Dark Stain (31 page)

He looked at Marian Burrow. He didn’t know that she was Marian but he knew she wasn’t Suzy. He remembered. He was smoking marihuana. He held the reefer far away from him. Suzy? Who was Suzy?

“All standing there. I was in the middle of the floor,” Marian was saying. “They wanted to. They wanted to kick me. But I took my clothes off and they change their mind.” And he heard laughter and heard the voice saying. “I give the orders.” The iron mesh was tightening around his head and he was trying to remember. He was peering into a smiling face above him, close to him.

He felt something smash on his cheek. Slowly, he realized the smile had slapped him. The smile ran away from him through whirling orange into another room, another place that was like an office with desks and newspapers and a woman was dancing with a cat whose eyes had been gouged out. He thought: This is happening to me. He reached out his hand and he didn’t know why and he thought he was reaching for his own hand. He had lost his own hand and he would never find it. But there it was at the end of his arm, his own arm. He found his hand and smashed the fist his hand became against his own jaw. And sobered to recognize Marian laughing on the studio bed.

“I slap you and you — ” she gurgled. “What we care. You and me’ll smoke all the reefers in the world and have us a time. You and me. I’m coming for you.” She got to her feet.

Across the blackness and the dizziness and the flaming, a pen of fire was writing a name. The pen was inside his brain. He said, “Suzy.” He blinked at Marian and she wasn’t Suzy. He felt Marian’s fingers through his hair and heard her say. “We give the orders, you and me.”

“Where is Suzy?”

“Serve her right for spoil the orders. In the dream she come. They don’t look at her. They look at me.” Her fingers were burning rods in his hair, like cables through which fire was leaping from her body into his body and he remembered that he didn’t know where Suzy was and he’d never find Suzy and he said:

“Where is Suzy?”

“Ask Aden. Ask Clair. Don’t ask me,” she said petulantly. “Oh, I’m so sleepy.”

He staggered up from the chair. She gripped him and laughed. “You ever dream? Where’s your billy club?”

He broke from her, walked to the window, fumbled for the shade loop, rolled the shade up. The light of day appeared miraculously like a frozen sheet of ice in front of him. He yanked the window open and stuck his head out into the light, sucking in air through his mouth.

She pulled him away from the window, rammed it shut, tugged the shade down. He gazed at her with lungs full of fresh air. He saw a young doped girl in the room. Two buttons were open in her pyjama top. In the office of the Harlem Equality League she had always looked trim, but now there was a dissolute untidiness about her like the baggy stockings of an old street corner bum. To him, remembering what she had looked like, she was now lost and afraid and locked forever in the marihuana. She seemed to sense, too, that he had escaped the marihuana and escaped her. She screamed. “I’ll swear you bring me the stuff. I swear you screw me, you bastard cop!” Her hands flapped like two cloths on the ends of sticks. She rushed to the enameled box, seized another reefer. She smoked. “All reefer talk,” she said plaintively like a beaten child. She turned her back on him. “You over there. All you, come here. I give the orders, I give the orders!”

There was something he had to remember but his head ached too much. Even before he reached the street, the room and Marian were fading in his brain like a dream.

From the double bed, Bill was moodily watching Isabelle inspecting herself in the mirror. There were two Isabelles, both of them tall in green evening gowns drawn tight around the waist by draw strings. The two Isabelles untied the draw strings; two red mouths opened and said. “Bill, dear, I wish you would tell me when it’s right. Is it too loose?”

“All you women!” he exclaimed. “We’re going to a party and that’s all a woman can think of. Like a damn fool, I break my oath — Christ, I must’ve been crazy.”

She turned around. “I’m your wife. I had a right to know.”

“So you know.”

“Let them dare!” Her black eyes flashed protectively towards the door. He stared at her. He had told her of the organization’s personalities, the organization’s power and she acted as if there wasn’t too much to worry about. To her, the organization was like a bogey man that would vanish at a cry. She was walking towards him. Out of the mirror she came, made of mirror shine and brilliance. Her green gown glinted. She was like a Fifth Avenue window model animated into life. He felt her cool hand stroke his cheek.

He gasped out a short laugh. “The string’s just right. Just right. A fatty can wear it loose. A skinny one like you can wear it tight.”

“Every woman likes to feel snug around the middle.”

“You’ll be the best looking woman at the reception.” His words jittered to a pause. He pulled on his hair. “You’ll be careful. They’re smart, Isa. Hayden, Heney. Smarter than I can ever say. Heney spotted how upset I was. I don’t look upset easy. Not with my pokerface. But Heney — ”

“You know my opinion?”

“Yes.”

“You’re worrying too much — ”

“Too much? Christ! That oath’s no joke.”

“A man can only swear his oath to God and to his country. To no one else.”

“That’s just dandy. Sweet. Lovely.”

“But to whom did you swear your oath, Bill?”

“To the organization.”

“To men like Heney. To that cheap imitator of Huey Long.”

“He’s smarter’n Huey ever was. You’ll be careful? Promise.”

“I promised you last night, darling.”

“Promise again.”

“I promise,” she smiled. “Now, suppose you finish dressing.”

“The party? It begins at eleven, the big party. Life begins at eleven.” He looked down the blackness of his tuxedo trousers to the blackness of his socks. “Isa, I love you. I trust you. My life’s in your hands. I’m not joking. It’s no joke. A woman like you, you have no idea — ”

“I knew you loved me last night.” She stooped over him, kissed him on the forehead.

“All because I broke my oath, because I got scared — ”

She kissed him again. “You trusted me. That’s what matters.” She returned to the mirror and the problem of the draw strings. In a lighter party voice, she added. “I wouldn’t be so blue, darling. I know more than you imagine about secret organizations. My grandfather Michael — You never met him.

He passed away eight years ago. Grandfather was in the Klan years ago. He used to talk of the new type of Klansmen — ”

“How could he be in the Klan? Wasn’t he a Catholic?”

“No.” She flushed. “Grandfather broke from the Church. But, anyway, grandfather became disgusted with what he saw.” She was chattering now as if speaking of soap. He marveled at how cool she was. It must be her breeding, he thought; her knowledge of her family’s history, her family’s ability to survive crisis. He breathed in the scent of her perfume and let the perfume build an elusive night-time universe which would last forever. She finished with the grandfather who had joined the Klan and tightened the draw strings. “Bill, how are they now?”

“Perfect.” He got up out of the bed, walked to the closet for his evening jacket. He put it on. She moved to him, smiling. Her hands rested on his shoulders.

“Bill?”

“I’ve been thinking all day that last night was a new beginning for us.”

He kissed her ear. “You’ll be careful,” he said. “You’ll meet Hayden. You’ve met Heney before but it’ll be different tonight. Heney’s worried. Don’t let them pump you!”

“Bill, I didn’t ask you last night?”

“Ask me what?”

“You said the organization had welcomed the disturbances in Harlem?”

“Yes?”

“What about the girl?”

“What girl?”

“The one kidnapped.”

“The organization didn’t welcome that nigger job.”

“I’m glad, Bill.”

“Really? What’s that Red to you?”

“She’s a woman, Bill, a white woman. My grandfather Michael — Bill — Years ago, white men, cheap white trash would black their faces and then go out and commit foul things; violate Negro girls and white girls, too, pretending all the time they were Negroes. My grandfather said that there had to be a dignified relation between white folks and the blacks. The blacks had to know their place. If necessary, they had to be taught their place with violence. But Grandfather Michael detested all underhanded practices.”

The reception for ex-Governor Heney had reached the point of a cocktail glass in almost every hand when they arrived at the Hotel Maurice. The great reception room was humming with the voices of hundreds, men in evening dress, in military uniforms, women in evening gowns. The cocktail glasses reflected the light of the electric crystals overhead. Out of the glasses, the cocktail conversation seemed to pour. Bill guided his wife through the crowd to the buffet bar. Six bartenders, wearing full evening clothes, were busy executing the incessant orders for Manhattans, fizzes, Tom Collins. Bottles gleamed in rows. Outstretched fingers clutched the stems of new drinks. “What’ll it be?” Bill asked Isabelle. “How about champagne cocktails?” She touched his hand with her fingers and her excited eyes sent him her love in a short telegraphic glance. Near them, a white-haired gentleman and a young woman in a blue evening gown were talking. “Thank God for the waiters,” the man said to the young woman. “They stand like watchmen in the night.” “Watchmen?” the young woman questioned. The old man nodded. “Martha, dear girl,” he said. “Haven’t you noticed how the War has changed the atmosphere all over town. Everywhere, the familiar faces are gone. New faces everywhere. That’s why I say thank God for the waiters. That tall one’s Carl. I have seen him around town for years.”

Bill handed Isabelle her cocktail, lifted his glass in a toast. “To you,” he said.

She slid her arm through his. “You should have said, to us.”

They left the bar but he saw no one he knew. He heard snatches of talk, diamond-hard as the jewels the women were wearing. He wondered where Hayden had found all these people? They were all in the money, he thought. They were sitting pretty. They were safe, secure. Not like himself. “How about another drink, Isa?”

“Weren’t you drunk enough the other day?”

“That day’s gone.” At the bar, he ran into Hayden. In his evening clothes, Hayden was slimmer, blonder than Bill remembered. Hayden had been conversing with an elderly couple; the man was small with an intelligent terrier-like face; the woman should have been fat but her body had been haggardly streamlined; her dough-colored arms shiny with bracelets. Hayden immediately excused himself and stepped over to Bill and Isabelle. Bill introduced them.

“Now I understand why Bill has been keeping you in hiding,” Hayden said as if reading the remark off a slip of paper. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Johnson.”

Isabelle was smiling, correct and formal. It was a smile, Bill appreciated, that was as enameled as the smiles in the society pages. He smiled, too. He felt an almost convulsive relief. He could depend on her.

“Our guest of honor has not arrived as yet,” Hayden went on.

“What do you do if the guest of honor fails to arrive?” Isabelle asked.

“I might think of stealing you for a few minutes.” Hayden laughed. “Bill, would you mind if I took Isabelle away for a few minutes?”

Isabelle took Bill’s arm. “And leave my husband all alone?”

“I won’t mind,” Bill said. “Be good, Isa.”

“I will.”

Bill stared after them, Isabelle in her gown pulled in at the middle, as tall as Hayden. He thought; the bastard’s not wasting any time. He walked to the bar. “Champagne cocktail,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

He drained the second cocktail in four swallows. Near him, a crowd of women and their escorts were calling for fizzes. Bill ordered a third cocktail, killed it, and wandered across the floor. Where was Isabelle and the bastard, he wondered. To hell with Hayden. He could depend on Isabelle, he could, he could … Somebody at his elbow was saying. “So many foreigners in town at the clubs. Any one speaking English feels out of place.” Somebody else: “Why if it isn’t Harry? How are things in Detroit?” Somebody else: “My dear, diamonds are emphatically not an investment.”

He stood among strangers and was fearful of meeting anyone he knew. The oath he had broken ripped across his brain. He didn’t want to remember. He didn’t want to think of Big Boy Bose pointing the finger at him. A great black finger pointed at him, right at him … His brain had become a machine manufacturing one product: You shouldn’t have told her, you shouldn’t have told her … He compelled himself to listen to the strangers. Anything not to think, not to remember. He stood as if in a trance, half-listening. He sensed or imagined he sensed a wariness in the voices. They spoke guardedly of the war, of the President, of the allies of the United States, of labor, of the food shortage. He listened and all the time his brain produced: You shouldn’t have told her. The great black finger was pointing and Big Boy Bose’s black moon face was shouting: You South … And he listened to the people who had turned out to honor the ex-Governor. He sensed, at this reception in one of the city’s best hotels, no rock, no ground of permanence. Why was that? Why should that be? Was it the presence of the men in uniform, those perpetual reminders of the global war, of secret comings and goings to Iceland, to Australia, to the European continent, to China? YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TOLD HER! YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TOLD HER … YOU SOUTH! YOU SOUTH … YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU …

A snout-nosed blond man was talking to three other men about futures. Somebody told an anti-Administration joke. “Now I’m for the Federal Government but I want to tell of my experience with that New Dealer Brodkin. Brodkin’s a clever Jew, a wizard in contracts, but I taught him a few things.” They had all shown up to honor the ex-Governor. And Heney would lead them, Bill thought; into a world of guaranteed receptions and guaranteed contracts. What hadn’t Heney said? What hadn’t Heney promised? Bill recalled speeches of Heney’s he had heard over the years, Klan-like speeches upholding the white races of the world against all comers, liberal-like speeches in which Heney insisted the white nations had to admit the world’s colored peoples into the world theatre, but only after they had prepared themselves for government. And he saw Hayden and Isabelle, with a woman as blond as Hayden, who almost looked like his sister but whom Hayden introduced as his wife.