Night for Day

by Patrick Flanery

  Norwegian on my father’s side. Swedish on my mother’s.

  The professor nodded. Unfortunate name, given recent events, but then a man is more than the name of his fathers, only. . . I seem to have lost my train. Ah yes, it is only when that true whiteness is absent that the real problems begin, with the sallow and the black and the brown pigmentation that allows red to run rampant across the psyche.

  Quisling wrinkled his nose and sipped his second glass of scotch. Since the war he had been teased and taunted for his name and it had been insinuated that perhaps, really, he ought to think of changing it to one less compromised. He took another swallow. He would rise the next morning with bloodshot eyes, red as fire with the weeping that tormented him when he woke and knew himself a man alone in the world. King had a wife blonde as he and there was no doubt King took comfort in this twin-like company, but Quisling knew that, for him, woman was not his province, while man remained forbidden. As these unsummoned thoughts mobbed him, he was conscious of flushing red. Some careless nights he had allowed himself to drive downtown, hang out at Cooper’s Doughnuts or wander through Pershing Square, knowing what possibilities lurked in the shadows, visible in glances drawn to him by the angles of his own body, the contours of cheeks, planes of chest, his girder legs. Loitering was illegal and he was a lawman. Temptation had to be suppressed. Consciousness of temptation was the only thing that kept the fires at bay. It had nothing to do with the pigments of the human species or its many races. He had fallen into this job, fallen like a fool.

  If you like that whiskey, I’ve got something you’ll like even better. I suppose you’ve never tried port, have you, son? Professor Morrow crooned. Quisling shook his head, finished the scotch, and put down the glass on the coffee table. Well go on, Phyllis, you know what I’m talking about. Get the port for our guests.

  Yes, dear, she said, hurrying into the dining room to retrieve the correct glasses and the dusty bottle from the liquor cabinet. She was unsure whether Adelram meant the good port or the cheap port and decided he could only mean the former. Would you like a glass yourself, dear? He failed to hear and she poured the red liquor into four small crystal glasses, arranging them in a grid on the silver tray her mother had sent from Morocco last year. On high heels she wobbled back across the carpet and into the living room, taking the tray first to her guests, bending over so the men could reach the glasses without having to stand. Agent Quisling looked her in the face and thanked her politely but she was conscious of Agent King taking the opportunity to glance too long at her bust. She straightened her back and placed a glass between Adelram’s dimpled fingers and kept the last for herself. How nice it would be to go home with Agent Quisling, who wore no ring and had a sensible leather-strapped watch and probably lived in a sensible bungalow in Pasadena or Glendale and ironed his own shirts and made sensible dinners for himself. Quisling was the sort of man she felt she should have married, quiet and blond – so very blond – and tanned and muscular and yet apart from the beauty, that very particular California beauty she knew was made from the best of the American races coming together in a white European ideal, he also seemed a sensitive and intelligent man, she could tell from the way he moved and sat and spoke, the care with which he treated her furniture and possessions. Later, once Agents King and Quisling were gone, there would be a suffocating hour under her sweating husband, pretending a tenderness she had never felt for him. She flushed and wished to be alone with Agent Quisling, whose first name she had never learned. He looked like a Peter or a Phil. What if these men were not spying on sweet Mr. Frank but were really there to spy on them, or what if the men were not agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation but instead members of a criminal organization undertaking an elaborate surveillance of the Morrow home before breaking in to steal everything they owned, including all the jewelry her mother had given her, which she had been wearing ever since the men announced themselves?

  King sipped at the port and listened to the music that came through the headphones from the house across the street as Mrs. Morrow squinted in her chair on the other side of the room, hands sallow and disunited against her lap, feet two badly butchered cuts of beef. After a moment the woman seemed aware of King’s gaze and rearranged herself, tidying her legs, drawing herself erect, and folding her hands. She was not unattractive, still young, although her dress was dowdy. Nice tits, without question, two good handfuls of fun. Through the headphones a woman’s voice began to sing and King imagined, as Mrs. Morrow’s mouth moved in a conversation he could not hear, that it was she who was singing so enchantingly into his ears. It was not a song he knew but the music kept him mesmerized, so fixed on the face of his hostess that he was unconscious of tightening his grip round the crystal glass, hardly aware of the pain as the shards cut into his fingers. Everyone jumped at the sound he had not heard and the red blood that fell, mixing with port, into the beige carpet at his feet. He removed the headphones and Professor Morrow was speaking in an agitated way, Here we are talking nonsense, all of us crying Peace, Freedom, and Liberty, and poor Agent King has fallen victim to the glass with a crack in it. No, don’t trouble yourself about the carpet, Agent Quisling, our girl will see to the stains. Red rain will not blight this private acre of land, Adelram laughed, although the carpet would most likely have to be replaced and he intended reporting to the FBI’s Los Angeles field office just how inconvenienced he had been by this whole affair. The stain darkened the longer it stood, red as their steak dinner but less appealing, and he thought of raising his hand to fling a red coal from the fire and suffer each of the agents to take it into their mouths, to tie it inside against their teeth and watch their tongues sizzle. No, no, no, Adelram, you could never do any such thing, but what a pleasure it would be to see authority taking the hot rump of chastisement for casting itself about so indiscriminately, as if he, Adelram Morrow, did not have better things to do in his evenings than entertain a couple of towhead schoolboys while they poached the privacy of the whole neighborhood. No, no, no, Adelram, of course, you believe entirely in their cause. It is only right the Reds be flushed out of the country just as quick and hot as your bowels void each time Phyllis administers an enema.

  Phyllis, get Agent Quisling another glass of port and call Edna to come attend to this stain.

  Of course, dear, Phyllis said, bobbing out of the room.

  Agent King was red with shame, cheeks as red as coals. What fun it would be to plump them full with real red coals, a tortured little chipmunk, two chipmunks, these agents, one crafty, the other an idiot, although often difficult to tell which was which, no gaptoothed grin to identify the dumb one.

  What about my hand? Agent King’s cuts were continuing to bleed, dripping on the redwood coffee table.

  Funny, isn’t it, Agent Quisling, that if the Red Army had its way the whole world would be drinking white spirit. Just goes to show how flawed their philosophy is. A sickness as vile as any pestilence. Even they know the beauty of whiteness, but are simply too afraid to admit it.

  You don’t have to convince me. Agent Quisling placed his empty port glass alongside the empty scotch tumbler as Edna bustled into the living room with a sponge and a bucket of warm soapy water and the saltshaker. None of what the professor said made the least sense to Quisling. If only their host would shut up and let them do their job and go home. Perhaps if you have a bandage, we could attend to my colleague’s injuries.

  Phyllis, won’t you see to Agent King’s hand?

  With his uninjured hand King passed the headphones to Agent Quisling, who placed them over his ears as King rose, and, taking only a step or two, fell to the floor in a swoon and lay face down on the carpet. The maid screamed and Mrs. Morrow ran into the room, hand at her mouth.

  Oh! she cried. I’ll get the smelling salts.

  Don’t bother with salts, Mrs. Morrow, said Edna, better call the ambulance.

  That won’t be necessary, said Agent Quisling, kneeling over his colleague. It’s just that he has an aver
sion to blood. The wounds aren’t serious. We need the smelling salts, some rubbing alcohol, cotton balls, gauze, and tape. Do you have those items, Mrs. Morrow?

  I think I must have some bandages in the first-aid kit.

  As Quisling had spoken the sound of a woman singing flowed out through the headphones, behind which he was certain he could hear faint conversation. The music was comprised of longer and shorter notes. Red notes, he thought, the short ones, in contrast to black ones. He had sung in the church choir and remembered the director telling them about the two different kinds of notes in early musical compositions. Red full and red void. Full of red, empty of red, but still undeniably red. The Reds on the other end of the headphones were trying to empty and shorten their sound but Red they remained, or so he had been trained to believe. The training was beginning not to stick. What was the logic of redness, of seeing redness everywhere one looked? And then, all at once, the music stopped and the people on whom they were meant to be eavesdropping began to speak.

  – I don’t see how it can work, Desmond. A quartet is no less obvious than a duo, or a solo for that matter.

  – And if we say that the four of us, being the best of friends, couldn’t bear to be separated?

  – Is it really necessary? I don’t know that the whole thing won’t lose steam in a few months. People will get tired of it. Does the nation really care whether we believe one thing or another? I can’t see it carrying on myself.

  – Don’t be naïve, Helen. This is only the beginning. You have to believe the words of the demagogues. They will do what they threaten.

  In the pantry Phyllis found the kit with a large red cross on its white surface. It reminded her of the red she had run earlier that day trying to make way for an ambulance, how worried she had been that a police officer might have seen her but somehow God was on her side, she had got away with the infraction and proved once again how unadvisable it was to go out alone. She did not know how her mother did it, traipsing all over the world in strange company, and at her age. Next to the first-aid kit was a supply of Adelram’s red oxide stropping compound and a set of new straight razors. The glint of the blades made her think and the thought was unpleasant and she hurried back into the living room where Agent King was face down on the carpet with Agent Quisling leaning over him like mother to child, the headphones balanced on his ears seeming to accentuate the delicacy of his jaw. There was supposed to be boxing on the television starting at 8:30, live from the Hollywood Legion, and she had hoped to see the Richardson and Cracknell bout if she could get the agents out the door, because Richardson and Cracknell were both so handsome. What a pleasure it would be to see Agent Quisling in satin shorts and shirtless, squaring up to Adelram and slugging until he knocked him cold and then she could lean against Quisling’s arm, touch his bare chest, and run off with him to a cold hotel room.

  No, that particular thought was impossible. She put it away and indicated to Agent Quisling that he should return to his work while she tended Agent King’s cuts. Since the man was prostrate on the wall-to-wall carpet his lacerated palm was conveniently facing up. She lifted it into her lap and as she began daubing the cuts with alcohol the man burst back into consciousness and cried out in pain, really very like a woman’s his voice sounded, and Phyllis had to stop herself laughing. They had all had too much to drink.

  Now your ordinary Red, by which I mean any of the citizens of the Red Empire, Adelram said, would leave his fellow to die. They call themselves the heroes of brotherhood but they are more self-interested than all the robber barons combined, and this is the result of their infernal system. If you’re told everyone must be equal and the government steals all the money you earn, or doesn’t let you get paid in the first place, then you have to fight tooth and nail to keep ahead of the fellow next to you. Makes for an inhumane society. Feeling any better, Agent King?

  Yes, I’m sorry. It happened so suddenly. I don’t usually faint.

  Do you want me to phone the doctor?

  No, thank you, Mrs. Morrow, you’ve done a very capable job. I’ll be fine now.

  Funny, don’t you think, how quickly our sense of the Red Empire has changed. Only a few years ago the Englishman would have looked at his map of the world and known that all the countries colored in pink – which of course is only a diluted shade of red – were his own, and most of the globe they covered, too. No bad thing it was, I’d say, as our country was coming into its maturity, waiting to take its place at the top of civilization. Truth is, I blame the English for the rise of Communism. They gave safe harbor to that villain Marx and their particular failure to control their colonies and dominions has led to the sorry rise of the new genus of Red. Power vacuums, gentlemen – the English left a great yawning power vacuum when they retreated from the dark places of the earth and now the Soviet is rushing in to fill the gaps. But by God we will not let him win. We must fight to control the planet or risk falling into a new dark age. That Attlee fellow, however reformed he may be, is undoubtedly a menace. From what I can tell, he was at one time a possible Soviet agent, turning England into a staging camp for the worldwide march of Communism. Look at what he lost for the forces of freedom: India, Burma, Ceylon! They have made a mess of Palestine, and now Malaya is falling almost without a fight. South Africa is the one bright spot, secured for freedom and prosperity, but the English had no part in that. We have only the white Africans to thank for that particular success and we can but hope the South Africans and Rhodesians roll out a model of organization and commerce that will whiten an entire continent. No, the new curtain of Red sweeping the world is one that must be cut to shreds before it blackens out the light that brings prosperity.

  Edna was scrubbing the blood and port from the carpet, watching the pale skin of her hands redden with friction and salt. She knew how much Professor Morrow enjoyed having her on the floor, hands and knees, her backside shaking in his direction. More than once he had caught her like that, hiked up her dress and done the unspeakable, one of his chalky fat hands clasped over her mouth if she tried to make a noise. She would quit the job if she did not have a kid to feed. Every time it happened he took the opportunity to educate her, whispering suitable words: rapine, noun, as defined by Noah Webster, meaning ‘plunder, pillage, violence’. Language will unlock you, Edna. And then the judder and the spasm and the wet withdrawal. Play a game with me, he would say, you be red and I’ll be black. Chips laid on the table, Mrs. Morrow playing bridge at the home of some other lady, house twisted to a battle zone. Edna always beat him at cards, but he took his revenge in other ways, seemed to enjoy being beaten as excuse for punishing the woman he paid to cook and clean. I would have you here eternally, down to the ground, as it were, Professor Morrow might chuckle, my bête rouge. Edna never spoke to him, or spoke as little as she could to save herself while the punishments were delivered. The stain was lightening, but the carpet would have to be replaced. The trick was to make it look insignificant long enough that a new one could be installed while Professor Morrow was at work one day. Nothing more idiotic than a beige carpet unless you were only going to eat and drink white foods. She had read a library book in which the characters did just that, and it had not ended well, not well at all, the man left for dead in a South American jungle, the woman without one red cent.

  King was relieved to see the stain begin to disappear as he noticed that some of the port had splashed onto his pale socks, staining them red, and he laughed to himself that he, a lifelong supporter of the Cincinnati Reds, should be made something like an honorary member of the team through such a dumb mistake. He had high hopes that Sewell, the team’s new manager, would put them back on the road to the pennant, and then there was the hotshot pitcher Ewell Blackwell, with his whipping right hand (although there hadn’t been much sign of it so far) and long lean body, who looked like a fellow with whom you’d want to have a beer and maybe throw a few balls back and forth, though King had no arm to speak of, but still, it was distraction from life, the ballgame
s, and he liked to imagine himself out there in uniform, the cap with the red C emblazoned on its front, and the funny red stockings that didn’t look so comical on guys who wore them with purpose, the six-foot-six pitcher so tall and trim it would be possible in the right circumstances to shimmy up his body like climbing a coconut palm. If he were a baseball player, if he’d been born with the talent, King knew he could have made it to the top, been a celebrated pitcher or hitter, found out what gold really tastes like, eating caviar off 14-karat spoons instead of stuck in this dead-end job doing the bidding of a man no one liked. Boy, that Ewell sure knew how to play, he’d put Jackie Robinson in his place like no one else, told that—

  Mrs. Morrow floated into view again. She had put red on her lips in a haphazard way that made her look so fuckable it unsettled King’s equilibrium all over again and he began to swoon where he sat. At least a decade spread between them in age, as if she were an older sister or junior aunt, and the slight drainage of his blood seemed to hurry its passage to his groin so he began thinking about what else he might break or upset that would require Mrs. Morrow to lean forward and down, to give him a glimpse of the pink marble blush of her cleavage, Tennessee marble, hacked out of hillbilly soil and polished into a gleaming soft mausoleum. His boxer shorts would not long hold, he adjusted position, clasped his legs tight round his cock and thought of his father, fastest way to tame the lion, that lipstick on the woman’s face, smeared just wide of the left corner of her mouth, it was like the red marks on a sheep, ruddled for property, he could be minded to shepherd her into a quiet fold of field—