Coffee, Tea or Me?

by Donald Bain

  The next morning we departed Mexico City with a full load, mostly wealthy businessmen, a few with their families. One of the men, a Mr. Relick, was particularly charming. He was courteous to the girls, never asked for anything without prefacing it with Please. Besides, he was handsome, about forty, with that attractive graying at the temples. We found time to talk a bit toward the end of the trip, and he asked me to join him for coffee in New York. I accepted. I was pleased to be asked, and frankly hoped it would prove interesting.

  We had our coffee at the terminal, and I found out a few things about Mr. Relick. He was divorced, maintained a home in Mexico City, apartments in Paris and New York, and was successfully engaged in international import and export. I proved a good listener and he asked me for a date.

  I bubbled all about him to Rachel as I showered and prepared for the evening. I evidently went overboard because she asked, “Isn’t there anything wrong with him?”

  “I don’t think so, hon. Come to think of it, there is one flaw. With all his charm and sophistication, he has a little rough edge to the way he talks. I like that though. Know what I mean?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, you do so know, stupid. Like Anthony Quinn or Jack Palance or Harry Guardino. A little bit of dem and dose. But manly, like he’s lived.”

  “That ruins the whole thing. He sounds awful.”

  “Oh shut up. You’re just jealous because I came up with a winner.”

  “Where are you going to dinner?”

  “I don’t know, but I bet it’ll be nice.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Should I wear a girdle?”

  “Definitely not. Bill Harris says girdles are the curse of American women. He says unless you really need one, you shouldn’t wear it. And you don’t need it, Trudy.” Bill Harris was a flight engineer Rachel was seeing.

  “But Big Momma said we all need it.”

  “Big Momma’s a thing of the past. No girdle. Go loose tonight.”

  “What do you think he’d like me to wear?”

  “Well, Trudy, if he really talks like you say he does, he’d probably like to see you in sequined slacks and gold high heels. No girdle. Guys never like girdles.”

  I wasn’t wearing a girdle when Mr. Relick picked me up. We took a cab to an elegant Italian restaurant with “21” prices. Mr. Relick’s charm became even more pronounced as the evening wore on. The most interesting thing was that his tendency to fall into a Brooklyn speech pattern also increased. He knew all the right things to say, but had trouble maintaining what was obviously a forced urbanity. Strange but delightful.

  We continued the evening at Basin Street East where we enjoyed Duke Ellington and his band, a favorite of Mr. Relick’s. The Ellington magic swept me up as it did the rest of the crowd, especially when the band played a medley of Ellington evergreens.

  “All the guys in the band—Carney, Hodges, Brown, Anderson, Gonzales—they all hate to play the medley, Trudy. They’ve played those tunes at least eighteen thousand times, and it gets old. But that’s what has to be played. He plays a lot of new stuff, but the crowd always wants to hear ‘Indigo’ and ‘A-Train’ and those things. Great band, isn’t it?”

  “Wonderful,” I responded. “I love it.” I did notice the bored expression on some of the musician’s faces, now understandable in light of my escort’s explanation.

  “What a marvelous evening,” I said as we climbed into a cab.

  “I bet you can’t wait to get home and out of your girdle, huh?” It wasn’t a particularly charming thing to say, but humorous in light of my earlier conversation with Rachel.

  “I’m not wearing one,” I answered, realizing the answer wasn’t any more charming than the question.

  “I wasn’t prying,” he said quickly.

  “I know.”

  “Well, since you don’t have a girdle to get out of, how about making it to another place? I know a great coffeehouse in the Village. I’ll buy you an espresso.”

  “Great. I’m off tomorrow. The night is young, Mr. Relick.”

  I can’t remember the name of the coffeehouse, but it was what I supposed such a place should be. All around were dirty-looking young men and women, each trying very hard to conform to the nonconformist image. Mr. Relick and I sipped our espresso and he reached across the table and took my hand.

  “Trudy, being out with you is great. Really great. I’m truly enjoying myself and I’ve got something to repay you with.”

  What a switch. He wasn’t asking me to repay him, the usual feeling on the part of the fellow who’s paid for dinner and expensive entertainment.

  “Oh, Jim,” I said with complete sincerity, “I don’t deserve a thing. The fun has been all mine.”

  “No, no, Trudy. I insist.”

  He was drunker than I had realized, and his speech was now quite slurred and heavy, a great deal of the charm gone from it.

  He lowered his voice, glanced around, and looked me straight in the eye. With the secrecy came a hardness, a businesslike look, but more ruthless than that. He suddenly looked like Bruce Gordon, the actor who always played Frank Nitti, the enforcer on The Untouchables. He sounded like him, too.

  “How would you like a grand a month, Trudy? Tax free.”

  “A grand? That’s a thousand dollars, isn’t it?”

  He chuckled. “That’s right. A thousand bucks. How would you like that?”

  “Do I have to blow up an airplane?”

  “No, no. Nothin’ like that. Very easy loot. You’re not against money, are you?”

  “This sounds too easy, the way you tell it.”

  “Well, you interested?”

  I sat there pondering his question very carefully. The evening had been fun, and I had a sinking feeling whatever was going to come next would in some way ruin that fun. But maybe I was wrong. I had to appear interested.

  “Sure I’m interested in money. Everyone is.”

  “OK, Trudy. Here’s the deal. And I’m trusting you a hell of a lot to even offer it to you. You know I’m in the import business. Well, one of the things I import is marijuana.”

  There wasn’t another soul in the world at that moment. Everything ceased—all sound, movement, color. I felt a sickness creep up into my stomach, and my hand started shaking on the table.

  “I don’t feel very well,” I said and started to rise. “I’m sorry. Please excuse me.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said shaking his head back and forth and grabbing my arm. “Sit down.”

  I sat, but said, “Please, Mr. Relick, I want to leave. I don’t like any of this,” I wanted to hit him, or scream for the police, but he was frightening, sitting across from me. I just wanted to forget there was ever a Mr. Relick, a Duke Ellington, or a Mexico City. I wanted this whole day and night to disappear.

  “Don’t get shook, Trudy. I’m not askin’ you to use dope or anything like that. Hell, I don’t use the stuff. I just want you to help me out when you come up from Mexico now and then. Not all the time. Just sometimes. There’s no trouble. You girls come in and out without anybody botherin’ with you. Just carry some stuff once in a while. That’s all.”

  The coffeehouse was full, and I was afraid someone would hear us. I leaned across the table and whispered to him, “Look, let’s just forget about this. OK? I never heard what you said and that’s it. Please. I can’t do anything like that.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Do you think you’ll be the only stewardess who’s smuggled stuff across lines? Trudy, some of the international girls make a fortune doin’ it. And there’s no risk. If anybody did find some stuff on you, you just say some crook must have put it there. Some crook like me. No sweat. Besides, I’ve already got a girl, one of your buddies probably, working with me. It’s easy out of Mexico. How about it?”

  “No. Please don’t ask me again. I enjoyed tonight and want to forget it ended this way. Please!”

  I grabbed a cab by myself and went back to the apartment, looking behind at every corner to se
e if he was following me. Once inside, I bolted the door and leaned heavily against it. My sobs came in heaves, their intensity bringing Rachel from the bedroom on the run.

  “Trudy, baby, what’s the matter?” she asked as she put her arms around me. “So he likes girls who wear girdles. So what?”

  We stayed up the rest of the night as I told her of my evening. I finally stopped shaking long after the sun had risen, and Rachel persuaded me to lie down and sleep. I woke up a little after noon and there was Rachel, my good friend Rachel, sitting reading in a chair.

  “Feel better?” she asked.

  “I guess so.”

  “Want to call the police?”

  “I’m afraid, Rachel, to do anything like that. I just want it to never have happened.”

  “I know how you feel. But you should call them, I guess.”

  I didn’t. As wrong as that may be, I didn’t do anything. I wanted only to obliterate the entire affair from my life.

  Six months later I picked up a copy of the Daily News and read that Mr. Relick had been picked up along with other mobsters in a raid. They had been meeting someplace when the police interrupted their assembly. His picture was there, that same handsome face I first encountered on my Mexico City flight. I’ve never heard of him again.

  Getting involved with the gangster element as a stewardess isn’t too difficult. Rachel and I know a girl who dated a mobster in Detroit. He was a nice-looking young man, maybe a little too slick, but attractive. He told her he was a troubleshooter for a finance company.

  They dated every time she had a layover in Detroit, and her first inkling of his true occupation came one night at his apartment. They had been to bed, gone out for dinner, and were back in bed when he asked, “Do you love me?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered in all fairness. “Maybe I do. I don’t know yet.”

  “I was just wondering. I was just wondering if you liked me enough to do me a favor.”

  The stewardess sat up and sipped from a brandy snifter at the bedside. “Well sure I’ll do you a favor. I don’t have to love you to do that.”

  “Maybe not. But it would help. I might as well level with you. There’s this guy coming in town soon and he means a hell of a lot to me financially. What I wanted to ask you to do was . . . well, sleep with him for a couple of nights.”

  “Wait a minute,” she snapped in natural indignation at his request. “If you think I’m going to be a whore for a buddy of yours, you’re crazy.”

  The Detroit hood got up from the bed and slipped into his shorts. “Look, I just asked. It’s not like I want you to do it for nothing. You’ll get paid . . . by my company. You’ll be doing me a favor and makin’ fifty bucks besides.”

  She was furious. “Pay me?” she yelled. “It’s bad enough being asked to do it as a favor. But pay me?”

  He was almost dressed now. “That’s right, baby. And there’d be lots more where that came from.”

  She quickly got out of bed and dressed. She was on her way to the door when he grabbed her by the arm and swung her around.

  “You broads make me sick. You screw anybody who buys you a decent dinner and holds your hand, but taking hard cash for it makes you vomit. I told you I was in the finance business. Sure I am. But a different kind. I make finance out of broads like you. Only they ain’t all like you, and that’s a big break for me. I’ll level with you. I run a string of call girls. Hustlers. And you could make a bundle just workin’ a little on the side when you’re in town. Big bread, baby. And all you gotta do is lay on your back like you’ve been doin’ with me and enjoy it.”

  She swung at him but he was faster. He slapped her back against the wall and threw the door open. “Get outta here.”

  We heard the story fourthhand, but had it confirmed later by the girl herself. You can be sure this is a story I didn’t tell Aunt Laconia.

  Pimps and dope pushers aside, Rachel and I both agree that Lucius Dumbarton was the craziest man we’ve met in our flying career.

  Lucius was a happening director.

  “What’s that?” Rachel asked as she brought him his second drink. It was a quiet night flight in a nearly empty plane.

  “I direct happenings.” Lucius formed his fingers into a rectangular hole through which he peered out the plane’s window.

  “What are you doing?” was her second question.

  “It’s like a movie, baby, a movie. You know? Andy Warhol does wild things like this. Really beautiful. Like, try it. Make a lens with your fingers.”

  Rachel tried. The rectangle kept becoming a circle, and when she looked all she saw was fingers.

  “You still didn’t tell me what a happening director is,” she tried again.

  “You know, happenings. You’ve never seen a happening?”

  “Afraid not, Mr. Dumbarton.”

  “I’ll take you to one of mine. You’ll dig it.”

  “I see.” She didn’t.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t dig what I was doing a minute ago, when I was looking out the window.”

  “You’re very right. I didn’t.”

  “See. I knew it.”

  “You’re very perceptive, Mr. Dumbarton.”

  “Call me Lucius.”

  “Fine, Lucius.”

  “I’ll tell you what I was doing before, Rachel. That was your name, wasn’t it? Rachel?”

  “You’re right again.”

  “I knew it.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Good. You’ll be more impressed when you dig my happenings. Oh, yeh. Before. What I was doing was being a camera. A motion picture camera. You just set up the frame with your fingers and let it roll. Like Andy, only he uses a real camera. He just lets the camera roll on one thing. Like the Empire State Building. Or a banana. Or a Ping-Pong ball. And things happen. Like, no one plays Ping-Pong while Andy is filming. Oh, no. That ball, or that big building just sits there. Maybe for a half hour or more. Just that thing doing nothing. Beautiful. Power, baby. Insight. Inner conflict between the man and the machine. War and peace and the womb and plaid stamps. Beautiful. So beautiful. I do it myself all the time. With my fingers. Nothing moves, like. I set up on the sky, maybe. Just that plain, blue sky. Better gray. More power. And you know what? One time a bird, a big damn bird, flew right into my picture and that isn’t all. He actually came back again, from the other side, and came right through again. Oh, if I only had film in my fingers that time. Tooooooo much.”

  Rachel was quick to display her ignorance of such beauty. “That’s all these movies ever do? Nothing moves? Nothing?”

  “Of course nothing moves.” He was scornful. “If the building moved it would blow the whole thing. It’s like you take a guy and sit him on a chair and let the camera roll. No movement. Just maybe a twitch in his eye. And he can blink. Or maybe you do it with a cat who’s asleep. That’s been done already. A whole hour of this sleeping cat. Wow!”

  “Did a bird fly across his face?” Rachel was kidding, but maybe she wasn’t.

  “You’re putting me on, right? How could a bird fly across his face? I mean, like, he’s asleep in his bed. Dig? A bird . . . his face. Oh, man, am I gonna have to hip you.”

  “I’m afraid so, Lucius. It’ll take a lot of hipping, too.”

  “Beautiful. Tell you what. I’m running two happenings next week. Classics. You’ll understand better when you see them. One is called Miscegenation. It’s like one guy and a watermelon. There’ll be a lot of social significance with this happening. Wait and see. The other happening is called Meat Meet. You’ll absolutely die with this one.”

  Rachel accepted his offer, despite his advance billing of the events, and met him at a small Spanish restaurant in the Village the night of the happenings. He was wearing exactly the same unwashed clothing, his hair was one week longer, and no soap company could boast of increased profits on his account.

  He remained silent and morose throughout the meal, so much so that Rachel asked, “Are you having a happeni
ng now?”

  Lucius just shook his head back and forth and never took his eyes from the tabletop. “No, baby, no. But dig this tablecloth.”

  Rachel looked down. It was a red and white check, and contained large, permanent grease stains.

  “Are you going to make a movie of the tablecloth, Lucius?”

  “Oh stop talking, baby, stop talking. Like, things were happening on that cloth. Did you see that fly? I mean you didn’t even see the fly, did you?” Lucius flailed his arms around in the air. “Oh man, that fly was making it right into the scene. Right into it.”

  Rachel was sorry she’d interrupted such a monumental event. “Maybe the grease on the tablecloth attracted him. Maybe he’ll come back.”

  “Ah, screw the fly,” Lucius said with great authority. He motioned for the check.

  They walked many blocks until Lucius turned off into the dark doorway of a loft building. Rachel scurried in after him and followed him up pitch-black stairs until they reached a large, metal door that admitted a shaft of light underneath from inside. Lucius pushed it open and she followed him in.

  Rachel described the happening scene two days later. It went this way:

  “Trudy, you wouldn’t believe it . . . never in a million years . . . It looked like a big warehouse and there were all these weird people sprawled out on the floor . . . One guy was actually making love in the corner with a girl . . . and there were guys holding hands with guys and . . . oh, my . . . Well, the only light was from some purple bulbs hanging from the ceiling . . . They were like floodlights . . . Lucius told me they were ultraviolet lights and they’re important to a happening . . . (I evidently shook my head at this point) . . . You don’t know why either, huh? . . . Anyway, in the middle of the floor was a big blanket . . . He told somebody to change the direction of the lights . . . He told the couple in the corner to stop it . . . They did stop . . . Pretty soon music started playing . . . It was Southern music . . . Like Dixie and Stars Fell on Alabama . . . Out came this skinny fella with a loincloth around him . . . It really didn’t cover him at all, especially when he sat down on the blanket like an Indian . . . You could see everything . . . This same boy was painted black all the way down one side and white all the way down the other side . . . Split right in half . . . A girl in a mink coat and nude underneath carried out a whole half a watermelon and patted the skinny guy with the loincloth on the head and laid the watermelon down in front of him . . . He picked it up and started chomping away . . . He chomped and he chomped and that couple started making love in the corner again and Lucius was making little groaning sounds and everyone watched this nut eating watermelon with the juice and seeds all over him . . . Trudy, he ate that damn watermelon for forty-five minutes . . . I kid you not . . . forty-five minutes . . . The couple in the corner just kept going at it . . . Everyone else seemed to be getting their kicks from the watermelon man . . . Finally, he got up, rubbed the juice and seeds all over himself, hugged himself tight, rubbed some black makeup on the white side and white makeup on the black side and then do you know what he did? . . . He cried . . . He bawled and ran out of there . . . Everyone was cheering and applauding . . . It was awful . . . awful . . .”