The Man in My Basement (9 page)

“Mr. Blakey?” She had come in behind me while I watched her assistant and thought of her.

“Oh,” I said. “Hi, Narciss.”

“Hello, Geraldo,” she said, having satisfied her social obligation with me. “Have you been here long?”

“Not long,” the godling reported to his muse. He was holding up a terrible painting done by my aunt Blythe. “Is this really worth the film?”

“We’ll do the paintings first,” she said. “And after that the clothes and then the hard objects.”

The crestfallen look on Geraldo’s face was worth a whole week of hard labor.

“Excuse us, Mr. Blakey, but we’re going to be working in here for a while.”

“If you call me Charles, I’ll let you alone.”

She smiled without answering and I left, grinning broadly at the sour-faced Geraldo.

The next few hours were tough for me. I was reading a book but wanting a drink. The book was about a prince who had been stripped of his memory and exiled from a magical kingdom to mundane Earth. There were agents trying to kill him, but in his confused state he couldn’t understand why. I liked the story because I often felt like that, like I was being persecuted but didn’t know why. Why was I alive and seeing and thinking and dreaming if everything was just stoplights and televisions, tests and failures, red wine and death?

But I didn’t want a drink to escape, not then anyway. I needed a drink because I wanted to ask Narciss for that rain check for the dinner we’d missed.

The first obstacle would be asking the question in the presence of the adoring Geraldo’s imposing physique. But I got over that. I could see that Narciss wasn’t all that interested in the Dominican artist. When he strutted and preened, she hardly noticed. He was actually just an assistant.

But even when I saw that he was no competitor, I still held back.

After being nearly crushed to death and then incarcerated in a mental hospital, the prince escaped and was running. I decided to go in and check on my guests.

“How’s it going?” I asked, entering the room.

Geraldo sneered but Narciss took off her glasses and smiled.

“We’re halfway through it,” she said. “It’s taking longer than usual because I’m taking a separate slide shot. Some of these pieces are so wonderful that I’ll have to send them for projection.”

“Oh,” I said. “Good. Good. Would you like to get d-dinner after this?”

Just that one small stammer made me want to bite off my tongue. One double skip on the letter
d
and I’d told Narciss all about my fears and weaknesses. Geraldo was standing behind me, but I’m sure he was grinning at my failed manhood. The smile on Narciss’s lips I took to be pity and pleasure at the discomfort of a child.

“I’m sorry, Charles, but I have plans,” she said.

“Uh-huh.” I nodded, putting an upbeat tone to the grunt and realizing too late that that made me sound even more pitiable.

“But maybe we can have coffee or something after we’re finished here. There are a couple of things that we need to discuss.”

“No problem. Just as long as we’re through before seven ’cause you know I got to get out and eat something.” Every word out of my mouth seemed calculated to make me look more like a fool.

I went back into the kitchen feeling as if I were descending into a pit. Every step brought me lower. And all it was was just that double
d.
A stuttering skip and my fingers were tingling, the light in the room refused to illuminate. I didn’t feel hungry; I didn’t want a drink. My months of unemployment, my loneliness, my drunken poverty all came to the surface then. I would have liked to cry but I couldn’t. The prince in my novel was reduced to a mass of unreadable words.

The minutes went by and I kept sinking. At some point Narciss came in. She had sent Geraldo away, but I didn’t care. She wanted coffee and I made it, but the brew was unbearably weak and she took no more than a sip.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “I mean, you look kind of sad.”

“Fine,” I said.

“Is this a good time to talk?”

“Sure.”

“It’s about those masks.” Narciss was excited. She took a large book from her shoulder bag and opened it. Because I didn’t move my head, she pulled her chair next to mine and opened to a page marked by a red ribbon. On the page was a carven mask that resembled the three masks on my windowsill.

“Passport masks,” she said. “That’s what this is and it’s also what we found in that box. They were used as identification but also as a way of bringing home along with you when you were away on a long journey. It’s hard to say, but the masks you have could represent a family, maybe three brothers or friends who set sail for America as indentured servants. The majority of passport masks are made of wood, so the fact that these are ivory might have special significance.”

“Uh-huh,” I said because she seemed to be waiting for some kind of response.

“They might have belonged to rich men, maybe even royalty. Your family might descend from a direct bloodline of
kings.
” The emphasis she put on
kings
was dramatic and full of feeling.

But if I was a prince, I too had forgotten.

“I’m getting hungry.” It was almost impossible for me to get out those few words. “Why don’t you write me or call about the stuff, you know, that you’re selling.”

“But these masks —”

“I have to talk about it later. Later.”

I was looking at the book, the picture of a longish face carved from wood. The eyes were gouged out, making a ridge for the nose. The forehead was high and the mouth was just a slit. Narciss’s hands closed the book and then pulled it away. I heard her chair sliding backward. As she moved away the air on that side seemed to cool, as if her body heat had been keeping me warm.

I didn’t want her to go but I couldn’t even look up—much less ask her to stay.

“The boy so retarded he sit on the toilet waitin’ for inspiration to wipe his ass.” That’s what my uncle Brent used to say about me on report-card day four times a year. That’s how I felt.

I heard the front door close.

My descent progressed even though I didn’t move a muscle for a very long time.

I
closed the windows and locked the front and back doors at 3:00 in the morning. I snapped the phone connections out of the wall and moved the masks down into my father’s library. I slept with the money and the masks for a day and a half. People came to the front door but I didn’t answer. Once Ricky came around to the library window and called out my name. After he was gone I connected the phone long enough to call his mother’s house and leave a message on his answering machine.

“I’m okay, Ricky,” I said. “Just thinking about some stuff, so I need to spend some time alone.”

After that I disconnected the phone again and spent almost the next six weeks alone in my house. I only went out for pizzas and whiskey. And as time went by, I had less and less desire to see or speak to anyone.

I got letters, mainly from Bethany. Long yearning letters about wanting to see me and asking what was wrong. Ricky had told her about my phone message, and she said that she was worried about me. Every letter she sent was more intimate and more passionate. They were long letters, ten to twelve pages in a rolling cursive hand. I didn’t finish most of them but I got the gist. On week three she broke up with Ricky and wanted to see me. By week five she confessed her love.

“I don’t know how it happened, Charlie,” she wrote.

But I love you. I love you more than any other man I have ever known. There’s something so strong and gentle about you. You don’t care what people think and you just follow your own mind. I don’t know what you’re doing or thinking right now, but I hope when you’re ready that you will call me and see how deep I feel.

I got a letter from Narciss Gully too.

“Dear Mr. Blakey,” she wrote.

Enclosed you will find a check for six hundred dollars thirty-two. This is from the sale of four of your great-aunt’s paintings to the African American Experience Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. They were very excited to obtain these works and wish to buy more. First I thought that I would see how you felt you were being represented. I tried to get you on the phone, but there’s never any answer.
I also wanted to apologize about the way I acted at your house. I realized afterward that you were saddened over the loss of so much of your family’s history and that Geraldo and I were like invaders in your home. I would like to make it up to you by buying you a dinner sometime. I know it seems that we’re always at cross-purposes when it comes to dinner, but I’m sure we can make it work.
Please advise,
Narciss

I wrote a note in response:

Dear Ms. Gully,
You seem to be handling the sales well. Please continue as you see fit. I’ve been under the weather lately, but when I revive I will call.
Charles Blakey

Two women wanted to see me. At least they thought they wanted to. In my mind I had convinced myself that it was my unavailability that piqued their interest. If I dared to go out on one date, it would all be over.

I wanted to call both of them. I almost connected the phone two or three times every day. But when the moment came, I lost my nerve.

Bethany even came to the door one night. She rang and knocked and called out my name. But I didn’t answer. I just stood at the second-floor window at the top of the stairs and watched until she went away.

Those weeks, I felt, were just a small sample of my whole life up until that time—a waste. I slept and ate and drank according to my own clock. I didn’t shave or bathe hardly at all. I read for escape. If I was a brave man I would have probably killed myself.

I was everything that my uncle Brent said that I was, and less. Nothing ever changed and I never got any better or worse.

But then I received Anniston Bennet’s boxes, and the world I knew receded like an unfinished novel whose story had become overwrought and tedious.

The truck that came that afternoon was unmarked brown. The burly moving men had a knock that could not be ignored. I came down, expecting the police or maybe the fire department.

Both men wore green work pants and strap undershirts. They were white and at least one of them bore tattoos, but I think that they were both marked up with naked women, knives, and hearts.

“We’re supposed to put this delivery in the basement,” the blond and balding one said.

“Around the side,” I told him.

I was in swimming trunks and tennis shoes. We went around the side and down into the cellar. The men hefted six long flat boxes, one at a time, laying five of them on the floor in the rudimentary pattern of a flower (one flat box in the center and each of the other four parallel to one of the sides). The sixth flat box was laid up against the far wall. These boxes were very heavy. I could tell by the way the men strained when carrying them.

After that they brought in two dozen boxes of various sizes and weights. Finally they delivered a loose-leaf notebook that was vacuum sealed in shiny see-through plastic.

Upon handing me the notebook, the balding blond man said, “Well, that’s it.”

“Do I sign something?” I asked.

“No signatures, no tips,” he replied.

They turned away and climbed out of the cellar. I suppose that they got into their truck and drove back to a garage somewhere in Connecticut near where Anniston Bennet told me he lived. I didn’t see them out. Instead I sat on the stairs of the basement and began to read my instructions.

I don’t remember what I was doing when the movers came, but I do know I was suffering from a severe hangover. That was gone as soon as I saw the first handwritten page. The notebook contained about thirty of these pages. The paper was unlined but the words followed an equal and rigid pattern from side to side that resembled marching ants—they were so small and even in their progress.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CELL
was the headline of the first page. “
OPEN BOX #1, THE CENTER FLAT, AND REMOVE THE CARDBOARD
,” the sentence began. Following the instructions revealed a heavy slatted piece of metal that opened into a nine foot square. The flat steel bands, which were at least a quarter of an inch thick, became a latticework grid. A woman might have gotten her hands through one of the openings, or maybe a small-boned man, but a workman could only get a few fingers through one of those holes. At each angle there was a tie that the book told me would fit the tough-looking little padlocks that I also found in the box.

Box number nine held a heavy rubber mat that fit over the slats. Boxes two through five were the walls of the cage. These were exactly the same in design except that there was, of course, no matting. Also, number five had a small square opening in the front, three feet by three feet. Box number twelve contained the door that was to be fitted into this space. It had conventional bars and was designed to open by lifting it kind of like a portal that some people put on their back doors for pets. The roof of the cell was heavy, but it had been placed in such a way that, with a little oomph, I was able to push it over and on top of the nine-foot-cube cage.

All the walls and top and bottom had loops that fitted together and were designed to be held fast by the little padlocks. Each of the thirty-seven padlocks had a numbered key and a small brass key chain. There was a larger key chain onto which fit all of the smaller keys.

It took a couple of hours to construct the cage, or
cell,
as the instructions called it. The basement was large but that structure dominated the space. The tough metal slats gleamed as if they were brand new. I wondered what kind of animal Bennet would bring with him that was so dangerous it had to be kept in a cage.

There were more instructions but I was tired. I went to the house and ate some frosted cornflakes, and then, on a whim, I went back to the cellar, crawled into the cage, and stretched out. It was an odd sensation. I had never been in jail, but I thought that this was close to the experience of incarceration. The light around me seemed to be teeming, like insects in a swamp, because of the winking between the slats and spaces. The rubber was comfortable enough. There was a certain reassurance to the walls’ enclosure. I wondered if this cage was for Anniston’s rest. Maybe he was afraid that people would attack him in his sleep. Maybe he just liked the walls.