Rodney looked up. Pharsin’s face was a screen of tears. Thoroughly emboldened, Rodney hunched himself forward and leafed through the text.
“That bit… that bit where she… when Cissy—”
“When she comes to the States?”
“Yes. When she comes to America.”
“The thing with Immigration?”
“Yes. Now that scene… Incredible. But so true! And then, after that—I’m trying to find it—the bit when she…”
“When she meets the guy?”
“Yes. The guy: now there’s another character. And there’s that great scene when they… Here it is. No. When they…”
“At the rent tribunal?”
“Oh now that scene. Can you believe that?”
“The judge?”
“Please,” said Rodney. “Don’t get me started on the judge.”
And so, for forty-five minutes, always a beat late, he somehow sang along with a song he didn’t know. It seemed like scurvy work, of course; and it was strangely shaming to see Pharsin’s face awaken out of hunger into vivid varieties of animation and delight (as at the chessboard, Rodney felt dwarfed by a superior force of life). It was scurvy work, but it was easy. He wondered why he hadn’t done it months ago. Then Pharsin said,
“Enough. Forget the laughter, the characters, the images. What’s The Sound of the Words, the Sound of the Words actually saying, Rod?”
“The Sound of the Words, the Sound of the Words?”
“What’s it saying?”
“What’s it saying? Well, it’s a love story. It’s about love in the modern world. How love gets hard to do.”
“But what’s it saying?”
Ten seconds passed. And Rodney thought fuck it and said, “It’s about race. It’s about the agony of the African-American male. It’s about the need, the compulsion, to express that agony.”
Pharsin slowly reached out a hand toward him. Once more tears shone in the bloodbaths of his eyes.
“Thanks, Rod.”
“It’s been a pleasure, Pharsin. Hello, is that the time? Shouldn’t you be uh…?”
Until that moment Pharsin had seemed insensible of his surroundings. But now he jerked himself upright and began to move around the room with purposeful curiosity, one arm folded, the other crooked, a forefinger tapping on his chin, pausing to inspect a nicknack here, a doodad there. Rodney wasn’t thinking about his other guest (who, he assumed, would still be wedged behind the bed). He was thinking of her simulacrum: her portrait, arrayed on its stand, in blazing crime. Redigesting a mouthful of vomit, Rodney watched as Pharsin loped up to the easel and paused.
The black shape on the white sheet. The beauty and power of the rump and haunches. The sleeping face, half-averted. Rodney, out of sheer habit, had salved and healed her bruises. That was probably a good idea, he thought.
“This a real person pose for this?” Pharsin turned, artist to artist, and added, “Or you take it from a book.”
“A book?”
“Yeah, like a magazine?”
“Yes. From a magazine.”
“Know who this kind of reminds me of? Cassie. My wife, Cassie.” Pharsin smiled ticklishly as he followed the resemblance for another second or two. Then he rejected it. “Maybe ten years ago. And she never had an ass like that in all her born days. Well, Rod. I want you to know what this last hour has meant to me. There was a man crying out in the dark here. You my friend have answered that cry. You’ve given me what I wanted: a hearing. I sent that novel to every registered publisher and agent in the city. All I got was a bunch of printed slips. Know what I think? They didn’t read it. They didn’t even read it, Rod.”
“That’s a terrible thing, Pharsin. A terrible thing. Oh, by the way. You once told me that your wife was an artist. What kind is she?”
Then for a second their eyes met: horribly. And in Pharsin’s face you could see the ageless and awful eureka of every stooge and sap and cinch. He said,
“You read my book and you’re asking me what Cassie does?”
But it came to Rodney and he said, “I know what Cissie does. In the book. I was just wondering how close you were sticking to life. I know what Cissie does?”
Pharsin’s voice had Rodney by the lapels. It said, “What?”
And he told him: “Mime.”
With Pharsin caged and dropping in the elevator, and all loaded up with his typescript like a bearer, Rodney’s head remained limp and bent, hangdog with relief. Even the strengthening conviction—not yet entire, needing more thought—that he, Rodney, had no talent: this brought relief. He let his head hang there a little longer, before he faced the music of human speech.
She said, “You fucking done it now.”
He said, “Oh dear. Have I said the wrong thing?”
“All a slight nightmare, really. She couldn’t leave, do you see, because Pharsin was on the door. So she rather let me have it.” Rodney was no stranger to the experience of being denounced from dawn to dusk; but he wasn’t used to accents such as hers. “A terrible way for things to end. Our first night together and it was all talk and no sex. And such talk. She was livid.”
“What about? I wish those people would go away.”
Cocktails alfresco in Rockefeller Plaza: Amber Dreams under a cold blue sky. The square was punctuated by people dressed as mannequins and posing as statues. Just standing there with painted smiles.
“Oh God, don’t ask,” said Rodney—for her grievances had been legion. “She knew someone or something had been driving him nuts. She didn’t know it was me. He’d never been violent before. It was me. I put those marks on her.”
“Oh come on. It’s in their culture.”
Rodney coughed and said, “Oh yeah. And she said, ‘He’ll write another one now.’ She’d been moonlighting for two years. As a waitress. To support him. And she could tell I hadn’t read it. By my voice.”
Rock looked on, frowning, as Rodney imitated her imitating him. It sounded something like: Ooh, ah say, wort simplay dezzling imagereh. Rodney said,
“She thought I was sneering at him. Him being bleck, do you see.”
“Yes, well, they can be quite chippy about that over here. Do you think his novel might have been good?”
“No one will ever know. But I do know this. She won’t have to support him while he writes the second one.”
“Why not?”
“Because she stole my money.”
“Oh you tit. How many times did I tell you? Jesus Christ, what a silly old tart you are.”
“I know. I know. Waitress? If you please? Two Amber Dreams. No. Four Amber Dreams.”
“Are you telling me you just left it lying around?”
“In the middle of the night I… Wait. When I first met her, in the bar, do you see, I offered her five hundred dollars. No, as a sitter’s fee. So I reckoned I owed her that. Went and got it out for her. Thought she was sleeping.”
“Oh you tit.”
“She did leave me the five hundred. Ah. Thank you most awfully.”
And on her way to the door she paused in front of the easel and whispered a single word (stressed as a menacing and devastating spondee): “Wanker.” And that was the end of that, he thought. That was the end of that.
Rock said, “Were they in it together, do you think?”
“No no. No. It was all pure… coincidence.”