Ecstasy

by Gwynne Forster

  “He asked me to come to his school one night to root for his debating team. I went. As team captain, he introduced each team member and, to my astonishment, introduced me as his best friend. That gesture was out of place, and he knew it, but I never saw such a proud kid. By now, he means as much to me as I do to him, so don’t think I’m going to want to cut him loose.”

  “What if you want to get married and your intended doesn’t like Skip?”

  “I won’t want to marry a woman who doesn’t like Skip.” He ignored Steve’s gestures of disbelief. “I’ll tell him to call you.”

  They warmed the dinner and sat down to eat. Steve always honored their late father’s custom of grace before meals, but Mason admitted that he rarely thought of it. They discussed the relative merits of General Colin Powell and Brigadier General Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., each conceding that Davis might have been great had he operated in a racially less-difficult, less-troubled era, and that Powell had made a more phenomenal imprint on the history of his time.

  “You could have done the same in the field of medicine,” Steve griped. “You developed a method of operating successfully where most doctors would rather not venture.”

  It always came back to that. Mason put the remainder of the food in the refrigerator, rinsed the dishes and placed them in the dishwasher and prepared to leave.

  “Is that the reason why you won’t go into business with me? As partners, we could take turns touring, and one of us would always be in the office.” When Steve failed to answer, Mason added, “I need you. If I ask often enough and long enough, maybe you’ll give in.” They embraced each other, as was their custom, and Mason left, knowing that Steve watched him from the doorway, as he had since their long-ago youth.

  * * *

  Mason took a taxi to the Amsterdam Houses on West Sixty-fifth Street, to the grim little apartment where Mabel Shaw lived with her nephew, Benjamin “Skip” Shaw. He surveyed the tidy but modest accommodation, wondering how Skip managed to study with the television, his aunt’s only diversion from illness, blaring loudly, noise from outside and from surrounding apartments intruding and the smell of decaying refuse drifting through the window with the dank air. At times, he was tempted to take the boy home with him, but Mabel was confined to the house, and she needed her nephew. He gave her some bills and inquired of Skip’s whereabouts.

  “Thank you, Mr. Fenwick. We couldn’t live on what I get from the city, not even in this old dump. God bless you.” Her weak hand dropped helplessly to her lap, and he knew a twinge of guilt. She needed better medical care and, under other circumstances, he could have gotten it for her.

  “Where’s Skip?” he asked again, and learned that the boy had gone to choral rehearsal. He told her he’d call Skip, and left. Two hours later, he walked into his apartment building to find the boy standing in the lobby wearing a hopeful look on his face. Although he’d eaten earlier with Steve, he sent out for pizza and nibbled some, while Skip devoured most of it.

  “You don’t need me to help you with your homework,” Mason told the boy.

  “Man, I have to know it’s right. I have to stay at the head of my class.”

  Mason put the palm-sized calculator aside and looked Skip in the eye. “I do not like your calling me ‘man’. How would you like me to call you ‘boy’? I have a name, so use it.”

  “Yeah, but...”

  “I don’t care for that expression either, and I’ve told you so. The word is yes. Where’s your math workbook?” Mason knew that what Skip wanted from him was attention. Though in junior high school, the boy’s knowledge of math was nearly equal to that of a high school senior.

  Skip confirmed that, when he said, “Man, I’m way ahead of my class in math.”

  “Then we’ll work on your English. You’re not ahead of anybody on that. I want you to drop that street language.”

  The boy’s eyes rounded and increased in size. “You want me to talk like you? I can’t do that, man. The guys’ll gang up on me if I start acting smart-assed.”

  “And clean up your mouth. You are not going to be like them, and you’re not going to talk the way they do. You hear me?”

  “Okay. Okay. I’m gonna be just like you. Right? I’m gonna get an education and learn everything. Me and my aunt are gonna move out of the projects soon as I get my first paycheck.”

  Mason resisted an urge to pat Skip’s shoulder, to relieve him of his immense psychological burden. “My aunt and I. Read this page aloud.” He listened, enraptured, as the boy read a long passage from Richard Wright’s Native Son, interpreting it, giving life to the writer’s words. Chills streaked through him as Bigger’s furor, fears and then his dreams flowed from Skip’s mouth. How could a twelve-year-old express another person’s horror so eloquently? The boy had crossed Central Park and walked another twenty blocks to get to Mason’s apartment near Eighty-seventh and Madison.

  After Skip left, Mason sat alone, looking at the wood-panelled walls of his study, glancing occasionally at the expensive Tabriz Persian carpet beneath his feet. Without his brother’s sacrifice, he’d have been like Skip—a good little ship with no rudder—or worse. Quitting medicine had been a tough decision, but living with it had been hell. He had gained a measure of peace, had learned to be comfortable and relaxed with himself and with others since changing his profession. He got up and paced the floor, ill at ease now, stressed as he hadn’t been since he’d pulled off those surgical greens for the last time, and he traced his discontent to Jeannetta Rollins. He didn’t understand his reluctance where she was concerned, but he had to do what was right.

  Mason didn’t fool himself; his fitful sleep was due to his unsettled feelings about the woman who, in the space of seconds, had jarred him out of his sense of contentment, his hard-won equilibrium. He didn’t doubt what would happen if he spent two months in her company. Hell: two days. At first light of morning, he called it a night, a sleepless one, dressed and walked over to Central Park. He had searched for an apartment on the East River so he could see the sunrise from a balcony or a window. But people who had the kind of place that he wanted could afford seldom vacated. He leaned against a huge oak at the park’s edge and enjoyed the chirping birds that darted freely about as though claiming nature’s beauty and bounty for themselves before humans laid waste to them. He crossed Fifth Avenue on the way back home and greeted the newspaper lady who worked the corner of Madison and Eighty-seventh, collecting papers that she sold for recycling. She stored them in her shopping cart, and he saved his copies of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal for her. She was a businessperson, he remembered her having told him, and she didn’t want handouts. At eight o’clock he telephoned Jeannetta.

  * * *

  “Hallo.”

  “Sorry to awaken you, but I thought writers started work early.”

  “They do if they get a good night’s sleep. Who is...? Mason?”

  “Right.” So she recognized his voice and thought of him by his first name! He blew all the air out of his lungs. Maybe he ought to let nature take its course and stop worrying about what could happen. And he would, too, if he didn’t have this strangely uneasy feeling about her.

  “Do you still want to take the tour?”

  “Yes. Does this call mean you’re accepting me?”

  “We fly out of Kennedy on the twenty-second of May. My secretary will send you a list of the countries for which you’ll need visas and information about the required shots. If you don’t have a health card, your doctor will give you one. Any problems, call me. I know you’re interested in Africa so, before you give me your word, I want you to understand that we’ll be going to Northern and Western Africa, but not to any countries in the southern and eastern regions. That suit you?”

  “Fine. I can go to East Africa some other...”

  “Some other time?” He wondered why she hadn’
t finished the thought, and when she replied, “Well, maybe,” he became curious.

  “I know this trip is expensive. Most people who take it have saved for a lifetime.”

  “It damages your savings, alright.”

  He recognized evasiveness when he heard it and decided not to push her. “Next time you’re down here in the city, stop by the office and pick up your carry-on bag.”

  “I have to be there Tuesday morning. Is that too early?”

  Excitement coursed through him and he tried to suppress it. He wanted to see her. As soon as he’d heard her voice, his sexual energy had kicked into high gear and he’d felt the heat swirling in his belly. As though unaffected, he replied in a dispassionate voice, “That’ll be fine. If you’re free, say around one, we could have lunch, and I can outline our route for you.”

  “I... Thank you. I...I’d love that. See you around one on Tuesday.”

  He hung up, but didn’t shift his gaze from the telephone. So she, too, was skeptical about a relationship between them. He fingered the keys in his pocket and told himself to stop thinking about Jeannetta Rollins. Not much chance of that...

  Four days later, Jeannetta walked into Mason’s suite of offices to find him standing by his secretary’s desk with his right hand braced on his hip, examining his wristwatch. She’d tried to get there on time, she really had, but she hadn’t been able to resist watching the harlequin-like couple in Grand Central Station who danced for their livelihood to the tune of Louis Armstrong’s old recording of Let’s Do It. The crowd had loved them, had showered them with money and they had shown their appreciation with dazzling bluegrass clogging.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  “Something tells me you say that often.” The thrill of his deep, comforting voice washed away her cares. She didn’t care if he showed displeasure, as long as he kept their date. White shirt, red-and-navy-striped tie and dark gray suit. Did he dress that way every day? When she’d met him, he had looked good, Lord knows, but not that sharp. The thought that he might have dressed well for their luncheon sent her heart into a gallop.

  “I can’t resist enjoying things that are pleasing to look at,” she said. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  He asked if she liked Italian food and smiled his pleasure when her reply indicated they had that much in common. He took them to a restaurant on Sixth Avenue, not far from his office.

  “Your usual, Mr. Mason?” the tiny dark-haired woman asked him. He nodded, and the woman led them to a small back room that had four well-separated and well-appointed tables. White linen cloths, vases of yellow, pink and white snapdragons, long-stemmed crystal glasses and porcelain dinnerware. Any ideas she had of insisting that they go Dutch went out the window.

  “Do you eat here often?”

  Amusement reflected itself in the gleam of his eyes, dazzling her. He held her chair, seated himself and leaned toward her.

  “When I can find the time. Yes. Now, let’s get something straight before we proceed. If you’re not at the boarding gate for flight SK620 on May twenty-second when the flight is called, I’ll let the plane leave without you and I will not reimburse you. Got that?” He didn’t smile, wink, or do anything to soften the harshness of his remark. She avoided looking in his eyes and let her gaze find a spot over his shoulder, mulling over her reply before deciding to bait him.

  “I won’t be the first woman you left behind, but you’ll be able to say you know at least one female who didn’t chase after you.”

  “I’m serious, Jeannetta.”

  “Me, too, Mason.” His handsome long brown fingers strummed the table lightly while his gaze fastened on her. “You aren’t known for patience, are you?” she ventured.

  “With people who don’t deliberately provoke me into losing it, I’ve got plenty. Take you, for instance. You’ve got a built-in patience buster that stays on automatic pilot.”

  “How do you know all that?” she bristled. “We’re strangers.” She wished he wouldn’t look at her so intently. Right then, his eyes changed color, jacking up her body’s temperature and jellying her bones.

  “Oh, I don’t imagine that you do it deliberately. My guess is that you merely float around in your own world, laid-back, unperturbed, wrecking other people’s equilibrium without meaning to.” She shifted in her chair. Laura must have accused her of something similar dozens of times over the years. Without thinking, she asked him, “Are you a psychiatrist?” She watched the light in his eyes dim and a defensive shield steal over his face.

  “Anyone who cares about people can learn to interpret human behavior—one needn’t be a psychiatrist.”

  She told herself that she’d gotten too close there, that she had better be more careful. In his mesmerizing features, she had glimpsed pain; just for a second, it had been there. Unmistakable. Perhaps he regretted leaving medicine. Or maybe someone for whom he had cared had betrayed him. This man carried scars, and trust probably didn’t come easily with him. It wouldn’t do for him to know too soon why she had chosen his tour. The waiter took their orders. Shrimp scampi with rice and a salad for him; spaghetti with pesto sauce and a salad for her.

  He folded his arms, grasping his biceps and leaned back in his chair. “Jeannetta, we might as well stop fencing with each other. It doesn’t make sense and, besides, it’s useless.” Tiny pricks of warm sensation shot through her and anticipation simmered in her breast.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She hadn’t been able to steady her voice, and his expression said that he knew it.

  “Alright. Stick your head in the sand, if you think you’ll be more comfortable that way.” Before she could speak, he added. “And if you like mind-blowing surprises.”

  “I’m taking this tour because I want to see the world.” Realizing that her voice had sounded plaintive, she smiled to soften the effect and, to her amazement, Mason abruptly leaned forward, his eyes simmering pools of brown heat.

  “I’ll show you the world.” Tingling excitement shot down her spine at the sound of his passion-filled lover’s voice. “The world through my eyes is a wondrous place, Jeannetta. Sunrises that explode from a kaleidoscope of colors, great trees with leaves that dance in a wind you can almost see, foamy ocean caps, long stretches of virgin sandy beaches and moons that nourish your soul. I’ll show you stars in your favorite colors, mountains topped with evergreen trees and pristine snow, green valleys with millions of wildflowers. If you travel with me, Jeannetta, you’ll live in a new and different world. You’ll bask in the realm of the ethereal.”

  She hid her trembling hands beneath the tablecloth, pressed her arms to her side and crossed her ankles. He wasn’t speaking of the Fenwick Travel Agency tour, but of what she’d find in an intimate relationship with him. Strange that the picture he painted symbolized what she’d lose if he didn’t help her. Somewhere from the archives of her mind came a reminder that if she fell for him all might be lost, and an admonishment that she ought to get away from him while she could. She knew she’d better get them back on an impersonal basis. But she sat there, imprisoned by his hypnotic stare, and said nothing.

  “Well, what do you say?”

  She called on her aplomb and managed to return his gaze. Sucking in her breath, she told him, “You paint a magnificent picture. I could see it all in my mind’s eye, but...”

  “But you’re scared,” he interrupted, his face bright and animated. Most of the time only his eyes expressed his feelings, and she had to force herself not to comment on the change. He regarded her carefully, and his demeanor told her that her words were important to him, but the effect of his rapt concentration was lessened by the gentle strumming of his dark fingers on the white linen cloth.

  “Of all the things I may have been called in my life,” she said, “I doubt that scared was one of them. But you’ll have to admit that only a foolish woman would fail to q
uestion the words of a man whose tongue is as smooth as yours.”

  His eyebrows arched sharply, and he rested his fork.

  “And the woman who does not recognize a man’s truth when she hears it is to be pitied.”

  She didn’t want him to know what his words had done to her, but the loud swish of air into her lips was all he needed. Her eyelids dropped and she cringed at the prints that her nails had dug in the palms of her hands.

  He must have seen her agitation, for he shook his head and told her, “A person’s first duty to himself is to know who he is. I’m working hard at that, and you’d better start. Why can’t you do what you’d like to do?”

  “And what’s that?” she asked, her tone less than friendly. He reached in his pocket for his credit card, placed it on the table and signaled for their waiter.

  “Jeannetta, I promised myself three years ago that I would tell myself the truth no matter how much I hated to hear it. Although some inner sense—call it intuition—tells me I may regret it, you attract me as no other woman has, and I want to spend time with you. A lot of time. If you were as honest with both of us, you’d tell me that you feel the same way. Let’s go. I’ve got a two-thirty appointment.” Her penetrating, disbelieving stare must have gotten to him, because he explained his rapid change of mood. “I’ve grieved about two incidents in my life, and I doubt anything else could move me as deeply. I’ll settle for peace and contentment. What about you?”

  “Sounds good to me.” She stood and hooked the strap of her hobo bag over her right shoulder. After their conversation, she had to start looking for a miracle. His fingers, splayed across her back as he guided her toward the door, gave her a sense of security that she hadn’t often known. He was there—and he wouldn’t allow anything to shatter her well-being—was the message that his warm fingers sent to her body. If only that were true. They stepped out into the early spring sunshine and she felt his hand through the fabric that covered her arm.

  “Headed back to Pilgrim?”