Vanishing Rooms

by Melvin Dixon

  One night I heard Jesse crying. I got in the bed and held him to my chest. Before I knew what was happening, I was kissing the tears gathered at his lips, and when he realized what was happening, he started kissing me. I felt something crawl along my navel. The man’s sex was in relevé all by itself. We just stopped right there. Jesse calmed down, and I told my jittery knees to get back in place, which they did, but the flutter went all through me. I remembered the song and Nina Simone’s thick voice, and my trembling, improvising knees. Then it was my turn to sing, “He does not know his beauty.”

  Why did he call me Rooms? What did he say about Metro’s name? Was Jesse going somewhere, too? They were lovers, I understood that. But Jesse was still a man, the relevé told me that much. While he slept, I touched myself all over and found the spaces I could offer, all the rooms he could visit.

  The next morning he was fidgety. There was nothing left to clean in the apartment. He did exercises, then paced the floor. He searched my windows like a trapped bird and wouldn’t look me straight in the eyes. Ruella, girl, I told myself, before you go off the deep end, you better find out more. Don’t stretch your heart to six-o’clock extension just yet. You better find out something more. And Jesse’s fear told me, yes, there’s a whole lot more here than Metro or Phillip. But then again there’s a lot more to me, too. Rooms, somewhere.

  We’d call the police again. Find out if they had gotten anywhere on the case, if any one of us, Jesse included, knew any more. Jesse picked up the phone and dialed nervously. His voice cracked when he told the police who he was. I stood next to him, my arms about his waist, his fingers drumming the dial plate. I could hear the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Sergeant Porter speaking.”

  “This is Jesse Durand. I’m calling to see if, well, I’d like to know if, well, if you have any news on the Barthé murder on 12th Street?”

  “You mean the attack by those teenagers?”

  His fingers stopped drumming. “It was murder,” he said. “Oh, yeah. Detective Stone is looking into that one,” the sergeant said. “I’ll put him on.”

  We, waited. Jesse looked at me. He looked back at the phone.

  “Detective Stone here.”

  “I’m Jesse Durand.”

  “Yes, I have the Barthé file right before me. You’re the roommate, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen. Could you come down here? I’d like to ask you a few more questions. It won’t take long. Say tomorrow, about three?”

  Jesse looked at me. I nodded and he nodded.

  “Yes, we’ll be there.”

  “We?” asked the detective.

  You’re never really prepared to just walk right into a precinct station. Inside, the glazed cinder-block walls and scuffed linoleum floors remind you of elementary school on the first day when you wanted to cry for Mama, or a hospital corridor without the smells of alcohol or medicine but you still have to get a needle, and it’ll hurt. Jesse walked ahead of me up to the desk officer and stated his business. Our business. He directed us to an inside office where Detective Stone sat behind a small oak desk like a teacher and fingered a stack of files. I could see notes on yellow paper and the curled edges of some 8x10 glossy photographs which must have shown how they found Metro stabbed and dirty with leaves and street garbage and gravel. I didn’t want to look too closely.

  The detective rose from his desk and greeted Jesse. He turned to me with his eyebrows raised. “And you, Miss, Miss—”

  “Ruella McPhee,” I said. “I’m a friend of Jesse’s.”

  Jesse relaxed a little, but I could see him tense up when the detective spoke to him again. I listened as carefully as I could.

  “I’m sorry to have you come all the way down here, but there’re some items we’re not too clear about. We need more information.”

  “I’m sure I’ve already answered your questions,” Jesse said, his words dancing on the edge of anger. “And you’ve still no lead on Metro’s killers?”

  “Metro?”

  “I mean Barthé. Jon-Michael Barthé.”

  “Perhaps you can still help us. All we know so far is that he was severely beaten. Fatally wounded.”

  “You mean stabbed, don’t you, Detective?”

  “All right, stabbed.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “That happens often enough here when teenagers, you know, get it into their heads that—”

  “They can beat up fags, you mean?” Jesse said. I could see the veins tighten at his neck. He opened and closed his empty fists. His eyes narrowed.

  “Yes,” said the detective. “That’s right. But they may have just been fooling around, you know, showing off to each other. Kids do it all the time.”

  “But those kids killed him.”

  “We don’t know anything for sure, now.”

  Jesse said nothing. He rolled his eyes at me.

  “How long were you two living together on West 4th?”

  “Only several months. We moved in last May. After college.”

  “And Barthé. Was he into drugs? Kinky sex? You know what I mean?”

  “No, I don’t know. Say what you mean, Detective. We were lovers, that’s all, and long before we came to New York. A good thing, too, because this city will take everything you have.”

  “Did he have many friends in the city?”

  “Only a few where he worked.”

  “He was a reporter, right?”

  “Yes. At the News. Just starting out.”

  “I’ll check with my sources there. Did he have other friends, I mean, other sexual partners?”

  Jesse bit his Bps and turned to me again. He looked back at the officer. “Yes.”

  “Anyone on a regular basis?”

  “Me.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “I’ve given this information before, Detective. Why are you interrogating me?”

  The detective seemed embarrassed. At least I thought so. He turned back to his file and shuffled several pages of notes through his hands. “I want to be sure I have all the facts, that’s all. We have some reports from the neighbors. But you, Mr. Durand, did you see him earlier that evening?”

  “Yes.”

  “At your apartment? On West 4th Street?”

  “No. Actually, it was by the docks. Metro asked me to meet him there. He wanted to have a drink.”

  “May I ask what happened there?”

  “We were just together. We had drinks. I don’t even remember the name of the bar.”

  “And after?”

  “I left him after an hour. I had a dance class. He said he would meet me later at home. He never made it back.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “That’s what I’m here for, Detective. To find out.”

  “Look, don’t get upset with me. Blood tests showed not only that he had had a lot to drink but that he’d taken tranquilizers.”

  “But what about the cause of death? The coroner’s report? I saw the body. I saw how they cut him up.”

  “We’re still investigating that.”

  “You don’t really care. What’s one more faggot dead? I’m glad Metro wasn’t black. Then you’d forget about the whole thing. But Metro was a white boy, Detective. He had family.”

  The officer stood up from his desk. “We’ll call you when we have something.”

  Jesse reached for my hand. “I’m not staying there anymore. I’m with Rooms.”

  “Rooms?”

  That’s when I cleared my throat, gave my teeth some air. I smiled and spoke my name with great precision. “Ru-el-la McPhee.”

  Jesse was already pulling me toward the door.

  “Please leave your number with the desk officer, and I’ll call you both if anything develops.”

  “If?” asked Jesse.

  “As things develop,” he said firmly and sat back down. It then occurred to me that he never shook Jesse’s hand. Nor mine.

  I
gave my telephone number and address and left with Jesse. He walked ahead of me again through the tiled hallway, the scuffed linoleum echoing our steps. Outside a chill was rustling the trees. I held Jesse’s hand, but he let go and put his hands in his pockets instead. At the corner of 7th Avenue he stopped, and I stopped, for the traffic going both ways fast. I held his hand, harder this time, until the veins showed through my skin.

  We went into the IRT entrance, got tokens, and waited for the train. The smell of burning wires came through the tunnel and made me want to leave and take the bus. But there we were. We had paid our fare. We were trapped. The local howled in and I covered my ears. The bell rang. “Step in and watch the closing doors,” said the motorman. In twenty minutes we were back at my place.

  Lonny

  LIKE I KEEP TELLING YOU. October is a bitch, a mean, red bitch. And you still don’t believe me. Shit, you got the red leaves, you got early nightfall and twisted chilly mornings freezing you back into bed. You got people in scarves and caps tilted to the side like Hollywood detectives. You got October. What more do you want? You want red leaves clogging the sewers? You want legs and arms splayed out like tree limbs after a storm? You really don’t believe in fall, huh, or how people can change too, just as fast? You want all this? Then you’re no better than that faggot who wanted me.

  He said his name was Metro. Just like that, he said it, out of the blue. So I said, “Yeah.” Nothing more. The way he looked at me I could tell he was thinking he’d seen me around and knew I’d seen him around, too, and after saying hello just once he could come up to me a week later and tell me his funny name.

  I was on my way to meet Cuddles who had the smoke this time. I had my mind on herb and didn’t really see him until he was close enough to speak. “Metro,” he said. I thought he was asking for directions. But he stuck out his hand, ’cause it wasn’t a place he was telling me, it was his name. I felt a load on me from the moment he spoke. All I said was “yeah.” He didn’t take the hint. He waited for more. Maybe he was thinking the cat got my tongue and he wanted it. I looked closer. He was about my height and build. Had wavy hair, not stringy like mine. He looked like any regular guy, except he spoke in a drawl straight out of Gone with the Wind, then changed back to a normal voice, like my voice changes sometimes, but not that bad. He said again his name was Metro. What could I do? He waited for me to tell him my name, but I never did. I finally said, “You know what you are?”

  “Metro.”

  “Shit, man, you better get out of my face.” And I left him standing there, looking like he just lost some money or came home to find his apartment broken into and his stereo and favorite record gone. With the wind. How do I know he even had a stereo? I don’t know. He never invited me in to smoke dope or listen to records. Which is the only reason anyone would go with him. With a name like Metro, what would you expect?

  I didn’t expect nothing at all. The third time I seen him walking into the corner building, I knew he lived there. I wasn’t meeting Cuddles that time. I didn’t know why I was even in the neighborhood. You get used to meeting friends in the late afternoon and it gets to be routine. Metro was dressed in a suit, no jeans, no flannel plaid, no white undershirt poking from inside the open collar. He looked like one of those Wall Street businessmen, he looked so square, so regular. He might have been somebody’s husband or somebody’s father even though he wasn’t that old. You should know about fathers. They’re the most important people to a kid trying to be a man, when everyone is out to get you or fix you into a can or a crate going six feet down.

  My father built things. He was a carpenter mainly. He’d build things, take things apart, and build them again. But he was also an electrician, a house painter, a wallpaper hanger, a welder, a car mechanic, a plumber. All for money and for fixing up other people’s houses. He could fix anything. A regular jack-of-all-trades. I remember he used to make toys for us at Christmas because he couldn’t buy any. We was living in the Bronx then, and my father would load up his beat-up station wagon every morning and go off on the jobs people called him for. He owned his business. He was his own business. That’s what Moms said to write in the blank beside “father’s occupation” on school registration forms every September: “self-employed.” I didn’t even know what it meant, because my father never talked to us. He didn’t tell us about who we were. I mean, as a family. And since I didn’t know who I was aside from nothing or no one, I thought I could be anybody I damn well pleased.

  “You ain’t never had a chance, have you?” Moms said once.

  “What are you talking about? I’m anybody I’m strong enough to be.”

  “And mean enough,” she said, shaking her head like she did when my father died. He worked all the time and kept his feelings locked inside him until his heart burst open. The fucking load he must have been carrying. Shit, I coulda carried some of that load.

  “You ain’t never had a chance,” Moms said again.

  “I make my own chances. I’m self-employed.”

  Naw, Metro couldn’t have been anybody’s husband or father. You could tell by the way he walked and, if you listened close enough, by the way he talked. He had what you call opportunities. Maybe if you don’t ever have kids you can build things for yourself. Do things. He just made the mistake of wanting to do me.

  “You can come up to visit sometime, you know. Now that you know where I live.”

  “You mean me?”

  “Sure. What’s your name?”

  “Lonny.”

  “I’m Metro.”

  “You told me before. Remember?”

  “Yes. I thought you didn’t remember. You didn’t say anything.”

  “I didn’t know what to say. Besides, where’d you get a name like that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Listen man, you trying to get wise or something?”

  “Let’s be friends, Lonny.”

  “I got to go now.”

  “Some other time, then?”

  “Sure, man, sure.”

  “Call me Metro. I like that.”

  “Sure.”

  I got away and ran all the way to Cuddles’ place. He wasn’t even expecting me. But I was there just the same, leaning against the corner beam of the loading platform. It was about five feet off the ground so that the packing trucks could be loaded from the level of the storage and work areas. I could have been holding up the very corner of the building myself, or at least the sign saying Holsworth Meat and Poultry Packing, where you could actually see the sides of beef, the blood and fat making the loading-platform floor slippery and the whole place smell like rotten armpits.

  Maybe it was the heat. Or just me, hot with my tangled nerves sizzling electric. All from talking with that guy Metro and running at breakneck speed to Cuddles’ job like it was the only safe place. I was hot standing there thinking about Metro and hating myself for letting him talk like that to me. Shit, he talked like he knew who I was or who I could be. Like he could actually see into my corduroy jacket, his eyes like fingers in my clothes—touching me. You ever get that feeling talking to someone? Shit. I hated him for thinking he knew who I was and could come on to me like I was some bitch. He didn’t know who he was messing with. Sure, I told him my name. We was just talking. Wouldn’t you talk before you realized his eyes were fingers crawling all over you? I know you would, mostly because you’d think a guy wouldn’t do that to another guy.

  Later, you’d swear he hadn’t touched you. Wouldn’t you? You’d think that talking was all right. It was only some words between you, not hands. You’d think that as long as he didn’t touch you it would be all right to speak. Long as neither of you was touching. It don’t mean that you’re one of them, just ’cause you say “Lonny,” like I did. We was only talking, man. But when you realized his eyes were fingers taking hold, you’d hate him even more for pulling it off, undressing you right there with his eyes and laughing at your naked ass or shriveled-up cock. You’d be mad enough to kill him.


  “You lying,” Cuddles says when I tell him. “You lying, man.”

  “Naw, I ain’t.”

  “Shit, man. Wait till I see Maxie and Lou.”

  “What for?”

  “We oughta kick his ass.”

  “Look, Cuddles. Maybe we can just forget it, huh?”

  “Naw, man. You one of us. What happens to you, happens to us. You forgetting the pledge.”

  “What pledge?” I ask after him, and he’s dancing on the same short circuit I’m on.

  When we catch up with Maxie and Lou, it’s Cuddles doing the talking. “Man, we should celebrate,” he yells, looking me over.

  “Celebrate what?” I ask.

  “Losing your cherry to a faggot, what else?” he says. My face burns. “He didn’t touch me, man.”

  “Aw, Lonny, we know you got a little bit,” says Maxie grinning.

  “Don’t start no shit,” says Lou.

  “Maybe that’s what I’m smelling,” says Cuddles, moving up then back from me and flailing his arms like he’s brushing me off.

  “You mean the shit on your breath,” I say, stepping up to him.

  And Maxie jumps up and goes “Whoa,” and Lou goes “Whoa,” and I go “Whoa.”

  Cuddles backs off. “I’ll fix your ass,” he says. “Fix it real good.”

  “Aw, man, we been low too long now, let’s ride high,” says Maxie.

  “Beer and smoke?” I ask.

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s ride and fuck the night,” adds Lou. He revs up the cycle with Cuddles holding tighter to him than I ever held. At the first red light Cuddles turns to me, saying he’ll fix me real good. I tell him where to put that shit.

  Around midnight, after five trips to Burger King for fries and hot apple pies to ease the munchies, we get back to the garage in Chelsea. I’m high, yeah, I admit it. Feeling good. We stop cutting up with each other and just enjoy being so bloated we can barely move. We keep talking shit, though, like it’s all we can say. But I still feel funny about meeting Metro earlier in the afternoon. A numbing tingle comes through my face like I’m getting high all over again or just burning slowly inside. Then I feel light again as if something is about to happen to ease the beer and marijuana out of me on a cool streak, and I’d lift off the garage floor, lift up from the street and glide out to 12th Street and Bleecker and on to West 4th, where I’d be sure to see him and we’d talk. Just talk. Maybe this time I would get to hear his stereo. Maybe he likes the same music I do. Maybe he really is like me or Maxie or Cuddles or Lou, just a little haywire.