High Crime Area (23 page)

Opening the door then to see to his surprise that the bellboy was not a male after all, but a female: though wearing the old-fashioned olive-gray livery of the renowned hotel, with rows of buttons and gold brocade, and a visored cap perched rakishly on her head. Why, it was the girl-editor of X's Italian publishing house whom, only an hour or so ago, X had denounced as a chattering sycophant! Tonia, or Tanya, clearly wanted to make restitution, to apologize; her skin was no longer coarse and displeasing to the eye but glowed with cosmetics and her thick black Italian-looking hair was loose, in tendrils and wisps falling seductively to her shoulders.

Even as, in exuberant high spirits Tonia, or Tanya, flashed a dazzling smile at the elder writer, crying, “Signore X, may we come in? We have such surprises!” X understood that he would forgive her.

How dreamlike and confused and deliriously wonderful it was, X's surprise midnight treat, like nothing else X had ever experienced in more than seventy years of existence: and only a few minutes before, how self-pitying, how morbid he had been! He stood back in awe as the Italian girl-editor and another attractive female in bellboy livery pushed an ornate silver cart of the approximate size of a hospital gurney into the sitting room: the cart was heaped with delicacies—an unusually large bottle of champagne, in a gilt-embossed wrapper not familiar to X's eye, goose-liver pâté and gourmet cheeses and crusty breads, chocolate-covered truffles, bonbons, cashews and pistachio nuts, and remarkable fruits of all varieties, great glossy apples, blood-oranges, fat black grapes, plums and kiwis, classically proportioned and in colors vivid as a still life by Matisse. X saw to his astonishment that the Italian girl's companion was the German fraulein with the long shimmering dyed-blond hair who'd interviewed him in Berlin!—the first several buttons of her jacket were unbuttoned to show the alluring tops of her pale, perfect little breasts, and she too flashed a dazzling smile at X, as if she and he were old friends, sharing delicious secrets. At once, his heart swelling with magnanimity, X forgave the brash fraulein, too. “Yes, of course! Please come in,” he stammered, laughing in delight. It occurred to X that, through his long blessed life, in such instances of surprise and confusion, he'd stood by helplessly as others, nearly always women, took charge.

And now a third young female in bellboy costume appeared, helping to push the cart, and yet a fourth! The heavy door was shut, and discreetly double-locked, amid giggles high-pitched and silvery as the tinkling of ice cubes in delicate crystal goblets. X tried to behave as if he were not astonished but perhaps halfway accustomed to such episodes of high gleefulness; he clapped robustly, laughing; what did he care that he would be awakened by a call at 6:30
A
.
M
., to be driven to the airport; what did he care for mere sleep, he who had often stayed up through the night working at his books, and sometimes, though less frequently, making vigorous love.

Already the girls had taken over the sitting room, there was the German publicist with the full, shapely perfumy body, there was the French girl-translator he'd misjudged as plain, graceless and without charm, quite transformed now, with rouged cheeks and lips, mischievously shining eyes, and a ripe body that strained at the silk fabric of her costume. With giggles, X was pushed onto a sofa; with the jarring sound of an artery popping, the enormous champagne bottle was uncorked; the ebullient Italian girl splashed champagne into a long-stemmed glass for X, and into glasses for herself and her companions, and she raised her glass in a toast, declaring that this midnight feast was in homage to a great writer, to the last man of letters, whose work had penetrated their souls and changed their lives permanently—“Signore X, thank you!” Breathless, X drank from his glass; the champagne was delicious, though slightly tart, with a queer metallic bouquet; its myriad miniature bubbles flew up his nostrils and into his brain, to burst. More toasts followed, for the girls were insatiable in their praise of X, he begged them, ‘‘Please, please! Enough! You are very kind, but—” and they crowded in to kiss him, wild wet kisses landing anywhere, one of the German girls cried, “Ah, no, Herr X, we are not kind at all, we are only just...” Though X tried to push their hands away, the girls prepared him for the feast like a great baby, tucking a linen napkin beneath his chin; the French girl patted him familiarly up and down his sides, and gave his cheek a caress; another girl bestowed a wet smacking kiss on his right ear, and another girl bestowed a wet smacking kiss on the dome of his head; more champagne was splashed into glasses, and drunk; champagne ran in rivulets down X's chin, and wetted the linen napkin; X understood that this was a game, perhaps it was a game he'd played in the past, a celebration of his worth: he, the male, was the girls' captive, their trophy: they were his preening captors, but also his adoring slaves.

Next, they competed with one another to ply X with delicacies from the silver cart: an apple pared and sliced into bite-sized pieces; pâté lavishly smeared on a piece of crusty bread; a large chocolate-covered truffle. To his surprise, X was hungry after all, ravenously hungry, his angel-girls had aroused his long-dulled appetite, tears glistened in his eyes as he ate, he squirmed on the sofa wracked with delight as with an almost unbearable pain; the girls exchanged excited murmurs in their accepted English, as if X's greedy appetite pleased them; he could hear their voices distinctly but he could not understand their words. It was then that the midnight feast took an abrupt salacious turn, X tried to protest, his dressing gown was torn open, his naked body was exposed, feebly he tried to hide his genitals but the girls snatched his hands away; shouting with glee, the girls hoisted him to their shoulders, his considerable bulk of nearly two hundred pounds, crying “Heave-ho! Here we go.” And stumbling and staggering like drunken revelers they bore him flailing and kicking into the sumptuous bedroom, with much laughter and little ceremony he was dropped onto the rumpled bed, which he'd feared was the girls' destination from the first, theirs and his.

When X opened his mouth to protest, for he was a contentedly married man, and a gentleman, a bold kiss stopped it; the acrobatic French girl with her sinewy, squirmy body pinioned him to the mattress, and one of the German girls clambered beside him; the girls had shed their bellboy costumes, and X himself was naked now; he would have cringed in shame except his aged flaccid body was pronounced beautiful by his captors, his skin admiringly stroked, how handsome X was! how manly! The girls took turns straddling his chest, kissing him with deep, sucking kisses; sucking at his tongue as if to tear it from his mouth; sucking at his breath; X could feel, against his strangely cool, dampish skin, the powerful heat of the girls' skin; the heat between their naked thighs as they straddled his chest and belly; the crinkly damp of their pubic hair; the pulse and throb of their young bodies. When had they tied him, wrists and ankles, to the four carved-mahogany posts of the immense canopied bed?—tied him with silken cords? His hairy navel, his hollow, sagging belly-button, was smeared with pâté to be licked by rapacious, tickling tongues; he was being forced to lick goat cheese from the navel of the fleshier of the German girls; all the girls shrieked with impudent laughter; if X's enemies saw him now, what tales they would spread! what legends! The girls were vying with one another to touch, to fondle, to stroke his limp penis, a limp veined old carrot of a penis, and the testicles delicate and cool as quails' eggs; roughly the girls tickled his pubic hair which was a coarse yellow-white, like wires; the German fraulein had discovered the scar from X's abdominal surgery of several years ago, an eight-inch scar like a zipper in his sallow flesh, and playfully she ran manicured red talons up and down the scar—“Zipzipzip, Herr X!” Tonia, or Tanya, panting with desire, had smeared her buoyant breasts with whipped cream, and her pert little nipples were maraschino cherries X was obliged to eat, how she screamed when he bit her, screamed and kicked and struck him with her hard fists, so that for an instant he was terribly afraid. But the French girl was squealing in triumph for she'd managed at last to stroke X's penis into a steely rod, all the girls exclaimed at its length, its elasticity, its healthy burnished-red hue, its throbbing heat; greedily they competed to hold it, to stroke and caress it, to kiss its tip that gleamed with precious juices, the very elixir of life. “Stop. No. Please,” X begged. For the sensation was almost more than he could bear. He was covered in perspiration and panting as if he'd run up the seven flights of stairs to this very room. His heart was banging like an impatient fist against his rib cage. One of the girls had lowered herself over his penis, having stroked it to a red-hot rod, and had fitted her satiny, smooth and muscular vagina over it, thrusting herself down upon him, and gripping him tightly; X heard his groans like strangulation; groans like he was sobbing, and then he was laughing; the lights in the bedroom were in fact candle flames and these flames were now being blown out. X pleaded, “Stop! My dignity! Don't you know who I am!” and at once the girls cried, “Yes, we know who you are, you are X, the last man of letters!” And a scalding geyser erupted from the very pit of his belly; his eyes flew open, and his heart ceased beating; the astonishment of such a moment, the wonder of it; he was alive after all, alive, and young, and his life lay before him; the shell that was X slipped away, he was free, triumphant. “Thank you!”—X's words were sobs, a lover's plea, snatched from his throat even as consciousness was extinguished like a blinding-bright fluorescent light in a white-tiled bathroom.

And in the morning they found him. After X failed to respond to telephone calls and anxious knockings at his door. His Italian publisher, who'd arrived to escort X personally to the airport, directed the hotel manager to force the double-locked door; and there in the darkened bedroom lay the old man lifeless on the carpet beside his bed; the bedclothes were in a turmoil, tangled in X's naked limbs; his arms were outflung as if in protest; champagne had been spilled on the carpet, and on X; there was a lurid trace of chocolate on X's gaping mouth, and what appeared to be a pâté smeared on his torso and belly; his face was deathly pale, and his cheeks sunken; his dentures were in a water glass beside his bed. X's eyes were starkly open, yet sightless; the left eyeball was turned up into his head as if peering inside, inquisitively.

Detroit, Michigan. April 1967.

One of them is following me. I think it must be the same (male, black) figure I've seen in the past. But I could be mistaken.

From the rear entrance of Starret Hall at the edge of the Wayne State University campus, through faculty parking B, along a littered pedestrian walkway that opens onto Cass Avenue—I am aware of this lone figure behind me as you'd be aware of small flames licking at the edge of your vision. Thinking
There is no one. And even if there is someone, I will not look.

Ascending concrete steps, nearly turning an ankle. Walking too quickly.
Will not look!

It's 6:25
P
.
M
. Not yet dusk. Not yet, the bright arc lights that illuminate certain near-deserted walkways and corners of the sprawling urban campus.

For days the sky above Detroit has been overcast and wintry. A fine red-ashy haze when shards of sun push through the clouds, from factories in River Rouge. As the sky darkens, the air seems to coarsen. Your eyes and lungs smart, it's a mistake to walk too quickly—in the desolate streets at this edge of the University, a hurrying figure is an alarming sight.

Sudden shouts, screams—you don't want to hear.

Rapidly my brain works: is the (male, black) figuring following a woman who happens to be me; or is the (male, black) figure following
me
?

If it's just a (white, lone) woman who is being followed, I will be able to elude the (male, black) figure—I think. If it's
me
who is being followed, the situation is more serious.

I am prepared, this time: I am
armed
.

In my shoulder bag, a small handgun. Snub-nosed nickel-plated .22-caliber Sterling Arms semiautomatic that weighs more than you'd think, with only a three-inch barrel.

I've just come from teaching a class in composition in Starret Hall.

To my students, I am
Mz. Mc'tyre.
The name usually mispronounced in a mumble as if there is something inherently embarrassing in speaking my name at all.

If
Mz. Mc'tyre
is being followed, that is not so good.

In this class, which is listed as English 101: Composition, there are twenty-nine students formally registered of whom several have not appeared in weeks. There has not been a single class meeting attended by all of the students including even the first meeting when I'd read off their names and tried to determine, by their murmured responses, whether I'd pronounced the names correctly. (At least half of the names were virtually unpronounceable—by me.) For I was a young teacher, in just my second year of part-time teaching at Wayne State, and eager not to offend.

Two months later, I am no longer that young teacher, I think. But I am still in dread of offending.

Like many new teachers, I hope
to be liked
. I hope
to be respected
as well, but will settle for
being liked
.

Yet, I think that I have failed at
being liked
.

I am not a full-time instructor in the English Department, nor even in the College of Liberal Arts. I have an adjunct appointment in the Continuing Education Division—“night school” as it's called, condescendingly. I have a master's degree in English from the University of Michigan, and not a Ph.D. I have published a few stories and poems in small literary journals but I have published only one scholarly article, in
Philological Quarterly
. (No one knows this, but that scholarly article will be my last as it is my first.) And so, though I am negligible among the Wayne State faculty, and beneath the radar of those who control tenure-track appointments, still I am hopeful.