Glass House

by Chris Wiltz

  When he came to, they were back in his face, all over him, but he was dazed and they seemed far away, until they came at him with that plastic bag again, and he knew he had to find something to say, something to get them to stop.

  He pulled his shoulders up, wanting to protect his head, a wasted effort with his hands locked behind his back. “I don't know nothin,” he said. “I don't know nothin and I ain heard nothin ‘cept he wears a black hat all the time.”

  They laughed at him, asking him, didn't he know all the bad guys wore black hats, and he began to cry, not because they were laughing, but because it was a betrayal, didn't matter how little, it was still a betrayal.

  They said to let the crybaby go home.

  9

  Dexter told Burgess later, “Don’ wear that hat no more, man. Don’ never wear that hat again.”

  The hat in question lay on a blond Formica coffee table in front of a red plush sofa where Burgess and Dexter sat. Janine and Sherree sat on the single bed, which was covered with an old green chenille bedspread and pushed up against the opposite wall. Overhead a milk-white glass light fixture shaped like a woman's breast shielded a low-wattage bulb that merely dampened the room with light. Burgess picked up the hat, balanced it on an index finger, and twirled it around while Dexter, Janine, and Sherree watched in suspense, as if he were performing a circus act of some magnificence.

  They were all wondering just exactly what was Dexter's status with Burgess now. They were beginning to sense the change that Burgess knew was already set in motion.

  Dexter didn't think he could bear to be in Burgess’ disfavor. Burgess had given him something to do, a living, had given him a lift in Sherree's eyes. Now he had money, he drove Burgess’ car and spent time with Burgess, he had power.

  Sherree wished Dexter could be an independent man, but at least he had a job. And it was true that the job made Dexter a hot shot, made her a hot shot too. She was the envy of many a single woman in the Convent. Just to have a man these days was something; to have a man with money was something else. Of course, she wasn't sitting nearly as pretty as Janine was.

  But Janine wasn't sitting so pretty in her own eyes at the moment. She looked at Burgess, his face passive as he took in what Dexter was telling him, and felt a rush of love that quickly turned into a wave of nausea at the thought that he might not always be there. She realized that over the past several months she'd grown dependent on Burgess, and one of the lessons she'd learned, living with a mother who'd been deserted while she was pregnant, was no man is dependable.

  Burgess used the momentum of the twirling hat to send it flying across the room.

  “No more hat,” he said. “You better find a garage for the Cadillac, Dexter. Better do it tomorrow. After that, go buy a cheap used pickup.” He lifted his hips off the sofa to dig in his pants pocket. From a gold money clip he unfolded twelve hundred-dollar bills and handed them to Dexter. “We got to lay low for a while.”

  Dexter took the money and he and Sherree left Burgess’ place, Janine's place really, and went home to Sherree's apartment two red-brick buildings away. Dexter felt strangely let down after all the high drama of the day. Burgess didn't seem to hold any grudge against him and was still going to let him drive, but he would be driving a pickup truck instead of the Cadillac. He saw the wisdom of this, but still, it was the consequence of his inability to pass out in the plastic bag as many times as it took before the cops believed he knew nothing.

  “I just couldn't take that plastic bag no more,” he said to Sherree. “Burgess got to know that.”

  Sherree was sitting at her dressing table wearing a white chiffon negligee she had danced in back when she worked at the strip joint. The way Dexter was talking annoyed her. If it was at all possible, she was going to turn him into something other than an ass-kisser. “You don't worry ‘bout nothin ‘cept savin your own skin,” she said to him sharply and struck herself on the forehead, chin, left cheek, right cheek, unconsciously using the sign of the cross to leave large dabs of nightcream on her face.

  Sherree was something of an expert on the theory of saving your own skin; she was a survivor. The only home she'd ever known was the Convent. She and her two brothers were children of an arthritic mother and alcoholic father. They were victims of terrible poverty. For weeks at a time they would have nothing to eat but instant oatmeal. A pot of red beans on the stove was festive, made it seem like a holiday. The younger brother was frail and did not survive this meager diet. One winter he succumbed to the flu.

  Sherree's father was next to go. He died in a barroom brawl, hitting his head on a table and never regaining consciousness. Sherree dropped out of school to take care of her mother. When her mother died, Sherree was sure she'd died of grief, mourning the death of her eldest son, who'd become a crack peddler by the time he was fifteen and was dead by the time he was seventeen, murdered, it was assumed during a dope deal.

  Alone in the world but feeling lucky to have a roof over her head, Sherree decided it was time to make something out of her life, to be somebody. She wanted to seek gainful employment, but early on she realized that not being able to read beyond about a fourth-grade level was going to cause her some problems. She thought of going back to school and looked into literacy programs, but she needed to eat and pay her rent quicker than she needed to be literate.

  More than anything else in the world, Sherree loved to dance. She decided she was going to be a dancer in one of the nightclubs downtown. She got a routine together that involved a lot of swishing chiffon and high kicks, but she knew that the object of the dance in these clubs was to strip down to a G-string and pasties. She didn't like the idea of this at all. In her own eyes her body was not the ideal of a stripper's body. Her chest caved in and her breasts tended to want to point toward each other. In clothes this made her appear to have some cleavage, but there would be no cleavage with nothing on but pasties. If the ideal breast was likened to a large grapefruit, then she would have to liken hers to small ice cream cones. She took the problem in hand—almost literally.

  Without ever having heard of Gypsy Rose Lee, Sherree decided that she would become known as the most modest stripper in the city of New Orleans. Using nothing but a pair of scissors, a needle and thread, and the cheapest material she could find, Sherree made herself a white satin body suit with nylon cutouts that came up over her breasts in the shape of hands. She cut the legs of the suit at the sides to her waist, and as an afterthought added a third, smaller hand with its middle three fingers lost under the curve in between her legs. All in all, a modest little body suit, over which she wore a frilly, virginal negligee of white chiffon.

  Sherree was a hit. She became known as the Hands-On Girl; she was modest but provocative, always drawing a decent crowd. Life was a ball for a while, until she got pregnant, got laid off, drew unemployment, then had to go on welfare.

  Sherree's baby girl, Lucilla, was only a few months old when Burgess moved into the Convent to live with Sherree's lifelong friend Janine. He was a rich man come to live among the poor people, using his money to buy medicine and a playground for the kids, repairing the Convent buildings when the city wouldn't do it, installing smoke alarms when the city said it couldn't afford to, paying Sherree to run the day-care center, paying Dexter to run for him. And she was learning to read too, at the literacy center Burgess got the nuns from St. Stephen's to start right there in the Convent.

  Burgess was a hero to the people in the Convent; he was like Robin Hood to them. So when Sherree, annoyed, suggested to Dexter that he worry about saving his own skin, she was also smart enough to realize that this meant saving Burgess’ skin as well.

  The next morning she and Dexter both began some serious networking. She got Dexter up early so he could talk to as many men in the Convent as possible before he went off to work. From the day-care center, she passed the message on to all the women who dropped off their children. By the following afternoon, almost everyone in the Convent was wearing a black hat, w
omen as well as men.

  Sherree had all the kids out in the yard teaching them a new dance routine when she heard a series of coded whistles, a warning to Burgess and his men that strangers were in the Convent. Burgess wasn't around and the whistle codes were not the ones used for the police, so Sherree was more curious than scared. She kept on dancing, counting out loud to keep the kids moving in time to the music coming out of the boom box next to them on the lawn. Most of the tenants in sight were heading indoors. Sherree looked back toward Convent Street and saw TV trucks parked at the curb. People with cameras and microphones streamed into the Convent yard. Heading the pack was an extremely good-looking brown woman, full straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, dressed in a bright blue dress, black patent high heels, and a lot of chunky gold jewelry. The woman came straight for Sherree, undoubtedly attracted by her crimson leotard and tights and the large black straw hat she was wearing. Sherree turned off the box and told the kids to sit down in the grass and be good for the TV cameras.

  The woman introduced herself as a reporter for one of the local TV stations. Sherree recognized her but didn't want to say so. She put one hand on her hip and looked hard at the woman, at her two-inch-wide gold necklace, the matching bracelet on the wrist of the hand holding the microphone, earrings the size of silver dollars. The woman asked Sherree a couple of preliminary questions: did she live in the Convent and, laughing, were all these kids hers, not a laughing matter as far as Sherree was concerned.

  Two more reporters, both black because it wasn't safe to send whites into the Convent, men from other local stations, put their microphones up close to Sherree as she explained that she babysat with the children while their mothers went to work, that was how she made her living. She was careful not to use the words day-care center, since the center was not officially certified by the city. As she spoke, Lucilla ran up and clutched one of her legs. Sherree put her hand on top of the child's head and told the reporters how, prior to her daughter's birth, she'd been a professional dancer.

  One of the male reporters asked Sherree if she wasn't afraid in the Convent since the cop had been killed.

  “There ain nothin to be afraid of ‘cept the cops themselves,” Sherree said, getting belligerent. “They come in here and beat up our men. Two days ago they come in and take my boyfriend downtown for questionin. You wanna know how they question people from the Convent these days?” she asked them, pushing her face up closer to them so they had to back off with their microphones. “They put plastic bags over their heads first.”

  By this time black-hatted tenants were back in the yard, out on the porches, and up on the balconies, watching.

  “What were the police questioning your boyfriend about?” the other male reporter asked.

  “Whatever they felt like,” Sherree said.

  The well-dressed woman reporter said to her, “Rumor has it that one of the biggest drug traffickers in this part of the country is hiding out here, in the Convent.”

  “Girl,” Sherree said, her hand on her hip, “a bishop could hide out in this here Convent and no one'd know ‘bout it, not even the people that live here.”

  On the news that night, Burgess, though still anonymous, became known as the Bishop of Convent Street.

  10

  Janine and Burgess sat on the red plush sofa. They were waiting for the evening news broadcast. Sherree told them to be sure and watch, she'd been pretty good in front of all those cameras.

  Janine waited, expectant, excited, her best friend was going to be on TV, telling everybody in the city how the police put a plastic bag over Dexter's head to make him talk. Let everybody know how bad the cops could be, let them know the way it was in the Convent these days: the police didn't protect the tenants, the tenants needed protection against the brutality of the police.

  After the news Burgess would feel better. The past couple of days he'd been tense, Janine could feel his edginess, making her edgy too, though she was afraid to show it for fear of getting him angry. As quickly as he'd come, he could go away that fast. He stayed away from the Convent during the day, coming home after five o'clock as if he had a regular job. He didn't say anything to her, but she knew he was busy keeping out of sight.

  She was dressed up for him this evening, the black dress with the purple roses on it and the peplum he liked to put his hands under, run them over her hips, down her sleek thighs. He asked her why she was all decked out, her high-heeled shoes on, her hair done, her makeup just so. Not yet, she said, she wouldn't tell him yet. She was picking her time. After the news, when he felt better. Then maybe they could go out to the Solar Club, get something to eat, do a little dancing. Celebrate.

  There it was on the screen in front of them, the Convent. There was the rehab center, the vegetable garden, over there the kids’ playground, a woman's smooth but businesslike voice telling about the cop killing, the fear in the Convent, how this black community was pulling together to improve the project and their way of life. Telling too about the housing authority's financial problems, the mayor's proposal to raze the project, asking the question everybody was going to want to know the answer to: If the city isn't paying for all this, then who is?

  Janine sat forward. Now here was Sherree, looking good in her red dancing outfit, that big black hat, one hip thrust forward, talking to the reporters as if she did it every day. No question about it, a natural-born entertainer. That's right, girl, you tell them.

  Now some pictures of the tenants all grouped around, wearing their black hats: Sherree so proud of herself earlier, telling Janine her foxy idea. And now the woman reporter putting the cap on her story, a memorable little twist, making a mystery out of it: So where is all the money coming from? And who is the Bishop of Convent Street?

  Burgess hit the off button and fell back on the sofa. “They know for sure I'm here now.”

  “The Bishop of Convent Street?” Janine said. “Come on, that's just some wiseass reporter making her story.”

  “That's not what I mean. It's the hats, all those hats, everybody wearin a black hat.”

  A few seconds lapsed before Janine got it, then the blood left her face. If she hadn't been sitting down, her legs would have gone out from under her, the shock of realizing that Sherree, with all good intention, had told the cops exactly what they wanted to know, what they had not found out for sure from Dexter even though they put a plastic bag over his head.

  She couldn't speak, her tongue was like a slab of hide with a thick coat of fur on it. That feeling of dread she'd had the other day when Dexter was talking about Burgess’ hat, it was back. And with it came the voice of her mother: No man is dependable, you remember that, especially after he goes and knocks you up and makes sure you got no way out.

  No way out. She felt as if she were going to vomit, vomit up those words, vomit up the dread, vomit everything inside her. Because Janine had gone out and got herself a home pregnancy test and this morning it had showed up positive.

  She swallowed hard, swallowed it all down. “You got to hide.”

  You got to hide. Hide as if there would ever be a time that he could stop hiding. Hide as if there were life after hiding. Hide as if his future depended on it. But there was the catch. He was famous now. People who were famous were supposed to have a fabulous future ahead of them, as long as they didn't go and mess it up themselves. It didn't work that way for Burgess; his future diminished in direct proportion to his fame.

  Janine was panicking, pulling at his arm, saying, “You got to hide,” maybe dragging him out the door next, she was so scared.

  He laughed. “I am hidin, remember?”

  “Somewhere else.”

  “They ain no better place to hide,” he told her, and was telling her not to be afraid, he'd be all right, they'd be all right, all the while thinking to himself no place was safe, no place would ever be safe again.

  The next morning, two bodyguards dressed in workman's white overalls with him, Burgess went over to Thea's house to get the wo
rk on the parlor started. He took his time. He had tea with Delzora. He talked to Thea. She'd changed her mind, she wanted to paint, not paper. Was that a problem? No problem at all. He went back to scratch, how much paint would it take, how much would it cost, he'd get his two expert painters on it, the same two guys, it turned out, who were the expert paper hangers. He went out to look at the gazebo again. He had coffee with Thea. He was in no particular hurry to leave.

  Because as long as he was at Thea Tamborella's house, he was safe.

  11

  Thea went with Bobby to a dinner party, a gathering of some old friends at the new-southern-style home of Lyle and Sandy Hinder-mann. By the end of the evening she was afraid to be alone in her own house.

  Waiting for Bobby, she stood in the wrecked parlor surveying the work in progress for the third time that day but really wondering if she were dressed correctly in her basic black dress, pearls, and low-heeled pumps. She wondered if it would be like high-school days when no matter how good she thought she looked before going out, the minute she saw a girl like Sandy she would feel she was dressed all wrong and it was hopeless that she would ever get it right. She could never be like those girls, the golden girls, with the right looks, the right backgrounds, the right credentials, and all the right moves, the kind of one-foot-directly-in-front-of-the-other walk that made them look so sexy and made her look punch drunk when she tried it in front of her bedroom mirror.

  She told herself that was all high-school nonsense, but as she and Bobby stood on the portico of the Hindermanns’ plantation-like house, the curtains open so that the windows were tantalizing showcases for the tempting life inside, Thea was nervous, her fingers floating on the slick of sweat they left on the black leather clutch she was carrying. It slipped to the brick portico floor. She picked it up quickly, before Bobby could, his movements so slow they might open the door and catch him at it. She tucked it securely under her arm.