“If I’d known where you were, I’d have sent you a hundred wires, but I didn’t, you didn’t tell me. You told your mother, and she told the Hyattsville Post Office — but she wouldn’t tell me, you forbade her.”
“I was so thrilled, you finding out where I was.”
“Well you can knock it off with those shakes, as I didn’t lift a finger to find out where you were, and wouldn’t. I have some pride left, I hope.”
“Now we’ll have to start over.”
“How, start over?”
“I’ve just said. It’s why I came. But now—!”
“Yes, I think you’re right — a completely fresh start is what’s called for. I’ll mumble under your ear — work around to your mouth — then carry you up — and we’ll see if our cloud is still there.”
I started off, and just then the chimes in the hall sounded. I said: “I’ve never known it to fail that when we get in sight of our cloud, the goddam doorbell rings.”
I got up and started for the hall. Then: “Gramie!” she burst out, in a voice like a whipcrack. “I’ve just waked up! Don’t answer! Don’t do it! Don’t open that door!”
By then she was beside me, her eyes big and almost black. I said, “At least we can see who it is.”
I opened the pigeonhole and a man was there, in red jacket and Afro hairdo. I opened the door, asked: “Yes? What is it?”
He didn’t answer me, but cocked a gun in my stomach, a big, shiny, stainless steel thing, almost a submachine gun, and motioned to my hands. I put them up and he stepped inside, closing the door behind him. I said: “Okay, take it easy, just say what it is, and that’s how it’s going to be. I have money, and I’ll hand it over, but first lower that gun — this girl is my wife and I don’t want her hurt. And, to get out my wallet, I have to lower my hands, so—”
But he motioned again and I had to keep my hands up. Suddenly she said, “Gramie, it’s Burl — in that mask he brought home from Japan and the Afro wig that goes with it.”
“We can’t fool little Bright Eyes.”
He took off the wig, dropped it in the chair beside the phone table, then pulled off the mask, which was of some sort of thin rubber, with eye, nose, and mouth holes, and went on like scuba gear, and suddenly was my brother, with his same little twitchy grin that was more like a sneer.
“That feels better,” he remarked, very breezy, dropping the mask on top of the wig. “Stuff like that can be hot, this time of year.”
“Did you send me that wire?”
“Come to think of it, Sonya, I may have.”
“You had a nerve.”
“Well? I heard Gramie was pining for you, and of course I was. So, two birds with one stone, and after all it was you.”
“What do you mean, you were pining for me?”
“Well what do you think?”
“What do you want?”
“Two or three things, all at the same time, but I’ll be very glad to explain — in fact, I want to explain, I want you to get very clear, what I’m doing here. Shall we go in and sit down?”
“Who wants to know?”
For some reason, it infuriated me, on top of everything else, that this jerk should be inviting us into the sitting room, as though he owned the joint. I said, “This is our house, and we do the inviting around here!”
“Not when I hold the gun.”
Chapter 23
He stepped behind me, slapped my pockets, and then repeated that we should “go in and sit down.” Sonya and I, walking beside each other, led the way to the living room, with him behind us, holding the gun. He said, “Okay, Gramie, I’ll take this sofa, and you and Sonya can sit on the other, but” — pointing to the cocktail table between the two sofas — “will you move this table out, so there’s nothing in between? So I can look up Sonya’s legs and see what she’s got?” I told him to watch his language, and he told me do as he said, but with a sudden, half hysterical note in his voice that betrayed the state he was in. I moved the table a few feet, and he said: “That’s good. Now sit down.” I sat and he turned to Sonya. “Okay,” he said, “take ’em off.”
“...Take what off?”
“Drawers. Panty hose. Whatever they are.”
“And suppose I don’t?”
“Then I will. But I might do it kind of rough.”
He lifted her skirt as though to show her, but she slapped his hand away. “Keep your hands off me!” she snapped. “How many times do I have to tell you? You stink. You smell like feet that haven’t been washed — or more like a dead rat, maybe.”
“I never smelled feet that haven’t been washed — my friends all wash their feet, and I’ve never even seen a dead rat, let alone smelled one — I hope you tell me some day where you were raised, Sonya, that you know so much about it, how feet and dead rats smell. But just right now, skip it! Quit stalling! Take ’em off, I said!”
She stepped out of her shoes, and with him still pawing at her, slipped off her panty hose. She dropped them on the table, stooped, and put her shoes on again. He said: “Sit down!”
She sat.
He sat, and slouched over to peep.
“Open your legs.”
She opened her legs.
He stared, his lips slimy wet. Then, though it cost him an effort, taking his eyes off her, he started to talk. “So what do I want? Like I said, two or three things, but let’s take them one at a time. But before I get to them, there’s something I want you to know: I heard what you said to Gramie, that he shouldn’t open that door — but don’t hold it against him, that he did what you told him not to. It wouldn’t have been any different — I have a key, and would have come in, irregardless. That’s the first thing I want to make clear: I’m playing it back just as you played it at me, key and all — I got mine from your cleaning woman, with the same song-and-dance, pretending I wanted a date, like you pretended to me, that day when you staked me out, broke up my marriage, and cut me out of my land, that I was due to inherit—”
“After you knocked her off.”
“Knocked who off?”
“Your wife, who do you think?”
“My, my, my, the way you talk! Well, speaking of knocking off, that brings up the subject of Gramie.”
“In what way, the subject of Gramie?”
“I’m playing it back at him, just as he played it to me, that day when he hit me, sneaked a punch when I wasn’t looking — and kicked me, when I was down. I’ll do the same, except perhaps harder.”
“And then what?”
“Hey, not so fast. Other stuff comes first!”
“Come on, spit it out! What are you up to?”
“Before I attend to him, there’s what I do to you — with him looking on. Last time we had two, this time only one — but he’s your husband, and so it equalizes.”
“And then what?”
“I attend to him, with you looking on.”
“And then what?”
“Well Sonya, that would be up to you.”
“Come on, jerk, say what you mean!”
“I did say it, it would be up to you! My mother’s hellbent for history, says I’m a cut-rate Casanova, or something, so I’ll spout some history too. You can be Mary, Queen of Scots — who held still for her husband’s murder, and lived happily ever afterward.”
“Until they chopped off her head.”
“Well anyway, she lived, at least for a while.”
“You think I’d hold still for Gramie’s murder?”
“Well if you don’t, dead wives tell no tales.”
“And you think your mother’ll hold still?”
To that he made no answer, being caught by surprise. She jumped up and tore in, half screaming: “You think she won’t guess who killed her favorite child, her first-born, the apple of her eye? You think she won’t know who the black man was, that she won’t see inny connection between him and that Japanese mask, or the Afro wig that you had? You think she’s not going to use it, the clout she has in this county? The political stuff she can pull? Burl, she hates your guts, and you’re looking hell in the face right now, if you have the sense to know it! You...”