The Awkward Black Man

by Walter Mosley

  She laid out the plan for him to go to five different sections. He committed these destinations to memory, thinking that maybe the Tibetan notion of reincarnation was true and that Alyce had died and been reborn as Frankie.

  He went into the store and was shocked by the air-­conditioning. The cold made him shiver now and then, even under his coat and sweater. He made his way to the meats and looked into the cold bins with rows of steaks and pork chops, whole chickens and slabs of bacon—all set on rectangular Styrofoam plates wrapped in clear plastic. The food distracted him. He cooked in his subterranean lair but only rice and beans, chicken necks and grits.

  After a while Alyce, no, Frankie, yes, Frankie, wandered into the aisle. One, two . . . She wore tight-fitting, faded blue jeans and a linen shirt. There was a necklace of blue stones around her neck. Her hair was tied back, and she was so beautiful . . .

  . . . eleven, twelve.

  Albert moved on, looking for the fruits and vegetables.

  Store employees followed him openly. There was a guard in a uniform not three steps away.

  Albert wasn’t worried. He was no thief. His mother hated thieves. At one time his sister wanted to be a cop. Looking at a bin filled with huge pomegranates, Albert wondered whether Luellen still had the same phone number. They hadn’t been in touch in nineteen years, maybe twenty.

  “Excuse me,” the copper-skinned guard, wearing a blue and gray uniform, said.

  At just that moment Alyce, no, Frankie, came into the far end of the aisle.

  One, two, three . . .

  “Excuse me,” the guard insisted.

  “Yes?” . . . four, five . . .

  “Can I help you?”

  “No, no, I’m just looking.” . . . seven, eight . . .

  “If you’re not going to buy anything, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  The guard was young and pudgy, with a silly, drooping mustache. His eyes were both insecure and resentful.

  When Albert got to twelve he turned and walked away.

  The guard followed him.

  “Excuse me.”

  Albert passed the pasta aisle and one with cookies and cakes. Finally there was a row with coffee and teas, chocolates, and ­wildflower-flavored honeys.

  Albert stopped in front of a row of golden jars and stared.

  “Excuse me,” the guard said.

  There were store employees standing at the far end of the aisle.

  “Yes?” Albert asked, grateful not to be distracted by having to count.

  “I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  “But I haven’t finished looking.”

  “You have to buy something.”

  Albert reached into his pocket and took out a five-dollar bill. He showed this to the guard.

  “See?” Albert said loudly. “I have money to buy with.”

  Looking at the guard, he noticed that customers had stopped to watch the argument.

  The guard slapped Albert’s hand.

  “I don’t want to see that,” the man with the drooping mustache said.

  “I got a right just like anybody else to be here, to shop here,” Albert said, loud enough that the spectators could hear.

  More people were coming into the sweets aisle. Albert glanced around to make sure that Alyce wasn’t one of them. No, no—Frankie.

  The guard grabbed Albert’s left biceps, but when Albert flexed his muscle he let go.

  “I’m just lookin’ for a candy bar, man. Why you wanna kick me outta here?”

  “Chico,” a man in a dark blue suit said.

  Albert was looking around for Frankie, yes, Frankie, but she was nowhere to be seen. Had he made her up?

  “Yes, Mr. Greenwood?” the security guard said.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Um,” Chico the guard said.

  “I come in here wanting to buy me a piece a’ fancy candy,” Albert averred, brandishing his five-dollar bill. “First I looked at the meats and vegetables just to see what you got, and then this man here said that I’m not welcome to shop in your store. I got my money right here in my hand.”

  Mr. Greenwood was about Albert’s age. He was pale-skinned and had amber eyes behind metal-rimmed glasses. He’d made something of himself, that’s what Albert thought. He was a man who ran a grocery store, while Albert was just a guy who lived in a hole.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Greenwood said, forcing a smile. “You are certainly welcome to shop here, just like anybody else.”

  There were people all around them, but Alyce—no, Frankie—was nowhere to be seen. Albert was becoming light-headed.

  “Would you accept a gift of one of our boxes of chocolates?” Greenwood was asking.

  “No,” Albert said. “I don’t want anything from this store if you won’t even let me walk around and look. I mean, that’s what people do in the store, right? They shop and look and buy if they see somethin’ they like. No, I don’t want your candy now.”

  When Albert saw Frankie waiting at his shopping cart, he was overjoyed. He thought that maybe he had actually seen her on that corner but imagined their conversation. Maybe his make-believe had brought him to the store, thinking that she was following him, and he was perpetually moving away.

  “You were just perfect, Al,” she said, beaming.

  She pulled his shoulders and kissed his cheek.

  “Let’s go to my house,” she said. “And I’ll make you a Stillman’s steak.”

  There was an office building on Broome Street that had changed hands and was under reconstruction.

  “The man who owns it is being indicted for fraud or something,” Frankie told Albert. “The trial’ll take years. A guy named Childress gets the keys from the construction boss and makes a few spaces available for apartments. I got the one on the sixth floor, and I only pay three hundred a month.”

  The halls were dusty and dark, but the makeshift apartment was bright and airy, with good furniture, electricity, and a camping stove in the office-supply room that she used as a kitchen. There was even a bathroom with running water at the end of the hall.

  “You’re not all that dirty,” Frankie said, “but you could still wash up while I make us dinner. There’s some clothes in a box in the hall that might fit you.”

  The bathroom had a fiberglass businessman’s shower installed in the corner. Albert felt vulnerable being naked in that illegal space, washing with cold water. But he was excited too. Frankie was almost Alyce in his eyes, and for the first time in decades the mantra of love-lost had stopped nagging at him.

  With a smile on his face he plunged under the ice-cold spray and experienced exhilaration that spanned his entire life. His father might have been dead by now. Luellen never became a cop. The moon was rounding the curve of the Earth, soon to be aloft in the New York sky. Albert was standing naked in that hidden space, and there was a woman down the hall who wanted to have a meal with him.

  Out of the clothes box he took a pair of gray sweatpants and a green T-shirt that was only a little too small.

  “You’re in pretty good shape for a homeless,” Frankie said, as she served him a fried rib-eye steak with white rice and shredded brussels sprouts sautéed in butter with garlic and soy sauce.

  “I live in a hole in the ground,” he said, savoring the meal. “But I’m not homeless. No more than you are.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “How come you picked me off the street like that?”

  “I needed a partner, and the last guy I worked with punked out on me.”

  “You needed a black man to distract security?”

  “Uh-huh. You want some red wine?”

  “I don’t think so. No, no, I don’t.”

  “You need a job, Albert?”

  “I’d like to work for you, Fra
nkie.”

  “I’m not getting up off of any pussy. My last partner, Joby, didn’t understand that.”

  “These his clothes?” Albert asked. He was thinking about his deceased Tibetan master and the ideal of balance, of the moon arcing through the sky and all the many tons of rock he’d piled over the years.

  “Yeah,” Frankie said, “but they belonged to a guy named Teddy before that.”

  “You know a lotta men.”

  “My father had Huntington’s disease,” she said, as if in answer. “He’d go into these wild rages, and my mother had me and my sister padlocked in our rooms at night. She gave me a pistol. I still have it.”

  “Did he ever try to hurt you, your father?”

  “Only all the time.”

  “What’s that got to do with all the men you know?” Albert was wondering about the reasoning behind his own question.

  “I’m not afraid of anybody,” she said.

  “I won’t steal,” Albert said, as if in answer, “but I don’t mind walkin’ around in a store.”

  3.

  Albert “walked around” while Frankie shoplifted from drugstores mainly, but they also hit hardware stores, art-supply stores, little knickknack places down in SoHo, and some Midtown department stores. Frankie knew the most valuable items to boost (and where to sell them), and all Albert had to do was look at things that interested him.

  He was especially interested in portable electronics and colored pens.

  He was arrested twice but then released for lack of evidence. He made sure to have twenty dollars in his pocket so that he could always claim to be shopping.

  Frankie set up a room for him down the hall from her suite. She padlocked her doors and told him that if he broke in on her, she still had the pistol her mother had given her.

  “I’ve shot men before,” she warned.

  Early one Thursday morning, Frankie knocked on Albert’s door. He was already awake, lying on the futon she’d had the man Childress deliver. She paid an extra hundred dollars a month for Albert. He stayed on Broome Street, even though he had another illegal home uptown.

  He heard the knock but didn’t answer immediately. He was lying there thinking that he hadn’t had a drink since the day he met Frankie.

  “Yeah?” he said at the second knock.

  “You wanna get breakfast and do some shopping?”

  “I have something to do today.”

  “What’s that?” She pushed the door open and walked into the small office.

  “I’m going up to Central Park to beg.”

  “You don’t need that. We make more than enough.”

  “I don’t do it for the money,” he said.

  “Why else would somebody beg on the street?”

  “To save souls and redeem karma.”

  * * *

  They left the building together and walked up Broadway toward Houston Street. Just before crossing Prince, Frankie stopped and turned around, pretending to be looking in the window of a little perfume boutique.

  “Stand in front of me, Al,” she whispered forcefully. “Stand in front of me. Not there. On the other side.”

  Albert did as she said and looked around.

  Coming toward them were two burly white guys in jeans and white T-shirts. They had crew cuts and tattoos. They were the kind of men that Albert had learned to avoid on streets and back alleys.

  One of the men looked at Albert as he passed.

  Albert smiled, and the white man sneered.

  “Are they gone?” Frankie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  They stopped outside the entrance to the F train near Broadway and Houston.

  “Who were those guys?”

  “Toad Boy and Westerling,” she said.

  “They got a problem with you?”

  “When the police asked me where they were, I told ’em—because they killed my friend Bobby. I guess the case fell through.”

  “What’ll happen if they see you?”

  “You might have to start begging full time.”

  Nine days later Albert and Frankie were sitting in her makeshift apartment eating a dish she called Yankee stew. It had potatoes and beef and a good amount of beer in it.

  “I like you, Al,” Frankie said as they ate.

  “Me too. I mean, I like you too.”

  “Is there anything you want from me?”

  “You already gimme a job and a place to stay.”

  “I’ve played this game with a lotta guys. All of them have tried to get in my pants at least once. I never let ’em. You’re the first one didn’t want it. Are you gay?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t like white girls?”

  “I would like one thing from you, Frankie.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Could you . . . would you let me . . . let me call you Alyce?”

  “Alyce?”

  “Yeah. I used to know a girl by that name when I was in college . . .”

  “You went to college?”

  “I loved her so hard, and when she left my heart broke, and it never got better until I met you.”

  “You fell in love with me?”

  “You took her place, kind of,” he said. “You don’t look like her, but you have the same spirit. If I could call you Alyce that would mean a whole lot to me.”

  “You’d rather that than lay up in my bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” she said, bewilderment in her tone. “OK. I guess it could be like our little nickname.”

  That night Albert reclined on his futon feeling like he’d passed into a new land, a new place. There was a woman like Alyce who didn’t mind being called by that name.

  He was smiling and sober and hopeful for something he could not quite imagine.

  Through his window he could see the crescent moon. Then a loud banging from the hall brought him to his feet.

  The footsteps passed his door and continued down toward Alyce’s room.

  He came out into the hall and saw the backs of two men. They had crew cuts, T-shirts, and tattoos.

  “What do you want?” Albert demanded.

  The white men turned.

  “This ain’t your business,” either Toad Boy or Westerling said. “We just want the bitch.”

  Albert surged forward throwing his fists, getting hit twice for every blow he delivered. He pushed and fought and struggled in the narrow passage. The men hit him, and he felt pain, but it was like a far-off experience, like the memory held in an untouched bruise.

  He felt something hard strike the side of his head and fell, happy to give in to the pull of gravity. Someone kicked him in the chest, then in the head. They kept up like that for thirty seconds or so.

  Albert expected even more punishment, but there was a shot and then another shot.

  “Let’s get outta here!” one of the men shouted.

  After the third shot the same man squealed in pain.

  By then Albert was on his back looking up at the ceiling. Alyce ran by and was gone for a minute, maybe two.

  Albert closed his eyes for a moment.

  “Are you all right?” Frankie, no, Alyce, asked.

  Albert opened his eyes, caught a glimpse of his friend, and then passed out.

  He woke up in a hospital bed feeling surprisingly healthy. His jaw hurt, as did his side. He turned his head and saw a middle-aged black woman sitting in a chair. She was heavy but not fat, wearing a gray dress and holding a dark blue purse.

  “Al?” she said.

  “Lu?”

  “Baby, I was worried that you were gonna die lyin’ right here next to me.”

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody called the police and told them that you was all beat up in this build
in’. They came and found you. You had my name and address in an old alligator wallet. The cops said there was the smell of gunpowder in the air. But you didn’t have no gunshot wound.”

  “It was only me?” Albert Roundhouse asked.

  Nodding, Luellen said, “The police wanna question you.”

  The interrogation lasted an hour or so. The men who broke into Albert’s illegal squat were named Toad Boy and Westerling. They kicked the shit out of him, and then there were shots. He didn’t know if anyone else lived on that floor. He’d only happened upon the place that day.

  The hospital discharged Albert when he told them that he didn’t have insurance.

  His sister offered to fly him back to Los Angeles.

  “I’d like to go back to school, Lu,” he said. “I’d like to study history and find out what really happened with Great-Uncle Big Jim and the town of Hickton, Mississippi.

  “You can come live with me,” she said. “Daddy got sick after Betty Pann died. He bought a house in LA, and I took care of him till he passed.”

  “I have eighty-three thousand two hundred ninety-seven dollars and forty-two cents,” Albert said.

  “You do? Where you get that?”

  “The money I collected while saving souls. I can give it to you, and then I won’t be a charity case.”

  Starting Over

  As I do almost every day, I’m starting over again, again. Now that I’ve passed the sixty-year mark, it seems as if each day is a new passage, a more deeply felt loss, or some unexpected plateau achieved.

  When I was younger, life was a self-contained ebb and flow, as predictable as the tides under Luna. Breakfast and a drive, work from nine to five, the children as they became enthralled with one activity and then moved on without warning to new interests. Back then their lives changed daily, while Marguerite and I remained the same for them, even when we were lying, even when we feigned feelings and interest. She loved the children, and they her and me, and I loved the kids and her too. My feelings in the early days did not waver, not even when Marguerite and Gary Knowles ran away together and she was gone for twenty-three days while I was left alone to care for Juan, Alexander, and Trish.

  I told the kids that Marguerite had gone back east because her mother was sick. The sanatorium, I said, was in a place where telephones didn’t work. I didn’t know that Gary had left Marguerite a week into their flight. He just needed somebody to help him out of the jam of his life: his alcoholic wife, their angry children, and the mounds of debt. He didn’t know that he was using my wife, and she couldn’t see past the euphoria of a world without whining children and a commonplace husband plucked off the rack.