The Collected Novels of Charles Wright

by Charles Wright

  I went out and bought two fifths of scotch for us, milk and oranges for the baby.

  The bell rang. I heard Troy’s gravelly voice coming up the stairs.

  Susan, brown as a berry, all smiles, was wearing what appeared to be a camel-colored Berber’s robe. She ran to embrace me. “Oh, Charles. It’s so good to see you!”

  “I’ve missed you kids,” I said, releasing Susan.

  Troy came up to me. He had on blue jeans, sweatshirt, and a floppy safari hat. Three-year-old Skipper was glued on his back, Indian fashion. Troy dropped Skipper to the floor, and gave me a man-killing slap on the back.

  “Charlie, old man,” he said. There was warmth in his voice and smile.

  “Jesus Christ,” I exclaimed, stunned.

  “We got in this morning,” Susan said. “You’re the first person we’ve seen.”

  “Yeah,” Troy added. “Had to see you. Had to find out what’s been happening.”

  “Oh,” Susan moaned, looking at her son. “We almost forgot the baby!”

  “Skipper,” Troy commanded, like a stern, proud father, “Say hello to Uncle Charles.”

  Three-year-old, tow-headed, Troy Mantle Lamb pouted and played with his fingers. He wore a little striped suit with matching cap, mischief-like lights sparkled in his blue eyes.

  I am very fond of children. The neighborhood kids get all my spare change. “Hello, fellow,” I said, picking Skipper up. “Did you kill any tigers in Africa?”

  Skipper gave me a long serious look, which in an adult might have meant, “I know you, I know your kind.”

  “Nigger,” Skipper said in a clear, small voice.

  For a brief second, human breath was suspended.

  Then Troy said angrily: “Shut your trap, you little bastard.”

  “Oh, Charles,” Susan said, shaking her head sadly. “I’m sorry. Honestly, I don’t know where Skipper heard that.”

  MY FRIEND NICK has spasms over my body. He thinks it is something to worship, to sing wordless hymns about. He must tell his well-connected friends about it. I must enter the rich world of queerdom.

  So tonight, I have on my one-and-only good dark suit. There’s a scent of pine about me. I’m using my boyish mannerisms. I’ve had three double scotches and the lights are in my eyes. I smile quietly, a diplomat in a new and perilous country. Nick, the eunuch guide, is in his glory. There is the proper, white-coated oriental houseman, razor-eyed, smelling of hothouse roses. The host, tanned with gray hair clipped like an oarsman, the face sexless and set like stone. I don’t think it’s possible for him to move a muscle of it, but he smiles faintly at me, a flicker of interest.

  I take in this large room, covered in pale green damask. Empire paintings in gilt frames; the fruit-wood furniture with simple lines; masses of carefully arranged white tulips.

  There are exactly twelve men in the room, talking quietly over drinks, their quick eyes darting around the room. They have little of the aura one associates with piss-elegant faggots; these men are well-to-do, not phonies. Still, I keep thinking if they’re so unreal in real life, how is it possible for their sex lives to have any meaning? And the answer is: perhaps it doesn’t.

  “Writer? How interesting!” They knew slews of writers. It might be fruitful if I came to cocktails next week. I need to get away to the Cape, or Fire Island. A writer needs solitude. I don’t look like a messenger. (What does a messenger look like?) They’re all round me, talking in their prissy, cultured voices and I’m thinking, Jesus, Jesus, the latest hunk of meat to be tossed into the arena.

  Dinner in a shimmering black and white dining room. Real linen napkins, candlelight, three wines. Polite small talk. And now, shall we retire to the den?

  We’re all good and drunk now. To hell with good breeding, we’re for real. Several of the men have suddenly become their favorite actresses. Gradually, the lights are lowered, one by one. Men are lounging in chairs, on sofas, the floor, in various poses. Shirts open or at least unbuttoned. Trousers: open or down. Most of them went about their business silently, except for a few who whispered in tense voices, cooing of love. It was a grotesque scene with wild, quick body movements, groans, great murmuring sounds.

  No one had touched me. I have a feeling that they are waiting for the main show, me. When it came, it was the little man who had sat next to me at dinner, a jolly man who told amusing stories. But now he was like a man stumbling through the dark and afraid.

  Nick and I left at three a.m. I wanted a drink. We stopped in a neighborhood bar.

  “Oh, you were sensational!” Nick beamed. He seemed very pleased, like a mother when baby takes his first steps alone. “You’re going places, Charles. Didn’t I tell you, didn’t I?”

  I didn’t answer him. I drank my drink, his drink, and four more.

  It was an experience, nothing more. And if I felt like it, I’d do it again. It was as simple as that.

  But Nick talked on. My anger rose. With a rock-and-roll singer on the jukebox yelling, “What is the price of happiness, what is the price of love?” I leaned over and tried to crack Nick’s head with my glass.

  SOMETIMES I FEEL as if I’m being strangled by the sophisticate scum of New York, by those millions of feet making it toward Mr. Greenbacks and what it takes to be a “smaht” New Yorker. And me, what does this sophisticate scum want from me? The understanding ear, the priest in blue jeans.

  I hear the breathless, girlish voice of Mrs. Lee coming upstairs.

  “Now Pike . . . now Tike. Babies! One at a time, one at a time.”

  Her heels clicked on the tiled steps and she stage-called, “Charles, darling! You have visitors.”

  I opened the door and Mrs. Lee came toward me puffing, her short, plump body cleverly concealed in a black suit. She was weighed down with garlands of oriental pearls, a large garnet-pearl brooch, and exactly eleven gold bangle bracelets. A sable scarf dropped seven skins carelessly from her shoulders; a garnet velvet skullcap was perched on her thin, red-gold hair, fluffed wild. Her hair was not unlike that of Tike and Pike, her two miniature French poodles. She had the face of a warmhearted cherub.

  “Whew,” Mrs. Lee sighed. “These steps. Charles, you need an elevator.”

  I stood by the door and watched her. “You’re looking wonderful,” I said.

  “Naughty boy,” she tut-tutted. “I brought you a little present—champagne. “

  I put the champagne in the ice box and waited for the soliloquy. Mrs. Lee was posed grandly on the sofa bed.

  “I was thinking of you, Charles darling, of something you once said, ‘You are not defeated until you are defeated.’ Remember Adolf? . . . Where he got that German name I’ll never know. Oh dear, I was wild with grief, stayed in bed two days. I couldn’t eat a thing, darling. But on the third day I was starved. I went to Schrafft’s and had a feast. Over dessert I said to myself, ‘Lee, dear, let’s face it. Adolf was a first-class son-of-a-bitch!’ Well he was, darling. And these two little sweethearts knew it all along.” She paused to look lovingly at Tike and Pike. “Adolf would sit on the sofa beside me, and Tike and Pike would jump on the sofa facing us. Never once did they sit on our sofa. That’s how I smell out rats. With Tike and Pike, the dears.”

  On cue, like guards of honor, Tike and Pike pranced over and sat elegantly at their mistress’s feet.

  “I had a little party last night, Charles, and I called you. Where were you, darling? It was only half-past-eight, and Chico had left. . . .” At this Mrs. Lee paused and tears began to play hell with the three layers of makeup. “Left, darling. Saying the most impossible things. Oh, dear.”

  Mrs. Lee has had a succession of lovers and suffers no illusions. Her heartbreak is only on the surface—the same act played with a different male lead. Mrs. Lee, an aging, ageless coquette, dressed in gold and lavender tea gowns, matching ribbon in her hair, dancing through an army of Puerto Rican gigolos, small pretty young men, manicured like dolls. Or Mrs. Lee, her face powdered chalk white, a headache band around her hair, ya
rds and yards of black chiffon, screaming, “Go! This very moment! Back to your Goddamn island!” Or Mrs. Lee, motherly, chiding, “Your English hasn’t improved. What are you going to night school for? No more pointed Florsheim shoes. No suede jackets and those tight pants. Understand?”

  “Oh dear,” Mrs. Lee was saying, “I need someone like you, Charles.”

  “Chico will come back,” I tried to reassure her.

  “Of course,” she said coldly. “They all come back, the rats. But Charles, do you think I’ll have another lovely, lovely affair? Like last summer?”

  Remembering the champagne, knowing what she had come to hear, I nodded and said in a soothing voice, “As sure as the sun rises.”

  MITCH CAME OVER this afternoon with a mysterious bottle. He offered it to me, his tiny, glass-bead eyes never leaving my face. I screwed the top off the bottle and took a whiff. The smell was too sweet, sickening.

  “Go on, man. It’s cough syrup. Take a swig,” Mitch invited. “You can buy it at any drugstore. Just go in and cough like mad. I never have any trouble. I’m so skinny they think I have TB.”

  “I thought pot was your speed.”

  Mitch gave me a long hard stare. “Have you got anything? It just so happens this boy is busted. I’ve got to get my nerves together and make a score. Real bad.”

  I knew what was coming. “I need some money myself,” I said. “I don’t get paid till Tuesday.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Mitch said thoughtfully. “You ought to give up that messenger job. You’ve lost a fortune with that body of yours.”

  “Never in your stall, daddy,” I shook my head, remembering what Alice had once told me: “I gave away a million dollars’ worth before I discovered I could sell it. Pussy will sell when cotton won’t.”

  “With me, it’s morals,” Mitch was saying, eyeing the brown bottle. “Are you gonna drink that shit?”

  I took a short nip and it tasted like sugared glue. Mitch took the bottle. “Man, I got so high that I walked all the way down. From West Seventy-second Street.”

  I took another drink of the cough syrup and after a few seconds, my head was slightly light. I wanted a drink but I wouldn’t stand Mitch a drink. A shot wouldn’t do him any good. On moneyless days, we used to boil water and make a cup of tea, throw in a generous amount of cinnamon, inhale the fumes and drink the scalding tea down in a gulp. Today, I can’t stand the smell of cinnamon.

  “Mitch, have you ever drunk lemon extract?” I asked.

  “What? Come again.”

  “Lemon extract. It’s got eighty percent alcohol in it.”

  “Take me to thy vat,” Mitch hammed.

  We went into the closet kitchenette. I opened up a bottle of Seven-up, got a tray of ice and a ten-ounce reserve bottle of lemon extract, and poured them into a water pitcher. I stirred until the tangy mixture was chilled.

  “This is something a cook in the army taught me,” I said, giving Mitch a sample glass.

  Mitch took a careful sip, his beady eyes pointed dead on me. He licked out his fox tongue and took a long drink.

  “Ba-bee,” he exclaimed, “this is a fucking groove. Man, we can bottle this shit and sell it!”

  “Oh, sure,” I agreed, pouring a glass. “We’ll call it lemon juice.”

  “Yeah,” Mitch hee-hawed. “Lemon juice.”

  We downed our lemon juice, poured another round, went into the living room, and exhausted the possibilities of lemon extract, joking about the crazy Bronx-Brooklyn kids who get high on marijuana mixed with store-bought oregano and catnip. Mitch used to push that stuff. The kick came from following the leader and because it was the fashionable thing to do.

  “Awright,” Mitch said. “Awright. With this codeine and lemon juice I can’t help but score tonight.”

  “Do you mind if I have some more of this shit?” Mitch asked.

  “Knock yourself out, baby.”

  Mitch returned from the kitchenette, a deep, one-track expression on his face. He fished in his pocket for a cigarette and out fell his red plastic toothbrush.

  The toothbrush fell to the floor dully. I didn’t say anything.

  Mitch crinkled up the corners of his lips and I saw his teeth. But it wasn’t a smile. He shook his head sadly. “I’m travelling light,” he said. “Those whores are down at The Tombs. I ain’t got any bread. I can’t bail’m out. In fact, I got locked out of my pad. I have on my one-and-only wardrobe.”

  “That’s tough,” I said, feeling as foolish as I sounded. “Why don’t you work the eastside?”

  “Don’t dig those pissy faggots,” Mitch frowned. “And you know I got morals. I got to dig a fag.”

  “You’re roofless, baby,” I told him.

  “But I’m gonna be one old clip-artist tonight. You just watch this kid operate. Awright!”

  “You’ll be all right,” I tried to assure him. He was never sure of himself.

  “I’m getting my nerves settled down,” he said. “I got a feeling it’s gonna be real nice.”

  “Well,” I said slowly, “if you don’t have a place to flop, come on back up here.”

  Mitch was smiling this time and wishing like hell that he wasn’t. He gave me a warm buddy-buddy wink. “Charlie, you are a jewel.”

  TODAY I WALKED and walked through the rainy New York streets. I had deliveries downtown, uptown, westside, eastside. I walked until my feet were soaking wet and I could feel water coming through my raincoat, sweater, and shirt. I made my way through hordes of New Yorkers, and commuters, all walking, running, shoving, cursing. Finally the last delivery was over, and at 7 P.M. I climbed up my five flights and locked the door. I didn’t even bother to take off my wet clothes, just lay down on the bed and asked myself what I was doing in this city. I knew some answers. After my grandmother’s death there was nothing to keep me in Missouri. I had always been a travelling lad, and so I came to New York.

  But I cannot connect the fragments of my life. These dirty, white-walled rooms, the mixed cheap furniture, the decayed scent of this old midtown brownstone, the constant hum of voices, music, and impatient traffic which comes up from the street—what do they have to do with me? The Chinese say that the first step is the beginning of a ten-thousand-mile journey. But what is the first step?

  With my head burrowed in the pillow, I try to think of beginnings; my past.

  “One of these days, you gonna die, pretty baby,” a voice sings mockingly from the jukebox of the bar on the ground floor.

  With enormous effort, I go back through the bowels of memory, back to Missouri. It is death that carries me back, my mother’s death in that four-year-old world.

  She had only been sick two hot August days.

  Death was a crowded cottage with paint peeling from the exterior.

  “Poor thing. Ain’t he sweet?”

  “Come and give cousin Mary a great big kiss.”

  “He don’t know what it is all about.”

  “Poor thing. Ain’t he sweet?”

  Death was my father, standing around looking lost, although he didn’t live with us anymore. And Grandpa, a big tall man with handlebar mustache, in a black deacon’s suit.

  “Come here, Sonny,” he said, picking me up, playfully rubbing his big brown hands through my hair. He gave me a bowl of raspberry ice cream. After the ice cream melted, I stuck my finger in it and the raspberries went round and round in circles.

  Most of all, there was my grandmother, standing in front of the casket and looking down at the last of her four daughters. Her mouth was set tight and she clenched a handkerchief in her hand. But she did not cry. I did not cry either because they had already told me death was a long, long sleep and you did not wake until you got to heaven. Afterwards, I looked up at the sky and in my child’s mind, I did not believe that that was true.

  Then there was the fun of living with Grandpa and Grandma. Cookies and cakes, licking the big cooking spoons. Fishing with Grandpa. Walking through the courthouse square with him, listening to his old
cronies and their tales of the muddy Missouri River.

  School starts and I am very shy. I do not know the children. But the teacher likes me. My marks are good. There are fights with the kids.

  “Teacher’s pet.”

  “You think you is cute.”

  “You is a nigger like all the rest of us.”

  “Yeah. You ain’t nothing but a shit-colored nigger.”

  “Half-white bastard.”

  Ella Mae was a pretty, dark little girl with merry eyes. She was skinny with long braids. She smiled at me during recess. I gave her my apple.

  Years go quickly. I become the best-liked boy in the community. “I think it’s simply wonderful the way you are raising that boy.” This is said to Grandpa and Grandma.

  I’m thirteen now and teaching Sunday school. I become a man in the sexual sense.

  Mary Ann’s grandmother was a sewing-circle crony of my grandmother. One hot, summer afternoon they went out, leaving Mary Ann and me alone. We drank lemonade and had a couple of half-hearted games of blackjack. Finally the card game petered out. Sixteen-year-old Mary Ann began telling ghost stories. The setting was perfect. An old Victorian house filled with dark, heavy furniture, stiff, dusty drapes at the windows and between the doorways, the odor of hothouse flowers. Very little sunlight entered. I was always fascinated by Mary Ann’s house; it was like suffocating in a delicious dream.

  Suddenly, Mary Ann became sleepy. I began to leave, believing she was trying to get rid of me. On the contrary, she wanted me to stay. If I wasn’t sleepy, at least I could stay until she fell asleep. I could usually be talked into things which did not interest me. Not really talked into, but still I’d go along like a good sport. Already I had discovered that it caused me less worry, less arguing and explaining.

  So I went into the bedroom and carefully turned my head while Mary Ann undressed. I caught a view of her buttocks and legs as she deliberately pranced in front of me, talking a mile a minute. Her naked body aroused my thirteen-year-old mind. I would have liked to ask Mary Ann to stand still so I could take a good full view. But I was too well brought up.