Ian stood still in the dark, straining to hear every word. Yes, Phil was leaving. A cab was on its way. He picked up a hammer from a workbench. Tapped it against his palm.
Phil told Margaret to hold on. “Is someone there?” he called out.
Ian didn’t answer. He was tapping harder. But he couldn’t feel it.
Phil called out again and he grunted a reply.
“Could’ve lost your life,” Phil said when Ian reached the landing. “I’ve got your gun here.”
“Oh yeah?” Ian mumbled. “You have a gun. I have a hammer. But you have something to live for. I don’t. I think you luckier than me.”
Ian feel asleep with murder on his mind. He heard the voice in his head for the first time. Kill Margaret. Kill Phil. Kill me.
chapter eight
Halloween fell on a Monday that year.
Two months after the flight of Fire, Sylvia, committed to writing a page a day, had written a hundred and two pages of a new novel, a love story, set in Jamaica, about a writer who meets a blues singer on vacation and comes to believe they’re reincarnated lovers from the days of slavery. The novel on which she’d been working for the past several years was out of her life. Gone. The manuscript bound up with old newspapers and left on the curb with the trash. For trash it was, she’d come to realize. The best novels, she learned, after taking the time to reread the work of Toni Morrison, were not just about skill. They were also about honesty.
The new shape of her consciousness, she knew, was largely the result of her collision with the mind of the man on whom her main character was based. And there were times when she would allow herself to consider that this novel, which came to her slowly but easily, like the dawn with which she rose to write, was not just a piece of fiction but a clever way to engage him without incurring any risks. Being a character in her story, he couldn’t walk away from her, he couldn’t slip off her screen as easily as he’d slipped out of her life. For she controlled him.
From a distance, by being forced to explore him in order to render him as a character, she began to understand him, began to sympathize with his decision. For she was wrong to have accused him so, to beat him about the head with her own guilt and insecurity. He didn’t deserve that. Not after all he’d done. But he should’ve written, or called. For the first month, she would cry whenever she thought of him. But the process of shaping her emotions into art had helped to heal her. She still thought of him as a person distinct from the character she’d drawn—a left-wing rasta who lived in Brooklyn—but less and less so as she became involved with molding her story.
This didn’t happen naturally, this mature objectivity. She was feverish and weak for three days after he left. She went to her doctor, worried that she might have caught an infection, and after several tests and referral to a specialist was told that her symptoms were psychosomatic. She was lovesick.
She couldn’t allow this, she told herself, and began to look for reasons to dislike him. She sat up in bed and made a list: He didn’t respect her time—he was always late. He didn’t respect her privacy—he asked a lot of personal questions and had gone through her things while she slept. He was presumptuous—had come to her house and to New York without calling, just assuming it was a good time for her. And there were so many things that didn’t seem to add up or weren’t clear. How did he make his living? And what was he really doing in England? And there was no proof that he’d actually done those drawings in the book he’d sent her. He could’ve easily bought it somewhere.
She threw out anything that reminded her of him. His flowers, the vase in which she’d placed them, the book of drawings, even the plates from which he’d eaten and the glasses from which he’d drunk. Even the towel he’d used to dry his body.
Drawn into a Zenlike calm by the meditative ritual of writing at first light, Sylvia began to find a lot of things more bearable—work, for instance. She had begun to accept it as an imperfect situation in an imperfect world. Writing fiction was her calling. She was clear now. She understood this because she was crafting a novel from truth. Umbra, she could say now, without wavering or rancor, was just a gig to pay her bills.
Her relationship with Lewis had improved as well. They didn’t argue as much, largely, she believed, because she wasn’t as tense about work; also, she admitted, she had become more forgiving since the affair with Fire. What had he done, she would ask herself, that could compare with her infraction? Being arrogant? Condescending? Philistine? And even that thing that Ian had told her about in a rambling letter the other day. What drug was Ian on at the time? That thing about their under-the-table deal. It wasn’t exactly illegal.
Should she tell Lewis?
Admittedly, she had come to feel more for Lewis in the last month than she had ever felt for him. He had been very kind to her, and attentive, and seemed warmer.
Swaddled in denial, she never asked herself if she was feeling this way about Lewis because she felt abandoned by Fire. She had convinced herself that Fire had been an insignificant dalliance that had almost cost her a valuable relationship. And she shooed away thoughts of him as though they were germ-infested flies.
Lewis would be coming over soon. To pass the time as she waited, she watched the Jets play Cleveland. When a string of commercials interrupted the game she switched channels randomly until CNN grabbed her attention. It was another story on the high proportion of black males in jail or on parole. As she leaned back to absorb the statistics, a follow-up story covered the plight of professional black women in search of partners of equal status. She listened intently as sister after sister produced the same I-got-everything-a-brother-would-want-but-no-brother-to-give-it-to sound bite in different words, accents, and degrees of demonstrated desperation.
When that was over she switched again and got a CNN promo: “Educated. Professional. Good-looking … and very lonely. Single black females in America.”
As she sat quietly considering all this there was a knock at the door.
She knew it was Lewis. He never rang the bell. He’d become adept at slipping inside the front door without being buzzed up.
She opened the door to find him holding flowers and a picnic basket and was overwhelmed by emotion. She took them from him with a smile and hugged him, then pulled him toward her and kissed him on the lips, blessing their first intimate communion in months.
“I guess you’re glad to see me,” Lewis said as he stepped inside.
“Very,” she replied.
She placed the roses in some fresh water in a vase in her bedroom. Then they made a little picnic in the living room and watched the game, wolfing down smoked salmon and chardonnay like hot dogs and beer, while moaning for New York.
At the end of the game, they sat together on the couch. She had a leg thrown over his and he had an arm draped around her shoulders.
“I came to talk seriously,” Lewis began. “You know that.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Sylvia, I love you.”
“I know, Lewis,” she replied, kissing him on the cheek. He took her face in his hands.
“Sylvia, you mean so much to me,” he said. “I want you back in my life. I want us to be together again. I’m not perfect. I know that. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been trying my best to win you back. And if I’ve failed I’ll just keep trying harder, because I refuse to let you go. If I have to cry and plead for your sympathy I don’t mind, cause you mean so much to me …” He couldn’t hold a straight face as he recited the lyrics of “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.” Sylvia laughed too.
“Lewis,” she said, “you’re making me laugh too easily nowadays, and that’s dangerous.”
Lewis chuckled.
“Bottom line though, Sylvia, is, Do you want me back or not?”
“There’s something I have to do first before I answer that,” she said, thinking about the CNN feature. She got up and went to her bedroom.
Lewis sat nervously until she returned. But he smiled wh
en Sylvia reappeared with the candleholders in her hand.
“Remember these?” she asked.
Lewis nodded wryly.
“They don’t mean that much to me,” she said, then went outside and threw them in the garbage. Lewis stood at the door watching her. As she ascended the steps he realized that she was crying.
“I’m sorry, Lewis,” she said, as he held her close at the doorway. “I hurt you so much. I’m so selfish.”
“It’s okay, Sylvia. It’s okay,” he murmured, leading her inside.
As she pressed against him she felt a hard lump against her pelvis.
“Been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Like an eternity,” he replied sheepishly.
“Come inside the bedroom then. I’ll make it up to you.”
Lewis kissed her deeply and massaged the mound between her legs as she undid his buckle. Leaning against the wall, she slipped out of her shoes and came to his assistance as he tried to ease her jeans over her hips. She trembled as he touched the waist of her underwear. But before she could savor the sensation his hand was up inside her, his tongue was on her lips, and his penis was on the tips of her fingers.
“Take me to bed, Lewis,” she said as she felt herself being lifted off the ground.
Aware that he was in charge of the moment, Lewis laid her down on the bed and took his time as he undressed. Standing in the center of the room, he removed his shirt, undoing just the neck, then hauling the shirt over his head to reveal his muscled torso. She stroked herself beneath the sheets as she watched him. She liked his upper body, the way it rose out of his narrow hips and bloomed into his shoulders … the way his chest was bisected by a deep, hard furrow that proceeded down his middle, where it became overgrown by wispy hair.
He turned around and removed his pants. He had a nice ass. The kind that women like to pat and men like to penetrate. Hard. And clamped shut. When he turned back and came to bed, his face was flushed with a look of mischief.
She opened her legs and parted her lips for a kiss, a heat racing through her body as she felt him fumbling around between her thighs, searching for the gateway to her softness.
Then he kissed her and she felt something in her mouth. She was curious. Then startled. It was hard and it had edges and it … oh God!
She pulled it out—a three-carat diamond in an antique setting.
“Oh, Lewis,” she said. “Lewis, oh, Lewis.”
“Will you marry me, Sylvia?”
Delirious from the heat of the moment, she said yes.
He placed the ring on her finger.
“Make love to me,” she said, “and wash away the past.”
As Lewis poured himself into her, Sylvia felt fire in her heart and between her legs.
Standing backstage at the Blue Note on the cusp of his first New York engagement, Phil fidgeted nervously with his trumpet valves as tenor saxophonist Marshall Davis ran down the number they were about to perform. The gig had come about after some serious arm-twisting on Margaret’s part, and Marshall was getting edgy, because Phil seemed unprepared.
“Pabadabbadabbadabbadoobididoo, pipideebideebideebideebididee, spaa-rooo-sipsideeeee, deee-deeeeeee,” Marshall scatted, his acned face contorted as he reiterated the intro to his signature tune, “Kamikaze,” a hard-bop number that was aptly named. “Get it? That’s in unison. You and me together. Then we repeat that phrase, then it’s alternating improv for twelve bars each. You and me. I go first, then you. And we just work it like that back and forth till we run outta shit to play. You with me now? Cause you’re looking kinda spooked.”
“No, I’m fine actually. I’m just thinking of what I’m going to play,” Phil replied.
“Don’t do that cause you’re gonna forget it all when you go up there, and you’ll freeze and fuck up and make us look bad. Too much thinking makes your improvisation sound scripted. We’re going for that spontaneous feel. We wanna go out on the edge here—throw caution to the wind. Think of a Jap nose-diving in a Zero.”
“It appears problematic for you,” Phil replied, “and I’m sorry, but I need to think things out in my head first. Sketch them out a bit.”
“I can see this shit ain’t gonna work,” Marshall said, flashing his green-tinted dreadlocks out of his face.
“Well, it’s too late for that now, isn’t it,” Phil said with muted aggression.
Marshall turned to Margaret. “Where’d you get this fucked-up boy from? Coming in here acting like he know everything?”
“Relax, Marshall, everything will be fine,” she replied ingratiatingly.
“Fuck relax! We go on in five minutes and this nigger making me nervous.”
“I’m clearly not a nigger,” Phil retorted.
“So who’s a nigger, me?” Marshall replied. “You calling me a nigger, you cracker son of a bitch?”
Margaret jumped in front of Phil as Marshall lunged at him. Phil went to a corner away from the other band members and quietly tamped a cigarette against a chair.
“Marshall, look,” Margaret said, primping the lapels of the lanky sax man’s double-breasted jacket, “relax, okay? It’s only one number. You rehearsed with Phil and you didn’t have any problems. You were doing great out there. The crowd’s loving you. Now you’re on your break and you’re gonna go back, and they’re gonna love you even more. Now Phil’s only coming on for the finale. Can he really spoil all that for you? Marshall Davis? The Marshall Davis? I don’t think so.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Look, you’re doing me a favor, right, cause I’ve done some for you. I’ve had you on the station how many times this year? About four. I put your records in regular rotation. I can stop doing favors.”
Marshall took a look over Margaret’s shoulder at Phil. “He’s smiling like nothing even happened.”
“See, Marshall, he’s a nice guy. Give him a break already. And listen, I invited those A&R people here to see you. A little thank-you for doing this favor for me.”
Marshall’s pockmarked face broke into a grin. Margaret stepped out of the way, and Marshall shook Phil’s hand and apologized, saying he was a little bit nervous because some A&R people had walked in just before the break. Phil said it was okay and they worked out the number one more time before Marshall returned to the stage.
Margaret walked Marshall downstairs. On her way back to the dressing room, she thought about how important this evening could be for Phil. The A&R people who were giving Marshall the jitters were actually there to see his guest trumpeter. She didn’t tell Phil this, because she wanted him to remain calm.
She had been selling Phil diligently and had prepared his look carefully and didn’t want his sound to spoil things. In fact she hadn’t mentioned his playing much to the record scouts. Not that Phil couldn’t play. But she knew from experience that from a record company’s point of view Phil had more important attributes in his favor than talent: he was white, from Britain, had a classical background, and lacked a mind of his own. She had worked very hard to set things up. Phone calls here, faxes there, long lunches, phony greetings. Finally, the time was ripe.
On her way back she paused at the top of the stairs and straightened her dress, a black crêpe mini with a plunging neckline and a single button holding it together in front. She opened the door and entered the smoky room, each step revealing a vista of high thigh. Phil was standing with his back to her, head bowed, shoulders hunched over, sketching his solos vaguely with the trumpet’s mute in place. Margaret quietly closed the door behind her, and watched him as he stood oblivious to her in the diffuse light, dressed in a three-button black suit like a mystery man in a fog … or a dream … or a fantasy … or, perhaps, in a smoky elevator at the Factory. As she watched him, she felt a quiver below her belly button as if a pouch had been punctured. She willed the man in the black suit to turn around … and close the distance between them … and ease away the curtain of her dress … and take a peek at her thighs … and ease them apart … and slip inside her with a thrust that would re
ach her heart.
Phil turned around and found her staring. He smiled at her, his newly grown mustache framing his mouth.
“Come here,” she said, “and touch my legs. Quickly, before they come to get you.”
When Marshall summoned him to the stage, Phil bowed politely. Holding his horn primly across his chest, he waited for the applause to drain out of the room, nodded at Marshall and the sidemen, then spoke softly into the microphone.
“Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Margaret Weir, I love you.”
The rhythm section cranked up to a blistering pace, the drums slashing a jagged path along which the bass walked in earnest. The piano played a catch-up game, hanging lazily behind, then leapfrogging across great spaces, only to straggle to the back again.
Pabadabbadabbadabbadoobididoo, pipidideebideebideebideebididee, spaa-roooo-sipsideeeee, deee-deeeeeee. Unison. Repeat the phrase again.
Marshall launched into a gymnastic solo, sending notes tumbling and somersaulting and vaulting from his alto sax around the room. At the end of his twelve bars he nodded to Phil.
Phil stepped up to the mike, and as he was about to fill in the middle and edges of his solo sketch he found himself with a blank sheet. So he did what any intelligent musician would have done in such a crisis: he paraphrased Marshall’s solo and tried to pass it off as commentary.
He thought fast during Marshall’s next turn, but before he was finished he was up again. He stepped up to the mike again, directionless, getting himself in and out of jams guilelessly like a desperate thief on the run in a strange neighborhood, as the pianist lobbed chord changes at his chest, and the drummer stepped up the tempo.
Marshall stepped back to the mike again, announcing his return with a loud honk above the roar of the crowd. Reveling in the fast tempo, he took off on long runs that melted notes into each other, and took sudden dives into deep blues cries, sweat glistening on his wrinkled forehead. He played fast, hard, and reckless, making adventurous shifts like a confident driver with a Porsche on an Alpine road. He careened over chord changes, redlined the tempo, and skidded around turns in the melody. He cocked his sax flamboyantly and rocked his body wildly, bucking and railing like a Pentecostal minister caught up in the spirit.
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