Dear My Son,
I hope this leter cachis you in the best of helth. I hold my head and cry when Fire come back an tell me that he see you becus I thout I would go in my grave and not here from my ondly son. I get the money that you sen for me with Fire thank you but Im an old lady I dont have any use for so much. I dont really want for anyting. Fire have me retyred. I have a nice room for myself and he use to kuorrel if I pick up even a pin, but I tell him that I am boring when I dont have nothing to do so I cook and take care of my littl garden. I am trobling with my heart nowaday. Im going on haiti years old now. I can dead anyday so come and look for me. Son rich or poor you are my son no mater what hapen I am glad to see you. My birtday is coming at mont end and Fire ask what I want I tell him my son to come and he say right and ask you. I tell him if you cant get to come then to go to Jerusalem and see were Jesus walk woud be my other wish. As I say I dont have much use for mony so here take back a tosand pounds and by a plane ticket if this can by it and come for my birtday next month in october. If you cant come keep the mony and come another time. I am so glad to fine out your adres to right you. I learn to right a littl bit well now so you will here from me again. And dont tell Fire I send the money for you or he will kuorrel with me. Dont let me die before I see you my son. I will pray for you that you will fine a nice yung lady to care for you. Fire to. He need the same. Boat of you are good childran.
—Your mother Gita Bhagwandhat
It was Labor Day. The summer was gone.
Sitting on the edge of the low iron bed, in his illegal conversion in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, shirtless and shoeless, dressed in a pair of pea green boxers, Ian looked up from his mother’s spidery script into the sheet of silver sky that filled the windows like wrinkled foil. He withstood the bite of the glare, vowing not to cry even as the tension in his head began to buckle his face, deforming it like a hand squeezing water from a sponge.
On the kitchen counter at the far end of the loft, beyond the barber chairs and low glass table that marked the den, and the scuffed floorboards beneath the basketball hoop, the West Indian Day parade—a lava flow of rum-loosened revelers in fringes, sequins, and feathers—hissed across the TV screen like the beckoning smile of a femme fatale.
My life has turned to shit, he thought as he placed the letter on the dresser and looked out the window for Margaret. He had never in his life felt so vulnerable. For he’d always depended on the strength of others. Since the argument at the gallery three months ago, he’d withdrawn from Sylvia, and she hadn’t tried to reconnect; Margaret now belonged to Phil; and he hadn’t heard from Fire since the argument about the watch. Every time he spoke to Claire he felt like confessing his arrangement with Lewis. So he’d begun to avoid her as well.
But even with all these people out of his life, he thought, looking down the street toward the entrance of the sprawling brick-and-concrete complex, he still didn’t want to see his mother, whom he resented for reasons he’d long recognized without really understanding. He loathed Miss Gita because she was East Indian. A coolie. A despised and stereotyped minority in an overwhelmingly black country. Coolie. The word seemed to knock the wind out of him. He leaned against the window ledge, which was wide and trimmed in mauve. The walls were a powder blue and hung with the work of friends, including, over the bed, a Jean-Michel Basquiat portrait of him as a king, in acrylic on hardboard.
In his head he heard the taunts. Coolie baboo shit pon hot callaloo. Coolie gyal ave white liver. Coolie can tief milk outta coffee. Sixteen coolie weigh one pound. Coolie cyaah dance. Coolie batty flat. Coolie drink dem own piss when dem thirsty.
Coolie. It was worse than nigger. Because even a nigger could call an Indian “coolie” and get away with it. But the black people don’t see it that way. They expect you to forget who you are. It’s okay to celebrate Diwali because they like to come and eat the food, the curry this and the curry that, and they like to watch you jig to the tabla drum because coolie cyaah dance and coolie gyal wi gi weh pussy once dem get excited.
Coolie gyal have white liver. Coolie gyal cyaah satisfy nuh matter how hard yuh fuck dem. Coolie gyal mighta likkle but dem big underneat. His own friends used to say these things. Like the nigger in America, the coolie in Jamaica is invisible.
So knowing this, Mama, he thought, as his shadow stained the wall, why you had six children for six different men? Why you never married even one o’ dem? Everyone—you included—likes to emphasize that I’m your only son, as if it’s the same thing as being your only child. What about your daughters? My sisters? Wha’appen to dem? Dem cyaah help you?
Now that you old everyone sorry for you. But I remember you when you was young and the cyaar man-dem used to draw up a de gate and everybody used to look and point behind your back when you walk past the standpipe in your tight-up dress—which you still used to wear when your ass and your belly start exchanging places.
And being the youngest—remember, you had me at forty-five—I grew up hearing that my sisters, most of whom had left the house by then, was just like you: some white-liver, fucky-fucky coolie gyal. Which is why I used to spend so much time with Fire’s old man although him was a faggot. But a faggot better than a whore. Faggots fuck a lot but at least they doan breed.
Mama, you doan know how it feel to walk past a bar and hear a man bawl out, “Bwai, call me ‘Mister’ cause ah coulda be yuh faada.”
Now you talking about Jesus and Jerusalem. It easy to turn Christian, eeh? Now that you old and nobody doan want you. Why now, Mama, and not then?
He heard Margaret’s key in the front door. He checked his TAG. It was four-fifteen. She’d called a half hour before to say she was leaving. In his mind he followed her from her house to his.
She lived about six blocks away, on South Elliot Avenue, but the six blocks could have easily been sixty miles. Fort Greene Park, a rolling green with tennis courts and a jogging trail, sits between DeKalb and Myrtle Avenues, not so much as a barrier but as a sieve, leaching the rehabbed brownstones and shade trees from the streets that enter it from the south. From DeKalb south to Atlantic, Fort Greene is a historic district of boutiques and cafés. It’s the manger of African America’s future—the home of acclaimed and emerging figures in music, fine art, and literature. Filmmakers. Architects. Choreographers. And fast-moving corporate executives. Beyond the park, though, is Myrtle Avenue, and the Fort Greene projects, acres of low-rise boxes like a jumbo pack of roach motels; and incorporated storefront Pentecostal churches; and bulletproof Chinese take-out joints; and liquor stores that cash welfare checks; and teenage boys who will enter manhood with the burden of children; and young girls pushing strollers when they should be pushing for a promotion.
The Navy Yard, where Ian was waiting, was north of Myrtle,north of the elevated BQE, north of the Brooklyn Correctional Facility, on the northern edge of Fort Greene, on the southern bank of the East River.
The Navy Yard, which was now an asbestos-ridden commercial park, did not allow tenants to live there. But Ian had converted some space into a residence. He needed somewhere to live. And the rent was cheap.
He showed Margaret the letter when she arrived. She sat on the bed. Her hair was pulled away from her face and tied in a knot above her head, a style that drew attention to her eyes. They were dark with thick lashes whose shadows gave the effect of kohl. She was wearing a velvet shirt that he’d given to Phil. She hadn’t wanted it when it was his, Ian noted. Brown didn’t suit her, she’d said.
The fuck is wrong with her? Wha she a-try say? This thing with Phil is serious? He laughed inside. She’d even tried to cut him off—had said she’d never sleep with him again. But here she was, only weeks beyond her declaration, ready to let off, because Phil didn’t know how to slap her despite being taught by the master.
He went to the fridge for a Guinness, asked Margaret what she wanted. She said, without looking up, red wine.
Despite all the mix-up, Ian liked having Phil around. He was jovial and domestic. He cooked and cleaned and washed. Went shopping and ran errands. Without any sort of prompting. He had a nice spirit. And hearing him practice on his trumpet from dawn till noon was indulging in aural sex.
He also liked having Phil around because he gave him access to Margaret. Because of Phil’s presence, Margaret visited often, and had even spent a few nights.
Ian pretended to be unaffected by her visits, and he kept out of her way under the guise of giving her some privacy with Phil, although she didn’t seem to cherish it. As a matter of fact she tried to outrage him by being openly sexual with Phil.
So Ian was faced with a choice between two hurts—the hurt of seeing Margaret with Phil, and the hurt of losing touch with her altogether. Through Phil, he learned about the goings-on in her life—what she ate, where she went, how she was feeling. And gleaning this information was easy because Phil spoke about Margaret constantly. He adored her.
About a month ago, Phil had made an announcement. He said it very simply: “I’m thinking about living with Margaret.” He and Ian were sitting next to each other on the staircase having dinner.
“Why? What appen?” Ian said. “You tink I runnin y’out? Stay as long as you want, man.”
“It’s not that you’re making me uncomfortable or anything,” Phil replied. “It’s just that I’m thinking of staying in America for a while and I guess I’d need my own place.”
Ian heaved a sigh and swallowed. “I mean if you get the Philharmonic gig then you’ll be over here for a while, but you can stay here for as long as you need, man,” he said, worried about the prospect of losing touch with Margaret.
“I’ve kinda soured on the Philharmonic, Ian,” Phil replied laconically.
“What you mean?”
“I’m not sure if my future is in classical music. Margaret’s been suggesting that I start thinking about jazz. She could do things for me, she says … open doors … She knows a lot of people, being at the station and all.”
“Me never know you like jazz all dat much, Phil.”
“I do. I’ve been playing more in the last couple of years … but come on, America’s where it’s at. Not England. New York. Not London.”
Ian sucked his teeth.
“Listen,” Phil continued. “It’s not just about music … I love Margaret, and I want to stay near her.”
“But does she love you?” Ian asked, trying to sow seeds of doubt.
As he thought back to a conversation they’d had that morning, Ian admitted to himself that Phil buttressed his sagging ego. Make me a stud, Phil had asked when he came out of St. Vincent’s. And in daily chats and quizzes Ian had been trying to teach him what most men had learned in a lifetime—not really expecting him to learn. He taught him out of arrogance. Even with his help, he thought, Phil could never be as good as him.
After a slow start, Phil learned a lot about sex, got the hang of it—at least in theory—as evidenced by his good scores on Ian’s pop quizzes, which came without warning or regard for place. On the train. In the tub. At breakfast. During trumpet practice.
“If you don’t want to come too fast, what you must do?” Ian asked one day as he and Phil waited on a supermarket checkout line.
“Is that before or during?” Phil replied.
“Don’t answer me back a question wid a question. Before.”
“Easy. Jerk off at least twice, at most an hour before you go. It’ll take you longer to come the third time.”
“Good. What about during?”
“When you feel it coming, look away, don’t engage in explicitly sexual talk, and think of yourself pushing your dick in the blades of a fan.”
“What if de poompoom big?”
“Deep or wide?”
“Don’t answer me back a question wid a question. Deep.”
“Well … if you’ve got her in missionary, put her legs over your shoulders, grip her by the ass, and raise yourself to a kneeling position. This combination shortens her vagina and allows an extra inch and a half of your dick to get in compared to the basic missionary.”
“What if dat don’t work?”
“Take her from the back.”
“Just from de back? You know how much ways you can fuck a woman from de back, bwai? Specify.”
“Oh. Let her kneel with her head down flat, like a Muslim at prayer … then kneel behind her on one knee with the other foot flat and that knee bent … y’know, basically crouching on one knee. Hold her by the waist and work it. It shortens her vagina more than leg-over-shoulder, plus you still get the extra inch and a half.”
“What if it’s wide?”
“Legs crossed to constrict vagina. Good positions are standing face-to-face, lying face-to-face woman on top.”
“Now, quickly. Five rules to live by de first time you fuckin a woman?”
“Always have an extra pack of condoms. Always with the lights on so you can see what you’re getting into. Always before dinner, never after—cause it’s never worth it on a full stomach. Always do it her way today to improve your chances of getting to do it your way tomorrow. Always do it twice in case tomorrow never comes.”
Margaret’s voice pulled him out of the reverie. “I think you should go and see your mother.”
She turned up the ends of her mouth to seal her opinion, hoping the conversation wouldn’t go any further because they’d argued several times about his distance from Miss Gita. She’d said to him quite often that he resented all women because he resented his mother. To which he’d often replied that she was defending her because she was a whore as well.
He was thinking of this now as she began to undress.
Fuck, they would have to be quick, he thought. Phil would be returning from the parade soon. And he didn’t want to hurt his feelings. The poor boy was naïve enough to believe that Margaret would be faithful.
“Do you want me to strip for you?” she asked, taking a sip of merlot. She smacked her lips, which were painted a coppery brown.
“We don’t have time,” he said, feeling bad for Phil momentarily. He was too nice. He didn’t deserve this.
He was feeling the heat of her lips from a distance. Those lips, he thought. Those lips.
A few days after she’d said she would never screw him again, she came to see Phil and did everything to get in his way, to rub it in. Walking around half clothed and shit.
As he lay in bed resting, he heard them in the sleeping bay above the kitchen, then on the stairs, then on the bed beside him while he pretended to sleep. He heard her moan. Heard her sigh. Heard her tell Phil to come in her mouth. Heard her slurp and swallow through these same lips.
But he didn’t respond. He held it in.
He would break her, he knew. And he had. She’d apologized afterward. By phone and in a letter. But that wasn’t the proof he needed. This was it. She was peeling the shirt down to her waist, revealing a white teddy into which her body was poured like a cup of coffee. Her breasts spilled over the top like cream on mugs of cappuccino.
You’re such a nasty bitch, he thought. He felt the urge to smack her. Which drove—or was it driven by?—his need for her to hold him and rock him and tell him that she loved him best and not Phil and that he didn’t have to worry about Miss Gita, because she would mummy him whenever he needed. As he watched her slide out of the rest of her clothes he found himself comparing the woman he’d first met with the one in front of him, the one with the fleshy hips who was lying topless on the bed in a transparent G-string, the one whose fatness pulled the spit into his mouth like the breast of a roasted chicken.
It was 1985, Ian remembered. Fire had just moved to London, and he’d begun to make a name for himself. It wasn’t a spectacular meeting. He saw her in a Paris metro station, followed her onto the train, and slipped her a drawing that he’d made of her while she stood on the platform—an opening flush that had served him well in the past. Five stops later she agreed to meet him for dinner. And the next evening he arrived at the restaurant with flowers and high expectations and met her boyfriend, whom she’d invited. She was from St. Louis, he discovered over dinner, and her boyfriend from Tallahassee. They were music students at Berklee—she in jazz piano and he in trumpet—and they were both traveling outside America for the first time. There was an endearing greenness to them, a provincialism that he liked because it defined him as cosmopolitan. So he adopted them for the rest of their stay, which was three months, and they willingly surrendered authority. He picked up the tab at meals, took them to galleries and museums, and drove them out to the country in his Alfa. Then he moved them into his apartment for the last three weeks because they ran out of money. That’s when he began to spend time with her, because her boyfriend continued to move with a crowd of posey Americans that he’d met at their hotel.
I’ve never met a man like you, she used to say all the time. You know so much, you’ve done so much and seen so much. Gosh, Ian, I wanna be like you … y’know … make money from my art. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to do that, she would say. She felt she had the talent. But she was afraid of the cycle of feast and famine. Her father, a pianist who’d recorded with Gerry Mulligan, had died in obscurity, so she knew the danger of life on the edge.
I’ve never met a man like you. Whenever she said this, he would put his hand on her shoulder, and feel her innocence drawing the anger from his soul. She created beauty so easily, he would remark to himself. Even when she played the piano. Her touch was so light it seemed she barely touched the keys, as if the keyboard were connected to her fingertips by invisible lengths of string and creating the lushest melodies was a simple matter of flexing her knuckles.
Two weeks before she left, he told her over a bottle of wine in his studio that he thought he was falling in love with her. What would it take, he asked, for her to love him in return? Nothing, she said. She was in love with him too, had fallen in love at first sight. It was his eyes, she said. She’d fallen in love with the pain there.
They kissed. It was awkward. Her tongue flapped like a child’s excited hello. No, he said, holding her face. Not like so. Like so. And taught her.
Under his guidance they kissed, they touched, undressed, and … went no further because, she said, trembling as he mounted her, she was saving herself for marriage. Promise me, she said as she dressed herself quickly, that we will never do this again. And don’t mention it ever, she added. Not even to me.
And everything was normal again—until two weeks later, when she was leaving for the States.
They got high together at the going-away party and tried again in the wine cellar. And again, as he tried to penetrate, she began to cry. She was guilty, she said. He tried to reason with her, which made her cry even more, and he became frustrated and stormed away.
Returning to the studio to brood, he caught her boyfriend cotched on a pedestal with a nodding crew cut between his legs, and he went back to find Margaret. The only way to get her for himself, he thought, was to break her heart. He led her to the room feigning innocence and made her open the door. And she ran away screaming.
It took him a while to find her. He drove around looking for her, ashamed of himself and completely in love, wanting to comfort her and beg her to stay with him. He’d never loved like that in his life. Had never loved a woman at all.
He eventually found her in the studio—at two o’clock in the morning, drunk and coked-up, lying on a workbench with her skirt up, giggling then moaning in chemically dulled pain as three of his German acquaintances had their way.
Ian still loved her then.
He loved her until, instead of stopping it as he knew he should have, he took one look at her luscious thighs and pliant lips and lay on top of her like the others and smothered his love to death. He would always hold her dear. Always have a special affection for her. Always like being close to her. But he could never love her, he told himself, because she was a whore. Since then a part of him always hated Margaret, for he blamed her for his inability to love.
“Come here,” she whispered, sliding her panties over her hips.
He glanced up at the TV as he lay down in her softness. How would he explain this to Phil? She locked her ankles round his neck. How would he explain that he and Margaret have a connection that no one else would ever understand?
“Who do you love?” he asked. He wanted to beat her. But mental pain was deeper and more lasting than physical pain, he knew. So he loved her up sweetly, told himself he was an anxious finger slipping into a wedding ring.
Who did she love? Margaret wasn’t sure anymore. She’d been with Phil for a couple of months now, and she was falling in love. Not so much with him, but with his innocence, his naïveté, his faith in human goodness—but most of all his acceptance of her as a person. She was thinking now of the first time they’d slept together after the ménage with Ian.
“How is it that you make love so beautifully?” he’d asked as they showered.
“Because I’ve fucked a lot of men,” she replied. She wanted him to understand that it was just a fling. There was a part of her that didn’t think she deserved more than that.
“Good,” he replied, “because I haven’t slept with many women, so maybe you could teach me. I’m quite inexperienced for my age.”
After he’d come out of the hospital, she’d told him to come and stay with her until his new audition date. He couldn’t afford to fly back to England and return, she knew; she also knew it would be difficult for their relationship to prosper in Ian’s shadow. After a few days, however, her neighbors began to complain about his practicing. So he went back to Ian, without knowing the depth of their history together—he thought that she and Ian were just fuck buddies.
Ian.
The man she lived to please. The man who knew her body like a musician knows his chosen instrument. The man whose touch was so unerring that when she was flat—like now—he could slide his fingers down her spine and bend her back in tune.
“Who do you love?” he asked again.
His eyes were half closed, the skin on his face rumpled like the damp sheets beneath her.
“You,” she said, smiling. In her mind her cervix was the head of a talking drum, and he was playing a love song to the gods.
“If you love me, then prove it,” he whispered. “Surrender everything. Turn over.” He reached for the lubricant. “I want complete surrender.”
He was sweet and attentive afterward, wiping her down with a cool, wet towel as she lay on her back hugging herself, her shoulders drawn up to her ears, as if she were afraid that her fluttering legs would propel her body through the open window. He brought her water, and held the back of her head as she cotched herself on her elbows to quench her only remaining thirst, and he kissed her brows as he wiped her lips. Addressing her as “baby,” he went to draw her a bath, his brows flexed haughtily after breaking her down with his cock, which was badly chafed but throbbing with excitement after escaping the noose of her anus.
“Is it wrong for me to be doing this?” she asked when he returned. She was sitting up with her legs crossed. There was a sweet burn beneath her.
His arms were splayed on the window ledge. He was pulling deeply on a Craven “A,” jetting blue smoke in the face of the reddening sky.
“What you mean?” he replied without looking around.
“Sleeping with you behind Phil’s back. Fucking you again after telling you I didn’t want that anymore.”
He turned around, his face ablaze with triumph. She gathered the sheets around her to shield herself. Fuck! She’d taken the light in his eyes for compassion. Recognizing her mistake made her angry. Gave her strength. She lay down again, feeling the urge to spit on him.
He sucked his teeth, looked at her and sucked his teeth again, thought she was cowering. Of course you can’t look me in the eye, he thought. I’ve just reminded you of how much you need me, of how you can never be faithful to any man as long as I’m alive. I’ve got the handle, baby. You’ve got the blade.
“There’s nothing wrong,” he said, stonily. “You’re a whore. Y’have a whore mentality. You cyaah get away from yourself.” He crossed his ankles and flicked some ashes in his palm, trying to appear controlled; then, forming his lips in a kiss to taunt her, he took a sip of smoke to calm his nerves.
“What makes me a whore?” She threw off the sheets and stood in front of him. Naked and afraid, but determined to protect on Phil’s behalf the seed of pride within her.
“Because you open your legs for any man,” he snapped.
“Call me what you want, Ian, but opening my legs is easier for me than opening my heart. You of all people should understand why.”
He crumpled beneath her words—a cornstalk in a shower of hail. “Why Phil?” he heard himself say. “What about me, Margaret?” His thoughts imploded, sucking in his cheeks and eyes.
“Ian,” she replied, “have you ever opened your heart to me?” She jabbed a finger in his face. “Phil has.”
“So why are you here?” he said, his voice breaking. His hands were at his sides with the palms turned toward her—ready to catch mercy if it were thrown his way. “Why are you here if he means so much to you?”
“Because I keep hoping that one day you can make me feel like it wouldn’t be a risk to open my heart to you,” she replied, taking his hands and wrapping them around her waist, holding him now and speaking into his chest, which was bare and smelled of tar and sweat. “But how can I when you call me a whore?” She pulled away and stepped back two paces as she felt herself becoming weak again. “Ian, until you can look me in the eye and tell me you’ll respect me … and that you’ll leave the past alone and judge me by the goodness I always try to show you, I’ll remain with Phil. Can you look me in the eye and do that?”
He looked away quickly, scared by what he saw reflected in her pupils—himself, or a version thereof, trying to look at her through different lenses. To humanize her would make it too easy to forgive her. And forgiveness was the first step to redemption. He was afraid of that. It would make him vulnerable. Bitterness had served him well as a strong defense.
“Let this be the last time,” he said, walking away from her. There was a gun beneath the bed. In a suitcase. A Ruger nine millimeter. Black handle with chrome barrel. Loaded. Two clips. With fifteen rounds each. “Leave now … I’m beginning to fucking hate you.”
“This is goodbye,” she said. “I hope you know that.”
She began to button her shirt. He lit another cigarette and leaned out the window. At the water’s edge, giant cranes rusted on thirty-foot legs, hooks dangling from their arms like hands with broken wrists. Was it true? Is this really the last time? As the smoke filled his chest he felt his heart shudder, then spark, then spin. Then it fell through his body in a whining spiral, a helicopter gunship downed by fire.
I made her this way, he said to himself. It’s not her fault. He was thinking now of her first return to Paris—of how much she’d changed just a year later. She was worldly and confident. Sexually experienced. They fucked the first night. He wanted to make love but she didn’t want to do more than fuck. She told him that. Placed her hand over his mouth and said that, when he told her that he loved her. Love, she said, meant entanglement. Which was why she was single—and would always be. You’re a man, she said, when he tried to discuss it … you should understand … we know how we feel about each other … fucking other people shouldn’t change that … sex is just release … so let’s be open … lies are too hard to live with.
And he accepted this. He had to. He had made her that way.
You don’t know how this feels, he thought now as he watched her jam her foot in her shoe.
The best work of his best years had been secretly dedicated to her. He was thinking especially of Seoul now. The Olympics. The commission to create the ornamental friezes for the stadium. Each of the female figures—six hundred and seventy-two of them—had parts that were modeled on hers. Eyelids. Kneecaps. Shoulder blades. Toes. Guilt was a brilliant muse. Fire thought he’d come to America to run down fame. What did he know? But then what had he told him? Nothing. Why add more to his plate, which was already filled up with Blanche. He’d even asked her to marry him—this fucking bitch who was leaving now—and she’d said no. Said some fuckery like, Only if we’re allowed to see other people.
And he’d beaten her. Kick way her leg-dem. Siddown pon her chest and pin down her hand-dem. Take out him stiff-up cocky and baton her face. Buss up her lip. Blood up her mout. Swell up her wandering eye.
Then tried to kill himself … sucked on a pistol for a half a day, but the bullet wouldn’t come.
“Goodbye, Ian.”
He looked up from the floorboards. She was on the landing now. Her hands gripped the railing as if she were thinking of vaulting downstairs to get out of his life a bit sooner.
“What should I say to Phil?” he asked.
“That he should pack his things and leave.” There was a gun under the bed. Maybe he should pull it out and shoot her.
Ian went out for a walk at about eight o’clock that evening, dressed in black. The Puerto Ricans were out on the sidewalk in their lawn chairs listening to salsa and watching the Mets on their portable TVs. Ian stopped for a little bit with a group outside a bodega and sat on a beer crate and watched part of the game, shaking hands with all the neighborhood folks who came to pay their respects to El Jamaiqueño, whom they hadn’t seen in a little while.
He moved on, and walked up Kent Avenue—the foreshore road that runs from Fort Greene up to Long Island City in Queens—through Williamsburg, where the Hasidim scurried out of his way; to Greenpoint, Little Poland, where he stopped in at a bar and shot a round of pool; then on to Astoria, Little Athens, where he had dinner at Uncle George’s.
He walked a lot that night, moving in a hunched-over shuffle like a laborer carrying a sack of cement. And he stopped in at many places. Illegal gambling dens. Warehouse raves. Strip clubs. Churches. Crack houses. Poetry readings in performance spaces. Artists’ studios. Cafés. Liquor stores. Record shops.
He walked around until he could find nowhere else to go, then walked back home.
It was two A.M. The street was deserted. The lights in the tortilla factory across the street were on, and a few cars were parked along the curb. But there was no sound—at least none that he could hear, because his hearing, like the rest of his senses, had turned inward.
Sitting down heavily on his doorstep, Ian began to think about himself and Margaret, picking up their history at the point when she left Paris.
Margaret had been the reason that he’d moved to the States. He’d kept in touch with her and continued to see her whenever he could, which was about three times a year. Because of what she’d experienced on her last night, Margaret left Paris a changed woman and in very short order had jettisoned Mr. Boyfriend along with all the trust and stability associated with a committed relationship. She neither requested nor expected a commitment from anyone, including Ian. Out of this came the ground rule that permitted—and to a great extent encouraged—openness about their myriad involvements.
At the time, Ian thought he was being cool. But as he sat on his doorstep, thinking about his past with Margaret, he realized that they’d done this to avoid dealing with the wedge that had been driven between them when he’d participated in her violation.
He would fuck her friends. She would fuck his. He would talk about his kinky experiences, she would talk about hers. And over time they succeeded in burying each other beneath the dirt that they shared, creating a thick coat of crusted muck that made it difficult for them to really touch.
Margaret’s departure sparked a creative explosion within Ian that set off a chain reaction of commissions, media hype, and skyrocketing prices throughout Europe. Striding confidently between the classical, postmodern, and primitive, Ian was on his way to stardom. What was not known, however, was that all his work—his grand statues in expansive plazas and detailed architectural friezes on public buildings and exquisite accessories in expensive homes—was an attempt to win the love of Margaret Weir. All his work, in his heart, was dedicated to her.
It didn’t matter to him that she had never made it as a musician, or that she had made only a minor success of herself in broadcasting. He knew what it felt like to love her, and he wanted to love her again. And he wanted her to love him—at least initially. But once he began to believe that winning her love was futile, he tried not to love her. He decided that it would be a bad thing. Whenever he found himself coming too close to loving her, he intentionally screwed things up. But still, he needed her.
His decision to move to New York came one night when he attended a party at the Factory—the kind of party where a rum and coke was an unchased drink and some powder, and a girlfriend was more likely to be a friend than a girl, even in those days of shallow relations.
Contrary to his reputation, he was quiet that night. He was just interested in smoking as much herb as he could, and wasn’t talking much. Freddie Mercury came over and tried to make conversation, and as they talked, Keith Haring joined them with Sylvester and Diego Peña in tow.
“André Six come yet?” Ian muttered into Diego’s ear.
“Why? You wanna see if he should be renamed André Neuf?” Diego replied jokingly.
“I want see who him coming wid,” Ian replied flatly.
“You know these models, Ian, they always come with some tired bitch.”
As Ian anticipated, André came a few hours later with Margaret. He was doing a lot of work for Calvin Klein then, and Willi Smith. He was tall and big-boned.
Margaret had told him a lot about André—too much, in fact, for too long. For once it seemed as if she was becoming involved above the waist, at least as high as the liver. And he found that threatening.
He had invited her to the party and she had turned him down, saying that André had already invited her.
“Well, I’m asking you now,” he insisted.
“But I already told him yes,” she replied casually.
“Well, cancel,” he commanded.
“I can’t,” she replied nonchalantly.
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t like that.”
“So?”
“So he wouldn’t like that, and I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”
“When did feelings begin to count?”
“They count sometimes.”
“When do mine count?”
“But he does, right?”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t?”
“C’mon, Ian, I was joking. Don’t tell me you’re serious. We’ve never been like this. It’s always been come and go as you please.”
“I’m tired of that,” he said, stonily.
“Well it suits me fine,” she snapped, put off by his insistence.
“Fuck you!”
She laughed to annoy him and walked away.
He watched her and André as they elbowed their way through the crowd. He watched them dance and he watched them kiss, unaware that he was crying until Diego told him discreetly.
And he felt something taking over his body. He called it mischief then, this thing that took him over to a bubble gum machine in a corner … this thing that made him insert coin after coin until he got a ring … this thing that made him walk up to Margaret and whisper in her ear to meet him in the stairwell … this thing that made him stand his ground when she said no.
André was standing next to her, looking on intently as he held her hand and slipped the ten-cent ring on her finger and told her to read his eyes.
“What do you see?” Ian asked.
“Immaturity,” Margaret whispered.
“Yes, but that’s not it,” he whispered back.
“You’ve got some nerve,” she whispered. “You—”
“You’re mine, Margaret,” he interjected. “And we’re leaving. Let’s stop pretending. We’re special to each other. Let’s … stop … pretending.”
He squeezed her hand and pierced her soul with the pins of his eyes, determined to bully her, beg her, bamboozle her—anything to make her leave with him.
He felt it when she relented. It was nothing that she did. He just knew. They were connected that way.
Emboldened by her collapse of will, he turned and walked to the door without so much as a backward glance, then stopped and waited with his arm outstretched behind him … waiting … a little nervous … but waiting … willing her to come to heel … a little unsure … but waiting … until he felt her hand in his. And he decided on the spot that he was not going back to Paris.
He had called it mischief then, this thing that made him make that bold move. But as he sat on his stoop thinking about all these moments he began to wonder if this thing was more than that. And the longer he thought about it, the more he was convinced that it was in fact more. And although he had screwed things up back then, it had taught him something. Maybe he needed to make another dramatic move—if it turned out that he really wanted to risk hurting her and himself again.
Ian tried to clear his head, then went inside.
He paused downstairs in the studio. The unsold pieces from the show that Fire had seen were packed up in boxes. Only two of them had sold. What did Fire think? He hadn’t said. Which meant something. He started up the stairs. And Miss Gita? Would he go and see her for her birthday? And …
Phil was on the phone speaking to Margaret. He was packing. Fuck. How would he be in touch with her now?
Ian stood still in the dark, straining to hear every word. Yes, Phil was leaving. A cab was on its way. He picked up a hammer from a workbench. Tapped it against his palm.
Phil told Margaret to hold on. “Is someone there?” he called out.
Ian didn’t answer. He was tapping harder. But he couldn’t feel it.
Phil called out again and he grunted a reply.
“Could’ve lost your life,” Phil said when Ian reached the landing. “I’ve got your gun here.”
“Oh yeah?” Ian mumbled. “You have a gun. I have a hammer. But you have something to live for. I don’t. I think you luckier than me.”
Ian feel asleep with murder on his mind. He heard the voice in his head for the first time. Kill Margaret. Kill Phil. Kill me.