I recall once being waved at by a man in drag from a balcony window in Baton Rouge, and as I ignored him and kept walking, he shouted loudly down, "Well, it's only hey!" and shamed me. I gave him a weak, noncommittal wave that made him laugh..
The watering woman and I had fully explored the dynamic of stranger-to-stranger waving, and it had developed its own periodicity. I could have drawn up the elemental chart of waving. On a Monday she'd give me a haggard little gesture from very near her hip, where her free hand rested as she watered with the other, and I'd return in kind a little thing with a finger or thumb from near my pants pocket. By Wednesday she'd be offering more arm, more motion, with loose-wristed familiarity and a smile. By Friday we were at a quantum ledge of hand semaphore; she waved like a relative down at the docks to greet the ocean liner I was on. It made me respond by waving so vigorously in return I'd go off the sidewalk.
On this Friday she saw me coming, crimped off the fat red hose, and began to gesture so wildly I was certain she intended a slapstick parody of us, that she was saying finally, Well, it's only hey. She got her arm up stiff, not unlike a German salute, and swung it gravely over her head, leaning a bit with the motion as if she were signaling with a great, heavy, brass railroad lantern overhead. It was so far out on the chart I could not wave back properly. I walked up to her fence.
She gave the hose a further dip and crimp, and some water flew onto her robe, which she stared at, dabbing the spots into broader spots.
"That material will dry quickly," I said.
She looked at me. "I know how quickly this material will dry. I spazzed out."
I was aware that we had already abandoned the innocence of strangers waving at one another. It seemed a bit of a shame.
"I hope you're not standing there like a geek because you think I'm that woman named Drown."
"Ma'am?" I said.
"Ma'am what?"
"I think you might be what?"
"You think I might be a fool. Come on in and let's have us a gin something." She turned and walked into the flowers, from where, out of sight, she called, "Gate's unlocked." She called then, from inside the house, "Fizzes or will simple tonics do?"
I managed the gate and said with fake aplomb, "Tonic's divine."
"Divine is right," she called from the kitchen, where I could see her through a bank of jalousie windows which enclosed a patio. It had flowered oilcloth furniture and a concrete floor. On a table beside a yellow weatherproof sofa with blue hydrangeas printed on it I saw a Sunday newspaper entertainment section, the cover of which was a color photograph of a woman standing on a spiral staircase. Her hair blew to one side, and gray moss on oak trees blew in from the other. The colors of the woman's face were printed out of register, yet it was still recognizably the woman in the kitchen fixing gin somethings. The caption read Mary Constance Baker in "A Woman Named Drown."
"Some of these people get the idea you are what you act in the amateur theater game," Mary Constance Baker said, coming out with two drinks. "I have to wear a disguise to go shopping."
"Because you are famous here?"
"Because there are folk out there who think I drowned a plantation-mules, Ashleys, slaves, my mulatto children, and all."
"That happens in the play?"
"That happens in the play."
"Sorry I missed it."
"Sugar, play like that will be back every other year. Sit down."
"This is you," I said to her, pointing at her photo in the Sunday paper.
"Bingo." She was already through with her drink, shaking the ice.
"I hadn't seen this before."
"It's no federal case. You shoot pool?"
"No."
"Come on."
We went into a sunken room, which was walled on the garden side by glass blocks. The colors of the flowers came through softened and mixed so that the room felt as out-of-register as the newspaper photo.
She racked the balls and started running them off the table.
"Where'd you learn to shoot like this?" I finally said.
Not looking up from her shot she said, "My old man."
"Where is he?"
She kept shooting.
"What happened to him?"
"What?" She interrupted a shot.
"Your old man. What happened?"
"Oh," she said, realigning. "Lost his stick." She ran the table. She put her cue down and turned on a two-tone hi-fi in the corner. "Ray Conniff," she said. "You look ready." She left for the kitchen with my glass. If I could see her dancing to Ray Conniff and His Singers as she made the drinks. She came back, racked t again, and started dancing from shot to shot, swooning dreamily, then snapping up with eyes all business, sinking balls with precise cracking collisions of incidence and reflection, rolling in rocket trails of the candied light.
I asked, without planning to, if I could take a shower.
"No ceremony here," she said, indicating another part of the house with her cue.
"Before I do," I added, again more or less surprising myself, "should you know me any better?"
"Like what?" she asked, looking up.
"I don't know.]ob, name, sexual preference. That sort of thing."
"I thought you kids did away with that song and dance."
"We tried."
"Take a shower."
In the shower, beautiful pink-and-green tiles seemed to move a bit along with Ray Conniff, too. I held my head in a big towel for a while and saw a double bed and without ceremony got in it, under a spread that had a thousand fuzzy balls on its fringe and millions smaller on its surface.
When I woke up-it was one of those sleeps in which you drool-I was out of the covers and people were talking.
"Well, you'd think a bitch named Drown'd dress before goddamn t'ree o'clock, for Christ sake," boomed a male voice. I heard Mary say, very formally, "What can I get you, Virginia?"
The door opened and Mary came in, motioning for me to stay put. "Guess what?"
"What?"
"A drop-in."
She slid out of her robe and into real clothes with her back to me. "There's two drawers of the old man's things when you want to come out."
She left and I got up. Not once do I recall wondering what in hell I was doing there, though now, looking back, it seems a good time to have wondered. Perhaps I was held by the certainty that I had to stay in order to find out. I tested my head with a small shake and saw my face was waffled from the knitted bedspread. I looked like a kid up from a nap.
In one of the indicated drawers, I found the old man had left two kinds of pants: swimming trunks with built-in net liners and bright putter pants with elastic waists. The shirts were all pastel Ban-Lons. I did not see the clothes I came in. I found some white shoes. I emerged in a canary golfer's ensemble.
When I stepped into the den I was converged upon by the loud man, who introduced himself simply as Hoop and pointed out his wife, Virginia, as if she were down the block. Virginia waved vaguely to us while talking with Mary, who came over with a tray of drinks. Hoop and I took one.
Hoop had balls in play on the table. "Hey, bud, you play this friggin sport?"
"I don't shoot for shit." My language seemed to delight him.
"It's a bitch all right," he said. "It's a motherin bitch." He then missed his remaining shots, feigning dissatisfaction with himself. I thought he was going to ask for a game, but he racked his cue and came over to me, stopping within a whispery, conspiratorial distance. "Hey, Constance," he yelled, winking at me, "what's two sailors got to do get some liquor in these drinks, for Christ sake?" He quickly whispered, "You got a good one there-lotta the boys give a nut be where you are. You know what I mean?"