“As for Tre, they don’t even understand her plays. But as long as she takes swipes at the brothers, Becky will keep her.” He leaned over. Whispering. “Between you and me, I think it’s because of some affair Becky had when she was in the South organizing during the sixties. Some black dude. Fucked over her. Stole her credit cards, and forged her checks, and now she’s using Tremonisha to get even with all black men. Kind of like a circus act where the ringmaster shoots a dummy out of a cannon. She dared not tamper with your play because of Jim Minsk. I’m surprised that they even gave you a workshop, now that he’s dead.”
“Brashford says that the Jews are using blacks to keep the goyim off their case. All this stuff about pathology — welfare, crime and dope, single parent households — he says that the conservative Jews keep those issues on the front burner so’s the goyim will be so angry with blacks that they will ignore the Jews and leave them alone. He says that the black criminals might mug somebody or relieve them of a gold chain, but they never built no empire of crime like Murder Incorporated like the Jews did.”
“Ninety-five percent of the audience for his stuff is Jewish. The blacks don’t like him, nor his work. Listen, you’re going to have to wean yourself away from Brashford. Hasn’t he gotten you enough grants and fellowships? I mean, it must be embarrassing.”
Ball didn’t say anything. The waiter came and handed Shoboater the check. He pulled out his American Express and signed for it.
“I got to hand it to you, Ball. You’re the original malevolent rabbit. You couldn’t care less about what happened to Brashford. As soon as you stop using him, you’ll use somebody else. Your mother was like that. Wasn’t she arrested?” Ball leaned over and grabbed the sucker by the collar. The diners looked at the pair, but Ball didn’t care. He let him go. Shoboater was trembling.
“Hey man. Calm down. Here, have some coffee, it’s like the kind they have down home. None of this weak northern stuff.” He poured Ball some coffee from the silver pot the waiter had left.
“I’m sorry, Paul. But when somebody puts my mother down, I just go crazy.” Besides, he wanted Shoboater to write a good review of Reckless Eyeballing.
“So Randy Shank is a doorman uptown,” Shoboater said, changing the subject, smiling profusely and straightening his clothes.
“He’s an important playwright. He paved the way for us all. Now that he’s down on his luck, you guys are pouncing on him like buzzards, lingering over his bones.”
Shoboater looked at his watch. “Hey, I’m late. I have to go uptown for the interview with—” He mentioned the name of another black feminist writer who had finished a book.
She wrote in a style that Brashford sarcastically called “finishing school lumpen.” Brashford accused the woman of having maimed the speech of ghetto women for the benefit of white women who didn’t know any better.
He rose and hurried out of the restaurant. The tailor-made suit had his butt sticking out. That amused Ball.
“Anything else, monsieur?” the waiter asked.
“Yeah. Give me another Pabst,” Ball said. The waiter turned up his nose.
That night he dreamed that all of those giant Amazon women that Shoboater had said were on the walls of museums on the domed ceilings of churches, and on public buildings in Europe had escaped and were chasing him and the fellas through the streets. These giant women didn’t seem to have much difficulty in catching them, despite the heavy clothing they were wearing. None of them tripped over her skirt. They were “monstropolous,” as Zora Neale Hurston would say.
17
O’Reedy was getting nowhere with his search for the Flower Phantom. The bastard’s somewhere right now, probably laughing at me, he thought as he entered his house in Queens. He hung up his coat and hat in the hall.
“Where’s dinner?” he said gruffly. He heard low voices talking in the living room. He couldn’t make out what they were saying.
He sees things. I think that he needs a rest, and the other day he didn’t know that I was in the house, and he was in the bedroom with that thing.
What thing?
That gun. He had it next to him.
Maybe he was keeping it under the pillow.
No, he had it next to his cheek. He had a smile on his face.
I’ll try to talk Dad into taking a vacation.
He calls the gun Nancy. I mean, Sean, I wouldn’t…I mean I’ve been a good wife, and, well, if it was another woman, I’d understand, and even another man, I mean, I try to keep up with the times, but Sean, competing with a gun— He stood in the doorway. He cleared his throat.
“Oh, dear, we didn’t hear you come in, Sean is here.”
“Yeah, I see him with my own eyes. So what were you two gabbing about?” He folded his arms and leaned against one side of the threshold.
“We, ah, we—” his wife began. “Oh, I’d better see about dinner.” She went into the kitchen, leaving Sean to his father. His son looked more like O’Reedy’s father, Captain Timothy O’Reedy, who was known as a great risk taker, and finally made captain after a controversial career and many unnecessary homicides, which he claimed took place in the line of duty. Freckled face, red hair, but unlike his grandfather Sean O’Reedy was a wimp, in the eyes of his dad. He was thirty-five years old and still in school.
“Mom and I were thinking, Dad, you’ve built all of this vacation time up, maybe you ought to take a vacation, kind of get your schedule ready for retirement.”
“I haven’t missed a day’s work in the thirty years I’ve been on the force.” O’Reedy picked up the newspaper from the doorway entrance and sat down on a sofa and began reading as though Sean wasn’t even there. On the wall of the living room were framed portraits of the Virgin Mary, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The queen was seated. The wall also bore a painting of a landscape, and there were furnishings that elitists would consider kitsch. He could smell the roast beef coming from the kitchen.
“Staying for dinner?” O’Reedy asked, not even taking time to look up from his paper. The headlines read: FLOWER PHANTOM STRIKES AGAIN.
“I don’t think so, Dad, I have a date tonight.”
“Yeah, when do you think you’re going to settle down? Your mother keeps talking about grandchildren.” O’Reedy was uncomfortable being left in the same room with Sean. Something about the kid was strange. Always into the books, never any time for fun, and when O’Reedy took him to some chippies to get him broken in, the kid ran away. Scared of broads.
“Dad, I came to say goodbye.” O’Reedy looked up.
“Goodbye, what do you mean, goodbye?”
“I’m going to California, Dad. I’m going to be teaching Irish studies.” His father slowly lowered the newspaper from his face.
“Irish what?”
“Irish studies. I’ve been hired by a foundation that’s begun an institute in ethnic studies.”
“And what was it again that you were going to teach?”
“Irish studies.”
“And what, may I ask, is that?”
“It’s the study of Irish culture, history, politics, literature—” O’Reedy laughed as his lanky son stood before him dressed in a tweed jacket, green turtleneck sweater, jeans, and sneakers.
“Hey, you come here.” His wife came into the room, but not before turning down the portable television’s volume. Bette Davis was giving Anne Baxter a good scolding on the subject of ambition.