“Congratulations,” I said, and seemingly on cue, the waiter came with our wine.
I tasted, nodded, and the waiter poured.
I lifted my glass and said, “To your new job.”
Tempest clinked my glass and downed the expensive wine like it was tap water.
“Thanks, Angel, but you know I didn’t take the job.”
“Why not?”
“Well,” he said, pouring another drink, “it sounded good. I mean Johnny G told me up front that I had to kick back twenty percent of the net on my check to him and maybe sometimes devote a little time to his side business.”
“What kind of business?”
“Johnny has a thing goin’ with Jill Hastings, the bookkeeper. She do double orders on the beef twice a month and he sells the extra out the back door. All I’d have to do is put some packages into the back of a van now and then. I already knew all about it before I got there. Buddy’a mine from the joint hooked me up.”
“This is even better,” I said. “You saw a sin and avoided it.”
“Only I didn’t mind about the kickback or the meat stealin’. I didn’t take the job because’a Johnny’s attitude.”
“His attitude? Toward what?”
“The way he touched his hair and put his feet up. I could tell that he was the kinda man blame the world for his plain looks and low position in life. If he ever got caught movin’ that meat, he would have pushed the blame on us poor dudes workin’ for him.
“No, Angel, I didn’t take the job because the man was weak.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Tempest,” I said.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get a job.”
“I’m sorry that you have not realized, after all that you’ve experienced, what sin is.”
“What sin?”
“Thou shalt not steal,” I said in the full timbre of my angelic voice.
People all around the restaurant turned with hints of awe on their faces.
All except Tempest. He just grinned and shook his head.
That simple smile was proof that he was the most dangerous man in the history of the human race.
There was a light in Tempest’s eyes that was disarming. He hadn’t complained that if he didn’t get a job that he’d be sent back to prison. He hadn’t grumbled or whined about the East Harlem rooming house that he’d been forced to live in.
When the two-hundred-dollar steak came he rubbed his palms together like a joyous fly that just happened on a horse barn.
“You know if you eat too many vegetables, it’s not good for you, Angel,” he said. “You need meat to stay strong.”
“You don’t think that taking a job for a thief and helping him steal is wrong?” I replied.
“You know, Angel,” he said while masticating on a thirty-dollar mouthful of beef, “I got through my job application list early, so I come up here. I went to the fountain across the street and sat down on one of the granite benches they got there….You know, I always feel kinda funny when I’m out in public in another man’s body not livin’ his life and neither mine. It’s like I don’t belong anywhere.”
“That is your weight to bear, Tempest.”
He looked at me and nodded and then shook his head as if retracting his unspoken agreement.
“An old white dude walked up to me after a hour or so and asked if I minded if he sat down next to me. All the other benches were occupied with mostly young women with baby carriages and this old guy was a little tattered if you know what I mean.”
I nodded.
“Anyway the guy was lookin’ up at this buildin’ and smiling. I told him I was gonna have dinner up just where he’s lookin’. ‘I helped build that sucker,’ he told me. ‘That and six dozen more buildings in Manhattan and on the New Jersey side.’ Said he was a welder and plied his craft for forty years.”
“An honorable profession,” I said. “No theft necessary or called for.”
“Maybe not,” Tempest agreed. “I mean maybe Bradley, that was the guy’s name, maybe Bradley never stole nuthin’ but he was the victim of a theft.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean here he built this buildin’ we spendin’ fi’e hunnert of your dollars in and the guard downstairs won’t even let him walk in the door.”
“But you said he’s homeless,” I said. “He really doesn’t belong here.”
“How can the man built a buildin’ not belong inside’a what he made?”
The question stopped me.
“I talked to Bradley for a long time,” Tempest said. “He never been to prison. He got his diploma. He’s white and has some kids somewhere. And as the Infinite’s witness I’ma tell you that he been robbed by somebody. And they didn’t just take some’a his food and push it out the back door. They stole his whole life right from under him and we sit here talkin’ ’bout Johnny G like he the devil incarnate.
“No, Angel, don’t tell me that I’m a sinner for not worryin’ over Johnny’s stealin’. Don’t tell me a man can live in this world and not be involved in theft and rape and murder up to the thirty-fifth floor. Don’t tell me that, Angel. Don’t tell me.”
—
We finished the meal in silence and went our separate ways without shaking hands. When I had first looked up at the towering structure that held our restaurant I had agreed with Tempest’s notion that it was something like a heaven on earth. My opinion had not changed but now it was tinged with an odor not unlike the sweat of human lost labor.
Late-Night Visitor
Tempest Landry loved two things; well, actually, he loved many things: black women of all shapes and sizes, the streets of Harlem, loud laughter, and schemes to make him rich even though few if any of his machinations ever bore fruit. But of all his passions, very high on the list was playing dominoes and winning at that enterprise.
Tempest’s love of dominoes was why I was amazed one Thursday evening when he invited me over for a friendly one-on-one game. I wasn’t surprised that he wanted to play but that he wanted to play with me; this because I had been, for time immemorial, the Accounting Angel of heaven and therefore better with numbers than any mortal.
In the past I had beaten Tempest every time we played and this never failed to bring out a bad mood in him.
Tempest stopped playing the game with me because my superior ability was one of the few things that got under his skin and this was a threat to him. When Tempest got mad he also got sloppy and because it was my job to get him to slip up and admit that he was a sinner (therefore deserving of his sentence to hell) he shied away from putting himself into a vulnerable state of mind when in my presence.
But not that night. That Thursday Tempest shuffled the tiles and played full-out. He shouted victoriously whenever he got a high score but accepted with decorum when the final tile was laid and I came out the victor.
“Damn, Angel, you can play,” he told me at the end of our eighth set.
“Eons of experience with the advanced arithmetic of sin,” I replied evenly.
It was after midnight and we had done nothing but play dominoes, and drink two bottles of an exceptional Beaujolais, since eight that evening. Tempest had steadfastly refused to discuss sins or any other topic of weight.
He jumbled up the tiles and we started on game number nine. We had been playing for a while before he asked, “I thought there was no fixed numbers involved in telling whether a sinner went to hell or not?”
“You were wrong,” I said as he put down a double three setting me up for a forty-five-point gain in three or maybe four plays. “In heaven we use mathematics to gauge and quantify sins. In the end there is always a number that puts the sinner on one side of the line of righteousness or another.”
I put down a two/five tile.
He responded immediately with a four/two.
“But I thought you once told me that you didn’t use numbers to count up sins?” he said.
“We don’t count sins; we evaluate them. The wages of sin make u
p a heavy weight around the neck of the sinner.”
I played a three/six tile and collected my forty-five points. Tempest counted along behind me and nodded.
“I don’t understand, Tempest.”
“You seem to understand pretty good, Angel. I ain’t nevah played nobody I couldn’t beat even once.”
“What I’m saying is that you used to get mad that I beat you at this game. The last time we played you threw over the table and stormed off. I didn’t see you again for twenty-three days.”
“That’s when we were playin’ dominoes,” he said.
“And aren’t we playing tonight?”
“Tonight it’s another game we up to.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Tuesday last I got me a job runnin’ a outside fruit vendor cart in the Sixties off’a Park.”
“Congratulations,” I said, “but what does that have to do with what we are doing here?”
“On Thursday my PO went to talk to Mr. Bernini, the man owns the vending company.”
“And?”
“Aldo told Bernini that I was an ex-con on parole and did I report that fact to him? Bernini said that his communications with his employees is of no concern to the state except when it comes to payroll and benefit taxes. Trieste told Bernini that I had been in prison for evading sentencing for manslaughter. Bernini told Aldo to get the hell out of his office.
“I know all this ’cause Bernini’s secretary, Rosalda, is sweet on me and she overheard it. She also connected a call to the state parole board and told them what Aldo was doing to try and sabotage my rehabilitation. That was this morning.”
“Oh,” I said. “So you brought me here to discuss the unfairness of this man.”
“No, Angel. I decided that talk alone won’t never convince you that I’m not a sinner but a victim of the sin of the world.”
“To begin with that claim is ridiculous. Every being, mortal or otherwise, is responsible for his or her acts in this world or the next. Secondly, us playing dominoes in your room late at night takes not one step toward addressing the nature of sin in this world.”
Tempest smiled and nodded, falsely acknowledging the truth of my words. His eyes said, If you say so, Angel. He knew this attitude always enraged me. It was one of the dozens of ways that he kept me from proving to him that he was, indeed, a sinner.
I won game nine handily and we were well into our tenth and final set when there was a sound at the door.
“What time is it, Angel?” Tempest asked.
I looked at my watch. It read 1:37. I realized then that it was Tempest’s intention to make me tarry long after I should have been home with Branwyn, Tethamalanianti, and little Tempest Ouranos Angel. As an angel it was my wont to lose track of time. In heaven there was no such thing as minutes and hours, today and yesterday. Time for us was a whole cloth that grew but never passed away.
The door came open but was stopped by a chain that Tempest had fastened. The thrust had been pretty powerful showing that the intruder wanted to make a violent entrance.
“Goddammit!” a man’s voice cried on the other side of the door. “Unhook this thing, Walcott!”
Tempest gestured at the door, looking at me. I could see that he wanted me to open it and I was quite curious as to the nature of his plan. So I stood up from the walnut table and removed the sliding latch from the brass slot that held it.
Immediately the door flew open and a shortish, prissy man in a blue suit and white silk T-shirt entered. His brown hair was beginning to gray and his salt-and-cinnamon goatee only served to make his face seem ratlike and drawn.
“Who the hell are you?” he shouted at me.
“Joshua Angel, and you?”
The little man shuddered and turned toward Tempest. “What the fuck is goin’ on in here?”
“Just a friendly game of dominoes, Mr. Trieste,” Tempest said, giving his most exasperating grin. “Angel, this is Master…I mean Mister Aldo Trieste, my parole officer.”
I held out a hand but Trieste went straight to Tempest’s bed, ripping off the blankets and sheets and throwing them to the floor. Then he attacked the bureau, taking out each drawer and dumping out its contents on the sheets. He did the same with the cabinets, bathroom medicine chest, and the trunk that Tempest used as a chair for our game.
He brought a screwdriver from his pocket and took off the plate over the light switch and actually yanked the carpeting up from the floor where it had been tacked down. He used a pocketknife to rip open the pillows and cushions on Tempest’s sofa. Then he turned the couch over looking under and behind it.
All the while Tempest looked at me with the barest grin on his lips.
When Trieste had trashed the house he turned to Tempest and said, “Okay, Ezzard, you know the drill.”
I expected some kind of resistance from Tempest. After all, wasn’t this the same soul who had refused the judgment of heaven? But my domino partner just shrugged and began taking off his clothes. He handed each item to Trieste who searched everything—even the boxer shorts.
“Turn around and spread ’em,” Trieste said once Tempest was naked.
Tempest did as he was asked.
The calmness on my charge’s face was a revelation to me. Not for the first time it was evident why the Infinite had failed to turn his free will to its own purpose.
“Empty your pockets,” Trieste said.
What pockets, I thought. The man was naked. When I looked up I was surprised to see Trieste looking in my direction.
“Excuse me?”
“I am an officer of the court and I am ordering you to empty your pockets. You are in the domicile of a parolee and anything illegal I find on you he will be held responsible for.”
“No,” I said.
He reached for my right front pants pocket intending, I was sure, to rip it open.
“YOU WILL NOT LAY HANDS UPON ME!” I said in the full potency of my angelic voice.
The effect was immediate and profound. Aldo Trieste fell to his knees and bowed his head. He wept for a full minute, then stood up and fell away from me. He went to the door but was unable to open it. His hands wouldn’t work well enough to hold the knob. Finally Tempest took pity and opened the door. The parole officer fell into the hallway and scurried away like some small mammal trying to escape after being bitten by a venomous reptile.
“Damn, Angel,” Tempest said, snickering into the crook of his bare elbow. “You near ’bout kilt ole Aldo.”
“You planned this,” I said only just reining in the range of my vocal cords.
Tempest frowned and then sneered.
“No, baby, I live it.”
Temptation
On 68th Street, a few feet west of Park Avenue, the fruit vendor stood beside his large metal cart. He had mangoes, tomatoes, apples of half a dozen types, baskets of strawberries, avocados, bags of peanuts in the shell, and a dozen other fruits and vegetables, fresh and dried, roasted and raw. The peddler was natty, wearing a dark, dark blue shirt with iridescent thin blue lines etched here and there in relief. His pants were stylishly baggy and cut from a gold cloth. He also wore a Panama straw hat that seemed to be woven to fit that smiling dark brown head on just that searing July afternoon.
A young Asian woman, dressed as a salesgirl for one of the upscale Madison Avenue stores, no doubt, was holding an orange and both frowning and smiling, suspicious of and yet attracted to my mortal charge—Tempest Landry (aka Ezzard Walcott, ex-con).
“You should be an artist if you want to be one,” Tempest was saying to the lovely young woman. “I mean, the people you work for don’t care if you ever do a thing with your life.”
“But Mrs. Walker told me that she liked my drawings,” she said.
“Yeah,” Tempest said, smiling directly into her trepidations, “but if you told her that you were gonna stay home this week to finish a paintin’ she’d say, ‘No, baby, you got to put the hours on the floor in my store.’ ”
; The rhyme, unlikely language, and the truth of what Tempest said dispelled all of the twenty-something’s misgivings. She bought a bag of oranges and touched Tempest tenderly on the forearm before walking back to her job.
I applauded and Tempest turned to look at me.
“Did you know I was standing here?” I asked.
“Does the pope talk to God?” he responded.
“I don’t see what one question has to do with the other,” I said.
“Both of ’em mysteries that men will ponder down through the ages.”
I grinned and we shook hands. This was a rare gesture for us of late. After Tempest had been paroled from prison he was in a foul mood both from the memory of his experiences of being locked up and from the abuses that a man who has been convicted of a felony must endure. Our discussions about sin often ended up in dispute and anger. Tempest had even managed to make me lose my temper in the wee hours when his parole officer, Aldo Trieste, threatened me physically.
“How is your Mr. Trieste?” I asked.
“He took two weeks off after you shouted at him. Now he’s back he just comes out in the waiting room, signs my papers, and sends me on my way. Tuesday last he told me I only have to come in once every other month.”
No human in history, save Tempest Landry, has ever gone unaffected by my celestial tone.
“I can’t help but feel that you set him up to raise my ire,” I said.
“Angel, you give me too much credit, man. I knew he might’a come ovah, ’cause he was mad at my boss. I knew that he’d act all crazy and then you might see what it’s like when a man tries to be good in a world where they don’t want you. But you know I never expected him to try and attack you too.”
There was no use arguing this point. I had come to understand that Tempest’s dispute with heaven was being waged on an unconscious level as well as deliberately. Heaven’s war, my war, was with the accumulated instinctive knowledge of the entire history of the human race as it was contained in this unrepentant wild card.
The Further Tales of Tempest Landry Page 8
