Samaritan

by Richard Price

  Agitated both by his own dramatic reenactment and fighting off the mounting terror of being back here, Ray paced the room blindly. From her seat on the couch, Nerese took in his small yearning gestures, the language of fluttering fingers, of tightening mouth and twitching eye, and she had to remind herself why she was here, why she was voluntarily putting out for this man; but for the first time in her life, the childhood memory of Ray coming to her aid with that blood- and sweat-sopped T-shirt made her feel hollow and enraged. Had that been all about this? Had he been working his shit out on her too?

  But then and with great relief, she brought back—she made herself bring back—the frightened, disoriented expression on Ray’s face as they sat rib to rib on that filthy curb, the great exhalation of deliverance that came out of him when Dub’s father, Eddie Paris, showed up and took over the show.

  And that was the problem she had with passing judgment on Ray: at heart he was a decent individual, an “honorable person,” to use his own words, or at least he consciously tried to be . . .

  She had no doubt that it honestly thrilled him, for whatever reason, to truly come through for people even if only in the short run—which was fine, unless in the euphoria of the moment he was in the habit of making long-term promises he had no intention of keeping, or unless he chronically confused, as his ex-wife had said, making a dent with making a splash.

  But on the other hand, what the hell: a cash crisis was a cash crisis, poor people needed to bury their dead too, Paulus Hook kids were desperate for passionate teachers, no matter where their true motivations lay. And who in this life wasn’t carrying around a suitcase of hidden agendas?

  The mug shot of Freddy Martinez was still lying face up on the coffee table. Nerese mused on the fact that even though twenty years as a cop told her that this was the guy who had laid open Ray’s head for him, she was sure that if this murderous sonofabitch were to call up Ray tonight and ask for—well, maybe not a loan, but a job reference, or some advice on how to be a better husband to Danielle, Ray, his heart swelling like a balloon, would instantly and unhesitatingly come through for the guy. And feel like a million bucks for doing so.

  “So, Tweetie.” Knitting a ladder of fingertips, Ray tilted tremulously into the windowsill. “How’d you become police. You were going to tell me.”

  “No, I got to go,” she said tersely, finally jerking the line.

  “Aw c’mon, don’t be like that . . .”

  “Next time.” She began gathering herself up, wondering if in addition to springing the trap she wasn’t also throwing a little payback his way for the discomfort of some of her perceptions.

  “C’mon, hang in a bit,” Ray forcing some cheer through the panic in his throat. “It’s kind of freaky around here.”

  “See, what you’re scrambling to do right now,” Nerese said with one hand on the doorknob, “is to figure out how to make me stay without giving me what I want. The thing is? You can’t.”

  “I’ll tell you why I left the show,” Ray blurted.

  “Some other time.”

  “You don’t want to hear about my, racial incident?” Dangling it like a bracelet.

  “OK . . . By the way, I have no idea why that episode was nominated for writing. We used just about every cliché in the manual, but I guess . . . I just don’t know . . . I just don’t.” Ray stood before her again as if onstage, Nerese back down on the couch, grudgingly giving him her eyes, telling herself a few more minutes to finally scratch an itch wouldn’t make any difference here one way or the other.

  “Anyways, about two weeks after I go all blubbery in front of the cameras, there’s a birthday party for one of the actors. Guy plays the gay black art teacher, so you can imagine the tolerance punch lines whenever he’s center stage, right?

  “And the actor who plays this character, Tony Raymond? He got his start in the blaxploitation flicks, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold, Blacula, The Mack, and everybody loved this guy, great guy, one of those feast-or-famine actors, nothing doing for fifteen years, and now he’s working again and just, in general, happy to be alive practicing his craft, joy to the world. And for his birthday, it was going to be a surprise costume party with a seventies theme, you know, everybody dressing like popcorn pimps, disco ducks, dashikis, bell-bottoms, Afro wigs, medallions, marshmallow heels, muttonchops, miniskirts.

  “But me, I don’t want to do the matching vest and pants Saturday Night Fever thing. Me, I have to have a fucking brainstorm. Me, I’m going as Curtis Mayfield, you know, ‘Superfly,’ ‘Pusherman,’ ‘Freddy’s Dead’ . . . Me, White Ray Mitchell, as Curtis Mayfield, OK? Not offensive enough? How about this. Mayfield’s died since then, but at that time he was a quadriplegic. So how about in addition to wearing an Afro-trimmed bald wig, jawline beard and big pink tinted shades, I go in a fucking, wheelchair.

  “We were in New York shooting exteriors at the time, so we have the party at B. Smith’s, food, music, costumes, it was a blast. They even hired Pop Staples from the Staple Singers, guy was in his eighties, had everybody going crazy on the dance floor. Except me, of course, because you know, I’m in character.

  “Anyways, pretty quickly into the party, one of the actors, the guy who plays the black principal of the school, comes up, says, ‘Ray, what’s with the wheelchair? You OK?’ I say, ‘I’m Curtis.’ ‘Curtis? Curtis who?’ ‘Mayfield.’ He’s like, ‘You’re . . . I don’t get it.’ So I explain. I say, ‘He got hit by a light pole onstage at some concert a few years back . . . He’s, he’s a quad . . . he’s paralyzed, I think.’ Guy says, ‘He’s in a wheelchair?’ At which point I’m, I say, ‘Well, yeah, he is.’

  “And it’s not like I was oblivious to the possible downside reaction to what I was doing, Tweetie, it’s just, you get caught up in the excitement, the, the hit you could make if you pull this off. I did, at any rate. And the guy says to me, ‘You’re coming in here, to this party, and you’re Curtis Mayfield in his wheelchair . . .’ And I look, and I can see in his eyes, him processing the information. I can see the mental violence that I had just perpetrated on him, and I’m . . . I want to die, you know, finally. So, I can’t even look at him, I’m so horrified by myself. I just mumble, ‘No, man, I love Curtis Mayfield. He’s like my hero,’ or some such shit, but the guy’s not even there anymore, he’s stormed off into the crowd, and as I’m sitting there, I know the word is going around the party like the Ebola virus, and I’m ashamed, I’m heartsick, and I’m frightened. And I know I have to get out of that goddamn wheelchair instantly, but I can’t. I’m so fucking mortified that I can’t, get, up. And so I sit. Every, every atom in me is bubbling with horror. No one goes near me. No one says hi, all these people I’ve worked with for over two years, and I can’t get up. Finally I just roll myself into a corner of the room, rip off the Afro beard, the wig, toss the glasses, try to rearrange my hair into some kind of half-assed pompadour and I’m ready to tell people I’m George Wallace, which I’m not sure was a hell of a lot better, but of course, nobody asks, because everybody knows I’m Curtis fucking Mayfield.”

  Ray paced in front of Nerese like a manic sentry, addressing first one wall then the other, the words rattling out of him as if he had delivered this tale verbatim every day of his life, although she was fairly sure that if he had, he’d delivered it mainly to himself.

  She had no gut reaction to the story yet, no inclination to pass judgment one way or the other; Ray’s self-castigating rhythms neutralizing any real sense of outrage in her.

  “So, OK, I’m sitting there in a corner, maybe fifteen, twenty minutes, I don’t know whether to sneak out, try to apologize, what . . . Finally, just as I’m about to make a break for the door? The actor that I, exposed myself to comes tearing out of the crowd, corners me in my wheelchair, and at first I thought he was going to slug me, but instead he says, ‘How would you have liked it if I had come in here tonight wearing striped pajamas and had numbers tattooed inside my arm, huh?’ And the die-hard wiseass in me wanted to say
, ‘But it’s a seventies party.’ But of course I don’t.

  “And I could tell he had put some time and effort into the wording of what he’d just said, which made me feel worse but it also made it easier for me because it gave me the chance to say I’m sorry, which I do, and then I leave.

  “Except that night I kind of lose track of what was freaking me out and I go from writing this guy an apology note to thinking where the hell does he get off comparing the Holocaust to a singer having an accident at a concert, you know, tearing up the note, getting all Zionic, coming off it, redrafting the note . . .

  “Anyways the bottom line is, I just walk into the producer’s trailer the next day, you know, my ex-student Shaker, and the minute he sees me he says, ‘Oh my God, it’s Curtis Mayfield! And not only is he walking again, folks, but he’s turned white! Great glory to God!’

  “The next day I fly back to LA with everybody else, but a week after that I was off the show.”

  “You got fired?”

  “I quit.”

  “Your boss, he was black?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And he didn’t fire you?”

  “He thought what I did was in bad taste but people would get over it.”

  “But you quit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because of that.”

  “Yeah. What would you have done?”

  “If I were you?”

  “If you were him. My boss.”

  “I don’t know shit about TV except how to watch it.”

  “C’mon, Tweetie, you know what I mean.”

  “Like I said,” she muttered, not particularly interested in being his race priest, “I don’t know shit save for how to watch it.” Then, to change the subject, anything to change the subject, “So that was it for you and TV?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. Save for one last trip, one last stab.” He stepped over to the sliding glass doors and gazed out at the river, waiting for the go-ahead.

  Nerese glanced at the sun going down, wondering if by staying for more of the show she’d be allowing him to sate himself with anecdote and achieve a state of repose that would undo the fear. But as she watched him minutely jig and jerk before her even now, in this fleeting moment of calm, she decided that for people like Ray, the state of repose was a lifelong mirage, perpetually just ahead but never experienced.

  “Go on,” she said with a blatant heaviness.

  “Yeah, so after I quit?” Ray wheeled back to her as if someone had flicked his switch. “Pretty soon after that I came back East, and after all the insanity around here somewhat settled down I kind of develop this three-point game plan. One, I was going to get my own place in New York. Two, I was going to maybe try and take a shot at some serious writing. And three, I had this fantasy of really connecting with Ruby, for the first time, like, connecting.” He paused to draw a tone-shifting breath. “But I have to tell you, after a few weeks? It was like, one, I wound up here on the geriatric Riviera, two, all I wrote of consequence was checks, and three, with Ruby? It was ‘Hello, Ruby! Here’s your unemployed dad, coming back to New York, expressly to be with you!’ The pressure’s enormous. What do you say, what do you do. Anyways’—waving himself off—“everything’s boomeranging on me, I feel like the man without a country, so what I did was, I didn’t want to go back to Brokedown, but I reached out to John Shaker with this idea I had for a new show. It was going to be about cabbies—not like Taxi—but a drama that— See, in New York you can always tell the newest influx of immigrants, which nations were coming over in force because they all become cabbies, it’s the easiest job to get right off the boat. And, if you really want to know which group is the most recent to have arrived? All you have to do is check the registration number on the hack license posted on the partition. If it starts with a zero, it’s some old Jew with hair coming out of his ears, been driving since DiMaggio’s hitting streak. But if the numbers start with a five or a six? You got the newest wave. So, for example, last winter it was all Fukien Chinese, spring it’s Sikhs from Punjab, summer it’s Hindus from Gujarat, fall it’s Albanian Muslims or whatever. And I wanted to do a show that would have different main characters, follow their newborn lives in the city, you know, living in cramped basements, sending their money back home, the loneliness, the culture shock . . . I’m making it sound way more of a bummer than it was, although my first idea for a title was Wretched Refuse.”

  “Meaning . . .”

  He stared at her for a beat without answering, then forged on.

  “Anyways, I catch Shaker coming through town, and he loves the idea. Well, I mean everybody loves everything in that business, at least to your face. The thing is, Shaker tells me his own contract is up at the teen network and he’s probably not going to renew, he’s been talking to various networks looking for the best deal for himself and he’s sort of leaning towards this one particular network at the moment, let’s sit down with some of their guys, run it by them, see how they react.

  “Now this is in New York, right? We go in, I do my thing, the pitch, everybody’s like, ‘Wow, I love it I love it I love it.’

  “Me and Shaker, we’re all V for Victory, it’s in the bag, the only thing left is to get together with the Head Guy in Burbank, get his OK, and we’re off to the races.

  “And I can’t wait. I’m so excited, especially because if we pull this off? What we’re talking about is a New York–based production, which means I can have my cake and eat it too, you know, in regards to not bailing on Ruby. Plus, it’ll be much more relaxed between us because I won’t have all this free time to moon around in . . . In any event, the next step is flying me out to LA to sit with Shaker and the head of programming, get the final OK.

  “And I ask Ruby to come with me. She’d never been to California and it just sounded like the best idea in the world, you know, watch Daddy score.

  “So off we go, the network puts us up in a beachfront hotel in Santa Monica, she takes one look at all the movies we can order on the TV? She doesn’t even glance out the window. And I’m not one of those ‘It’s a beautiful day, go outside and play’ type parents so . . . And in all fairness to her, she did take a peek at the Pacific Ocean on her way to check out the minifridge, but whatever.

  “OK. This sit-down, it’s for the next morning, right? About nine o’clock that night, Shaker calls the room, tells me he won’t be attending the meeting—he’s not sure, he’s developed some doubts about the premise, doesn’t think he can go in there and say for sure he wants to do it.

  “And I’m like, ‘Shit, man, we just flew out.’ He says, ‘It’s still a great idea, Ray, maybe just not for me.’ Which means he’s definitely not going to do it. ‘But hey, man, you’ve been around the block. Take the meeting yourself, it’s your baby, you don’t need me, the networks have producers coming out of their ass, don’t sweat it, get what’s yours, brother!’ I get off the phone, I know him well enough not to take it personally, and I start thinking, You know? He’s right. Let me see what I can do on my own. It’s my idea, I don’t really need him godfathering me wherever I go.

  “So come the morning, the studio has sent a car and driver for us. It was a town car, not a limo, which I was hoping for, you know, for Ruby’s sake, but the driver’s wearing a suit at least and off we go out to Burbank.

  “I’m so jazzed. I feel like I’m both showing Ruby off, and showing off to Ruby. We go up there, the corridors are lined with huge blowups of the network stars, the kid’s all big-eyed, I go in for the meeting, there’s the guy, there’s the bottled water, he says how he’s such a big fan of Brokedown High—which in my mind makes him either a moron or a liar—and I start laying out the taxi thing and I do it very well. I’d much rather talk than write, and he’s listening, nodding, making appreciative noises, takes me about fifteen minutes, and I’m done. He says, ‘I just love it. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. It’s gritty, it’s real, it’s got heart.’ Says, ‘Screw all this other crap we do. I’m an old Brook
lyn boy, Midwood High class of ’66, and this is getting me right where I live. Great. Just great.’

  “So I say, ‘Great.’

  “He says, ‘Great, OK. Let me just talk to John Shaker, get him on board, and we’ll put you guys to work.’ And I’m, ‘Uh, Shaker’s not, he’s not coming on board, I don’t think . . . Didn’t you . . . I assumed everybody . . . Uh, duh, uh.’

  “And the guy doesn’t miss a beat. He never stops smiling, doesn’t come out and say to me, ‘Well, if John Shaker, who we desperately want to be in business with, is not involved on this, why the fuck are you wasting my time?’ He just says, ‘Well, OK, look, give me a few days to live with it, let it sift down . . .’ You know, like his head was some kind of colander, and I knew the thing was dead in the water and it hurt. I felt like two cents and, shit, I have Ruby out there, what am I . . .

  “So we shake hands, I go out to the reception area, try to be cool, happy, Ruby takes one look at me and says, ‘Dad, did you get fired?’ Whispers it, and I’m like, ‘No honey, not at all,’ which is technically true since you need a job in order to get fired from it but like any sensitive kid, she can smell it on me.

  “So we go down to the car and I tell the driver that I’ll pay him to stay with us until the evening. I’m gonna show Ruby a great time. In fact, after that meeting, in my mind, it’s life and death that I show Ruby a great time. So I have him take us to the Beverly Center, which is this six-story indoor mall. I mean, we just came from Gray York and, so far, Ruby’s take on California is that it’s all indoors. But I know my kid. I know what’s fun for her so, screw the Pacific Ocean once again and off we go. Unfortunately my kid also knows me, and she’s looking very troubled.

  “We get in the mall and I say, ‘Ruby, the hell with it. Let’s just buy shit. Whatever you want, who cares . . .’ She says, ‘That’s OK, I’ll just look.’ I’m like, ‘Ruby, c’mon, I just swung a big deal, a dollar’s like a penny today.’ And I sort of bully her into buying some studs for her ears, can’t get her to buy clothes, can’t get her to buy any skin stuff, she grudgingly lets me buy her some teen magazine and it got really tense, the both of us like in this battle in the mall. And at one point she stops at a kiosk where they’re selling belly-button rings, she just got hers pierced a few weeks before and I see her eyeing this one ring, sort of a curved silver rod with dice at either end and, I’m instantly breathing down her neck, ‘You want that? You want that?’ Which of course makes her want to run away. She says, ‘Just looking,’ and wanders off. I’m so panic-stricken, the minute her back is turned, I buy it plus two others, then I sort of mosey up behind her, say, ‘Miss, did you drop these?’ and show her the three belly-button rings in my hand and she, goes, berserk. She starts sobbing and screaming at me, ‘Stop buying me stuff! Stop buying me stuff! Please! Daddy! Please! I don’t want anything!’” Ray had to pause.