Dem

by William Melvin Kelley

  “I saw plenty, usually from behind.” He leaned forward, his hands around his almost empty glass. “You have to be quiet. You blacken your face and move as quiet as a butterfly.” He smiled. “Cover the scream, break the windpipe. You want any dessert?”

  “No, thanks. How does it make you feel?”

  “Feel? You don’t feel anything. Most of the time you get yourself something, like morphine.” He turned the right side of his head toward Mitchell. “You ever take a close look at my ear?”

  For the first time, Mitchell saw the little hole. Godwin had a pierced ear. “One time I got so high I did that.” He pinched the lobe. “You numb it, and jam in a needle. I used to wear a little gold ring. But Cindy didn’t like it. I guess I would’ve looked funny as hell in the office with an earring. But lots of men did it. It was kind of hard to take out my earring and come back to work.”

  Mitchell understood this. In Asia, he had once gone six months without a bath. Back home, he found he had almost forgotten how to knot a tie.

  “I guess I’ll be putting in my earring again.” Godwin sat up and raised his arm. When the waiter came, they each ordered another drink and did not speak until they arrived. Mitchell spent the time imagining how he would look with an earring.

  “You know, Mitchell, one of these Sundays you have to come out. You like baseball?”

  Mitchell nodded.

  “We could sit around and watch the ball game and get a little drunk. We could make a stand. Order the wives to drive the kids over to the woods and we could just sit.”

  “Nice. That’d be nice, John.”

  “The neighborhood’s getting quiet now. All the wives and kids’re going away for the summer. We could just sit and watch a double-header. But I guess you’ll have to make it soon.” Godwin was rocking from side to side. “You know what I liked about the Marine Corps. You didn’t have to pussyfoot around. You killed or screwed anything yellow and talked to anything white. It was simple.”

  Mitchell remembered how wary he had been in the conference with Mr. Cook, continued his thought aloud. “You don’t have to wait and see what anybody’s going to say. You just come out and talk.”

  Godwin had not been listening. “You get yourself one of those little yellow girls, keep her in food, and you have a very, very good friend.” He let his fist fall onto the table. “And no back talk!”

  In Asia, Mitchell had kept a friend like that. She had even unslanted her eyes for him.

  Suddenly, Godwin started to laugh. “You ever hear that joke about the young correspondent who was going to relieve an old correspondent in Hong Kong? For hours, they sit in the editor’s office and talk about the political situation, the economic situation, the important contacts. But when they come out of the editor’s office, the young one says to the old one: ‘That’s all very interesting, George, but that isn’t what I want to know. Let me ask you one thing. You know what they say about Oriental women, about how they’re built? Does it really run crossways?’ The old one just looks at him. ‘Did you really believe that nonsense? Of course, it doesn’t run crossways. But I’ll tell you one thing: an hour after you’re finished, you’re as hungry as hell!’ ”

  Both men began to giggle, their hands over their mouths.

  “Really? ‘You’re as hungry as hell!’ ” Mitchell repeated the punch line.

  They paid their checks and left the restaurant. Mitchell, in a good mood, was still laughing at the joke. Avoiding the sun, they walked in the cool shadow of the buildings.

  “Remember what I was talking about before, about you coming out to see me? Why not this Sunday?” Godwin’s blue eyes seemed darker now.

  “Well, I can’t tell you for sure. Tam might have something planned. But I’ll phone her and let you know before we leave the office today.”

  Godwin nodded. “Push it, boy. We got to make a stand.”

  3

  MITCHELL HAD HESITATED to accept Godwin’s invitation, not because he had to consult his wife (he knew already Tam had nothing planned for Sunday), but because he did not quite understand why Godwin had asked him to visit. After his three-thirty appointment, he spent the last hour of the afternoon trying to figure it out. He and Godwin had never been friendly, had lunched together only when business made it necessary. Perhaps, Godwin now wanted to make Mitchell a friend, to protect himself. It had been, after all, a very poor script. Or perhaps Godwin wanted someone in the firm to watch over his interests while he was in Asia. Then the invitation could even have been a simple gesture of friendship, though Mitchell doubted it. Unable, finally, to decide what Godwin was planning, Mitchell based the decision on his own feelings. He realized then that he admired Godwin, not just for his ability to walk through the park unafraid, but because of the way he handled himself with Mr. Cook. Godwin’s fearlessness might spring from nothing more than the knowledge that he was leaving the firm, or it might grow from something deeper. Mitchell decided he wanted to know for certain, and accepted Godwin’s invitation. He told Tam that evening, just as they were stepping out of their slippers.

  “Oh, Mitchell, why didn’t you make it for next Sunday?”

  He was punching his pillow, wondering if they needed a thin blanket to shield them from the air conditioner. “You weren’t planning anything, were you?”

  “No, I mean, not to do anything.” He was not looking at her, but could hear her fanning the pages of a magazine. “But we could’ve just stayed home.”

  He rolled toward her. “Where were you this afternoon?”

  “I had my hair done.” Her hair was dark, shineless, recently cut short where jaw joined cheek, and parted on the right side.

  “I tried to get you all afternoon,” he lied. “Finally, I just had to give him an answer. I didn’t know you’d get so upset.” They could just as well stay home the following Sunday. “Listen, Tam, John Godwin is a good man to be friendly with. He’s been with the firm much longer than I have.”

  She opened the magazine to a picture of a thin girl in a flowered slip. “I’ll tell Opal to come and baby-sit.”

  He rolled away from her, certain that even in the lighted room, his lids would supply more than enough darkness for sleep. But after five minutes, he realized he could not keep his eyes closed, and rolled toward her again. “I can’t sleep.”

  She was no longer reading. The magazine lay closed in her lap. “You have some pills in the bathroom.” She did not look at him.

  He shook his head, crunching his hair against the pillow. “Then I’ll be groggy all day tomorrow.”

  She shrugged. The light was behind her; the line of her profile was darker than her face. The tip of her nose was a dime-sized ball. He watched her raise her cigaret, the smoke coming out through puckered lips in a thin stream. Under the covers, he inched his hand toward her side.

  “That tickles.”

  “Relax and it’ll feel sexy.”

  She pushed his hand away. “Stop, Mitchell, that tickles!” Turning toward him, she blew smoke into his eyes. “Besides, I’m not a sleeping pill.” She did not smile, but he could not believe she was serious.

  “I know that, Tam.”

  “Then don’t.” Her face softened. “Anyway, I haven’t got in my stopper.”

  He smiled. “Well, why don’t you trot into the bathroom and put it in.”

  She stared at him. “You really want me to?”

  “I don’t want to force you.” He paused. “But it is your job.”

  “God, I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.” She took another drag on her cigaret. “But I guess it is.” Sighing, she put her feet on the floor. “All right.”

  It seemed to take her a long time, but finally she returned, snapped off the lamp, slid into bed, and put her arms around his neck. “You know I love you, don’t you, Mitchell?” She sounded just the slightest bit worried.

 
“Sure.” He patted her back. Through her nightgown, her skin was cold.

  “I mean, I hope you don’t think I didn’t want to make love to you. I mean, I always do, anytime you ask me to.”

  He laughed softly. “Anytime?”

  “Yes, really.” She kissed him hard, pushing his head deep into the pillow, so that it curled around his ears like a close-fitting cap. She was half on top of him. But suddenly, she withdrew her lips, squinting down at him in the light from the street below. “Is anything wrong?”

  He could just hear her through the pillow. “What?” He lifted his head.

  “You’re not doing anything.” She rolled away, onto her back. “You’re just lying there.”

  He propped himself on his elbow, facing her. “No, I’m not, Tam.” Shaking his head, he wondered what she wanted him to do.

  “Nothing was happening to you.” She was sulking. “I could tell.”

  He tried to make a joke of it. “How do you know what’s happening to me?”

  “I couldn’t feel anything.”

  That was true, he supposed. “But we just started.”

  “I started on my way to the bathroom.” Then she added, almost timidly, “If you know what I mean.”

  He put his hand on her stomach. The baby had been born almost a year before, but still she had not done the exercises prescribed by the doctor. “Of course. I feel the same way.”

  “Well, what’s wrong? Don’t I please you anymore?”

  “Now you’re being silly.” He tried to keep the anger out of his whisper. He wanted to make love and get some sleep.

  “Something’s wrong.” She slid toward the head of the bed, was almost sitting up now, half out of the sheet. “Did you bring your cigarets in here?”

  “Yes.” He grabbed her around the waist and began to tug her back down to him. “But you haven’t got time.”

  They went on with it. But Mitchell had to think about the girl who had unslanted her eyes for him when he was fighting in Asia.

  4

  THEY WERE IN their car by one Sunday afternoon, driving uptown beside the park, through Harlem—windows tight, the car air-conditioned, fearful at each stoplight—and, after crossing the last bridge on the east side of the island, caught the highway to Westchester. Mitchell told Tam to roll down her window and breathe some clean country air.

  “Did this Godwin give you directions?” Her knees were clamped together where they emerged from her bright pink skirt.

  “Come on, Tam. Why don’t you want to meet him?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “What’s wrong with you then?” Mitchell moved to the left and overtook a convertible, top down, driven by a white boy with a beard of scars and pimples. A girl sat beside him, her elaborate black hair kerchiefed against the wind, her arm around his neck. When Mitchell came abreast of them, she pointed, and began to shout into the boy’s ear. In a few seconds, the boy had caught up and was leering into their car.

  Tam, who had been preparing her answer, did not notice. “I hate to nag, really I do. But I don’t think it was fair of you to make this date without telling me.”

  “I tried to call you.” Beyond her, the boy was yelling at them, but the wind carried his words away, and Mitchell could not read lips. The convertible moved closer; Tam could have reached out and stroked the boy’s enflamed cheeks.

  “I know you did, Mitchell, and…all right. But then you could’ve waited until you got home.” She held tightly to a small straw purse in her pink lap.

  “Hey, you bastard! Hey!” The girl had taken the wheel now; the boy had jumped onto the seat, and stretched across the inches that separated his car from Mitchell’s, his hands on their windowsill. “Hey, big man, this is my road. Nobody passes Ricco McInerney on his road. Ain’t that right, baby?” He leaned into their car and tried to kiss Tam, who moved to the middle of the seat.

  Mitchell stepped on the gas. But the girl was a good driver and stayed with him.

  “Hey, Marilyn, give them a bump.” Ricco McInerney shouted over his shoulder, but did not release Mitchell’s car. Marilyn edged another foot closer, fender against fender. Mitchell’s left-side tires scraped the low concrete rim of the roadway. He put on his brakes.

  But Ricco McInerney had been watching Mitchell’s foot, and pulled his hands away before he could be dragged out of his car.

  “Stop, Mitchell.” Tam was grabbing his sleeve. “Just stop and let them go.”

  He shook her away. “I didn’t start this.” He waited for Marilyn to slow down, but she did not. Before Mitchell could catch up, the convertible had turned off the highway, Ricco McInerney standing, looking back, sticking out his tongue at them.

  Mitchell did not speak to Tam for another ten minutes, not until they too had left the highway. Then he reached into his pocket and handed her the directions Godwin had written for him. “Read those to me, will you, please?”

  “Can’t we make up before we get there, Mitchell?” She was whining.

  “Sure, but read the directions first.”

  She did, and while he was searching for street signs, began again to explain herself. “It’s just that when you don’t even ask me, I feel left out. I begin to think you don’t care about me or my feelings.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Most of the signs were hidden by the leaves of the roadside trees, as if the people living in that community did not want themselves found. “I tried to explain it to you. If I know for a fact that you don’t have something planned, what good reason can you give me to call and ask you if you do have something planned? Doesn’t that make sense?”

  He was speeding, slowing, speeding the car, scouting for signposts at each corner. Beside him, Tam lurched forward and back. “Of course, Mitchell.” She sighed. “I’m talking about how it makes me feel to be left out.”

  “Okay, we’ll talk about how you feel. Don’t you see, it’s silly of you to feel that way? If I knew you had something planned, you know I wouldn’t plan anything.”

  She shrugged, clamping her upper-arms against her ribs. “But I kind of did have something planned. We could’ve—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. We could’ve just stayed home.” He found Godwin’s street and, without braking, turned left, throwing Tam against the door. “And done what? Watched television? You don’t like to watch television.”

  Shrugging again, she lowered her head, the skin pulling tight over the tiny round bone at the top of her spine. “I guess you’re right.”

  “Of course, I’m right. But that’s not really the point.” He took a deep breath, his eye on the house numbers. “All I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t get upset about things that don’t matter very much.”

  “But I’m different from you.” Staring ahead, her face was all but hidden by her straight brown hair. “I get upset about different things. What’s silly to you is sometimes very important to me…” She stopped, thought. “Maybe just because I’m a woman?”

  Reluctantly, Mitchell pulled to the curb and, leaving the motor running, shifted into Park. He was within two-hundred numbers of Godwin’s house, and he wanted all this settled before he reached it. “That may be the most stupid and hypocritical thing you’ve ever said. If I actually treated you like a woman, I wouldn’t consult you at all. I’m trying to treat you like a reasoning human being!”

  She ran her index finger through the dust on the leather dashboard. “I know that, Mitchell, but…”

  “But what? Most of the time you talk about how bad men are to women, then you turn around and want some kind of special treatment because you are a woman. I mean, God, make up your mind.”

  “All right, Mitchell.” She nodded. “What time is he expecting us?”

  “Two.” He moved slowly on down the street, looking for Godwin’s stone house.

  5

  GODWIN WAS ON
the front lawn, behind his power mower, pins of grass spraying around his ankles. He did not look up until Tam had slammed her door. Then he reined in the mower only for a moment—raising a hand hidden in a white work glove, smiling—before he returned to his work. Except for the gloves, he was dressed as if about to leave for the city, in a dark summer suit, a dark tie, a white shirt buttoned to the collar. A spot of sun twinkled on his earlobe.

  He had already finished the half of the lawn nearest the house. The grass was cut so short that it shone like a pool. They stood on the fieldstone walk and watched the mower pull him toward a high hedge that separated his property from his neighbor’s, and back to them. “Hello, Mitchell. Is this your wife?”

  Before Mitchell could answer, he turned away, beginning a new row. Mitchell started after him. “You got it fixed, huh?”

  Godwin shook his head. “That’s why the grass is flying all over the place. I’ll have to rake it up later.”

  They had to shout over the sputtering motor.

  “Your wife inside, John?” They had reached the hedge.

  “We had a fight. She’s riding around somewhere. She does that when she gets mad. I got jumpy waiting, so I decided to do some work. Might as well finish now.”

  “Sure.” Mitchell peeked through the hedge into the next yard. Several people sat in steel chairs, around a white steel table. There was a bottle, square and half-empty, and several bowls of potato chips in its center. The people drank and stared at each other.

  “I’ll be finished in a couple of minutes. Why don’t you go inside and fix yourselves a drink.”

  “Okay.” When they reached the walk, Mitchell left Godwin, took Tam’s elbow, and led her toward the house.

  “What’s wrong with him?” she whispered.

  He pressed the latch with his thumb, pushed open the door. “He and his wife had a fight. He wants to work it off.” Smiling, he wished that sometimes he too had a lawn to mow.

  He closed the door behind them, watching to see if Tam was impressed with the house, but could not tell. The living room was to the left of the front door, down three carpeted steps. A low liquor table stood near the curtained window.