Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore (9780385538398)

by Mosley, Walter

  “But in this case the family is known to me. Theon Pinkney was a frequent client.” Lewis stopped and showed a rare honest smile. “Not, of course, in his current state. No. Theon took care of his friends. If someone in his trade died penniless and alone, Theon brought them to me and paid for the services. If some poor bereft mother or daughter or spouse could not handle the work it takes to make the transition, Theon was there to lend a hand. He knew as much about this business as I do. He knew about the embalming chemicals and brands of coffins, state and city ordinances, and the many denominations that would and would not speak for the dead.

  “This of course refers to Theon only as far as my business life goes. Most of you know me. The only role any, or at least most of you, have seen me fill is the funeral director—the undertaker who takes your loved ones away.”

  Lewis stopped there for a good quarter of a minute. I believe a real emotion was passing through him, a memory of someone he was or might have been.

  “But Theon knew me in other ways. Sometimes he’d wake up in the middle of the night and call me at the mortuary. ‘Hey, Lew,’ he’d say, ‘what you doin’ down there tonight.’ ”

  What shocked me was how much Lewis was able to sound like my husband.

  “Often I was deep in my work,” Dardanelle said, continuing, “but some nights I was just sitting around in the office. Theon would come over with a deck of cards and a bottle of … mineral water.”

  That got a few laughs. Theon always called cognac his mineral water.

  “We’d play for matchsticks and drink, trading stories of what happened at work that day. We both practiced interesting trades.”

  More laugher.

  “One evening I remember Theon telling me how he had to get on the set and stop a jealous lover from strangling his girlfriend on camera. The man was much bigger and more powerful than Theon, but he wouldn’t let that young girl die.…”

  Lewis was referring to Tina Bottoms—at least, that was her screen name. Her boyfriend, who went only by the moniker Turk, had gotten it into his head to immortalize them both by killing her on film.

  Turk broke Theon’s arm, jaw, and ankle, but my husband saved that girl and helped her move back to Amherst, Massachusetts, where she’d been born.

  “He was a good man and he treated me as a friend,” Lewis said. “He never made fun of me or my predilections, and he loved his wife. I will think of him every time work slows down and I am sitting at my desk wondering what is it that I’m missing.”

  Again there was silence from the podium. That stillness seemed to fill the great hall of death. At least thirty seconds passed before the undertaker could bring himself to speak again.

  “There will be only two other speakers at this service. The first will be the deceased’s good friend Jude Lyon. Mr. Lyon will be followed by Theon’s wife, Sandra Peel-Pinkney.

  “Those of you who donated to this service have already been informed about where the wake will be held. There you will each be given a chance to drink mineral water and toast the dead.”

  Dardanelle walked away from the podium and down into the pews. A few seconds passed and the audience began to shift in their seats. I was moved by the friendship Lewis evinced in those few words. It showed me something about Theon that I knew but rarely witnessed—he was a good friend to a certain kind of man: an outcast who had something to offer but with few takers. He felt comfortable with people like Jude and Lewis, and with him, they belonged.

  Something was wrong. I went through all the things I knew at that moment, trying to find out what had misfired. I was dressed the way I should be. The room was full of Theon’s friends. Rash was in the audience.…

  “Jude,” I said. “Jude.”

  I reached out to touch his arm but he grabbed my wrist before I could. His grip was hard.

  “You have to go up there, baby,” I said.

  He gazed in my eye. He was an angry child caught in his own conflicting desires.

  Then he let me go, jumped to his feet, and scurried out onto the dais. He tripped on the first stair, caught himself, and then stepped slowly up to the podium.

  Lewis had adjusted the microphone for his great height and so Jude brought it down and twisted the snakelike metal stalk until the little receiver was there at his lips.

  He cleared his throat and looked around. He turned to me and I gave him my best smile.

  He turned back to the audience and then remembered the folded-up paper in his hand. This he unfolded and placed on the podium before him. Then, for an uncomfortable span of time, he read the words silently to himself. I wondered if he thought that he was reading out loud and the assembly could hear him.

  I was about to get up and go out to him when he raised his head.

  “Theon Pinkney was my best friend,” he said in a voice that was flinty and certain. “I don’t really know what I meant to him but he was my best, best friend.”

  Jude splayed out his right hand over his chest. I thought that this was maybe the only time I’d seen the real man.

  “Person of interest,” he said then. “That’s what I’ve been called many times. A person of interest. That’s not a good thing, not at all. I mean … it’s good for the person who others are interested in insofar as it’s good that they’re interested, because that makes you special—unique. But at the same time”—I realized then that Jude was not reading from the creased page in front of him—“it means that there’s a whole world out there wanting to tear you down. They want to catch you, imprison you, maybe even take your life. A man,” he said, and then he glanced at me, “or a woman who rises to the level of interest is something special. While everyone else is following canned music they’re moving away, looking for their own.

  “Theon Pinkney was a person of interest. He had a big stomach, a big heart, and a big dick”—a laugh or two came from the hall of death—“and he didn’t care who knew it. He’d take off his clothes in a minute and lick his lips after throwing back a big slug of brandy. He was afraid of death; I know that because like Mr. Dardanelle, death is my stock-in-trade. Theon was afraid of dying but being fearless in the face of death isn’t much. It isn’t anything. The thing I loved about Theon was that he wasn’t afraid of tomorrow. When the sun came up he looked around to see what there was on the horizon. He’d watch a ball game and then go to his mother’s church when he knew she wouldn’t be there. He flew off to Morocco the day after nine-eleven to see if the world looked different.

  “Another thing about Theon was that he was a natural-born filmmaker. Not like these Hollywood fools with their automatic robots and ridiculous, impossible love stories. Theon saw the world he lived in today, the world we all live in. He knew what people wanted and what exhilarated them. He knew what you needed even when you didn’t.

  “No one has ever touched my life the way he did. And I’m sorry he’s dead but I am happier, by far, that he lived.”

  Jude turned away from the podium and paused for a moment to make sure that he didn’t tumble down the stairs. He walked stiff-legged back to his chair, where he sat down and bowed his head.

  Lewis recorded every word spoken at the podium. For the first time I was happy about that. I wanted the words that Jude spoke to live on.

  I waited for the pulse of Jude’s speech to pass and then I walked out onto the stage with my ass-length platinum hair and fiery cobalt eyes, in five-inch coral heels. I stalked up to that podium like I was going to do the salsa with it. I pulled on that microphone until it reached my lips and I touched the off-center white bull’s-eye inside the faux tattoo on my cheek. My nostrils flared and the chill of the room braced my black skin. Whenever I moved I heard the white satin slide against my body, and I was home—if only for a moment.

  “All my years with Theon have brought me to this place,” I said. “It was like he was driving here from a million miles away and stopped to pick me up on the side of the road. ‘What’s this little black girl doin’ out here?’ he said when he saw me. ‘Any
thing you want, Daddy.’ And ever since then we’ve been together. I was his tenant, his costar, his girlfriend, and his wife. He loved me and hated me and stomped out the front door more times than I can count. He’s fucked more women than any basketball player or U.S. senator. He’s crossed almost every line that they put down in church.

  “I went with him willingly but I hate where I’ve ended up. I love the people in this room but I can’t stand what we do to each other. It’s not like I think we’re less than the people who live out in the straight world buying our videos and looking to see if we bleed. We’re better than them because we know that there’s no difference between men and women, black and white, Christian and Jew, young and old.

  “We know better but that’s not enough. We pay for that knowledge with drug addiction and STDs. We suffer from the people who feel alive only when watching our asses on electronic screens. We are beaten and raped and spit on. They pay us for this and we smile our bloody smiles and learn to pretend even when we know better.”

  That wasn’t my speech. I had yet to unfold the papers in front of me. That was merely my recognition of the familiar faces in that room. I’d had sex with at least half of them.

  “But none of that is why I’m here. I mean, I do love you. We have blazed a trail across the imagination of the world. They may not like it, they might not like us, but here we are, bound together to say good-bye to one of our own.

  “We’ve come here to celebrate him, but Theon has been the star before. In movies, behind the camera, on the red carpet, and winning every award they have to offer. I don’t mean Theon but Axel Rod—the self-proclaimed hardest-working cock in the Valley.”

  That got me some grins and guffaws.

  “Theon was an imperfect man in an imperfect world,” I continued. “A child died on his lap. A little girl, barely sixteen. All she had was the beauty of youth and the desire and the willingness to climb out of the shit of her childhood. She died fucking my husband in our big bathtub and he died reaching for her, because in her fractured youth he saw himself just like he saw himself in me when I was her age.

  “She was born Myrtle May but she called herself Jolie Wins.”

  I gazed around the great chamber and saw that every eye was on me. That brought a smile to my lips, not because I needed to be the center of attention but because that was a tough crowd and you had to tell the truth to keep their interest.

  “When I met her I was looking at her backside and she was on her knees in front of some fat wannabe. She was high and didn’t even know where she was. She called me miss and asked me to help her. I tried. I did. But, as we all know, there’s no help for the likes of us.

  “Her story was the same old, same old—her panties and Daddy’s dick, Mother making noise in another part of the trailer, and the sun shining outside just like nothing ever happened. In a lot of rooms words like that would call up tears and indignation, but in here we’ve all heard it and felt it one way or another.

  “I took her by the hand and brought her to what I thought was a safe harbor. I gave her my private number and a promise I could not keep.

  “She and Theon found each other and saw in each other’s eyes the dreams that they always had. They grabbed at each other, not for sex or solace but for hope. They were outlaws on the run just like the rest of us.

  “And I believe that Mr. Dardanelle and Jude are outlaws too. I believe that Theon would want us to remember them and Myrtle May, because he did have a big heart and he wanted something that he knew he could not have, but that never kept him from trying.

  “We are that something. We are the scenes on the wide-screen plasma TVs that millions watch every night hoping for something that they can never have. They stay in their condos and trailers. They go to work and talk about the newest cop show but that’s not what they’re feeling.

  “Myrtle May left home when she was just a child. She died still a child. Theon was so lost that he might have even thought that he was helping her. He thought that he had saved me—I did too. But that was never true. We aren’t in the saving business. We are down-to-the-bone serious and at risk. We are, and Theon was, all the pain that happens on the back alleyway that leads between the bank doors and the church.

  “And so I am here in the persona of Debbie Dare to tell you what Theon should have said to Myrtle May.

  “Save yourself. Know that you can do anything. Don’t look down on anyone. Don’t forgive them or condemn them. And when they tell you to get down on your knees, you tell them to get down there with you. Tell them that you can take the pain if they will too.”

  What happened immediately after those last words is a blur to me. I think I just stood there staring for a while until Jude came up and led me off the stage. From there Lewis brought me to the side of the coffin, where I was joined by Lana Leer. She was wearing a simple black dress that went down to her calves and was shod in white pumps.

  I came to myself standing there next to the open coffin. Theon still looked natural, almost as if he might open his eyes at any moment.

  “That was a beautiful eulogy,” Lana whispered.

  “I never got to the words I’d written,” I said. “I just kinda got lost up there.”

  “It was still wonderful,” my little friend said. “It touched a lot of people. You gave ’em a lot to think about.”

  Lewis had gone out among the mourners and was lining them up along the left side of the pews.

  “Are you ready?” Lana asked.

  “Ready for what?”

  “For the people to walk by and pay their final respects.”

  “Oh.” For some reason this responsibility had escaped me. “Sure.”

  Moana Bone was the first in line. Her once fine features were heavy, made more so by an overabundance of makeup. Her body had thickened to the point where she had no real figure anymore.

  With surprising strength she gripped my hands and said, “I’m very sorry for you, my dear. What you said up there is in the hearts of all us whores. We do the heavy lifting and they flush us down anyway.”

  “Do you know my name?” I asked, feeling numb and reckless.

  “They call you Debbie Dare in the cast list, but your real name is Sandra Peel. I always loved Theon but you were better for him than I could have ever been.”

  Her eyes were on mine like some kind of emotional predator tracking down a simple nod.

  “Hey, Deb,” Myron Palmer said after Moana wandered off. Standing next to him was a mousy woman wearing a loose, dark green shift. Her face was once pretty and her gestures recalled that younger beauty.

  “I wanted to thank you for letting me be a pallbearer,” Myron said. “You know, I really liked Theon and, and, and I styled myself after him as much as I could.”

  “Thank you, Myron.”

  I shook his hand, which was both soft and strong, and then offered the same gesture to the woman he was with. She took the proffered hand and said, “You have my condolences, Mrs. Pinkney.”

  “Have we met?”

  “No. I’m Myron’s friend Nora.”

  “Brathwait?”

  “He told you about me?”

  “You were the love of his life. I don’t think he’s had a single day where he hasn’t thought of you.”

  “Your speech was beautiful,” she said. “Myron and I have just reconnected over Facebook recently. I’m trying to get him to leave this profession and do something else—maybe still in film.”

  Our middle-aged Russian housekeeper, Julia Slatkin, came up after half an hour.

  “I am so sorry for you, my child,” she said.

  “You didn’t have to come to this zoo, Julia.”

  “I love you and your people,” she said. “Theon was a good man. He was a man and so he was always a little lost. Men are like boys and sometimes the only thing we can do is put them to bed.”

  I hadn’t even been worried about crying until she spoke those words.

  “He did awful things,” I said.

&nb
sp; “And he has paid for them,” she replied with Jude-like certainty. “There’s only so much revenge that God can ask on any man’s soul.”

  “Those were really nice words you spoke up there,” hunched-over Kip Rhinehart said after what seemed like hours of pity and commiserations.

  I was thinking of how lovely it would be to sit down in the polar bear room, bring my father’s pistol (the pistol that failed to save his life) to my temple, and pull the trigger.…

  “I heard,” Kip, the canyon cowboy, went on, “that you’re havin’ money troubles and might not be able to make that mortgage. If that’s so you’re welcome to come up and live in one’a my rooms. It gets a little lonely up there and … and I wouldn’t bother you or anything. I’m kinda old for that nonsense.”

  I was imagining the red spray across the white fabric that I chose to accent my ebony skin.

  “You think about what I said,” Kip muttered after I thanked him.

  Linda Love came up with a small band of directors. They said the right words but didn’t really mean them. A has-been actor was just that in their business. Neelo Brown shook my hand and kissed my cheek. He’d been an awkward adolescent—a virgin at eighteen. It was decided among his aunties that I would be the one to initiate him into the sexual life. I took him down to Ensenada for his birthday and came into his room after a night of dinner and trying to teach him how to dance. I did it to build his confidence but after that he was always a little in love with me.

  Anna Karin, Newly, Perry Mendelson, Chas and Darla the accountants, and my son’s guardian, Delilah, came up singularly and in pairs. All the while I was thinking about Suicide—that handsome man who joined me every once in a while, all silence and smiles.

  Toward the end of the procession two men wearing identical suits and faces approached me. They were pale and thin, of equal and normal height, but still they seemed small. Their eyes were barely gray and their lips … nonexistent. The one on the left walked up to me and took my hand. “John,” he said, and then moved my hand to his brother, who said, “Ronald.”