She refused to give it to him.
He kept asking; she kept refusing. He began to feel trapped. He imagined himself cutting up her face, or pouring lye under each eyelid while she slept. He imagined ridding himself of her in many ways, but realized finally only one way lay open: he would have to catch her committing adultery.
Not that he felt certain she cheated on him. But he felt certain she might; after he stopped loving her, he had stopped making love to her. Common sense told him: if he was not between her legs, some other man could be.
But he could not catch her at it, and so decided to hire some man who would get under his wife’s clothes and arrange to make pictures of the event.
Some man, named Carlyle Bedlow, sat in the dentist’s chair (two small leather pillows messing his straightened hair) when the dentist made his proposal.
Carlyle’s mind said Yes immediately, but he wanted to see if the dentist spoke seriously. He pretended reluctance, and also that such a job lay beneath him. “Man, you must be crazy. I don’t do no shit like that.” He pretended so well that, for a moment, he forgot the dentist had just pulled his tooth.
“You didn’t let me finish.” The dentist stood over him, Carlyle’s molar clamped between the prongs of his silver pliers. He inspected the tooth, held it so Carlyle could look into its black hole. “You got to take better care of your mouth, Carlyle.” He shook his head. “This tooth’s a disgrace.” He rested the pliers and the tooth in a metal dish. “Look, I’m in a spot and it’s my only escape. Besides, I didn’t mention money yet.”
“You hurting me, man, so don’t mention it. I don’t go in for that kind of stuff.” He specialized in smoke and warm fur coats.
The dentist pushed him deeper into his great chair, fingered his wound, and inserted fresh cotton between cheek and gum. “The blood’s stopping.” He smiled; the dentist himself knew a good dentist. “You realize this’s legal? Got to be done by somebody and I’m just throwing the money your way. All you do: Take off her clothes, and have somebody to break in and take pictures.”
“Why don’t you ask her for a divorce?” He suspected that the dentist had done that.
“You think I didn’t? And what you think she said? Yes? Look, I’m in a prison with a crazy warden, trying to get me to do all kinds of crazy things.” The dentist told Carlyle about his wife’s obsession with sailing around the world.
Carlyle agreed; that did sound crazy, but he still pretended to hesitate. “Suppose she really don’t got nobody else? Some women wait. I can think of at least one.” Glora. “Besides, it ain’t my thing.”
“She hasn’t waited. She’s getting something somewhere. You don’t understand how bad it is.” He went to the glass door and opened it. “Mamie, come in here, will you, baby?”
Entering the office, hand against jaw, Carlyle had noticed Mamie’s big, brown legs even through his pain. He had tried his smile on her, but her lips had not softened, had remained stretched across her teeth. Now she came in suspiciously, but smiled at the dentist after she closed the door.
“Meet my girl, Carlyle.”
The pupils of her eyes looked black-brown. “Pleased to meet you.”
“We want to get married.” The dentist sat down. “And I thought you might help me out of friendship.”
Carlyle nodded, leaned into the small basin beside him, and spat. He did not consider the dentist his friend. He did not even know the dentist’s home phone number. Under arrest, he would not have wished to know it. They met, two or three times a month, by accident only, in Jack O’Gee’s Golden Grouse Bar and Restaurant.
The dentist waited for Carlyle to straighten up before he continued. “Now I found me a sane woman, and can’t live with that crazy one no more. I need those grounds!”
Carlyle glanced at Mamie to see if she had helped to plan the scheme. She leaned against the wall near the door, her face empty except for makeup, two shades lighter than her real skin. “How much you paying?”
“We ain’t got no kids.” The dentist hesitated; no kids formed part of the trouble. Carlyle had never married, but already had two children, visited their mothers when he had extra money. “…all going well, means no support. If I get her on adultery, I can cut the alimony down low. So it’s worth a thousand if I get my pictures.”
He had expected an offer of five hundred dollars, but did not tell that to the dentist. “Throw in my teeth.”
The dentist agreed.
Carlyle climbed out of the dentist’s leather chair. “Then I guess I’ll turn legal for a while.”
11
THEY AGREED TO MEET that night in the Grouse. The dentist would bring his wife. Carlyle would sit at their table. After that, they could only hope that the dentist’s wife wanted another new man.
Carlyle stood at the bar over his second drink, when they came in. He had seen her only a few times before, and his memory had shown her kindness: she looked even less appetizing than he remembered her. She wore a dull pink dress that hung loosely from narrow shoulders, drowned high hard breasts and sharp-edged hips, her face the color of milk mixed with orange juice, the features squeezed into its center.
Passing by Carlyle on the way to the booths at the rear of the Grouse, the dentist did not speak or nod. But after helping his wife into a seat, and ordering her drink, he returned to the bar. “Bitch didn’t want to come, but I told her I didn’t want to stare at her all night.”
Carlyle looked at the dentist’s wife. She had already half-emptied the glass in front of her, a Brandy Alexander. “What happen to her when she drinking?”
“She cries.”
Carlyle told the dentist the truth: “I like your money, but we’ll never make it.”
“Well, go ahead and try. One thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
“You’re right.” He pushed away from the bar, leaving his drink, which had stung the dentist’s work, and started toward the booth, the dentist close behind him.
She looked up at them, light-brown eyes in her light-orange face, but she did not speak.
“I haven’t seen this man in years, Robena.” The dentist suddenly pretended great excitement. “We served in the Army together.” He introduced them.
Carlyle smiled. “Pleased to meet you.” Her hand felt cold, filled with tiny bones.
“Have a seat.” The dentist motioned him into the booth, next to his wife. As Carlyle settled himself, she finished her drink, pushed the foamed glass a few inches across the table.
“You want another?” She nodded; the dentist went on selling Carlyle. “We was in Asia. Right, Carlyle?”
“That’s right.” So far, Carlyle’s luck had kept him from wearing any uniforms.
She looked at him now, seemed not to believe him.
“So how you been, Carlyle?” The dentist did not let him answer. “You do want another drink, don’t you?”
She nodded, continuing to study Carlyle.
“What you been doing, man?”
“A little of a lot of things.” He reached for his cigarets, wishing he had smoked for this meeting, trying to decide what to say if she wanted a more precise definition of his livelihood. But then she turned away.
The dentist did not give up. “Carlyle was a male nurse in the dental corps, even pulled some teeth when we had lots of work. He was pretty good at it. I remember the first time I asked him to swing the hammer while I held the chisel. Cat’s tooth broke off at the root.” He started to laugh. “I had to keep telling Carlyle to hit harder. Finally got that sucker out though. Right, Carlyle?”
“That’s right.”
The waiter came with her drink. She drained half right away.
“She drinks that like lemonade, huh, Carlyle?”
He did not know what to answer. But he forced himself to speak, watching her eyes. “Some people take it better than others.”
“And some get fallen down drunk.”
She snorted, a short laugh, leaving Carlyle with a silence to fill. “Your wife don’t look like that kind.” He tried a broad smile.
“Yeah.” The dentist finished his drink, put ten dollars on the table, and stood up. “I’ll be right back.” He went toward the restrooms, but when, fifteen minutes later, he had not returned, Carlyle realized the dentist had left him on his own.
Weather did not interest her, or Asia, or even hemlines. She would not speak, gave him no handle. When the ten dollar bill had dwindled to seven pennies and a dime, he helped her out of the booth, up the stairs to the street, and into a taxi.
On the Hill, she handed him a key and he opened the door. He stepped aside, knowing in this situation she would have to ask him inside. “Can you make it all right?”
She nodded, and started into the dark house with his thousand dollars. Then her heels stopped and turned back, but he could not see her pinched face. “You seem too smart to be his friend, Mr. Bedlow.” She closed the door in his face.
12
THE NEXT DAY, Carlyle paid the dentist a visit. “Man, that was the wrongest thing you could’ve did, leaving like that. I got to sell myself under your nose.”
Bent over his work table, the dentist inspected his tools. “What happened?”
“Nothing. She just filled up on that ten you left.” He sat in the dentist’s chair, and his jaw, remembering, began to throb. “We worse off than before.”
“How you figure that?”
“Because now she connect me with a unhappy time. I got to have a chance to sympathize with her. But she didn’t tell me nothing. I didn’t ever get the chance to call you a bastard.”
The dentist turned around, a small knife in his hand. “I couldn’t sit there with that crazy bitch no more. I went to Mamie’s.”
“You have to hold that back if you want this to work. You educated and all, but you act dumb.”
“I couldn’t help it.” He looked unhappy. “So you didn’t make progress?”
“Nothing, man. As a matter of fact, I think she know we ain’t army buddies, because at the end, she stuck her head out the door and tells me I’m too smart to be your friend—Mr. Bedlow.”
“She did?” The dentist brightened. “God damn! You made it, Carlyle.” He jumped, the knife shining in his fist. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
Carlyle cleared his throat. “Remember you said you wanted to get out before you went crazy too?” He shook his head. “You too late.”
“Listen.” The dentist came toward him, waving the knife. “You’re too smart to be my friend. That’s a compliment.”
Just then, Carlyle imagined himself sitting with a steady customer, selling a fur coat fresh from some unlocked car, perfume still strong in its silk lining. “She haven’t mean a compliment. Not the way she said it.”
“No, man. I know my wife. I’m a bad guy. But you’re too smart to be my friend. She’s going for it. Time for stage number two. The weekend’s coming,” he went on. Friday night, Carlyle, Mamie, the dentist and his wife would drive to the cottage at the end of Long Island. Mamie would go as Carlyle’s date. But once they had arrived, Mamie and the dentist would have lots of paper work. Carlyle would seduce the dentist’s wife. He felt so certain it would work that he told Carlyle to arrange to have someone ready to take pictures on Saturday night. He would put up the photographer at a small motel nearby.
Carlyle did not attempt to argue with him. He agreed to come to the office at six on Friday, with a suitcase full of attractive sports-clothes, the better to trap the dentist’s wife.
13
THE DENTIST OWNED a very large automobile. Carlyle and Mamie—her big, beautiful thighs crossed—sat in the back. The dentist’s wife stared out the open right-front window at cemeteries, airports, rows of pink and gray houses, and finally, sandy hills, covered with stubby Christmas trees and hard, dull-green bushes. Two hours from Harlem, they turned onto a dirt road. Then, even over the engine, Carlyle heard the music, as if they had made a giant circle, returning to the summer jukeboxes of the Avenue.
The community of cottages crowded in the dusk light around a small, bright bay. It did not look like Harlem, but if he had come on it by accident, Carlyle would have known that people of African descent lived there; by the music, the aroma of good food, barbecuing ribs, frying chickens. Carlyle had always believed that people like the dentist and his wife tried very hard to act European. If so, their music and food gave them away.
The dentist had built his glass and lacquered-wood house thirty yards from the beach. They sat around an empty yellow-brick fireplace, flicking their ashes into ceramic trays, while the dentist’s wife fixed dinner. Behind her back, the dentist winked, smiled, waved at Mamie. Carlyle read a magazine, trying to give them privacy—and wondered if the dentist’s wife actually did not know about Mamie and the dentist. They ate, drank two or three scotches apiece, tried to talk, and, at eleven, gave up and went to bed.
Carlyle had not gone to bed as early as eleven in years, and he awoke in the middle of the night. Unable to call back sleep, he climbed out of bed, removed his black pressing rag, and stepped into the front yard. Something made him look up, and he discovered the stars. In Harlem, he could see only the brightest, strongest ones. But now he saw more stars than sequins on a barmaid’s dress, and liked them. He sat, then lay down, careful to keep his hands between the wet grass and his hair.
At first he did not hear her thumping toward him. Then her pinched orange-gray face peered down at him, her hair wrapped around tiny spiked metal rollers. “You didn’t like your bed?” She wore only a nightgown, drab in the starlight.
He sat up quickly. “I couldn’t sleep. Not enough happening.” That sounded funny to him and he laughed quietly.
“I know what you mean.” She hesitated for a moment, then sat down next to him. The dentist’s scheme might work after all. The man might know his wife. Maybe she had some men, but in a very careful way.
Lowering herself down beside him, she gathered up the nightgown to show him knees as square and hard as fist-sized ivory dice. “It’s a nice night though.”
“Yeah.” He had not finished judging her legs.
“They’re not much, are they? Maybe that’s why…” She stopped. “No, that’s not why.” Then she looked at him. “Mr. Bedlow…”
He did not let her finish, pushed her onto her back while his name still bubbled in the air. He did business, like opening a car door, going through the glove compartment, tossing the road maps aside, hoping to find a portable radio or a wallet. She wrapped her thin arms and legs around him, moaned as if in pain.
On hands and knees, he pulled away from her, and discovered she had begun to cry. “Oh, this is bad. This is bad. But…I was so hot!” She rolled onto her stomach, muffling sobs in the grass. “This is really bad. I can’t do this!”
He patted her shoulder blades, pulled her nightgown over her buttocks, realizing as he tried to comfort her, that the dentist had lied to him. She had waited. Of course, it made no real difference; but he did not want it known that he believed everything people told him.
Finally he got her to stop crying and sit up. But she would not look at him, huddled on the grass, her back to him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bedlow. I guess you could tell we’re having troubles. But I didn’t mean to bring you into it.”
“Come on, Robena, the sky won’t fall down. And call me Carlyle. Mr. Bedlow don’t make it now.” He moved closer to her, spoke over her shoulder. “What kind of trouble you people got? You own everything, two houses, a big car, and all that. So it can’t be money.” He believed what he said, but had asked because now he wanted to know the dentist’s weaknesses.
She lowered her chin to her chest. “No, it’s not money. Yes, it’s money.” She raised her head and turned toward him. “How old
are you?”
He gave himself a few years.
“I’m thirty-six.” She waited, let the number die. “Me and my husband, when we went to school, in Washington, it was different, even from your time. We always thought, at least I did—I mean, now I don’t know what he really thought—I mean, we thought it was enough for him to be a dentist. You know what I mean?”
All this had little to do with marriage, the kind he knew. He had expected the usual story, the dentist running in the street, chasing after many Mamies before this one. Or perhaps she would think the dentist cheap. He waited.
“But that’s not enough anymore. I mean, he’s a good dentist. He really is. But they don’t care if he’s good or not. I always thought they’d care.”
Carlyle thought, then realized whom she talked about.
“But they don’t. It took me a long time to see that, and after, I didn’t want to believe it.” She paused. “We got raised to believe we had to be best. My mama always told me, you got to be best in your class.”
Carlyle too remembered such words.
“But I was a girl and only supposed to be the best wife I could. So when we got married, I worked so he could go to school full-time. He’s a good dentist, but it didn’t do any good. When he should’ve been on the staff of a good clinic, he ended up in Harlem. And when he should’ve…” She shook her head. “This isn’t very interesting, is it?”
Carlyle had developed patience in his work; he told her to go on, still hoping she would give him something important.
“The point is when I saw they lied about caring, I looked into everything they said, and you know what? They lied about everything.” Her discovery still bewildered her.
“Hell, I known that since I was seven.”
She shook her head several times. “No, listen, everything. Even about food. You ever read the small print on a box of ice cream? It’s not even ice cream.”
Dunfords Travels Everywheres Page 6
