Through his window in the first-class cabin, Fire watched the twilight soaking through the clouds. He was struck once again by the drama of the heavens, by the colors and shapes and textures that throbbed and shifted and eddied there. Leaning back in his seat, he concerned himself with the package in his hands, the one that Ian had sent to him at four o’clock in the morning, stipulating, as the bearer said, that it not be opened till he was over the Atlantic, where he was now, approaching the coast of Wales.
It was a letter he saw when he opened it—attached by a clip to a check drawn on an account at a bank that was based in the Caymans.
Fire—
Don’t cash this until two weeks when certain things straighten out. I’m selling the watch. When I do that the check will be good. Right now it will bounce. Please though if you could give mama 2000 pound for me in the meantime then deduct it from when you cash the check which should be soon. Tell her the money is from me. Tell her I look good. Tell her she don’t see me cause I shame of my roots. Don’t say what you saw.
Waiting to meet Fire at Heathrow was his cousin Courtney. He was short and ginger-haired, with narrow eyes cut into a broad, flat face. He grabbed Fire’s bags and hurriedly led the way, babbling on about carburetors, headers, and limited-slip differentials as they moved through crowded passageways and skipped up stairs to the third level of a parking garage, where parked between a yellow Toyota Supra and a black Honda Prelude was his latest restoration project, a ‘72 Ford Cortina Lotus—a boxy, pearl white coupe zipped from head to tail with the Lotus flash in racing green.
Stepping over the bags, Fire walked around the car, running his palms over the paint job, checking under the wheel wells for rust. Then, satisfied that the exterior had neared perfection—there was a small dent near the driver’s door—he asked to see the engine, the legendary twin-cam, push-rod dynamo that spurred a hundred and fifty horses to power the rear wheels. As he checked it, he was thinking about his mother.
It was his mother, not his father, who had taught him about mechanics. Her father, who was a cousin of the Manleys, was a fighter pilot in the RAF during the Second World War, and returned home to introduce crop dusting to the family farm where she was born and raised. By the time she was fourteen Fire’s mother had learned to overhaul and operate the biplane.
Backing off so he could look at the Cortina in relation to the cars around it, Fire noted to himself that he would take it over either the Toyota or the Honda, which—with their aerodynamic noses and power-assisted steerings and noise-dampened cabins—in the company of the old Ford were like yuppies in a blue-collar bar. He loved old European cars: Mini Cooper Ss … BMW 2002s … Volvo P 1800s … Alfa Romeo Alfettas. Driving cars in which he could feel the pores of the road through the fingers of the shocks and hear the guttural cussing of the engine as he pushed it toward redline.
“Lemme drive,” he said, excited now.
Courtney threw him the keys, admonishing in his South London accent that his baby cousin be careful. “Many have died so I could have this.”
Fire laughed at the vocational reference. Courtney was an undertaker. He’d passed only woodwork and bible knowledge at O level. What else, his father had said at the time, was he fit to do?
Settling into the Recaro seat, Fire ran his hand over the burl dashboard and flush door panels, eyeing excitedly the rows of analog gauges and toggle switches.
“Go on,” Courtney urged. “Crank it.”
When he twisted the key he felt as if he’d tweaked a lion’s ear. A roar erupted from the belly of the machine.
“Want some music, Fire?”
Courtney pulled some tapes from the backseat.
“Wha y’have?”
“The Diamonds. Go Seek Your Rights; Sugar Minott, Good Thing Going; and a dancehall mix tape. Kilamanjaro versus Stone Love.”
“Yes, rudie,” he said, booming him—pressing fists. “Gimme some o’ dat.”
The windows down, the engine bawling, they shunted onto the motorway, seduced by the nihilistic ghettocentric rhetoric, urged toward rebellion by the brutish kick drum, which came down on their skulls like a pistol whip, commanding them to mash the gas.
When they reached Brixton, though, a different mood fell over them. To Fire it felt as if the skins from the dead in the Atlantic and in the plantation fields had been sewn into a shawl and draped around his shoulders.
Arriving from America, where black people had so much more—more wealth, more education, more numbers, more influence, more history, and consequently more hope—to this London, this England—where black people have lived in large numbers for only fifty years and had not had a chance to nurture their own Spike Lee or Reginald Lewis or Alexis Herman or Toni Morrison or Henry Louis Gates or Colin Powell or Johnnie Cochran or Carol Mosely Braun—underscored his reason for moving home.
Jamaica, despite its motto, “Out of many, one people,” was a black country, and he was a black man, and there, on that island, no matter how hard things were at times, he waited for scraps at no one’s table. He was no one’s scapegoat. No man’s Sambo. No one’s recurring nightmare. And people there did not whisper the word white in conversation, because they know that in 1833 and 1865 and many times before that and since, the black people of Jamaica have risen up and spilled white blood, licked it off their fingers, swallowed it, burped, and said, “No problem.”
On the high street, a doddering bus transformed the car into a front-row seat for the long-running drama of the Brixton tube station, which if it were ever adapted for the stage should be called Notice Me. For camped outside, lying in wait to pounce on weary passengers, were scores of predators, some in packs, some alone. A skinny Trinidadian in a tight brown suit and tube socks was waving his bible like a tambourine and screaming for all to repent. A group of Black Israelites in outfits inspired by Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Star Wars were screaming into a microphone, in a fake American accent no less, that the white man would be the black man’s slave after the coming Armageddon. To which a Greek chorus of coked-up druggies lounging on a cardboard bed in front of the 7-Eleven were screaming, “Monkeys can’t rule anything except bananas.” Which made the schizophrenic dread who’d been screaming as he defended himself against invisible stones realize that he wasn’t being pelted by the duppy of the last white woman who gave him head but rather the last monkey on which he’d performed cunnilingus. “Monkey pussy taste nice but i wi mad you,” he screamed to the preacher. “Doan nyam it.” The preacher screamed back in tongues, “Shala-mala, shala-maloo … askillapunka … I rebuke you.” To which the dread screamed, “You suck de same monkey too.” And the preacher began to beat him with the bible. “Shala-mala, shala-maloo … Lissen, I wi put away God business and throw licks in you moddacunt, y’know. Stop dis chupidniss now!”
Further on, they passed the market, a pepperpot of food and races; and Cold Harbour Lane, the new front line, where rudebwais in Hilfiger distribute pharmaceuticals to a richer, more wanly dressed white clientele; and the park around St. Matthew’s, a hulking presence with Doric columns that due to lack of faith was no longer just a church but also an arts venue—with a restaurant in the crypt.
Continuing on Effra Road, they passed some terrace houses in need of love and care; and the Eurolink Business Centre, a hothouse of local capitalism in the shell of an old synagogue. Then moving quicker now, as Fire felt the pull of his house, they cut through Brixton Water Lane and entered Herne Hill, a scarf of relative affluence on the edge of Brock-well Park.
“So where’s Nan?” Fire asked, as they walked up the steps of the brick Victorian.
Courtney checked his watch. “On her way home from classes, I’d fink.”
They’d stopped for takeout on the way.
“She won’t be hungry when she comes?” Fire asked. “You didn’t pick up anything for her.”
Courtney thought for a second, then shrugged his shoulders.
“Is awright,” Fire said as they went inside. “I’ll make something.”
Courtney shrugged again.
“So what she doing at the polytech?” Fire asked, noting that the lawn was shaggy. Come on, he thought. You’ve living here rent-free, Courtney, you could take care of the fucking place.
“Farting around,” Courtney said, straightening the For Sale sign. “She claims she’s studying computers … she can’t even fucking type.”
“I fink it might be word processing. But I’m not really sure.”
Fire had purchased the house when he sold film rights to his first novel, The Rudies, an epic about the rise and fall of a Jamaican gang in London. At the time, the neighborhood, like a lot of Brixton, was considered marginal. Since then, however, yuppies, priced out of Thatcherite Dulwich, had moved in, increasing property values exponentially. He didn’t foresee this when he bought the place, neither did he care. He bought it for the park, an undulating green triangle, with a duck pond and a wonderful lido, where he saw nothing but sky while floating on his back in the summertime, the sun warming his face like a hot copper penny.
To command a view of the park, he kept the top floor for himself. Courtney and Nan lived in a first-floor duplex, and Phil, Fire’s first roommate when he moved to London, lived on the floor below him. Phil was away on tour with a chamber ensemble and was expected to return in a month.
“So, did Nan get called for the gig with that design firm?” Fire asked, as he made her a veggie-rice pilaf. He was down in Courtney’s kitchen. Some eggplant, which had been tossed in olive oil, was sitting aside on the counter. In a Dutch oven, the rice was simmering in a vegetable stock seasoned with onions, garlic, cinnamon, and allspice.
“No,” Courtney replied. He was sitting at the breakfast table, shoveling food into his mouth.
“What about the gig with The Face?” Fire asked, chopping the plum tomatoes.
“No.”
“I can’t see why she doesn’t get hired. She’s a good photographer.” He reached into a cupboard for a bottle of honey.
“She’s got problems,” Courtney said, flatly.
“I know,” Fire replied with a chuckle. “You.”
Courtney changed the subject. “How’s your dad?” he asked.
“Fine,” Fire replied, spilling the box of currants he was opening. “Still at the School of Art. How’s yours?”
“All right. Still a cantankerous bugger, but e’s all right. E’s still fucking around with that twenty-one-year-old Paki girl. I wish I can be like im at is age. E’s sixty-seven! D’you realize tha? And e’s still able to keep up! E’s got the dick of deaf. I’m convinced that’s how Mum died. Fuck cancer. He poked er to deaf.”
“Where’s he living now? The old man told me he moved.”
“Wimbledon. Did he also tell you Dad’s girlfriend is pregnant?”
“Get the hell outta here!”
He stirred the eggplant, the currants, and the honey into the rice. Only the dill was left.
“Serious as cancer … or getting poked to deaf for tha matter. Six months pregnant. Maybe Dad didn’t tell your old man because he didn’t want to get im jealous. Your dad’s not into girls anymore, is e?”
“Whatever.”
“So school begins next week,” Courtney said, retreating from this sensitive issue. “It’s Kings College ain it?”
“Not this year. I’m doing some fiction workshops for emerging writers at the Eurolink Center. Word Star is putting it on.”
“Well that’s mighty nice of you. From what I’ve heard they don’t have much money to pay a big shot like you. Mr. Somerset Maugham Prize. What’s next then, a Booker? Nan says you’ve been—what—short-listed for Dangling on the Brink of the Edge? Maybe that’ll be your breakthrough in America. It’s a shame you don’t do well there.”
“Well, if it should be it will be. What is for you cyaah be un-for you, y’know, Courts. The American market is so difficult. So big and so competitive. They have so many of their own writers to admire. Updike. William Kennedy. I have enough money now to do the things I like to do: buy music and books, travel, help people, laze about. And success in America might ruin that. See, Courts, there is a certain point, with money, where it can become a burden. Where you always feel like you have to be watching it. And you have to hire people to watch it for you. Then you have to start watching them. Then you won’t have any time to read books and listen to music and just laze about. And then you don’t want to help people because the money becomes an end in itself, and you become so taken up with making it grow, as they say, that you don’t want to do anything that might make it stand still even for a little bit. Yeah, I want my money to grow. But not like a tree. Like grass. Spread out.”
“So is Word Star paying you then?”
“Of course. If you give away things for free people don’t appreciate it. They begin to feel entitled. And that’s a bad thing. No one’s entitled to anything but a fair chance, kind encouragement, and a kick in the ass when they keep fucking up, Courts. And that’s why I’m over here. But should I really have to do this? Where are the black writers who were born here and spent most of their lives here? The ones who’ve done really well? America. That’s where they are. Teaching in the best universities.”
“Would you call them sellouts?”
“No. It’s quite complex. They’re trying to get the biggest market for their work. And that’s understandable. There’re only a million and a half black people in all of Britain versus thirty-two million in the States. I guess they feel they have to get more before they can start giving back. Labels like ‘sellout’ are too simple to describe the challenges faced by black people, Courts. Have always been. No, I wouldn’t call them sellouts. They’ve had to take a different route because they haven’t been as lucky as I’ve been. By the way, how are Little J and Kyle and Locksley?”
“They moved to America—Brooklyn, I believe. A lot of people have moved over there. England’s getting tougher and tougher every day. Layoffs everywhere. Maybe I should move over there. The funeral business must be better over there wif all the drive-by killings and disgruntled postal workers. Not to mention cancer and hypertension. Shit! Over ere I’ve got to wait for a car to run over somebody or until someone dies of old age or boredom.”
Fire and Courtney stayed up chatting about cars and music until they heard the tinkling of Nan’s keys at the door. They were in the living room now. Fire was flushed with warmth when he saw her. He’d known her since they were teenagers.
“Oh, you’ve already got supper,” she said, as she walked toward Courtney to give him a kiss. She spoke with modulated precision. “I brought you supper, luv—for you too, Fire—donners.” She dug a space between them with her hips.
“I heard you’re going to the polytech, Nan,” Fire said. “What’re you taking up?”
“Computer-aided retouching—Adobe Photoshop.”
“Courts told me you were doing word processing.”
“What does he know about me? He pays me no mind. He’s too busy with his dead bodies. I’m beginning to think he’s a necrophiliac—”
“That explains my attraction to you, Nan.”
Nan slapped Courtney playfully, then continued on about school.
When Fire woke up the next morning, Nan was sitting on the edge of his futon. Wiping his hair away from his face, he sat up and gathered the covers around his middle, aware—too much so, he felt—of the form of her breasts through her light nightgown.
She’d acquired some lines in her face, he noticed—to her advantage, for they drew attention to her best features: her dark eyes and thick lashes, and her slightly crooked Cypriot nose. Poor Nan. She needed a different kind of man, Fire thought. She needed a man who encouraged without prompting. For, as bright as she was, Nan was in thrall to self-doubt. At times he was inclined to believe that Courtney withheld his support to ensure that she’d never outgrow him. Which began to make more sense now as he considered how Courtney had pressured her to drop out of university in Liverpool, where she’d gone to study math, threatening to leave her if she didn’t return to London—where there were lots of lonely black girls. In love and insecure, she obeyed him, promising her parents that she’d finish up at Goldsmith’s. But that didn’t work out, and she lucked into a job as a photographer’s assistant, which she did off and on whenever she could find time. Courtney’s ego required a lot of nursing.
“I’ve got something to show you,” she said, handing him her portfolio.
He asked her to get him a T-shirt from his duffel bag, which was sitting on the floor between a steamer trunk and a folding chair. As she turned away he flipped through quickly, preparing himself before she asked his opinion. To his relief, most of the work was good. Good but not brilliant. Solid though. Which is all most people will ever achieve in this life.
“I’m digging it,” he said, slipping on a striped gray top. “I can see where you’ve grown.” He pointed to a silver halide print of three black men, all with white hair, sitting on the stoop of a rooming house, their eyes fearless, but their coats drawn tight around them, showing their vulnerability. “Now this here is the boom shot. It’s not just about technique. It’s about empathy. You’ve steeped the essence out of these men like they were tea leaves. This is the kind of thing that Cartier-Bresson and Roy DeCarava do so well.”
“I like it, but it’s not the kind of thing that editors are looking for, I’m afraid.” She leaned across him and skipped a few pages. “This is more like it as far as they’re concerned.” Three naked women seemed to be making love to a draft horse. One had her nipples thrust toward the horse’s mouth. One had her face beneath the horse’s tail. The third was draped over the animal’s back. Adding to the quote unquote complexity was the fact that it was a mare and not a stallion.
“Well, it’s up to you to decide who you are, y’know, Nan. I’d say if this is what you have to do for a while to get through, then do it—bearing in mind, though, that with these kinds of deals with the devil you can easily forget the original intent and end up being a part of the very organism you used to run away from. So, who are you?” He flipped between the images. “This or that?”
“I don’t know,” she replied.
He put his hand in hers. She played with his fingers, as she used to before she and Courtney started going out. They’d met through their parents, who’d known each other from jet school. Her dad was a pilot for BA; his mum had flown for Air Jamaica.
“You have to decide,” he said, pulling away from her. “I hate to sound bullshitically existential, but life really is about the choices we make given our situation. You know your situation, Nan. It’s up to you to make the choice.”
“I guess.” She looked away.
“How’ve the interviews been going?”
“Not well … It’s the book, I think. It’s not very good.”
He felt a twinge of annoyance, but he didn’t show it. He resented weakness in the people he loved; that was why he did his best to make them strong. He couldn’t count on weak people during the times when he needed to be held, and reassured—which was more often than he led others to believe. This was a part of Blanche’s appeal. It hadn’t been all about love. She was the only person in the world on whom he could depend, into whose arms he would fall backward with his eyes closed, knowing she would be there to catch him with hands as big and soft as mittens.
Looking at Nan now, he saw not an old friend, but yet another person who needed to draw strength from him.
To whom, he asked himself, would he turn if he needed help right now? He couldn’t think of anyone except Blanche. And maybe not even her anymore. For she was a part of another set of problems. He thought about the letter he had written her from Brooklyn and wondered if he’d been right to mail it. Yes, he decided. She deserved it. She’d done so much. Even this house. She’d helped him to pick it out. Explained to him the nuances of down payments and mortgages, things he still didn’t know or care that much about.
“Well, Nan,” he said with a smiling face, “just put together a new one.”
“It’s expensive to do and I can’t afford it.”
“I’ll give you the money, Nan.”
“I couldn’t do that, Fire.”
“I’ll lend it to you.”
“It wouldn’t matter. I’d only fail.”
“So why’re you going to the polytech then?”
“To get out of the house. Sometimes I think I’m going crazy.”
She broke down and started to cry.
“I want a steady job, Fire … I’m tired of having to ask Courtney for things … I want to be my own person.”
She fell on top of him and he held her, stroking her hair with one hand, ignoring the discomfort of the other, which was trapped awkwardly beneath her.
Nan was depressed for days after that. There were days when Fire wanted to sit down and talk with her, but that would’ve been helping her to cheat, he thought. It was her situation. And she had to make the choice—after which, he believed, she’d be stronger.
Soon after his arrival, Fire settled into a daily rhythm anchored by his need to paint, a violent primal urge that would punch him in the belly in the middle of the night and drag him half asleep, half awake to the bathroom, shove his face under a bracing stream, kick him down the stairs to the shed in the back of the house, and jab him even as he worked furiously, in different media on different days, but never the same thing in a row, and never anything that he would have recognized as his own had he not been there to witness the work being released from the tip of his brush, which he maneuvered like a machete, slashing back and forth across the canvas as if its whiteness, its neutrality, were something that had to be destroyed, had to be chopped open and gutted so that its hidden emotions could spew forth, staining its skin with a multicolored stream that shone like blood and was bitter as bile.
This is not me, he said to himself one day after being kidnapped during a lunch break at one of his workshops. He hadn’t even bothered to wear an apron. Paint was splattered all over his shirt, his jeans, his boots, all over the floor, even on some of the work that he’d done over the previous days, work that had been left to dry against the moldy brick walls that sucked the life from the one bare bulb that hung from the ceiling by a length of cord.
Why this, and why now? he asked, considering his stylistic evolution. At home he’d been influenced by the work of his father, a master draftsman and composer in the Western realist tradition. At Yale, where he first began to imbibe the ink of Derek Walcott, he was seduced by the light of impressionism. After that was a leap to constructivism and the work of the Mexican muralists, which led him to Cuba, where he was drawn to the vibrant, rhythmic art of the color-intuitive campesinos.
And now he had done this, he half-said, half-asked, hearing in his head the feathery tenor of his father’s voice. This. The impact of the word flung his arms out wide and spun him around, showing him in the swirling abstractions a vision of himself that he recognized as neither past, present, nor future.
Sitting on the dull cement floor in a corner, beneath a tent of cobweb, he tried to remember if he’d ever experienced anything like this, resting his chin on his knees for support as his head filled up with thoughts and memories. After sorting and stacking and counting and filing and cross-referencing for date and subject and characters and ideas, he was as unclear about his compulsion as he’d been at the beginning. He checked his watch. He was fifteen minutes late. Today they would have to wait. Because the feeling was pulling him up now, and shoving him toward a canvas.
You’ve survived three weeks of this, he said to himself as he mixed some green on a palette. But what is this? he asked again. His brush bit into the unknown. What the hell is this?
With the ballerina still on her toes, floating across the stage like a mast on the horizon, the applause went up and the curtain came down, and the Dance Theater of Harlem’s benefit performance for the United Negro College Fund broke for intermission.
Sylvia, in a black dress, a string of pearls around her neck, took Lewis’s hand and walked with him, cutting her steps short, as equally handsome couples who had paid to be seen in the right company poured into the center aisle and streamed into the lobby of the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center.
Patting him on the arm as she spied Boogie Boo, Sylvia asked Lewis where he’d be. He pointed to Virgil and patted her shoulder.
“Oh, Boogie, I feel like I’ve died and gone to negro hell.”
“Oh come on, Syl,” Boogie replied. “You know black folks ain’t got money till they showing it. And ain’t nobody can work an evening gown like a sister who knows her hair’s a-yit. After looking at some o’ them hairstyles tonight I’ve got a mind to quit work tomorrow and open me a shop.”
“Stop, Boogie, stop,” Sylvia whispered through her teeth. “Can’t you see I’m being sophisticated in my too-high shoes. Goddamn, girl, if these hooker pumps don’t kill me, you will.”
“Oh come on, Syl, you know whamtalkin about. Just check it right. On the night before an event like this a stylist is a sister’s best friend. See, cause sisters know they can’t always vouch for black hair. Cause black hair likes to improvise. Black hair is like fucking jazz. And not swing either. Bebop. Why d’you think so many sisters are wearing dreads today? Dreads can’t do shit but stay nappy.”
“So where’s your date, by the way?” Sylvia asked.
“The fellas I talk to wouldn’t wanna be here.”
“They might have if you’d told them it was a Dance Theater of Harlem event.”
“Oh, it’s not about ballet or anything like that. It’s about the people they’d have to deal with. The men I talk to would see right straight through this bullshit. This has nothing to do with ballet or the United Negro College Fund. Come on now, Syl, you’re older than me. You know that. If it was all about helping they’d donate the money at the end of the year and claim it on their taxes. Why pay a toll from Jersey to be here, and add to your expenses? But it’s all about macking. They make it seem like only ghetto people mack. It’s the same thing. This is like Bentley’s on a Friday night. But instead of mail room clerks in their one tired suit, you have CPAs in their one tuxedo.”
“By the way,” Sylvia asked, through a laugh, “how’d you get tickets to this?”
“Well, you only needed two, right? It’s not like you have a family or anything.”
As she laughed with Boogie Boo, Sylvia asked herself, Is this really how I want to live my life … surrounded by these people? She didn’t. Then why, she asked, did I telephone Lewis and make up with him two weeks ago?
“Virge.”
“Lou.”
“How’re you doing?”
A photographer for Jet magazine was right on cue, documenting this historic occasion for black posterity. Two black men in black tuxedos hugging.
“So how’ve you been, stranger?” Virgil asked, keeping his arm around Lewis’s shoulders.
“Good. Just busy trying to make some money.”
“Let’s put it this way. If I complained I’d be ungrateful. They believe in me. No one asks any questions.”
The lights blinked.
“What’re you doing later?” Virgil asked as they headed back to their seats. “Come uptown with me for a private after-party. A little group’s getting together.”
He whispered the details in Lewis’s ear, nibbling a bit on his earlobe.
“You’re gonna get yourself in trouble,” Lewis said with a chuckle. “You’re looking too good tonight.”
“Oh, I keep forgetting,” Virgil muttered, as Sylvia approached, “that we’re not like that anymore.”
“And I think it might be best if it stayed that way.”
They’d been “like that” as a matter of convenience five years ago. The involvement lasted a few months, then petered out after they both realized that the essence of the attraction had been neither love nor lust, but status—like the feeling of wanting to drive a Rolls but not really wanting to own one.
They remained in touch, however, which wasn’t difficult, the black bourgeoisie being so small and inbred, and washed each other’s back over the years. But it was always conditional. Scrub for scrub. A rule that was never made explicit, seeing that they both accepted recompense as a very basic principle.
The after-party was held at the home of a prominent attorney on Hamilton Terrace, a crescent of limestone houses on a hill above City College. There Sylvia suffered her way through an evening of cocktails and banal conversation with a group of politicians, businessmen, and academics. Where are you, Boogie Boo, when I need you? she thought, as she listened to Lewis drone on about his latest redevelopment plan for central Harlem.
As a leading attorney tried to impress her by reciting Phyllis Wheatley, she asked, “Have you read Rita Dove? Or Yusef Komunyakaa?” He had not. She asked to be excused and locked herself in the bathroom for ten minutes to renew herself. Her arches were killing her. She wanted to take her shoes off. But it wouldn’t look good, now would it?
While she was gone, Lewis and Virgil withdrew to the terrace.
“Did you hear that Sekou’s wife is leaving him?” Lewis asked, referring to a Columbia professor whose marriage seemed Kodak-perfect as they spoke.
“No,” Virgil said, leaning closer.
“For a white man,” Lewis continued. “Brother Africa is dying, I hear.”
“Actually, I don’t think it’s because it’s a white man. He doesn’t want her with any man. He doesn’t want competition. You’ve heard about him, haven’t you?”
“I’ve heard rumors, but I don’t pay them any mind. Niggers talk a lotta shit.”
“Speaking of niggers talking … I heard the other day that you and Sylvia had broken up.”
“Oh. That was a big rumor. Everything’s fine.”
“Can I tell you something frankly, Lewis?”
“Go ahead. If you’ve got something to say, don’t hold back.”
“I never thought you two were a good match. I mean … I can’t tell you who to choose, but … let’s see … how can I put it? … Sylvia is just not grounded enough for you. She lacks a certain aggressiveness. She’s talented enough to be a queen bee but she’s content with being a worker—does that analogy make any sense? She doesn’t place herself in the right contexts to get noticed. I used to think she was lazy. I’m inclined to believe that she’s just not ambitious. And her politics are just so bizarre. I don’t think she understands the black experience. I couldn’t believe it when I saw her résumé: she’d never worked for a black organization in her life. That should’ve cued me in. Suffice it to say, we have political problems …”
“Like what?”
“And I know I don’t have to say that this is just between us, but take Congressman DeVeaux …”
During his time of great confusion, Fire received several letters from Blanche, and wrote to her in return.
In the beginning it was little more than an expression of obligation. She had responded to the letter that he’d mailed her from Brooklyn, explaining with economy and mature composure that she had used the time away from him to think about their history, and that she had now come to the conclusion that her desire for a relationship was selfish and unreasonable, and that she would simply like to be his friend. Why lose that? she asked. Who knows me better than you do? She didn’t mention the flowers; neither did she comment on the story he related. And she completely ignored his mopey expression of love, which had begun to worry him after he’d dropped the letter in the mailbox, for it promised much more than he thought he was capable of giving.
His reply, hastily drafted in pencil on composition paper while he rode the bus to his workshop, was brief, considerate, and sincere. She shouldn’t call. They needed distance for the new reality to set in. Writing was fine, but he couldn’t promise either long or speedy replies. And although she was under no obligation to agree, he thought it would be best if she immediately returned the house keys to Miss Gita and took any belongings that she might have at the house back to her apartment. Sarge would take care of his things at hers.
He heard from her within a week. A cheery note saying that she’d done all he’d asked, reminding him however that Sarge couldn’t locate his set of keys for her apartment. Did he have them in London? And would he, if he did, send them via express mail along with a few books she hungered for.
He went to Foyle’s in Charing Cross Road and the next day mailed her five volumes, two collections of poetry and three long novels, along with the keys and a rambling letter of apology that found its purpose in the last line: “There is something unsettlingly final about this.”
To which she replied in a postcard delivered via two-day service: “That is not what I want to hear. What I want to hear is, ‘Blanche, I don’t need you to look after me anymore.’ Can you say that, Fire? Can you honestly say that?”
Shortly thereafter he was faced with a second compulsion—exchanging with her, by express post, thick, honest letters examining their history from the beginning till now.
One morning, just before sunrise, five weeks after he arrived, he was drawn from sleep by a sound that seemed to be calling from a distance. A sound as soft as it was beautiful, like moondrops falling on a mountain lake. Still groggy, he opened his eyes and made out through the mist of semi-consciousness a ghostlike figure drifting across the room—shirtless, he gathered, from the flash of pink that leaped from the dark when the man, as he now realized, passed under the trickle of window light.
As he sat up, unsure if he was dreaming or awake, the figure leaned against the back of a chair, revealing its familiar profile—the long neck and narrow shoulders that seemed to have been drawn by Dr. Seuss.
“Phil,” Fire said, fully awake now. “How the fuck’re you doing?”
Gangly, with buzz-cut sandy hair, Phil held his horn like a baby and slapped him five, taking a seat on the edge of the futon.
“So when’d you get in?” Fire asked.
“Oh, I just got in about a half hour ago,” he said, gray eyes bulging. “Fuck, after hearing you snoring from downstairs, I said I’d have to wake you up so I could get some sleep.” He began to laugh. Spastically. Which is the way he did everything except play music—as if God felt guilty for giving him so much talent and chose to deny him many other qualities, including shrewdness. As Ian liked to say, Phil was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Neither was he stylish. His glasses, which were clearly too large, bloomed out of his nose like the wings of a moth.
What he was, though, was loyal and genuine. And giving. Qualities that Fire could not always ascribe to Ian. As a result, there’d been a time when Phil had replaced Ian as the person closest to him.
As he’d recently written to Blanche, second to her, Phil was the person who knew him best. Ian had known him longer, but not as deeply. There were a few reasons for this, he had written. In some ways he and Ian were rivals. Ian was the more gifted artist. And as a result Fire’s father had paid him more attention, seemed to encourage him more, and to have higher expectations; that was one reason why he and his father had begun to drift apart. Also, Ian had lived apart from Fire during crucial periods of his life, had not traveled with him on many important journeys and waited with him at crucial junctures. During college and the years immediately following, they had mostly written, and in fact had lived together only as adults in Lisbon—only for about two and a half years. He’d lived with Phil for five. And Phil had seen him through his artistic breakthrough and triumph, and had watched over him during all of Blanche … Although Phil couldn’t offer any meaningful advice as Fire tried to unravel himself from the memory of Blanche after she’d left him for her husband that very last time, his support was unfailing.
“So when are we going to have a drink, then?” Phil asked when he’d finished telling Fire about his tour.
“Maybe next week,” he replied, getting out of bed now, as he heard the urge crunching up the stairs to the landing and stopping at his door.
“Well, you know I’m going to New York on Monday, don’t you?”
“No, I didn’t. What for?”
“An audition for the New York Philharmonic. Keep your fingers crossed. Hopefully I’ll get hired so I can stop living hand to mouth. By the way, has Courtney spoken to you about the rent?”
“No.”
“I’m two months behind, but I’ve got some money coming in. I’ll catch up in the autumn. By then a number of things should have straightened out.”
“Hey, man,” Fire told him. “Come on, Phil, how often did I have my rent that first year when we lived together? Pay it when you have it. Otherwise don’t worry about it. If you want something to worry about, worry about your audition. You need a place to stay over there?”
“I’ll be staying with Ian.”
“Are you sure he knows this?” Fire asked. “He didn’t mention anything to me. I’d double-check with him if I were you. Plus you know his situation … it’s up to you, really. I played it safe and stayed in a hotel.”
“Well money’s a bit tight at the moment, and I’ll only be there for a few days. I guess I could manage it if I had to. The audition is what really matters to me. I just have to do what I need to do to get through it. I need this one bad, man. If I don’t get it, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Fire was up now, pulling on his jeans and heading down the stairs without shirt or shoes. Phil trailed behind him.
“Where you going?” he asked.
“To paint.”
“Shit, you haven’t done that in years.”
“And you should see the stuff I’m doing. It’ll blow your mind. It’s blowing mine.”
“D’you know what I see when I look at this one?” Phil said, biting his lower lip as he picked up one of what were now over a hundred and fifty canvases.
“No,” Fire said, working furiously, wondering if this interpretation would be as classic as the last.
“I see a bird, right … flying through a forest … but like the forest is burning up … that’s what all this red messy-looking stuff is here.” He pointed to something that Fire didn’t recognize as anything. “But the bird is flying through these flames—”
“Phil,” Fire asked as he mixed some yellow, “so how come the bird isn’t getting burnt?”
“Well, cause it’s not real flames. It’s only a picture, and the bird knows that.”
“So it’s a real bird, then, flying through a picture?”
“Right. Oh, come on, Fire, it can be anything you want it to be. That’s what I want it to be.”
Fire began to hack away with the yellow, slicing through a layer of green.
“So, Phil, why would you want to see this particular scenario—a bird flying through fake flames?”
“Well,” Phil began, picking up another piece, “I was watching this program on television about a brushfire and there were all these little birds that died. And I began to think of a way to help animals in fires. And so I started thinking that maybe Du Pont or one of those companies could make a spray that would make animals fireproof. Y’know, something that you could spread like insecticide … I really can’t explain how it would work. But I think it’s worth looking into—”
“Right, but where does the fake picture come in?”
“So what? You believe that everything in life is real? How do you know we’re not dreaming this right now? Someone asked me that the other day and I couldn’t answer.”
Fire looked at Phil, looked at the work in progress, and looked back at Phil and began to laugh. “Because,” he said, “it would be a fucking nightmare.”
“Maybe we’re onto something,” Phil said. “What did Freud say about dreams? I know you probably know.”
Fire spent about thirty minutes trying to explain Freud to him, then gave up after Phil began adding his own theories to anything that didn’t make sense to him. The good thing, though, was that talking had somehow made the urge go away.
While Phil locked up the shed, Fire walked to a shaded spot by the back fence and sat on a bench beneath the apple trees, which were heavy with leaves and fruit.
“There might be something in that whole dream thing, you know,” Phil said, as he sat next to him. “What have you been dreaming about?”
He couldn’t remember. Not just what he dreamed. He couldn’t remember dreaming.
“Well, what are you not dreaming about, then?”
“I know you’re trying to be helpful, Phil, but maybe this is one of those things that will work itself out over time.”
“I think I’m onto something though. Okay, name five things that you’re not dreaming about.”
“Phil, don’t you realize that any five things will do?”
“Okay then, name five.”
“Why? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Okay then, so name four.”
Fire began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.
“Okay then, three.”
“Phil, stop … please.” He was laughing hysterically now.
Nan came out to her window and shook her head at them.
“Okay, name two.”
“I can’t think right now.”
“Okay, name one then. Name one thing that you haven’t been dreaming about because you’re scared of dreaming about it.”
And Fire heard himself say, “Sylvia.”
Then suddenly, as if seized by a falcon, his soul was picked up, yanked up, ripped from his body and taken way into the sky, above the clouds, across the time-and-space divide, and he saw their affair laid out on a timeline, and witnessed the moment when he decided to protect his feelings by trying to forget. As soon as he’d written her that goodbye letter, he saw, he had willed her memory away, putting to use that psychic muscle that adolescent girls often use to will away their periods because they’re afraid of becoming women.
Now, sitting on the bench beneath the apple trees, smelling the unctuous aroma of the fallen fruit, he lived again the feeling that washed his body when she appeared at the door in her sarong … barefoot … molasses dribbling over her toes. Oh, he thought, as the hairs on his body curled over and began to massage his skin, I miss her so. I want her now. I want her here with me, on this bench, so that I can cradle my head in her lap and have her talk to me, about anything, in any language, even if it’s one that I don’t understand. He began to inhale the smell of her hair, which was strange because there had been no memory of it until now, as he thought of holding her and rocking her in the back of the cab. As he thought about this her sweat began to bead his lips like dew. When he had actually kissed her, he hadn’t smelled or tasted anything. Now he was getting a kind of scent like … or was it? Each time he tried to name it, it caught a breeze and flew away.
That afternoon, Fire went to the London Graphics Center in Covent Garden and bought some supplies. He stayed up working into the night.
When Phil left for New York, he carried with him a very special gift.
Phil called Sylvia as soon as he checked into the Fulton Inn. He’d taken Fire’s advice and decided not to stay with Ian.
“Hello, Umbra magazine. How may I help you?”
“Good morning. May I speak to one Sylvia Lucas, please?”
“One moment.”
“Sylvia Lucas speaking.”
“Hello, Sylvia, my name is Philip Llewellyn,” he said, remembering the script that he’d been given. “I’m over here from England for a bit and I’ve got a little parcel for you from a famous blues singer by the name of Muddy Waters. When do you suppose we could meet up so I can give it to you?”
There was silence on the line.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s … awfully nice of him. Oh … I didn’t think that he remembered me. Oh, wow … I don’t know what to say. Aah … that’s a really nice of him thing to do. Oh, sorry, that didn’t make much sense, did it? I’m a little disoriented today. What’s your schedule like, Phil? How soon can we meet?”
“Well, I’ve got some auditions coming up, and, to tell the truth, I’m not terribly familiar with New York. It’s my first time. Maybe if I told you where I am staying, you could arrange to meet me sometime.”
“Okay, Phil, where are you?”
They made arrangements to meet that evening.
The sun was low across the tops of the trees in Prospect Park when Sylvia entered the lobby of the Fulton Inn with a bouquet of cut flowers, hoping that it had really been Fire who called—wishing, as her heart rolled around like a child demanding to be born, that Phil was simply a character that Fire had assumed to make this surprise even more special, and that he would step out from behind one of these columns and smile at her now. Any minute.
This would not happen though. She asked the concierge for Phil and was told that he was out.
“Did he leave a package for anyone?”
She was handed a small burlap sack containing a box wrapped in corrugated brown paper, topped with a sisal bow.
Flushed with curiosity and excitement, Sylvia kept peeking into the bag on the way home, happy not so much that he had sent her a gift, as that he had remembered her.
As soon as she got in, she sat on the bed and opened the box, finding inside a handmade book, twenty-four pages of heavy-gauge paper bound with needle and embroidery thread. Affixed to the cover was a dried rose. Inside was a series of warmly impressionistic streetscapes languorously rendered in ink and gouache—all unified by the presence of a woman in whose form she recognized a bit of herself.
There was a poem done in calligraphy on the inside back cover. Her middle turned to liquid when she read it. She had to lie down. Flopping backward into the pillows she imagined herself as a skydiver—freefalling through the clouds, too thrilled by the feeling of weightlessness to think about hitting the ground.
PERSON
“He.” I say “he” to construct the fiction of this thing. I can now call it love and riddle his passions with old clichés. He sees her in strange cities, her body poised in orange light, and he paints her onto canvases, constant orgasms, admissions that she haunts him always. “Him,” I say, not “me”—it is all fiction.
—Fire
She wrote to him that night.
August—, 19—
Dear Fire,
I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the time we met. Thank you so much for your package. I received it today, and I was thrilled out of my mind.
When I met you my life wasn’t perfect, but I’d grown accustomed to its routine. I apologize for being so apprehensive with you, but I’m sure you can understand why.
I know that you’re probably wondering, then, why I seemed so friendly toward you when you and Claire came by that Sunday. It was because when you called my number earlier that afternoon, looking for Claire, you were concerned that I wasn’t sounding well without knowing who I was. And that told me that you are kind to people period—not just to the ones in whom you have a romantic interest. And that small act, that display of basic goodness, elevated you in my estimation.
You may prove yourself to be other than I believe you to be. Maybe you are not bad, but ordinary, like most people, who give to get. And as I survey my own life I realize that at times I have accepted this social currency as being valid, and have traded in it myself.
I don’t know much about you, Fire. As a matter of fact, I don’t know you at all. But when I met you something happened inside of me, and (since you were allowed to be trite in your letter I should have a chance too) a spark was lit. And every time I’ve been in touch with you, it has grown brighter.
I’m about to say things, Fire, that I don’t want to say, so let me go. Things about needing your nipple so bad right now. Things about touching myself the first night that I met you and falling asleep with you on my mind.
My Jamaican guy—Grace Jones won’t mind if I bite a piece of hers.
—Sylvia
Her letter arrived on one of his days off and he immediately called her. He was lounging in bed in yellow boxers, his head propped up against a pillow, a glass of water on the nightstand. A soccer player, Fire had a strong body that suggested torque rather than horsepower. He had a hard, wide chest. A dense middle. And long, sturdy legs that matched his arms.
With each spin of the dial ripples of excitement washed through his body. The excitement, however, was no longer simply romantic. There was a strong undercurrent of eroticism that was threatening to drag him out to sea and drown him. For the first time he experienced the sensuousness of the rotary dial, the slipping of his fingers into the holes, the tight fit, the twisting around, the arcing groan of the spinback. It was ten in the morning for her, three P.M. for him.
“Hello,” Sylvia said when she came on the line, “how are you?”
“Fine, and yourself?”
“Good, thank you.”
“I have your letter here,” he said, “and I’d just like you to know that it’s nice to know that you think I’m nice.”
“But you are.”
“You’re at work, right? I can’t remember where I called you.”
“Yes, I’m at work. What are you doing?”
“I’m in bed,” he replied.
“Lucky you.”
“Not really … I’m alone.”
“I was alone in my bed last night, but you don’t hear me complaining,” she said.
He closed his eyes and pictured her lying next to him … in her sarong … with a smooth leg thrown over his … a warm hand on his chest … moist lips foraging along the back of his neck.
“What’s your bed like?” he asked, catching her off guard.
“It’s a bed … rectangular … mattress … box spring … sheets,” she replied, slipping through a fissure, falling into his groove.
“Are you in bed right now?” There was a wetness beneath her. She paused awhile to enjoy it.
“Yes,” she replied.
Her legs were falling open.
“Are you alone?”
“No.”
“Who is there with you?” he asked.
“You.”
“And what am I doing?”
She closed her eyes.
“You’re lying beside me and rubbing my belly.”
“Do you like the way I’m rubbing it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re gentle, and …”
“And?”
“… you have this way of making your strokes stray into the waist of my underwear and up against my breast.”
She slipped a hand beneath her skirt.
“And you like that?” he asked.
“Yes … Fire … I do.”
“I’m using my lips now, to do what my hand was doing before. Which do you prefer?”
“Your lips.”
“Okay, I’ll use my lips then. But what should I do with my hands?”
“Caress my breasts.”
“With both of them?”
“No. Use one to caress my breasts and use the other one to play with me.”
“Where should I play with you?”
“Inside my underwear.”
“My hand is there now, inside your underwear. It’s very wet here. And warm.”
“I know,” she replied, “you have made it that way. Play with me.”
Her fingers eased the silk away. And her flesh gave way to her softest touch like mud on the floor of a still lagoon.
“What should I play with?” he asked.
“You know what to play with.”
“How do you know that I know?”
“You know.”
“Maybe I don’t.”
“Don’t make me say it,” she said. She was breathing heavily and her voice was trembling. “Don’t make me tell you to play with my clit and finger-fu … manipulate me inside with your fingers.”
“Because I’m fingering myself as I’m talking to you and I want to come so badly. But someone could come through this door any minute.”
Fire felt a coolness near his waist, and looked down to see his cock growing toward his chest from the moist heat inside his boxers. He held it. It was hard and brown like a length of renta yam. At the top, in a nick, a custard-colored sap spilled out in soft eruptions.
“So if you want to come, then come. I’ll hug you.”
“Don’t hug me … make love to me.”
“Fast or slow?” he asked, rolling over on his belly.
“Slow at first,” she said. “Put it a little way in then pull it out, so I can savor the size of the head. Tease me with it.”
“There you go.”
“Yessss.”
“Like that?”
“Yessss. Now push it deeper.” She had two fingers inside her now.
“Like this?”
“Yessss. Stroke me deep.”
“I’m up against something, what is it?”
“That’s my cervix. You’re all the way inside me.”
“I didn’t realize that I was so deep.”
“You’re very deep. I like to feel you up there, Fire. I like to feel you up there. Now move around inside me and make me wetter. I know you can do that.”
“Like this?”
“Yes.”
“Faster or slower?”
“Just like that.”
“What should I do just like that?”
“Make love to me.”
“What?”
“Make love to me, Fire. Make love to me.”
“Fast or slow? Hard or soft?”
“Okay, I’m making love to you fast and hard.”
“Yes, I’m wet enough that you can make love to me as fast and as hard as you want.” She clamped the phone with her neck. “Pump me.”
“Can you hear me smacking up against you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you feel my perspiration wetting you?”
“Yes.”
“Dripping off my chin into your face?”
“Yes.”
“Raise your legs for me.”
“Oh God!”
“Raise your hips so I can get my hands beneath them.”
“Oh God!”
“Move with me.”
“Oh God!”
“Now hold still and take me. Take me. Take me however you want.”
“Come with me, Fire!” she whispered through clenched teeth. “Come with me! Come … with … meeeeeeee!”
She leaned back against her chair and pulled her knees toward her chest, struggling to catch her breath.
“Hush, baby, lay on my chest. I have you,” he said. “Lay on my chest. I have you.”
She composed herself before replying.
“Fire, I can’t believe that I just did that … I can’t believe that … Oh God, my skirt is all wet … Shit … If someone had walked in—”
“When are we going to see each other?” he interrupted. “I think it needs to be soon.”
“I don’t know,” she replied awkwardly. “You’re there, I’m here.”
“I want to see you, Sylvia.”
“I want to see you too … Fire,” she replied, while considering that she was back with Lewis now.
“Because …” she began.
“Because?” he asked, urging her through her loss of words.
“When I see you I’ll tell you,” she replied, laughing to ease the tension.
“I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m coming to see you.”
“You’re joking, right? You’re always joking.”
“No, I’m serious.”
“Where are you going to stay?”
“With you.”
“That’s not … very … practical … right now.”
“It doesn’t matter where I stay, really, as long as I get a chance to see you.”
“You’re going to come for how long?”
“The weekend.”
“Just to see me?”
“Yeah,” he said casually.
“Right.”
“You think I’m joking, don’t you?”
“Of course you’re joking,” she said.
“Well, what are you going to do when you see me sitting on your doorstep?”
He was laughing. So was she. Then she suddenly became silent.
“You have company, I gather,” Fire said.
“Yes,” she replied, trying to sound businesslike. “Can I get back to you on that? … Okay, bye.”
Virgil had entered her office in a huff. Shit, she thought. That whole thing with the receipts again. She had to get them in tomorrow morning, he said, or there would be trouble.
Unfortunately, she didn’t know where to find them.
Sylvia got up the next morning and continued the frantic search that had begun the night before. Her apartment was a mess. Desk drawers were out and their innards scattered widely. Books covered the living room like pebbles on a beach. Sitting on the coffee table in her white pajamas, she covered her face with her hands and tried her best to remember. Where were they? Where could they be?
It was 8:15 and … Shit, she realized. She needed the 8:00 A.M. train because she had a meeting at … Shit, she needed an earlier train at like quarter of to catch an 8:30 meeting.
Picking her way over the rubble she dashed in and out of the shower and scrambled to get dressed in the bedroom—she slipped on some slacks and jumped into some shoes and hauled on a top without any consideration, then shot out the door.
As she closed it, though, she remembered. She’d left her portfolio inside. She bolted back inside to grab it, but it wasn’t where she thought she’d left it. In the hall room. By her computer. Where was it? By the time she’d decided that she had to leave it, it was 8:30. What to do? What to do? Better call the office. But where was the phone? Not where it was supposed to be. Hadn’t she just seen it when she was looking for her portfolio? She thought so. But she hadn’t been looking for the phone then, so she wasn’t quite sure.
She couldn’t believe she had allowed herself to come to this—to be so out of control. In the first place she should’ve filed the receipts a while ago. But to have the place a mess like this was completely unforgivable. A part of her wanted to smile when she thought of the reason, the force that had exploded within her, creating this shambles in which she was standing now, this outward expression of her state of mind.
He made me come, she was thinking … with words … over the phone … from a distance. He made me let go. Made me feel okay to step outside myself. Made me feel feelings that I’d locked away since Syd.
For most of her life she had accepted that it was her, she was thinking now, and her baggage. And although Sylvia had stopped faking orgasms a few years ago, she still had a sense of being incomplete, and felt awkward about touching herself in the presence of a lover. She’d been disappointed every time that she had tried. A lot of men felt it was a form of castration. Others thought it was a show and pulled away to watch. Then there were those like Lewis, who tried but simply didn’t know what to do … no matter how many times and in how many ways she’d tried to show him. So she usually did it alone. Fire … Fire … Fire. She was hearing his voice now. How is it that you just know?
It’s so simple. An orgasm, at its core, is a mind thing.
But, yes, she had to call her office. Where was the fucking phone? In her mind she saw it on the bed and she went to dig through stacks of paper there. There, under the pillow she was sure she felt it. Shit, it was the remote. She tossed it in frustration and heard behind her the crash of glass and the thud of wood.
She leaped across the bed to investigate, scattering clothes and paper. One of her favorite pieces of art was a small collage by James Denmark. Now the glass was shattered. The frame was broken. And the work itself had a two-inch rip.
And as she went for the broom and dustpan, the phone began to ring. Where was it coming from? She listened, cocking her head. The kitchen. She stumbled through the mess. The fridge. The fridge. The goddamn phone was in the fridge.
“Hello,” she said frantically.
“Hi, Sylvia. How are you?” It was Lewis.
She checked her watch. It was almost nine. “I can’t talk now, honey. Ring me at the office.”
“What’s the hurry?”
“I have a meeting with Virgil and I’m already late. Is it something urgent?”
“Actually, Virgil asked me to call you to tell you that the meeting won’t be happening till tomorrow.”
“Why would he ask you to do that?” she asked, leaning against the fridge. The closeness of Lewis and Virgil had always bothered her. “I work for him, not you.”
“Well … he’s here at my place. The other night, at Lincoln Center, we started a dialogue that might turn into something big. So we’re having a breakfast meeting. It started early and now it’s running over.”
She toyed with a jar of black pepper as she composed her thoughts. “You’re not his messenger boy, Lewis. Let me speak to him.”
“Sylvia, calm down.” It sounded to her as if he had placed his hand over the receiver. “Virge and I have a friendship that goes back before you. Don’t forget that. Don’t encroach on it.”
“Do you know what, Lewis? Whatever … this just shows complete disregard for me as a professional. I hope you know that. To ask you to call me to cancel a meeting.”
“Well, if you’d been at the office as you were supposed to I’m sure I wouldn’t have to do this.”
“First of all, I’m always on time, so there’s no need to call me out on that, okay? And second of all … I don’t have time for this. Look, I’ll talk to you whenever.”
She hung up.
He called back. “Don’t you ever fucking do that again!”
“Leave me alone, Lewis. You are just so small to me right now. Just leave me the fuck alone.”
“I did the other day and you came running back.”
She threw the jar against the wall. It exploded like a powder keg.
“Are you saying that you don’t want this? Just tell me if that’s what you’re saying. Be big about it,” she said.
“All I’m gonna say, and I’m not gonna say any more right now because this is all looking very unprofessional, is this. If we split up I know for sure I can survive.”
“Fuck you!”
She hung up again and marched out of the house. Fuck the portfolio. Fuck the receipts. Fuck everything right now.
But somewhere along that short passage from the front door to the stoop, as Sylvia left the safety of her home for a place where she’d lost control, an invisible hand pressed the anger from her and wet her down with fear. For as she stepped out into the bright, hot morning, she was quaking with the primal fear of darkness—a fear grounded in the infinity of fearful possibilities, the fear of not even knowing what she shouldn’t be afraid of.
Why does he think he can talk to me like that? she asked herself. What have I done? What am I doing? Why did I go back to him? What was there to prove? What was there to gain?
The questions echoed in her belly like stones dropped down a well. Feeling weighed down, she sat on the stoop in her wrinkled clothes that didn’t match, and thought about the mess that was her life. At times like these, she thought, it would be nice to have a father or a brother or a son—a man to reassure her that it was them and not her that was fucked up.
How was it that Lewis couldn’t understand her hurt? she wondered. Or was it that he did, but simply didn’t care? He said he could survive if they broke up. What was he implying? That she couldn’t? By what ludicrous standard was he measuring her? She came into this world alone and she would leave alone. At first this declaration filled her with defiance. Soon after, though, as she considered that she was alone now, and had been for most of her life, she began to feel vulnerable. If she lost her job there was no family to move back to, or any sibling to put her up, or any uncle to arrange a job. Unlike him. Unlike most people. Was that what he’d meant? If so, he was right in a way. Which made her depressed now, made her turn her face from the sun and hide it between her knees.
She began to hum, the monotony of the sound echoing the white noise that filled her head.
A dog barked. She looked up out of reflex, then dropped her head again.
Footsteps went by. Three people, by the sound of it. A man and a woman, talking to each other. The third person, the one in slippers, did not speak. Those steps trailed the others.
A truck rumbled by and stopped a few doors down. She recognized the driver’s voice. UPS. Overhead a plane descended toward La Guardia. Down the street someone was watering their garden. Mr. Jonas, most likely; he was always getting shrubs delivered from Calyx.
More footsteps. From the direction of Mr. Jonas. Man. Definitely. The bite of the heel into the pavement said that. And the length of the stride. White man, most likely. A black man around at this time of day was most likely making deliveries. Which most likely meant sneakers.
Other steps from the opposite direction. On the other side of the street. Voices too and the creak of wheels. One voice Hispanic. The other white ethnic … Italian maybe … and younger. Homemaker out with the nanny and baby. Baby who just cried out. “Put da blanket da baby.” The other voice stalled, not knowing if this was question or statement.
A car washed those sounds away and the other footsteps drew closer. Began to slow down.
A helicopter cut through above her, heading for Wall Street across the harbor.
The footsteps were replaced by the silence of a shadow.
She felt the coolness. Felt the darkness on her skin through her clothes. She anticipated the question—directions perhaps. But none was forthcoming. And the shadow was lingering.
He was watching her intensely, she could feel it. Which made her uneasy now. The neighborhood was safe but … She was vulnerable with her head down. What if he were a burglar, scoping apartments? Or a rapist?
She had to look. But should she be discreet or brazen? If she saw his face and he was in fact a criminal, that might scare him. But if he was truly dangerous, should she draw attention to herself? Or even allow him to see her face?
She heard the pavement crunch beneath his soles as he swiveled to move again. Which relieved her. Until the first step came in her direction. Up the steps.
On adrenaline now, she raised her head and wedged her hand across her brows to block the sun and defend herself and saw that it was Fire—freshly shaven, his hair brushed back, dressed in a white linen shirt that was open at the neck, and black dress pants and square-toed shoes that shone like the wheels of a new Mercedes.
Calming her with his shadow, steadying her with his eyes, he smiled at her and called her name softly, and gave her a posy of freshly cut tulips.
“I can’t … believe … you’re here,” she said, feeling the sweet release of tears. “I can’t believe you came. To see me … I thought … it was a … joke.”
He lowered himself to his haunches and took her face in his hands, holding it as if it were a porcelain vase.
“No. I wasn’t joking,” he said, using his thumbs not so much to wipe away the tears as to massage her face. “This is madness between us. And madness is a serious thing. Yes, Sylvia, I’m here. I’m here to see you.” He brushed his lips across her brows. “Why’re you crying, sweet girl?”
“Just lots of stuff,” she replied. “Nothing I’m ready to talk about right now.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “In the fullness of time. Everything happens in the fullness of time.”
They walked together to the subway, Sylvia carrying her flowers through these streets that she knew and where she was known, past old houses whose shuttered windows and drawn curtains seemed to turn a blind eye to this indiscretion, no longer feeling fit to judge, having witnessed for over a hundred years this same couple in different incarnations, making this journey toward the blissful possibilities of uncertainty.
They were lovers now. It was clear to anyone who saw them. Clear but not provable. But people can see things, and know them, without being able to explain. What did it mean, for example, that he would sweep back hedges with the forearm of his new white shirt for the simple pleasure of being beside her instead of ahead or behind? Or that her smaller, more softly shod feet were falling against the pavement in counterpoint to his longer, heavier stride, forming a single rhythm played by two? It meant that they were lovers. Lovers already in heart and mind … and very soon in body.
As they waited to cross a street, she dared to take his arm, tugging him back toward her as he leaned around a truck to check for oncoming traffic. The sensation of touching excited her. The naturalness of it. The way his smile told her it was okay for her to take responsibility for him. Desirable even.
“I didn’t tell you before,” she said as they neared the subway. They were on Henry Street, a thoroughfare flanked with storefront shops and a high-rise condo complex made of prefab concrete. “Thank you so much for the flowers. They are really beautiful. I couldn’t leave them at home. I have to take them to work with me. I hope you don’t think I’m countrified for doing that.”
“Would it matter what I think, though?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I really want you to like me right now.”
“Right now and not tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow too. But right now more than ever.”
“Okay, I like you now more than ever.”
When they reached the token booth he asked, “So when will I see you?”
“Call me at the office,” she replied. “We could have lunch. Where are you staying?”
“The Fulton Inn.”
“I didn’t mean to cry when I saw you,” she said. “I was just having a very bad morning.”
“And here I was, thinking they were tears of joy.”
“You’ve gotten lots of those, I’m sure,” she said. “You don’t need mine.”
“Yes I do. As a matter of fact I think you should cry for me right now to make me feel really wanted.”
“Boo-hoo, hoo. There you go.”
“Thank you.”
This feels so easy, she thought. So natural. She pressed her thumb against his lips, choosing it and not a finger for its softness and dexterity, for its ability to convey to him the impression of a kiss.
“I feel like I could just hold you and smooch you right here, Fire.”
“Smooch?”
“Yes, ‘smooch,’ like white people in those sixties beach movies. Smooch.”
“Well, don’t let me stop you from”—he made his brows dance—“smooching me,” he replied.
“Not here though.”
“Why?”
“For me to smooch you to show you how happy I am, I’d have to smooch you too many times … and my train is coming any minute now. You have no idea what you’ve done for me this morning, Fire. You have no idea what it means to me that you’ve come here … to Brooklyn … all the way from London … overnight … for no other reason than to see me. I needed this. But I didn’t know I did.”
An intense silence fell over them, and they stared at each other for a second, which in their heightened state of attunement felt like a minute. In this suspended flash of clarity, in which the world around him and his swirling thoughts moved slowly, showing their undersides, Fire glimpsed the logic behind the chaos of the universe. He began to understand why he needed her, and why he needed distance from Blanche. Sylvia needed him, showed her vulnerability, which made him feel useful, potent—valuable in the way of a solution to a riddle. And Blanche did not. She was older and—especially when they’d met—more accomplished in many ways, and she refused to surrender control to him even when she was ill … The most she would ask of him in those days was to bring her water, and read to her, and drive her to the doctor. And she only seemed vulnerable while begging him to return to her. After which, things would be the same. He was a child for her. At best an adolescent. But with Sylvia he could be a man … whole … ranging freely between the roles of giver and receiver.
“I’ll walk you down,” he said.
He watched her get on the train. She stared at him through the window. He moved his mouth, pretended to say something. She wrinkled her brows, trying to tell him that she didn’t understand. He pretended to say something else. She wrinkled her brows even more, transforming her face into a sign that read, “Hurry up and say it slowly. The train is about to leave.” He mouthed some more. She gave up. Put her thumb in her ear and her pinkie in her mouth to say, “Call me.” He blew her a kiss. She swallowed it, still trying to make sense out of nonsense as the train entered the long black tunnel.