Damn—and he’d thought all the bruising was gone.
He heard a deep, soulful voice humming, breaking into words: “—crucified—lynched—cause he was black!”
There she was, on Hollywood Boulevard—Sister Matilda of the Golden Voice, standing there with her Bible in her hand and a crowd—
Lyle’s joy dropped. There was no crowd, nobody had gathered to listen to her, everyone just walked on by, glancing and clucking at the woman in a flowing dress, wearing a crown.
“Another crazy,” sniffed a snotty woman walking by.
“No, she isn’t, ma’am.” Lyle followed the woman to tell her that.
“You get away from me or I’ll scream that you’re molesting me, I’ll sue you! Say aren’t you—? Oh, my God, it is the Mystery Cowboy, and he’s a stalker!” The woman ran away.
Lyle returned his attention to Sister Matilda. She looked different, everything the same but frayed, except her crown, which sparkled golden. No, it didn’t. He’d just wished it had sparkled. It was tarnished, yellowing with age.
He stood before her. She squinted, rubbed her eyes, shook her head. She continued her preaching: “Jesus was black, y’all hear me?—and he was lynched because of that.” She hummed, sang:
Were you there when they nailed him to a tree? …
Lyle joined her, aloud but very softly:
Were you there when they laid him down to rest? …
“Is it you, Lyle?” She squinted, hard.
“Yes!”
She moved toward him with difficulty, grasping her Bible.
“Sister Matilda!” He embraced her, tight.
She allowed the embrace, returned it. “There now, cowboy, don’t you go upsetting my crown,” she tried to disguise her delight.
Some people lingered to see the handsome cowboy and the black woman with the crown.
“Why are you staring at my crown?” she asked Lyle.
“Because it’s so beautiful,” he said.
“Hmmm. I thought maybe you were thinking it’s odd on the street. But you remember this, cowboy, Negro ladies never go out formal without wearing a hat.”
“I know,” Lyle said, and linked his arm through hers, noticing that she walked unfirmly now and that her hair was speckled with gray.
7
A bittersweet reunion at Musso & Frank’s.
Lyle took Sister Matilda to Musso & Frank’s Grill on Hollywood Boulevard. The grand old restaurant attracted every ilk of people, those who, back on the Boulevard, were asked for autographs, and others who were just a part of the awesome old area. He had eaten there himself, and the waiters now greeted him like a friend, even gave him a booth when the place wasn’t too crowded, although he preferred the counter, where there would always be somebody interesting eating right next to him, once an ex-countess.
The attendant, a dapper gentleman, gave them a booth, to accommodate Sister Matilda’s girth.
Used to seeing exceptional people, those in the restaurant merely glanced at the extraordinary couple, the cowboy and the elegantly frayed black woman.
Quietly, she and Lyle studied the extensive menu, prepared by a “chef from Paris, France,” Juan Galán, his favorite waiter, informed Sister Matilda.
“Hmmm,” Sister Matilda clucked. “They’ve got chicken pie. Huh! My mamma baked the only chicken pie worth eating, but I’ll give it a try.”
“I’ll have the chicken pie, too,” Lyle told the waiter. He wanted to feel close to Sister Matilda. Of course, her girth made that possible; he didn’t have to move much to be close. Why was she so silent? Why was she looking at him so defiantly? Did she want to be asked what he hesitated to ask? “What happened, Sister Matilda?”
She said sternly, “Because I’m on the street preaching the word of God instead of singing and trembling before television cameras and fakes?”
That wasn’t what he had meant; he had meant to ask why she had left without saying anything to him. But he didn’t have a chance to clarify.
“Doin’ penance for being a part of that corruption,” she said. It was as if everything she spoke turned into a possible song, the deep sad, joyful sounds, the inflection on certain words so that they came out as a rhythm: “Doin’ PEN-ance for being a part of the cor-rup-SHUN.”
“But you broke away, and you warned me, and I didn’t listen,” Lyle defended her from herself. He didn’t add, You ran away without telling me, and I expected you to show up all along, and I stayed because you said “Stay put.” … No, that wasn’t the only reason I stayed, he knew. There was the money that Brother Bud and Sister Sis had offered him.
“When I saw they wanted to corrupt you—and figured, yes, the Lord knows I did—that they just might, you being so green and stuff—that’s when the Lord gave me a jolt, and I felt real harsh about my own contribution to them. All those years—yea, Lord, you saw it all—Amen to all the Lord sees!” she ordered.
“Amen,” Lyle smiled.
“Amen,” echoed a small man alone in the booth next to them, as he cut into his grilled pork chops.
“—all those years I stayed playing queen, being praised, getting paid,” Sister Matilda had continued. “I even left, for a short spell, and then came back.” She shook her head in dismay. “I sold them my golden voice. I did, and the Lord knew it.”
“You were never corrupted, you extended, really extended.” Lyle thought of how much her voice meant to Sylvia. “People heard you and you stirred their hearts, Sister Matilda. You were never corrupted.”
“Never, never corrupted!” the small man in the booth said to himself.
“Don’t you tell me what I was and wasn’t!” Sister Matilda aimed her words at the man. Then she resumed with Lyle: “I knew years ago that those two were deceiving poor folks. Things like fake tumors, envelopes full of pennies they put there themselves to draw hundreds of dollars.”
“I saw all that, too,” Lyle said. He wanted to share in her guilt, to contribute his, lessen hers. “I thought you’d get in touch with me, to support what you said about them.” He couldn’t withhold that any more and quickly wished he had.
She sighed deeply. “Some of it went wrong. I signaled you with that note—and the jelly beans,” she chuckled. “I was going to get in touch with you right after they were arrested, but you had to go and volunteer that you were guilty of something or other and they took you to jail. Went there to get you out, but you were already out, thank God, and you’d left. I helped the Lord’s judgment on them, couldn’t wait for their penalty that was sure to come afterwards. I sat in that court chair and told how they robbed and stole and cheated the poor.”
“Still goes on,” the small next to them opined, “and that sure doesn’t deserve an Amen.”
This time Sister Matilda just waved her hand toward him, either dismissing him or extending him her blessing. “I had to do penance for my part in it all those years,” she said.
Penance. The word had a harsh sound, like a curse, Lyle thought.
The chicken pie arrived, an ample portion. Sister Matilda eyed it with suspicion. “It’s large enough.” She buried the fork into the crust. “Let’s see how many chicken chunks it has.” She speared a portion on her fork. “Now we’ll tell—”
Lyle waited for her verdict. She just ate, took another piece. To him, as he ate, it tasted great. “What were you doing with that peacock?”
What? Everyone had seen that picture! Lyle felt too happy to be embarrassed, and she apparently was willing to withdraw her question.
“Hmmm.” She tasted more pot pie, holding it in her mouth, testing it. “Yes, penance!” she resumed. “That’s why I’m out there on that corner—travel around to different places. As long as I can get around, I’ll say what I should have said then but didn’t on the television, about cruelty and meanness—”
“And about Jesus being black,” Lyle offered to her.
“Jesus wasn’t black,” the small man said. “He was Jewish.”
“He was black and Jewish,
” Lyle told the man, quietly so Sister Matilda wouldn’t feel contradicted.
The man nodded.
“Somebody’s got to say the truth about the Lord.” She pondered another forkful of chicken pie. “Sometimes, cowboy,” she said, looking deeply into his eyes, “a life begins before it begins. The past has a lot of power. It’s there before you’re even born—and then without knowing it you’re doing penance for what happened to someone else. Like a curse passed on that you didn’t bring on.”
The odd, tangled words resounded in Lyle’s mind. Was she talking about him now? About Sylvia? But how? What kind of curse? … Doing penance for what happened to someone else, like a curse passed on? Was she just saying words? “Were you talking about me, Sister Matilda?” he ventured.
“Cowboy, I was talking about myself! Doing penance now for not bearing witness to what I saw done to my daddy, lynched, nailed to a tree.” Her mind drifted away to the horror of that time. She opened her mouth, a silent scream. She bowed her head. ‘Amazing grace’?—is that what you asked me?”
A long time ago, yes, and she had answered, but not too clearly, something about “hope” and “understanding another’s pain,” and about em-pa-thy—no, no, that was Clarita. It was as if, now, some memories spoke to her and she answered them aloud. “Yes,” he said, “I did.”
But Sister Matilda’s mind had moved into the present. “This chicken pie is good, eat up, eat up, cowboy, it is really good!”
When they were finished and Lyle had paid—and the small man paused at their booth and nodded, or bowed, before Sister Matilda, who smiled graciously—Lyle tried to give her money, but she refused it, placing the bills gently back into his hand, enclosing his fingers over them, holding her hand over his for long moments. She arranged her girth, preparing to leave. She stood, adjusting her crown. She looked up, up, her eyes fixed up, way up. She turned her gaze back on him and smiled.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “You asked about grace? Can’t understand grace, Lyle, you feel it.”
She moved out of the restaurant, like an exiled but undefeated queen.
CHAPTER TWENTY
1
Yet another unexpected turn.
Raul!” There he was—again!—at Lyle’s apartment door. This time Lyle’s first reaction was anger. “You little bastard!” Ummm, he was a bastard himself. “You little fucker!” That was off too. “You little shit!” He let it go at that, except that Raul wasn’t little any more. He had grown even more, a young man, with budding muscles, and, now, an earring in each ear, and a tattoo—very small, though—on one of his biceps. “You promised to go back—”
“Don’t get mad at me, Lyle. I won’t want to stay here, I got a place of my own. But I’m—”
“—hiding out again?” Lyle tried to sound harsh. He looked around, expecting Buzzy. “Where’s—?”
“Buzzy’s hiding, too, probably heard what happened.”
Lyle crossed his hands over his chest. Once—okay. Twice—well—
Lyle stood aside to let him in. “I’m going to have a hard time believing you, Raul,” he warned.
“I know.” Raul sat down facing Lyle, who sat on the bed with his arms crossed before his chest. “Lyle, I swear on my mother’s name—well, I don’t have one—I swear on my aunt’s name—she can’t stand me—I just swear that I’m not lying.” He made two crosses, thumbs over index fingers, kissed both, and swore. “I’m gonna tell you everything, not leaving anything out, just listen, and don’t think I’m dirty because of what I’m gonna tell you—”
2
A move back in time to learn what Raul told Lyle, involving more of life’s impossible coincidences.
Fiction rejects coincidences, but life abounds in them, and, for Raul, they just kept piling up, and that’s what he asked Lyle, please, please, to believe.
After he had bought his ticket back to Rio Escondido, he returned with Buzzy to the Boulevard, to say good-bye to other runaways. Buzzy was still trying to decide whether she’d join Raul and help him “clear the mess up in Rio Escondido.” On the Boulevard, Spike, a kid who dressed in black vinyl and had spiky hair, was telling everyone he’d got a real easy job “as a model”—and he was going to make “cool contacts” from it. Contacts! That meant talent scouts, producers, directors, agents. Spike showed them the advertisement he’d found in a throwaway newspaper:
MODELS. Young (18–24), good-looking, with good bodies. Excellent working conditions, excellent pay. If you think you’re right, call for appointment.
It made sense. Make a good contact before going back to Rio Escondido—that was Buzzy’s idea. She called on behalf of Raul, preparing to become his manager.
Both went to the building on Highland, a slick building occupied by offices with impressive names listed on the lobby directory: agencies, production companies, just as he had expected. The office they were looking for took up half a whole floor. Buzzy wished Raul good luck, promised to meet him—“for my manager’s fee”—and left.
Raul walked into a reception room, where the attendant, a huffy man who seemed to peer—not see—sat at a desk. He asked if Raul had an appointment, and then buzzed him into a classy office. There was a spectacular view from a window—Los Angeles sprawling toward the ocean. Behind a desk with nothing but a telephone on it sat a heavy man, well dressed in a flashy way. “Hey, dude!” he said. “Fuckin’ good to see ya.” Talking like that.
“Thank you, sir,” Raul said politely.
“Must you? Must you?” That’s what a woman sitting on a taller chair said to the man. When he had said “fuckin’” she winced and with manicured fingers applied pressure to her temples. She was very well dressed, she even wore gloves. She said to Raul: “How do you do, young man? Please do sit down.” She spoke very formally, pronouncing every syllable exactly. “As good-looking as you are—I am quite certain of this, but correct me if I’m wrong—you are hoping—aren’t you?—to become”—she sniffed—“a movie star.”
Raul beamed. “It looks like it? That clear to see?”
“Yes,” the woman said with a smile that didn’t smile.
“Are you tal—?”
“Talent scouts, right, and producers, young man,” the woman said.
“Sure, and we have lots of fuckin’ contacts,” the man told him. “The kind that can help a smart kid like you climb as high as ya fuckin’ wanna in Hollywood.”
“Must you always—?” the woman directed at the man, brushing her hand over her hair, but, more, as if to thrust away an echo of the man’s words. “All you require is to be discovered; am I right?” she asked Raul.
Imagine! All those days on corners selling star maps for fuckin’ Scala and hoping a limousine would stop and it would be a movie scout—but nothing. Now here he was being discovered—so easy, too—by these two great people! Who wouldn’t take this great opportunity?
“We’re going to ask Ms. LaGrande, our most prominent director, to join us for an interview.” The woman called out to into a farther office: “Ms. LaGrande!”
Out tottered a huge drag queen, heavy, made taller by the fact that she—that’s how they referred to him—wore spike heels and a monstrous, frizzly blond wig. She inspected Raul, circling him, tripping once on her own heels, almost toppling. “Mais oui; je suis enchanteeze,” she approved in what seemed to be French. “Mais—” she seemed to search her vocabulary, gave up: “Your type is toujours quite po-poo-lar, trésor. Of course, we’ll have to see more of you,” she tittered.
This is what they explained to him: The Internet was the place to be discovered. That’s where he would be seen—if he had proof that he was of “legal age”—and he did, like everyone else on the streets, whatever their real ages. When he appeared “on computer screens all over the world,” big studio people would spot him and the offers would pour in like rain in Seattle.
“Wanna be star, trésor?” Za-Za LaGrande asked Raul with such an assertive wink that a false eyelash fell out.
“Can’t wait!
” Raul said.
Raul followed Za-Za LaGrande and the man and woman to another large room. Against one corner, like a set in a small theater was a bed, an ordinary bed, a lit lamp, and a droopy artificial tree. On the rumpled bed were two young men, naked, doing—
His eyes widening to take in what he saw, Raul still couldn’t tell. Two young men were entangled so that it was difficult to see what anyone was doing. Naturally he was puzzled, wondering what the hell was going on. Still he was curious, right?
The woman smiled at the scene, as if she was seeing something very pretty. “Sweet,” she said.
“Tray dulce,” Za-Za translated.
“Fucking hot, eh?” the man said to Raul.
Yes, it was hot, especially since one of the two young men, a slim one, had smiled at him as he glanced over, or from under, one limb or another. Raul was attracted, and, well, hot. After all, he’d never been with a guy, but, oh, he wanted to be, God, did he!
With small cameras, two men, clothed, danced around the couple on the bed, filming the activity. Another man, with a cap on backwards, was calling out instructions, like a coach. “Shift … Go up … Go down—” Next to him, smoking heavily so that it was impossible to see her face behind a cloud of smoke, was a stocky woman.
“So now let’s see what you got in your repertoire,” Za-Za LaGrande said to Raul in a distinctly male voice.
“That means get buck-ass naked!” the man said.
The chic woman cringed.
“Au naturelle,” Za-Za said, giving her stuffed breasts a hefty heave up.
Raul stalled. He wasn’t about to get naked in front of all these people.
“What’s the matter? How do you think all those fuckin’ big stars got their breaks, dude?” The man caught Raul staring at the slim performer on the bed. “How’d ya like to pair up with him?”
Would he! He didn’t tell them that, but he wouldn’t lie about the fact that, yes, he would want to. Still—