She laughed out of gratitude.
“What time is he getting here anyway? That trim motherfucker?”
“He isn’t coming …”
“Oh, yeah? What happened?”
“Let’s just say we’re taking a break.” Her expression began to congeal in a frown. “We got into this fight last night and I didn’t like the way he talked to me … and a lotta bullshit went flying in both directions and we learned a little about ourselves … and I decided that I needed some space.”
She told him most of the story.
“You miss him?” he asked.
“Not really …”
“You think he’s missing you?”
“I really don’t care—”
“Oh come on, you can’t stop caring like that.”
He snapped his fingers, a simple act in its own right. But she heard in it the echo of another snap. And in her mind she was sitting across the table from Fire asking herself in a fearful tone, What if I were wearing a dress or skirt, how would tonight be different?
The thought unnerved her, and she slid back into the dream from the night before.
She is naked on her bed … legs apart … and he’s outside, watching her through the window, his belly wet with sweat. She shuts her legs. Sits up. Draws up the sheet. Wraps her arms around her knees. “Get away,” she screams. “Go … or I’ll call the police.” He grabs her with a stare. “Show me,” he says with ragga sangfroid. And she obeys … surrenders—not to the words but to the attitude—the arrogance distilled to the flavor of meekness. She unfolds herself slowly, like the answer to an ancient riddle, sliding her palms over her thighs and hips, into the mouth of her essence, where her fingers coax the pouting lips to flash a vampy smile.
“Nice,” he says, sweating more now. “I want to come inside.”
“No,” she says. “Only through the window … you’ll fuck me if you come in here … and I don’t want that.”
“Why?”
“Because when men fuck you they have power over you.”
“So what? You fuck your man or your man fuck you?”
“We make love …”
“Nutten wrong if you let a man fuck you, baby … as long as he’s the right man.”
“No, I don’t want that,” she says. “But we could play though …”
His shoulders begin to hunch now.
She opens the window and a soft breeze fills her mouth with the remembrance of sea foam and cane juice.
“Come,” she says. “Come here.”
He plants his palm on the window frame and leans in toward her face, bearing in his pores the memory of lemon-grass and orange blossoms.
Then a sudden wind slams the window shut.
“Hold it,” she says, as she rattles the latch. “Don’t waste it.”
“You want it?” he asks. He is caught in the sweep of a powerful tide. “If you really, really want it then mash the glass.” She covers her face and breaks it, cowering as it clatters like a bag of marbles.
When she opens her eyes, though, he is gone. She looks through the window and he has disappeared. She steps out on the fire escape. The wind wipes kisses on her naked ass. Where is he? She peers into the backyard, behind the cherry tree. Then as she lowers her head in disappointment she sees it—a shard of glass in her navel and blood, blood, blood.
“Help,” she cries.
But no one hears her.
“Someone help me … please …”
“Sylvia. Are you okay?”
It was Diego calling her. As she tried to answer him she was asking herself, Is that it? Could I really just want to suck him off? She thought of all the cocks she’d sucked. The number was small—but certainly too many to own. Had she ever wanted to just gulp someone like that? No. And why not? She didn’t know. There had been people that she wanted to screw, though … but she’d never pursued the impulse … at least not all the way. Could I just want to suck him off? She began to consider it now … saw herself in the kitchen at Claire’s, lips flared out, cheeks sucked in, jawbone trembling beneath the weight.
“Sylvia, are you okay?” Diego insisted.
“Yes,” she said.
In her mind she was answering an urgent request for a little more tongue.
“Did you hear a word I said in the last ten minutes?”
“Ssssure.”
“So … are you willing to do it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What am I asking you about?”
His voice was a mix of grunt and bark, throaty with a machete edge.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m talking about Umbra.”
“Oh … yeah,” she replied, smacking her lips unconsciously. “No … I can stick it out if I have to … I guess.”
“Seriously, mi hija,” he said, taking her hand. “Are you sure?”
“Yes … I am.” Shut up, she wanted to say, you’re breaking my concentration.
“C’mon, tell me the truth.”
“Why don’t you believe me?” she said, shaking her hand loose. “I was just venting a few minutes ago. I’m all right. I’m fine. Some days I’m finer than others, but I’m fine.”
He held her face. She stiffened. She didn’t want to be touched right now. She wanted to remain suspended in the weightlessness of fantasy.
“You’re not happy there. Why don’t you leave?”
His palms felt like slugs. She pulled away sharply.
“Mi hija—”
She cut him off. “Stop, Diego. Leave it alone.”
“You’re such a crazy bitch sometimes.”
She got up to leave. And he held on to her. She tried to twist away.
“Okay, mamí, I’m sorry … but stay so we can talk.”
Could I really just want to suck him off? The question was a ball of stress behind her eyes. As soon as she acknowledged it, it bounced back and forth between her temples, then began to ricochet around her head at faster and faster speeds.
“Diego … let me go.”
She had to leave.
“Just listen for just a sec …”
Could I really just want to suck him off?
She began to scream. Hyperventilate. “Let … me … go.” She lost control and slapped Diego, splitting his lip.
“You need to get outta here,” he said, heading toward the kitchen. “I’m about to get a little hostile.”
She began to apologize but he waved her away.
“Get the fuck out before I kill you.”
chapter three
On the seventh floor of the Fulton Inn, a hotel on the edge of Prospect Park, Fire lay down by a curtained window and wrote a letter to Blanche. Shirtless and barefoot, flowers by his side, he opened a packet of flecked beige paper and swam in a sea of thoughts, his pen skimming the words like a seal moving through scalloped waves.
He glanced outside and thought of why he liked this part of Brooklyn so. He paused and considered the arc within his view—the rambling woods in the rolling park … the triumphal arch at the roundabout … the grand boulevard with the old shade trees … the museum’s dome above a stand of trees. It was a little slice of Europe, where beauty was a premise, and form was more revered than function.
Order. Practicality. Efficiency. He’d always thought of these as gates, not goals—filters through which one had to pass to reach the state of nonchalance. But last night’s confrontation had made him think again, and this was one of the things he was writing about. The other was the bouquet, oriental lilies pink and aromatic.
Of course he could have called. But the ritual of writing—the choosing of the paper, the finding of the pen, the convening of the thoughts, the drawing of the letters—was an intimate act that sometimes gave him the pleasure of kissing, for a pen could be many things: a finger … a tongue … a nose … a cock. And paper, with its possibilities of color and finish, could easily be a forehead … a back … a cheek … a belly … the pumiced sole of a delicate foot.
June
—, 19—
Dear B,
Thanks very much for the flowers. That was very generous of you. You really didn’t have to—well, of course you know that. I guess this is a part of what makes them special—the indulgence. You have always indulged me, haven’t you?
Something happened last night to remind me of how special you are. I went to Ian’s opening and there was this couple there that Ian got into a fight with. The argument started because the guy said that this friend of his, some kind of corporate type, had ruined his life because he married a word processor. Ian asked him if he would be with his girlfriend if she were an editorial assistant and he said he wouldn’t. He said that he wouldn’t be with someone who was a liability.
After putting Ian to bed I went jogging in the park to clear my mind. And out there in the dark alone I began to realize how lucky I am. I had nothing to offer you when we met. I had no money, and I could barely take care of myself.
I love you for that, Blanche. No matter how things turned out or how they are. I will always love you for loving me before you knew I would be me.
—Fire
As he folded the page and licked the stamp he remembered a letter she’d written to him. About three months after he had gone to New York and found out she was married, she’d sent him a pleading missive in which she begged him to meet her in London, where she’d be lecturing at SOAS. She’d thought about things a lot, she said, and was sure he was her man. You must come, she wrote. You’re the most important thing in my life. Let’s work things out. I’ll buy the ticket. You can pick it up in Kingston. Your sperm still clings to my womb.
They worked things out in London, and he left there with a deal—he could see other people until she’d settled her life. After this they’d be together … where they didn’t know … but they’d work that out … details and things like that. And all was well it seemed; then four months later, he received another letter—a postcard this time—she was pregnant again for her husband. And he moved to Brazil without telling her … lived in Salvador for a year … painting and teaching English … until she tracked him down and begged him for forgiveness. It was an accident, she said. It wasn’t planned. Don’t shut me out. Even if you don’t want me anymore … at least say you used to love me. He didn’t; and she told him that she’d wait for him in case he changed his mind. A year went by without hearing from her … without even knowing how she had been. Then he got a letter from Ian and found out that she was sick with cancer and that her husband had left her and taken the kids when he’d found out about her affair. He went to New York to see her and ended up staying for a while … stayed through radiation, two mastectomies and silicone. That’s when he started to write … at first little captions for the hand-drawn cards he used to make her, then poems, then narrative meditations on love and loss. You must write more, she said one day as they returned from the doctor—they’d just found out that the cancer had spread. Please save the stories that will die with me … the love stories I didn’t write … I should have written more about love. Are you willing to try something different? he asked. She said yes. I know a man in Cuba … a Santero … I’ve heard great things … but you’re in no shape to travel. Right now, she replied, I’ll try anything.
During the month they spent in Baracoa he fell in love again. And six months later, she went to her doctor and he told her she’d been cured. Soon after that she went back with her husband … for what she said was the last one’s sake. But he didn’t protest this time. He packed his things and went to live with Ian and Claire in Lisbon and began to really write. After that he and Ian moved to Paris; then he moved to London, where he spent five years. He’d been back in Jamaica for a year now, and so was she—lecturing at the university. She was divorced now, finally, and wanted them to try again. Love had never been the issue, she said: he was twenty-four when they met and she had to be practical, had to think about her children … one had to be practical in matters of love.
Why was it so hard to shake her? Fire thought, as he fanned himself with the envelope. She’d even made him late for Ian’s opening. As he was about to get ready to leave she asked if they could lie down for a while. He sucked his teeth, and was about to get short with her until she said, Don’t worry … I just want to hold you. Nothing else. It wasn’t so much what she said, but the way in which she said it: as if she really meant it … and … they went to bed and cuddled; there she pressed her breasts against his heart and milked his swollen guilt. He fell asleep and missed the flight and woke to the rain of her tears. She cried as he arranged his clothes … was still crying when Sarge brought the Land Rover around the front. Don’t cry, Miss B, the foreman said. His smile was as white as his hair. Daddy soon come back. I can’t help it, she said from the verandah. I always cry when he leaves me. But dat’s common assault, Miss B. You should use to it. I don’t know, Sarge, she said. This time just feels different. Different how? I don’t know, she replied. Just different.
Ian stirred and Fire drew the curtains against the light. But it found a way to seep through, lightening the tone of the somber wood that had been exquisitely turned and beveled to furnish the room.
He never felt closer to Ian than when he saw him asleep—when the skin on his face shrank back to his skull, smoothing the wrinkles that began to appear when he started doing coke in art school.
What moved Fire was Ian’s vulnerability, the way he wheezed instead of snored, the way he clung to soft objects—a grip that contained the hope that maybe he wasn’t a man yet … that there was still some time for him to change.
The night before, when Fire had to peel away his sweaty clothes and set Ian in the tub to wash away the piss and grime, his body had felt like a golf bag, the thin bones clanking like driving irons.
He was trying to roll out of bed now, rising and falling like a bat with broken wings. He tried to speak but his mouth gaped like a sore.
“You awright?” Fire asked.
He nodded, then words began to dribble out like pus. “Remember what you ask me bout Lewis last night?”
Fire checked his memory. He remembered now, but he thought he’d been muttering to himself.
“Well, this is it …”
Fire threw him a pair of boxers, yellow ones with blue stripes, that he’d bought him that morning. Ian slipped them on and thanked him with a nod.
“Fire, you and me are like brothers, y’understand, so you cyaah repeat anything I gweh tell you right now. Me and Lewis are involved in a slight bandoolo business.”
Fire leaned against the window. Ian sat on the edge of the bed, bending forward as if the weight of his story was pulling his body off balance.
“Hear me now. Back in the days when I was licking like a granda shit a week I met Lewis through this beef name Margaret. Nobody you know. A Yankee beef from down south … as a matter of fact I still slap it now and then.
“She, now, is a beef that know a whole heapa people—she’s the program director for CGR. You know them, right? WCGR … jazz station? Well, anyway, she introduce me to him at an opening at MOMA and everything was criss, cause I use to see him hanging around the galleries and all that, but I really never knew him. I knew him as a man that used to buy a lot though. But that don’t really mean nutten because you have people who buy with other people’s money. Which in truth was what he was doing. His company was starting a corporate gallery and they gave him three million to go and spend. And I heard that for every piece he bought for them he bought another one for himself. But that’s neither here nor there. Everybody tief when them get the chance.
“Anyway now, we exchanged numbers and he told me he wanted to come and see me because he was interested in looking at some of my work, and I told him plain and straight to fuck off, because him use to fuck Margaret too—Margaret is what you’da call a mattress, if y’know whatta mean—and for me personally, pussy and business don’t mix.
“Well, a few months after that I kinda find meself running shorta money due to the lifestyl
e I was programming.” He began to smile now. “Girls and all that. Man … this is something they should teach in school: ‘If you want to get pussy, stay in school. Cause nutten bring pussy like money.’ But anyway, all the pussy programming make me just doan waah do no work. It was just drugs and pussy, pussy and drugs, morning noon and night till the money start run out and I ask my dealer to lend me some dollars.
“This fucker now, Nasser, a vile fucking Sudanese—ex-fucking army staff sergeant—lend me two hundred grand at around forty percent interest and steady me again for like another six months … But then is still pussy and drugs so I start fucking up—fucking up bad-bad—and make the man come look for me.
“One day I’m at the dentist getting a root canal and boodoom! the door kick off and is Nasser and around three big-neck man. And before I coulda bawl out, man, them grab me rass and throw me in a car trunk and drive me outta one old dock out by Greenpoint and park the car inna the hot-hot sun for half a fucking day.
“Fire, it was some Joe Pesci shit. While me inside the car the Novocain wear off. So check it now—the fucking tooth wide open and me can hardly breathe, cause the only air is a from a little hole where them dig out the lock. So is like I waah bawl out but I don’t waah use up all the air. Listen man, there is nothing like when you waah cry and cyaah cry. Is some freaky fucking shit.
“Ever so often, just outta the blue, them woulda just beat pon the car trunk with some baseball bat and iron pipe. The sound me a-tell you is terrifying—like God coming for him world. And then them start with the piss. Remember the little hole in the trunk? The man-dem start piss through that now. So the piss coming in and frying in the heat, so is like now I don’t even waah breathe.
“Nightmare, man. It was a bloodclaat nightmare. When them let me out, them gimme two weeks fe catch up. As they say in Jamaica, ‘Humble calf suck the most milk,’ so I humble my fucking self and go to Lewis and we work out something. He would lend me four hundred thousand and I would pay him back over time in art. And this is where it get shady now, because this is not work that pass through Claire. She don’t even know this work exist. So she don’t get no commission. So that Claire won’t find out now, Lewis sell the stuff abroad, to like Latin America and the Far East—cause me name still high in them place deh.”
Waiting in Vain Page 6
