And, just last Sunday: I revisited the Museum of Natural History, knowing there was a possibility that you might return. For it had seemed to me possible that you’d recognized me on the steps, and sent a signal to me with your eyes, without Lisle noticing; you were urging me to return to meet with you, alone. The deep erotic bond between us will never be broken, you know: you entered my virginal body, you took from me my innocence, my youth, my very soul. My angel! Forgive me, return to me, I will make up to you the suffering you ve endured for my sake.
I waited, but you failed to return.
I waited, and my sense of mission did not subside but grew more certain.
I found myself the sole visitor on the gloomy fourth floor, in the Hall of Dinosaurs. My footsteps echoed faintly on the worn marble floor. A white-haired museum guard with a paunch like yours regarded me through drooping eyelids; he sat on a canvas chair, hands on his knees. Like a wax dummy. Like one of those trompe l’oeil mannequins. You know: those uncanny, lifelike figures you see in contemporary art collections, except this slouching figure wasn’t bandaged in white. Silently I passed by him as a ghost might pass. My (gloved) hand in my bag, and my fingers clutching a razor blade I’d learned by this time to wield with skill, and courage.
Stealthily I circled the Hall of Dinosaurs looking for you, but in vain; stealthily I drew up behind the dozing guard, feeling my erratic heartbeat quicken with the thrill of the hunt… but of course I let the moment pass, it was no museum guard but the renowned Dr. K-for whom the razor blade was intended. (Though I had not the slightest doubt that I could have wielded my weapon against the old man, simply out of frustration at not finding you, and out of female rage at centuries of mistreatment, exploitation; I might have slashed his carotid artery and quickly retreated without a single blood drop splashed onto my clothing; even as the old man’s life bled out onto the worn marble floor, I would have descended to the near-deserted third floor of the museum, and to the second, to mingle unnoticed with Sunday visitors crowded into a new computer graphics exhibit. So easy!) I found myself adrift amid rubbery dinosaur-replicas, some of them enormous as Tyrannosaurus Rex, some the size of oxen, and others fairly small, human-sized; I admired the flying reptiles, with their long beaks and clawed wings; in a reflecting surface over which one of these prehistoric creatures soared I admired my pale, hot-skinned face and floating ashy hair. My darling, you whispered, I will always adore you. That angelic smile!
Dr. K-, see? I’m smiling, still.
Dr. K-! Why are you standing there, so stiffly, at an upstairs window of your house? Why are you cringing, overcome by a sickening fear? Nothing will happen to you that is not just. That you do not deserve.
These pages in your shaking hand, you’d like to tear into shreds-but don’t dare. Your heart pounds, in terror of being snatched from your chest! Desperately you’re contemplating- but will decide against-showing my letter to police. (Ashamed of what the letter reveals of the renowned Dr. K-!) You are contemplating-but will decide against-showing my letter to your wife, for you’ve had exhausting sessions of soul-baring, confession, exoneration with her, numerous times; you’ve seen the disgust in her eyes. No more! And you haven’t the stomach to contemplate yourself in the mirror, for you’ve had more than enough of your own face, those stricken guilty eyes. While I, the venomous diamond-head, contentedly spin my gossamer web amid the rafters of your basement, or in the niche between your desk and the wall, or in the airless cave beneath your marital bed, or, most delicious prospect!-inside the very mattress of the child’s bed in which, when she visits her grandparents in the house on Richmond Street, beautiful little Lisle sleeps.
Invisible by day as by night, spinning my web, out of my guts, tireless and faithful-”happy.”
KARMA by WALTER MOSLEY
Leonid McGill sat at his desk, on the sixty-seventh floor of the Empire State Building, filing his nails and gazing at New Jersey. It was three-fifteen. Leonid had promised himself that he’d exercise that afternoon but now that the time had come he felt lethargic.
It was that pastrami sandwich, he thought. Tomorrow I’ll have something light like fish and then I can go to Gordo’s and work out.
Gordo’s was a third-floor boxer’s gym on Thirty-first Street. When Leonid was thirty years younger, and sixty pounds lighter, he went to Gordo’s every day. For a while Gordo Packer wanted the private detective to go pro.
“You’ll make more money in the ring than you ever will panty sniffin’,” the seemingly ageless trainer said. McGill liked the idea but he also loved Lucky Strikes and beer.
“I can’t bring myself to run unless I’m being chased,” he’d tell Gordo. “And whenever somebody hurts me I wanna do him some serious harm. You know if a guy knocked me out in the ring I’d probably lay for him with a tire iron out back’a Madison Square when the night was through.”
The years went by and Leonid kept working out on the heavy bag two or three times a week. But a boxing career was out of the question. Gordo lost interest in Leonid as a prospect but they remained friends.
“How’d a Negro ever get a name like Leonid McGill?” Gordo once asked the P.I.
“Daddy was a communist and Great-Great-Granddaddy was a slave master from Scotland,” Leo answered easily. “You know the black man’s family tree is mostly root. Whatever you see aboveground is only a hint at the real story.”
Leo got up from his chair and made a stab at touching his toes. His fingers made it to about midshins but his stomach blocked any further progress.
“Shit,” the P.I. said. Then he returned to his chair and went back to filing his nails.
He did that until the broad-faced clock on the wall said 4:07. Then the buzzer sounded. One long, loud blare. Leonid cursed the fact that he hadn’t hooked up the view-cam to see who it was at the door. With a ring like that it could have been anyone. He owed over forty-six hundred dollars to the Wyant brothers. The nut was due and Leonid had yet to collect on his windfall. The Wyants wouldn’t pay any attention to his cash flow problems.
It might have been a prospective client at the door. A real client. Someone with an employee stealing from him. Or maybe a daughter being influenced by a bad crowd. Then again it could be one of thirty or forty angry husbands wanting revenge for being found out at their extramarital pastimes. And then there was Joe Haller-the poor schnook. But Leonid had never even met Joe Haller. There was no way that that loser could have found his door.
The buzzer sounded again.
Leonid got up from his chair and walked into the long hall that led to his reception room. Then he came to the front door.
The buzzer blared a third time.
“Who is it?” McGill shouted in a southern accent that he used sometimes.
“Mr. McGill?” a woman said.
“He’s not here.”
“Oh. Do you expect him back today?”
“No,” Leonid said. “No. He’s away on a case. Down in Florida. If you tell me what it is you want I’ll leave him a note.”
“Can I come in?” She sounded young and innocent but Leonid wasn’t about to be fooled.
“I’m just the building janitor, honey,” he said. “I’m not allowed to let anybody in any office in this here building. But I’ll write down your name and number and leave it on his desk if you want.”
Leonid had used that line before. There was no argument against it. The janitor couldn’t be held responsible.
There was silence from the other side of the door. If the girl had an accomplice they’d be whispering about how to get around his ploy. Leonid put his ear against the wall but couldn’t hear a thing.