CHAPTER FOUR
"Suspicion used to be on an individual basis.
Now each one of us, black or white, is a symbol.
The war is out in the open and the skin color is a uniform. All the deep and basic similarities of the human condition are forgotten so that we can exaggerate the few differences that exist...
"Whitey wants law and order, meaning a head-knocker like Alabama George. No black is going to grieve about some nice sweet dedicated unprejudiced liberal being yanked out of his Buick and beaten to death, because there have been a great many nice humble ingratiating hardworking blacks beaten to death too. In all such cases the unforgivable sin was to be born black or white, just as in some ancient cultures if you were foolish enough to be born female, they took you by your baby heels, whapped your fuzzy head on a tree, and tossed the newborn to the crocs...
"...no solutions for me or thee, not from your leaders be they passive or militant, nor from the politicians or the liberals or the head-knockers or the educators. No answer but time. And if the law and the courts can be induced to become color-blind, we'll have a good answer, after both of us are dead. And a bloody answer otherwise."
—John D. MacDonald, THE GIRL IN THE PLAIN BROWN WRAPPER
"Bobby Seale, the radical, the famous Black Panther, the firebrand whose blazing rhetoric helped shape the Sixties—Bobby Seale is writing a cookbook. He'll call it Barbecuing With Bobby.
"...'When I hear Rap Brown is running a health-food store in Georgia, that Stokely gave a lecture and only 22 people showed up...Hey, I'm the last of the Sixties. The rest of them are still living in the Sixties.'
"Nearby, his daughter J'Aime, 4, plays quietly across from the fireplace, absorbed by her twin blonde Barbie dolls...
"'Look, I've got to send my kids to college. Not only that, people don't donate money the way they used to. If I have the ability to alter my standard of living, I want to do it. When I went into the struggle, I didn't go in to keep the ghettos the way they were.'" —AP dispatch, July 19, 1982 (Seale's cookbook drew a $100,000 advance.)
It was a week and a half later before Russell got a chance to spend a free afternoon strolling around town by himself—and then only because José's day-job discount store shut down for inventory.
Russell enjoyed the trip uptown. The subway was just as he remembered it—except, of course, that a token cost several times what it had in his youth, and vagrants were now tacitly permitted to sleep by the dozens in certain stations. The sounds and smells were almost unbearably nostalgic. They acted directly on his subconscious, simultaneously soothing and exhilarating. This amused him—he remembered his childhood as one long scrabbling attempt to get out of New York City for good, and now he saw that he was forever doomed to think of this stinking town as "home." In recent years it had usually taken Russell upwards of half an hour to get to sleep—but for the past week and a half the sound of city traffic outside the window had knocked him out like a sleeping pill each night.
The ancient train reached Grand Central at last and shuddered to a halt. Solving the mouse's maze of stairways and corridors that led to the upper world, Russell emerged onto 42nd Street and stood a moment blinking in the sunshine. The day was splendid, unseasonally cool for Manhattan summer, and the air was electric with music.
It had been his intention to walk to the Public Library at Fifth Avenue and do some research. He had not yet told Dena and Jennifer that he was working again, because he knew that Jennifer in particular would make a big deal out of it and he was not yet ready to be committed publicly—the design might not fly, his motivation might leak—but he had at least admitted privately to himself that he was no longer a retired person. His preliminary work had progressed to the point at which he needed more data; six years was a long time in molecular electronics alone and he was out of touch.
But there was a deeper problem that he was suppressing.
Russell had long ago learned that the best designs of which he was capable invariably went straight to hell in the manufacturing and marketing stages, became unacceptably diluted or perverted by the greed of the money men. The only way he was ever going to get a product from his mind to the consumers' hands unspoiled was to do the manufacture and marketing himself, with his own money.
By the time he had reached age forty, brilliant work had brought him enough capital to begin doing so—whereupon, disgusted by the human race, he had retired. The intervening years had taught him that people did not want their lives improved, and manufacture and marketing were heathen arts he loathed. He had decided that his money was better spent on amusing himself than on bringing the world miracles it was too ignorant and lazy to deserve. What little philanthropic instinct he retained was satisfied by underwriting Dena's career.
So if this new design project came together, it would put him right back on the horns of his dilemma. He would find himself locked in a death struggle with the people who made and sold conventional refrigerators and stoves.
Russell did not like death struggles with entrenched interests; he had learned that when he had tried to introduce a sensible bathtub and a comfortable toilet to the world. He had come out of that fiasco not only utterly defeated, but humiliatingly richer by his failure.
And so as his feet touched sidewalk Russell changed his mind about doing research today. He had not walked 42nd Street in decades, and the sight of it triggered even more déjà vu than the subway had. The first erection he could remember having had occurred within a few blocks of here. On a whim, he walked right past the Library—noting that one of its magnificent lions had been spray-painted and the other smashed entirely—and past Bryant Park toward Times Square. He had heard much about its overhauling.
But except for the absence of porno theaters and the proliferation of video arcades, the district was much as he remembered it. A milling sea of multicolored humanity filled it to overflowing as always, shucking and jiving and hustling and rapping and breakdancing and just hanging out.
Every fourth person tried to sell Russell something. Drugs, girls, boys, whatever they thought he might find irresistible.
Handbills were forced on him every twenty meters; donations to a dozen obscure causes were solicited. He knew he could avoid most of this by walking twice as fast and staring fixedly ahead. But he did not want to traverse the area, he wanted to travel it, and accepted the aggressive solicitation as the price required. Snatches of dialogue drifted to him:
"Konichi-wa yourself, motherfucker."
"—just don't think it's a Spring List book, Fred. It feels like Fall to me."
"I wouldn't dream of arguing, Donald. You want me to cross my feet? I see you only brought the three nails—"
"—mothafuck be talkin' shit about 'donatin',' and I'm here: 'Mothafucka, I don' give away nothin' but bubblegum an' hard times, an' I'm fresh out o' fuckin' bubblegum.' So he's like: 'Yeah?' An' I'm here: 'Man, get out of my face or I—'"
"Joa san, ah bok—"
"What are you, stunadz? You got some pair of balls on you, you know that?"
"Cop some of this good Mayflower, my man—all the Puritan maidens come across on it—"
"Chinga tu madre, pendejo—"
"—the hell are we gonna meet a margin call at twenty-two-five, for Chrissake? I'm telling you, Morris, it's Chapter Eleven again, that's four times in six years, I just don't—"
"I ain't the baddest man in the world, but I'm in the top two, an' my daddy's gettin' older—"
"Macho like a gabacho, uh? Your mama says I do it to her better than you, ioto, so what's that make you?"
Russell's designer's mind could not help classifying the bits of conversation he overheard. There were numerous exceptions, but in general blacks boasted, hispanics insulted each other, and whites complained about money.
He began classifying the people he saw as well. He noticed that while a few whites handed out religious or advertising circulars, the overwhelming majority of the vendors and barkers and sidewalk entrepreneurs who sold drugs and stolen goods were black or hispanic. That was a change from the 42nd Street that Russell remembered.
And where were the white teenagers? In Russell's day this strip had been jammed with boys and girls from out of town, all in pursuit of adventure and illicit thrills that could not be had in Levittown or Patterson, in search of improbable pornography or a case of venereal disease or a bag of oregano to smoke with their friends. He had been one of those daring white kids himself. Young whites were plentiful on the street even now—but half wore military uniforms, and most of the rest were whores of one sex or another. These clumped together in silent groups of three or four, and did not mingle with the black or chicano whores.
Virtually all other whites on the street were prosperous-looking adults. Men in business suits or in short-sleeve shirts with sportscoats slung over their shoulders; women well-dressed and walking quickly on their way to somewhere else.
"Come on over here, sugar, we'll go back to my crib and ball ourselves unconscious."
"—Right this way, ge'men, they han'cuffed, earmuffed, an' mouth stuffed, get 'em 'fore they sold to Japan—"
Russell was surprised by the boldness of the prostitutes, by the variety of explicit costuming, and the aggressively frank sales pitches. The conquest of AIDS had inspired a boom in the sex industry. In his day whores had waited to be approached, or at most murmured something suggestive to passersby. Only a few of these people held back and sold by eye contact alone, and Russell decided that they did so only because a certain percentage of the market demanded it. The next time he was hit on, he stopped. "Look, I know you're working, one fast question, okay?"
"Sure. Maybe I'll even answer it."
"How could you make an explicit offer like that, sex for money, right out here on the street? What if I were a cop?"
She snorted. "You, the raise? Right." She wrinkled her ten-year-old brow. "Anyway, what the fuck would I care what you do for a living?"
"Never mind." He walked on, bemused.
Within a block or two he noted another odd pattern.
Whores of all races and colors were doing firesale business with the G.I.s, which was not at all surprising—but Russell noticed gradually that no black prostitute, male or female, would have anything to do with a black serviceman. This puzzled him until he overheard an explicit statement of the policy—"You can fight for The Man, you can fuck y'own hand"—and then the logic dawned on him. A black man who would go to Africa to kill black men at the behest of white men was persona non grata here.
But surely, Russell thought, most if not all of them were drafted. What were they supposed to have done, gone to prison? That or gone underground, apparently. It made him wonder how many of the hustlers on this street were draft evaders, gone off the books, living on cash transactions and thus invisible to The Man.
He had lost track of where he was. Times Square was somewhere behind him now; he had come to wherever they had moved its sex industry in the "cleanup." He came to a pornshop that seemed to meet his standards and went inside. Russell cherished a mild taste for quality pornography, although he had not bought any in years because the stuff offered for sale in Halifax was so lame and tame. The store was crowded and smelled of cigarette and marijuana smoke despite the prominent no-smoking signs.
Time, he soon found, had again changed pornshops. It had been in Russell's adolescence that all the shops had begun installing peepshow booths, within which a man could see two minutes of grainy eight millimeter porn for a quarter.
Thanks to maxiplexing, which had brought all TV channels to everyone, there were only two of the booths left now, each accessing satellite porn channels for that dedicated contingent of New Yorkers so genuinely homeless that they did not have access to a TV set they could watch in privacy. Similarly, the long shelves of eight and super-eight millimeter movies were gone, replaced by small racks of videotapes and floppies and CD-ROMs.
On the other hand, the live sex encounter modules which had first appeared during Russell's early adulthood, and which he'd heard had nearly become extinct during the AIDS era, were back and more popular than ever. There were four such structures, circular clusters of booths in the unseen centers of which people were performing sexual acts for those strangers willing to pay a dollar a minute to unlock the booths' window-screens. (It had been half a dollar in Russell's time.) The four booth clusters were labeled: "Sweet"; "Raunchy"; "Nasty", and "Twisted."
From the interior of "Nasty" could be heard the unmistakable sound of someone trying to endure a spanking in silence (whether male or female was indeterminate); from "Raunchy" there came driving flash music with heavy flanging, by the group called The Pulp; from "Twisted" came silence broken only by a muffled voice from within one of the booths saying softly and reverently, "Holy Christ almighty." As Russell browsed past "Sweet," he clearly heard the high sweet sound of a young girl coming, and every customer in the store stopped what he or she was doing to appreciate it for a moment. It sounded (although Russell would have bet cash against it) as though it were her first orgasm, fearful and joyous. It should have brought all of them together, if only in a way and for a moment, to share the hearing of it, but it did nothing of the sort—an instant after the cry had ended each customer was back inside his or her own private skull again. That saddened Russell slightly; nonetheless he was glad he had heard her questing call. He only wished he had heard it somewhere else.
Studying the feeling, he identified it as the same warm glow he got from a brand-new baby or a bunch of struggling kittens, a sense of being reconciled to being alive after all. The accompanying sadness was the same one that occurs when, looking up from a new baby, one smiles at one's neighbour and gets no smile in return.
Russell had once studied Zen for a time, and remembered a quote he had read somewhere: "Enlightenment can be a lonely country."
The magazines he browsed past enlightened him further— magazine porn too had changed with the years. For one thing, competition from TV had made the quality of the photography enormously better. But there were subtler changes. At the time Russell had left New York, a curious convention had prevailed: straight-erotic magazines (whether hetero or gay) could graphically depict genuine sex acts of any description, but bondage magazines contained no sex at all, and the rare sadomasochism magazine, while depicting discomfort, humiliation, and clumsily-faked torture, restricted sexual activity to very occasional cunnilingus (the vast majority of the victims being men). In neither of the latter categories was an erect penis ever seen.
Now these, eccentric taboos were dissolved. The magazines were organized into the same four categories as the booths, with each category broken down into straight, bi, gay male, gay female, transvestite, and transsexual (a category which had not exlsted in Russell's youth), and each of these further subdivided. As Russell's meandering took him past "Nasty," he discovered that graphic sex could now be found conjoined with either bondage or violence, as long as all the participants were German; even gang rape was now vendable, and females had finally achieved parity with males as victims. Then he drifted past "Twisted," and after a few moments of horrified fascination he left that section.
The least disturbing things he had seen were three magazines featuring a surgically-created creature called Enigma. Enigma had wide brown eyes, webbed fingers and toes, no genitalia or hair of any kind, no ears, nose or thumbs, and exactly three bodily orifices: a single nostril and small tubelike protrusions where the mouth and urethra belonged. He/she/it was a featureless, sexless doll with whom no imaginable sex act could be performed, restricted to a liquid diet, and assured of a limited—but apparently lucrative—lifespan. Everything else in the "Twisted" section was much worse than Enigma; Russell decided that the recent breakthroughs in simplified surgery were not an unmixed blessing.
One thing had not changed. Russell had never in his life seen any genluine child pornography offered for sale in New York, and there was none now—just the same two or three sad magazines featuring eighteen-year-olds done up in pigtails, bobby socks, and saddle shoes. You could rent a live twelve-year-old outside on the street, but you could not take her picture home with you. It appeared to be the only taboo of any kind still in effect, and as the father of a fourteen-year-old Russell was rather pleased by that.
As he came to a halt where he had ultimately planned to, midway between "Sweet" and" Raunchy," another change struck him. There was almost no written porn in the store: only a single rack of plastic-bagged paperbacks, none of which looked new. At first he wondered if the U.S.'s illiteracy problem could be even worse than he had heard—but soon he figured out the true reason. Erotic writing, as hardcore as could be asked, and much more competently written than the old stroke-books Russell remembered, could now be had in any bookstore.
Pornographic literature at least had finally escaped the pornshop. It saddened Russell to think that Marco Vassi had not lived to see this day.
In any visit to a pornshop, there comes a threshold point, at which the intrinsic interest of the merchandise reaches saturation level, and one begins to notice, and perhaps to covertly study, one's fellow consumers. For Russell that point came just as he was making his second selection.
First he chose a magazine for himself in which a man who vaguely resembled Russell was relieved of a great deal of tension by a redhead, a blonde, and a dark black girl who had apparently devoted a lot of thought to the creative uses of the feather. Then he looked for a present for Dena. He knew that her tastes ran along the same general lines as his own: someone who looked enough like herself to identify with, having fun with someone who did not resemble her spouse. Tasting variety in their fantasies, they were able to eschew it in real life. After some searching, he found a magazine on whose cover was depicted a woman who not only resembled Dena in face and hairstyle, but even had something like a dancer's body. She was smiling seductively at the camera, sitting on someone's lap. As Russell was reaching for the magazine to inspect the contents (another reason he seldom bought porn back home in Halifax: it was always offered for sale sealed in plastic), it suddenly struck him just how much searching he had had to do to find both these magazines, and he froze with it in his hand. The worst thing that Russell knew how to say to himself was, "You have not thought this thing through," and he said it to himself now.
There was plenty of white-on-white porn in this shop.
There was plenty of black-on-black. There was very little interracial porn. Most of what there was had been back in the "Nasty" and "Twisted" sections. He glanced around and his heart sank. He was the only white customer in the store standing anywhere near a magazine featuring blacks. He had two such in his hand. Three black youths standing nearby visibly disapproved of his taste.
Whites were in a slight majority in the clientele. He wondered how much difference that made. Bad tactics would be to put the magazine back and leave, inviting attack. Forcing himself to move slowly, he paid for his purchases, tucked them away in his briefcase full of scribbled designs. As he reached the door he turned back and stared squarely at the trio. They were motionless where he had left them, staring back at him. He tried to convey the impression that he carried at least four lethal weapons and was eager to be followed and challenged.
There was no telling whether he was successful; the faces of all three were unreadable. He turned his back on them and left.
He was not followed.
He decided to keep heading west. He had heard about the complete rebuilding of the Port Authority complex, and was curious to know how they had solved several design problems. He walked that way, glancing over his shoulder from time to time to see if the three youths had followed.
And so he cannoned directly into the Black Muslim.
"Excuse me. My fault."
Correctly identifying Russell by these words as an out-of-towner, the white-robed and turbaned Muslim said, "Allah akram," and thrust a pamphlet into his hand. It was covered with Arabic script, a series of pictures of the phases of the moon, and the words, "Fast of Ramadaan."
Even discounting the turban, the heavily-bearded Muslim had a good four inches on Russell; he chose his words with care. "Thank you for your gift," he said, trying to return it, "but I cannot give you a donation for it now."
The man made no move to accept the booklet back. He smiled a predatory smile. "Better change your mind, paleman," he said. "It's the month of Ramadaan, and the Night of Power is at hand. There's still time to heed the words of the Prophet." Russell tried to interrupt. "It could save your paleman life."
Was this a public shakedown, or just the usual aggressive Muslim hardsell? All Russell was sure of was that the longer he stood still on this street, the more attention he drew. "What is the minimum donation?"
"Couple dollar be sufficient."
To produce money was to show any nearby pickpockets where it was kept. As Russell weighed the situation, measuring risks, a distraction occurred.
"What you mean, 'no'?" a man shouted just behind him.
Russell turned; a black G.I. was confronting a shavenheaded black hooker. He was hurt and trying to cover it with anger. "Tomorrow I get on the boat and go get my ass shot off, and today I can't rent a little piece of yours?"
"That's right, come-drop," she told him coolly.
"Listen, sister, back home in Montgomery women pay me.
Come on now, tipe tizwe."
She lost her temper. "I ain't your sister, fuckwipe, and you hear me good: if you get into some napalm over there, and your body be on fire from head to toe, why then that'll be the only day of your life when I wouldn't piss on you. Get gone from my face!"
He was stunned silent for a moment, and then his mouth twisted and he slapped her hard. At once Russell saw her bring her fist upward fast, as if she were serving a volleyball; it connected with the soldier's lower belly with a smacking sound, and it was only as it came away with a twisting motion that Russell saw the wicked little knife in it.
The Muslim beside Russell exclaimed something approving with "Allah" in it. The soldier glanced down in surprise, then looked back up into the flashing eyes of the whore. His face changed, as though he were about to say, "Aw now, let's not fight, sugar—I'm sorry I slapped you," but the first syllable was all he could manage. He loudly soiled his pants, and his knees hit the sidewalk with a sharp cracking sound. Blood dripped from the crotch of his khaki trousers.
Pandemonium broke out. Russell was chilled to realize that at least half the shouting was laughter and cheers. Soldiers and civilians began fighting one another. Something smashed Russell in the lower back, propelling him out of the center of the melee, and he kept on running without looking back, the Muslim pamphlet still clutched in his fist.
He found that he was heading back toward Grand Central, and that it suited him. He had seen enough of New York for one day.
Within a block he was clear of the disturbance. Instinct yelled a warning; he stopped running, settled into a slow, measured walk. Just as he did so, pairs of cops began appearing as if by magic and racing past him to the ruckus.
He was glad he had stopped running. As spiders instinctively go after anything that behaves like a fly, cops tend to be interested in anyone running away from a murder scene. He briefly tried to imagine himself explaining to a typical New York cop why he had a Muslim pamphlet in one hand and a briefcase full of interracial porn and circuit-drawings in the other. He slipped the pamphlet into the case and kept walking. He could not feel the ground with his feet. His back did not hurt at all where he'd been hit.
Music beat at him from all sides as he walked. It had been everywhere since he had first emerged from Grand Central—personal headphones were not big on 42nd Street; they were more snatchable than necklaces—but he had not paid much attention, preoccupied by people and sights.
Now it seemed that the whole world was music, that every fourth person had a ghetto blaster on his wrist or belt, each playing a different tape or CD. First ten seconds of King Sunny Ade's ju-ju music, then Jevetta Steele, then a flank attack by some anonymous processor group, then some rap crew, then a cello solo by Abdul Wadud, then early Beatles—it was like being trapped inside the speaker of some monstrous radio programmed for constant search.
Russell's head spun; when he reached Bryant Park he had to sit down. He found an unoccupied bench and put his head between his legs, holding his hands against his ears to shut out the music, managing only to mute the treble.
Distantly he realized he was in shock.
Will that soldier die? If other people die in that riot will they ever know what started it, what they died for? Do any of these people around me know or care that people may be dying a few blocks away right now? He was being shipped out to die in a far land, and he wanted a nice sendoff and was willing to pay for it. Now he has a hole in him. Pooh Bear, I think this is the wrong kind of gash. Oh God.
A fresh-orange-juice vendor was pushing his cart by.
Russell had the vague idea that fluids were good for shock; he bought a large cup and gulped it down. Suddenly the temperature seemed to rise ten Celsius degrees. He turned and put his head over the back of the bench; his stomach twisted and gave up its contents. Dogs came running to see the fun.
When it was over he felt a little better and his head was clear, but he was not ready to get up and go home. His back hurt now where he had been hit, and his legs felt wobbly.
He wanted to read something—anything. He took the Muslim pamphlet from his case and began to read that.
He got hopelessly confused until he realized that the pages were numbered back to front. Even then a good deal of the text was incomprehensible, heavily interspersed wlth blocks of Arabic script with accompanying translation.
This was, apparently, the month of Ramadaan in the Muslim year 1416, a time of great significance requiring much fasting and prayer. Russell learned that "Ramadaan" came from the root "Ramda," meaning "burning." He ran across the phrase "The Night of Power," and remembered the words of the Muslim who had given him the pamphlet.
The Night of Power, it seemed, had been the night, in the month of Ramadaan twelve years before the Great Hegira, on which the first suwrah of the Qur'aan had been revealed to the prophet Mustafa Muhammad Al Amin. The term was also used in reference to something called the Battle of Badr. Two years after the Hegira from Makkah to Medina which marked the beginning of the Muslim calendar, a group of three hundred Muslims had made a stand at Badr, and with the assistance of "Angels" sent down by ALLAHU SUBHAANAHU WA TA'ALA had held off a charge by three thousand "idol worshippers."
Characteristically, Russell noticed the numbers. The Muslims at the Battle of Badr had been outnumbered by a ratio of ten to one. There were roughly 250 million people in the United States, and 25 million black people. You couldn't ask for a Badr Battle than that, Russell thought, with a momentary vision of avenging black Angels stooping down from the skies on the idol worshippers.
Reading on he found veiled suggestions that this year's Night of Power would be an especially holy and portentous one. He thumbed idly to the calendar-translation section and worked out the Gregorian date for the Night of Power.
It was tonight.
He snorted and read on. The balance of the booklet's English text was fasting rules and regulations, with occasional photos of groups of small black children practicing karate and such. Russell decided he was strong enough to go home now, and stuffed the pamphlet back into his briefcase. He rinsed his mouth at a leaking fountain, dodged a junkie who wanted spare change, and went back to Grand Central Station. There was still a long list of places he wanted to visit while he was in New York, but they would still be there tomorrow.
Yes, he heard himself saying to a friend when he got back to Halifax, I was in New York for over a week before I saw my first knifing...
=
It was after five when he got back to the apartment. As he unlocked the second Medeco lock he saw José eyeballing him through the fisheye, and by the time he had the door open Jennifer was exploding out at him. "Daddy, you're late, we were just going to send the bloodhounds out for you but we couldn't find anything of yours they'd agree to sniff, when is supper I'm starving, Mom called she'll be home late, I beat José four straight games of Glory Road and I called Sophie but I didn't talk too long, let's eat!"
He disentangled himself from the hug and they went inside.
Jennifer had the TV turned to ASN, which made Russell grin to himself. (Back home she made a fetish of ignoring Canadian TV and watching only the American channels.
Now that she was in New York, she faithfully watched Halifax programming, made José sit through shows that she would not have been caught dead watching at home.
NAMSAT East had made it possible for one to travel thousands of miles without changing one's viewing habits—and Jennifer changed them anyway!) "I know I am, soon, that's too bad, congratulations, that's good, let's." He went to the big crockpot and checked his Perpetual Stew. It was maturing nicely. "Another week and this'll be fit to serve company. José, you're not company, you're family—will you stay for dinner? To make up for your humiliating defeat at Glory Road?"
José flashed his quick grin. "Thanks, Russell. A man's gotta keep up his strength to run with this one here. I'll set the table."
"Cripes," Jennifer exclaimed. "Daddy won't let me cook, you won't let me set table—how am I supposed to learn the skills necessary to nail boys?"
"You can do the dishes," Russell said at once.
She tried to frown ferociously, but could not suppress the grin. "Walked into that one. I'll never learn to keep my mouth shut."
"That's another good one," José agreed solemnly, and she threw a plate at him. Naturally he caught it. She had formed the habit of throwing objects at him without warning, and he always caught them. Two days before he had genuinely annoyed her, and she had let fly with an uncooked egg; when he caught it without breaking it, admiration had overcome her anger and she had given up her grudge. Dena wasn't crazy about the game, but it tickled Russell.
Over dinner Jennifer asked him why he was late.
"Breakdown on the subway. Power was out for almost an hour and a half."
"Daddy, really? You were down there in the dark for that long?"
"There wasn't much choice. No real trouble—a couple of Guardian Angels and a transit cop took care of the claustrophobes, kind of kept order. Nobody seemed especially surprised."
"Nah, man," José said. "You'll be in one of those every couple weeks, wait an' see. Those Guardian Angels are something these days, hah? I got to hand it to them. I thought they was broke up for awhile, and to tell you the truth I didn't much care...but the last couple of years they come back strong, really showed a lot of heart."
"They were good. They talked down one old fellow who was mad as hell, wanted to leave the train and wander through the tunnel looking for a manhole, big appointment he had to keep."
"How'd they talk him out of it?" Jennifer asked.
"Opened a window and let him listen to the rats scurrying outside. They showed him one with a flashlight. He reconsidered. "
"Yuck," Jennifer said. "Big rats. Like the ones Oscar meets in the Tower of the Egg in Glory Road."
"You and your Glory Road," José mocked. "Honest to God, Russell—pass the pepper, please—I thought I was pretty good at games, but she's a demon."
"That she is. You know, I'm astonished at the number of arcades in this town. There seems to be one on every block, and they all have the new programmable games with full keyboard. There was one in the Grand Central complex, the biggest I ever saw, with incredible graphics."
"Yeah, they're everywhere. Especially popular with black people. The game ain't rigged, you know? Don't you people have arcades up there in Halifax?"
"Sure, a dozen or so, but nothing like this. Another funny thing: I just noticed today that half, better than half of the customers are adults."
"They have more quarters," Jennifer said.
"Yeah, it's funny," José agreed. "You'll see, like, a dude in a three-piece, and a kid in mylar with his face tattooed, and a big spade in shades, all side by side, paying no attention to each other at all. You know another funny thing? Once in a while I'll be watchin' a game, you know, and it'll seem like I saw the same exact game a week ago, the same moves and score and everything. Weird, huh?"
Russell chuckled and poured more apple juice. "I know what you mean. It's the ones wearing those red sunglasses I can't understand. Are the new screens supposed to be dangerous to your eyes, or what?"
"It wouldn't surprise me none, but I ain't heard it said yet.
Some people just never take off their shades, I guess. Them red ones look sharp. I want to get a pair, but I can't seem to find any. This is good stew."
"'Things are in a Perpetual Stew at the Grant household,'" Jennifer and Russell chorused. "If you think this is good," he went on, "come back in a week or so when it's ripe."
"Daddy?"
From the tone of voice alone, Russell knew he was about to be taken to the cleaners. But of course, foreknowledge was no help. "Yes, kitten?"
"I told you I beat José four games?"
"That's right."
"So you know I did double homework?"
Russell and Jennifer had both figured out early on that she was a genius, and decided it was best kept their secret.
Since that time her education had had very little connection with her schooling. She carefully maintained a respectable B-plus average and a recorded I.Q. of 117, because Russell did not want her to be singled out and skipped ahead the way he had been as a boy—but she was doing college-level work in math and history, and he had privately measured her true I.Q. at 151. They still debated when to drop the masquerade; Jennifer wanted to do so on her College Boards, but Russell argued that she should get her teenage years over before taking on freak celebrity status. As one of his self-designed teaching aids, he had programmed the family computer not to unlock the game mode for Jennifer until she had put in an hour of skullsweat, most recently in math; even then it would only play two games before locking up again. There was a bypass code for himself and Dena, of course, and Russell privately suspected that Jennifer had somehow managed to either learn or deduce it. But he preferred not to find out, since an affirmative answer would have placed him in the position of being forced to punish ingenuity. "Yes," he lied.
"Well you're wrong, I did triple, and I still only played four games, so you owe me, right?"
"I concede no such thing. Assuming the situation is as you describe—"
"Daddy! You can check the—"
"—I said I assumed it. That being so, you owe you two games of Glory Road or agreed equivalent reward. All I owe you is your allowance—which, I admit, you have more than earned lately."
Jennifer pounced. "All right then, I'll make you a deal: I'll waive my allowance for this week, and throw in two games' worth of credit, for a favour."
"Mmmm." From the price offered, this would be a largish favour. And he didn't like that part about waiving her allowance—it suggested that she had alternate sources of income he knew nothing about. "Name the favour."
"I want to go to Madison Square Garden and see The Juice."
Even Russell, who hated flash music, knew about The Juice. They were a popular processor group—in the same sense that the Beatles had been a not-unsuccessful rock band. There was no chance that The Juice would ever play Halifax; there was no venue big enough. The favour was so enormous that he could not not grant it. But he did not much like the idea of Jennifer at Madison Square Garden late at night. "What night is the concert?"
"Tonight."
Reprieve. "Oh hell, princess, you'll never get tickets, they must have sold out before we left Hali—"
"I've got two."
He blinked. José was earnestly studying his stew.
"I wrote Grandpa before we left home, and he came into the city to get them for me."
"Sweetheart, I'm tired, and your mother won't be home until late—"
"Mama said it's okay with her if it's okay with you," Jennifer said at once, springing the trap.
"She did," José confirmed. "I'll take her if you don't want to go, Russell."
Russell thought of some of the drug-crazed defectives who went to flash concerts. Then he thought of José's knife, quivering in the center of the tree.
"Please, Daddy. The TV said Mark and H are going to be using the new Spangler Fives."
"You're sure you don't mind, José? You've been stuck with her all day."
"Well...I have a favour of my own I was gonna ask."
"Why do I get the feeling I'm going to leave this table dressed in a barrel? Let's hear it."
"See, I can't stay at my spot tonight. I'm havin' the roaches steamcleaned, so they'll be more presentable. It looks like a nice night, I thought maybe I could put a cot in the garden or something, if you don't mind."
"The living room couch folds out. Dena and I will probably be asleep when you get in—what, around midnight?"
Suddenly his lap was full of Jennifer. "Oh Daddy thank you thank you thank you!"
He hugged her back, reflecting that gratitude took years off her apparent age, and pushed her off his lap. "Finish your dinner. And you stick close to José tonight, you hear me?"
"Thanks a lot, Russell," José said, and threw a buttered roll at Jennifer's face. She caught it at almost arm's length— and gaped at it, surprised at herself. Then she smiled.
"I been workin' out with her a little," José said. "She'll be okay."
=
After they had left, Russell took a thermos of chilled Bushmill's out to the garden and set up a recliner so that he could watch the square of sky overhead. The day had been comparatively mild for New York summer, with some cloud cover and every third breeze a cool one. Perversely, the evening was becoming a hot one, muggy and oppressive. The few stars bright enough to be seen seemed to dance liquidly in the air.
Russell had long maintained that alcoholism was what happened when good booze got into the hands of amateurs; he drank seldom but well. He had never understood, for instance, how others could drink without looking at their watch—how could you measure dosage by wholly subjective parameters, when the point was to distort your subjective parameters? And why did they always add ice?
Ice cubes diluted the taste, further confused the dosage—and were in addition about the least energy-efficient way to chill a drink he could think of. (One of the reasons he did not smoke grass was the impossibility of accurately quantifying strength, dosage or flavour. Old Bushmill's, on the other hand, had been a known quantity for almost four centuries. He kept a bottle in the fridge.) Russell could reliably achieve and maintain any of the five plateaus of intoxication, could change from one level to the next in as little as seven minutes or as much as an hour, and never had hangovers.
So he had no trouble staying at Level One, Buzzed, for the first hour, and when that proved unsatisfactory he modulated easily to Elevated. This is the stage at which one notices a small but marked increase in one's powers, a slight augmentation of everything from intelligence to peripheral vision. The problems of man in the universe are clarified; their solutions are just within sight and just out of reach. One feels kinship with all things living, and one's tongue has not yet begun to thicken appreciably.
But even this level failed to soothe him. Even from halfway up Olympus he could not integrate a universe in which a young man could be goaded to his death for the crime of having submitted to the draft. On all sides Russell heard babies crying, spouses bellowing, teenagers mocking each other, TVs and stereos adding subliminal undercurrents to the general uproar.
Dimly he knew that what he really wanted was to discuss the incident with Dena. She paid no more attention to politics than he did, American politics least of all, and their combined knowledge of the African war and its rights and wrongs was negligible. Besides, you could never fairly judge a war until the data came in...fifteen years or so after it ended. But she was a black person that he lived with, and he wanted to know what she thought.
But Dena was still not home. There was no telling when she would be home, and he was not allowed to call the studio for anything less than a full-bore emergency. And so, secretly beginning to resent her for not being there, he gave the mental equivalent of a shrug and went to Level Three. If that did not work, he would taper off again, take two aspirin and go to sleep.
At Level Three, Inebriated, intelligence begins to decrease (while seeming to the subject to continue increasing) and the tongue starts to grow fur. Coordination and motor-skill impairment first appear, and the subject is prone to become restless and/or argumentative. Russell replayed the afternoon's events through a fantasy filter, tried out alternate versions in which he came off better. He stepped hastily between the soldier and the whore, caught her wrist with catlike grace, berated them both sternly for their mutual intransigence, browbeat them by sheer force of personality into seeing reason when reason itself had failed, then sent them on their separate ways with the grudging respect of both. The metropolis is safe as long as Spiderman is on patrol; if only he could be everywhere at once! The part he liked best was when one or the other of them tried to deflect his arguments by saying that he was just a racist honky, and he silenced them both with the stunning revelation that he was a Canadian with a black wife. Russell knew perfectly well that Canada's treatment of blacks, indeed of all non-whites, was far short of exemplary, so much so that the nation's shame was mitigated only by the presence of even greater horrors to the south. Canada was no longer accepting draft dodgers in large part because the draft dodgers were no longer overwhelmingly white. But the whole point of Level Three intoxication is that reality becomes plastic.
He could not entirely override the true memories. They were too vivid. He remembered the last glimpse he had gotten of the prostitute. She had been standing over the kneeling soldier, grinning down at him, and in her eyes Russell had read exactly what she was thinking. She was thinking that the next time a black soldier was fool enough to approach her, she would accept him. And take him somewhere where they could be alone and naked, so that when the little knife came out there would be no hurry, no impeding clothing, and she could slash as well as stab...
He actually flinched when he heard a sharp sound behind him in the apartment. It was the first of the front door locks snapping back. Dena was home. Nine o'clock. Bloody well
'bout time.
He wanted to get up and go in to greet her. But he also wanted to stay where he was in the garden, lick his wounds, and have her notice that he was miserable and come to him. At Level Two the former impulse would have won. He uncapped the thermos and replenished his cup of whiskey, kept his back to the apartment and tried with the exaggerated intensity of a first-year acting student to register Angst.
Of course there was a long pause, while she relocked the door, put down her bag and purse, drank apple juice, went to the bathroom, straightened this and that. With each second of delay, Russell became more irritated. Doesn't she know I'm in misery out here? Can't she tell somehow?
Is she even going to come out at all? Has it even come to her attention yet that I'm not in the fucking house?
Finally the door behind him opened. "Hi, honey. José took Jennifer to the concert, I see."
Ah, that was better. From the tone of her voice he could tell that she knew something was wrong. "Hi, darling. I'm glad you're home."
"Bad day?"
"Medium bad. I saw a boy knifed."
"Jesus. Where?"
"In the guts."
"I meant where geographically."
"Times Square. I was sightseeing."
"Russell, how awful for you! Did he die?"
"I don't know. I listened to the news after supper to try and find out. Somehow I had the idea a trivial thing like that would make the news in this town." He snorted and sipped whiskey, eyes on the stars. "I guess if they reported every stabbing in New York, they'd need a separate channel for the purpose." And I need you to come hold me, Dena, I need to hold you and smell you and run my fingers through your hair and tell you the whole story, and for some reason I don't understand I can't just come out and tell you that, so figure it out my darling, please. A little of that woman's intuition—come and touch me with your healing hands.
He heard her shut the door behind her and lean back against it. "How did he get stabbed?"
"A hooker turned him down, and he slapped her."
"And her pimp got him."
"No. She did. Low and fast."
"Ouch." Pause. "Well, he asked for it."
"I'm not sure that he did."
"He had no business slapping her. She has the right to choose her customers. Of course, a knife is excessive—"
"Isn't that the same logic that Alabama restaurant owners used to use when a nigra came to the door?"
"Oh. It was a race thing. That's different. But he still shouldn't have slapped her."
"She didn't just turn him down, Dena. She put him down, publicly humiliated him so badly I wanted to slap her myself."
"Because he was black?"
"Yes."
"Then I take it back. She didn't leave him much choice."
"No, she didn't."
"I'm surprised. You wouldn't think that a shade girl could get away with that kind of public racism in this town any more."
"What makes you think she was white?"
"Huh?" He heard her shift her weight. "Oh, I see: she was hispanic. Or was she asian?"
"No. She was as black as you are."
"But you said she refused him because he was black!"
"That's right. Oh, I can't prove it—but I'm convinced she would have fucked a white soldier. Or at least have turned him down without castrating him."
"A soldier. That's different too."
His irritation boiled over. "Will you listen to yourself?
One person stabbed another person today, maybe killed him. First you're on her side, because she's a woman slapped by a man. Then you find out he's black, and you're on his side because a white woman threatened his masculinity. But it turns out she's black too, so the situation gets fuzzy. But he happens to be in uniform, so it resolves again: he deserved to be knifed because of his politics.
Would the moral situation change again if I said he were a Swiss soldier?" He began to get up and turn to face her, decided to take another sip of his drink instead. Let her talk to his back.
"What are you doing?" she said, anger beginning to enter her own voice. "You fed me the situation in bits and pieces—so I responded that way. Now that I've got all the pieces—if I do—I don't say that he deserved to be knifed.
But I do say it's understandable, that he should have known better. If you and I went to a Ku Klux Klan meeting together and got assaulted, wouldn't it be at least partly our own damned fault?"
"He wasn't at any kind of meeting. On a public street he went up to a prostitute of his own race and said something like 'tippy tizzy' and she opened up on him."
"Ah." He heard her dress rustle as she changed position again.
"What does 'ah' mean?"
"What he said explains a lot. 'Tipe tizwe.' It means 'give me a taste,' and the connotation is such that if a stranger says it to a respectable woman, it's grounds for yelling 'rape!'"
"How is that relevant?"
"It's African. Shona, from Rhodesia."
Russell was distracted from the argument by a sudden monstrous suspicion. "How do you know?"
"Eh?"
The trees before him rustled darkly. "You don't know any more about Africa than I do. Where did you learn Shona?"
"Russell, in this country at this time, black people talk about Africa a lot."
"—and aside from Odet, whom you can't stand, the only other black in the company is Jerome, right?"
"That's right."
The tone of her voice made 'danger' alarms go off in his head, but he ignored them. "So he's your Shona tutor."
"Listen to me. I told you about Jerome. I didn't have to, but I told you. And I told you there was nothing to worry about, that he didn't threaten us."
"That's right, you did."
Her voice rose slightly in pitch. "Are you telling me I have to have your permission to talk with an old boyfriend, to be civil to someone I work with?"
"Not at all. I'm just curious to know how the civil conversation veered onto the etymology of the expression, 'give me a taste,' which is grounds for crying 'rape!'"
"Damn it, Russell, he said it to Odet and she slapped him hard—so I asked him why. Do you really think—"
He believed her at once, was ashamed of his suspicion— and even more ashamed of having spoken it. To doubt a spouse's fidelity, out loud, is to challenge it. "I'm sorry, baby," he began, "I know better—" and got up to face her so that his expression could attest to the sincerity of his apology, and cried out in shock.
"Christ!"
Her head was shaven bald.
His expression must have been ludicrous; Dena burst out laughing. He was so stunned and horrified that he could not help joining her. They roared together for a few moments, and then both began speaking very quickly through their laughter.
"Oh shit, Russell—"
"—the fuck did you do it for?"
"—Lisa insisted, for the piece—"
"—your beautiful hair—"
"—it'll grow back—"
"—why didn't you tell me first—"
"I couldn't, there wasn't—"
"—oh, Dena—"
The laughter was gone now. "Oh Russell, do you really hate it?"
He went to her and took her in his arms.
As a dancer, Dena had often changed her hairstyle to fit a dance, had worn it curly, ultracurly, waved, straightened, braided, natural, and in corn rows. Although the gentle curls with which she had left the house this morning were Russell's personal favorite—it was the hairstyle she had worn when he met her—he had never minded a change before. There was a certain subconscious erotic charge in taking to bed a woman who looked and vaguely smelled like a stranger, yet knew intimately the topography of his desire. As he hugged Dena now, he had to admit that a completely shaven skull added yet another fillip, a touch of androgeny that he found a bit appealing.
He held her from him so that he could see her, and looked closely.
"No," he said finally, "I don't hate it. It's startling, Odin only knows, but I like it."
His tone of voice was quite convincing; a stranger would have been fooled. But he and Dena were five years married. She knew that he hated it, and he knew that she knew, and it was agreed that neither would admit the knowledge. The only thing Russell did not understand was why he hated it, and he would certainly give that some thought in the near future, but right now he was busy reassuring his wife that she was still beautiful.
"It makes me wonder what else you've got shaved."
She grinned, and accepted the diversion. "I knew you'd think of that."
"Does that mean—?"
"Come on in the house and find out."
She was indeed hairless from head to toe, and he did indeed find it exciting, and if it took him a little longer than usual to reach orgasm Dena did not seem to notice, or mind if she did. When it was over he marinated in pleasure for a time, thinking, this is contentment, now are the demons of the day exorcized, my tension soothed, my fear eased.
Catharsis. "Night of power," He murmured happily to himself.
Dena opened one eye. "Where did you hear about that stuff?"
Russell started to answer, then opened both eyes. "Where did you hear about it?"
"A streetcorner Muslim," she said, and something he could not define caused him to wonder if she was lying. "Me too," he said, hearing himself chuckle just a bit too loudly at this cute coincidence. Had there been the faintest hesitation before she spoke? No, perhaps not. "Well," he went on, "We've blown our chances of having a new Qur'aan revealed to us. As I get the story, you're supposed to abstain from food and sex."
"No, they only fast from sex during daylight hours."
Pause. "I see you got the whole rap."
Pause. "Yeah. He got me at a red light in Chinatown and I couldn't get away from him."
"Did you buy a pamphlet?"
"No. I'm not really into encouraging religious fanatics."
"I didn't either, but I've got one. He stuffed it into my hand, and then that boy got knifed while I was trying to give it back."
Russell was hyperalert by this time, and when she said indifferently, "Mmm. I'd like to look through it sometime," he felt that there was a hair too much indifference. So:
"It's right in my briefcase in the living room."
"Mmm," she said again, and now he had the feeling that she wanted to go get it now but didn't want to seem that interested. So, in a growingly dangerous mood, he decided to see how far it would go if he pushed it, and gave her an additional reason to get up. "That reminds me—while I was in Times Square I picked us both up some new porn. Also in the briefcase."
"Really? I'd like to see that." She got out of bed, reached back, and gave him an intimate tweak. "You thoughtful husband, you."
He made himself smile. "You don't mind if I just lay here in the dark awhile and sort of bask, do you?"
"Of course not. I'll look through it in there. Then maybe in a while I'll tiptoe back in and turn my basking ace into a basket case." She grinned and was gone.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling.
Admit it, Russell. You think she lied. You think she learned about that Night of Power crap from Jerome. He can't be a Muslim or he wouldn't be in a modern dance company, but he might know about that stuff. Interesting conversation it must have been. Found time to touch on the sexual conventions of Muslims. Apparently didn't get to that part you remember about "flirtatious behaviour" during the day.
Or did the conversation take place after the sun went down? All right, let's review the record. Christ, do we really want to do that? Yes, of course we do.
Aw, shit.
The second and third nights back. Late rehearsal the first time. Costume fitting the second time. Both nights she said she went out for coffee with Lisa afterwards. An hour the first night, the second "we just talked and talked" and she got in just before midnight.
All right, back up, Sherlock. You have been married to Dena for five years. Long enough to know someone if the trick can be done at all. You trust her. You love her. You know damned well she loves you. Even when she's in rehearsal frenzy like this and can't always take the time to show you, you know she loves you. You've never had reason to doubt her, and Zeus knows she's had opportunities enough if she'd wanted them; it's not true that all male dancers are gay, and there's got to be something erotic about getting sweaty with a superb physical specimen in scanty attire all day, letting him put his hands on you—remember the time she had to do that pas de deux with that big guy from Montreal and she came straight home and told you right out that it was making her horny enough to bark and would you kindly fuck her brains out right now, and you were genuinely sorry four weeks later when the last show was over and he went back west?
Come on, Russell old man, long ago you worked this out, with her help and thanks to her you came to terms with your perfectly understandable fear of losing her to another dancer.
Yeah, but what about a black dancer?
The door opened and she came into the room fast. Before he could adjust to the sudden flood of light something hit him hard on the nose.
"You son of a bitch," she said, her voice low and quavering and dangerous.
"What the hell—"
"Of all the cheap, cowardly ways to bring a subject up."
She grabbed a pillow and blanket. "Sometime you must tell me whether that was an accusation...or a suggestion."
She stormed back out to the living room with her bedclothes before he could frame a coherent question
"Christ in crinoline," he yelled after her, "what the fuck is wrong with you?" but there was no response.
He went up on one elbow, turned on the bedside lamp, and discovered that his nose was bleeding. He grabbed Kleenex and dealt with that, then saw the missile that had caused it. The magazine he had bought for Dena.
Oh for Christ's sake, he thought, is that all it is? What a silly misunderstanding. There's something objectionable in the magazine, she doesn't know I didn't have a chance to examine it before buying it, I'll just explain how it was and boy will she be apologetic. I guess I really should have looked it over before telling her about it.
I guess I really should look it over before I go out and explain.
He picked it up.
Title: Afternoon Surprise. Layout utterly simple: one photo per page, no text at all. Lefthand photo: black woman who looks like Dena and white man younger, broader and fairer than Russell, both getting dressed together in the morning.
Righthand photo: the two in business attire getting into separate cabs, blowing each other a kiss. Flip. Left: woman entering her expensively appointed office followed by black male secretary. Right: woman grinning over her shoulder as she lifts skirt to display bare ass to grinning secretary. Flip. Left and right: woman continuing to undress. Flip. She kneels before secretary; unzips his trousers and fellates him. Flip. She leans back against the desk while he returns the favour. Flip. White man (her husband?) sits at own desk with visible erection, takes cab.
Flip. Couple are now fucking on desktop, vigorously.
Flip. Same scene, two more camera angles, they're having a wonderful time. Flip. White man is leaving elevator; black man is standing bolt upright, arms at sides, muscles bulging, apparently holding her clear of the floor by penis alone. Flip. White man reaches for office doorknob; couple are now down on the carpet. Flip. White man in office, openmouthed with shock, black couple looking at him in surprise, white man in identical position, black couple ignoring him and resuming copulation. Flip. Both shots: black couple in foreground achieving orgasm; whlte man in background staring. Flip. Left: black man gestures at white man. Right: white man is half undressed, black man is taking cigarettes from pocket of white man's jacket, woman is smiling. Flip. White man is naked, eyes downcast, penis at maximum erection, being questioned by black man, who holds in his hand a penis which is dripping wet, limp, and nonetheless noticeably larger in every dimension; woman is watching with a smile. Opposite page: white man on all fours between woman's legs; she is kissing and fondling black man.
There were ten or twenty pages left, but Russell carefully closed the magazine and stared at it edge on.
His first thought was: this was misfiled. It didn't belong in "Raunchy," it should have been in "Nasty." At least.
His second thought was: my, this bed is lumpy.
The third thought was: how dare she? How could she not guess, how could she possibly not know that this was a mistake, that I didn't get a chance to look this over? How dare she believe for a moment that I intended to give this to her, just because I gave it to her?
His fourth thought was again: god damn, this bed is lumpy.
The next one really twisted the knife, echoing over and over, it was: the guilty flee when no man pursueth.
Then, in an adrenalin-charged rush:
Wait a minute, you don't really believe this/maybe I do and maybe I don't/Dena loves you/"Was that an accusation...or a suggestion?"/you can't believe it/who told her about tippy tizzy and Muslim sex law/you have a good marriage, she wouldn't/I'II bet it is bigger/she has too much honesty/she's human/if she did, don't find out about it, one slip isn't worth a good marriage/I never slipped, in this marriage or the last one, and let me tell you sometimes it wasn't easy, and no the fucking bed is not lumpy, it s just got a Smith & Wesson tucked...
And then he stopped thinking altogether. He got up, joints popping, and cleaned the last of the blood from his nose and upper lip. He dressed carefully and quietly, in different clothes than he had worn earlier. He took the gun from under the mattress and the firing pin from the dresser drawer. He put them both in the righthand pocket of his windbreaker. He took wallet, money, and keys from the clothes he had worn that afternoon and redistributed them.
He left the bedroom, went straight to the front door and left the apartment as quickly as the complicated locks allowed.
If Dena was awake, she made no sound.
He walked east on 31st. It was necessary to get rid of the gun; a gun was no longer a good thing to have in the house.
The East River was only a few blocks away, and there were so many handguns Iying beneath it that the Smith & Wesson would not be lonely. When he got back home he would settle once and for all, one way or another whether his beloved wife had betrayed him—but not with a gun around.
His head was aching dully as he reached Second Avenue.
Thirty-first ended there, and if he had been thinking clearly he would have gone left up to 33rd or right to 30th and continued east to the river. But he was busy trying to rearrange his universe, and decided to cut straight through the Kips Bay complex. He and José had taken Jennifer for a walk through there a few days ago. It was only as he was entering the walkway between a pharmacy and a supermarket which led to the giant apartment tower complex that Russell realized this might be a dangerous place at night. He reached into the pocket of his windbreaker put the firing pin into the gun, and kept his hand in that pocket.
Sure enough, the plaza between the three massive towers was a splendid place for a mugging. It was 10 PM; all the residents were indoors. The lighting was inadequate, and trees and shrubs and park benches and stone sculptures provided many shadowy places of concealment.
Actually, he realized, he was probably more likely to be mistaken for a mugger himself than to be mugged. He had, without thinking consciously about it, dressed for New York night streets. He wore cheap old clothes, so he wouldn't look temptingly prosperous. His shoes were noiseless. His wallet was in his left rear pocket, where it might escape a cursory search. His right front pocket held a measured fifty dollars, just enough to appease a mugger, while the balance of his cash was strapped to his left forearm with an elastic band (José had warned him that stuffing it down your sock no longer worked.) Between these things and the gun in his windbreaker, a cop might hesitate for some time before classifying him as either criminal or potential victim.
But there were no cops here, and no honest citizens to frighten. He followed the path left past the playground area, and would have turned right onto the great walk that bisected the plaza, but the throbbing in his head had escalated to jackhammer proportions now. He found a bench and sat down for a moment.
The night was oppressive, muggy. Leaves chattered desultorily, but the warm breeze brought no relief. It carried the usual New York symphony of bad smells.
Russell dimly came to realize that there was an odd scent layered in there among the rest, a smell that was familiar but did not belong here. What the hell was it? A metallic smell...
Copper, that was it. Freshly sheared copper. Who does metalwork in Kips Bay Plaza at ten o'clock at night, without making a sound? No, wait, there was a sound.
Behind him, in the playground. Now it made sense.
Someone was repairing something in the playground, in the dark, making a little rhythmic bubbling sound as he worked...
Russell sat perfectly still, his right thumb disengaging the safety catch. Then suddenly he was a meter to the right of the bench, on his stomach, gun pointing into the darkness of the playground.
The bubbler whimpered.
Whatever was there in the shadows was bad medicine.
Perhaps a trap. The prudent move was to back away with gun at the ready. Russell got up slowly and moved forward.
The bubbler lay on his back at the bottom of a child's tall slide. Jennifer's backside had passed over his resting place three days ago. He was black, in his forties, bald and thickly bearded. He wore jeans, a leather vest, and snakeskin boots; his thin torso was powerfully muscled.
The coppery smell came from the astonishing amount of blood he had lost—was still losing. It flowed freely from every orifice he had been born with, and several he had just acquired. Bellevue Hospital was a block away, on the far side of Kips Bay; it might as well have been on the far side of the moon.
"Why, it's you," the man said in horrifically conversational tones. The bubbling sound came from his chest.
Russell shook his head. "You don't know me."
"Seen...seen you yesterweek...drivin' Michael 'round on your ride...hand of God, you comin' along now." He tried to smile. "Hand of God." His voice was thick, wet.
Russell could not think of anything to say or do. He knelt beside the bleeding man.
"I got...got no time for no ID routine...you're with us, right?"
Russell did not understand the question, but he could tell that the dying man urgently wanted an affirmative answer.
"Sure. "
"Had to be," the other agreed. "Chaufferin' Michael around like that...you hip to the Night of Power."
"Yes. Fast of Ramadaan."
"An' all that other good shit. Well, the fuckin' Muslims ain't gonna play along after all...deal or no deal...you gotta tell Michael, brother: it's a cross...motherfuckin' Mustapha Khan gonna cross him tonight...Iet us do the work, then whack Michael while it's goin' down...fuck, my ches' hurts—"
"I'll go for help."
"Fuck help, man, get the message to Michael...they lookin' to whack him just before it goes down...after midnight...shit, I was really lookin' forward, you know?...now I ain't ever gonna see the day...go on now, you tell Michael...it was Willie Ray Brown died for him first tonight."
Russell was undecided what to do.
"Whassa matter? Oh, you ain't got your glasses on you...here—" With an effort, Willie Ray dragged a pair of sunglasses from his vest pocket and waved them at Russell, who took them with barely concealed confusion. "There's a place uptown on First...open all night...some quarters in my pants if you need 'em, I sure don't...go on!" Unexpectedly, he moved, with unexpected strength. Before Russell could react, the gun was snatched from his hand. He froze, totally confused, waiting to die. "God bless you," Willie Ray said, his voice deeper and louder. "You a black shade...you a white spade...everything up to you now, brother... thanks."
And Willie Ray put the gun barrel into his mouth, closed his bloody lips around it, and pulled the trigger.
It all happened at once, but afterward Russell would remember clearly the sequence of sounds. The actual gunshot, muffled by Willie Ray's head. The louder sound of the slug whanging off the slide and up into the night, followed almost instantly by the wet sound of brains, bone, and blood spraying eight feet up the slide. Air bubbling out of the chest wound and nostrils. The gun hitting the ground.
A shattered branch from overhead hitting the ground behind the slide. Finally the soft trickling sound of the ruins of Willie Ray's head sliding back down again...
And then silence.
I was in New York for almost two weeks before I saw my first knifing. But it picked up after that...