by Lewis Shiner
Roger’s annoyance finally broke through. “D’you think you’re the only one with paternity issues? D’you think this isn’t personal for me? You should try being on the other side of the equation some time.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Forget I said anything.”
“You’re talking about Helen’s daughter, aren’t you? You’re her father. Jesus. Does her husband know?”
“Michael, I’ve never told this to anyone before. I hope you appreciate the amount of trust I’m showing in you.” That was Roger all over, Michael thought, always telling you how you were supposed to react.
“So after everything that’s happened to me,” Michael said, “you’re going to torture that little girl with the same lies and doubts and confusions that I went through?”
“It’s not that simple,” Roger said.
“Yes it is,” Michael said. “It’s very simple. I don’t think I like you anymore, Roger. And I don’t want to work for somebody I don’t like and don’t respect.”
After a silence, Roger said, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “Me too.”
He switched off the phone, packed the script and Bristol board, and washed out his brushes and lettering pens. It took 40 minutes.
When he was done, the room seemed oppressive. He got in the car with no destination in mind, ending up drawn to the gravitational pull of the Durham Freeway. He got off on Fayetteville Street and parked in the Hayti Heritage Center lot, next to Denise’s car, and walked across the overpass and down to the freeway. The city had patched the retaining wall where Barrett Howard’s body had been, and the new concrete was a light gray against the existing dark beige.
Michael sat on the grassy slope and watched the sun ease below the horizon. At one point a cop car slowed to look at him. Michael ignored it, and it drove on.
Around 6:30 he saw Denise walking across the overpass, headed toward him. He loved to watch her move. Beneath the grace and sensuality was a New Yorker’s swagger. She sidestepped down the slope and sat next to him.
After a few seconds Michael said, “I just quit Luna.”
Denise slipped under his left arm and held him. “Because of Roger?”
Michael nodded.
“You’re too good for him,” Denise said. “I’m glad you finally figured that out.”
“It’s so hard. I helped create all those characters. I’m the one that brought them to life. It’s like walking out on your family.” He thought that over. “I guess that’s what it would be like, if I’d ever had a family.”
“I expect there’ll be a feeding frenzy once word gets out that you’re available.”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t put it past Roger to badmouth me around the industry. And I don’t want to go draw superheroes anymore. I want something more…real.”
Denise didn’t try to cheer him up, for which he was grateful. They sat in silence for a while, then Michael said, “What’s going on with us?”
“I don’t know. I went out to the parking lot, on my way to get something to eat, and when I saw your car there, I felt this…pressure.”
“Uh oh.”
“I really like being with you. You’re smart and talented and you’ve got a wonderful heart. And you’re a sweet and patient lover.”
“But…?”
“But Rachid and I have been on our own for so long that this is all very strange to me. Sometimes I feel like you need more from me than I’ve got to give.”
“Do you want to break up with me?”
“No.” She sighed. “I don’t want to. I get these compulsions to run away sometimes.”
“Don’t listen. Your compulsions don’t know what’s good for you.”
She squeezed him tightly for a few seconds, then let go. “I have to get back to work.”
“You didn’t get anything to eat.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She got slowly to her feet. “Charles is working late too, I can send him out for something.” He felt jealousy as a physical pain, then, like a stitch from running too hard. It eased when she raked her fingernails through his hair in the way that he loved.
“Denise?”
“What, sugar?”
He shook his head, unable to find words.
“It’ll be all right,” she said. “This too shall pass.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said.
“I’ll call you before bed if I can.”
He watched her walk away, and once she was gone he felt the evening chill for the first time.
*
They were waiting for him in the parking lot. There were four of them, and they carried the shadows with them when they stepped into the light. They wore sweat clothes with the hoods up, in anonymous gray and navy and black.
He was still ten feet from his car when they moved into a loose circle around him. “Say, man,” said the one to his left. “You got a smoke?”
“Sorry,” Michael said, his voice dry with sudden fear. All four were black, all over six feet tall. The one who’d spoken carried a 16-ounce plastic bottle of Coke; otherwise their hands were empty. Not that they needed anything more than their hands.
Michael nodded and smiled and made as if to push his way past the man in front of him. The man didn’t give way. Instead he stared at Michael and said, “Yo, wait up a second.”
Michael couldn’t see inside the hoods, nothing beyond a broad nose, the flash of a gold crown.
“We just want to talk to you for a minute,” the first man said.
If I start yelling, Michael thought, this will go to the next level, whatever that might be. Escalation didn’t seem smart.
“So what do you want to talk about?” he asked, failing to make his voice sound relaxed.
“What you doing in this part of town?” the first man said.
Michael went with the first idea that came into his head. “My girlfriend works here.”
“His girlfriend,” the third man said, from behind Michael’s back.
“Your girlfriend black?” the second man said. He seemed genuinely surprised. “You trying to change your luck or something?”
“I’m black too,” Michael said. “My mother was black.” Just like you, he wanted to say. Only he wasn’t black the way they were. Denise was right. He never would be.
“Don’t look black to me,” the second man said.
“Come on,” the third man said. He sounded nervous. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Look white to me,” the second man said.
“My grandmother was black,” Michael said, feebly.
“Motherfucker,” the first man said, “we know who you are.”
The words chilled him. This wasn’t robbery or casual sport. Now or never, he thought, and he tried to dodge between the two men in front of him. The second man gave way, and for an instant Michael thought everything might turn out all right. Then the first man swung him around by the shoulder and hit him in the stomach.
It was a serious punch, and though Michael tried to fall away from it, still it took him to his knees. His lungs emptied and refused to fill again, and his vision narrowed to a two-foot radius directly in front of him. Then somebody shoved him from behind, and he went face down into the asphalt, scraping his chin, nearly smashing his glasses.
“Hold him,” said the first man, and Michael made it onto all fours from sheer panic before two of them caught his shoulders and pushed him to the ground.
“Help!” Michael shouted. A passing truck covered his voice.
The first man knelt next to him and grabbed him by the hair. “You yell again and I smash your face into that curb over there, knock every tooth out your stupid head. You be still, this be over with in a second.” He let go and stood up. “Get his legs.”
The fourth man lifted Michael by his ankles. When he felt the hands go around his waist and start to unbuckle his belt, Michael tried to thrash and kick himself free. His arms were c
oming out of their sockets, and the first man kicked him in the ribs, hard enough to make everything go gray again. Stunned, he felt his pants and underwear slide down his legs.
“Damn, man, your asshole stinks.” Michael no longer knew which voice was which. “Don’t you wipe yourself?”
“Probably shit hisself.”
“Shut up and give me that. And hold him tight.”
In spite of the roaring panic in his ears, partly claustrophobia and partly the more conscious fear of rape, he did register a strange, liquid noise above and behind him. Then he felt a hand parting the cheeks of his bare ass.
He began to scream. It was not a high-pitched, horror movie scream, but something low and ragged from deep in his guts. Then a fist hit him in the side of the head, right over the metal stem of his glasses, and the pain was so intense that he stopped struggling and lay passively as something wet and burning exploded across his rectum.
Then the pressure was gone and the men were laughing, slapping each others’ hands, from the sound of it. Still he lay on the asphalt, meaning to get up, unable to remember the muscle sequence required to do it.
Part of his mind still functioned, analyzing what he’d felt, thinking, hoping, that it hadn’t been an ejaculation—there had been too much liquid at once, no penetration, only the sudden heavy spray.
The first voice said, “Time to go back to Texas. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I don’t think he hear you,” another voice said.
“Nod your head if you hear me, so I don’t have to hurt you again.”
Michael found that he could nod.
“See, he hear me all right. You go back to Texas, there be no more trouble.”
The voices, still laughing, moved away. When he could no longer hear them, Michael rolled onto his side. He reached between his legs, and his hand came away covered with thin, sticky brown fluid. He sniffed at it. Coca-Cola. The empty plastic bottle lay a few feet away.
For a second he was giddy with relief, then he began to feel the pain—in his raw chin, in his ribs and stomach, in his temple, in the sockets of his arms. He pulled up his pants and looked around to see if there had been any witnesses. The streets were empty. He saw Denise’s car, thought of her sitting inside a few feet away while they worked him over, and the image was so humiliating that he had to push it away.
He got in his car and locked the doors and started the engine. Then, as he was backing out, he saw a movement in the darkened upstairs gallery of the Heritage Center. Too tall for Denise. What was his name?
Charles. How naïve he’d been to let Charles see the drawing of the tattoo. No wonder he jumped when he saw it. He probably had one himself.
He drove to the hotel with both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, thoughts churning. He felt one leg already stiffening as he climbed the stairs.
With the door double locked, he emptied his pockets, took off his belt, and stuffed his torn trousers in the kitchen trash. He put his underwear in after them, then his T-shirt and socks as well.
He started the hot water running in the bathroom and did a quick assessment in the mirror. There was a patch of dried blood the size of a shirt button on the point of his chin that burned without his touching it. His lower lip was split in the middle. His left temple looked bigger than the right, and bruises were already showing dark pink on his left ribs and abdomen. Both knees were scraped, the right worse, neither bleeding badly.
He showered for half an hour, washing his crotch repeatedly, shampooing twice, mostly letting hot water beat down on his neck and shoulders. When he got out he treated the scrapes with peroxide and Betadine and put band-aids on his knees. He took three aspirin and held a baggie of ice against his temple. I can take care of myself, he thought. The way I always have.
He called Southwest Airlines and converted his open return ticket to Austin into a reservation for 12:55 the next afternoon. Then he turned off his cell phone and unplugged the room phone in case Denise should call. He put on a clean pair of drawstring pajama bottoms and got into bed and turned out the lights. After a minute he got up and turned the bathroom light on and left the bathroom door open wide enough that he could see into all the corners of the room.
Only then did he begin to shake.
Wednesday, November 3
He slept, eventually. His nightmares were not explicitly about the assault. He was trapped in the back seat of a driverless car rolling downhill. Later, he needed to get to an urgent destination and found himself in turn on a bicycle, a scooter, on foot, eventually crawling on his belly.
He was packed and ready by nine o’clock. He drove to the airport and turned in the car and checked his bags, then sat at the gate and pretended to read Rolling Stone. He had to hold his right knee out straight, and he wore sunglasses to hide the blackening at the outside of his left eye. He’d been unable to shave. His ribs, though he was reasonably sure they were only bruised, hurt every time he breathed.
This too shall pass, Denise had said.
Eventually they called his flight. He was in the first boarding group. To his surprise he failed to get in line. The second and third groups boarded, then the standby passengers. When Southwest paged him, he didn’t respond. The flight seemed to have nothing to do with him. When they closed the door to the jetway, it was 1:05.
At the main counter he arranged for his luggage to be flown back to RDU. He was a veteran of lost luggage and canceled flights and so had two days’ worth of clothes in his carry-on. The woman was not sure if she would be able to refund his ticket. He told her it didn’t matter. She asked him twice if he felt all right.
The rental agency gave him the same silver Echo, newly vacuumed and scented. Michael sat in the lot and turned on his cell phone. The voice mail alert flashed at him. He called Donald Harriman’s cell and got Harriman himself.
“Surprised to hear from me?” Michael asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“Surprised I’m still in town? And not on a plane to Texas?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Where are you?” Michael asked.
“I’m walking home from campus. I intend to have a late lunch and grade some papers.”
“Why don’t you give me your address and I’ll meet you there?”
“As I said, I have papers to grade, and this afternoon is not really convenient—”
“I think you’d rather talk to me alone than talk to me and the cops, but it’s your choice.”
“What do the police have to do with it?”
Michael heard the nerves in Harriman’s voice. “Four men attacked me last night. I got a chance to pull one of their sleeves back, and I saw your tattoo.” As bluffs went, it felt like a good risk. “What do you call it, the Four Moments of the Sun? So I think your group, which supposedly has no name, is still going strong. And Charles at the Hayti Heritage Center is a member, as are you. I don’t think it would be hard to prove once somebody knew where to look.”
“What do you want?”
“Information. And I’ve got some to trade.”
*
The address Harriman gave him was across the street from the UNC campus, off a labyrinth of narrow lanes that were more like alleys. Michael parked behind a maroon BMW that was either new or maintained at considerable expense. The house itself was a sprawling one-story ranch in tasteful gray brick. He rang the bell, and a moment later Harriman let him in.
The marble-tiled foyer opened into a dining room with a cathedral ceiling that carried through the living room beyond. There was a lot of low mahogany furniture, with cushions covered in rough fabric of black, gold, and green. The far wall was mostly glass and looked out on birds, exotic landscaping, and a fountain.
“Do you want a drink?” Harriman asked.
“I’d like to sit down. I hurt in a lot of places.”
Michael took an armchair that faced Harriman’s massive green leather recliner. As he sat, Harriman said, “I
had nothing to do with the attack on you.”
“The rest of it’s true. Your group is still active, and you’re still part of it.” He watched Harriman’s reaction, then he said, “Even if you didn’t have anything to do with the attack, you knew about it, didn’t you?” Again, no denials. “So, was it Charles’s idea?”
“I’m not going to admit to anything. What deal did you want to propose?”
“The NRC is planning something big, probably violent. I know when and where. I went to the cops with it, but I don’t know that they’re willing to do what it takes to stop it. As they like to point out, the NRC is a perfectly legal organization.”
“And why do you care so much what the NRC does?”
“Because my mother was black. Because my grandfather was part of the NRC and I want to make up for that somehow. Because I know something bad is going to happen and I can’t just stand by and watch.”
“And what do you want in exchange?”
“I want your cooperation. Not just yours, I want your entire group to help me. And no more bullshit like last night.”
“Help you how?”
“Help me get answers to my questions. About my mother, about Barrett Howard.”
“And if I say no, you call the police. And because we’re a black organization, we won’t get the same protection the NRC gets.”
“That’s right. These days they might even call you terrorists. You could wind up in Guantanamo.”
Harriman looked out the window, pondering. Michael was impressed with the man’s control over his emotions. Michael himself was ready to fall apart at a moment’s notice, to start smashing furniture or curl into a fetal ball in the middle of the floor.
“I won’t make you any guarantees,” Harriman said at last. “As you implied, there is something of a power struggle taking place at the moment. Charles, and the younger members, against myself and the old guard. Charles sees no point in vodou unless he can use it directly as a weapon. I think perhaps he’s seen too many cheap horror films. Whereas myself and some of the older members respect the discipline and understand that it provides a vital adhesive that binds us more than our shared goals or heritage.”