The Female of the Species (25 page)

“I told him.”

“What?” Errol didn’t care. Such an awful morning. When he moved his hand to reach for his cup, it seemed it would never get there. Finally, the porcelain on his finger was smooth and warm. Please, Gray, shut up. I am not a hero.

“You know,” said Gray.

It seemed minutes before her words slurred into his head. Oh, I know, do I? And why do I know so goddamned much? I want to be a carpenter. Jesus was a carpenter, right? So what’s wrong with that? I could be Jesus, but skip the parables on the hillside, and
please
skip the crucifixion. I mean, it’s clear to me lately that I’m a saint; I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility out of hand that I’m the son of God. However, I think I’ll be Jesus the Carpenter. I’ll skip the stuff about beams in people’s eyes and stick to the ones on the roof. I will redeem the sins of the world by constructing a series of perfect mortise-and-tenon joints. I think this tack will make me more popular than the cross gambit in the long run. It wouldn’t make everyone feel so guilty. Gabe, how about it? Set me up. Sit me in front of a red-and-white-checked oilcloth every morning. I don’t have to
have Gray’s fresh-ground coffee; instant would do, bad instant, old, crusty,
STALE
instant—just get me out of here.

“Errol, are you still asleep?”

“I wish.”

“What’s wrong?”

Somehow the question struck Errol as hysterical, and he laughed.

“You’re acting very strange lately.”

Errol sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I spend a lot of time living other people’s lives, Gray. You know that about me, don’t you? Well, once in a while I live my own life. It’s not fun, but somebody’s got to do it. Whenever I do that, you see, whenever I’m not completely focused on what’s happening in your life, you think I’m distracted.”

“Now, what did I say to deserve that?”

“Nothing. I’m so sorry. I’m a terrible person.”

“You are not, but would you snap out of this?”

“You mean, would I please go back to living your life.”

“Errol, did something happen to you I don’t know about?”

“Oh no. You know everything, or just about. That’s actually what makes this whole thing interesting.”

She paused. “I hope you’re enjoying this, because I’m not.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll stop. I’ll go back to being ‘normal,’ and everyone will be happy, or whatever it was they were. Besides, Gray, honest to God, I’m not doing anything. I’m just talking.”

“You were pretty strange last night, too.”

“I was stoned.”

“And you give me a hard time about going to a rock concert.”

“You said we were investigating the culture. I was participating in the full ritual, that’s all. However, I must say I don’t remember the end of the evening. Did we go somewhere?”

“We went out for drinks. And you were incredibly nice to Raphael. You paid him compliments, made conversation, bought him vodka, top-shelf.”

“I was nice to him?”

“You acted like his long-lost friend.”

Errol smiled. “Splendid.”

“Frankly, he started to avoid you after a while.” Gray paused,
and inserted casually, “You don’t happen to recall what Arabella was bending your ear over, do you? After talking to Raphael, she spoke to you for quite a while.”

“I do, come to think of it. She’s upset with you. She’s done all that work for you on matriarchies, but according to Arabella, you have yet to ask her to go with us in February to study the Lone-luk. Granted, it’s still only August, but she claims you’ve avoided the subject whenever she’s brought it up. And she’s really put herself out setting up the interviews in the South Bronx next week, but evidently you’re not even asking her to go with us to New York. You’ve asked Ralph.”

Gray grunted.

“Why not ask both of them to New York?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

Gray drummed her fingers on the table. “She answers the phone a lot.”

“She’s supposed to.”

“Fast. Within one or two rings.”

“So?”

“Then she chats.”

“What’s wrong with that? And you think I’m strange.”

“She stays late.”

“What are you getting at?”

“More than she ever has, she stays and works late into the evening. She eats here more often than she used to. She gets the door.”

Errol waited. Gray tapped the table with the pads of her fingers now in a slow, heavy rhythm. “She hurries to get the door. I’ve seen her.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And then she chats.”

“Uh-huh.”

The tapping got slower and heavier.

“
She plays with my ferret
.” She stopped tapping; her eyes blackened and narrowed and she sounded for all the world like an angry little girl.

“Ah,” said Errol.

“Yes,” said Gray. “Ah.”

“I think maybe,” said Errol delicately, “you’re getting paranoid.”

“I’ve always been a rational person.”

Errol almost added, “Before February,” but bit his lip. “Did something happen last night?”

“Nothing I could point to.”

“Your evidence isn’t very persuasive.”

Gray sighed. “I suppose not. I’ll try to stop being ridiculous.” She brushed the crumbs of coffee cake off her hands and began cleaning the kitchen.

“Sorry I came back here. I should have gone home and left you alone with the protégé.”

“It was fine. You walked inside and you were out. Raphael and I stayed on the porch. I was glad you were inside. I told him, but that was all I intended to do.”

“What did he say?”

Gray slowly wiped her hands with a damp dishcloth. She smiled shyly. “It was nice out last night. Lots of stars.” She stroked each finger with the cloth separately. “There’s a way he has, of smiling.” She wiped her forearms one at a time.

“He doesn’t smile very much,” said Errol, watching. “Have you noticed?”

“No, but when he does…” Gray wiped across the counters with her cloth. She swabbed down the canisters of sugar and flour. She took her damp forefinger and pressed it onto stray coffee grounds, picking them up one by one. She examined the grounds closely and rolled them around between her thumb and forefinger. “There’s a passage in Mahler’s Sixth. In the
Andante
. You know that symphony well?”

“Since it’s one of
your
favorites, of course I’ve heard it performed ten or twelve times.”

“The Tragic Symphony. There’s a moment when a flute rises, and a high, lyrical cadenza pulls out from nowhere. It’s the single place in that symphony where you can breathe; where the clouds break; where for a few measures everything doesn’t seem so terrible. Well, Raphael’s smile is like that, this partic
ular smile. It pulls out of nowhere. It raises the hair on my arms.”

She seemed happy, purling around that kitchen as if a cool, secret creek burbled quickly and serenely at her feet. Errol yearned to be hateful. He wanted to stay a stolid black lump in her kitchen, disgruntled and charred. It wouldn’t work. Gray seemed light this morning, and every move she made with that damp cloth was graceful. Her ankles were so slim. The water ran beneath the muscles in her face, and her voice spilled from her mouth as a stream through a sluice. Listening to her was like going for a swim He could not maintain his anger, so he gave up and dissolved the soot of his disgust into the brook of her pleasure. Bits of black grain by grain trickled away from him as he watched Gray pick up grounds with her finger, run the faucet over her hand, and wash the dark specks down the drain.

“So you told him,” said Errol, “and he smiled.”

“Yes,” she said. “That way.”

“And?” Errol felt immersed in a horrible reservoir of understanding.

“He was delighted.”

“Why do you suppose?”

“I don’t know. No reason. Just that it was the most charming and wonderful thing he’d ever heard.”

“God, I hope he’s for real,” said Errol quietly.

Gray’s face dropped. The water drained away. The sluice ran dry. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“
What
do you mean?”

“Nothing,” said Errol staunchly. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

Having pulled the plug on such a clear, cheerful spring, Errol slunk away to his work for the day.

That Sunday Errol drove Kyle to the airport, and when she said “Take care of yourself” in parting, Errol had a funny feeling he probably wouldn’t.

“I’ve always felt bad about missing out on World War II,” said Errol. “It looks as if I’m going to get my chance. This looks like Dresden.”

They were driving up Melrose Avenue in the South Bronx.

“What’s the story here?” asked Raphael.

Gray explained. “Landlords hire arsonists to burn their buildings for the insurance money.”

“Can we leave a sign? I don’t want the insurance for my Porsche.”

As they parked, Gray suggested they stay together for the first interview so Raphael could get an idea of the kinds of questions to ask; later she’d send him on a separate mission.

Once they got out, Raphael shot his car a wistful look. He picked a dried piece of mud affectionately off the body, and checked twice that the doors were locked. He had set the alarms, all three of them. Then he paid a boy on the corner ten dollars to watch the car, with the promise of another ten if the car was intact on his return. Raphael might never have been here before, but he immediately seemed to understand how the place worked. Errol found himself thinking that maybe Raphael wouldn’t make such a bad anthropologist at that.

The lobby had once been ornate, though its mahogany trim was slapped over thickly with dour green paint and the fireplace was filled with garbage. They picked their way upstairs. Roaches rustled through the trash. Shadows darted down the halls; Raphael shuddered on the landings. The stairwell smelled of old fat; Errol breathed through his mouth. The lights were out. The grating of their shoes was loud.

Outside 6B Gray spoke to someone through the door; the woman who opened it held out her large hand to Gray and pumped it once, hard. “Leonia Harris; real pleased to make your acquaintance.” Her voice was deep, her vowels round.

“Gray Kaiser. My colleague Errol McEchern. My assistant Raphael Sarasola.”

“Lord,” said Leonia, looking Raphael up and down. “Do come in, honey. You’ll brighten up this place in no time.”

Errol sat on the couch. The springs were broken, and Errol found he had either to perch on the edge or sink so far back it would be hard to get out.

“Where’d you get an assistant like that is all I’d like to know,” said Leonia. “Wouldn’t mind that kind of assistance myself! So tell me, darlin’,” she said to Raphael. “You talk?”

“Not much.” Of course, he’d found the one comfortable chair in the whole living room.

“Smart, honey. Boys like you open your mouth, it most always be terrible disappointing. Now, can I get you folks a cup of coffee?”

“Yes, I’d love a cup,” said Gray.

While Leonia was in the kitchen Errol looked around the room. It was neat and clean. While much of the furniture looked like curbside salvage, the wood was polished and rips were repaired. Travel posters covered the walls.

Leonia returned; her wide arms didn’t jiggle as she set down the tray. Though not fat, she had breadth. Her shoulders stretched her cotton dress taut. Her calves swelled as big around as Gray’s thighs. If Errol were ever in a fire and needed saving, this is the kind of woman he’d want to pull him out.

“You a professor?” she asked Gray.

“I’m an anthropologist,” said Gray. “I study people and the way they live.”

“So what can I do for you, Missus Kaiser?”

“Miss.”

Leonia raised her eyebrows. “Too smart for ’em, huh?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Gray softly. “If you end up by yourself after fifty-nine years, how smart is that?”

“’Pends on what you pass up. Sometimes pretty damn smart. Sometimes not.”

“And you’re married.”

“More or less. You ask Raymond that same question, I wonder what he’d tell you. That is, if you could find him.”

“Your husband has taken a—leave of absence.”

“That’s a real sweet way of putting it.”

“How long ago did he leave?”

“Six years. But he be back. Ray be back. I just waitin’. I ain’t in no big hurry, neither. But he be back.”

“Why?” asked Raphael.

She turned to him and pointed her finger. “You boys think you so precious. You thinkin’ you don’t need nobody. I look at you, I see right through your little head. I’s a hundred years ahead of you. You got a big surprise comin’. Time come and you get in on it, but I’s already in on it. I got this big secret, an’ every man in the world gotta take so long gettin’ to it, something I knowed when I’s fourteen.”

“What’s the secret?” Raphael seemed to really want to know.

“All these men afraid of bein’ crowded, ain’t they? They need all this room, they afraid some woman gonna crawl in their head and take over. Well, surprise, surprise. Ain’t nobody crawlin’ in there ’cept
you
, honey, and you get older and older and it get stuffy in there. Let me tell you, you afraid of other folks takin’ away your elbow room, well, just relax. You born alone, you die alone, and you get any
kind
of company in between, you one lucky boy. Bein’ by yourself ain’t no accomplishment. Ain’t like being no kind of hero. Ray, see, Ray sho ’nough figures he gettin’ away with somethin’, understand me? He think he a clever boy, runnin’ round with whores, gettin’ diseases, drinkin’ his heart out till five in the a.m. Lucky Ray, huh? Well, what Raymond Harris gettin’ away with is not see his kids grow up, and when he do come back they call him Mr. Harris ’steada Daddy, and they shake his hand ’steada kiss his cheek, and they spit when he turn his back. And I spit, too, though I’ll take him in again and love him, ’cause that’s what I’s here to do. But I spit anyways, ’cause he such a dumb sucker, understand me? ’Less stupid ole Ray Harris die by hisself in some alleyway. Sho, run away. Best way in the world to be nothin’. Risk endin’ up croaked by garbage cans, when he could die in my arms?” Leonia put her coffee cup in its saucer, and it rattled softly. “That no way to be the big man, baby. That just be dumb and sad. You got me?”