Women and Men

by Joseph McElroy

  "I know the woman in that cab and so do you," said Senora Wing. "She came for a consultation and she asked if I knew where she could find you— it was wonderful how she knew I knew you."

  The Chilean entered the warehouse and the door banged behind him. "Where were you headed?" Spence asked. "Where were you headed?" Wing returned. Spence nodded at the heavy metal door. Wing said, as up at the corner the taxi door opened, "The West woman asked if you had a brother and I said I did not know you but maybe I knew your brother."

  Spence hauled on the door. "I don’t have a brother that I ever heard of." "The West woman said she didn’t believe in such powers but she asked if I thought you might be brothers though I didn’t know the two of you." "Who was the man?" Spence asked, and the City touched him in a way that drew him away from the words passing between him and this highly colored figure who was no fortuneteller he was sure, as he was sure also that he was carried along by a track or current he had tried to figure out so that now he was less himself but only like being a whole lot more than he had been for years and years of mere motion. The cab could be ten yards or a hundred yards away. "The man’s name is Mayn, and he is interested in that old couple, too, but it is the man he is interested in, I think." Spence started across the threshold, and Senora Wing said, "They’re not getting out after all." Spence left her without a word.

  At the top of the dark entry stairs where the wide, old corridor that would serve as a lobby went away to the left into the dusk of dim music and voices, a child was holding her bike. "Can you ride that bike?" he asked. "Yes. I learned in the park," the little Puerto Rican girl said. "You’re a long way from the park," he said, but the child said, "No, it’s over there," and she pointed at the stairs with a grand motion and brought her hand back gently bending to smooth one of her dark braids. "How old are you?" he asked. "Seven," she said, looking at him. "Do you ride in the streets out here?" "No, there’s too much traffic; I’m not supposed to. We go on the sidewalk and we ride in the park." "Who are you waiting for?" he asked. "My uncle," said the little girl. Rising on the far pedal, a girl’s bike, she eased back onto her saddle as she rode away down the glimmering corridor. One of the doors to the theater opened, with a sudden argument of voices, and she seemed to almost decide to ride right through but a tall young man in a khaki army jacket came through and when she didn’t brake he grabbed her handlebars and laughed, "Hey, baby." Without a word she turned her bike and came back toward Spence, who thought he was recognized and thought that in some way he would know this sauntering, cool guy. The little girl braked and stepped forward onto the floor. "How old are you?" she asked. "I don’t know," said Spence. "Are you a hundred?" "Amy," said her uncle. "No," said Spence, "I’m not a hundred, but you’re a smart girl, can you count to a hundred?" "She talks a lot," the other man said, and picking up the bike by the frame under the saddle with one hand, he took the little girl by the hand and they went down the stairs, but the little girl said, "I can carry it. Efrain! I can carry it."

  The man Talca, or de Talca, was in one of the last rows, intimate of the great lady singing onstage with another woman and a large man Spence knew as Ford North. Spence and Talca became aware of each other at once, and Spence’s dangerous contact (though hardly then releasing some curl of sight that he left in motion adrift for Spence to worry about as the diva stopped and said, "I keep hearing Otello" laughed, said "Good!" and resumed) might have been sweeping the small "orchestra" with a cool hand to say to Spence, Certain people are not here:

  the exile economist, for one, was not here, whose wife was particular friend to Talca’s lover onstage turning and walking away now from the big man North as if to leave with him what she had just finished singing while the composer himself was at the piano half-singing with them; and some other figure was not here:

  but here Spence and Talca parted company and both felt it at a moment when Luisa turned back, like that gracious lady mayor with a white feather in her piled hair ordering a planeload of snow flown down from Nueva York for her island waifs just beginning to get wind of P.R. liberation—and Luisa sang so gladly to the audience or at least Talca if not the big man North or the tall, ghostly black girl who was in the scene too,

  You ask the matter but you have forgot,

  Forgot me in my inmost part which part

  Is yours, yours, too

  (and repeating this song so gladly) that the hammering notes of big North being nasty and the thin black singer singing high high above them seemed not to touch her and Talca’s head swayed until Talca rose to come back to Spence, a standing-room character in this give-and-take, and then she did respond to North, who half drew his sword and they acted like they would like to kill each other though singing all the time, as Talca arrived and the black singer sang

  I have remembrances of yours I long

  So long had longed to exchange for you

  That now it feels I long have longed to re-deliver them

  while North seemed to sing at both of them, left right left right,

  Doubt thou the stars are fire,

  Doubt then sunlight doth move

  and more words that Talca (or de Talca) and Spence hardly heard:

  for involved with each other even for the moments when Talca strode to a small door and disappeared and a toilet flushed instantly and he instantly returned to where Spence stood gazing at the stage, they were communicating almost too fast, like actors (though as if over each other’s shoulders) before the words like lyrics against the enthusiastic pianist-composer’s music even started uttering themselves:

  Why have you followed me here? To see that Puerto Rican con who just left?

  You know I like the music.

  You don’t know a Fedora from a—

  His name is Efrain, that’s all I know about him and his little niece was in the hall riding her bike.

  He has been seen with our "friend." So what is the connection?

  The prison, maybe. Which friend?

  The one who is not here, said de Talca as if not to say the name.

  Hortensa, the aura reader, is not here, said Spence.

  Wing’s sister?

  She is friends with Clara.

  Who is not here either. Nor our "friend."

  Oh you mean her husband.

  Your client, yes. Ah, you thought I meant—

  So you’re the one who got hold of that communication whatever it was.

  Ah, Spence, were you there ahead of me? perhaps waiting in the Mayn wastebasket with the other shit?

  I guess I haven’t had to since I’ve known you, Talca.

  Quite right. Right on the button. I was intentionally rude.

  Deals are deals, Talca. It doesn’t matter.

  Of course. It is not a matter of style with you, Spence, you are fed up with your client the economist and you and I have interests in common anyway, your side of which I do not inquire about.

  I have a wastebasket, too.

  You are one, Spence. Look, I grant you the letter in question—

  It sounded like more than a letter. There’s a lot between Mayn and his daughter.

  Obviously, and so I will grant you the letter—

  Grant me? Maybe you mean something different in your own language.

  I know you speak Spanish, Spence, and we must speak it sometime if you like but what I am saying is that I grant you that I have seen the letter, O.K.?, or at least the longhand draft of it; and our mutual interests will be served if you will amplify for me what is said there concerning the woman Mayga Rojas Rodriguez: you knew her when she was lobbying copper but in reality promoting Frei’s presidential future. Mayn’s young friend, how much does he know?

  I may not know much, but the music is beautiful, Talca.

  I can only guess all that is in your head, Spence. The music is excellent, and strangely familiar. The work is not some mere folie that North is letting his boyfriend show off; and Lady Luisa is not herself, she is waiting for something to happen. Preparation is all, as
the poet says.

  And you are waiting . . . ?

  O.K., I am going back to my seat in a second: we know the letter Mayn wrote to his daughter, I at least the longhand draft. But Spence, you must tell me where are the diaries of this corrupt clan of invert begetters?

  Marion Hugo Mayne you mean? The legendary Chapultepec encounter with the girl who looked like a boy.

  Marion Hugo Mayne I mean. Information relating Mayga’s death to the Masons.

  Talca, next thing you’ll be relating her death to the famous false ring finger Jackson had to put up with after that blood-ritual game in upper New York.

  Spence, even you who do not matter may be in danger, because if this entertainingly mythical mountain approaching is code talk for an attempt on a South American President’s life by Cuban elements posing as anti-Castroist—

  Is there such a thing as a South American President?

  —then we have to weigh the meaning even of some presumptuous Indian’s rumored prophecy that a friend of Mayn’s, possibly young, possibly gifted, will die for discovering a non-lethal radioactivity that enables one to be two people at the same time and in two different places and then apparently the two can become one just like that, because with the educational system here in the United States, such future-madness may just be possible.

  If Mayga’s death is related to the Masons, said Spence against the rise of the passionate piano, it could be related to you, Talca, as easily as to Mayn, because there’s plenty of Masons down in your corner of the hemisphere. Yes, the more I think of it . . . yes.

  What do you mean "yes"? It is obvious from the letter and evidently from other "effluent" documents that certain Masonic order secrets connected with an engraved pistol Mayn’s grandfather and others before him kept safe from Indians who needed it for something and sought it may explain not only the origin of their family newspaper designed to promote Andrew Jackson but the death of the woman Mayga—

  —I was there when he heard, said Spence—

  —in ‘63, I believe—

  —she went off a cliff near Valparaiso harbor—

  —while walking with a well-known German-American printing magnate named Morgen connected on his mother’s side to an Alsatian mathematician whose solutions yielded designs instrumental in the development of Chilean railroads but also formulae bearing on other matters and connected on his father’s side to a Communist printer protected by Marion Hugo Mayne after he ran off with Masonic secrets and threatened to expose them.

  The Anglo-Indian blood rite in northwest New York State was not ridiculous, said Spence.

  The Masons interest us only insofar as—

  Your family had some Masons in it, said Spence. Like Luisa’s.

  The piano had stopped, the tiny woman Lincoln was onstage with an electric drill, the singers had been shouting at each other and now Luisa called to the rear of the orchestra, "Will you please be here or not be here, I am doing this, this, Opera perdida chilena because you urged me—"

  ‘ 7," said Ford North with a deep frown that projected far beyond the house lights, ‘7 urged you, my princess, my priestess, my—"

  "—please to discuss your business outside the theater."

  De Talca raised a hand and tilted his head in humoring apology and turned to Spence, who had stepped back as if to go, as another hassle ensued onstage with words uttered so richly they sounded sung, and at this, other lyrics came back to mind that had been actually sung during the interchange between Spence and his client, but whether Spanish or other, Spence, flickeringly alone, could not tell, while the bright sword of the big man came out again and he made a pass at the curtain and the pianist became engaged in a three-way argument repeating what sounded like desde Menal (the pianist saying it; Luisa saying it perhaps first; North saying it)—while through all this Talca turned and turned a bit too slowly to Spence and—

  Do not speak of my family, Spence.

  I don’t spend my time in wastebaskets, Talca.

  Which reminds me of one last thing: what do you know about these crossed initials?

  I’m a free-lance photo-journalist.

  Did you photograph the prison break? You know the man Foley or he knows you, and he predicted the break.

  He dreamt it probably, said Spence.

  He said he was in touch with the Nos Otros (is it two words?) and that’s how he knew. Is it true the child is being hidden in Mayn’s building?

  You know more than I know, Talca. I don’t know any Nosotros.

  You came up with very little information altogether, Spence.

  I’m waiting for something to happen.

  Will it be here? said Talca. What has it to do with these ... are they people, these initials?—S.R.s up-and-down and across, and O.G., L.S., P.M. (maybe afternoon?), and other abbreviations or initials. Who is O.G., who is D.M.? if they go backward, too, it is a whole new ballgame. M.R.M. may be M. H. Mayne. And S.R. abuts upon O. at one point.

  I don’t know any S.R.O., said Spence. What did they mean by desde Mena?

  Oh Spence, you don’t know Fedora on a bike from Louise with a pot au feu on the stove and her father dying. S.R.O. is Standing Room Only.

  Talca turned contemptuously toward the aisle to return to his seat and Spence said, And is it the pot you’re waiting for or is Luisa’s Masonic father dead already?

  Talca paused a split second and showed his profile, and Spence heard the word insect and said, The Cuban who escaped, does Luisa know who’s got the missing kid?

  Again Talca paused to show his profile and the turn carried Spence away on the sounds of lyrics he had partly heard while not paying attention; and again, after another call from Luisa to her lover, the words Spence had understood before but now in another voice harder to understand not because of accent or lower register but because of some meaning given to them by the strung-out composer-boyfriend of North’s took a moment all to themselves, Este opera perdida chilena! and, looking back once more, Spence caught Talca’s angry eye; and a red-haired, red-bearded man was suddenly standing near the piano, and North at the back of the stage by a black curtain ran his sword back into the scabbard only to haul it out again like doubling its shape and stab the curtain, stab it again, half singing, half saying as he stabbed it yet again and again, "For a ducat, for a ducat, for a ducat, dear ducat, dear ducat, dear ducat," but Spence was through the door into the corridor choking on the word insect while hearing fall away from him his own familyless name.

  An accelerating sanitation truck ran a light with a racing yellow cab on either side, as Spence and a good-looking woman in a fur coat were about to step off the curb, and the phone started ringing in the booth at t)iis corner and they turned to look and watch. After several rings Spence smiled and slid back the door and picked up. He shrugged and the woman turned away and stepped off the curb. "Drew a blank," he called out through the glass, and she turned to frown and smile with an intensity that seemed to surprise them both.

  "He’s supposed to be here," the older woman’s voice said from the foundation office; "he has an appointment."

  "Oh my God of course!" said Spence expressing cheerful surprise. "He’s meeting an old friend of mine. It’s a small world. It slipped my mind completely. An old old friend. Have you tried his apartment?"

  "If he’s there he’s not answering," said the woman uncertainly.

  "Well, it’s urgent," said Spence, "maybe I can track him down. Thank you so much for the information—oh, and give her my best."

  In the pause, during which the woman did not ask who Spence meant, Spence said (and sounded it), "I’m breathless and I don’t have another nickel, my number here is . . ." (he read it off fast as if the dial were an interruption)"—oh you don’t need to know that . . ." (he laughed genuinely).

  "You don’t want to speak to Mrs. Myles?"

  Spence said, "It must be not having any more change. I’m saying things, you know what I mean? I mean I’m looking out the glass into the street, and there’s nothing
much there and I’m saying things I didn’t really think of so there’s something there by the time you get to it, do you know what I mean? I’m sorry."

  The woman said, "Strangely I think I do."

  "You’re a pearl," said Spence, laughing excitedly.

  The woman laughed back with affection as if it were her name instead of the person waiting to see the Chilean economist.

  "Who shall I tell her said hello? I have a call on another line."

  "Oh, my brother," said Spence, and laughed as if he were surprised. "God I must be in a rush. I mean Jim Mayn."

  "Don’t I know your voice?" said the woman. "I don’t know him."

  Spence hung up. Coming back across the street was the fine woman in the fur coat; she looked haggard as she caught Spence’s eye, a dark cut curved down her cheek like a shadowy parallel to her nose and nostril and so dark that the blood looked like it had never been bright. He went out toward her and found himself extending his arms in comfort and she did not shy away at first but stepped over so the wire trash basket was between them, yet smiled at him, but this might be because the phone started ringing somewhere at a compressed distance from the mass of traffic emerging then around them. She looked at him puzzled and leaned on the trash basket and vomited onto her hands.

  Spence went and answered the phone and it was the low, resonant voice he had heard before with the definite, almost audible Mexican capability though the voice was not a Mexican’s: "Mayn, is that you?" And in his hesitation, Spence heard, "No! It’s Santee, hello, Santee. Dina West knows your twin brother named Spence (joke, eh?). So whatever happened to the technical specialist I was supposed to pick up in New Jersey that Mayn picked up, did you run across him again?"