Authors: Frank Baldwin
“Hey,” she says gently.
I turn. Her eyes are electric, trusting.
“Don’t worry, Jake,” she says, her voice steady. “I saw it in you last Friday, and I’m not afraid. I like my princes dark.”
“How dark?”
She kisses my chest, then looks up again into my eyes.
“Try me.”
• • •
“Mimi?”
“Yes?”
“Did you…?”
“Almost.”
“Damn.”
“It’s okay.”
We lie in the dark, just afterward, Mark on his back and me against his chest.
“I could —”
“It was wonderful, Mark.” I trail my nails along his shoulder.
“I mean it, Mimi.”
“Shhh… Really, it was wonderful.” I kiss his neck.
We lie quietly, the only sound the wind through the open window playing gently with the plastic shades. And now, far off,
a car horn. How was it that I used to feel, in these moments? Completely happy. At peace.
“Father Cronin was something, wasn’t he?” Mark says.
“He was wonderful.”
“I thought he’d go Latin on us, but those were some vows. Your mom will love them.”
“She will.”
“Two weeks, kid.”
“I know.”
My hand finds his and squeezes it. He runs his fingers softly through my hair, down to my neck and back again. And again.
And again, until his strokes shorten and his breathing lengthens into sleep.
Father Cronin’s words
were
beautiful. He talked about the journey of joined souls. About the power of union. Hearing them in that alcove, I’d felt so
strong. And I know I’ll feel strong in two weeks, when I hear them again. I breathe deeply and let it out slowly. And then
again. Faintly, from the apartment below, come the sounds of opera. Verdi, I think. It’s like listening to clouds.
The sharp tones of the cell phone break the silence.
“Ow!” says Mark.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I say, getting up with a start, rubbing his shoulder where I’ve just dug into him. “I’ll get it.”
I reach for the lamp and turn it on. I sit up. I take my robe from the chair and pull it around me. The ringing continues,
insistent.
“Jesus,” he says. “They can’t be serious. It’s eleven o’clock.”
“They said to be ready for anything. Monday’s the fifteenth.”
The phone is in my purse on the desk. I take the purse and walk quickly to the living room. I sit down on the couch. I take
out the phone and hit the pulsing button.
“Mimi Lessing.”
“Mimi, it’s Jake.”
The shiver starts in the small of my back and shoots up all through me. I pull the robe closed over my knees.
“I’m here,” I say.
“Do you have a pen?”
“Yes,” I say, reaching for one.
“Eight two three West One hundred and twentieth Street. On the corner of Amsterdam. Apartment fifty-three.”
I write it down and then quickly fold the piece of paper in two.
“We’re ready, Mimi.”
I hang up the phone and put it back in my purse, along with the folded address. I close my eyes.
“What’s wrong, kid?”
Mark stands in front of me. His sleepy eyes are beautiful. Calm, trusting.
“They need me,” I manage to say. “The Taylor account is blowing up.”
“Bastards. What’s the guy make, two million a year? You’ll have him paying less than we do.” He sits down beside me and puts
a warm hand on my hair.
“Look what I’ve done,” I say, reaching into my purse for a tissue and pressing it to the small cut on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Must have been some dream, Meems. You can tell me all about it when you get back. Did they say how long?”
“No. You’ll stay here, won’t you?”
“Where would I go?”
“Thank you.”
“Mimi, are you okay?”
“Yes. It’s just… all catching up with me. I’d better shower,” I say, standing. He pulls me to him and nuzzles his face in
my robe.
“Be quick,” he says. “You know what’s waiting for you.”
• • •
Observe the time and fly from evil
.
Those are the words inscribed beneath the steeple clock of St. Mary’s Cathedral. I looked up at them just four hours ago,
but now I ride through the darkness toward Jake Teller. The taxi turns into Central Park and speeds through the curving park
streets, the lamps giving way to blackness as we wind beneath the overpass, the rare scent of trees reaching me through the
open window. We emerge onto Amsterdam at Eighty-first Street and turn north, past the Natural History Museum, up through the
familiar, busy Eighties, the sidewalks dotted with cafés and bars, and now into the quiet, foreign streets of the Nineties.
I have on the dress I wore last Friday. The same one. And the same cobalt sweater. Before I took them from the closet, I walked
to the bed to see if Mark was asleep. He was, his face in the crook of his arm, his breathing steady and peaceful.
We are into the Hundreds, past 110th Street now. I’ve never been up this far. We pass the gates and grounds of a big university.
Columbia, it must be.
“Which side, miss?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Which side of the street?”
“I don’t know. Either one.”
At 120th Street he pulls over to the corner. He turns and looks back at me, his rough hand grabbing the divider.
“In this part of town, dressed like that, you should know where you’re going. What’s the street address?”
I look at the slip of paper in my lap.
“Eight twenty-three.”
He looks out through the front of the cab and points at the corner building.
“I’ll wait till you’re inside.”
“Thank you.”
I pay him and step out of the cab. I stand in front of a giant prewar apartment building. The brick walkway is lit by a street-lamp
shaped like an old gaslight. In the window of the lobby ahead of me I can see a uniformed doorman. I pause. If I could just
get a glass of wine somewhere or sit by myself for a few minutes. But the taxi waits at the curb, its engine running, the
driver watching me. I walk to the lobby.
“Good evening, miss,” says the doorman as he holds the door for me. He is a black man in his sixties, flecks of white in his
short dark hair. Suddenly I realize that I don’t know what to say.
“I’m here to…,” I start.
He waits.
“I’m going to apartment fifty-three. But please don’t call up.”
“You must be Jake’s friend,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Jake told me you’d be coming. Just a minute.”
He steps to a small table just inside the front door. He reaches down beside it and comes up with something. “He said to give
this to you,” he says, and holds out a black pouch that is just a little smaller than my purse. It is made of soft felt and
closed at the top by a gold drawstring.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“Jake Teller, right?”
“Yes.”
“Jake come by this afternoon. He told me you would come tonight, and I should give you this.”
“Thank you.”
I take the pouch and walk to the elevator and press the button. But I feel dizzy, and the gray elevator doors in front of
me start to blur. I feel the way I felt in art class, in the ninth grade, when I posed perfectly still for twenty minutes
and then stood suddenly and tried to step off the platform.
“Are you okay?” the doorman asks.
“I’m sorry. Would it be all right if I sat down for a few minutes?”
“Sure.”
He takes my arm and guides me to the left, to a sitting area, a couch and chairs in front of a small fireplace. I ease down
onto the brown leather couch.
“There you are,” he says.
“Thank you. I’m fine,” I say. “I just need a minute.”
“Take as long as you want.”
He steps away, and I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. A small fire burns in the fireplace, close enough that I feel
its warmth on my legs. I look down at the black pouch. The felt is the softest material I’ve ever touched. I turn it in my
hands. Through it I can feel three — no, four — hard objects.
“Miss?”
I look up to see the doorman holding out a glass of water. “You look like you need this.”
“Thank you.”
I take a sip. The doorman steps past me, stiff in his movements. He takes a poker from the mantel, parts the fireplace gate,
and turns over the bottom log. A shower of sparks lifts and then settles. My fingers rub one of the objects through the soft
felt. It is thick, with sharp corners. The others all seem to be in cases of some kind. What was it Father used to say?
We find the people we need to find
. The doorman puts the poker back in the stand and then turns and lowers himself into the chair beside me.
“How do you know Jake?” he asks.
I pause.
“We work together.”
“And Elise?”
“I haven’t… met her yet.”
“A nice girl,” he says. “You’ll like her.” He sits with his hands crossed in his lap. I can see that one is steadying the
other.
“You sound like you know Jake,” I say.
“I know Jake going back twenty years. He grew up in this building.”
I look at him.
“He grew up here?”
“Yes, he did. When he come back the other day, after all that time, don’t know who was more surprised.”
“Which apartment did he grow up in?” I ask, knowing the answer before he gives it.
“One you’re going to. Fifty-three.”
I hold the pouch to my knee now, feeling its weight through my dress, the sharp angle of something pressing into my skin.
I cover the pouch with both hands, as if the doorman might somehow see right through the felt. We are quiet a few seconds.
“What was Jake like as a boy?” I ask.
He smiles and looks into the fire for a few seconds. He seems to search the flames for an answer.
“Kind,” he says.
The buzzer rings from outside, and the doorman stands quickly. “You gonna be okay?” he asks.
“Yes, thank you. I’ll go upstairs now.”
• • •
Memory is the cruelest sense.
I remember clearly our first evening together. The electrifying sound of her deadbolt, the soft clicks as her door opened
and closed, and then through the speakers a sigh and her first words:
“What a day.”
I knew early that she would not be like the others. I knew the next morning, when she awoke and did not turn on the television.
I heard the sound of the tea kettle, the toaster, and the rustle of the newspaper as she brought it in from her doorstep.
She read it while she ate, and if she spotted an item of interest, one that intrigued her enough to set it aside, I heard
the crisp sound of scissors on paper. After breakfast she dressed to the music of the classical station, and then stepped
out her door at 8:20 for the walk to the subway and the ride to midtown and work. Thirty blocks away, I closed my eyes in
thanks. I had found her.
And now one year later I sit in a car in Harlem, staring at the building Miss Lessing has just walked into. She stepped from
the sidewalk onto the brick walkway like a child stepping alone into a dark forest, glancing back over her shoulder at the
taxi that had brought her, her eyes tense and fearful. And yet she turned and walked into the building. Compelled, drawn forward.
By what force?
I will know soon.
Two mornings ago I stood behind the newsstand on Eighty-sixth and Lexington, at the mouth of the subway entrance. When Miss
Lessing walked past and headed down the stairs, I fell in just behind her, invisible in the morning crush. And as she reached
into her handbag for her subway pass, I dropped the tiny Øre inside.
Where it lies now, listening. Listening inside the handbag Miss Lessing carried into 823 West 120th Street. Not thirty minutes
after telling her fiancé that she had been called in to the office for work.
This far uptown, this far west, the Øre in her bag cannot reach the mother unit on the windowsill of my apartment. But it
can reach the one in the backseat of this car. Which I have wired into the car stereo. And so I have listened these past few
minutes, as Miss Lessing spoke with the doorman about Jake Teller. And I listen now as the grinding elevator carries her up
to him.
• • •
She is crossing from desire into need.
“Please, Jake,” she says, her voice still strong, but drops of sweat have broken out on her neck, and as my climbing fingers
reach the very edge of her black silk panties, only to lift away off her thighs yet again, she turns her face, for the first
time, hard into the deep red covers.
Thirty minutes ago we sat on her couch, her bare leg tight against the knee of my gray corduroys. She touched my cheek, then
the top of my shirt, then ran her fingers slowly down to my belt. I stopped them there, reached beside me into my jacket,
took out the white silk tie, and placed it in her hand. She looked at it and up at me, and she unfolded it and laid it across
her black dress.
“For me or for you?” she asked.
“For you,” I said. And then I nodded toward my jacket. “Both of them.”
She looked down again at the tie. She closed her fingers around each end and then rolled her wrists, once, winding the silk
around them. She looked at me and smiled, her dark eyes steady.
“One strong drink first,” she said.
And now those white ties bind her delicate wrists to the metal bars of the bed that stands in the room I slept in as a child.
Her lean, tanned arms are spread wide, defenseless, her black, flowing hair is pinned beneath her lithe body, and her belly
and legs, freshly oiled, glisten in the hot spotlight I’ve rigged to the foot of her bed.
She has been a playful captive. She smiled as I secured her right wrist, her shining eyes looking from my face to my hands
as I then took her left arm and slid six of the seven bracelets, one by one, down to her wrist and off. The seventh I slid
the other way, up to her biceps. Then I wound the silk tie around her left wrist and tied it, too, to one of the thick metal
bars of the bed frame.
“I’m yours now, Jake,” she murmured. “Do what you will.”
I walked across the room to her desk. In one of its drawers I found a pair of heavy scissors. “You wouldn’t,” she said, watching
me as I returned with them, but she sighed languorously at the cold touch of the blade and trembled with pleasure as I cut
the straps of her black dress, pulled it down off of her, and dropped it to the floor.