Legs (17 page)

Magic beyond magic. I've never known another woman in
the world who used that stuff and only one who even knew what it was.
It was an object out of Kiki's mystical beauty kit like all her other
creams and powders and soft pencils and lip brushes, and as I looked
at the bottles and jars on the dressers, they all illuminated
something central to her life: the studied passivity of being
beautiful, of being an object to be studied, of being Jack's object.
Her radio was on the dresser and exaggerated the passivity for
me—lying there waiting for Jack, always waiting for Jack, and
letting the music possess her as a substitute; the pink rubber douche
equipment on top of the toilet tank—more proof of Kiki as Jack's
vulnerable receptacle.

She stood, after she finished her eyebrows, and
lifted her dress over her head, a navy-blue satin sheath with silver
spangles on the bodice—Jack loved spangles. Her slip went part way
up, and there flashed another view of some of the underneath
dimension, to which I reacted by saying, memorably, "Whoops."
She laughed and I stood up and said, "I'll meet you in the
lobby."

"Why?"

"Give you a little privacy."

"Listen, I'm all fed up with privacy. Stick
around. You won't see half what you'd see if I was in one of my
costumes. I'm just changing my dress."

She moved around in her slip, sat down at the
dressing .table and combed the hair she had mussed, then turned
quickly, faced me, giving me a full central view of upper, gartered
thigh, and I thought, oh, oh, if I do what I am being tempted to do,
I will end up with very substantial trouble; thinking also: vengeful
concubine. But I was wrong there.

"You know," she said, "I don't know
why I'm here."

"In this room or on this earth?"

"In this room waiting for that son of a bitch to
come and see me whenever he goddamn feels like it, even after I tell
him a story like I told him about Jimmy Biondo."

I sensed she was talking to me this way because she
had taken her dress off and felt powerful. She was a sexual figure
without the dress and merely a vulnerable beauty with it. Sitting
there giving me an ample vision of her hinterlands was a gesture of
power. Tenors shatter glassware. Strongmen bend iron bars. Sexual
powerhouses show you their powersources. It reassures them in the
place where they are strongest, and weakest, that they are
significant, that the stares that automatically snap toward that
sweet region of shadow are stares of substance and identification.
With this stare, I thee covet. Desirable. Yes, yes, folks, see that?
I'm desirable and everything is going to be all right. Feeling
powerful, she could talk tough.

"Do you work for him all the time now, Mr.
Gorman?"

That "Mr." destroyed my fantasy of being
seduced. A disappointment and a relief.

"I've done some things for him."

"Do you remember Charlie Northrup from that day
up on the mountain?"

"I do indeed."

"Do you think Jack really did something to him?
Hurt him?"

"I have no firsthand information on that."

"I don't think Jack would kill him like that
Biondo man said. And what he said about that man's eyes and that girl
in the river. Jack wouldn't do that stuff."

"I'm sure he wouldn't."

"I couldn't stay with him if he did that stuff."

"I understand."

"I'd leave right now if I thought he did that
stuff. You think I could love a man who could do something to
somebody's eyes like that?"

"Didn't you say it was Murray who did that?"

"That's what Biondo said, but he said Jack knew
about it."

"Well, you can't believe Biondo."

"That's just what I think.

"I know Jack liked Charlie Northrup. When he
spit that beer at Jack up on the mountain, Jack told me that night,
'If I didn't like that guy, he'd be in a lot of trouble.' Everybody
thinks Jack is such a tough guy, but he's really sweet and gentle and
never hurts nobody. I never even saw him pop the guts on a fly. Jack
is a gentleman always and one of the tenderest, sweetest human
persons I've ever come across, and I've come across my share of
persons and they're not all human, I'll tell you that. I saw him with
Charlie Northrup up in the mountains, and they were talking together
and walking around the front yard. So I know Jack wouldn't hurt him.
It's a bunch of lies what's in the papers because I know what I saw."

"That happened after that day we were all on the
mountain?"

"Five days after. I counted the days. I always
count the days. At Biondo's farm up there. Jack said staying up on
the mountain was too far away for me, and he moved me down to the
farm for a few days."

"What about dinner?"

"Jesse cooked for me. The old nigger man who
runs the still."

"I mean now."

"Oh, now. All I have to do is put my dress on."

She closed her gates of power and stood up.

"You know," she said, "I like you. I
could talk to you. Don't take this the wrong way now."

"I take it as a statement of friendship."

"That's just what I mean. Some people you talk
to them and ka-zoom, it's a pass, just because you said something
nice."

"You like me because I didn't make a pass?"

"Because you wanted to and didn't and you had
such a good chance."

"You're a perceptive girl. "

"What's that mean?"

"You see inside people."

"I see how they look at me, that's all."

"Not many people see that much."

"You see, I knew I
could talk to you. You don't make me feel like a dumb bunny."

* * *

The night I went to dinner with Kiki, Tony (The Boy)
Amapola was shot through the head and neck four times and dumped
outside Hackensack. The papers said he was a close pal of Jimmy
Biondo's and that Biondo was Capone's man in town, which wasn't true.
Another victim of another beer war, was the consensus, but I suggest
he was a victim of Jimmy's bad manners toward ladies.

I sat talking with Kiki that night until Jack came
back around midnight, and then I drove to Albany without telling him
I was all through. A call from Jesse Franklin was waiting for me when
I got to the office the next day, asking me to come and see him. I
don't think I'd have remembered him if Kiki hadn't mentioned him as
her cook at the farm the night before. I called him back and got a
hotel which turned out to be a flophouse for Negroes in Albany's
South End. I told him to come and see me, but he said he couldn't,
and would I come to see him? I never met a client in a flophouse
before, so I said I would.

It turned out to be the ground floor of an old
converted livery stable with a dozen cots, two of which were
occupied: one by a man wheezing and ranting in a drunken, mumbly wine
coma, and the other by Jesse, who sat on his cot like a bronze
sculpture of despair, a weary old man with nubby white hair, wearing
ratty overalls and staring downward, watching the roaches play around
his muddy shoes. He hadn't been out of the flop in three weeks except
to go to a corner store and buy food, then come back and sleep and
wait.

"You remember me, Mr. Gorman?"

"I was talking about you with Kiki Roberts only
last night."

"Pretty lady."

"That's her truth all right."

"She didn't see nothin' what I seen, what I
wants to tell you 'bout. Nobody seen what I seen."

"Why do you want to tell me about it?"

"I got some money. I can pay."

"I would expect it."

"I sent my boys away but I don't wanna go
myself, don't know where to go. Only one place to go I know of is
back to the farm and work for Mr. Jack, but I don't wanna go back
there. Can't go back to that old place after what I seen. I fear
'bout those men. I know the police lookin' for me too 'cause they
askin' Mr. Fogarty 'bout me before he go to jail and I don't want no
police, so I highfoots it up to Albany 'cause I know they got
coloreds up here plenty and nobody know me, and then I know I gonna
run out of money and have to be on the road and I gonna get picked up
sure as Jesus. So I been sittin' here thinkin' 'bout what I gonna do
and I remember Mr. Jack got a lawyer friend in Albany. I been sittin'
here three weeks tryin' to 'member your name. Then yesterday this old
bum he fall right in front of me, right there by them little roaches,
and he got a newspaper in his pocket and I seen your picture and Mr.
Jack's picture and I say, that's my man all right, that's my man. Man
who runs this place got me your phone number all right. I gets picked
up you goin' help me?"

"I'll help you if I can, but I've got to know
what this is all about."

"Yep. I gonna tell you but nobody else. No how.
What I see I don't want no more part of. I see it when I just about
finished at the still for about five hours, sun goin' down and I
throwed down my head to sleep off the miseries when I heerd this
automobile pull up in front of the barn. I sleeps in the back of the
house, so I look out and see Mr. Fogarty openin' the barn doors and
other fellas Mr. Jack have around him all the time in the car and
they drives right inside. Now I never did see this before. Mr. Jack
use that barn for storage and he don't want no automobiles drivin' in
and out of where he keep his beer and his whiskey 'cept for loadin'
and that ain't no loadin' car I see. But Jesse ain't about to tell
them fellas they can't use Mr. Jack's barn.

Bye 'em bye, Mr. Fogarty he come in the house and
then he and Miss Kiki go out with Mr. Jack. I spies out the window at
the gay-rage and I sees the light on there. I don't see nobody comin'
or goin' out of that old place so I figure it ain't none of Jesse's
business and I tries to go back and sleep. Bye'em bye, I hear that
car again and it's dark now and in a little bit Mr. Fogarty comes in
and gets some old newspapers and calls up to Jesse, is you up there
and I say I is and he say Mr. Jack say for me not to go near the
still tonight and I say okay by me and I don't ask why because Jesse
ain't a man who asks why to Mr. Jack and his friends. Mr. Fogarty
carries them papers back out and about twenty minutes go by and I
heerd that car again and I sits right up in the bed and says, well
they's done whatever they's done and I look out the window and they's
no light in the gay-rage and I call down the stairs to Mr. Fogarty,
but he don't say nothin' back and nobody else does neither, and I
know my boys won't, 'cause they sleep like fishbones on the bottom of
a mud pond, and so I think of what they been doin' in the gay-rage
and I can't figure it out. But I say to myself, Jesse, you ought to
know what's goin' on hereabouts since this is where you livin' and
maybe they up to somethin' you don't want yourself fixed up in. So I
takes my flashlight and I spokes quiet like down them stairs and out
into the backyard and they's no light in the gay-rage so I sprites
'r0und by the back in case somebody pull up. And inside it's the same
old gay-rage, a couple three newspapers on the floor 'longside the
wheelbarra. Coolin' room's the same as usual and Mr. Jack's tahger's
on the back wall's the same as usual and all the tools on the bench.
I can't see no difference nowhere. Then I see in the corner of the
coolin' room a big piece of somethin' all wrapped up and I knows this
wasn't there before and I knows what I think it is soon as I sees it.
And I shines the light on it. It look like a rug all rolled up 'cept
it ain't no rug. It's canvas we throwed over the beer barrels first
time the roof leaked. And I goes over and touches that canvas with my
toe and it is solid. It feel just like I 'spect it to feel. And Jesse
beginnin' to worry what gonna happen if he caught here with this
thing alone. But I got to make sure it's what I think, so I puts my
wholefoot on it and feel how it feels, and it ain't exactly like what
I 'spect, so I touches it with my hand. And that ain't exactly like I
'spect either and so I opens one end of the canvas to peek inside and
see what is this thing that ain't like what it ought to be like, and
out come this here head. All by itself. It roll out just a little
bit, and I tell you if I ain't 'lectrified dead now, I don't know why
I ain't. And I highfoots it out of that barn and back into the house
and up them stairs and back to my own room and under the covers so's
I can think by myself what I ought to do. And I thinks. And I thinks.

And I don't hear nobody comin' back. Then I say to
myself, Jesse, if somebody do come back, you is in mighty trouble.
Because that head ain't where it ought to be and they is goin' to
know somebody been out peekin' into that canvas. And first thing,
they comin' back in here and say to you, Jesse, why you foolin'
around with that head out in that barn? What you say then, old man?
So bye'em bye, I sits up, and gets up, and goes downstairs and out to
the gay-rage and what scare me now ain't that head, but them lights
of the car if they come shootin' back in the road. But I say to
myself, Jesse, you got to go put that head back where you got it. So
I goes back in the coolin' room and shines the light down and sees
the old head lookin' up at me three feet out from the end of the
canvas where it rolled.