“Anything, anything is fine,” Quick said, wiggling his mustache. “So you won’t forget.” He had both feet in the room, was looking around. “You got to plug in the television. It’s not plugged in.”
His arm tingling as if there were needles in it, Christopher wanted to smash Quick’s face. Instead, pretending a smile, gave him five dollars. Quick winking at him in receipt.
“Enjoy yourselves,” he said, beaming, smacking his lips, “but don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and there ain’t a thing I wouldn’t do.”
“Get out,” he said, and Quick was gone.
Borrowing her razor — an old-style straight razor with a jeweled handle — he went into the bathroom to shave. Take it off, take it off, take it all off, the television voice whispering to him in the mirror. He felt his flesh slide down the inside of his legs, falling with a splash to the white tile floor. A flushing sound. For moments he felt remarkably light. All loss, he discovered, an easing of the burden.
He took his mustache off, as much as he could get with a dull blade, cutting his lip, the blood on the inside of his mouth. It took a long time to shave his face, the mirror fogged over from the shower, a long time.
Put some fun in your life, the voice said. Become a blonde. Rosemary in the green rented suit, a scarf over her hair, was going out the door.
He came back to Carolyn. “I’ve just shot the President,” he said. “I need a place to hide. The Army is looking for me, the National Guard, the police. The President’s wife.”
She told him to hide in the closet. “Christopher is coming with his army to protect you. They’re all Negroes now, you know.”
While he was in the closet, the police broke in. They couldn’t find Parks so they raped his wife and beat her.
Parks hid himself inside the vacuum cleaner until they were gone.
Christopher awoke in a strange mood. Angry at something, aroused. The room in shadow, glowing as if everything in it were luminescent. The funereal cold of the air-conditioning giving off a smell like damp wool. Where the hell was she? Where had Parks gone?
Rosemary appeared in the doorway of the bathroom in a green silk dress, as beautiful and remote as a model or a movie actress, one of the most lusted-after women in America.
“How long was I sleeping?” He shouted the question at her, angry at having lost a sense of time. He had been separated too long from himself.
She sat on the edge of the bed as if she were weightless, a stricken heroine in a ballet, a fallen swan. “Do you know you look like a child when you sleep?” Looking at her hands. “You were shivering so I covered you. I hope you don’t mind.”
He was shivering still. Something in her tone. She was like a marvelous statue, too exquisite to be borne in an ugly place. Wanted to smash her, but couldn’t bear the idea of the room without her.
“I want to make it up to you for what I’ve done,” she whispered. “Please let me.”
There was no one there talking to him. He had the idea his hands were bleeding and put them behind him.
“I knew you had been following me,” she said, as if continuing a conversation they had been having. He made no response.
She took a deep breath, a hard confession to make, not looking at him, unaware of the way he was watching her — the blood stare of his anger. “I don’t know why I didn’t say anything. I wanted to talk to you. Something about you … I think I had the idea you understood something about me.”
He was very still, as if all his energy were compressed inside him into nothing.
She touched his arm, then took her hand away as if it had transgressed. “I’m sorry I’m so bad.”
It was as if he had dreamed his entire life and woke on his deathbed to find himself still an infant, hardly formed.
“You didn’t know.” He pulled her down from behind, her face in reverse. The silence holding the walls of the room apart. Rosemary, wide-eyed, nailed to the bed.
“Don’t hurt me,” she said in a dull voice, resigned to misuse.
“Who have you told?” he said like a cop. “Who knows about it?”
She pretended not to understand, moved her head from side to side as if someone were hitting her.
He wanted to put his head on her breasts but didn’t. “Who have you told? I won’t hurt you if you tell me. Did you tell the police?”
“Is that all you care about?” Her eyes like a snowstorm.
“It’s because I don’t care I want to know.”
“I told them.”
It didn’t matter to him.
“Nothing about you. I told them I didn’t know who it was.”
Then why were they following him? What did they think he did? Was he responsible for his dreams?
“What can I say to make you believe me? I try not to lie.”
Her breasts occupied his vision as if they were born in his head. “What does Parks know?” he asked. His chest pained him.
She shook her head, whispered something. Crying. Her tears like leaves.
“Does he suspect me?”
“I think he suspects himself.”
He laughed until the pain left his chest. But then it came back, heavier than before.
She started to talk, stopped. “If I asked you to, would you come with me to church? You don’t have to pray or talk to anyone. Just be with me there.”
“What in hell for? Do you think you can offer me to God?”
“Only you can do that, offer yourself.”
“I was born a Jew.”
“I thought you were Jewish, though I wasn’t sure. The name Christopher …”
“I’m nothing.” He inhales her into his lungs until she burns his chest like smoke.
“I want to help you and I don’t know how.”
Climbed, swung himself from the pivot of her shoulders, on top of her. “Help me,” he pleaded, mocking her. “I want you to help me. Will you help me?”
She slapped his face gently, harder. Harder. Harder. Harder. Her hand out of control, killing him.
His eyes burning as if there were a flame at the deepest part. Aware of the power of his position, the weight of his knee (like a foot in the door) between her legs. There was nothing to keep him from doing what he wanted. Nothing. Afraid of wanting what he didn’t want. Afraid of who he wasn’t.
Kill a Commie for Christ.
He left her, went to the bathroom, and locked the door. With the shower on, though he didn’t go under it, he felt better. His hopes murdered.
He lay next to her on the motel double bed, feeling nothing, married to the dead feeling in himself. He held her hand. The panic gone.
She kissed his face where the slaps still burned. “What are you running from? Would you tell me?”
He ducked his head, smirked. “I just wanted to get out of the city.”
“You have a beautiful face,” she said, “and I love you. Do you know?”
He didn’t say anything, his eyes wet; thought of the return trip — in a hurry to get back. All time somehow connected for him with the city, who he was, what he had been. The panic again in his chest. “No one loves anyone,” he whispered. (Parks would return, would want Rosemary, would not go away again without him.)
“I love you, Christopher.” Her saying it burned more than the slaps.
He laughed, the sound unreal, scratching his nerves. She kissed his eyes. “Believe I love you, Christopher. Believe in me.”
“I believe in you,” he said, his chest hurting. He thought of going on — the two of them in her car — until they found someplace they wanted to stay, but the idea held no joy for him. Even if they weren’t caught (the past pursuing him, the Army now), what would they do? What choices would they have? There was no life to be lived, only anonymity and death wherever you went.