The Collected Novels of Charles Wright

by Charles Wright

  The girl sank her teeth into my right shoulder. I slapped her hard and carried her to the bed. She whimpered again. I fell on top of her. Her tongue was busy in my left ear. I whimpered. Her right hand, like a measuring tape, grabbed my penis.

  With my right hand I cupped her chin and thrust my tongue into her throat.

  The girl squirmed and tickled my ribs.

  Lowering her head, I kissed her chin and the oyster opening of her neck where her bone structure v’d, until my face slid farther down, and came to rest in the soft luxury of her breast. More delicious than fruit, I thought, teasing the wishbone below her breasts.

  Still going down, I stopped at her navel.

  She said clearly, “Oh,” and rose slowly.

  Panting, I shoved her back down on the bed, and with my knees, opened her legs. They opened like a pretty, well-constructed fan, and then closed like a fan, engulfing my back.

  “Mercy,” I sighed, settling in.

  She bit my lower lip but didn’t say anything. I did not say anything either. But at the climax, I bit her lower lip. Her hands were mad on my back.

  Now I was breathing deeply; my eyes kept closing. The girl sighed. Then her sharp teeth nipped my cheek with its day-old beard. Pleased, she went on to discover the delight of my nose, the treasure of my ears, my red but large eyeballs. And then, like one looking for truffles, she buried her face against my flat hairless chest.

  “Baby,” I whispered.

  “Love,” she said.

  I looked tenderly into her smiling face, planted one resounding kiss on her nose. Then I fell against her, and the last thought I had before dozing off to sleep was, “I wonder what The Deb is doing?”

  I was awakened by having my neck kissed.

  “I’ve got love to give,” the girl said, digging her fingernails into my backsides.

  “Sweetcakes,” I sighed, coming to life again.

  “I just want to make you happy.”

  “And I want to make you happy,” I said.

  “Do you love me a little?”

  I was feeling much too good to answer.

  The first shadows of evening arrived. There was no moon, I noted through the sheer white curtains. And there were no stars. In the room, there was only the glow of the girl’s shining hair and the glow of The Wig.

  Silently, she anointed my body with Joy.

  Yawning, I said, “I wanna Coke, and put some ice in it.”

  “Yes, love,” she said.

  Smiling in the darkness, I put my hands behind my head. I felt good. The frustrations of the day had been spent. The Wig, The Deb, and all those people I had encountered . . .

  “Love,” the girl called, breaking into my thoughts.

  She sat down on the side of the bed and took me in her arms and held the glass of iced Coke as she would for an ill child. With her free hand, she gently stroked my brow.

  “I want you to become my lover,” she said quietly.

  “We’ve just met,” I protested. “We don’t even know each other.”

  “You’ll learn to love me. I’m a good woman. I’ve got money.”

  I bolted up from the bed. “Where’s my jeans? I gotta run, cupcake. Perhaps I’ll see you later.”

  “Please,” the girl cried.

  “Later,” I said softly. I got into my clothes and made it to the door. Just as I shut it behind me, I thought I heard her cry, “I’m going to tell Mr. Fishback on you!”

  Midnight found me on the Eighth Avenue A train for Harlem, wearing a pretty flower-printed plastic rainhood I’d luckily snatched up along with my clothes. It was raining out, and otherwise I’d have got The Wig wet. None of the passengers paid me the slightest attention. They had witnessed too many extraordinary happenings on subway trains: such as an old man getting stomped to death by a group of young punks because he didn’t have life insurance; or someone getting sick and choking to death. Even statutory rapes had lost their appeal, they’d seen too many of them—so no one was likely to be impressed by a sad-faced, redeyed young man wearing a plastic rainhood, shivering, biting his fingernails, staring at his reflection in the dirty window of the car.

  I began to doze, thinking: when love waxes cold, said Paul in “The Third Coming . . .” then jerked up suddenly as the A train pulled into 125th Street.

  I was the only passenger to get off. The platform was deserted. Workmen were spraying the platform with glue. Dazed and a little frightened, I ran up the sticky steps and out into the deserted street and hailed a taxi.

  The driver, wearing a gas mask, stuck his head out the window.

  “Oh, it’s you,” said Mr. Fishback, the funeral director. He removed the gas mask, spat false teeth onto the sidewalk. Then he placed a fresh pair of false teeth in his mouth. “It’s this goddam country. It’s ruining my health. I can’t complain, though. They’re dying every second. But there won’t be anybody around to beautify me when I kick off. Ain’t that a bitch?”

  I had a sudden urge to rip the taxi door off. “Why are you driving a Yellow Cab?”

  “I was waiting for you, Lester Jefferson,” Mr. Fishback said innocently. “Why, they brought this big fat mama in and I didn’t even have a chance to bang her. Terrible to see them go into the ground before you get what you want. And I didn’t wanna upset you by arriving in my hearse.”

  “Why should that upset me? I’ve been riding in your hearse all my life.”

  For reasons known only to him, Mr. Fishback replaced the gas mask. “When love waxes cold . . .”

  “What?” I exclaimed. “You been experimenting again?”

  “The Deb,” Mr. Fishback began. “She got run over by a school bus this afternoon.”

  Numbed, I could only stare at Mr. Fishback. I took off the rainhood.

  “No,” Mr. Fishback said solemnly. “You know she had been taken up by café society and was staying high all the time. You had made her see things she had never seen before. Madame X said she called for an appointment but never showed. Under that tough, tart front, she was a sweet kid. An all-American girl. She left her rock ’n’ roll record collection to charity. But I might be able to get you a couple of favorites.”

  “Mr. Fishback,” I said, “it’s strange, The Deb is dead but my heart’s still beating, and I can’t cry.”

  “It happens in all the best families and to the world’s greatest lovers.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “Get in, son,” Mr. Fishback said kindly. “Rest assured, The Deb is in the best of hands.”

  “I know,” I said, “but I won’t get in, thank you.”

  “She’s a beautiful dead girl.”

  “Yes. Now please drive slow. I’ll walk along beside you. That’s the least I can do for her.”

  “Do you need my gas mask?”

  “No.”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “I don’t care,” I said.

  Mr. Fishback’s mortuary was under the Triboro Bridge, at the edge of the polluted, muddy river. It was a one-story building of solid plate glass, with the roof also of glass, rising up dramatically like the wings of a butterfly. Mr. Fishback parked the taxi (which belonged to his brother-in-law, who was dying, he said) near the bridge and then walked down a lonely garbage-littered slope with me.

  Side by side, we walked under a deep gray sky that was just beginning to break with the first light of day. The cool air was refreshing against my feverish face.

  Once, for a brief moment, I panicked. “I can’t go on.”

  “Now, son,” Mr. Fishback said gently.

  “What can I do now?”

  “You know what you have to do.”

  “Yes,” I nodded, clutching Mr. Fishback’s arm for support.

  We entered the glass building and walked like mourners to the direct center of the floor. Marble tiles slid back. Mr. Fishback removed his mask. He had a kind, dark, wrinkled face, the face of a genius, though being modest, he had always considered himself just God.

  He escorted m
e down steps into a room the size of a standard bathroom. The room was mirrored and brightly lit, odorless. There was only a red bat-wing chair.

  “I’m glad to get rid of these things,” Mr. Fishback said, jerking out his false teeth and spitting blood on the floor. “Everything is so unsanitary!”

  I flopped into the bat-wing chair: “The poor Deb!”

  “Hush, now. You’ll feel better after I cut off The Wig. Then one more act and you’ll be happy for the rest of your life. While I was abroad, I kept in touch with Madam X. Remarkable woman.”

  Mr. Fishback pressed an invisible button in the mirrored wall and out popped a brand-new pair of sheep shears.

  I closed my eyes. I felt no emotion. It was over. Everything. Love waxed cold. The Deb—dead.

  “Watch out for my ears,” I warned. “And hurry up. I’m hungry.”

  There were tears in Mr. Fishback’s eyes as he expertly clipped The Wig in exactly one minute.

  “It was so beautiful,” he sniffed.

  I kicked the magnificent burnished red-golden hair haloed around the wing chair. I smiled at my bald-headed reflection. “It’s over. I can always do it again.”

  “It was so pretty,” Mr. Fishback said. “Nobody had hair like that except Madam X, and that was before she became a saint.”

  “She’s a funny woman. She gave me the creeps. I didn’t stay for the first session.”

  “I know,” Mr. Fishback said sharply. “Now stand up and take off your clothes.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do as I say.”

  “You’re always experimenting.” I laughed weakly, but I stood up and stripped.

  Mr. Fishback sighed. “You’ve lost weight. You look like a corpse. Think of something nasty and get an erection.”

  “Like what, for example?”

  “Anything. Hell. This country is filled with nasty images.”

  “The Deb and I will never have children. Why are you torturing me!”

  “Not so loud,” Mr. Fishback said angrily. “Having children is the greatest sin in this country, according to Madam X. After a series of experiments, Madam X has concluded that having children is a very great sin. Hate is an evil disease.”

  “I’ve got an erection,” I said.

  “Fine,” Mr. Fishback said happily. He pushed another invisible button in the mirrored wall and out popped a red-hot slender steel rod.

  With a deadly serious expression on his face, Mr. Fishback jabbed the steel rod into the head of my penis.

  He counted to ten and jerked it out.

  Sighing hard, he asked, “How do you feel?”

  “I’m beginning to feel better already,” I said, smiling.

  Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About

  In memory of Langston Hughes, Conrad Knickerbocker, and Alfred Chester

  I had never before understood what “despair” meant, and I am not sure that I understand now, but I understood that year.

  —JOAN DIDION

  Life is worthwhile, for it is full of dreams and peace, gentleness and ecstasy, and faith that burns like a clear white flame on a grim dark altar.

  —NATHANAEL WEST

  IN THE HALF-WORLD of sleep where dreams and consciousness collide, I turned on the narrow, sticky plastic mattress. The brilliant ceiling light seemed to veer toward me. But with less than four hours’ sleep, fourteen shots of vodka, six twelve-ounce bottles of beer, two speed pills, one marijuana cigarette—I chuckled in my pale, lemon-colored cubicle. The stone floor had a fresh coat of battleship-gray paint. After less than a week, the old terra-cotta paint was surfacing. The armless bentwood chair functioned as a night table. Narrower than a standard clothes hanger, the wardrobe was doorless. The new opaque window was jammed. Unlike other residents, I never came upon rats or snakes. What unnerved me were the goddamn arrogant cockroaches. Who cared? The cubicle was at least a roof, reasonably clean, reasonably safe and inexpensive, thanks to the charitable foresight of the Salvation Army’s Bowery Memorial Hotel.

  Now, the 6 A.M. voices of Sallie’s men blended; became a litany of fear, frustration. Voices calling for ma, mama, and mother. Pleading: Stop and help—occasionally stamped with the moan of a dying male tiger. These nightmare voices were the twin of the daytime voices. These were weak men who no longer cared. Cheap wine chemicals had damaged their brains. As I listened, fear touched me. Would I become a soldier in their army? Fool! Get yourself together. You’ve got to get out of here.

  Then my bowels roared. I bolted toward the bathroom. My timing was perfect. Afterward, pleased as a spoiled fat cat, I stood up and felt faint. Grabbed the door of the toilet booth. Too late, too late. I was falling, slowly, toward the tiled floor. Just another mini-blackout.

  My heart was racing. Perspiring, breathing hard, I eased up from the floor.

  “You all right?” a voice asked.

  “Yeah.” I grinned sheepishly.

  A tall man with a weathered face like Robert Penn Warren was staring at my naked body.

  “I can see your ribs,” he said. “You don’t eat. Me neither. Here, have a swig.”

  I took a healthy swig from his bourbon pint, thanked him.

  “You better watch it,” he warned.

  “That’s the trouble.” I chuckled. “I have been watching it.”

  Solitary watchman. Lantern held high. Peering out at friends, strangers. Desperately trying to get a reassuring bird’s-eye view of America. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s sunny philosophy had always appealed to me. I believed in the future of the country. At fourteen, I had written: “I am the future.” Twenty-six years later—all I want to do is excrete the past and share with you a few Black Studies.

  I felt as if my testicles were packed in a bowl of dry ice. Things beyond my control had rimmed my brain, and it was strange to relax in Brownsville where the death of a boy had forced boys of his own age to riot in his and their name, and I who had been contemplating suicide for five days no longer a boy.

  Now in the wake of his death, sporadic action nipped through these fucked-up streets. A new R & B—rage and brutality. Sirens of police cars and sirens of unmarked cars. Smoke drifted from Howard Avenue like the smoke of an autumn bonfire. A tall old woman hobbled down from a stoop, cackling, “I knew it. They is started.”

  A car pulls over to the curb, and a man says, “I’ll let em pass, baby. They got their work cut out for them.”

  “You’re right, brother,” I replied. The P.R. bodegas were closing or closed. In fact, P.R.’s were in the act of disappearing, although they crowded their windows, talked, and looked down into the almost deserted arena of the street. No P.R. men were lounging against cars tonight. A few of them sat on stoops or braced themselves against Victorian carved doors.

  I had to buy a six-pack in a bar and returned to the flat, popped a few, talked with Tony. TV gave out Take Her, She’s Mine, while the sound of shots, Molotov cocktails, angry voices drifted across the vacant back lot (filled with about twenty-five inches of rubbish and where at this very moment a slender middle-aged Negro man was studying the lot as if it were a mound of old gravestones) and into the flat’s windows.

  There was absolutely nothing to get alarmed about. Just another domestic scene in current American life. But they will use more sophisticated methods next summer. The kids will have matured by next summer.

  Earlier a group of them had stopped me.

  “Have you seen Joe?”

  “No, man,” I said. “I ain’t seen Joe.”

  A mistaken identity. But I was with them—someone has to be on their side and I cursed their goddamn parents and this goddamn mother-sinking country that has forced them into the act of rioting. In the act of reaching the portals of the seemingly prosperous poor, their parents had lost them just as this country had forgotten the parents.

  Certainly I felt these black kids had a legitimate right to break store windows and throw rocks and bottles. Recently, I had worked at a resort where bored, wealthy kids kept the security guard on the
go as they ripped lobby sofas and broke into the underground lobby shops between midnight and dawn.

  Meanwhile, the black children will continue to riot and die.

  M. D. said, “There is a man that I want you to meet.” We taxied over to Intermediate School, No. 201, 2005 Madison Avenue, and I met the man. I also saw, for the first time in my life, former Senator Paul H. Douglas of Illinois, chairman of the L.B.J. Commission on Urban Problems, and Senator Robert E Kennedy and two of his handsome children.

  We arrived late, and I could not hear what Senator Kennedy was saying. It did not matter. He seemed likable. And despite the rumor of the ruthless reputation, the cold blue eyes, I could picture him having a pint with the boys at McSorleys Ale House. Discussing politics, history, books, broads. I began to warm up to him and was rather pleased to think: This is our next President, ’68 or ’72. I might not have felt that way if I had listened to what he was actually saying.

  Afterward, the crowd banked around Kennedy as if he were Jesus Christ or the son of Jesus Christ. I had never seen anything like it. Perhaps this was the op real-life version and I failed to realize it.

  A few minutes later, the Senator’s smiling daughter exited to a Cadillac. Father and son walked toward one of Detroit’s modest models.

  M. D. and I looked for a taxi. I heard an old black woman say, “Give me some meat. I don’t want no bones.”

  You greedy meat eaters—this is where it is at.

  We finished the typing session, rapped boredom out of the Vietnam war, raced minute cars, and had a wild game of cat and mouse around the dining-room table. Now it was almost midnight. An incredible moon outlined rooftops like a romantic proletarian stage set. But the voices of this tough territory were real and violent. Unflowery. Already that restlessness—peculiar to people with a remembrance of Mediterranean nights—had knifed me. Charlie Mingus was on the phonograph, and I went back into the dining room.

  Clara Bow curls frame Anne’s five-year-old face. “Sorry about that. You’d better buy some Beatles records,” she said, her smile as refreshing as a slice of honeydew melon.