The Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  More guilt money.

  Back on the sidewalk, I cross Massachusetts Avenue and mosey into Dupont Circle, pausing at the stone chess tables, pretending to watch the games, but really craning my neck to see whether I spot the green car or its furtive passenger. I drift from one table to the next, glancing at the positions on the boards. The players are a true rainbow, a random mix of ages, races, languages. Few of them seem very strong, but, on the other hand, I am not giving their games much of my attention. A crazy old man yells at a younger woman who just defeated him. The woman, who looks about as healthy as my customers at the soup kitchen, wears a hairnet and glasses repaired at the temple with a Band-Aid. She points a quivering finger at her vanquished opponent. He slaps it aside, baring brownish teeth. The kibitzers take sides. Other games lose their audiences. The crowd around the stone table grows raucous. Lawyers with cell phones at their hips jostle with slender bicycle messengers as everybody seeks a better view of the hoped-for tussle. I lose myself inside the throng, trying to peek in every direction at once. I cannot remember when my senses have been so open, so absorbent. I am not even scared. I am exhilarated. Every color of every branch of every tree is so crisp and clear I can almost breathe its hue. I feel as though I can examine the face of every one of the hundreds of pedestrians who walk through the park every minute. Another half-hour elapses. No sign of the green car, no sign of the passenger. Forty-five minutes. Eventually, I slip away and walk north, toward the Hilton.

  Then I change my mind. There is another stop I want to make first, for I have a new question to ask, and I know where to ask it. I look for a bank, find a cash machine, and withdraw another hundred dollars from our dwindling checking account. I will explain it to Kimmer somehow. I find a public telephone and make a quick call. Then I hail another cab and give the driver instructions.

  We pass the Hilton and then cut east on Columbia Road, passing through the loud, colorful, ethnically complicated neighborhood of Adams-Morgan, where, following law school, I lived for several years in a tiny walkup apartment with my books and my chess set and an unadorned mattress on the floor, my diet consisting almost entirely of apple juice and Jamaican meat patties from a shop down the block, until, at Kimmer’s urging, I moved to far more expensive quarters in a dreadfully modern building much further up Connecticut Avenue. Sitting in the back of my fourth taxi of the day, I shake my head ruefully, for she was still married to André Conway when she began complaining about how I lived. The cab passes my old building, and I soften with sentimentality. We hit Sixteenth Street, where we turn north toward the heart of the Gold Coast. Along the way, I remain alert for any sign of the green car or the passenger who searched for me on foot.

  A very familiar passenger. The passenger of my dreams.

  The roller woman.

  CHAPTER 22

  CONVERSATION WITH A COLONEL

  (I)

  VERA AND THE COLONEL were surprised to hear from me, not least because, despite ten years of entreaties, I hardly ever just drop in when I happen to be in the District on business. Their modest house on Sixteenth Street is set in the middle of the Gold Coast; the Judge’s larger place, Mariah’s now, lies on the border with the paler nation, as did his public career.

  My in-laws welcome me effusively, banishing the dogs to the yard because they know I suffer from allergies, a fact that Kimmer’s father holds against me, for he thinks it betrays a fundamental lack of toughness. From the number of hugs we exchange, I almost believe they are happy to see me. Then I remember the chilly Thanksgiving dinner two weeks ago in this very house; I remind myself of the tendency of Madison moods to swing, usually without warning. They lead me into the small family room at the back of the house, a converted sun porch, the decor a suffocating mix of cheap souvenirs from ports around the world and photographs and citations from the Colonel’s days as a leader of men, as he likes to describe himself. Vera serves cheese and crackers and asks us what we want to drink. The Colonel scowls at the platter and sends her back to the kitchen for a bowl of nuts.

  The shelves sport a whole series of pictures of Kimmer and her sister, Lindy—Marilyn at birth—from infancy to the present, and you can see, even in the early teen years, a hint of smoky challenge in the way the fleshier Kimmer glares at the camera, whereas willowy Lindy is, early on, more remote, less giving. The Madisons, like the rest of our set, were always puzzled at my apparent preference for Kimmer. Her parents certainly remember that I dated both their daughters, albeit not at the same time. What they do not realize is that only Kimmer dated me back.

  Vera returns with the nuts and our drinks.

  We sit surrounded by bric-a-brac and chintz, the Madisons as nervous as I, pretending that we are having a grand time, that we do this every day. The Colonel is drinking Scotch straight. A cigar smolders in an ashtray pilfered from a cruise line, for the Madisons seem to be off sailing somewhere every five minutes. Vera sips white wine. I stick with my usual ginger ale. I am never sure how to begin a conversation with my in-laws, whose skeptical eyes and querulous manner often make me wonder whether they blame me for ruining Kimmer’s marriage to André Conway, Perhaps they believe that, if not for the nefarious and wily Talcott Garland, their daughter would have been a faithful wife, and they would have a son-in-law who makes films and is always on television rather than one who professes law and is always in his office. They ask a question or two about Kimmer, just for form, but the subject is awkward and we hastily move on. The Colonel asks how Elm Harbor is doing these days, for he has heard that speculators are buying up the broken neighborhoods, and is wondering if he should get in on it; Miles Madison owns empty houses, to hear him tell it, in half the cities on the East Coast, waiting for real estate to take off. Some places it has. Kimmer is always at pains to explain that, since her father has no tenants in the dying areas where he buys, he is not a slumlord.

  When we have exhausted the subject of Elm Harbor real estate, Vera, perfect hostess, makes polite inquiries about the law school—she has, of course, seen Lemaster Carlyle on television quite often, and asks what he is like, and I burn a bit but answer as politely. Then my in-laws grow effusive as they ask about the marvelous Bentley, for Lindy, the darling of the Gold Coast in her youth, made a single bad marriage and has yet to give them any grandchildren. Now she is just another unmarried black woman in her forties hoping for lightning to strike, a pattern all too common in the darker nation as intermarriage, violence, prison, drugs, and disease combine to decimate the pool of eligible males.

  Then it is time to get down to business, and Vera can tell whom my business is with. “I’ll leave you men alone,” she murmurs and withdraws. She always defers to her husband, although, in other respects, she is like her daughter: no shrinking violet, few skills of self-effacement.

  “So, Talcott,” says the Colonel expansively, waving the Cuban cigar in his stout hand. He has offered me one, but I have declined. Unlike André, I neither smoke, drink, nor curse; the Colonel, accordingly, considers me less manly. His smooth, hairless dome glistens. “What can I do for you?”

  I hesitate for a moment, my mind spinning back absurdly to my flight around Dupont Circle an hour ago. I wonder, for a silly moment, if the roller woman might be lurking in the bushes outside the window, perhaps holding a directional microphone that can pick up voices from vibrations in the pane. I force my concentration back into the room, meet the Colonel’s challenging stare.

  “My father owned a gun,” I tell him flatly. His yellowing eyes widen slightly, the intricate motions of his cigar hand grow more extravagant, but he shows no other reaction. So I continue. “I checked . . . . I hear it’s easy to buy them in Virginia.”

  “It is. I’ve bought a few.”

  “Well, that’s the thing. I don’t believe he bought it there.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I just can’t imagine my father sneaking over the Memorial Bridge in the dead of night with an illegal handgun hidden in the trunk. It just . . . wouldn’t hav
e been his kind of thing.”

  A faint smile creases his pudgy face. He finishes his drink, glances around for his wife to fix him another, then remembers she has left the room and goes to the wet bar to get his own. He waves the ginger ale bottle vaguely in my direction, but I shake my head. “You’re probably right,” he murmurs as he returns to his lounger.

  “It’s not that he wouldn’t have kept an illegal handgun. It’s more that he wouldn’t have taken the chance of getting caught.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “On the other hand, you have quite a collection of guns down in the basement.”

  “It’s not a bad one,” agrees my host, who has failed many times to get me interested in his hobby.

  “Well, this is what I was thinking. If my father wanted a gun, I guess I could see him borrowing one from you.”

  The smile broadens. “I could see that, too.”

  I finally exhale. “So I guess what I was wondering was . . . when exactly he asked you for a gun, and why he said he wanted one.”

  The Colonel shifts comfortably in his seat. He inhales, blows a few rings, but not at me. “I would say it was . . . oh, a year ago. Maybe a little more. Say, October a year ago, because we were just back from . . . from . . .” He turns his head slightly, shouts: “Vera! Where did we go last October?”

  “St. Lucia!” she shouts from the next room, over the television. Vera’s Jamaican accent has grown faint over the years; the Colonel’s is all but impossible to detect.

  “No, not this October. Last October.”

  “South Pacific!”

  “Thanks, doll.” He grins sheepishly. “Old gray cells aren’t what they were. Yes, just back from the South Pacific. Seems to me we invited you folks to come . . . .”

  “No.”

  “No? Maybe it was Marilyn. But I could have sworn we called Kimberly, Weren’t you on leave from the law school or something? We thought you’d have free time.” He sees the answer the same time I do: they invited Kimmer, and she declined without troubling to mention it to me. Maybe even lied to her parents and said I was the one who said no. Being cooped up on a ship for two weeks with her father, her mother, and her husband would be my wife’s notion of hell on earth. He rushes on to cover his faux pas. “Well, we were back, oh, say four, five days when Oliver called. Came over at night, sat right where you’re sitting, asked could he speak to me alone. He wasn’t the sort to mince words”—looking right at me, as though implying that I am—“and he told me what he wanted.”

  “What did he say exactly?”

  “Said he was getting a little worried about safety at his age, and could I help.”

  “Safety? His own safety?”

  The Colonel nods, blows more rings. I am being brusque, in my half-remembered litigation mode, but it comes back to you, like riding a bicycle. Kimmer’s father does not seem to mind being interrogated. He is having fun. His tiny eyes gleam. “That was my impression. He was kind of—” Suddenly he spins in his chair, the light selecting a different angle to reflect off his bald head. “Vera! Hey, Vera!”

  She is in the room at once, hands folded at her waist. Probably she has been listening from the alcove.

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “Damn cigar’s no good. Be a doll, go down to my desk, get me another.”

  “Of course, dear.” She heads for the basement stairs at once, and I am reminded, for the thousandth time, just what Kimmer was rebelling against. But I also know that there is nothing wrong with the cigar, that the Colonel is just sending her away.

  “What a doll,” he murmurs, watching her go. “You’re a doll!” he calls, but she is out of earshot, which is what he is waiting for. He leans toward me, and suddenly is all business. “Look, Talcott, I don’t know exactly what the hell was going on. I never saw your father scared in my life, and I’ve known him—sorry, I knew him—for twenty years. But he was white as a sheet, if you’ll excuse the expression. He wouldn’t tell me why he wanted the gun, just that he wanted it fast.”

  “You gave it to him? No questions asked?”

  “I asked lots of questions, I just didn’t get any answers.” A guffaw. He has dealt with pipsqueaks before. Then the serious tone again. “Look, Talcott. I saw him before we left on our cruise and he was fine. Then I saw him when we came back and he was . . . oh, hell, he was terrified, Talcott, okay?”

  I try to picture the Judge terrified. I draw a blank.

  Miles Madison is still talking, his voice low and sure. “So whatever happened to scare him, it happened while we were away. I’m talking about last October, just about a year before he died, and it spooked the hell out of him. If you find out what happened, you’ll know why he wanted a gun.” His head jerks, for he is preternaturally alert, as he must have been in his days in the infantry. “Vera! Thanks for the cigar, doll!”

  “The one you have looks just fine to me,” she points out as she empties the ashtray into a wastebasket decorated with a map of the Caribbean.

  He grins sheepishly up at her. “Damn imports. No quality control.” He turns back to look at me, winks. “Talcott and I were just making a friendly wager on a game of pool.”

  But nobody beats the Colonel at pool. He cheats.

  (II)

  VERA AND THE COLONEL wind up giving me dinner. I want to escape, but declining their hospitality would be rude. By the time I return to the Hilton, almost four hours have slipped past. It is nearly eight, and the streets of Washington are full pre-winter dark. I have missed the final day of the conference, but I am sure I was not missed.

  The lobby is crowded with citizens of the darker nation, most of them in evening attire: black tuxes with bright and distinctive cummerbunds for the men, glittering gowns of various lengths for the women. They glide up and down the escalators, striking poses for the absent cameras. The beautiful people! Nobody seems an ounce overweight. Every patent-leather shoe is perfectly shined. Every hair on every head appears to be perfectly in place. Every nose is in the air. My parents’ kind of crowd. And the Madisons’.

  I wonder what event they are attending. In my plain gray suit, sweaty from my brief run, sweatier still from my long walk, I feel out of place, as though I exist on a level far below the paradise inhabited by this radiant throng. From the skeptical looks they cast my way, some of the well-to-do folk gathered in the lobby have the same thought: that this disheveled man slinking along in the gray suit is not, as my mother used to say in the old days, our kind of Negro. Although the absurd American system of racial counting would consider all of these glitterati black, most of them are of hues pale enough to have passed the paper-bag test that so justifiably enraged Mariah back in college, when she flunked it, even though it is, supposedly, no longer in use: If your skin is any darker than this paper bag, you can’t join our sorority. Oh, but we are sick people! A buried sentiment catches me by surprise, welling up from some putrefying source deep inside me, a wave of cold, brutal hatred for my parents’ way of life, for their exclusive little circle and its usually cruel snap judgments about everybody on the outside. And hatred for myself, too, for all the times I actually answered their snide little questions about where this friend of mine went to school, who that one’s parents were, and, sometimes, where the parents were educated. Addison, as he grew, began to talk back to our mother and father; Mariah and I never did; and perhaps he preserved an independence of being that my sister and I lost. The lobby reels redly about me for a moment, and I find myself wondering, as I did in my nationalistic college days, who the real enemy is, for those of us who considered ourselves the radical vanguard of the battle for a better future used to sit up half the night cursing the black bourgeoisie. E. Franklin Frazier was right: I see my father and his cold intellectual amusement at “the other Negroes,” I see my mother and her elite sororities and social clubs as living a dark imitation of white society, ultimately mimicking, in their desperate quest for status, even the racial attitudes of the larger world. So stunned am I by the visions pulsing angrily
through my mind that I am, briefly, unable to move or speak or do anything but watch these beautiful people swirl around me.

  And then the part of me that lapped up the Judge’s occasionally pompous wisdom reasserts itself. These thoughts, I remind myself, are unworthy, a distraction, and not entirely fair; besides, I have more immediate worries. So I wrestle the visions down.

  For now.

  I edge through the lobby, sucking in my belly, my eyes on the elevators, but I also find myself checking the exultant swarm, almost automatically, for any sign of the roller woman—or, for that matter, for the late Colin Scott’s partner, the missing Foreman. I wonder why the roller woman was following me. I wonder why she searched for me so hard, and why I decided at once to run away. I was tempted, quite seriously, to leap from my concealment and confront her, for I was unable then, and am unable now, to believe that the roller woman could have meant me any harm. Perhaps I am kidding myself. I keep seeing her face, not suffused with the concentrated anger of this afternoon’s failed search, but alight with the flirtatious, toothy grin of our first meeting. I shake my head. Trying to figure it out is like chewing on cotton.