I could have changed her mind in time about black people, because I knew she had been in love with me. I remembered how happy she had been when she thought she had my baby inside of her. I remembered my contentment with my head resting on her warm satin bosom. She’d croon and baby talk to me.
Blue was all wrong. I had to have her back. I couldn’t do without the torture of her, the glory of her, the thrill of her.
She was the beautiful thing that had made my life glamorous, and classy. I was just a Nigger hustler from a sewer on Thirty-ninth Street without her.
I pulled the phone into bed. I rang her for five minutes. There was no answer. I rang Cordelia. No answer.
I finished the bottle of Scotch and lay there twisting in half-sleep, half-delirium on the fiery bed. And all the while that ruthless, awful question hammered my fevered brain. Why did you let them trick you into exposing yourself as a nigger?
20
THE FRACTURED NUDE
The phone rang. Dreamily, I picked up the receiver. It was the contralto voice of the Goddess. My heart tried to leap up my throat. All was forgiven. She was at Cordelia’s apartment. There was a most unusual party in session.
“Bodies beautiful unadorned is the theme,” she said. Would I rush right over? Or was I too shy for that kind of thing? If so, then perhaps some other time I could come to a more commonplace party.
“Oh, no,” I said. “I’ll be right over. I wanted to see you anyway about last night.”
I dressed and floated to the Buick. Then, quick as a wink almost, I was ringing Cordelia’s doorbell. I thought as I stood there, Cordelia’s bell doesn’t sound like it used to.
A new maid opened the door. She led me to a walk-in closet. I took my clothes off. I stepped from the closet naked. I followed the maid to the living room’s double doors.
The maid smiled oddly, and swung them open to pitch blackness. I stepped inside. Then suddenly the brightest light I had ever seen burst on. I cringed and held my palms against my eyes.
An explosion of laughter rocked my eardrums. I peeped around the palms. The room was crowded with elegantly dressed white people in tuxedos and glittering evening gowns.
All of their mouths were wide with wild glee. Then the Goddess stepped forward and clapped her hands for silence. I stood there trembling. All became quiet.
She looked up at me with a sneer and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, it is with ineffable pleasure that I give you Coon O’Brien, who will give you his inimitable live imitation of Marcel Duchamp’s famous painting, ‘Nude Descending a Staircase.’
“Unfortunately, his performance is sans the staircase. But I can assure you that he will be as fractured as the nude in the canvas version.”
The crowd’s blasting laughter seemed to blow me to pieces as I stood there. I saw and felt sections of myself falling away. The crowd brayed and hee-hawed.
I screamed from the pile of tortured rubble on the carpet that had once been me, “You rotten dirty jackass bastards! You rotten dirty jackass bastards!”
I felt something jerking me, shaking me violently. I grabbed at it. My eyes strained to see it through a dark shimmery mist.
A friendly fat-lipped, flat-nosed face poked through it. It was Blue. I was sitting up stiffly on the bed in a welter of sweat.
I hugged Blue and blubbered, “Oh, Blue, I’m so glad to see you. I’m so glad it was just a nightmare. I’m so glad it wasn’t real. If it had been for real, I would have lost my mind. I’m so glad to see you, Blue.”
He said, “Folks, I don’t give a damn whether you want to or not, but a croaker is going to see you tomorrow. You need something for your nerves and that hard lushing you’ve been doing.
“You should have seen yourself coming out of that nightmare. You looked like some poor chump frying in the hot seat. You’re not going to con me anymore that you don’t need help. I’m really worried about you now. Don’t get out of that goddamn bed until we go to the croaker tomorrow. I’m going to broil you a steak.” He turned to go.
I said, “Blue, I can’t eat. Bring me a good stiff drink instead.”
He looked down at the empty bottle on the nightstand. He shook his head sadly and walked down the hall.
I thought, “I’ve got to straighten myself out. I can’t stand that look of pity in Blue’s eyes. I don’t want to be a bum like the chumps on Madison Street. After I get the Goddess back, I’ll go back on the two-pint a day plan for a starter. Goddamn, it’s funny about that crack the Goddess made in the nightmare.”
She made me remember seeing the Duchamp’s painting in the art book that was inside the leatherette case that I left in the chili joint on Forty-third Street a long time ago. If I hadn’t lost the case, I’d probably still be painting. Duchamp’s picture had never made sense to me. It was a chaotic pattern of disjointed lines and angles.
Blue came back with a tall glass filled to the brim with whiskey. He put it on the nightstand and said, “Folks, this is it for tonight. I’ve locked the juice cabinet. I can’t let you loll yourself. Call me if you want anything, except more juice.”
He walked away. I reached over and picked up the glass. The Scotch in my trembling hand sloshed over the rim of the glass onto the bed. I gulped down what was left.
Finally, I heard my heartbeat gentle down. I drifted into a strange, terrible kind of sleep. Raw, razor-edged consciousness sliced out a piece from my brain.
I could clearly see the bedroom furniture about me, the bathroom door. But I knew I was asleep and dreaming, because how could there be a trio of floor-to-ceiling mirrors at the window where the drapes had been?
But how could I be asleep when there I was standing before them naked, looking at myself? And that woman with the insane eyes and the platinum hair looming up behind me.
She hurled something. I couldn’t move away. I screamed at the crash of it. I was no more. My image died in the three full-length mirrors. I was on the carpet in a million bloody bits of glass and the room exploded with jackass hee-haws.
Blue came and shook me back to my senses again. For the rest of the night he sat on the side of my bed. He drove me to the old white-haired croaker’s office at ten A.M.
He examined me from head to toe and said, “I saw you through your draft troubles, so I hope you will take me seriously now. You must rest and eat lots of wholesome food and abstain completely from alcohol in any form.
“I’m going to give you a diet chart. I am also giving you prescription aids toward these necessary goals. Fortunately, you have youth and physical resiliency. Follow my instructions, and my prognosis is that within a matter of weeks, you will be back in the pink.”
Blue and I stopped on the way home and got the prescriptions filled. There were six kinds of pills and liquid medicine.
I forced down some broccoli and carrot juice when we got home. I took two sleeping pills and fell into unmarred sleep. I woke up at seven P.M. I struggled from the bed and staggered to the liquor cabinet to see if it was really locked.
It was. And I was desperate for a drink. I peeped into Blue’s room. He was gone. Then I thought about the Goddess. I went to my phone and rang her number. No answer. Dizzily, I tried Cordelia.
Her brassy voice said, “Hello,” on the third ring.
I said, “Hello, Cordelia, it’s Johnny O’Brien. Is Camille there?”
She didn’t answer for a long moment.
Then she said, “No, she isn’t here. Why did you have to tell her, Johnny? Why the horrid thing to Brad?”
I said, “Too many things happened that night, I just couldn’t help it. Do you know where she is? I want to talk to her.”
She said, “Johnny, the poor girl is devastated. She’s gone away. I like you, Johnny, and my friendly advice to you is to forget her. She’ll never see you again. I’m her best friend and I know her so well. You don’t have the remotest chance with her now.”
I pleaded, “Cordelia, you’ve got to tell me where I can find her. I know she still loves me. Please te
ll me.”
I heard her sigh and say softly, “I can’t do that. She would never speak to me again.”
I said, heatedly, “You won’t tell me because I’m a Nigger, isn’t that right? You’d tell a white man, I bet. I guess you’re just like your friend. I was a fine guy until you found out the truth about me. I guess all of you are like that.”
She said angrily, “You inexperienced young fool. No members of any group are just alike. What the hell do you know about life, love, women or heartbreak?”
There was a long pause.
Then she said, bitterly, “You think I hate all black people? You think I hate you? You silly jerk. The only man I ever loved on this earth was as black as a patent leather pump. And, oh yes, Camille drove to friends in Cleveland. You can’t find her without an address. And that’s all I’m telling you, really nothing. Happy wild goose chase, simple Nigger.”
She hung up. Yes, she was right. She hadn’t told me anything. I’d never find the Goddess in a big city like Cleveland without an address.
I had to have a drink. I went to Blue’s room and searched it. I couldn’t find a drop. I tore the rest of the house apart. I’d have to go out to score for a drink. I finally got into a suit and overcoat.
I went out to the Buick and remembered I had no money. I went back and raised the rug beneath the nightstand. I stuffed the roll of bills into my overcoat pocket.
I drove the Buick to the Brass Rail. I sat in a booth until nine P.M. guzzling Scotch. Then I got a brilliant idea. Hadn’t Cordelia said that the Goddess drove to Cleveland? Wouldn’t the Goddess have classy friends? Of course she would.
Cleveland was like any other big city. All the classy whites lived together in colonies distant from niggers and poor white trash. Goddamnit, I’d go to Cleveland and do a Dick Tracy in whatever exclusive section of Cleveland she was in.
I had to find the Goddess and win her back. It shouldn’t be hard to spot that white Jaguar. Yes, I’d find her. She’d melt and rush into my arms at the sight of me.
She couldn’t have forgotten how close we’d been. I knew she couldn’t forget how I had kissed and thrilled her from the top of her heavenly head to the tips of her sugary toes. She had to be aching for more of my all-out lesbian-type lovemaking. We couldn’t do without each other.
I got up from the booth and went to the liquor store on the corner of Calumet Avenue and Forty-seventh Street. I got two-fifths of Cutty Sark Scotch and drove to a filling station. I got a tankful of gas, oil and a road map. I drove frantically toward Cleveland and the ineffably precious Goddess.
21
THE SEARCH
I jabbed the whining Buick through blurry time and space and screeching near collisions. At two A.M. I found myself registering at the desk of the Majestic Hotel on Fifty-fifth Street in the heart of Cleveland’s black belt.
I went to a clean, neat third-floor room overlooking the main drag. I had a fifth of cheap Scotch in a paper bag. I didn’t remember why I’d bought an off-brand.
I had forgotten to bring the sleeping pills. I’d fall apart without them. I wouldn’t be up to the search for the Goddess unless I got some rest. I had to make a connection for sleeping pills. Now!
I looked in the dresser mirror at the haggard red-eyed stranger. I shrugged and turned toward the bed. I collapsed across it and picked up the phone from a table beside the bed. Five minutes later, I went to the door. A fat, big-eyed, black bellboy, bulging in a drab monkey suit stood in the hall.
I said, “Are you familiar with Cleveland?” For a moment he looked puzzled.
Then he said, “Yeah, Jack, I’m hip to the scene. You want one for all night, or just a quickie?”
I said, “I don’t want a broad. I want to know where I can find the most exclusive white section in town.”
He said, “Shaker Heights is where most of the rich cocksuckers crib. For a paddy, you sound like a down stud. So I’m going to yank your coat. Don’t try no hustle out there, unless you’re a freak to making the joint scene. The Heights is lousy with heat. They’ll bust a strange paddy as fast as they will a boot.”
He took the deuce I held out and started to walk away.
I said, “I’ll sweeten that deuce with a sawbuck if you could score for a few yellow jackets.”
He whirled around like a pygmy ox doing a pirouette.
He looked up at me slyly and said, “Uh-huh, Jack, I cop the yellows for you. Right? Then later I cop some reefer. Right? Then you bring a pal on scene. He’s got to have H. Right? I catch a double dime in the joint, with no broads, no nothing. Then you make a joy-scene with some fine, hot-ass bitch and a case of sauce to celebrate that you crossed me into the joint. Right? I ain’t no dealer of nothing. Thanks for the deuce.”
I stood there in the open door watching him walk away down the hall. I thought, “I really screwed that up. What can I do now? I’ve got to have some pills. I’ve got to get a night’s rest.”
I was just at the point of calling him back to hike his fee to a C-note when he turned and shambled back to me.
He snapped his fingers and said, “Jack, you’re lucky. I just remembered, my sick old man is got some red devils from a script at his pad. But the pad is way out on Hundred-and-six Street and Massie Avenue.
“A cab out there and back would run at least a double sawbuck. I’d miss a fin or so in tips here in the hotel while I was on a long trip like that. Aw, forget about it. You don’t want them that bad, do you, Jack?”
I said, “If your sick father can part with at least two dozen devils, I’ll part with half a C-note. But I want you to hurry. I have to get some sleep. I’ve got important business in the morning.”
He said, “Righteous, Jack, righteous.”
I shut the door and sat in a mustard-colored easy chair at the window. I saw a big, black guy decked out in sharp clothes go into a barbecue joint across the street. He reminded me of Blue.
I thought, “It was lousy of me not to leave a note for him. But it shouldn’t take more than a day or so to find the Goddess. I’ll be back in Chicago, happy and on the mend before he really gets worried about me. I won’t call him. I’m too shaky to hold still for a lecture.”
I sat there and drank the cheap bottle of Scotch three-quarters empty. I was afraid to lie down. I didn’t want to risk that fractured nude scene with the Goddess.
I wasn’t a bit surprised to see the fatso bellboy lumbering out of the barbecue joint, toward the hotel with a stack of orders in his hands. I could only hope that he wouldn’t stretch his phony con trip for the Seconal until daybreak.
I looked at a calendar on the wall across the room. It was the fourth of December, Nineteen Forty-five. It seemed like only weeks ago that the war had ended, and the fabulous cripple in the White House had croaked and made the haberdasher from Independence, Missouri, a member of the most exclusive club there ever was.
I heard a rap on the door. I looked at my watch. It was two-thirty A.M. The slick bellboy was probably back from his mythical trip.
I opened the door. He was huffing and puffing and wiping his brow with his sleeve. I gave him the half a C-note and took the tiny glassine-wrapped wad.
He bared his gold teeth and chortled, “Righteous, Jack, righteous.”
I undressed and showered. I stuck the back of a chair under the doorknob. The fat boy might get a yen to visit my bankroll with a pass key.
I raised the blue carpet and shoved the nearly a grand roll of bills underneath it. I took two red devils and lay down. I was trying to remember the license plate number of the Goddess’s Jaguar when the red devils’ sneaky forks of oblivion plunged into my thrashing brain.
A banging at the door opened my leaden eyes. It seemed ages before my dopey brain tipped me off that I was in Cleveland.
I hollered hoarsely, “Who is it?”
A muffled broad’s voice said, “The maid, sir.”
I looked at my watch. It was eleven A.M.
I shouted, “Come back in an hour. I’m going ou
t.”
I lurched to the bottle at the window. I drained it dry and fell into the chair. Thuggish winds were slamming lacy snowflakes against the windowpane. The stark whiteness of the tenement rooftops teared my inflamed eyeballs.
Finally the whiskey brushed away enough of the fog and weakness so I could get to the bathroom to wash up. I looked at my watery eyes in the cabinet mirror. My face was puffy and gray pallored. My hair was shaggy at the nape of my neck, and I had a five-day dirty yellow shadow of bristly beard.
I still ached from the bouncing I had done on Lake Street. I sponged off and dressed. I got my bankroll from under the carpet, picked up my key, and walked out to the hall.
I heard loud phonograph music as I went by the open door of the room next to mine. I glanced inside. I paused. A chubby middle-aged guy was in his doorway with a friendly smile on his ebony face.
He said cheerfully, “Good morning, neighbor. I’m George Washington Jackson.”
He stuck out his hand. I smiled and shook his hand.
I said, “I’m Bill Flanagan.”
He said, “Bill, how about a little taste of gin?”
I said, “No thanks. Maybe some other time.”
I moved down the hall to the elevator. I dropped my key at the desk and paid two-days rent. I went through the lobby to the street. I walked uneasily on the skiddy snow-clogged sidewalk.
I went into a bar on the other side of Fifty-fifth Street. I had a fast three double shots of Cutty Sark. Then I went five or six doors down from the bar and got a haircut, shave and massage. Then I went to a restaurant on the same block. I forced down beef stew and a glass of milk.
I only felt half bad when I went to the Buick parked at the rear of the hotel. I drove to a filling station for gas and directions to Shaker Heights.
I cruised through a winter wonderland of stately trees, sparkling with puffs of ermine snow and jeweled with glittery icicles.
Marshmallow shrubbery swayed around the palatial mansions that lined the wide streets. My eyes searched every street, every driveway for a glimpse of the Goddess or her Jaguar.