The Man Who Cried I Am (25 page)

Shea waited before answering. “I should think you'd be even more concerned. What if you inherit ignorance and indecision, as I have?”

“Well then, whose fault is that?” Then Max saw him climbing Harry's steps once more and remembered Harry telling him about what Shea had said then. “My mood is foul today,” Max said. “Let's not talk about these things. Tell me about the job. And tell me, does
Pace
pay more than the
Century?
” He saw Shea start to relax. At one point he thought, He would be good for Regina. Never seen him with a woman. What's his bag? Max's publisher was giving a party for the publication of his book. He would invite Shea and Regina. And Granville. That would take care of that obligation. As the lunch was breaking up, Shea said, “Army-Notre Dame. Saturday at the Stadium. I've got two tickets I lifted from the Sports people. What do you say?”

The man won't let go, Max thought. What's the matter with him he won't let go? But he said, “Sure. Pick you up?”

“Twelve-thirty.”

It had been a different kind of meeting. Max had not been broke, distressed with a girl, or in the pit of a depression still finding its bottom. His bitterness had not, for a time, been muted. He had called a halt to the conversation about “conditions.” Once, he would have allowed Shea to continue talking about them. No more. He knew about the conditions. They had cut him to ribbons, but he had not died. Instead (thanks to Granville) he now stood heavily on his own two feet. The book helped too; a book always did. Well, then. If Shea wanted to unburden his soul, let him find someone else; if he wanted to hang around, goddamnit, he was going to hang around like a man, not a creep!

At the party for the publication of his book, Shea turned out to be a very shy man, which amused Max. It was Regina who did the wooing, hurtling into this new thing with the force of a bird trying to escape captivity. When last he looked, it seemed to be going okay. He talked for a long time with Zutkin, whom he had not seen in over a year. Granville Bryant was there with a young man who stood silently at his side and listened to his conversation without expression.

It was Bryant who, midway through the party, said, “Is he your only Negro friend, Max?” Bryant gestured toward Roger Wilkinson, who was indeed the only other Negro beside Max present. Max laughed briefly. “They were invited, Granville, they were invited.”

“Why didn't they come?”

Annoyed, Max shrugged and moved away. How in the hell did he know why they hadn't come? He had worked hard on the invitation list to bring about a balancing of white and Negro friends. He hated to do that. To secure the right balance he had set down the names of Negroes he didn't really like. Like Harry, he thought, I've become the marginal man. Where were they? Had he alienated every single one of them at precisely the
same
time? How? Glumly he watched Regina and Shea, then Roger Wilkinson talking with Bryant. That was good. Roger was a young writer; perhaps Bryant could be of use to him. Of course, Roger knew what he was doing. Max had had that feeling ever since his first meeting with Roger, who had thrust himself on Max, asking him to read manuscripts, discussing this writer and that one, eagerly writing down the advice Max half-heartedly gave him. What was wrong with Wilkinson, Max suddenly realized as he took another Scotch from the tray, was that he liked
names
. He thought they gave medals for reading Stendahl and Giraudoux and Auden and Henry Adams. He was a walking encyclopedia of famous and obscure writers, the good ones. (“Honest, Max, that Andreyev is something
else!”)

Goddamn it, why hadn't they come? Now he knew. He had been lucky. He had made it, they thought, and that made him less Negro; that made him no longer one of them. Dick Ricketts, the policy man in Harlem, greeted him in the uptown bars with, “Hey, Money!” Dick had sense and Max had told him more than once that writers made money if they were lucky, or said what other people wanted them to say. Ricketts, sharp yellow face taut, lidless reptile eyes cold so that you couldn't tell if they were comprehending or not, listened carefully, then said, “Okay, baby, you tell it your way. I
know
them white folks don't publish your books because they
like
you!” Max had told him he had it all wrong. “But dig, man,” Ricketts had gone on, his handmade suit falling about him like gray velvet, his shirt open at the neck, a little gesture to establish and maintain rapport with the nickel-and-dimers, his Aston-Martin double-parked outside, unticketed on 125th Street, for every cop knew it. “And you writin' for Mister Charlie's paper too. Don't I see your name in the paper? How you sound? C'mon here and let me buy you a taste even though I know you can't get into your house for all the hundred-dollar bills you got jammed up in it.”

Damn them, Max thought. When you're down, scraping through on ham hocks and beans, they don't want to be bothered with you. But when they think you've made it, they're either afraid of you or put you down for being a Tom. What's worse than being black? Being black
and
lucky. Max took a final look around at his party, then slipped out. Harlem wouldn't come to him; he would go to it.

“Every time I see you up here, you're runnin' through. Them white folks run you out from downtown?” Sergeant Jenkins. He seemed bigger, blacker, badder. Drugs were starting their poisonous flow through Harlem and, rumor had it, Jenkins was hell on pushers and junkies. Max nodded briefly. Black sonofabitch, he thought. Like I don't have any business up here. Like they were all
waiting
for me to leave Harlem for good.

“I spend a lot of time around here, Jenks,” Max finally said, wearily. “Right now,” he lied, “I'm doing a story on police brutality. Can you help?”

Jenkins grinned his big bad grin. “Police brutality, eh. What's that, son? I don't know nothin' about that. Sounds like Communist talk to me. You know the friendly, neighborhood cop is a public servant. That's right, son.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“What happened to your ace-boon-coon, that other writer fella?”

“He's in France.”

“France, huh? Hell, he married a white girl, didn't he? What the hell's he in France for? Did he divorce her or something, or just can't get enough of that white nooky? Is he coming back?”

“I don't know.”

Jenkins laughed. “You got your back up, son. Don't shit me. I know your type. Police brutality, huh, you goddamn nigger intellectuals and them nigger leaders, soon's you get two quarters to rub together you got your ass on a ship for Europe. You don't even know what's going on here.”

“We try, Jenks, we try.”

“That Boatwright boy, he was an intellectual too, wasn't he, son? Look what happened to him. Look what he did. You cats is as queer as three dollar bills. If it ain't sex, it's in the fuckin' head. I seen all kinds, son, and all the noise you make don't help a junkie or a cat done messed over his wife good, one bit. Cats say I'm hard. Sure, and I like to beat a bad nigger's head. Know why? Because when he sees me coming the next time he's gonna get the hell outa my way. I'm hard because I got to be. These niggers up here are harder on my ass than a hundred paddy cats. And I got to live, son. I got a family. Wife and kids. And I mean to come home in one piece when my day's hitch is done. And every single day,
every
day, there's some motherfucker up here sayin' I ain't gonna make it. What you damned intellectuals still got to learn is that this ain't no classroom, son, it's a jungle.” Jenkins hitched up his pants, those heavy dark blue pants with the flashlight in one pocket, .38 revolver low over one cheek of the ass, the row of cartridges, the blackjack and nightstick, the notebook, all attached. The paraphernalia made a jangling noise. “Cool it, son. I got to go. Keep your nose clean.”

Sweet Cheeks, the bartender at the Nearly All Inn greeted him as soon as he entered. “Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, the prodigal. The black Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Honoré de Balzac all rolled into one. Furthermore, he is the black Richard Harding Davis, Edward R. Murrow and Walter Winchell also all rolled into one. Hey, baby! Where you been? Have you come over to our side yet? Gay is best, baby, I shit thee not. Have a taste!”

He fled as soon as he could to Big Ola Mae's. He should have known what to expect from Sweet Cheeks; his was the most vicious tongue in Harlem. He loud-talked you, if he didn't think his tip was large enough. Now, Max sat down and Ola Mae waddled over. “Maxwell? It is you. Child, where you been? Is you hungry? You lookin' a little bit peaked, there. I know, you done got married and your wife's a little too fast for you. Right? No. Well you eat somethin' anyhow. Did you know your boss at the
Democrat
—” she bent close to Max, “that raggedy-assed nigger paper—married your girlfriend, that cute little thing, Mary. Sure enough did.”

Mary. In restrospect, nice, they all were then, softened by time and other women still. They spoiled a guy though, the women. Maybe it had to do with the male–female ratio he had heard about so much. He never thought about it the way he had thought of some European villages where whole male populations had gone off to war and been killed. What happened to the women? They must have become ravenous. New York women were a very special breed. Just as most knowledgeable American women hesitate to compete with European women, so most American women pause before climbing into the same arena with New York women. Special. Tough, lovely, knowing, playing the cards the way they were dealt, most of the time. Maybe the war had done that, set women free. But Big Ola Mae was still leaning on the table, her fat, deep chocolate brown face benignly creased, motherly behind the out-of-place gold-rimmed glasses, talking. “I bet you got one of them little white girls now, ain't you, Maxwell? You're a big man now, and every big nigger gets him a white girl.” She leaned back, brown flab encased in whalebone and elastic, laughed and slapped Max on the shoulder with a heavy hand. “I sure am sick of you colored men. Runnin' just as fast as you can after them. Whoo! Why don't you menfolks wake up? It ain't nuthin', now, is it?”

She had killed his appetite. But he ordered coffee and sweet potato pie. When he finished, he left, walking home. At some point, going south on Broadway, past Juilliard, Barnard and Columbia, his pace slow with heavy thought, November's cold slashing softly through the Heights, he decided that, with the first break, he'd get out of it for a while. His piles were kicking up more. The Army operation seemed to have done no good. Nerves, one doctor told him; too much sedentary work, another had said. He found himself bored with people, tired of them, and that seemed to gather in his rectum. There was pain, but that seemed easy, compared to the rest.

16

NEW YORK

To hell with the rest.

In successive days, Zutkin asked him to do some articles. (All right, going-away money.)

Berg was getting him set to do a series on Jackie Robinson, how he spent his time off-season.

Shea was giving him almost daily unsolicited reports on his burgeoning romance with Regina.

Still there was no mail from Harry. (Well, if that's the way he feels, later.)

Both doctors were agreed that what Max needed was another hemorrhoidectomy.

What I need, Max told himself, is a little orgy. For Thanksgiving maybe. Mildred.

After the long depression following Lillian's death, there had come the women. He met them at parties, conferences, through intermediaries—in all the ways there are to meet women. He overdid his first affair, put too much into it, made it meaningful when he really hadn't wanted to. He had to back out of it, and in order to do that well, he had simply begun another, then another. One of his early girls (Betsy!) had been very young, in her twenties, a graduate student at New York University. She wore T-shirts under her blouse (“I sweat a lot.”). The way she liked to make love, it could be done with all her clothes on. She went for nothing else.
That
had been a mistake. A man likes to grab hold of more than just a head of hair. Most times. The ingenue he had met while writing theater copy liked to drink sherry. She had to have at least one entire bottle before she even
thought
about making love. During which time she whined about her career. Irene. The Swedish stringer at the UN, Frederika, was all right, except she never came. She liked jazz, but couldn't shake her head to the music to save her life. There were a few tough hairs on her breasts that made lovemaking somewhat uneasy. And that
thing
, that ugly, dangling, crippled labia; it felt like taking hold of a piece of warm chitlin. And she was forever shoving it up out of the way. Regina was another who never came except when she masturbated. She guessed that was why she couldn't have an orgasm when lovemaking. Sometimes she had seemed quite close. Her eyes would narrow, her movements grow short and choppy, as if she were nearing the crest of a hill, running. Then with a long, sorrowful gasp of resignation, she would quit. There was the model, Hélène, who made love with quicksilver passion because she didn't have to, the way she had to with photographers, agents and others who made it possible for models to get to the top. A telephone call to a woman, or receiving one from a woman late at night, the work lying limp on the desk, meant one thing: the business of pursuing pleasure. Sometimes when one left his apartment and he was still keening his condition which was the murder of loneliness, he would call another and go to her, or she would come to him, giving him just time enough to change the sheets. Once when he had carried five changes of sheets to the laundry several times in a row, the laundryman asked, “Are you from the hotel down the street? Tell me, because we can give you a discount.” Max left hastily, mumbling, No.

Manhattan became a city filled with lonely women frowning at their telephones, anxious to make love, desperate to be with someone, and they would speed to him after a brief call, or he would dress hurriedly for the next day's work, toothbrush and comb jammed into a pocket, and hail a cab to go speeding through a stroboscopic city to the Village, the East Side, Harlem, Chelsea. It was always the same during the first moments. A kiss, an embrace, small conversation, unwrapping the bottle, or, briefly, watching the Late Show, delaying deliciously that moment made possible by the New York Telephone Company and UTOG, the United Taxi Owners' Guild. Sometimes, darting unbidden into the night there would come a phone call. Max would sit or, if they were already in bed, lie and listen. He liked it when the phone was near the bed. There is no better way to learn a woman than to listen to her talking on the phone to her lover, husband, lover-to-be, while you are fondling her breasts and making a soft, flanking foray. How calm they were, the women. Like electricity, always there awaiting a finger to push the right button. Max marveled at it; he accepted it. They were the winners, the women, and the man who thought not was the fool. Sometimes, high, Max would hold the woman he was with and let the words spill, cascade, knowing full well somewhere behind the drinks that this was not part of the deal, and whenever he was like that, he noticed in retrospect the next day—in the middle of an assignment having nothing whatsoever to do with women—that tiny, pitying smiles had played around her mouth. He would shrug, as if to her, and continue working.