I brought him breakfast and didn’t unlock the cage, so he could stay for at least the day. Maybe I’d free him that evening—that’s what I thought.
He wanted to talk more, but I refused. Just the few hints at the violence and pain he had caused set off a shaking inside me. I wandered around the floor of my house; then I tried to read a book. My mouth was producing too much saliva, and I had to swallow and spit continually. I had gas pains relieved only by foul-smelling farts. My fingers and toes felt numb. My teeth hurt at the gums.
I was scared to death. I felt like a man riding an avalanche; it was only a matter of time before I’d be plowed under and crushed.
I wanted my mother or father. Even a bad word from Uncle Brent would have been a relief from my fears. I went to the liquor cabinet but couldn’t stomach the idea of drinking.
Finally I sat down on the floor in the middle of the living room and closed my eyes. It was something I had done when I was a small boy. When everything got too exciting, I’d sit on the floor and think about the shadows on my eyelids. On a sunny day the darks and lights, the blues, grays, and reds that appeared behind closed eyes were like the ocean. I imagined myself as a little octopus, seeing the sea world and feeling safe because I had so many arms. Sometimes I’d make up little songs, humming a tune about nothing and floating in the ocean among fishes and sea kings.
I had crossed over from turmoil to childish ecstasy by the time the doorbell rang. I don’t know how long I had been sitting, but my feet were asleep and it was painful and slow for me to rise. I didn’t know how long the bell had been ringing either, but it stopped before I could hobble to the front door. I remember laughing at my exaggerated limp. Like an old man, I thought. And for some reason that made me happy.
She was headed back down the front stairs. Across the street, Miss Littleneck was watching.
“Extine,” I called out.
The woman with the big blond hair hesitated a moment and then turned around.
“Hi,” she said. “I came over to say that I was sorry.”
She was wearing jeans and a button-up blue-cotton blouse that didn’t cover her midriff. Both articles of clothing were tight. She had yellow rubber flip-flops on her feet and a yellow-and-white scarf around her neck.
Just thrown together, Uncle Brent’s voice said in my memory.
“Come on in,” I invited. She accepted with a bowed head.
“How did you find where I lived?” I asked Extine in the breakfast nook next to the kitchen. I had poured her some apple juice, which she wasn’t drinking.
“Petey said that he knew a guy who knew where your house was,” she answered.
Petey was the regular bartender at Curry’s. Somebody in town must have recognized me.
I was struck and scared by her appearance at my door. It’s not that I cared about Extine finding me, but I realized that my feeling of invisibility was false. People did see me. They knew when I passed in the street. My actions were noted no matter how small I thought I was.
“So I decided,” she continued, “to come over and apologize for leaving you out there like that.”
“Why did you leave me?” I asked.
“Jodie and By left and I told them that I would drive you home. They were mad at me because they thought I slept with you, and Byron and Sanderson are friends. I don’t know. I guess I got mad at you. I thought that you had taken advantage of me . . .”
“I passed out,” I complained. “And then you left me without a ride.”
“You put your hands on my breasts and jerked me by the arm,” she countered. “I thought you were going to rape me.”
“I don’t remember,” I said. And I didn’t. “I remember kissing you. I remember that. But I thought that that was okay. I thought you liked it.”
“That doesn’t mean I wanted your hands all over me.” She was getting angry. I could see that she was deeply bothered.
“I’m sorry, Extine,” I said. “It was a bad mix—whiskey and horsehair. Please accept my apology. You know I didn’t want to make you mad.”
“Okay,” she said as if it was the apology she had come for. “And I’m sorry too, about leaving you out there with no way to get home.”
“Why did you leave me?” I asked again.
The question surprised her. By her face I could see that she thought the answer was obvious.
“I mean,” I continued. “Did you think that you just wanted to get away from me? That you couldn’t stand one more minute in my company and you just had to leave? Or was it that you were mad at me and wanted to hurt me by making me walk all those miles lost in the woods?”
She thought about the question for a moment, and then a moment more.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was mad. I didn’t want to see you. And I didn’t know what you would be like in the morning all alone out there. When By and Jodie left, it was only you and me. I was afraid, I guess.”
“Afraid that I’d hurt you?”
“I guess.”
“Then why did you come here?”
“I felt guilty. That’s why.”
“Guilty because you kissed me? Or guilty that you left?”
Extine frowned and did not answer.
I stood up and she scrambled to her feet.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I wouldn’t have hurt you even in those woods. I’m a safe Negro. You could put a soap bubble in my hand and it’d never even pop.”
Extine liked neither the sound of my voice nor the words that I said.
“I have to go,” she said.
“Yeah. I know.”
I watched her drive away in a convertible Jaguar sports car. I don’t remember the model, but it was expensive, no doubt.
“Charles,” Miss Littleneck called from across the street.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Who was that white girl?”
“Just somebody I met.”
For a long time after she was gone, I thought about Extine. Her presence, her kisses, meant very little to me. Our physical relationship, what little of it there was, was no more than an exercise. I realized that most physical intimacy was like that for me. I liked sex, but it was only a bodily pleasure. It wasn’t an expression of love but just a need, a pleasant moment, sometimes even a chore.
What mattered about Extine was that she sought me out, that she found me. All of the women I had gotten to know after meeting Anniston Bennet had that in common. They made me real by seeking me. It’s not that they knew what they were looking for. Bethany only liked me because I resisted her erotic power. Extine . . . Extine liked horses, and at the end of a satisfying day in the saddle, she found me at her side. Narciss called me Mr. Blakey. She refused to see the solitary and jobless man who hadn’t accomplished one thing in his entire life.
It wasn’t that she was trying to form me with her blindness. She could only see in me what she needed. But because of the purity of her vision, I changed. I didn’t become what she needed, but the force she exerted on me—the impact of her desire—caused love of a sort. Not the kind of feeling that would bring us together but love still and all.
To a lesser extent I was changed by Bethany and Extine. We had shared a moment of transformation—like in one of my science-fiction novels.
After going through that long tunnel of thought, I emerged realizing that I could now answer Anniston Bennet’s question about love.
I went straight to the cellar and found Mr. Bennet with an erection. You could see the enormous arching contour under his hand-washed prison pants. I imagined that he had been masturbating when I opened the hatch and didn’t have time to calm down. I didn’t ask him about it though. I had more important things on my mind.
“Did you really sell a baby to a man’s dog?” I asked even before perching on the trunk.
I had thought that we would talk about love. I hoped to impress him with my self-realization. But once I understood my own impulses, I found that I was hungry for more understanding.
“Yes,” Bennet answered in an almost silent whisper.
“Did you know about Rwanda before it happened and didn’t say a word?”
“Yes,” he said a little louder. “But that’s different. Everyone knew that it was about to explode down there. Saying words wouldn’t have mattered. I don’t know if anything I could have done would have made a difference.”
“And you stole that painting?”
He nodded.
“. . . and killed that sergeant?”
He nodded again.
“. . . and you bought human organs from a man who dealt in that trade?”
Bennet hesitated a moment and then nodded again.
“But you still don’t think you’re a murderer? Even though somebody’s got to die to give up a heart.”
Bennet almost answered that but then swallowed and stayed silent.
“What was your failure?” I asked him.
“I thought you didn’t want to know about that?”
“I don’t,” I said. “But I have to. I have to know what I got down here. I can’t be too afraid to ask.”
“Why not, Charles?”
“Because it’s here. I took your money and now I have to know what I sold.”
Bennet’s face was filled with an emotion that I could not decipher.
“It was a device,” he said. “A device that could cause terrible damage if put into the wrong hands. I knew about a youthful indiscretion of a man who had some overseas contacts, influence. We knew each other socially, as chance would have it. But it was through e-mail, anonymously, that I delivered my threat. It wasn’t blackmail exactly because he stood to become a wealthy man with our transaction. But circumstances threw the deal out of whack. It didn’t work out.”
“What circumstances?”
“A case of conscience and subsequent suicide.” Bennet’s words were completely emotionless.
“So he saved his name without giving in to you.” I felt the victim’s triumph.
“He didn’t give in,” Bennet agreed. “But his secret was still leaked. It was in all the papers nine months ago. I had to punish him even though he was dead because there would be other candidates and they should realize that consequences go beyond the grave.”
“You are evil,” I said.
“I’m a tool, Charles. A precision tool. A tool of destruction. A tool of the dollar and the euro and the yen. But my actions are not mine alone. All the possibility of the world exists without me. That man would have died anyway. And the target of that device will one day be destroyed. That’s the way of the world. It’s not a question of good or evil. It’s a question of humanity and what is done in that name.”
“Then why put yourself down here?” I asked again.
Bennet’s erection was gone. He winced and grimaced, clutched his hands into fists.
“Don’t you understand yet? I can’t explain it like the instructions to put together a box. It’s powerful stuff. Powerful stuff. Powerful enough to destroy.”
“Do you want to get out of here?”
“No.”
“Will you answer my question?”
“I’ve already answered as well as I could.”
“I don’t believe that. So you either answer me right now or leave or spend four more days in the hole.”
“I can’t leave and I’ve already answered.”
I brought him more bread and condensed milk, which I opened for him since I had confiscated his opener. Then I left him with ninety-six more hours to contemplate his crimes.