Grace

by Calvin Baker

  “As you wish. Since you are afraid and have doubt, I wish to let you go now, face to face.”

  “We are still together.”

  “Non. We were. Not anymore.”

  “Of course we are.”

  “Non, mon amour. Not anymore.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “It is done. You wish to be the hero of the story, you tell yourself, but when people tell their own story it is so they can hide what kind of fool they are.”

  “I’m a fool for you,” I said, letting the subject drop, and I returned to the hotel to pack.

  When I returned the next morning to say goodbye before my flight, there was an ambulance picking its way down the hill. My heart sank, even before I reached her apartment, with fear of where it had come from. When I reached the top of the stairs, and opened her door, the apartment was empty and squalid. There was no answer when I called, and no note, and no music anywhere to be heard. I saw the neighbor in the hall, but he did not have to tell me anything.

  She was a fine, beautiful girl. Luminous. Fragile. True. And she was my girl, and I was broken-spirited with grief to lose her, and our love that ignited all of a sudden to burn brighter than anything I ever knew. And I was hollow and sick with myself for how lowdown it was to give up on her like I did. Haunted every sunless day I crouched low around my own spirit, with no company but all the other ghosts behind my eyelids.

  BOOK II

  14

  The film wrapped in early May and there was a cast party afterward in a club on East Broadway. The club was filled with beautiful people, who made media and fashion and nightlife, and knew, or thought they did, all there was to know about popular culture, and what people wanted, and how to give it to them. The air was clouded with weed smoke, which I never indulged in, but I took a hit from a joint passed to me by a beautiful girl, and had a sip of my cocktail, which I soon finished, and ordered another.

  I wanted to abolish the past from my memory, and focus on what came next, which I could not fathom as I leaned against the bar, trying not to look too empty and centerless. Soon the festiveness and laughter washing through the room were enough to numb my worries, as the air began to buzz with electricity and an omnipresent desire—for sex, for money, for conquest—which the beautiful-looking people displayed in their gestures, in their clothes, in the ease of coded references laced through conversations that exuded confidence and spoke of belonging.

  There were a smattering of famous faces scattered through the room, whom the regular people, the outsiders, watched surreptitiously. The famous people found each other, while the business people tried to circle next to the players, who manufactured and sold glory they themselves no longer believed in, as they but longed for something new they could hold to a while.

  What was left for them was boredom, cynicism, self-deceit. They bullied, they schemed, they manipulated, they threw tantrums. They were broken narcissists who wished to be worshiped. Whatever the chink in anyone else’s armor, they looked for a way to exploit it. It was their value proposition. They thought like gangsters, and the only lasting value was survival itself. Whatever happened in the struggle for that, they kept moving forward and never mentioned those fallen by the wayside.

  The rarest among them, who had reconciled how it was their world worked and who they themselves were, inhabited that apex of fear and insecurity and uncertainty, like gods walking through a dream. When they bullied and manipulated it was no longer for power or money but to serve some other, invisible truth they believed in absolutely. They were impressed by intelligence, talent, charisma, authenticity. If they could package those things up and sell them, so much the better. That was the game, but they had by then eyes on either side of their heads, one focused on the business at hand, the other turned inward to whatever kept them from losing themselves.

  I watched the crowd schmooze, front, hustle, and ordered another cocktail, and took a hit from a blunt someone was nice enough to share as I waited, watching as the reality in the room bent with the force of raw ego and condensed desire in so small a space. My part in it was done. Everything belonged to the machine now, and I did my best to not worry about what came next, and simply enjoy the night.

  Our party was upstairs on a balcony, affording us a clear view to the stage below, where last year’s pop superstar was making an unannounced appearance to test out the first single from his comeback album, which would be heard all around the world come summer. It was good and catchy the first time you heard it, and still hooked you the hundredth time. But by then you wanted the damn thing out of your head, which is why the machine was busy, even as they listened to it the first time, working up next year’s novelty the people did not yet know they wanted.

  The tables at the foot of the stage were filled with business people from another party, still in their suits, and their lawyers, still in their ties, ordering bottle service; all wired on coke. They were powerful and connected enough to be in the club, but removed enough from the industry that they served as the first marks, who would start the buzz humming in the next circle out, until the energy from the room rippled across the country, like wavelets across a fishing pond. It would no longer be about the music by the next morning, but an economic reality of mass experience. To be in the club that night was to witness its magical transformation from private art to public culture. And, slip of time, its first step toward the reliquary of the past.

  When the superstar left, the crowd was cresting with energy as the next performer, a midget Marilyn Monroe impersonator, took the stage. She did not imitate Marilyn exactly, but gave a pitch-perfect burlesque of the last golden idol to get her ticket punched that way. Unlike the ingénue she impersonated, she could actually sing. Raised-in-church-papa-was-a-traveling-preacher-mamma-used-to-cry-holy-all-the-damn-time-sing. When the black girls in the audience said That girl can sing, they didn’t qualify it with white girl.

  She sang like there was something inside her she was on fire to tell, cutting clean through the derivative cunning, the manufactured desire, the Warholian wannabes before her, who had nothing to add but rode the latest trend until it ran out. Hers was a further station, and she knew it, as she tapped at the twin roots of desire and yearning. When I looked her up later there were no recordings from any of her performances, and when I reflected on it, that seemed right too. She sang like she had been here before, and it was the purity and depth she made you aware of in a single, exquisite moment that made you think maybe you had, too.

  If she were four inches taller she would have been on every screen in the country. But who knows what the tradeoff would have been? She was not four inches taller, though, and did not get what came with that, but she had that voice. And she had that wanton, unbridled fire; and the people on the screens, and the people who decided what went on them, were watching her with awe and desire and joy that filled them completely and wanted for nothing else, as she made them know what they had come here for, if only for a vanishing moment.

  She wore a skintight red leather bodice to complete or complicate the effect, her ass fat and fertile as a harvest moon, so the suits downstairs, who were ginned up, and everyone upstairs, all weeded out, could do nothing but fall under her spell. Downstairs it was to screw her, because she was hot, or because they were freaks and it was something different. She knew that about them, of course; you heard it in her voice when she sang, saw it in the thrust of her hips. She knew everything there was to know. She had been here before. And she teased the crowd, promising any minute now to come down from the stage and fuck us all. If she ever got half a chance she would fuck the whole world.

  She never would get her big break, the world is unfair; you suffer that and do not complain. But we were fortunate to be in the room and hear her. Those who were not and knew only what had been put before them by those who did not create, lost out on the chance to know how beauty can overtake you unexpectedly. That is how this world works. It does not give you what you deserve. It gives you part of
what you work for, and halfway what you want. Beyond that it gives to you randomly some part of goodness, and all you can take of pain. That is what it was like for her too: somewhere in between. She was still blessed with that sanctified voice, though, and that irreligious fire she copped for herself.

  When the set ended I noticed my friend Nell sitting with an animated group at one of the tables, and made my way over. Their laughter was light in the darkness, radiating fellowship, and, as I sat down, a tall, winsome girl in a halter and shorts that showed the long line of her perfect legs saw me notice her, and we traded smiles.

  “Oh, you need to friend her up,” Nell said, catching the exchange, as we cheek kissed. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “I will in a second.”

  Nell was already in motion, homing in on the other edge of the sofa, where she struck up a conversation. Nell was like the pope’s confessor, people divulged their secrets to her in order to protect larger secrets, until she was one of the few people who knew how the city—and the people who ran it—truly operated, and could draw the hidden, unlikely connections between all its self-contained worlds. Whether through charm or guile or toughness, she was impossible to resist.

  “Fats,” she exclaimed, when she had penetrated to the center of the group. At the far corner of the sofa, sitting like a pharaoh, was Clinton Stone, a record producer, who had once been a musician, then president of a label, where he invented a whole new sound. It had made his stars famous, and given him what stars never get to possess, which is power. Nor did he get it by mistake. He knew what a throne was for, and when the suits finally examined the books and realized they had put an artist in charge of the business, it was too late. By the time they separated him from his chair he no longer needed it.

  In the years since, he had become impresario to half the town. He knew all the gods, and all the demigods, and all the beautiful, young ones who burned to be gods and demigods. He could tell at a glance who had it to make it, and who did not. Those who had it, he taught to manage it. Those who did not, he taught how to manage that too, until he had aided so many people on their paths he was known around town as Yoda—though never to his face. He was sensitive about his looks.

  Nell introduced us, and he asked what I did. I told him I had written the film with Davidson, and he nodded his approval. “He used to sleep on my sofa in Alphabet City, back when we were young and New York was cool. What are you doing next?”

  Most conversations about work in the city were a side-winding way to talk about money, but Yoda had the supernal curiosity of the brilliant, and was as fascinated as a child new to the world, which drew me out, until I had told him everything about my worries, and after that how I’d quit my old life.

  He nodded inscrutably, asking what had led me to quit, which was simply that I had learned there was nothing unique about suffering, and nothing I could do to stop it, and nothing more I had to say about it. I had asked myself how my life connected to all those others, and the theoretical questions evaporated, and the truth was too much to speak, until I was back at the place I’d started, which was simply: who are you and what do you know?

  “It’s not just black people they give black lives,” he deadpanned, after my brain had flooded through my mouth. He put a hand on my shoulder to shut me up, and told me not to get so weighed down—half my fear was projection, and the other half I created as well.

  I asked what he was working on, to change the subject.

  “Same as always,” he said coolly. “Getting back for what they took from the Africans.”

  He sent Davidson a text message, telling him to come join us, and ordered another round for the table.

  “I bet you date a lot of complicated women,” he said when the drinks arrived. “You should meet Estella.”

  “Because you think I need complications?”

  “Because I know you need fewer.” He whispered close to my ear. The one you think you like is a hot mess. Estella is grounded. Maybe not a supermodel, and maybe not a supergenius, just real good people, which is its own special thing. If I were you, I would take her out and get to know her.”

  I was horny and did not want to be alone, but I did not want a relationship and had my eye on the long-legged one who looked like fun. He was talking loudly enough that they both pricked up their ears, laughed, and flowed over to where we were seated. Yoda made introductions, and soon after slipped away and began politicking with Nell about something in next week’s newspaper.

  The one I liked was called Anna. She was originally from Texas, had studied psychology, and had just moved East for a new job in branding. She had the wholesome, fresh-faced look of people new to the city, and seemed like a nice girl to know.

  “I’d love to see you again sometime,” I said to Anna, after we had been talking awhile.

  “Next week,” she answered, over the noise of the club. I promised to call, and looked at my watch, and cheeked her goodbye.

  “Or tonight,” she said, wrapping an arm around my neck, and pulling me in to kiss me on the mouth. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

  “I have an early morning,” I wavered over whether to close the deal.

  She leaned in seductively. “Are you certain?”

  “Do you want me to take you seriously, or take you home tonight?”

  “Why can’t we do both?”

  I debated with myself between how much to trust affection that sprang so spontaneously into existence and my desire not to go home alone. I agreed to stay a while longer.

  “Yoda was right,” I said, getting up to go to the bar to freshen our drinks. “You’re trouble.”

  “Did he say we should be lovers?” she asked.

  “I did not ask him.”

  “What do you think?” she reached up and pulled me to her again. I had not dated anyone since Genevieve, and had not been looking for anyone—but the feel of her taut body was undeniable. It felt good to have anybody in my arms.

  “Maybe.” I wanted to be careful with myself. “I’ll call you.”

  She turned her head and smiled as she walked back to her friends, and I returned to the bar.

  “That was hot. Did you get her number?” Nell asked, coming over as I waited for the bartender.

  “I’ll go out with her next week,” I answered.

  “Next week? Honey, that’s a lifetime. Take her home with you. What’s the harm?”

  I was fairly lit by then, and as Nell voiced her approval I knew she was just trying to cheer me up, but I was still thinking about what I could not hold, and did not wish to be with someone I did not know. Still I did not want to be alone.

  “She is still trying to figure out what the world is about. I do not know if I feel like playing.”

  “Got it,” Nell said, turning her alert attention to a commotion that had broken out below.

  “Look at that. So typical. So sad.” She pointed down to a pair of suits at one of the tables near the stage, each vying to take the singer home.

  “Why?”

  “Two bankers fighting over a blonde.”

  The bouncers stepped in to break them apart, but the violence spoiled my high, and I slipped out a side door into the fresh night air to smoke a cigarette.

  Outside I took out my phone, fingering it like a worry stone, as I thought of texting Devi, until I remembered she had deleted her number. That should have been enough to stop me, but it was not. I sent her an e-mail as I finished my smoke, before slipping the phone back in my pocket. As the phone reached the bottom of my pocket, it pulsed with what turned out to be a message from Nell.

  “Where did you go?” she wrote.

  “Having a smoke. May go home.”

  “Come back upstairs,” she insisted. “The party’s just getting started.” She told me Davidson had finally arrived, along with some others I knew.

  I stubbed out my cigarette, and gathered myself to go back inside, as the phone glowed brightly again in the
shadow of the street. Devi had sent an e-mail, which I opened, drunkenly hoping she might be willing to come out. “I’m in Jersey,” she wrote. “Painting the house with my new fiancé.”

  I headed back inside for what I still hoped to be a jubilant night.

  Upstairs I found Nell and the others engaged in deep conversation. She sensed my approach, however, and took me by the elbow, leading me into the circle, where Davidson was holding court. As we all stood there laughing I felt a hand brush against mine, I took it with firm confidence of what I was doing.

  “Anna,” I said, “I was afraid you’d gone.”

  “I’m right here.” She laced her fingers through mine, moving closer, so I could hear her over the pulsating music. “Let’s go,” she whispered.

  I saw Nell smile knowingly, as she repositioned herself in the circle so that I had to move closer toward Anna. I was struck again by the sweet brightness of her face, brimming with an easy American confidence. Even as she told of how frantic her first weeks in the city had been, it was with an upbeat demeanor that seemed honest and light and made me take to her.

  The balcony was packed, and as our group continued to expand we were pushed near the wall, where we pressed against each other, and her body felt full in my arms, and her eyes twinkled mischievously with possibility that told me to take her home and feel someone’s arms around me.

  15

  Her bare leg brushed against mine as a voluptuous breeze streamed through the taxi window, suffusing us with expectation as we sped along the West Side Highway.

  Someone had invited her to an after party in Harlem, which she insisted we go to before calling it a night. It seemed too far away to be worthwhile, but our flirtation had advanced far enough that I went along with her.

  We exited the cab and walked up five flights to a rooftop, where all the lights of Manhattan fanned out before us, like a deck of illuminated playing cards. The person who had invited her was not there, and the party was uninteresting, but she seemed to enjoy herself, so I bided my time and took in the view, as she sang along with a rap song I had never heard before.