by Gayl Jones
Your own conceit. I don’t think we know the same Jamey.
Well, I thought it was wonderful, you know, I mean the two of you still being good friends, you know, being divorced and all and still being good friends. I thought it was the most wonderful thing. . . . Being able to be divorced and—
So you had to test us.
Test? No, I admired you, you and Jamey—
You haven’t a right to call him Jamey. He’s my Jamey.
—how you and your Jamey both keep track of each other, are on friendly terms. More than friendly terms. How you care about each other. . . . I admire that, and I was thinking that must be the most wonderful way to be divorced. To be divorced like you and James are divorced. I mean, if you gotta be divorced, then to be divorced like you and James are. I’ve heard men brag about their ex-wives like that, telling you how them and their ex-wives are still friends and how even their ex-wives is friends with each other, that’s nice, but that’s just to brag on themselves more than their women, but you’re the first woman I met to brag about her ex-husband, to truly brag about him, as your ex-husband, not just bragging on yourself. . . .
I’m trying to explain what I mean. And should I tell her that I started not only thinking the way they divorced wonderful, but then started thinking him wonderful. That he must be the most wonderful man. Or maybe it was just my own conceit. Was I testing them or myself? But she wave for a cab. When it pull up to the curb, she climb in without inviting me. The driver shaking his head at her orange hair and purple eyelids. Looking at her like she some freak. A trollop? Bitch, she mumble, slamming the door.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
He had tiptoed into the room, and now he digging into my shoulder like a wrench. At first I think it one of his security guards, even Nicholas. That maybe they don’t recognize me and think I’m some secret agent hired by the local Thoroughbred Owners Association or whoever Josef think playing dirty tricks on him. But then how did I get through them, security guards? Maybe they think I’m some kinda Ninja or something. Most of the Ninjas you see are men Ninjas, but I seen this television show that had women Ninja. Maybe they think I’m some kinda woman Ninja, hired by the local Thoroughbred Owners Association. He even got security people working for him who claim they former KGB, and former security people when Germany was still East and West Germany. One of them security guards say he was with the East German police, but then when East and West Germany united he come to America, because they was putting a lot of them East German police on trial for crimes against the state, or something like that, except when they was working for East Germany it weren’t crimes against the state, ’cause they was obeying the laws of the state. He one of them dark-haired Germans, though, he ain’t one of them Aryan-looking blond-haired Germans that that Hitler describing as the superior race. That always seem curious to me, Hitler and his ambivalent aesthetics, ’cause even he himself weren’t that blond-haired aesthetic ideal that he say supposed to be the aesthetic ideal of that Germany. A lot of them little countries he invaded have them stories about him separating the blond-haired people from the dark-haired people, and saying the blond-haired people the superior people, and the people didn’t even have to be Jewish or Gypsies, they just supposed to have dark hair. And even a lot of white people ambivalent about they aesthetics. The same people that celebrate the suntan celebrate Snow White. You’ll hear women selling that suntan lotion and talking about being too white till they put on that suntan lotion, and then you hear the same women saying they ain’t white enough and trying to sell you another lotion that give you a fairer complexion. Joan say that that the influence over there in Europe when them Moors invaded most of Europe. That that’s why a lot of them Europeans is ambivalent about they aesthetics, ’cause when the Moors was the rulers over there in Europe, the aesthetic ideal was to look like the Moors, and then when the fair-haired Christians won back most of Europe from the Moors, the aesthetic ideal was to look like the fair-haired Christians. ’Cept them original Christians wasn’t fair-haired, amongst the Mediterranean peoples. They mythologizes that Christianity. So them Europeans have always been kinda ambivalent about they aesthetics. I don’t know whether she read that in one of them nonfiction books and if that the truth about why them Europeans is ambivalent about color and does all that suntanning or just one of them confabulatory truths. Like that psychologist that wrote that book on the psychology of color. Maybe it him, that former East German policeman, or that Nicholas, Anyway, I jerk my hand out of the desk drawer.
Spy, he say. It a German accent, but it Josef German accent. I’m barefoot, in a Chinese silk nightshirt. Couldn’t find my Moroccan sandals. I’d climbed out of bed and wandered into the study.
I’m searching for scratch paper, I explain. Moonlight across his jaw, I can see his black pepper eyes.
What d’you want with scratch paper? he asks. To write up your report on me? Who hired you? Who do you work for? The Thoroughbred Owners Association? Your government? Mine?
I start to tell him I work for the Thoroughbred Breeders Association not the Thoroughbred Owners Association, or Our Nigs, International; Spies in the House of Love and that he our prime suspect in love arbitrage, ’cause he always talking about that arbitrage, that he in the arbitrage business before he become a Thoroughbred owner, but you can’t joke like that with no paranoid fool. Especially a paranoid fool that’s got former KGB and former CIA and former soldiers and former policemen and former policemen for the former East Germany and former Vietnamese soldiers who fought in the tunnels of Cu Chi—either that or they’s all confabulatory storytellers. Or maybe they all just told Josef them confabulatory tales just so’s they could get hired as his security people. Seem like I seen that former East German policeman on television, though, telling them about the reason he was interested in coming to America, ’cause in East Germany they considered him a hero, or at least a good East German, but in the reunited Germany they considered him a villain, and that he’d rather be a first-class citizen in America—’cause they didn’t know one German from another in America—rather than a second-class citizen or even a criminal in the reunited Germany.
Naw, to write down a song, I explain. I got a idea for a song. Anyway, if I was a spy, I’d be using the new technology. I wouldn’t need to write up a report on you. I’d have one of those miniaturized cameras or some shit. Those miniaturized recorders. And you wouldn’t even think I’s a spy ’cause they’da trained me so well. Therefore, you should know I ain’t no spy, ’cause if I was a real spy you wouldn’t be suspicious of me at all.
You write songs for your Joan? he ask, letting go of my shoulder. Do you write some of her stupid music?
No, for myself. I don’t show her my lyrics. They ain’t her type of music. The type of romantic music I write she ridicules. She likes satire, wit, what she calls intelligent music. Intelligent and satirical rock ’n’ roll. I like romance. I even like country music if it’s romantic. The only country singer Joan likes is John Prine. She thinks he’s the only intelligent country singer. She likes intelligent music. She thinks all African-American music is intelligent whether it’s intelligent or not. You know, musical intelligence.
He don’t say nothing. He’s looking like her music don’t sound all that intelligent to him, or much African-American popular music. Then he starts kissing me, nibbling me. You want romance? he asks. He draws me down on the carpet, kissing me, nibbling me, pulling up my nightshirt. Then there, beneath a leather chair that face away from us toward the Dutch windows, I can see shoes and trouser legs. He drops the core of an apple on the carpet, then scoops it up. I push up to get up, but Josef thrust harder. I watch the shoes and trousers, Josef rise up and kisses me again, nibbles me, then he pad out of the study. I turn on the desklight. Nicholas don’t stand up and reveal himself, but I know it’s him. Hiding in plain sight. I watch Nicholas’ shoes and trousers, and think he going to say something, but he don’t. I can hear the apple core plop in a nearby ashtray. Then
he rise and leave the room. I keep searching for scratch paper, but have forgotten whatever song I intended.
CHAPTER
NINE
This how I first met Joan’s ex-husband James Savage. She introduced me to him her ownself. Harlan, I want you to meet my ex, she’d said, as he opened the door of the farmhouse. Honey, this is our lady lodger. I told her I’d show her how I spend my summer vacation, she said, sounding like a little girl, but a little girl in a confessional. Except I don’t think a little girl in a confessional would call a priest honey. We shook hands, James and I. He’d been eating breakfast and there was a crumb on his lip. Joan reached out and scraped at it, then licked her finger. Um, banana bread. You smell like banana bread. Yummy. She sniffed under his chin then kissed him. He gave me a steady look before he said, Pleased to meet you. He was dressed casually in a blue workshirt with rolled sleeves and gray cotton trousers. He was wearing tennis shoes. He a average-sized man. He got a high, broad forehead and high, broad cheekbones, but a narrow chin. It narrow, but it still kinda square and prominent. His lips is sorta full. And he got a mustache with little bits of gray in it, though the neatly trimmed hair on his head is dark brown. His big brown eyes look like curiosity is they leading characteristic. And he got little dimples at the wings of his nose, I think they’s dimples. Maybe individually his features is kinda strange, but put them together they make up a handsome man. I ain’t say he a Denzel Washington or nothing, though he kinda got his self-possession, but he still a handsome man.
Harlan’s my new manager, Joan explained. He nodded as if he already knew me, but didn’t say anything, then we went inside and put our bags down on the living room carpet. He was puffing on a cigarette which he put out in one of them crystal tray. He mumbled something about giving up the nasty habit, that he ought to know better than to smoke, then he carried our bags upstairs, but when he came back down he was puffing on another cigarette. Joan had settled on the couch, reclining, with her legs thrown over the worn arm, facing the mantel and the fireplace. I sat in an armchair with my legs folded under me. Some of the furniture was old-fashioned, the couch and the chair of unmatched fabrics, and other of the furniture in the modern style. Look like the kind of furniture you might get in a flea market, mixing styles and fabrics, not the kind of furniture you’d think a rock star would have, even a not-so-famous rock star. Or maybe the furniture remind me of Joan’s music, ’cause her music do mix different musical styles and textures, though it supposed to be rock ’n’ roll. The couch was upholstered in a sort of woolen fabric, a plaid mixture of browns, whites, oranges and beiges; the armchair had silky upholstery of blue, purple and wine-colored stripes, its arms frayed and worn.
The farmhouse, though, looked larger inside than it did from the exterior. The living room was rectangular and had a sprawling chaotic look, the furniture not just a mixture of styles and fabrics but arranged haphazardly, catty-cornered as my grandmother Jaboti would say, except for the couch and armchair that faced each other. There’s several of them leather chairs, and there’s a rough-hewn wooden coffee table in the center, decked with albums of Joan’s favorite singers, not including her own, ’cause she always say she ain’t her own favorite singer, which surprise me ’cause I’m thinking seem like most singers would have theyself as one of they own favorite singers, ’cause seem like if somebody a singer they’d have that conceit of being they own favorite singer, even if they favorite songs is songs that other singers sing, but she say she ain’t her own favorite singer, and even the songs that she herself sing ain’t always her favorite songs. Now that don’t make no sense, though. That not being your own favorite singer make more sense than the songs you sing not being your favorite songs. Seem like you’d just sing your favorite songs, don’t it? ’Cept she explains that sometimes a singer don’t have the range to sing they favorite songs, that other singers might sing their favorite songs better than they can sing ’em, and that they favorite songs might not be they own style of singing. ’Cause can’t all singers sing in everybody style. They’s some singers that can sing in everybody’s style and every type of singing, so you can have favorite songs that other singers sing, as well as having other singers be your favorite singers. Still seem kinda crazy, you have the conceit to be a singer and ain’t have the conceit to be your own favorite singer singing your own favorite songs.
She ain’t tell me who her own favorite singer or what her favorite songs, but them albums mix assorted styles of singing, and not just American music, but Continental music, popular and classical, Caribbean and African and Latin music. And in American music it ain’t just African-American music, it everybody’s American music, even including country musk. I remember reading a short story called “Why I Like Country Music” and written by a African-American writer, and seeing Joan’s country music albums make me think of that short story. I don’t remember, though, why he say he like country musk in that story, but I don’t think his reason for liking country music the same as Joan’s reason for liking country music, and Joan ain’t even from the country. Well, her farmhouse is in the country, but that don’t mean you’s from the country.
Joan glanced at her ex-husband. He’s always such a mystery to me, she said. But he’s so sweet. Ain’t he sweet?
No, I’m not sweet, said James.
I’m thinking I’m in some stupid movie, you know, them talking that silly talk like that, ain’t that lovers’ talk, talking about whether he sweet or ain’t sweet—looking at him, though, I bet he is sweet maybe even Sweetness Itself—then he put out his new cigarette before he’d half-finished smoking it. He have a high, lined forehead; his dark complexion, though, make you hardly see the lines. In fact, except for that little gray in his mustache, he look kinda younger than Joan, though she say they the same age. I guess that’s why some mens likes to get theyselves younger women, so’s they don’t look younger than they wives. I think it’s just a power thing myself. Though they ain’t gonna tell you it got nothing to do with power, they’ll just tell you that younger women fascinating. Which might be the truth. Maybe them younger women is more fascinating to a man. That’s why they’s got laws, though. ’Cause you’s gotta have laws to help some of them men to decide who’s too young. Course when them womens gets power, they tries to play that same power game theyselves, ’cept with them older women, you’s still gotta look like you’s a younger woman. You might be a older woman, but you’s still gotta look like you’s a younger woman. You can’t be no Sean Connery if you’s a woman, you’s gotta be Cher. I think it’s just a power thing myself.
You were sweet to carry our bags up, but we’ll be no further trouble, will we, Harlan?
I said nothing. James puffed on yet another cigarette and rolled his sleeves farther up, Joan apologized for something, but I didn’t understand it—some private matter. I thought of the Ring Lardner story in which the man can’t go to bed without apologizing for something; he apologizes even to his shaver before shaving.
Joan kept kicking her legs back and forth. He gave her a couple of irritated glances. He looked at me again. And looking at me like I’m somebody he think he already know. He flicked ash into the tray. Joan told me you’re a good manager, he said, the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. There was still a bit of crumb of banana bread on his lip. To tell the truth I wanted to wipe that bit of banana bread from his lip myself, or lick it from his lip, or kiss it from his lip, and then, Say what? I asked. Joan told me you’re a good manager, he said. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, licked at the crumb on his lip, then put the cigarette back in the corner of his mouth.
I try to be.
Are you or aren’t you? he asked with impatience, the cigarette dangling.
I am, I said. Yes, I am. I don’t think I could manage anyone but Joan, though. I don’t understand how these managers can have more than one client and call themselves managing, you know.
Yeah, Joan is enough to manage, isn’t she?
And then I’m thinking, he every man
I know. He ain’t just hisself, he every man I know. But then men, they’s supposed to talk like that. Is you or ain’t you a good manager? They’s supposed to have the vocabulary of command, it’s women supposed to have the vocabulary of suggestion or innuendo. They say even little boys at play are always commanding each other, whereas little girls at play are always suggesting. Course there’s bossy control freak little girls, and you’s gotta have little boys that takes commands from other commanding boys. And then I feel like they got me in their stupid movie, and he almost as handsome as one of them movie stars. To tell the truth he a handsomer man than Joan a good-looking woman. I bet he is sweet, I’m thinking. Then he ain’t looking at me. He staring at Joan’s feet, which rotating clockwise, then counterclockwise. He put out the new cigarette.
I’ve stocked the refrigerator and the bar, he say swiftly to Joan, but still looking at her feet. He pick up a brass tray from the mantelpiece, look at its content of butts, put it down.
You’re sweet, she said.
It was good to meet you, he muttered, staring at me finally. But then he looking at me like he ain’t so sure we know each other. I’ll probably see you before you leave, he says.