“Tell her I’ll call her back,” Becky said, glancing at her watch. Ball could take a hint.
“Jim said that you were thinking of doing a play about Eva Braun.” She’d returned her attention to the papers on her desk and seemed annoyed that he was still in the room. Probably liked to fuck with the man on the bottom, Ball thought. Probably masturbated to ragas.
“You say something?” She was impatient.
“Yeah. Jim said that you were considering a play about Eva Braun.”
“Oh, yes. Eva’s Honeymoon. We’re going to do it in the Mountbatten.” His mind flashed to the plump blonde who wore her hair like the 1940s Claudette Colbert. She was usually romping about that place in the mountains that Hitler built. Playing with puppies and making home movies. She was always smiling. He thought of what Brashford would say. “Shit, a white woman was married to Hitler.”
“God knows we’ve heard enough about what the men thought.” She stared hostilely at Ball when she said men. “And that little k — Jewish girl, Anne Frank, she’s almost discussed in this town as much as the Rosenbergs. So now, Eva will have a chance to tell her side. How she was victimized.” This bitch is incredible, Ball thought.
“Victimized? I don’t follow, Becky. I always thought that Eva Braun was a Nazi.” She jumped to her feet. She was shaking, she was so full of rage. “Just like you men! You rehabilitate the Waffen S.S. because they’re men. But Eva! No, Eva’s a woman! She was an innocent bystander in conflict between Jewish and German men! All of those women, victims in a war of male ego.” She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. As she did, he thought of the newsreels showing the women crying into their handkerchiefs and squealing as Hitler’s motorcade passed, their arms raised in Nazi salutes just like everybody else’s. Women throwing flowers, screaming, breaking down, wanting to wrap their legs around the Führer’s hips and party all night.
“Yeah. Well, I gotta be going. One thing.” He needed some air.
“What is it?” she asked, stamping a foot impatiently.
“Who’s going to direct my play now that Jim’s gone?”
“Tremonisha Smarts. She’s read your script and will be contacting you. She said that she’s having problems with some of your female characters.” Becky said all of this with her head buried in the papers.
“What?” he said. His legs felt weak.
“Tremonisha Smarts is directing your play. Now, I have a lot of work to do. I—” He turned around and walked out of the office. She’s having problems with some of your female characters. The words, said with a mean, sarcastic smile, stayed in his mind as he stood momentarily outside her door. Soon he heard her voice behind the door. “Hello, Tremonisha. He just left.” This was followed by a triumphant laugh. Ickey looked up at him and chuckled. He looked up at the portrait of Shakespeare. Even Shakespeare seemed to be smiling, mocking him. “Nigger,” the bard seemed to be saying, “who do you think you are, trying to express yourself in English? Don’t you know that English is white peoples’ language?” He left the theater with Shakespeare’s laughter ringing in his ears. Becky, Ickey, and Shakespeare all seemed to be laughing at him, their faces in a heavy-handed montage like in an old film. He left feeling like something that sticks to the soles of your feet and smells bad.
11
For some reason, Tremonisha wanted their meeting to take place at the Oyster Bar located in Grand Central Station on East Forty-second Street. The building’s artwork was elaborate. It reminded him of Henry James’ prose style. Excessive, equivocating. It contrasted with the modernist temple, the Pan-Am Building, that stood behind it. Tremonisha was about forty-five minutes late, which gave him an opportunity to read The New York Pillar. The Flower Phantom, as the man who assaulted Tremonisha Smarts was called, had struck again, this time tying up at gunpoint and shaving the head of a feminist writer who had suggested in a book that the typical rapist was a black man. The newspaper was calling the culprit a hair fetishist because of his practice of collecting the victim’s hair and placing it in a black plastic bag. A sketch of the Flower Phantom appeared in all of the newspapers. Panels of experts discussed him on television. Some black men began to appear in public wearing a chrysanthemum pinned to their clothes. Ian’s head told him that this man was a lunatic who should be put away for a long time, but his gut was cheering the man on. His head was Dr. Jekyll, but his gut was Mr. Hyde.
The place was full of commuters who were gulping down oysters and crackers. Finally somebody said, “Mr. Ball.” He looked up. She was standing there. Her skin was smooth and had a tapioca color. She wore a white turbanlike headpiece, earrings that dangled, bright red paint on her lips, which seemed in a puckered state. She wore black beads around her neck and the kind of skirt women wear in the Caribbean marketplace. She dressed like Carmen Miranda and had Carmen Miranda’s sexy eyes.
“When they find that nigger I hope they put him under the jail.” She sat down. “He walked about the room calling me a collaborator before he did it. Said that the French knew how to punish traitors.”
“Brashford said that throughout history when the brothers feel that they’re being pushed against the wall, they strike back and when they do strike back it’s like a tornado, uprooting, flinging about, and dashing to pieces everything in its path. A tornado has no conscience. He says the fellas feel that they are catching it from all sides.”
“What else would a senior male chauvinist like Brashford say? He’s just a fifth-rate O’Neill anyway, and his opinions about women are just like O’Neill’s. We’re all whores to them. I’m really surprised that you seem to be agreeing with him.” She went into her bag and removed a small gun. “I was always a pacifist, always sympathizing with these guys, but if one of them tries that again, I’m going to blow him away.” Sympathize, Ball thought. By the end of Wrong-Headed Man, the lead villain has screwed his children, sodomized his missionary wife, put his mother-in-law in bondage, performed bestial acts with pets, and when the police break down the door he’s emptied the fish bowl and is going after the fish.
“Get me a bowl of oyster stew and some crackers, and I think I’d like a bottle of Löwenbräu Light.” She threw a hundred-dollar bill at him. As he rose to comply with her wish, a white man who could have been created by Sloan Wilson approached the table. He wore a blue three-piece suit without a trace of lint, black cordovan shoes, manicured nails. He was clean-shaven. As Ball started toward the order counter, he heard the man ask was she Tremonisha Smarts. He turned and she was signing the man’s autograph and grinning. A European-American man came and took his order. He brought it back. “Isn’t that Tremonisha Smarts sitting over there?” He told the man that it was, the man made a smart aleck grin like James Dean’s, looked him up and down and said, no charge. “I loved that play,” he said. He came back and set down the tray bearing Tre’s requests and his shrimp cocktail.
She threw the script onto the table.
“I brought this script to you. I’ve red-penciled all of my suggestions; of course you’ll have the final say so of what goes, and what’s to be added. I think that the characters need more definition.” She paused and stared into his eyes after that sentence. He looked away. “We’re going to have to cut down on some of the props and costumes. Becky said they’re reducing the original budget for the play.”