Suddenly panic slammed into me. What if Rollie and Sarah, right at that moment, were deciding to fire me? What if they said, “Get the hell out?”
I think I was nearly trembling when I sat down and buzzed Leah. “Look, doll,” I said. “Let me talk to Rollie.”
He was pleased, yes, he was pleased that I had time that week to see a show with him. In fact, he was delighted. He said so.
CHAPTER NINE
I sat up smoking all that night, smoking and thinking. In the morning I had it. All right, I’d make that “date” with Rollie in order to secure my job for a little while. In addition to that, I’d find out if he would take Obie in.
Obie and I had lunch and I talked with him about Rocket. I didn’t tell him about Rollie. I didn’t think he’d understand how great my fear was of being on the streets again. Maybe he did, I don’t know, but I didn’t say anything.
I told Obie there might be an outside chance of my swinging him into the company. He listened without expression.
“If I can do it, it’ll only be part-time,” I said.
He still said nothing. He sort of smiled at his plate. Then he looked up. “Man,” he said, “you know something?”
“What?”
“Thanks for looking out for me but, Steve, I’m just not interested in shoveling shit for a crooked-paddy company. After all you’ve told me about that place, well … later.”
“It’s just something for eating money, man. You know that.”
“I’m wise. Steve, in a few days or weeks I’m going to be out here on my ass again. I know what I’m capable of doing and the people who interview me know it too. I’m through making compromises because I’m Negro. I’ve made hundreds of them, just like you, and I know that after a while making the compromise becomes a habit and you’re always knee-deep in it, always, always.”
I thought of the “date” with Rollie. “Yeah,” I said.
Obie chuckled derisively. “It’s a damned shame. A Negro can always get into something no good or not going anywhere. He tells himself it’s temporary, but you check out all the post offices in America—New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles—graveyards of Negro talent, every goddam one of ’em, where some cat has gone in for a little while to get the weight off his ass, and there he stays, having made his compromise, which, my man, is considerably better than Rocket.”
“You kiss my ass,” I told Obie. He was burning me up with his talk. Indirectly, it all reflected on me.
Obie became serious. “You’re near it too, man. No more compromises.”
“I like to eat,” I grumbled.
“Who doesn’t? But after a while it won’t matter except when you get light-headed and have headaches. Later, even these you don’t mind.”
“Goddam it, Obie. You don’t have to tell me!”
“What’s eatin’ you, man? What you been smokin’?”
“Shut the hell up,” I said. “I’ll give you some of my part-time contacts when your book gets to the knitty-gritty. I guess that’ll be clean enough for you.”
“So that’s it.”
I tamped a cigarette hard against the table and said nothing.
“Aw, man, I didn’t mean anything personal. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I was still thinking of the conversation with Obie when I met Rollie a couple of nights later for dinner and a show. With the coming of night he seemed even more effeminate; he practically sparkled. He brought up the raise, not me. He said with a little laugh, “You’ll probably take this chance to push for your raise. We might be able to get it, but we can talk about it later.”
As we plowed our way through steaks, I noticed that he kept looking up and I had the feeling that he wanted to see someone looking at us. I forgot it because he began talking about the race thing.
“I think it’s terrible,” he said, “that a man can’t get a decent break in this country because he happens to be black. At Rocket, as you know, Steve, we hire people for their skills. Color doesn’t mean a damned thing to us.”
I listened to his crap and my stomach became so knotted up that I had to quit halfway through the steak. But he went on. “My mother raised me—my father died—and she taught me that the worth of a man could not be measured in color. Wonderful woman.”
We had a couple of martinis apiece before dinner. They went to work on Rollie during dessert. He smiled across the table at me and said. “You’re something of an athlete, aren’t you—or weren’t you?”
The question surprised me. I looked at him without saying anything.
“You walk like it,” he said. “Gracefully, manfully. You move beautifully, Steve.”
And I said to myself, Oh, crap. Walking to the theatre after dinner, I was on edge. I tensed each time he walked close enough to me to brush arms. Rollie, on the other hand, was chatting, gesturing, doing everything as brilliantly as the sexiest doll you ever laid eyes on. I thought when we got in the theatre it would be a little better. It wasn’t.
Rollie must have stroked my arm at least fifty times as he made his comments on the play. Once he pushed his fingers into my bicep. They lingered there until I moved my arm. I felt that everyone in the place was watching, not the play, but us, and I damned near ran out of there at the first intermission.
We smoked in the lobby, Rollie standing very close to me, as though he would charm me. Once he gripped my wrist, like a woman, as he turned to point something out to me, and once, in a cold anger, I took his upper arm. He smiled, pleased, and I smiled too as I squeezed until he jumped. I wanted him to feel the strength and hate there. I wanted the pressure to say to him what I was afraid to speak with my mouth.
“You’re strong,” he said.
“Let’s go sit down,” I said disgustedly.
Some of the message must have gotten to him because he kept his hands in his lap during the next act. At intermission he seemed nervous. He kept looking at me as though he wanted to say something. He knew I knew what that something was. The “later” he had talked of when he spoke about the raise had not come—yet. I knew it had to come and it did at the end of the show.
As we left the theatre, Rollie suggested drinks at his place as though it were mere formality—that it had already been settled. He was relieved when I didn’t argue. We hopped a cab and took off.
“How’d you like it?” he asked me.
“All right,” I answered. The cab wheeled through the streets toward the East Side.
“I thought it was great,” he said.
“We’ll be talking about the raise,” I said. “Won’t we?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said.
The cab driver was Negro. A couple of times I looked into the mirror and our eyes met. I wondered what he was thinking. I wanted to say something that would tell him that it wasn’t what it looked like, but Rollie, perhaps sensing what was on my mind, said in a low voice, “You look very handsome tonight, Steve. I like that suit.”
I could have killed him. Instead I said, “You look pretty cute yourself.”
He gave me a reproachful look, but I turned and stared into the streets until the cab stopped in the East 60’s. He guided me up the steps and into his building. I couldn’t help thinking of the little old ladies and the arthritic old men and young frustrated writers who’d made living in this neighborhood possible for Rollie.
I nearly choked when I saw his place. I had no idea he lived so well. Peter du Jardin-type furniture was all around. The rugs were in decorator colors and you felt as if you’d sink to your knees if you moved. Everything in the place was beautiful, but somehow a sense of loneliness pervaded the apartment. It seemed to me that anything as lovely as Rollie’s apartment should have been shared with a woman. I thought, for a part of a second, of Grace and me moving about the place—that it was ours, and Frank and Teddy were sunk in the rugs watching the television set.
Rollie finished showing me around and I sat down while he went to fix drinks. Of course, I thought with a smile, this is
just the sort of layout some young boo-hoo packer would like to have. And there would be Rollie, of course, to give him spending change. All the packer had to do would be to be around when it was packing time. But maybe Rollie’s particular narcissism didn’t include having anyone hanging around until the time.
He had changed into tight black pants and a white silk shirt cut like the ones Bob Cummings wears on his television show. He explained this when he brought the drinks by saying, “I wanted to get into something more comfortable.”
He sat down beside me and looked at me lingeringly.
“Well, how about it?” I asked.
“How about what?”
“The raise, Rollie. Isn’t that why we’re here?”
He took a sip of his drink. He wasn’t pleased, but I was damned tired of him thinking he was rowing this boat.
“Drink,” he said. “Don’t drive so hard. We’ll get to it.”
“I hope so,” I said. I was tired. I hadn’t realized how much of a strain it had been being with him most of the evening. I was tired and getting, as they used to say at home, “evil.”
Obie wasn’t on my mind anymore—I didn’t have to worry about being nice to get him a job. That left just me, and, sipping the drink, I knew damned well that I could scuffle just as well as Obie, so my fear ran on off.
“How about another drink?” I asked Rollie.
He seemed very glad to hear that and he bounded up and wiggled into the kitchen. I watched him, thinking he didn’t wiggle that way in the office. He had refilled his glass, too, and he was very gay when he sat down again. I decided to have some fun with him.
“You look very cute in that outfit,” I said.
He ran his hands along the tight black pants. “You like it?” he asked. He was pleased to hell and back.
“It’s a knockout,” I said, sipping my drink.
“I can get you a shirt like this,” he volunteered.
“Not my style, baby,” I answered.
“What?”
“I said it wasn’t my style, baby.”
“Say it again.”
“What?”
“Baby.”
“Why?”
“I like the way you say it.”
I took another sip of the drink and very carefully placed the glass on the table in front of us. I half-turned toward him and said, “Baby.”
He moved toward me, his drink splashing all over the couch. I moved away, pushing him gently against the shoulder.
“The raise,” I said. “The raise.”
“You bastards always want something, don’t you?” he said huskily.
“I have it coming and you know it.”
“What do you want?”
“Minimum. A bill a week.”
“Oh, come now, Steve. You know we can’t pay you that.”
“That’s what I want. Now what do you want?”
“Can you imagine? He had the nerve enough to try to blush.
“We can’t pay you that,” he repeated softly. He touched my arm; his hand tightened on it. He tried to move toward me.
“But that’s what I want, baby,” I said, “I got to have it.”
“Take a little less,” he said with a pleading look in his eyes.
“Can’t. Got to have a bill a week.”
“Let me work it out with Sarah and the people downtown.”
“Uh-uh. Now, baby. Now.”
Exasperated, he jumped up. “I tell you, Steve, I can’t.”
I stood up. “Better be going,” I said.
Rollie sped around in front of me as I started for the door. “Don’t go. Don’t go. Why do you need so much money? Money isn’t everything.”
“Can I go now?” I asked. “Can I go, baby?”
I had counted on the bastard melting, but he didn’t. Instead he slipped inside my arms, quickly, deftly, like a woman, and his face came closer to mine. I could smell the Yardley’s. I was fascinated as I would be fascinated by the sight of a huge snake.
“Back up, baby,” I said. “Back up.”
Now he closed his eyes and thrust himself forward. I backed up and came off my right foot, driving my right fist beside his mouth. Rollie was jolted to one side. He hit the wall and slid down to the floor. He wasn’t out. As I passed him, he kind of smiled with his eyes and, downstairs, in the street, I wondered if he liked that sort of thing. Hard to tell about people.
Well, Obie, I thought, you got yourself some company, I suppose. I didn’t figure Rollie would fire me the next day, but fire me he would, and I had to find something before he did.
The fear came again and it didn’t diminish when I told myself that I would find something.
CHAPTER TEN
I had little time to eat on my lunch hours. I went all over town on job interviews, and met all kinds of people. I tried not disclosing my race, which was in accordance with the law, but when that didn’t seem to work out, I attempted to save myself time and trouble by advising the interviewer beforehand that I was Negro. When I didn’t tell them, they were very often surprised when they saw me. They explained that I hadn’t sounded like a Negro on the phone.
What I disliked most was to be mistaken for a messenger. In New York, great numbers of messengers are Negro. You see them everywhere in mid and downtown. Usually they are well-dressed, neat-appearing young men, and so was I. At least twenty times I was asked to leave the package. The package was my folio. I couldn’t help but smile sometimes, thinking how universal the conditioning of the white man is. All Negroes look alike or, in this instance, all neat-appearing young men look alike because they’re Negro and they must all be, of course, messengers.
I met some good people who I am sure considered me on my merits and found me not right for the job. There were always, however, too few of these people.
Sometimes tests were given during the interviews. I disliked taking them. In my case a test was a waste of time because the interviewer knew all the time that the job wouldn’t be mine in any event. But to keep up appearances and comply with the law, he had to give the test. You return it in a day or so and they tell you they’ll call. The chances are pretty good that you’ll never see or hear about the sample copy you did. “Samples” of this sort can create such a backlog for the employer that he wouldn’t have to hire writers at all.
I wasn’t having any luck at all. Sometimes, realizing I was pressing, I eased up and didn’t bother with interviews for a while. I would suddenly get the image of myself sitting in an office with a chip on my shoulder. If not that, just sitting there as though I didn’t really care about getting the job. I was sure some of this must have been communicated to the people who interviewed me, so I forgot about the rounds for a while, just kept my ears open and stuck it out at Rocket where things between Rollie and me had become very chilly. Nothing much was happening except Leah’s birthday and the production of Crispus’ book.
The presses were pretty well filled and it was going to be difficult to squeeze O, Come Ye Back on. It was just waiting. The expectation of Leah’s birthday party we were going to hold in the office carried me through three or four bad days. The day before the party I found a tremendous coffee mug upon which I had painted Leah’s name. For her it was an ideal present. Rollie and Sarah stayed a little later than usual the day of the party, but then they finally realized they were putting a damper on it and they left.
Some of Leah’s friends stopped in and I was expecting my date, a friend of Gloria’s. We had a nice little crowd going. The Old Grandad had never been better, although I could have used Scotch for a change. My co-workers were hardier types, it seemed; even Anne was really drinking. Across the way the Empire State Building sparkled like a new scepter set with precious stones. It was quite beautiful, I thought, my head just a little light. I had a warm, satisfying feeling across my chest. Nice.
The party was half over when I began to feel uneasy. It was the way Harriet kept looking at me. Once Leah sidled over and said, “You’d better watch that Ha
rriet. She’s got eyes for you.” Her tone was light and she might have been jesting, but I didn’t think so. I looked closely at her. She smiled, but her eyes stayed the same. I recalled her phrase, “Kidding on the square.”
Harriet was telling jokes now, all of them a little lewd, and I know some lewdies. From time to time she looked at me and I wished my date would hurry. We all laughed politely at Harriet’s jokes. She began to dominate the party more and more. She was drinking like a fish. When the girls walked past her to get a drink or something, Harriet whacked them across the rump and cried, “Whaddaya say, keed?” The girls said, “Harriet, stop.”
She got up and stood next to me. “Steve, you and me are the only ones puttin’ this stuff away, eh?”
“Yeah, we do pretty good,” I said.
Then she leaned on me, her withered arm thrusting into my side. I didn’t want to move for fear of embarrassing her. When she talked to me, she tilted her face upwards and her eyes roamed restlessly over mine. I wished again that my date would hurry, be just a little early for the late dinner we were going to have. I felt if I called her while the party was going on full blast, it might get Harriet off me, so I did. There was no answer and I guessed she was on her way. The party began to break up. People drifted out until only Harriet and I remained.
“I’d better go downstairs,” I said, “and meet my girl.” I began to slip on my jacket.
“Aw, wait for her up here, Stevie boy.”
Stevie boy, I thought. “No, I’d better go down.”
“Let’s see how the city looks with our lights out,” she said, flicking off the switch. She stumbled in my direction, taking the long way to the window, passing very close to where I stood. I prayed for Evalyn to burst in.
“Come and look,” Harriet said, taking my hand.
I let my hand lie in hers for a minute. When I thought she was relaxed, I tried to slip it away. She stood facing the window as if enraptured by the view, then she turned to me. I couldn’t step backwards—my desk was directly behind me. She shoved herself at me so hard, I grunted. With her one good arm she put a headlock on me, brought my head down and tried to kiss me. I was ducking and weaving all over hell.
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