “Please . . . just sit. Okay? I’ll sing for you again.” She put her hands out, gesturing for me to wait, to halt.
I groaned, but I didn’t leave. She centered herself beneath the streetlamp like she was on a stage, under the spotlight. When she began, I laughed out loud at her choice. It was one of mine, a song I wrote for the McGuire Sisters called “I Don’t Want to Love You.” She sang like she was willing the world to yield. Willing me to yield, and my laughter faded with her performance.
Whenever I’m near you,
You make me so mad.
I don’t even like you, so why am I sad
The moment that you leave?
You get under my skin.
You mess with my head,
You won’t leave me alone,
But it’s gotta be said,
I don’t want to love you,
But I do. I do. I do.
The girl had spirit, I had to give her that. And damn, could she sing. The city was just beginning to stir, but she made everything inside me still. She sang the entire song, from tip to toe, and I didn’t stop her or even look away.
“How was that, Benny?” she asked when the last notes fell like the leaves at our feet.
Oh, so now I was Benny. And she knew damn well exactly “how it was.” It was brilliant. She was brilliant, and I wanted her to sing another.
I wasn’t sure I would survive another. I might start agreeing to her every demand.
I stood and held out my arm. “You can sing, Esther Mine. No doubt about it. We might need to work on your subtlety, however.”
“We?” she asked. The tinge of hope pushed me over the edge. Fine. I would write her a song, and I would help her get it in the rotation on the stations where I had some pull. That was all.
“Do you perform at Shimmy’s tonight?” I asked.
“I do. I do. I do,” she sang.
“All right. I’ll be there. And afterward, I’ll say hello to your band,” I promised.
“And then what?” she pressed.
“Then we’ll see,” I said, careful not to commit further.
She studied me, and I shook my head. “That’s the best you’re going to get tonight. Let’s go back to the hotel, and I’ll call you a cab,” I said.
“There’s a 5:00 a.m. bus. The stop is on the next corner.”
“Then I’ll walk you to the corner.”
“If you do, I won’t be able to change out of these shoes.”
I wasn’t following.
“The shoes are power,” she explained on a sigh. “And if they demand a little payment in exchange for that power, so be it.”
“Change your shoes. I promise not to even look at your feet,” I said. “And then, for God’s sake. Go home. You’re dangerous.”
She pulled a pair of flats from her bag, and I looked away as promised. But when she straightened, it was impossible not to notice the difference. The top of her head was below my shoulder.
“You said that’s the best deal I would get tonight. What about tomorrow?” she asked.
“How about you sleep on it, Baby Ruth?”
“I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours, and most likely won’t sleep more than an hour or two before I have to do it all again. But I know what I want. I want you to write me a dozen songs. And I want you to make the whole world sit up and listen and fall in love with me.”
“I can’t do that.”
She sighed heavily. “What part? What part can’t you do?”
“I can’t make the world listen. Or love you. You’ll have to do that part.”
“I’ve never been able to make anyone love me,” she said, throwing her words back over her shoulder as she walked away. “See you tonight, Benny Lament. Don’t let me down. And stop calling me Baby Ruth.”
The Barry Gray Show
WMCA Radio
Guest: Benny Lament
December 30, 1969
“So, Benny, your father took you to hear Esther Mine sing,” Barry Gray says. “Do you remember the date?”
“November 5, 1960,” Benny Lament answers.
“And was it love at first sight?”
Benny laughs. “I don’t know if I’d call it love. But I was caught, no doubt about it.”
“Caught . . . as in hooked?” Barry Gray asks, a grin in his voice.
“Yes, sir. Hooked. And I squirmed and fought just like a big fish who knows he’s met his match.”
“For my listeners out there, Mr. Lament is about six foot two, six foot three. Is that right, Benny?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re a big man.”
“I’m a big man. And Esther Mine is a little, tiny woman.”
“You’re not just big . . . you’re white, Mr. Lament.”
“I am.”
“And Esther Mine is not.”
“No.”
“But you say you’d met your match?”
“I’d met my match.”
3
BEWARE
Pop didn’t stay in East Harlem when he stopped boxing professionally, but he didn’t go very far. Just across the Harlem River. He and my mother bought a unit in a building in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx, a block from her parents. Her father, Salvatore Vitale Sr., had a fruit stand on Arthur Avenue that grew into a big store. He used the store as a cover for all the shady shit he—and Sal Jr.—did for the mob. He died in a hail of bullets, lying between rows of obliterated fruit, a month before I was born. My grandmother, now eighty, still lived in the same house. I think that was part of the reason Pop never bought us a big house or moved us out of the neighborhood into the suburbs with Sal and so many others. Nonna Vitale was Sal’s mother, but Pop was the better son.
“It’s what Giuliana would have wanted,” I’d heard my father say a thousand times when Sal complained about needing him closer.
“I pay all Mama’s bills, and she has live-in help,” Uncle Sal said. “She doesn’t need you there, Jack. I do.” It was a point of contention between them, though I think it probably made Sal trust him more. Pop didn’t seem to want any of the things most people wanted; he definitely didn’t want the same things Sal wanted. Pop never got flashy. He wore the same hat for years, the same dark suits and white shirts that he ironed himself. He didn’t buy expensive jewelry or wear a fancy watch. He was Sal Vitale’s right hand, but he never let his power or his position go to his head. Maybe that kept him freer than most. I don’t know. He still wasn’t free.