That evening I took three suits from the hall closet. I hadn’t worn a suit since I worked for the bank. There was a brown one, a deep green, and a blue so dark that I bought it thinking it was black. They were all cleaned and pressed. Before he got sick my father had repaneled all the closets with cedar, so no moths had gotten to them. I rummaged around for some dress shirts and ties. They were my father’s, but we were the same size. His suits fit me too. They seemed to have more character than my straight-cuffed wear. His pants were roomier in the thighs. His socks were argyle. He had bigger shoulders than me, so the jackets were loose but stylish. There were a dozen of his suits in my mother’s closet. And they covered the rainbow.
I’d always wondered why he had so many suits. He was a butcher in Southampton his whole life until he died. I guess he just liked them.
I brought Bennet a Big Mac and fries at about 9:00. He wanted to talk to me, but I didn’t bite. I just shoved his food in and carried the dirty dishes back to the house.
The next day, after feeding the prisoner, I put on a white gabardine that my father wore and a dark-blue dress shirt and cream-colored tie. Tennis shoes were all I had to go with the ensemble, but they looked good in the full-length mirror. I noticed something different about me, but I wasn’t sure what it was. It might have been the hipster clothes, but maybe it was something else.
Giving up that mystery, I drove off to see Narciss Gully.
She wasn’t expecting me. The door to her shop was locked. But after a long while, she came from somewhere and peered through the linen curtains.
Seeing me, she was startled. I don’t know if it was the suit or the surprise appearance, but she opened the door and said, “Mr. Blakey? What are you doing here?”
“Thought I’d check up on my business.” The words didn’t sound like me and the voice was queer. I didn’t know why I had come out to Bridgehampton, to the little converted cottage that Narciss used as her shop and home.
You had to step down to enter the house. The front room was large and there were quilts everywhere—hanging from the walls, spread out on chairs, folded in stacks in the corner. The designs were rude on the whole and the cloth was old, stained, and often yellowing. The dominant color was white, and that made the room nearly glisten. Narciss wore a black skirt that came down to midcalf. It clung to her slender figure and stood out against the whiteness of the room. Her skin, with its subtle variations, seemed like a black-and-brown flame that had been stylized in a painting.
“I was working out back,” she said as an excuse or maybe as a reason to be left alone.
“I thought this shop was your work?”
“It is—in a way. I’m writing a book too, about the Negro quilts of the northeastern states. I hope that it will be a historical document as well as a craft and collecting resource. Harvard University Press wants to publish it.” She rubbed her long fingers against the side of her face and looked down at the floor.
“That sounds nice,” I said. “How long you been working on it?”
“Years,” she said, smiling an apology.
“Good work needs time,” my mother said often and I repeated then.
She smiled again and I blessed my mom.
“How’s it going with my stuff?” I asked.
“Great. I’ve sent out all of my inquiries and people are starting to respond. A few serious collectors of African American art were interested in the masks, but I told them that they were in your permanent collection.” She looked at me, and there was something like pride in her eyes.
“How much do you think we’ll get in the end?”
“I don’t know, maybe eighty thousand dollars.”
If I was in my own clothes, speaking my own words, I would have probably yipped and shouted. Instead I stuck my lips out and nodded.
“That sounds good,” I said. “Sounds like what I expected.”
Narciss was happy to be appreciated. I was happy that she was happy.
“I’ve been reading about your masks,” she said. “They’re really interesting. They were used for tribal identification, but they also were to remind their owner of their home and family—their people.”
I was listening close enough to have repeated her words but I wasn’t concerned. Her skin and fingers and figure so slight that it seemed like they could be easily broken—that’s what I was thinking about.
“You know I’m busy for the next couple of weeks,” I said. “But maybe after that we could have that dinner we keep missing.”
Miss Gully’s mind was in Africa and history and identity, but I don’t think she was upset to switch over to dating.
“That would be nice,” she said. “You know, I’ve tried to call you a few times, but there’s never been any answer.”
“I’ve been away some lately.”
“Oh? Where have you been?”
“Down to the city. I’ve been considering working in Manhattan for some time now. You know, I’ve been here my whole life. I think it’s time for a change.”
“Oh. But the city is so crowded, so overwhelming.”
I laughed in a knowing way. “Sometimes I’m crowded and overwhelmed just living in my own head.”
Who was it talking? Not me. At least I didn’t think it was me. Whoever it was, Narciss seemed to like him. She smiled and pinched my baby finger with her forefinger and thumb.
I left there, making a beeline to Bethany’s apartment.
She answered the door and we fell into each other’s arms, not wasting a single word.
When our passions were satisfied, she lay against my chest and started crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“I wait for this every day,” she sobbed. “I love you, Charles. But you don’t care.”
“There’s a lot going on right now, honey. A lot that I can’t talk about yet.”
“You got a girlfriend?”
“No. Not that. It’s inside my head. My head.”
“Will you stay with me tonight?”
“I have to go.”
“To her?”
“To who? I’m not going to anybody.”
“If you aren’t going to anyone, then why do you have to go? Don’t you like being with me?”
“I can’t explain it, Bethy,” I said and then stood up from the bed. I still had a half-hard erection. Bethany stroked the hard-on lightly underneath and it jumped at her touch. But I put on my pants anyway, being careful not to do any damage to myself with the zipper.
“If you go now you can’t come back,” she said.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t really care.
She didn’t follow me from the bedroom. Her roommate, Robin Talese, was sitting in the living-room chair. I wondered if the chubby white girl had listened to our hollering out love earlier on. From the way she was staring at my crotch, I was pretty sure that she had.
“Where have you been?” Anniston Bennet shouted when I returned to the cellar at about 10:00 that night.
“I had car trouble,” I said. “Flat tire outside of Bridgehampton. Sorry.”
I handed him a Kentucky Fried Chicken four-piece meal that came with a biscuit, corn on the cob, cole slaw, and a root beer. The large paper cup wouldn’t fit under the bars, so I creased it and poured the soda into a squat glass he’d used for lunch.
“You can’t leave me down here all day without a meal,” Anniston said in an angry but soft tone.
“You want out?” I asked. “You can leave anytime.”
He didn’t have an answer to that.
“You want the light to eat by?” I asked.
“Please,” he said.
I left without sweating for the first time. And I slept the whole night through.