“What did you want to ask me?” she asked.
“Well, if I may be frank, why do middle-class women like you go out with guys who want to beat you up and take your money?” He and the fellas always wondered why the musicians got all of the pussy. They concluded that it was because they did all of their talking with their instruments. They were nonverbal and so the bitches could run their mouths without fear of being interrupted or being called on the bullshit they were laying down. They also had theories about what the mouthpieces were substitutes for.
“It’s none of your business,” she said.
“These guys beat you up. Why don’t you date somebody from your own class?”
“Leave.” She pointed to the door. She ah…looked…well, cute when she got mad. His mother’s image appeared in his mind. She was giving him a stern look. He’d have to cool it. He wasn’t as close to any woman as he was to his mother. Mama’s boy? Why not. Ten years ago, when Freud was still riding high, you couldn’t say that, but now that even some of his staunchest supporters were stating publicly that there was no empirical foundation whatsoever for his theories, you could say that you dug your mother without anybody, you know, looking at you funny. He started for the door. She’d gone to the couch and was sobbing on her arm. No. He decided. He’d have this out. “And another thing.” She had her knees up, and he could see some of that excellent area above her knees: Her thighs were calling out to him, Ian, Ian, they were saying. He felt like pulling a Clark Gable, in that scene from Gone With the Wind, taking her into his arms — she beating his chest and kicking — and going into the bedroom to comfort her and stuff. But since he had her attention he decided to go for broke.
“I know I’m from the South, and I’m not all that hip to the way northern urban proletariat people talk, but some of the fellas say that they can’t follow the dialect in Wrong-Headed Man. I mean, if they can’t follow it, how are these white women who praise it so enthusiastically able to follow it! What do they know that the people who grew up actually speaking this language don’t know? The fellas say—”
“What do those hardheaded fools say about me?”
“They say that you know as much about the way black people talk as Al Capp knew about Indian languages—” She started screaming and shouting. Then she started throwing things. He got out of there fast. He knew that he’d fucked up this time. Randy Shank was in the lobby, sitting at his desk. He was a little drunk.
“How come she let you up there and won’t let none of the other fellas in there? Only people I see going up there are broads. Man, some of those chicks look rough. They could have gone into the wrestling business. I’ll bet you’re working on more than that play up there. Does she stopwatch the foreplay? I’ll bet a cold biddy like that times her sexual orgasms.” He then began to ramble.
“That Becky French fucked over my play. I’ll fix her. That Flower Phantom. That dude is right. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Ball started to punch out Shank. These northern guys were always pushing him. He was always having to invite them outside. Always fucking with him. He was just about around the corner from Tre’s building when Shank came running out.
“The bitch wants to talk to you.”
Randy Shank waited for him to come into the lobby. He handed him the downstairs phone. He had a silly mocking grin. Ball grabbed the phone from the sucker.
“Yes,” he said. Randy was trying to listen, peering over the top of the newspaper he pretended to be reading. Headlines read: FLOWER PHANTOM’S NEW VICTIM.
“I don’t want our…what just happened to come between us and the play. We have to forget about our differences and think of the play. I guess I lost my head. Throwing those things at you like that. We’ll work tomorrow.” He noticed Shank trying to spy. He put his hand over the receiver.
“Very well.” He didn’t want to let on how relieved he was.
14
They’d been working from four to eight P.M. She had smoked a pack of cigarettes. When he went to the bathroom during a break he noticed a lot of stress pills in her medicine cabinet. Their exchanges since the argument had been cordial, civilized. A word she used a lot. This or that is so civilized, she’d say.
She knew her business. He had a tendency to tell rather than show, and she was teaching him the art of description. The art of movement. The art of character differentiation. She had recommended some minor changes in the script, having mostly to do with his tendency toward lengthy dialogue (Brashford’s influence). Some of his lines had to be snipped. He had a tendency toward the robust, having grown up under a big sky. A sky uncluttered by skyscrapers and other attempts to “make order from chaos.” He’d read that she had received a Phi Beta Kappa from a school in New York somewhere. The school where she met Becky. She’d had her stuff produced in a lot of workshops before hitting the big time with Wrong-Headed Man, which had become an international hit. One of the posters hanging in her living room showed a scene from Wrong-Headed Man, a black man with the missionary held over his head. He wears an idiotic grin. The viewer was provided with a good look at the missionary’s thighs and bosom. He seems to be handling her with his big, hairy fists as easily as one would hold a doll.
The doorbell rang. She opened it to a white man. He was breathing hard. Sweating. She escorted him into the room.
“This is Detective Lawrence O’Reedy of the New York Police Department,” she said proudly. The handshake was polite.
“He’s trying to find the man who cut my hair.”
“A hair fetishist,” O’Reedy said, frowning at Ball.
“A hair fetishist? I thought the newspaper said that he cut off her hair because of World War Two, or something,” Ball said. Tremonisha glared at him. O’Reedy ignored him.
“I came over to show you the profile of the man. It’s based on your description of his face.” She looked at the photo and then to Ball, who averted his eyes. There was a silence.
“Doesn’t look like him at all,” she said. “He’s heavier in the face. Like Ball here.” Detective O’Reedy stared at Ball. Ball squirmed in his chair.
“We’ll do another sketch,” Detective O’Reedy said.
“Since he was wearing a mask, we can only approximate his features.” He studied Ball. Like Clint Eastwood, his idol, Detective O’Reedy talked with his face.
“Ball is working on a play. I’m helping him improve it. I’m making some minor changes.”
“Playwright, huh?”
“Yes. Yes, sir,” Ball said.
“Well, I have to be going,” he said.
“Thanks for all you’re doing,” Tremonisha said, escorting him to the door.
Ball heard them talking low as they approached the door in the hall. Almost in a whisper. They talked that way for about three minutes. He heard the door shut. She returned to him. It was getting dark and he could see the moon beginning to appear over the East River. He was putting on his coat to leave. Their eyes met. They were that way for a long time. He could see her grunting and groaning as he moved his hips under her body. He wondered was she thinking the same thing. Probably not. She finally said it. He wondered what took her so long.