were a tight bunch. Playfully
called “The Others” (referring to being seen as on a lower
tier as Christensen's cohorts and also distinguishing this group from
the Ulysses Reale 6), their main man was definitely Ulysses P. Reale,
trumpeter - a proud, strong black man who refused to be cowed into
submission by the likes of Christensen or Sebastian. His wife was
Emmaretta Swope, who often sang with Reale's group or with a
small orchestra. Reale himself did no drugs, though he drank, but
some of his pals in and out of his group were users and/ or dealers.
His alto sax player, the virtuoso James Colburne, was a heroin addict, as was
Ulysses' childhood friend Paul Cutler, a quiet, kind gentleman with a
roaring habit who also dealt when he could.

Reale and Cutler were joined
by three other perennials:the aforementioned Ondine Jackson;
Octavius Flay, a pimp who'd grown up with the rest but refused to
drop out of the macking business; and young Junius G. Hand, who was
on the waitstaff in the club's kitchen. Sebastian especially hated
that such a menial would come and hang out in the club when his shift
was over. Shiloh Mercer would gravitate to the “Others”' table
regularly, unlike Colburne, who was into his own thing, and that
amounted to: his alto and heroin. And he romanced both harder and
more often than any woman who came his way, though he did end up
getting married in the 1960s.

IV. Erszebet

Junius Hand looked up to
Flay's pimping success and loved Ondine's quick wit. He imagined a
life dazzling folks with his talents in both areas. He even had a
name for a whole