“Coffee,” said Christmas, leaning shakily on the counter.
“Are you all right?” the waitress asked him again.
Christmas looked at her absently. “Coffee,” he said.
While the waitress filled a heavy white china cup, Christmas looked out the window, at the doorway through which sooner or later Ruth would have to pass. The Oakland was parked a little further down the street. The sun was reflecting off its windows, turning them into shining mirrors.
“Here’s your coffee,” said the waitress. “How about something to eat?”
He didn’t answer, but took the cup in his hand and took a swallow. The coffee was boiling hot and burned his mouth. He set down the cup and reached into his pocket, looking for some change. He felt a piece of paper. He pulled it out, unfolded it, and looked at it. It was the MGM contract. He’d completely forgotten about it. That too had happened in another lifetime. He laid it on the counter, smoothed it with his hand, flattening the wrinkled paper. He read it slowly, laboriously, trying to remember the pleasure that writing had given him. Trying to bring back to life that electrifying feeling of seeing life appear on the page, trying to remember the feel of his fingertips on the typewriter keys, the sound of the platen, the rustle of the paper. He read the numbers that the MGM administrators were willing to pay for his stories. But it all seemed too far away for him. It didn’t make any sense. He put the contract back in his pocket, drank the coffee, left a handful of coins on the counter without counting them, and went into the bathroom, after another look at the door to Ruth’s building. He splashed cold water on his face and looked into the mirror. Without managing to see anything in his eyes. It was as though he wasn’t there. As if he was suspended. As if he wasn’t alive.
He came out of the bathroom and went toward the car. As he came closer he could see himself in the sun-filled window. His rumpled suit, his tired walk, his slumped shoulders. He put his hand on the door handle. He looked up at the windows of the photo agency. They were still closed. Then he looked down the street, hoping to see Ruth. Nobody. He opened the door and got in.
“I knew I’d find you here.”
Christmas widened his eyes, almost frightened. “Ruth,” was all he said.
She was sitting in the passenger seat, next to the sidewalk. “I saw you in the cafeteria,” she said.
“I was waiting for you,” he said.
“Yes, I know.”
They looked at each other in silence. Close, and yet far away.
Christmas took her hand in his. Slowly, gently. “Why?” he asked her.
“It’s not your fault,” said Ruth, lacing her fingers with his.
Christmas looked down at Ruth’s hand in his. “Why?” he asked again.
“I’m damaged,” said Ruth, turning her head toward the window. “Ruined. We can’t ever have a future …”
“That’s not true,” he said urgently. Rebelling, holding her hand more tightly. “It’s not true, Ruth.”
Ruth kept on looking at the nothing outside the window. She didn’t move.
“We can do it,” said Christmas. “We have to.”
“No, Christmas. I’m not like other women, I don’t have a future like other women.” Ruth’s voice was very low. Desperate. Controlled. “I’m damaged.”
“Ruth–”
“It’s not your fault.”
Christmas pressed her hand. “Look at me,” he said.
She turned her head.
“Do you love me?” Christmas asked her.
“What does that matter?”
“It matters to me.”
Ruth didn’t answer.
“I need to hear you say it. You owe me that, Ruth.”
She pulled her hand away and opened her door. “Swear you won’t look for me,” she said.
Christmas shook his head. “You can’t ask me to do that,” he said.
Ruth stared at him intensely, as if she wanted to imprint his features forever. “Maybe someday I’ll be ready. And then I’ll look for you. It’s my turn this time.”
Christmas tried to take her hand but she got out of the car.
“I’m leaving. I don’t know where I’ll go,” said Ruth, her voice suddenly hard, with a haste that revealed her sadness. “Don’t wait for me.”
“Of course I’ll wait for you.”
“Don’t wait for me.” Ruth went through the door.
64
Manhattan, 1928
“Oh, goodness gracious, sir. Here you are at last …” said the doorman of the building on Central Park West when he saw Christmas. He rushed over to him, agitated. “I wanted to call the police, but then … well … I really didn’t know what to do.”
“What are you talking about Neil? What happened?” asked Christmas, moody and distracted.
“Really quite irregular, you see,” said the doorman, bending to take Christmas’ suitcase and accompanying him to the elevator.
“Neil, I’m just back from Los Angles, and I’m not in a good mood,” snarled Christmas, grabbing the suitcase away from him as he got into the elevator. “Now what happened?”
“A man obliged me to open your apartment,” said the doorman breathlessly.
“What man?”
“I don’t know his name. A very large man, sir, with enormous black hands.”
Christmas tried not to smile. “And how did he go about obliging you?”
“He told me he’d shoot me in the knee,” said the doorman, paling at the memory.
“And you believed him?”
“Oh, yes, sir, I did. If you could have seen him … and a voice–”
“Deep as a belch, I know.”
“Precisely, sir, and yet … he was bringing things … in;” the doorman chattered. “That is, I mean — he wasn’t taking anything out. He was bringing things in. I really didn’t know–”
“You did the right thing, Neil — letting him in.” Christmas cut him off. Then he turned to the boy running he elevator. “Eleven.”
“I know, sir,” the boy said with a smile, closing the grate. “I always listen to Diamond Dogs. It starts again tomorrow, right?”
Christmas looked at him as the elevator rose, humming. Only two weeks had gone by, but the life he’d had before seemed distant to him, almost extraneous. Like somebody else’s life.
“Seven thirty?” asked the elevator boy.
“What?” asked Christmas, distractedly.
“The program’s gonna be on at seven thirty, like always, right?”
“Oh. Yes.” Christmas wondered how he’d be able to speak with the same enthusiasm as before. He asked himself how he’d be able to not think about Ruth. Now that they were more closely linked than ever. Now that he belonged to her completely. Now that he’d lost her. “Yes, seven thirty. Same as always.”
The elevator stopped at his floor with a bump. The boy opened the grate. Christmas came out with his suitcases in his hand and walked tiredly toward his apartment.
“Good night, New York,” said the elevator boy.
Christmas turned and looked back at him. He nodded and gave a little smile, taking out his keys. Then he came into his apartment. He dropped the suitcase in the entry hall and walked through the empty rooms, headed for the window that overlooked Central Park.
Then he saw a walnut desk and a swivel chair, right in front of the window with the view of the park. There was a typewriter on the desk. He came over to it slowly. A sheet of paper had been fed into the Underwood Standard Portable.
yr mMothR tole me Now u rite down all yr crap But how U xpec 2 rite with no type riter an no desk needa pissr
Christmas grinned. He sat down in the swivel chair and kept reading.
Now yr Desk use 2 B long 2 Jack London that Muss be why the fucker what Sold it wand 500$ stinkin thief so finely he give it away 4 nothinG
Christmas rubbed his hand across the walnut surface. He burst out laughing. Sal had stolen the desk for him. Then he looked out beyond the paper, and saw the bench wher
e he and Ruth used to sit and laugh. In another life. He rested his elbows on the desk and held his head in his hands. A life that didn’t exist anymore. He got up and opened the window. Eleven stories down, the traffic rumbled. Far away. A life that no longer existed after a night of perfect love. After six years of waiting.
Christmas stayed there looking out over the lawns, the trees, the lakes in the park, and beyond that, the whole city. “Good night, New York,” he tried saying softly, without conviction.
He went in the bathroom, bathed, and changed his clothes. Then he went out and started walking unhurriedly. He went through the park and then onto Seventh Avenue, heading north.
After Ruth told him not to look for her, Christmas went back to the guesthouse MGM had lent him. He flung himself on the bed where he had made love to Ruth, and he’d breathed in the smell of her for a whole day, until it had faded. He wasn’t thinking of anything. He just wanted to keep that smell close to him. He couldn’t even manage to remember. Then, after that day passed in bed, he hadn’t resisted any longer. He picked up the phone, called Wonderful Photos, and spoke with Mr. Bailey.
“Did she leave?” he asked the old agent.
“Yes.”
“And where did she go?”
A long silence at the other end of the line. “Ruth explained to me that you’d made a pact,” Clarence said at last.
“Right.”
“But she wasn’t sure you that you’d respect it.”
Christmas thought he could detect a note of sadness in Mr. Bailey’s voice. “But you know where she’s gone, don’t you?” Christmas said.
Again there was a long silence, and then the click of Mr. Bailey hanging up the receiver. Gently. Christmas flung himself across the bed again, clinging to the pillow where a few of Ruth’s black hairs still lay. It only smelled like cotton. Ruth had gone. Definitively. Christmas hoped he could weep. His eyes were barely moist, as if his pain didn’t want to come to the surface. As if his soul hung on at least to that. The last thing of Ruth’s that remained to him.
That evening a car pulled into the garden. Christmas heard Hermelinda’s voice, and then firm steps coming up the stairs.
Nick came into the bedroom. He sat in the chair and crossed his legs; fumbled in the pocket of Christmas’ jacket and pulled out the crumpled contract from MGM. “Mr. Mayer says it’s your turn for some pepper up the ass. Have you read the contract?” he asked.
Christmas didn’t even turn over to look at him.
“The housekeeper says you had some company,” Nick went on in a detached voice. “Did you have a nice time?”
Christmas didn’t move.
“I guess not,” said Nick, standing up and putting the contract back where he’d found it. “We’ll expect you tomorrow at ten sharp. Mr. Mayer’s office. Time to sign the contract, all right?”
Christmas just lay there with his face buried in the pillow that no longer smelled of Ruth.
“Listen, Christmas,” Nick said from the doorway. “This is a girl problem, right? Well, I can get you all the girls you want. This is Hollywood.”
“And that’s what you do, right?” Christmas said, his voice muffled by the pillow. “You solve problems.”
Nick gave him a reproachful look. “Ten o’clock. Mr. Mayer’s office. Be there,” he repeated as he left.
Christmas kept walking up Seventh Avenue. He could already see the “Negro Tenements” along 125th Street. He slowed down. He stopped. He needed to take back the city, the places he’d been uprooted from in these two short weeks when he’d become another person. And he needed to find out who this other person into whom he’d been transformed might be.
The next morning he’d gone to MGM. He’d looked at door number eleven and the little office where he’d discovered the huge excitement of writing. “That’s all you’ve got left,” he told himself. Even that sensation — so new, so recent — seemed far away from him now. He turned away and started walking back toward Mr. Mayer’s office, with the contract in his hand. It was two minutes till ten. He was going to be right on time. Like a good employee. And then, even before he could make them move, his legs stopped. The word “employee” started to reverberate in his ears. Impending. Heavy as a curse. He heard a voice shouting something into a megaphone. He followed that sound, still with the contract in his hand. Behind a huge sliding door, slightly open, he saw spotlights aimed at a fake garden with a fake fountain that had just started to play. Two actors in white wigs and white makeup. Christmas slipped into the darkness, stumbling over a tangle of cables on the floor. “Quiet!” yelled the voice in the megaphone. “Camera!” someone else shouted. The camera started to whir in the silence. “Action!” cried the director, sitting in a chair off to the side. Suddenly the two actors came to life. Two quick lines of dialogue, suggesting something that had already happened. Next, the actors turned toward the back of the set, where the sounds of a riot could be heard. Now they rushed to hide themselves in some tall shrubbery. “Cut!” the director shouted into his megaphone. Everything stopped. The lights of the sound stage came on, showing the bare walls, revealing the set for what it was: painted cardboard. The director was signing some papers. Now the actors were sitting in front of a lighted mirror, wiping off makeup. They took off their wigs. One of them was bald. Another man walked over to them with money in his hand, and paid them. Christmas heard him say, “That’s it.” The two actors counted the money, pulled off their costumes and put on street clothes. As they passed by, Christmas heard one of them say, “Hurry up, we’re supposed to be on Stage 7 at ten twenty wearin’ cowboy gear.”
Employees, thought Christmas.
“Who are you?” an assistant asked him, looking at a clipboard. “Something to do with the set?”
Christmas looked at him. Now he understood. “No, nothing to do with any of it,” he said, smiling, and then he walked away.
That wasn’t his world. He wasn’t going to show up punctually at office number eleven every morning, like a good employee. As he headed for the studio exit, along the bustling and productive streets of the industry that was Hollywood, he let the intoxication he’d felt from writing rise up in him again. Writing. Imagining characters, shaping them at the beginning, and then later seeing them emerge from the ink smudges and the paper, unexpectedly alive and almost independent of him. He thought about his mother’s eyes, of how they’d shone when she told him about the theater. He remembered the tense and moving silence of the audience that had grown quiet; the delicate, sacred, liturgical sound of the great curtain, rustling as it opened; the warmth of the orchestra’s notes, vibrating into the air from where they were hidden in a hole in front of the proscenium; the dazzling light of the spotlights coming on. He felt his own heart stand still — thinking back to that evening with Maria, when he’d met Fred Astaire — conforming to the silence of the audience around him. And with them, he’d held his breath, as if he were there again, in that dark room with its faint smell of mold, like a church that held traces of incense.
All at once — avoiding a rowdy group of extras — he knew. As he went out of the MGM Studios gate, the hand that had been gripping the contract opened. The crumpled sheet of paper fluttered in the hot California air. In that very moment, Christmas decided to go back to New York. And to try to write. For the theater.
Nobody knew it yet. Christmas smiled as he walked uptown toward Harlem. He was going to the old CKC station. He needed to start over again from there. Maybe he’d find his foundation again in that place.
He turned onto 125th Street. And two blocks up, where Sister Bessie’s apartment was, he saw a crowd of people flowing over the sidewalk and out onto the street. He also saw a flashing police light. As he came closer, he saw two patrol cars, not just one. He walked faster, joining the people who were crowded around the entrance to CKC.
“What’s going on?” he asked a laughing woman.
She turned and flashed a brilliant smile. “You is Christmas!” she cried delightedly.
“What’s happening?” he said.
“Now Christmas be here, too!” she shouted to the crowd.
All the people within earshot turned to look. “Christmas!” many of them shouted, and the news spread through the crowd. Hands took hold of him, thrusting him forward into the heart of the street party. And as he went forward, everyone he passed clapped him on the shoulder, hugged him, joked with him.
“Hey, white boy, ‘member me?” asked a big fellow, who looked familiar. “I loaned you a bicycle that day back when we hauled up that old antenna,” and he stretched his powerful arm toward the roof.
“Old antenna?” said Christmas, looking up.
From the roof rose a tall slender antenna with a gilded sphere at the top. Halfway up the structure was a dazzling green and gold clock set at seven thirty. And just above were the letters CKC.
Christmas looked at the black giant. “Aren’t you Moses?” he asked.
But the black man didn’t answer. “Christmas is here!” he shouted to the crowd. Then he grabbed Christmas and lifted him effortlessly, showing him off to the crowd. Someone else took hold of Christmas’ feet. They tossed him into the air, laughing. A spontaneous line of men formed, passing Christmas to the center, keeping him aloft, welcoming him like a hero.
When they set him down, Christmas was out of breath, and his head was spinning. In front of him Cyril and Karl were laughing happily.
“Welcome home, partner,” Cyril said, hugging him.
“What’s going on?” Christmas tried to say.
But now Karl took him in his arms and held him tightly, almost smothering him. “Welcome back, partner,” he said.
Christmas pulled away from him. He took a step backwards, holding his hands out tensely to keep the two friends at a distance. “Can somebody tell me what the hell is happening?”
Cyril and Karl laughed.
“You look up on the roof yet?” said Cyril.
“Where’s our antenna?” said Christmas. “Where’s our clock?”
Cyril and Karl laughed again. The people around them laughed, too.
The Boy Who Granted Dreams Page 58