“You sound like my little brother.” He started to laugh. “He’s a Black Jesuit. And you know they crazy.”
She ignored him. “What I want is for him to stop working for a year and go around the world. I want to see if what I think is true really is. And I want him to see it. And if it is, maybe we can do just something small. It’s not enough for us to sit out here on a little pile of money. I mean, we’re supposed to do something good for our race too.” She stopped talking then, sat with her chin on her knees, her nightgown bunched around her thighs, leaving Carlyle disappointed.
Then she stood up. “Well, that’s my sad tale. Maybe you’ll tell me yours one time.” She smiled, for the first time.
In the kitchen, she gave him a cup of instant coffee. He read the label, wondering what kind of chemicals the Xs and Ys represented, their action in his stomach. When he had finished the coffee, he returned to his room, retied his head, and climbed into bed.
14
THE DENTIST KNOCKED at his door at nine the next morning, but did not wait for Carlyle to ask him in. “Got through, didn’t you. I knew you’d crack it. I hope your man is a good picture-taker. My prints got to come out clear!”
Carlyle propped himself against the bed’s headboard. “She may not do it again.” He had decided that he would let the dentist believe himself still in charge.
“Everybody knows the first nut is the hardest.”
“Maybe so. How you know anyway?”
“I woke up at three and she wasn’t in bed. And neither was you. I figured you went someplace together. What’d you think of it?”
“Ain’t the best I ever had.”
“Me too.” The dentist came to the bed’s foot. “But with the money you can buy something better.” The dentist smiled, good even white teeth, one gold-covered—then closed his lips. “You better drive over to that motel and tell your friend to load his camera.”
Carlyle nodded. “What’s the plan for today?”
“We got invited to a party. In the late afternoon. We get her drunk; you bring her home, undress her and snap away. I’ll make sure you got the house to yourselves.” He smiled again. “Me and my Mamie’ll make sure, someplace.” He laughed, turning to the door. “Get your hook in deep.”
“I might throw this one back,” M.F.
He opened the door. “Not in my creek, you don’t.”
But Carlyle did not know that for certain.
As he dressed—in short-sleeved pink silk shirt, white bell-bottoms—he tried to decide exactly what to do. Obviously, he wanted to come out the other end with the dentist’s thousand dollars. But then the dentist would have to get his pictures. Carlyle most wanted to get his money, but leave the dentist married to his crazy wife. That would sound good when told at the Grouse. “That dentist thought he had Carlyle, but then Carlyle Bedlow got down to business, do you hear, business!” That meant he had to get the money before the dentist saw the pictures, bad ones. But when he paid the money, the dentist would have to believe the pictures had come out clearly. Carlyle heard himself talking: “She passed out, man. I just sat there beside her in my shorts. We pulled back the covers and Hondo snapped away. They so good we might even sell some.” But the pictures would show nothing. He rehearsed his speech while he finished dressing.
He avoided breakfast, wanting the dentist to suffer through a morning with both of his women, imagining that scene as he drove the dentist’s car between the trees on his way to visit his friend, the photographer, Hondo Johnson.
“Wait a minute. You say you don’t want the pictures to come out?”
“Right.”
Hondo sat on the edge of his motel bed in pale-yellow pajamas. “Well, why don’t you just give him a blank roll?”
“Because if he ever finds me I can tell him it surprised me too. I can offer to do it again.” He looked into Hondo’s mirror, checking his hair. “But he won’t go for it because no man could do it twice to the same woman. And I’m sorry, doc, but I already spent that money. He ain’t got no boys to send after me.”
“Come on, man. Why can’t we just do it simple? Take the pictures and collect the money.” Once Hondo got a plan in his mind, he did not like to change it. He could not improvise. “We’ll mess up, man. And I can sure use that money.”
“We won’t lose the money. We’ll take insurance pictures. Good ones, with her legs open and all. I know a man downtown’ll buy them.” He needed the pictures just in case the dentist did have some boys. “You satisfied now?”
Hondo nodded, did not look happy. His lips poked out under his mustache. “Tell me the signal.”
Carlyle had not thought about it. “When I turn out the lights.”
Hondo started to laugh. “And how do I shoot pictures in the dark?” Catching Carlyle pleased him.
“You’re all right, man.” He adjusted his shirt, turned from the mirror. “What about the blinds?”
“That’s good. Pull down the blinds. And if they already down, pull them up. Just do something with them blinds.” He stood up. “You got that?”
“Right.” He liked Hondo. “But I’ll try to get her fallen down, so we’ll have plenty of time, and she won’t know nothing. Then we leave. I never did like no drunken Jones anyway.”
15
THE PLAN HAD WORKED. She might even pass out before he got her off the dirt road, into the house and out of her clothes. The party had started at five, and now at ten, still rolled. They had eaten potato salad, fried chicken and greens on paper plates, drinking steadily. The doctors, lawyers, dentists, big-time hustlers got very loud, about baseball, Harlem after the war when they had all begun their careers. Their children, teenagers, gained control of the phonograph, danced hard on the lawn. Carlyle had filled her empty glasses. Finally he asked her if she wanted to go home. Winking at the dentist, he led her out of the house.
In the moonlight, the dirt of the road, half-sand, shone gray. He supported her with a hand on her bony rib-cage. “How you doing?” He did not really want her to answer, and disturb herself.
“I’m doing fine. What did you say?”
“Nothing.” They crossed the dentist’s grass now, circling a clump of lawn chairs and an umbrella-table, a few steps from the porch. He saw the bushes move and waved at Hondo.
Taking her straight to her bedroom, he turned on the dim table lamp, and began to undress her. She did not resist, lay so limp he did not know if she had stayed awake. He put her clothes onto a chair, returned to the bed and pulled the bed-covers from under her.
“Thanks, baby.” The baby sounded strange, meant not for him, but for the dentist.
He undressed to his shorts, went to the window, and pulled down the blinds.
“What’s that?” She raised her head, but it weighed too much.
He tried to imitate the dentist. “Nothing, baby.”
Hondo banged open the front door, made his way through the living room, bumping into things. He slid the coffee table out of his way. Carlyle went to the bedroom door. “Hey, man, quiet down. Follow my voice.”
“Nigger, why didn’t you turn on some lights?” He had almost reached the hallway. Carlyle waited at the other end.
“Follow my voice, man.”
Now Hondo ran toward him, appeared, in Bermuda shorts and sneakers. Carlyle backed into the room.
Hondo popped into the doorway, stopped. “You expect me to take pictures in this light?” He looked disgusted.
“Quiet down, man.” Carlyle whispered. “She ain’t out yet.”
“I got to have more light. I didn’t bring my infrared attachment.” He began to focus his camera on the dentist’s naked wife.
“Baby?” She rolled to her side, then back. “Who’s that?”
“Nobody. Close your eyes. I’m turning on the top light.”
She did not answer. He waited, then switc
hed it on. For a few seconds, he could not see Hondo. “All right?”
“I think so.” He put the camera to his face again. “But I can’t be sure until I read the meter.”
“Come on, Hondo. We ain’t got time for that.” She would wake up. Somehow he knew it.
“Always got time. What if we don’t get our insurance pictures?” He took a light-meter from his pocket, advanced on her, held it over her navel.
Carlyle sat down on the bed. “How you doing, baby?” He patted her shoulder.
Her eyes stayed closed. “Who’s that just now?”
“A man.” He leaned over, kissed her cheek.
“I got it now, Carlyle.” Hondo moved to the foot of the bed. “One point four. But I got to do it in seconds so you can’t move.”
“Who’s that voice?” She raised herself to her elbows, looked up into Hondo’s lens. “Who’s he?”
“Now hold it.”
But she had already moved, scrambling to the edge of the bed. “He got you to do this!”
Carlyle reached out for her, but she broke away, and jumped for the closet. “He’ll never get it now!” She pulled the door behind her.
Carlyle did not follow her. He could easily open the closet door, but that would do no good. She had to be in bed, with a man, looking either surprised or happy, but not struggling. “You better come out of there, Robena.” He put a threat into his voice, but did not mean it. She had to imprison herself while he thought. He knew what he had to do: to convince her to pose for the pictures.
He looked at Hondo, still busy with final adjustments, then stood up. “Listen, you can’t stay in there all night. Nobody’s coming to rescue you.” He put his mouth close to the door.
“And nobody’s getting a divorce neither.” She started to scold him. “I thought you was nice.”
“I am. Come on out.”
Hondo sat on the bed, camera waiting.
“You’re not nice.” She paused, cleared her nose. “You make love to women for money.” She sniffled again.
“Me? Listen, I came out here with Mamie. Your husband’s nurse?”
“I know her. She got a crush on him.”
“No, she don’t.” He waited; she did not speak. “She’s with me, but then last night you and me got into something special. And your husband found out, and said he’d make a lot of trouble for me if I didn’t get his pictures. He got me in a terrible spot.”
She paused for a moment. “First of all, you didn’t even talk to Mamie, all the way out in the car. And second, where did you get a cameraman so fast?”
The dentist had married a smart woman. “You acting real stupid. What you want with a man who don’t want you?”
“He does so want me.” She did not believe herself.
“No, he don’t. He wants Mamie. He wants to marry her.” His voice grew cold, the way he talked to policemen as long as their guns remained buried under blue winter coats. “And he’s paying me lots of money to get him a divorce.”
She waited again, crying behind the closet door. “Well, he’s not getting it.”
“Listen, Robena.” He bent closer, softened his tone. “Face it, baby. He don’t want you. He don’t want anything about you. He don’t want to go around the world with you. He thinks you’re crazy. Give the man his pictures.”
And she did.
16
HONDO TOOK THE CLEAREST PICTURES any magistrate would ever accept into evidence. The woman sat on the bed, bare to the waist. She looked sad, her infidelity uncovered. The young hoodlum beside her, his hair shiny and slightly waved, did not at all resemble her dentist husband.
Carlyle decided against trying for extra money. One thousand would do him a while. The dentist paid him, in cash, the following Monday evening.
He had long since turned the money into a belted camel’s-hair overcoat, shoes, some perfume for his children’s mothers, when next he heard from the dentist’s wife. She had mailed a postcard to him care of the Grouse. It came from Europe:
Hello. We here on our honeymoon.
My husband is a dentist from
(the ink had smeared) in Africa.
Best wishes, Robena (remember?)
At first he could not remember. Her handwriting did not make a face. Robena sounded like somebody pretty jacked up. That brown girl from Atlanta joining her brother in Germany? A stewardess? That teenager in the blue dress and pink barrettes who wandered into the Grouse saying she had lost her way to Westchester? Where in the city had he met a Robena? The Bronx? Brooklyn? The Village? The Westside? Harlem?
He remembered the hen; it have surprise him, n he thinked about it for aWhile in the Overhaul, we may rate him n Mr. Charcoyle too right off centered and beginning tinfur subsistory infemination about his Malma from dottold, long-furgoted pegTail.
Dust, we may away ouSelfs from the Langleash language fo aPerusol o’some Sauce-matourial gleanerd from dPages o’dDialy Citysun, n aCause, in dTongue o’Now Afreequer-quenne, seeng z’Mr. Chacallo vbegin tclose dGap in dOwnderstanding o’dFront o’hExpierience n tspy dRelayshinship betwin hId-self n dhat:
* * *
—
DAPPY DUOWIFED Mr. 521th Street Dentoost, tendng Home on dTanagent, makeng dRound o’Harem-nicepots wi spicey Piece-girl, Rojena Shadrack. DBoys at B.B.s Bubbershop recommand he branch dhat Hypocritimus on aTree n call dhem by dhei’riteful Name;
Polley Gomez (note ed. chimer-about-tone), inrolld by h’well-pressd Prisonoir-parents in d’exclusively cashionable OuLadle o’dGriddle School, where dSupperintender o’Spoart, Chaf Childmascher, racently varrive from Upcellar’s Jan Freize Skol wi Orders tenrumpture dPreseedngs in dLockeroom. HAim: tdimfuse dDeezs n dDoozs, wi special Infantsis on dGuiles. He vfill Poll fool o’Nounsense, n dhen vsend her down hWay twarble hWhim tWham, at lease twenty itch Foughtnight, n vlove ditto, who sayd: “He do’nt’have aChance? He conduit. V-dGirls have mo’in dheiBuddys, baby? Who Star Tit wi More?”
Polley Gomez
Tommy Tambo, n hBalkick-boygirl Bwide, Fredarichard, bleching in dWeeds wi dhat lillBoarboy no mater what Toymay Taymbow doy aboutit, who vreceive aVicette from Anspectre Theopolice Heeley, who vhad him aHymn o 77 (runreddrunn!) followng dUnveilng o’hApoxalipical-Hymenall. (Coyez, Clyle, ne pas plier, but if you creases it, dHats all on tyou.) Later Frigericha vcall dInspectar at dSquid Room, where she vslum, tlet him know hHubboy, Tubby, vgiver Trouble. She sayd hHead she vshed, hizid she seed, n cdntgig it. D’fakeCat vtow over dhere, n nopd Tim’s Noirbet, giveng d’well-tressd Entercontainer dAdmoanition: “We know you myride to her, but don’t startreating that Murphy like a yam!”
Tommy Tambo and Fredarichard
Said Alfalah, oilrich Ptomentake from dMiddleleast, sharkng Aimbossy Row by proposeng dhat dGovermint trade hGypverment ouWoemans fo Earlmeralds n Industrail-diemands. He explaned at Corkineary Air, portng aPip, n emppland hSelf dhis aWhy: “We knead dWomn, n you nab d’hostilepal Beds.”
Hexilency Joke Barney Popachill, dRector o’dTheor Yeth Odinization’s Free Launch Progrom n what he vanswored when he closed hittite: “I am not in the babit to be asterix my reputation for tough Moutheadness by being fussed tan, sir, the questions of beachboys, if he knows what’s god for him. After all, I roed himher over, flour free.”
Vitchis Moroless Krecht, in hWay famous Suregun from Bactavaria, who vmake Headslines aFew Vix ago by fleeng dFreyr-world fo dFryworld n dCharms o’aCuti calld Hot-Fingers Dancerabar, in dCotton’s Paw: “I waltz dieng, so I gulf for vie, not?”
Jigglebody Jackson, n what she vsay after dhatMan wi dGun vbrak in hDressng-roamng around in n over hDraws, dhen falld on hKnees n begd n plegd wi her tgive him a’silver Dunceng-shoe wi dSpikeheel n coalSole: “But, butteie, dhen I lllimp too.”
DALDERMAN CELEBRATE HCINQUACENTURY LYMBNG BUT LIMBERSTILL
Flashy former Fa
lldman, C. C. “Af” Wrhygin sitng in aRocker celebrightng hHundreadth-berthday, stroked a’cateyed firmer Seamtress, Maeba, h’twenty-two-yeahold Waif, n vreflect on h’forty omo times twelve Years in d’lococal Polittlecarl-scene: “We vhave ouUpsandownes, ouBracknforths, ouOverenders, n I douane dhey always pious by. African Alley vntget remoteld yet. When it lllook butter, Ursa llshow us aPair o’Steal-pants.”
Vitchis Moroless Krecht and HotFingers Dancerabar
Jigglebody Jackson
DJettyson visk d’begrizzled Bestaboredon tcommint dCoinage o’h’adequated Parlens t’dEvents o’d’changeng Toaday:
“I vsee dSameting z’dissolver d’lost few Yeas. I vmake dRide tNewhoundland. I vsofa dSeesickness too. But I vmake mSelf aTrade wi Smith n Black, Anvils, tpay mPassout Money. I vemployer mSellf. Any Ting vdo it if he could it around in dMouth in hHead. Dawn, sir, by yOreself n aMaMa n, ibung her, ije ySelfs. Muvaut! Splitez!”
DCityson vset back. “Al, man, sitinbull again.”
“Now you take dEngines, powr Rusticks. Dhey vwin dBabyll, but dhey lllose dWar dSpite dheiSoot fo it. Soon z’we get ouBubbettes away from dheiWigworm, n out dBuckseat. Taker care tsetter up! Buy hBack wi Cloth tdrape. Better tsweeten it. She lltaste less bitter. Salt needd here! No leaker allowd! It silk at dPourtea, n hell on dBroadway goeng Home. Besides when Mimmae bwabeng she get boohoozy about hDefilment, hSin (so-cold), wi’out realizeng Sirvilefall vmake it necesairey. Sew do’ntunravel dhat Yawn about hStrayness. Mostly we vencountourd superior Fearpower, n Milema vsunse a’hard Wonter awintng. Dhen, we vrun ouGamebit under aCloud o’Moonbombs, aBag o’Ballwire, aWoe o’Warmbate away from Momoa’s Minny mansons. We vntsee aDrop in aWater’s Chance o’Saylng high n out o’dHat-Place. But nummo, bubbah! We vestablish aContitact! He he ee e e e e s s h she up! Lissend:”
Dunfords Travels Everywheres Page 7
