Free Brando by Marlon Brando

left school for some reason, and I never heard from her again.
       One night, after someone told me about a good band in Harlem, I took the subway to a small, dark club on 132nd Street with a bar out front and a small dance floor in the back where the band was playing. I had a pleasant buzz on, and after listening awhile I walked up to the bandstand and asked the musician who was playing conga drums if I could play a set. Ipulled a $5 bill out of my pocket and offered it to him, but he wouldn’t look at me. A guy next to him with a big scowl on his face wouldn’t look at me either. Then a huge guy with eyes like ball bearings came out of nowhere and said, “I’ll take your money, boy. Do you want to play the drums? Gimme your money. I’ll see that you play the drums.”
    “Well, I think I’ll just listen now,” I said, “and play later.”
    Suddenly the place was silent. That’s strange, I thought. Then it registered on me that the big man was the only person in the club who had made eye contact with me, and I realized that I was the only white person in the room.
    As I sat down again, I noticed that several women were sitting at a table behind mine. The band started up again, and I sat back and listened, still happy to be there. Then I heard a voice: “You want to dance?”
    I looked up and saw a very pretty woman. “Dance? Yeah, sure.”
    We started dancing and I asked what her name was.
    “Ruby.”
    “My name’s Buddy.”
    “Buddy.
Buddy?”
    “That’s right,” I said, and suddenly a slanted smile stole across her face, a charming smile illuminated by a bright gold tooth. We danced, and when the music stopped, we sat down and started to chat. While I was talking, I noticed her look behind me, and suddenly she said, “My name’s still Sugar.”
    I turned around and looked into the faces of five or six women, then saw a man sitting directly behind me, a black icebox with eyes like two .45s. I realized I’d looked into the wrong face; I had crossed an infuriated cement tank. I got out of my chair, swallowed hard, looked down at the floor, then at my feet, while trying to think of something to say. Finally I turned and walked over to him, my stomach fluttering like the hands of a jazz pianist. I stood beside him with all the girls staringdead-eyed at me, but he didn’t look back, just kept staring straight ahead. Trying to appear nonchalant, I said, “Hey, man, I’m just in from out of town.”
    He interrupted me and very slowly said, “My name is Leroy, L-E-R-O-Y.” Those letters are burned into my brain to this day.
    “Well, actually, Mr. Leroy,” I said, “I was just looking for a good time and trying to dig the music …”
    I didn’t know much black jargon, but I had heard the word “dig,” so I used it as often as I could. “My name’s Bud. I’m from out of town,” I said. “I just came in from Chicago. I don’t mean to be stepping on anybody’s toes or anything like that.”
    “That’s cool,” Leroy said. “That’s cool.”
    It took him about five seconds to draw out the one syllable of “cool”; in fact, he may have turned it into four syllables. “That’s
cool
, my man,” he repeated.
    I said, “Thank you very much. Are you sure it’s all right?”
    He looked at me and said “Mmmm, hmmmm.” It was a long “Mmmmm hmmmmm.” He never once looked at me.
    I went back to my seat mentally reciting my catechism, sat down and started talking to the girl again while trying to do something about the tortured smile on my face. “Is that your boyfriend?” I asked.
    “Well,” she said, moving her head slightly and smiling again,
“kind of.”
    “Listen,” I said, “why don’t we go downtown? I know some nice places there where we could have some fun and dance. Would you like to go downtown?”
    “Sure,” she said. “Why not, baby? Let’s make it.”
    I put some money down to pay the bill and went to the checkroom, which was near the bar in the front, to get my