The Incident at Naha

by M. J. Bosse

  A discothèque is the gloomiest place in the world before the sounds begin, and Eros was awfully depressing that evening—dark, silent, kind of damp like a cave, while from outside came the lazy sounds of people calling to each other through the summer twilight.

  I was sitting at the bar having a Coke and contemplating Virgil’s hopeless search for justice when Thing and the Feeler floated in, waving down at me from their enormous highs. I realized that I hadn’t smoked a joint in days, and my only real temptation had been on the beach when I’d been angry and frustrated because of Ginny Vaccaro.

  Thing changed into her costume and joined me at the bar. She didn’t look good at all. She had a drawn and pasty face, she had lost plenty of weight, and she sniffled a lot. We sat awhile with nothing to say. Then she hit me up for bread. That’s all, brother, I thought; her habit is getting expensive.

  “I can’t oblige,” I told her.

  “You’re going square,” she said, and we might have argued had I not looked past her and noticed approaching us none other than Mr. Smith.

  I waved gaily in mock eagerness to see him.

  Thing leaned toward me and whispered, “How about hitting him up for me, if you know him?”

  “I’ll try,” I said, feeling sorry for her. Thing slid off the stool and moved into the far shadows where the booths were.

  “What’s it now?” I asked Mr. Smith, who took the seat next to mine.

  “It won’t take long.”

  I raised my right hand. “Honest, Mr. Policeman,” I said, “I haven’t done anything wrong. Girl Scout’s honor.”

  Mr. Smith didn’t even smile; didn’t, for that matter, look me over in my tiny costume. Instead he reached into his coat pocket and took out an envelope. He was more serious than ever, so maybe his superiors were breathing down his neck these days. “Would you please take a look at these photographs, Miss Benton?” He handed over a half dozen, all of young men in Army uniforms. “Recognize any of them?”

  I squinted in the dim light. “No,” I said. And noting his skeptical look, I added, “Honestly.”

  “Would you take a careful look at these men, and if ever you see one of them, would you phone me, please, at this number?” He handed me a printed card with nothing but a phone number on it.

  I looked again at the photos of the young soldiers, two black guys and four white. “Okay, I’ve looked carefully. So what’s the deal?” Smith looked like someone going to a funeral. “Listen,” I said, “you better tell me.”

  “They are Alpha men, Miss Benton.”

  “Hell, I figured that.”

  “They could have strong reasons for contacting Virgil.”

  “Strong reasons?” I repeated. “I understand. You mean Dong Nai.”

  “For Virgil’s sake, I am glad you do understand.”

  “Mr. Smith, you are some kind of a real bastard.”

  Not a muscle in his face moved. I guess he was used to people calling him that.

  “I mean,” I said, “only a bastard would set up an innocent guy like Virgil. You’ve made him a bait.”

  “Miss Benton, don’t judge what you don’t understand.”

  “I understand this much: you expect some dangerous characters to come snooping around here.”

  “Isn’t it logical, Miss Benton, that anyone closely connected with Virgil Jefferson might be contacted by them?”

  “Sure, because you’ve told them who I am.”

  He blinked at that.

  “Mr. Smith—will you be happy if Virgil and I get killed?”

  “That’s rather dramatic, Miss Benton,” he said stiffly, but I saw that I had got to him. “Cooperate,” he said, “and everything will work out. If you see any of these men, let me know.”

  “I better look again,” I said, and I did.

  When I handed the photos back to Mr. Smith, he got off the bar stool, nodded coolly, and turned to leave.

  “Mr. Smith?” I called. “Could I ask you a big favor?”

  He came back to me.

  “The girl who was sitting here. She’s really goofed up on a habit—Cibas, bams, horse: you name it, I bet she’s tried it—so she needs some bread. Could you spare five or ten?”

  “You give her money to support a drug habit?” Square Smith was taken aback.

  “Look, I’m not her mother. I just know she needs money now, and I don’t have it and if I did I wouldn’t give it to her.”

  “But you’d give her my money?”

  “Sure, because you’re a one-shot. I’d never have any peace if the bread came from me.”

  “That’s pretty tough.”

  “Drugs are tough.”

  Smith shook his head sadly, this man who had probably seen just about everything, but he dug into his pocket.

  *

  That night when Virgil came to Eros for me, I told him about Smith’s visit, which was a mistake. Virgil said nothing until we got home, but then he said, “All right, that does it. You move out.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “No.”

  The next morning, early, Virgil stood over me while I called my old friend Linda and asked could I stay with her awhile. Unfortunately she said yes. And when I asked her when could I come over, unfortunately she said now. Almost before I had put the phone down, Virgil had my suitcase out and on the bed.

  I promised Virgil, before setting out, that I would not hassle anymore with Linda. After all, she was being generous to take me in on short notice, even though I would pay plenty for it. As a peace offering I took her a pound of bacon and a six-pack of diet cola; by noon I was there, holding a package and carrying a suitcase.

  I felt that the Sunday church bell tolling in the distance was tolling for me, but when I walked in I instantly told Linda that the place looked nice. I carefully avoided staring at the clothesline stretched across the kitchen with drying stockings and panties on it or at the unmade bed in which God knows what grubby character had slept the previous night. I was trying to be good, because Linda honestly seemed happy to have me there. I sat down and watched her parade around in a bath towel. She is usually going to or coming from a shower. Linda knows she has a great figure and will show it to anyone. I asked her was she seeing any particular man. She was.

  “At his apartment?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?” She seemed defensive, when after all I had only asked a simple question.

  “Of course it doesn’t matter,” I said. “Anyway, I won’t be here long. I was just thinking of that thin curtain.”

  “What thin curtain?”

  “Well, at best we’d only have a thin curtain between us if you brought anybody home, and so—” I paused to let Linda herself finish the sentence in the only logical way.

  “Don’t hesitate,” she said. “Get it out, whatever it is.”

  “Frankly, Linda—and I’m only telling you because you insist—you’re a screamer when you’re coming.”

  “I know I’m a screamer when I’m coming,” she replied rather proudly. “It’s healthy to scream when you’re coming. Ask any shrink.”

  “I agree it’s healthy, and I scream too,” I said, trying to placate her. “But that’s why we must be a little considerate when there’s only a thin curtain between us.”

  “You weren’t always so sensitive. Remember?”

  “Then we had an apartment with a wall between.”

  Linda considered that difference. Reluctantly she agreed to my demand that as far as lovemaking was concerned, for the duration of my stay the apartment was off limits. Paying to sleep on her springless couch gave me the right to lay down certain conditions.

  After that, everything was fine and she swished around grandly in the bath towel. But all of a sudden she began on sex, on her analysis of it. I mean, her hangup is a sexual thing and it involves talking about it and talking about it. Of lovemaking Linda will say, “Now, if he does that and I do this, will he do that, and if he does, will he like it or figure I did it
only to get him to do this?” To hear Linda describe lovemaking you’d think it was two robots facing each other, whirring and clicking, solemnly pushing buttons and pulling levers and all and feeding impulses into a computer. Yet I was resolved to be good. I was going to be patient and listen.

  Everything went fine that first night; but the following evening, when Linda came into the apartment and threw off her dress, waltzing around in panties and no bra, she started in again. An old, familiar theme.

  “Guess what happened to me on the subway.”

  “Was a man sitting opposite you?” I sighed.

  “Don’t anticipate me. You bet he was, and you should have seen him. You know the type.”

  “Yes, that type,” I said, yawning.

  “But this one was absolutely not to be believed.”

  “Fat, I bet.”

  “Isn’t that usually the type? Fat—”

  “And sweaty.”

  “As a matter of fact, he was. Why do you always anticipate me? He was sitting there staring at me, and pretty soon he smiled.”

  “Did he drool?”

  “Not actually, but he wasn’t right. Why do they let them run around in the subways when they’re obviously not right? This one winked.”

  “Were you scared?” I asked politely, but I couldn’t suppress another yawn.

  “Actually not. I was, you know, like, uncomfortable. I didn’t know what he would do, whether he would do more than smile and wink like that. It was really awful. And then very slowly he unbuttons his pants, never taking his eyes off me, you understand, and he takes it out and—and shakes it at me.”

  “And when did this happen?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Probably during rush hour. I see. What did the other people do?”

  “Other people?”

  “Well, when he did this, didn’t anybody say anything or call a cop or something? Didn’t somebody react? Like, didn’t somebody turn away or move down the aisle or change seats? I mean, it wasn’t as if it happened at midnight. You make it sound as if you and this guy were the only two people on the train.

  Linda blinked rapidly and flushed. “It happened exactly the way I said it did.”

  “You mean, he took it out and shook it at you.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Aimed it at you and you alone, and all the people looked on indifferently.”

  “He shook it at me, actually. Just like I said.”

  “He should have hit you over the head with it.”

  “What do you mean? What do you mean!” Linda shouted.

  “I mean I don’t believe one word of it!”

  And that started us off, yelling at each other just like old times. That’s why we could never get along—Linda and her stories about exhibitionists.

  When I told Virgil this latest tale, he looked disapprovingly at me and said, “Judith.” He said, “Leave that girl alone. If that’s her problem let her deal with it, only don’t make her any more miserable than she is.”

  I thought a moment. “Yes,” I said reluctantly. Then: “You know, sometimes I’m a bitch.”

  “Really?” Virgil laughed. And patted me on the ass and sent me back to her.

  *

  I wasunfair to Linda. I was taking my frustrations out on her because of Virgil’s decision to send me away. All I really wanted was to get home with Virgil, to be with him there. Danger or no danger, that was where I had to be. And anyway, I was thinking of sex. Anybody who spends more than an hour with Linda can’t help but think of sex. And so on my third day of exile, I decided to go over there and give Virgil a taste of something that would make him sorry he had ever thrown me out. I put on pink panties, my shortest mini, and a sheer blouse, and plenty of blue accent at the edges of my eyes, making them sort of Dragon Lady–ish, and I was off, at noon, to do some things that would outstrip even Linda’s imagination.

  When I got to Virgil’s apartment, I slipped out my key as quietly as possible, because the idea was to take him by surprise. Noiselessly I worked the key into the keyhole. It didn’t fit. It didn’t fit on the silent second try or the noisy third. Virgil had changed locks on me.

  “Virgil?” I called sharply. “Virgil!” I yelled. “You in there!” I yelled louder and kicked the door, kicked it hard enough to make my toes tingle. “Don’t jive me! I know you’re in there!” But with my ear against the door I could hear nothing. “I bet you’ve let the turtles die!” I screamed. Virgil was probably in one of his orecious libraries, checking facts facts facts, while I was here prepared to sacrifice my white body to his black lust. Well, I wasn’t going to let him get away with this. I ran downstairs as fast as I could, almost pitching headlong in my flight, and before I had time to think anything through, I was pounding on the super’s door.

  Had I been a little calmer, I wouldn’t have done that. The super is a very temperamental little man, sort of like an operatic prima donna, and you don’t ever pound on his door—not if you want a water pipe fixed that’s flooding your apartment. You don’t pound—not even Virgil does that; you tap gently on the door and genuflect.

  But I was pounding, and soon the door opened slightly. “What’s all that about!” came Mr. Carrigan’s snarling voice from behind the door. I doubt if he had heard the sound of pounding in years.

  “Mr. Carrigan, please, I can’t get in my apartment.”

  Mr. Carrigan’s face appeared in the doorway. Mr. Carrigan’s face is a sort of map, a network of broken blood vessels that are highways leading nowhere. He opened the door wider to get a better view of me, and I was close enough to him, our faces being on the same level, to see every little dip and crimson curve of road on his nose.

  “What’s all that about!” he repeated, as if I had said nothing in explanation. I could feel my cool blowing away as I stood there and watched a face get bigger and redder and more complicated by the moment.

  I explained again that I couldn’t get into the apartment, and no it wasn’t because I had lost my key, and yes Mr. Jefferson was not at home.

  “You want my key. Is that it?” Mr. Carrigan’s thin but wiry little arms crossed defiantly over a paint-splattered shirt. One hand held a big pipe, a shell-briar Apple.

  “No, sir. I don’t think it will work.”

  With his free hand Mr. Carrigan hitched up his pants over a great belly. He was sort of like those illustrations for Dickens that you see. He puffed once and furiously on the pipe. “And why won’t my key work?”

  “Because I think Mr. Jefferson changed the lock.”

  Mr. Carrigan assimilated that revelation very slowly, and for a while I thought I was gaining his sympathy, but then one of his thin, freckled little arms began working in the air, invisibly sawing and hammering with the pipe, while out of his small mouth, in that face of more detours and side roads than any other face I had ever seen, came a lot of swearing and mumbling and questions that my English teachers used to call rhetorical. I mean, like, “Changed the lock? Changed it, did he? Jesus! Then why come to me, pounding on my door? Because”—sawing and hammering with that pipe—“I don’t have no key. Didn’t give me no key. Tenants supposed to give me the key when they change it, but they don’t. He didn’t. Jesus Goddamn Christ. All of you expect me to let you in your apartments when I don’t have the key to it. You go and change the lock and lock yourself out and come down here pounding on my door expecting me to let you in. Goddamn people in this building. Change locks for Christssakes and come pounding on my door expecting me to drop everything and let you in—”

  By this time I had backed halfway down the hall to the stairway, with him at me, keeping pace, the roads on his cheeks all twisting into a weird red Texaco map, and his pants, much too big for him though his beer belly was big and round and protuberant as a watermelon, beginning to sag off him, and his freckled hand pumping the pipe into the air and sometimes jabbing it at my chest, and the aroma from his feet, which wore socks but no shoes, starting to drift up where I could smel
l it, and I was almost crying. He was still yelling at me when I was two flights above him, and I was crying. I was not actually crying about his treatment of me: I was crying about a key that I didn’t have. I was crying when I got to the apartment and pounded on it again, calling for Virgil. I slumped down like a rag doll, feet straight out, and just sat there in the hall against his door, blinking tears away.

  *

  I don’t know how long I sat there feeling sorry for myself before I saw Virgil’s head appear from the staircase and come level to the floor, and another head, the red one of Martin, come up alongside his. Then they were both standing over me, solemn and puzzled. I didn’t get up right away. Now that Virgil had come home, I was no longer self-pitying but defiant. “You changed the lock on me” was all I said.

  Virgil fished out his key chain and waited for me to move from the doorway, which I did not by rising but by squinching over. “I didn’t want you in there alone,” he said.

  “But you could have told me you changed it.”

  “I meant to.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Judith,” Virgil said, giving me a quick glance as he turned the new key.

  I got up and followed him into the apartment, Martin trailing us.

  “You should have told me,” I persisted.

  “I meant to tell you tonight.”

  “But—” I began, and then I noticed Martin, who was taking in this scene. He was smiling a little. I recalled what Virgil had said about Martin digging me, and I didn’t want to give him any ideas, promote any hope. Sure I could have worked at making Virgil jealous through Martin, but what the hell. I didn’t want anyone to have the satisfaction of putting Virgil down. So I swallowed my anger. If I took any revenge upon Virgil, I’d do it in private. I’d threaten sexual tortures or something when we were in bed. I began smiling, which made Martin frown, and I went up to Virgil and kissed him warmly. “What the hell,” I whispered, and I leaned against him.