Vanishing Rooms

by Melvin Dixon

  “You ain’t getting your money back,” I said. “And you ain’t climbing on top, neither.”

  “I just want to take my teeth out.”

  Shit, man. Ecstasy! An easy ride to the throat. I should have paid him.

  It was another two weeks before I could get back to the city. I didn’t see the man but had no trouble finding another. And another. And another. It got to be a habit. Moms never asked where the extra money was coming from. She got better. And I was cool back at the reform school, so they kept their promise to let me end my bid sooner since Moms was still sick and I was only an accomplice in the crime in the first place. By the time I got out, I had learned to do more with my body—every part of it—and I made more money, too. I had my own corner and didn’t have to go into the bars to buy drinks or wink at fat old men. I didn’t have to dance like some of the real faggots do in cut-off jeans or satin gym shorts too tight in the crotch. I didn’t have to do nothing much at all. Nobody knew my name and nobody cared. I was all face and body. Seems like I didn’t even have a name and didn’t want or need one. But just for kicks I tried calling myself Starlight and Mister Magic, not anything that would say something about me or what I did. Nothing that could get me back in jail. Then when it was warmer and spring, I wore only jeans and a light jacket. No underwear. The days were longer. Nights warmer. But one night, the magic stopped and for one goddamn scary moment I thought I was through.

  “Aren’t you Lonny? Lonny Russo?”

  I even stopped breathing for a second. Shit.

  A woman’s voice. A black woman’s voice. Someone I didn’t even know. A face I didn’t remember. A real woman, too, not one of the drag queens who worked the block. This one had real tits and a round ass. Two men were with her. Pimps? Shit, I was scared. I tried being cool.

  “Aren’t you Lonny?” she said again.

  “Naw,” I said. “I don’t know who you talking about.”

  “Yes, you are. You remember Jesse, don’t you? I’m his friend.”

  “I don’t know nobody like that.”

  “Remember Metro?”

  “Who?”

  “Metro. The boy they stabbed in the Village last year?”

  “Don’t know what you talking about.”

  She stayed there a moment, not crossing the street. I held my breath. But she kept looking at me like she had my case. Shit. I didn’t even know who she was.

  “Come on, Ruella,” one of the guys said, pulling her across the street.

  “We don’t want to be late for the program,” said the other one.

  “But that’s Lonny,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Come on, Ruella. City Center’s not too far. We’re going to be late.”

  The black guys also looked at me like they knew who I was. But they kept moving away. I heard one say something to the other, but the woman kept looking back at me like she couldn’t believe what she saw. I didn’t give a fuck. I didn’t have that name anymore. I was Starlight. I was Mister Magic. But the men kept talking. I don’t think she heard what they said.

  “He’s not even pretty.”

  “But he’s young. He can pretend he don’t know nothing.”

  “Yeah. He can say each time is his first.”

  I felt for the money in my pocket, glad they didn’t try anything funny. Then I heard them laughing. Shit, Niggers. Shit. I’m pretty enough, I said to myself. You bet your ass I am. And this pretty sweet ass costs money. Real money. Shit. I left my corner to look for a mirror. I finally found one in the windows of a men’s clothing store. I saw my reflection above a pinstriped suit and Italian loafers. There I was: Mister Magic, Mister Starlight himself. Who the fuck did those guys think they was? Who was they talking about? Not me, baby, ’cause this was magic and money, green leaves on a thick tree between my legs, hands touching me and passing green leaves with numbers on them. Who the fuck did they think they was, saying shit like that? Who the fuck did they think I was?

  Ruella

  WHEN WE FINALLY FOUND OUR SEATS I told Phillip and Abdul that it was really Lonny out there in the streets. “So what,” Phillip said. “Tell me about this dance. You sure this is going to be good?”

  “Yes, Phillip. You saw my program last night. Now you’ll see a different one. Jesse’s dance comes right after intermission.”

  “Your sister really danced her heart out last night,” said Abdul. I held his hand tighter.

  “Glad you both liked it.”

  “I’d like it even better if you keep on dancing,” he said.

  “Just the encouragement I need.”

  “You sure this is going to be good?”

  “Just relax, Phillip. Look at all the people here. You’ll like Jesse’s dance. He’s good.”

  “You ever tell Jesse about what happened to that kid in prison?”

  “The one we just saw? Lonny?” I asked. “You want me to tell him what your pals did?”

  “Yeah, Junior and Pete and the rest of them got a nut,” Phillip said, almost laughing. “We just kept a lookout for the guards.”

  “Isn’t that just as bad?”

  “Naw it ain’t, Lady. Now don’t be mad.”

  “Ruella.”

  “All right, Ruella. You know me and Abdul ain’t into that faggot stuff.”

  “Shhhh. The lights are dimming.”

  “That’s right, Ruella. Phillip and me ain’t into that shit.”

  “Shhhh. It’s about to begin.”

  “You sure this is going to be good?”

  “Shhhh.”

  “You gonna tell Jesse what happened?”

  “Maybe tomorrow I’ll tell him. Right now, let’s watch that pretty black boy’s dance.”

  Lonny

  “YO, MAN.”

  “It’s Clementine, darling.”

  “You with the lipstick.”

  “Indubitably.”

  “Get the fuck away from here. This is my corner.”

  “I know. Tonight, I’m buying. Do you speak Italian or French?”

  Shit. Just let anybody try to mess with me now.

  Jesse

  THE HOUSE LIGHTS DIMMED. The audience settled back into place. In the darkness I remembered what I had said to Rodney: “Things will be different now between us. I know these aren’t your steps. These are Metro’s steps. This dance is for him. You are Rodney, black and lovely. I am Jesse. Let’s be that to one another. It’s already quite a lot.” Rodney smiled and turned down the lights. I kissed his darkness and our dance went back and forth, step-leap-and-down. We danced to quiet music and to the applause of our own skin. There were no splinters in his coarse hair or in mine.

  A murmur lifted from the stage. The curtain drew up like a big woman gathering her skirts. From my post in the wings, I imagined the first glimmer of light on the dark stage as a beacon from somewhere high revealing a room with an immense fourth wall. From the light came a sudden darkness, then blue, and two fluttering bodies in a dance.

  The dancers moved and my body moved with them. Suddenly Metro came alive between the steps: freight train, caroom-boom-clack. Their sweat glistening was my sweat streaming out. Their muscles in a voice of trains moved with mine. And his, and his, my underground man.

  I climbed the warehouse stairs two at a time. I was dressed as Metro would want. Two poppers waited inside my pocket. Our tickets to another time, another room.

  “Jesse?Jesse? That you?”

  It was early afternoon. The river smelled ripe and blue. The wood of the warehouse floor was soft and slimy on my feet. Nothing here except the shadows and the orange glow of cigarettes here, there, over there. Metro approached unsteadily, his eyes half-open, his underwear sagging from the waist. The smell of medicine seeped from him. River water gurgled and popped from the distant, swaying piles.

  Male hands on a male waist. Wheels of legs spinning, leaping. Tiny runs ending in arabesque. Turn-two-three, plié-two-three. Relevé. Arms circling overhead. A reach for air. The bodies swallowed, one into th
e other.

  I held him by the shoulders. No hug, no caress. I simply held him. He knelt on his own. His eyes commanded me. “Push harder,” he said. “Push. ” His head hung lazily to one side. “My head aches. Maybe I’ve taken too many pills. ”

  “We can try it another way, baby. ” My voice pleaded with him. I didn’t know what to do.

  “I need it now. Give me your hands.” And he covered his face with my hands, breathing them in.

  A second round of rapid runs in a circle of one man’s pain. Trains on distant tracks from the music. Hands from one dancer holding the other, lifting and drawing me nearer. In watching them, I was dancing, too, dancing until sweat covered the floor like a cascade of tears now glowing in swirls of radiant, colored stagelights. Then feet reaching for the ground.

  Splinters. Watch out for the splinters.

  Once he had shaken the tobacco-stained hands of a sharecropper’s boy, the son of his mother’s maid. And he rode all the way home smelling his hand and knowing how hungry he suddenly was for the rough love they held. The first night we spent together, all he wanted to do was sleep with his nose pressed to the part in my hair. He said my smell came from the soil.

  The lights faded from blue to orange. The dancers gained shadow and space. Each threw a bit of his body into the light, captured color and grace from the bare stage.

  He fumbled at my jeans. His fingers couldn’t hold. “Just take me,” he whined. “Give me what you are.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about Metro. ” He was shaking in my arms.

  “I won’t call you nigger ever again. I’ll be your nigger. I’m not a white motherfucker. I’m not. ”

  “Who called you that?”

  “They did. Out there. In here. What’s the difference?”

  “Talk sense, Metro. What’s gotten into you?”

  “I’m not Metro anymore. I’m Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima.”

  “And what does that make me, huh? Another nigger, huh.” And before I realized it I was shaking him, slapping him, knocking him about the head. He started to cry. I felt his mouth curl up, the tears cascade. I licked them dry. I held him in my arms. “You don’t need it like this, baby. Not like this.”

  Then saxophone. A flurry of trumpets. Staccato piano. The A-train stride. Arms vibrating, legs twisting. Torsos lean. Feet firm on the ground. Hips whirling in a storm. Floorwork. Wideman extension. Arms reaching up-two-three, curve-two-three, down.

  “Hold me,” he said, pressing my hands to his chest, making me feel him all over. “Hold me here,” he said, guiding my fingers to his throat. “Keep holding. Tight. Tighter. Tighter.” His voice was a strained whisper. Air rushed out of him.

  Palms flat, knees bent in geometry. Arabesque. The dancer ran and leapt and landed in the waiting arms of the other. My muscles panted loudly with the dancers, my spine arched up and wide. “Touch me. Hold me,” my body said from the distance.

  “Get your clothes on. I’m taking you out of here.”

  “Yes, Jesse.”

  “You all right, now?”

  “Yes, I’m better now. ”

  “You go first. Watch your step. Take my hand.”

  Outside, the air stung me. Blades of sunlight fell from the sky. Metro led me out of the dark, rotting warehouse. I missed a step and stumbled against him. He reached to block my fall. I held tight.

  The fourth wall broke open into a gathering wave of hands clapping. Pools of sweat dotted the stage. The applause showered over me. The dancers stood proud, erect. Then quickly, the fourth wall burst into light, and the room holding us there vanished.