Odyssey (18 page)

“It was suggested that we let you go,” Martin LeRoy said. “But I told them that you’ve been an exemplary employee for decades and that we should at least wait and see what the lawyers have to say.”

“Really?”

“You sound surprised.”

Sovereign thought of Solar disowning Drum-Eddie. He wondered at the war waging in his own heart and mind.

“If it looks like things are going to get bad, Mr. LeRoy, I’ll quit on my own. You can tell the CEO that.”

At one thirty Sovereign left for lunch. He called a Red Rover car and had it take him to 86th Street, where he encountered the plump, freckle-faced doorman—Roger.

“Are you all right, Mr. James?” Roger asked.

“Yes. Fine.”

“I was reading about you in the papers. They were trying to say that you faked your blindness, that you tricked that guy. If they take you to court you have them call me, sir. Have them call me and I will testify.”

Instead of answering, Sovereign just held out a hand. He was deeply moved, and even more confused, by the emotional tone of the redhead.

“I’ve been remembering the story of Odysseus,” were the first words he said to Seth Offeran.

“Lost at sea,” Offeran said in a knowing way.

“The story of a man lost at sea told by a blind man so that others could be entertained and history might be passed down.”

“You see yourself as a historian?”

“As a blind man.”

“But you are no longer blind, Mr. James.”

“Maybe not,” Sovereign said. “I mean … you ask me how I see myself and I think that what I’ve seen has not been true. My mind is full of misinformation and that can’t make up for lenses that cause me to think I’m comprehending a world that I have no true knowledge of.

“Homer saw his world better than I do mine. What I’ve done is to make everybody up and then attach so many meanings to the words coming out of their mouths that almost everything I think I know is really a lie.”

“I don’t understand, Sovereign,” Dr. Offeran said.

“In the words of the poet, ‘I’ve wasted my life.’ ”

Sovereign could feel himself breathing and again he was transported to the wharf his grandfather talked about, looking down on the boat that he’d never seen.

“The snake is possibly the luckiest of all creatures,” Offeran posed.

“What makes you say that?”

“He sheds his skin, goes into hiding because his new scales are sensitive, and then comes out into life, leaving behind his old bonds and pains.”

There came a shooting pain in Sovereign James’s side. He winced and then
glowered.

“What?” Offeran asked.

“Talking to a black man about shedding his skin and you ask what?”

“Asking a man to let go of his misperceptions,” Offeran corrected. “This is not about race.”

“Maybe not, Seth. But here you sit on your brown chair talking to me like you were a textbook deciphering symbols. Your words are deader than a snake’s husk.”

“My mother died three weeks ago,” the psychoanalyst said. “She had suffered for six years. My sister and I took turns staying at her apartment, sleeping on the sofa, so that she wouldn’t have to experience the dislocation of the nursing home. At the funeral I could see the relief in my sister’s eyes. I was happy for her and I felt relieved too.”

“You mother was your skin?”

“The snake doesn’t look at the husk and call it a waste. He simply feels the exhilaration of freedom and the strangeness of transformation.”

“So you’re saying that I’m dragging the past with me.”

“I’m saying that there comes a time to let go.”

Sovereign intended to go back to work after the session but instead he wandered the streets of Manhattan, thinking about what lay beneath his dark skin.

After many hours and no answers he found himself at the entrance of a hospital named after the patron saint of the poor and infirm. Going to an official window he asked a question and received an answer. The woman behind the information counter hadn’t even looked up at him, hadn’t seen him, he thought.

The upper hallway smelled of chemicals and sweat infused with the faint odor of urine wafting from doorways. There came sounds of meaningless clicking, and television sets reverberated on the hard surfaces of the walls, ceilings, and floors.

The door to his room was open. He lay in the bed and she sat there next to him holding his limp, insensate hand.

“Toni,” Sovereign whispered.

She was startled and stood up from the metal chair.

“How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “I was just walking and I remembered my doorman saying something about him being brought here.”

“Why would you come to see him?”

Sovereign glanced at the man in the hospital bed. There were bruises on Lemuel’s face and tubes in his mouth and nostrils. An IV needle connected to a clear drip bag was stuck in a vein of his right arm, and various electrodes and wires ran from the bedside to a large, many-screened monitoring device. The lights in the machine throbbed like the electronic representation of a heart.

“I didn’t mean to cause this,” James said.

“It’s like a dream or a movie,” Toni Loam murmured. “Like something that happens, that was meant to happen even though you nevah wanted it.”

“You love him,” Sovereign stated.

She looked away from both men and Sovereign felt a faint smile etch itself on his lips.

“I should go,” he said.

She returned to her chair.

“Are you coming later?” he asked.

“I … I don’t think so.”

Late that night the phone rang. Sovereign was aware of being alone in the bed. He was thinking, as the phone was ringing, that he’d had unprotected sex with the woman who was no longer in his bed—not the night before but in the morning. It had seemed so natural that he didn’t even question it—at the time.

“Hello?”

“Sovereign.”

“Drum, I didn’t expect to hear from you for at least a year—if ever.”

“I looked you up online, Brother. Damn. You’re in big trouble, man.”

“Could be.”

“Maybe you better come on down, JJ. Down here a man can get lost. At least, he’ll never be found.”

“I don’t have any trouble getting lost.”

“You know what I mean, Sovereign. Once the man is on your ass he gonna stay there like a dog on a scent.”

“Is that why you never came back?”

“We talkin’ ’bout you, man.”

“Why don’t you come home, Eddie? Come on home. You said you always wanted to live in New York.”

“That boat has sailed, brother.”

“The world is round. That boat could be coming back to harbor.”

The laugh in Sovereign’s ear was familiar, half-forgotten. It brought him all the way back to the threshold of childhood.

“You changed, Sovy,” Drum-Eddie James said. “You sound like you lettin’ the world in.”

“Will you come?”

“Mama said that you haven’t seen her since two weeks after the FBI came lookin’ for me.”

“You come here and we’ll go see her together.”

“Take care a’ yourself, JJ,” Drum said before breaking the connection.

At eleven twenty-seven that morning Sovereign James was at his desk deep into the applications of potential employees. Just one day back and his desk was already piled with work.

He enjoyed leafing through the résumés. For some reason his job seemed
easier and clearer than it had ever been before. There was challenging information to decipher but no longer was he scrutinizing the words for secret codes about gender, race, and revolution. The forms were filled with truths and lies, hopes and hapless fatalism.

Hardin Pope had attended high school in Virginia and college in Atlanta. He ended his bout with higher learning at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. There he started out as a mathematician but changed his course to modular systems design. When Mr. Pope came in for his interview, Sovereign decided, the proper question to ask would be why he changed his major.

He scribbled that note on the form, placed it on the interview pile, and was reaching for another folder when someone knocked on his door. He wondered if Shelly was away from her desk. The young receptionist often was in the toilet or down at the staff kitchen flirting with the men from the mailroom.

“Come in,” he said.

The phone rang.

Darius Maynard opened the door and entered, followed by six other employees: Donna Price from accounting; Lola Alifah, who managed the new accounts in the marketing department; Winston Shatz, the security supervisor; Warren Chisel; LeAnne Moore; and finally Bob Simon, assistant to the vice president in charge of operations. Four of the men and Lola carried plastic red folding chairs.

Sovereign smiled. He had never before seen the seven African-American employees, handpicked by him, gathered together. And even though he now questioned the validity of his actions he still felt a parental kinship.

“Mr. James,” Darius began.

“Shelly?” Sovereign called out.

The phone rang for the third time.

“Shelly?” No answer.

Sovereign held up a hand to Darius. The others were settling in.

“My receptionist stepped away,” James said. “I’ll just take this and then switch it over to the automated system.… Hello?”