by Martin Clark
He dressed in his bedroom—blue blazer, starched shirt, khaki slacks, penny loafers, no socks—and thought about buying a dog, an Old English sheepdog or a basset hound. He’d hung a framed studio photograph of Ernie Kovacs on the wall, and he stepped toward the picture while he was knotting his tie. In the glass between him and the photograph, Evers could see, in miniature, his hands working and pulling at his neck, his collar raised, his top button unfastened. “Would you fuck her, Ernie?” he asked.
Evers drank several cold bottled beers on the way to West Virginia. The drive took most of the afternoon, but it was warm, June, and he rode with his windows down, and the air picked up a lot of different scents and smells and filled up his car. About a mile from Pauletta’s, he was alongside an attractive lady at a stoplight, and she smiled at him. He raised his beer bottle, toasted the air with it, and then, when the light changed, he drove away, feeling churlish and idiotic. Evers the adolescent. Still, it was a good feeling not being with Jo Miller any longer.
Pauletta was in the kitchen when Evers arrived at her house. She called for him to come in when he knocked on the door but didn’t go to meet him. Evers wandered through two rooms until he found her, walked past an umbrella stand, a stuffed peacock and a table full of ceremonial masks and clay pottery.
“My, you look nice,” she said. Pauletta was peering at him around her open refrigerator door. Her hands were full—eggs, bread, butter—and she was wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. She kicked the door closed with the side of her foot.
“Did you forget I was coming?”
“What do you mean?”
“You just don’t seem too, well, too prepared,” Evers said.
“I just talked to you this morning, and I just now got home.”
“Oh. I guess that makes sense. Sorry. May I help you?”
“You could make us a drink.”
Evers opened a cabinet near the sink. “Should I use the everyday jelly jars or the formal ones?”
“Why don’t you just drink straight out of the bottle, Judge Wheeling?”
“What are you cooking?”
“Omelets. I make good ones, with seafood in them. I have some crab and shrimp. And a salad.”
“Sounds good.” Evers was pleased. He took a bottle of scotch from a tray on the counter.
“Did you forget your socks, Mr. J. Crew, or are your white, bare ankles proof to the rest of the world that, despite the necktie, you’re not a tight ass?”
“I noticed that the guy in the picture in your den had on some really outstanding footwear—men’s hose, I think the salesmen call them. With shorts, too. That’s a good look. Those smart gossamer-thin nylon jobs and your sporty Bermudas.”
“You’re lying.” Pauletta broke an egg on the edge of a glass bowl.
“Maybe they were a nylon-silk blend then.”
“You’re lying to me.” She smiled. “I really never noticed. Did he really have on dress socks with shorts?”
“Who is that guy, anyway? He seems to be in a couple of different pictures.”
“He’s not too central anymore as far as I’m concerned.”
“No. Say no. You’re putting me on. You two make such a handsome ebony couple.”
“Not anymore.”
“End of story, huh?—to put it in your terms?”
“Pretty much.” Pauletta broke another egg.
“Why?”
“I just got tired of him. Like a good song, I guess. You hear it and love it and buy it and then get sick of it.”
“I can’t believe how cynical you are about romance,” said Evers.
“I can’t believe how romantic you are about cynicism.” She looked at him and made a face. “Clever reversal, huh?”
“You’ll probably have fewer disappointments than I, that’s for sure,” Evers answered.
“Try not to brood so much.”
Evers held up a jelly glass filled with scotch and ice cubes. He was leaning against the refrigerator. “To Adam Clayton Powell,” he said, and raised his glass.
“To Oral Roberts,” she replied.
“Instead of eating at the table, why don’t we just take our plates into the den and eat on the couch when you get everything ready? Less formal, less stiff, easier to transition into music and TV when we run out of small talk.”
“If you like. You’re the guest.”
Evers ate one omelet and enjoyed it so much that Pauletta made him another. They sat on her living-room floor, with their backs against a sofa and their plates between their legs. Evers picked up both plates and took them into the kitchen after he and Pauletta finished their food.
“So what do you think of Charleston? Had you been here before, before you came to meet with me?” Pauletta asked when he came back into the living room. She was still sitting on the floor.
“I like the way the city and streets press right up against the hills. Have you ever noticed how the roads sometimes touch this sort of wall—all around Charleston are these stained, water-colored banks. You can see where the hills have been cut into, all the strata exposed, and from a distance a lot of them look like hill fences or walls. Often, though, you can’t see the cuts and blasts in the hills until you’re pretty close; you have to be in the right spot.”
“That certainly attracts a lot of people to the city. Without a doubt, that’s why I came. Most people would probably tell you the same thing.”
“You asked.”
“Did you put the dishes in the sink or the dishwasher?”
“The dishwasher. I’m a neat person and live by myself.” Evers cleared his throat.
“That was nice of you. Thanks.”
“Thank you for the dinner,” he said.
There was a small gap, a little glitch. Nothing came to mind to talk about, and Evers considered whether he should get back on the floor with Pauletta or take a seat on the sofa.
“Let me ask you something else.” Pauletta was relaxed; she had taken off her shoes and set them beside her. Her toenails were cut short and painted with clear polish.
“What?”
“How about sex?”
“With me?” Evers was still standing. “The two of us?”
“Yes.”
“Sort of a one-time thing or what? This is sort of sudden.”
“I think that anything beyond a one-night stand might compromise us both.”
“I suppose you could talk me into it,” he said.
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Say the word.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Let’s go into your bedroom.” Evers hadn’t moved.
“No,” Pauletta said. “Come here.”
“Why?”
“Come here,” she repeated.
He took two steps toward her, and she raised herself onto her knees and put her face against the front of his pants.
“Let’s go into the bedroom.”
“Right here on the floor.” Pauletta stood up and faced Evers. Her hands were around him at his waist.
“The lights?” asked Evers.
“On. So we can see each other.” She kissed him.
“This is …,” he said, not finishing his sentence or his thought.
Pauletta positioned Evers on the floor and got on top of him. He had never touched her before, and her skin was smooth, brown and soft, without any give. He put his hands inside her shirt, first touched her stomach, then her back and then her breasts, underneath them—felt warm flesh on his palms and the backs of his hands at the same time. He lifted the bottom of her shirt, and Pauletta raised her arms above her head. She was on top of him, uncovered, shirtless, wearing jeans.
Evers turned off a table lamp beside the sofa; almost immediately, he reached up again and relit the room. “I’m not going to do it,” he said.
“Tell your crotch that. You two are out of sync.” Pauletta leaned forward so her breasts were close to Evers’ face. She was very attracti
ve.
“I shouldn’t.”
“Do you want to?”
“Yes.” Evers touched her breast with the ends of his fingers.
“Then you’d better do it now, or that’s it. I’m not a waiter, Mr. Wheeling.”
“I’m not going to.”
“Suit yourself.” Pauletta didn’t change her position.
Evers was still touching her. “I would’ve hoped you might appreciate my decency.”
“I don’t know if that’s what it is.”
Evers wiggled out from underneath her. He was still wearing his clothes and shoes. “Better to have small restraints than none at all. I already have too many aches and pains, without this. You’ve been kind to me, and I don’t want you to think that I drove up here just to sleep with you.”
“It’s not possible, is it, that you’re intimidated just a little bit?” Pauletta sat up some; she was still on the floor.
“No more than the usual butterflies that come on the heels of long anticipation and first-time sex.”
Pauletta made no effort to cover herself. “It’s your call.”
“I’m actually afraid of catching malaria or some incurable African pox. You know that, don’t you? That’s the real reason.”
“Or something even more loathsome?” asked Pauletta.
“True. Masturbation has pretty much become the ejaculation of choice. I’d rather lose my eyes than my immune system.”
Pauletta tried not to laugh, but did. Evers smiled.
“Thanks for the insight,” she said.
“So to speak.”
“So to speak,” she answered. Pauletta reached for her shirt and stood up. She turned her back toward Evers, raised her arms one at a time and pulled the sweatshirt over her head.
“I’m going to leave. I’m grateful for dinner. That was a fine thing to do. I’ll touch base again before too long. I’ve got to find my hotel. I’m not exactly sure where it is.” Evers walked to the door and stood there for a minute. “Good night. Thanks for the evening. Sorry I’m a little flustered.”
“Good night.”
Evers shut the door to Pauletta’s home and walked across the gravel driveway to his car. He lifted the handle on the door and discovered that it was locked. He tried the other door. Straight up, no resistance, no click. Evers never locked his car, but the doors were locked. He cupped his hands around his face and pressed against the passenger-side window. The keys were in the ignition. “God spoke to Moses through a burning bush,” he said.
He walked back across the rock drive to Pauletta’s porch, steps and crunches. The lights were still on inside. He knocked.
“Is that you, Judge Wheeling?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want?” she asked through the door.
“I forgot my wok,” he said.
“You didn’t bring a wok.”
“How do you know?”
“What do you really want?”
“To have sex.”
“Then this can’t be Judge Wheeling; you must be a burglar. I’m calling the police.”
“What do I have to do to get inside?” Evers asked.
“The house or my pants?”
“The latter.”
“Celebrate Kwanza with me.”
“Not possible.” Evers had his hands on his hips.
“Send me flowers on Dr. King’s birthday.”
“Done. Agreed. Promised.”
“And apologize.”
“I apologize.”
“And humble yourself by begging.”
“I beg. I apologize and beg, and, when the big day comes, I’ll woo you with the red-clay-of-Georgia bouquet from an enterprise-zone, minority-owned florist.”
There was a pause, then Pauletta opened the door. Her jeans and old shirt were lying beside her on a round, brown throw rug. She was unclothed, standing still, and she and Evers were on the floor almost as soon as he went inside the house. They rolled onto the rug and clothes and then off again, back onto the floor, hardwood and polished.
Somewhere after two in the morning, Evers and Pauletta retrieved his keys with a straightened coat hanger.
“You’re a fisher of keys,” she said.
“And you’re a fisher of men.”
“I generally just wait for them to wash up on the shore.”
“Thanks for the act of kindness.”
“It was something I wanted to do.” Pauletta was in a long T-shirt, a robe and tennis shoes. She turned away from Evers and started toward her house. “Once,” she said while she was walking.
“Oh?”
“I don’t mean that harshly,” she said over her shoulder.
“I doubt that you mean it at all.”
“Romance is a book, Mr. Wheeling. Only so many pages.”
“Maybe we could just be friends when you finally get to the index.”
She stopped and faced Evers. “I could, perhaps, but I suspect that you couldn’t.”
“Who knows?”
“It’s fair to say, though, that we’re never going to marry and raise adorable mulatto children, huh? Or, for that matter, date anyplace where upright, god-fearing people might see us.”
“True.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re black. That’s easy.”
“And because you’re white,” she added.
“Oh, I doubt we’d be serious if I were differently skinned.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’d still want to marry a white woman.” Evers grinned.
“Under eighteen, of course. You guys could ride around Dairy Queen and steal pocket change from her parents. That’s about your speed.” She headed down the drive again.
Evers opened his car door and a light came on; it illuminated the interior of the Datsun but didn’t get very far into the night, left him in the dark. “Good-bye. Get inside before you get too cool.”
“Right.” Pauletta opened and closed her front door without turning around, and the tail of her robe caught a little gust just before she disappeared. A light turned on and off in the house.
Evers found a credit-card receipt in his glove box and wrote on the back of the paper with a pencil:
“Romance,” said Pauletta, “is a book.”
But after the pages expire, there’s no second look.
So pen it long, dense and hard, that’s the trick—
Which leaves me, I fear, a line short of even a bawdy limerick.
He stuck the poem under Pauletta’s door.
Evers was staying at the Omni, in the center of Charleston. He wasn’t tired when he left Pauletta’s, so he didn’t want to go to bed. That left him with the prospect of sitting in an uncomfortable hotel chair, smoking cigarettes and watching infomercials or piss-poor movies or some of the R-rated tease from the “adult entertainment” selections that would, no doubt, feature too many ankle tattoos and quit right above the actors’ pubic hair. In fact, almost every late-night possibility in a West Virginia hotel room would cause Evers—alone in his underwear and dress shirt, without a wife or even plans for a wake-up call—to feel like he was at loose ends.
He stopped at a convenience store and bought two white-powdered doughnuts and a cup of coffee. The man working in the store was talkative and friendly and told Evers where to turn to get to his hotel. Evers stirred sugar into his coffee with a flat wooden stick, put a lid on the cup and walked outside. He could feel the hill air on his face, and the coffee warmed the paper cup in his hand. Evers drove around the city for another hour, beneath the gray buildings and hill walls, wasting time, looking at lights in windows and street signs, eating small pieces of his doughnuts.
When he found his hotel and checked in, it was almost three-thirty. He sat down on the side of his bed and called Pauletta. She was asleep but woke up quickly and sounded alert.
“I called to let you know that I made it to my hotel safely,” Evers told her.
“Are you stupid? Did it take you two h
ours to find your hotel, or did you stop somewhere?”
“I rode around some, looked at the city.”
“Oh.”
“Thank you again for a nice evening.”
“You’re welcome.” Pauletta didn’t seem upset by Evers’ call.
“May I ask you something?”
“What?”
“I’m still curious, you know, about a lot of things, including Salt Lake City and you and Ruth Esther. Now that everything is over and done with, I wish that someone would tell me what really went on.”
“Maybe somebody will, someday.” She yawned. “Oh, by the way, has anyone heard from our friend the cop? Dillon … what’s his story these days?”
“I hear he’s still in Florida,” Evers said. “He’s not back, that’s all I know. I hope he stays there. Basically, it’s just another thing for me to worry about.”
“I’m going back to sleep.”
“All right. I left you a little verse in your door. A poetry gift. Hope you like it.”
“I’m sure I will,” Pauletta said.
“I’ll bet that you get out of bed right now and go look at it, in fact. You won’t be able to wait until you wake up for work.”
“I’m going back to sleep, Judge Wheeling.”
“Maybe I’ll come up again, and we could do something. If that’s agreeable with you.”
“I understand there’s a monster-truck show coming soon and that Jerry Lee Lewis is playing here next Thursday. I’ll see if tickets are still available.”
The week of July Fourth, Evers took several days of vacation, leaving two opinions and several divorce files on his desk undone, and drove to see his brother. Pascal, Rudy and Henry were playing Monopoly in the kitchen when Evers pulled up at the trailer. Rudy had a large lead, a lot of property and green houses, and was paying Henry a hundred dollars each turn to roll the dice and move his piece for him. “A wealthy man doesn’t roll the dice,” Rudy said. “Plus, I’m trying to keep Henry and Pascal solvent.” Everyone appeared to be sober. Pascal was the only one drinking, and he had a beer in front of him.