Reckless Eyeballing (9 page)

They'd been working from four to eight
P.M.
She had smoked a pack of cigarettes. When he went to the bathroom during a break he noticed a lot of stress pills in her medicine cabinet. Their exchanges since the argument had been cordial, civilized. A word she used a lot. This or that is so civilized, she'd say.

She knew her business. He had a tendency to tell rather than show, and she was teaching him the art of description. The art of movement. The art of character differentiation. She had recommended some minor changes in the script, having mostly to do with his tendency toward lengthy dialogue (Brashford's influence). Some of his lines had to be snipped. He had a tendency toward the robust, having grown up under a big sky. A sky uncluttered by skyscrapers and other attempts to “make order from chaos.” He'd read that she had received a Phi Beta Kappa from a school in New York somewhere. The school where she met Becky. She'd had her stuff produced in a lot of workshops before hitting the big time with
Wrong-Headed Man
, which had become an international hit. One of the posters hanging in her living room showed a scene from
Wrong-Headed Man
, a black man with the missionary held over his head. He wears an idiotic grin. The viewer was provided with a good look at the missionary's thighs and bosom. He seems to be handling her with his big, hairy fists as easily as one would hold a doll.

The doorbell rang. She opened it to a white man. He was breathing hard. Sweating. She escorted him into the room.

“This is Detective Lawrence O'Reedy of the New York Police Department,” she said proudly. The handshake was polite.

“He's trying to find the man who cut my hair.”

“A hair fetishist,” O'Reedy said, frowning at Ball.

“A hair fetishist? I thought the newspaper said that he cut off her hair because of World War Two, or something,” Ball said. Tremonisha glared at him. O'Reedy ignored him.

“I came over to show you the profile of the man. It's based on your description of his face.” She looked at the photo and then to Ball, who averted his eyes. There was a silence.

“Doesn't look like him at all,” she said. “He's heavier in the face. Like Ball here.” Detective O'Reedy stared at Ball. Ball squirmed in his chair.

“We'll do another sketch,” Detective O'Reedy said.

“Since he was wearing a mask, we can only approximate his features.” He studied Ball. Like Clint Eastwood, his idol, Detective O'Reedy talked with his face.

“Ball is working on a play. I'm helping him improve it. I'm making some minor changes.”

“Playwright, huh?”

“Yes. Yes, sir,” Ball said.

“Well, I have to be going,” he said.

“Thanks for all you're doing,” Tremonisha said, escorting him to the door.

Ball heard them talking low as they approached the door in the hall. Almost in a whisper. They talked that way for about three minutes. He heard the door shut. She returned to him. It was getting dark and he could see the moon beginning to appear over the East River. He was putting on his coat to leave. Their eyes met. They were that way for a long time. He could see her grunting and groaning as he moved his hips under her body. He wondered was she thinking the same thing. Probably not. She finally said it. He wondered what took her so long.

“You got a thing about black women. They're either vamps or being subservient to some man.” She stressed
man
. “And then you give the old whorish white bitches in your play all the good lines, and don't leave no good lines for the sisters. I know all about your problem.”

“What do you want me to do, Tre?” he said, eager to mend his ways.

“I want you to do better.” She blew some smoke from the cigarette she held.

“I'll certainly work on it.” Outside he waited for the elevator. He was stunned at what she was saying about white women. Calling them whores and things. Making fun of Becky. The white women made her. They produced her. They promoted her plays. They told her what to say on television. They put her on the cover of their magazines. They told all of their readers and followers to read her. They analyzed the motives behind the male reviewers' unfavorable reviews before they'd even appeared. They arranged her trips and tours; they called up the hotels; they bought her tickets; they would have flown the planes if asked; they got her on “The Today Show,” “CBS Morning News,” network night shows, call-in shows, and kept her on Broadway for six months breaking all records, and here she was calling white women all kinds of bitches and telling him what he should do for the sisters. He thought about the picture of her on the podium at Town Hall, kissing some elderly southern novelist; almost knocking her over with affection, and how she said, when she won her honor, that she wanted to spend the time with Becky and celebrate her success with all of her friends.

Up north, Ball decided, things were awfully complex. He couldn't wait until the day after the opening of his play. He would go south, visit his mother for a few weeks.

He'd received a call from Becky French that morning. Can you please get over here this morning at 9:30
A.M.
No hello or nothing. When he reached the office, Mr. Ickey, the receptionist, the man with Humpty Dumpty's shape, lacking any perceptible waist, peered up at him. He smiled a decadent sleazy smile. Probably a frustrated romantic, Ball thought. Ickey signaled for him to go in and returned to reading the newspaper. Ball could hear the discussion coming from behind the door. He recognized Tremonisha's voice.

“You're going to change the entire meaning of the play. You hell hussy. Everything you touch you corrupt.” The voice that replied was equally shrill.

“I'm not going to produce that play as it is. We have…standards to uphold.” In his mind's eye, he could see Becky shake her head like a filly when she said
standards
.

“It's not standards. You're worried about that monologue. It's political, isn't it? You don't like the monologue, you bitch, admit it. You white feminists sound more like the white man with each passing day. In fact, the only thing your dipshit movement has produced is more white men. Standards. All the mediocre shit that you produce by these junior womanists. You've got your nerve talking about standards. Why do you always feel the need to castrate the black man?”

“How can you say that? You're the one they picketed.” That remark from French was followed by silence.

“That was your fault. You and that mutant bacteria out there. Your assistant. You were the one who listed me as a spokesperson for all black women in that press release. Writing The Black Woman's story. You insisted that I write in the scene about the man throwing his wife, the missionary, downstairs. In my version, she only converts him. You wanted to sensationalize it.”

“I don't remember.”

“All of you white bitches are like that. You don't remember. You treacherous cunt. Every time I'd appear on television you'd call. Telling me how I didn't sound like a dedicated feminist. How I should change my hairdo. How I ought to put more punch into my attack on black men. What's you bitches' hang-up about black men anyway? You're more likely to be raped by your daddy, your brother, or your date, man or woman.”

“Tremonisha, have you been taking Valium again? I told you about that. It makes you sound, well, you know, unreasonable.”

“It's not the Valium, it's you, you're the biggest depressant I know.”

“Look, Ms., I made you and I can destroy you. I filled that theater with women and got you those interviews in the magazines. You were nothing. Reading your diatribes in quaint little coffee shops on the Lower East Side. I created you. I gave you prominence. But don't get smart. There's always somebody else who'll take your place.”

“Do me like you did Johnnie Kranshaw, huh? Whatever became of her? Where did she go? Answer me, bitch, where did she go!”

Ball used the silence that followed as an opportunity to enter the office. He cleared his throat. They were both frozen toward each other like two cats with humped backs. Their jaws were puffed. He could smell the violence. Becky was lighting a cigarette, her hands trembling, and Tremonisha was staring at her, her hands on her hips.

“You're not to come into this office unless you knock,” Becky said. She was shaking like a wet dog.

“I'm sorry, the receptionist told me to come in.”

“You don't have to apologize, Ian. This bitch wants to fuck with your play. The same way they did with mine.”

“Look, Tre, nobody was twisting your arm,” Becky said, cuttingly. They were staring at each other. Their chests were heaving. “Nobody begged you, Tre. You didn't complain as long as the money was coming in. As long as you could take those trips to Europe, to learn and to grow, as you put it. You didn't complain then.” Tremonisha looked at the floor.

“I was young.”

“Maybe you want to be alone. I can leave,” Ball said.

“Tell him what you want to do with his play. She wants to change your play so that the mob victim is just as guilty as the mob. She wants to drop Cora Mae's line about their being in the same boat. That's that collective guilt bullshit that's part of this jive New York intellectual scene. She wants you to change the whole meaning of the play. She's saying that the man who reckless eyeballed Cora Mae was just as guilty as the men who murdered him. She feels that Ham Hill's staring at Cora was tantamount to a violent act. If looks could kill? Huh, Becky? She's saying that Ham Hill murdered Cora with his eyes.” Tremonisha and Becky were exchanging stares that were so dense he felt that they were probably looking right through each other.

He thought of them in the same households all over the Americas while the men were away on long trips to the international centers of the cotton or sugar markets. The secrets they exchanged in the night when there were no men around, during the Civil War in America when the men were in the battlefield and the women were in the house. Black and white, sisters and half-sisters. Mistresses and wives. There was something going on here that made him, a man, an outsider, a spectator, like someone who'd stumbled into a country where people talked in sign language and he didn't know the signs. After a long silence Becky said, turning to him: “I just want you to tone it down a little.”

As a climax to this extraordinary scene, Tremonisha started for the door. “Come on, Ian. Buy me a drink. Let's get out of here. First she cuts the white women out of the lynching scene, and next she wants you to change the whole meaning of the play.” Ball stood there. He thought of a long article he'd read about how plays about women were hot, and that anybody who could put together a halfway decent one could be assured of a performance. And anyway, what did this argument between these women have to do with him? Hadn't the black ones said that the only thing that had happened since Martin Luther King, Jr., was the black woman, and weren't the white ones telling themselves that they had come a long way baby? What did a quarrel between these sisters, hugging each other one minute and scratching out each other's eyes the next have to do with him? “Well, Ball,” Tre finally said. “Are you coming?” He stood his ground. She went to the door and slammed it, but not before giving them both disgusted looks. Ian turned to Becky and said: “Can we talk?” She smiled.

Paul Shoboater, critic for the
Downtown Mandarin
, kept Ian waiting. He looked at his watch. Paul was forty-five minutes late. He was like that, especially toward up-north fellas. They were from the same neck of the woods, but back home he and Paul didn't move in the same circles. Shoboater had been in the North as long as Ball had, but refused to drop his down home accent. Shoboater knew that Ball would probably be uncomfortable in this kind of place, with its white and black checkerboard tile floor, and waitresses in black silk dresses and white aprons, and tuxedoed waiters. Ball sat at the bar, sipping from a glass of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

The bartender had sighed when Ball ordered it. Shoboater finally entered, or swept in. He saw Ball, but pretended not to notice him as he greeted some of his friends. Artists and critics from the downtown art scene. He finally reached the spot where Ball was seated, and gave him a cool handshake. The maitre d' came up bowing and scraping before Shoboater, greeting him as he escorted the pair to Shoboater's reserved table. Ball followed Shoboater, carrying his Pabst with him and finally placing it on the white linen tablecloth. When the waiter asked them what kind of cocktails they wanted, Shoboater ordered some vintage wine, and Ball ordered another Pabst. The waiter and Shoboater shared a chuckle. The fellas called Shoboater “Eye Spy” because they claimed that his column for the
Mandarin
was actually a literary reconnaissance mission for tourists who wanted to become acquaintances with the trends and styles of Afro-American culture. An expedition into the heart of darkness, as it were. The fellas claimed that his position made him lazy because his editors didn't know whether he was faking it or telling the truth. Others said that his real role was that of a hit man for modernism, Pound's “botched bitch gone in the teeth” reeling from blow after successive blow. The modernists could take Sartre's late disavowal of existentialism, and the failure of Marxism, or even the death of abstract expressionism, but Freud's fall, that was the severest blow, and finished off the movement that had been traveling a steady intellectual downhill since the revelations about Stalinism. Freud had achieved the status of a Holy Man for them.

Brashford had claimed that the Jews ran the
Downtown Mandarin
, and that even though it carried articles that opposed quotas and affirmative action as methods for subsidizing blacks, fifty percent of the revenue of Jewish organizations was derived from government subsidies, and though they had put Shoboater up to claiming that black talent got by because of liberal guilt, the same thing was said about Jewish talent in the fifties; that the rise of the American Jewish novelist coincided with a wave of guilt that swept the country after the discovery of the Holocaust. The fellas also ridiculed Shoboater's “show-out” ornamental prose style that made his work nearly unreadable—they said that if his prose style were a horse someone would have put it out of its misery long ago.

After a weak toast to Ball's play, Shoboater skimmed through Ball's script as though Ball wasn't even sitting there. Ball could tell that this was the first occasion upon which Shoboater had availed himself of reading the manuscript. When the waiter came up and asked for their orders, Shoboater ordered in impeccable French, which must have impressed the waiter because he had a huge smile while scribbling the order. They both looked at Ball, who said that he would have the same thing as Shoboater.

“So what is this crazy shit of yours that the Lord Mountbatten is doing?” Shoboater said.

“It's not going to be done at the Mountbatten. They've moved it over to the Queen Mother,” Ball said, choking on his pride. Shoboater grinned widely when he heard that.

“
Reckless Eyeballing
, heh. Nigger, you are crazy, like they say.” Ball wanted to knock his teeth out right there. But thought better of it. He gritted his teeth and in his mind's eye saw Paul Shoboater falling from the chair and cracking his skull against one of those stone pillars of the restaurant, or the heavy pot that held ferns. He saw the waiter rise from where Paul lay—blood pouring from his head, spattering his three-piece French-cut suit—shaking his head before the shocked fellow diners, and announcing, “He's dead.”

“And Ham Hill. Why Ham Hill?”

“Ham Hill gets lynched for staring at this southern white woman. I call him that because it's kind of like Ham in the Bible, who gets cursed to be “black” and “elongated” for staring at Noah's nakedness. Brashford tells me, however, that this version was perpetuated by a Jewish commentator and can't be found in the Bible.”

“Well, I hope you don't think that's anything original,” Shoboater said sarcastically. “All over the world there are legends and myths about men staring at women or staring into their eyes or at them bathing, and being cursed.”

“I didn't say anything about it being new,” Ball said. Their lunch arrived. It looked like vomit. Some kind of veal covered with a rich, creamy sauce. Shoboater began to eat; Ball pushed his plate away and continued to drink from his second Pabst. He couldn't understand why Paul sneered at Pabst. If you ever examined the can or bottle closely you could see the reproduction of the medals the beer had received in international competitions with other beers, he thought. Shoboater kept scribbling in a leather-bound notebook with a red fountain pen that probably cost about five hundred dollars.

“Why are you so hung up on eyes? I remember in that travesty of yours,
Suzanna
, there were a lot of eye monologues and dialogues.”

“Eyes reveal a person's true intentions. They are, as Rousseau said, the soul's mirror. I also like to provide my actors and actresses an opportunity to do mime. I use the term ‘reckless eyeballing' because on one level the play is about people intruding into spaces that don't concern them.”

“Yeah. Well, you might try to rationalize it that way, but it seems to me that you're trying to make amends for your awful reputation as a male chauvinist. Admit it. The tables have turned since the seventies and now this women's thing is hot, you're trying to cash in on it.”

“That's your opinion, Paul.”

“My opinion, huh. Clever of you, I must admit. That bit about this woman having the body of Ham Hill exhumed twenty years after his lynching in hopes that a new trial might erase the lingering doubts that she brought the attention of his eyes upon herself—that is hilarious. Just like those dizzy feminists. I like that.” He chuckled, but in his column he was always pretending to be a feminist or a womanist, probably because women wielded some power at the
Mandarin
. There was something odd and weird about Paul. Come to think of it, the nigger did resemble Peter Lorre a bit with his Dr. Moto spectacles, his whiney, nasal voice.

“I'm glad you liked that,” Ball said, watching him eat the veal and sauce. Just watching him eat it made him feel nauseous.

Ball looked around because he felt some heat at the back of his neck. A woman dressed in the art nouveau fashion of the restaurant was staring at him, but when he caught her eyes, she fluttered them nervously and stared again toward her male companion. Lot's wife, Ball thought.

“What do you think happened to Minsk?” Shoboater asked.

“I don't know.”

“So they got Tremonisha to direct.”

“Yeah,” Ball said, looking down at his beer. He grinned.

“But you were the one who went about bad-mouthing her after
Wrong-Headed Man
hit the big time. What made you change?” He grinned even wider.

“I've matured. You know my play
Suzanna
, well, it was written at a time when these guys were into a big macho thing. You know, going around bragging about how they knocked this bitch over and that bitch over. Now we've entered a new period. I've grown with the times. I'm used to working with Jim, but I can adjust, I am adjusting.”

“Yeah. The Jews were the only ones keeping you guys going. But instead of expressing gratitude, the fellas keep coming down hard on the Jews, and commenting on the Middle East when most of you don't even know where it is on the map. Instead of fighting the Jews, you ought to be like them. They've survived all of their enemies, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Pharonic and Ptolemaic Egyptians, Rome. All dead. In fifty years they will have outlived the Germans, a vanishing race hung up on Föhn. Germany's population growth is zero. They don't have the will to continue. It's as though they've been obeahed or dybukked. Günter Grass has written a book about it:
Headbirths
, or
The Germans Are Dying Out
.” He kept on yammering about how the blacks ought to be like Jews. The waiter took the plates away. Ball was glad. He was really getting sick. How could Shoboater eat that shit, he thought.

“These blacks ought to save their money instead of loafing around and break-dancing.”

“Brashford said that the reason the Jews came up with monotheism is because they were too cheap to buy idols.”

“You're still hanging out with him, huh. He hasn't written a play in over twenty years and the only reason they're still backing him is because of that long monologue in the middle of his one and only play where the character renounces militancy and the end where that black guy comes out dressed in drag. He knew what he was doing. And then in the epilogue all of the black male bar patrons go off and register for World War Two so's they could fight Hitler. That's how the clever second-rate writer got to Broadway. That monologue in the middle and the ending. That's what got him over. The producers propped him up so that they wouldn't have to deal with Randy Shank. Incidentally, what happened to him? He was quite a character.”

“He's working uptown as a doorman at Tremonisha's apartment building.” Shoboater got a big kick out of that. He thought it to be so hilarious that he didn't stop cackling for a couple of minutes.

“Serves him right. He alienated the women, the Jews, and now he's out on the street. All those things he said about the Jews. Now he's suffering the retribution that eventually catches up with all of their enemies. That Jehovah, or Jah, is the Dirty Harry among the gods. He don't play. You fuck with his people, he'll get you. Now you know if he punishes his own followers so harshly, calling the children of Israel harlots and nasty things for disobeying him, you can imagine what he has in store for his people's enemies. The Jews are the only ones standing between black people and these barbarians from Europe that are over here. What do you think that the Posse Comitatus, the Order, and the other right-wing outpatient clinic is talking about when they say “bleeding heart liberals.” They're talking about the Jews. Plain and simple. And every year I send one-tenth of my salary to the Anti-Defamation League because they're keeping an eye on these people who not only hate the Jews but hate blacks too. You can't depend upon this black middle-class to do that, or the black intellectuals. All of them have become buppies. They spend an hour sometimes talking about condos and these wine-tasting clubs they belong to, or their computers. If it wasn't for Jewish morality these people would be burning niggers left and right. The Jews went into Europe and civilized these Anglos Nordics and Germans who were painting themselves blue and eating one another. Go read their texts. Read
Hamlet—
the play that tells you about the Nordic soul: a cold-blooded serial murderer who kills all of these people because he heard voices. Man, the only difference between Son of Sam and Hamlet is that Hamlet speaks blank verse. And their music, full of killing, like those Wagnerian operas where people ride into fire and things. Man, that's where this whole idea of nuclear war comes from. When one travels through Europe and visits the museums as I have done”—big deal, Ball thought—“one is struck by the violence on those walls. If violence is as American as apple pie, then Europe provided the oven, because on the public buildings, in the churches, and in the paintings there are scenes of violence. People stabbing one another and hacking each other to pieces, or beheading one another, and when there are no scenes of that they're killing dragons. Armies clashing and people wrapped up by snakes. They even have these women warriors there, Amazons who are dealing blows to men left and right. It's all over the place. The most frequent object you see in European art is a weapon. And their stories. Full of murder and mayhem. Man, if the Jews hadn't gone in there and tried to civilize these people with their blood-thirsty Viking gods, these people would still be on the rampage. And every time there's a period of reaction against compassion and mercy, these gods start to rumble again. They even named this new laser weapon The Excalibur; they can't get swords out of their minds. If Judaism hadn't required those people to renounce their blood-thirsty war gods, the world would have been finished long ago.” The waiter brought Shoboater a tiny cup full of espresso. Ball was on his third Pabst.

“Man, is that all you're going to drink? You don't touch your food. I'm on an expense account. What's the matter with you?”

“I'm not hungry,” Ball said.

“Black people are strongest when they emulate the Jews. How do you think they got through slavery? Those old biblical metaphors, that's how. They used them. They identified with the children of Israel. That's how they survived their suffering. Through the gospel they were able to define their situation. These intellectuals who denounce the Jews are making the same mistake that Hitler made.”

“I don't understand.”

“If Hitler had listened to the Jews, he would have won the war.”

“How's that?”

“The V-1 rocket designed at Peenemünde was the ancestor of the modern missile. It would have enabled Hitler to strike England and the U.S. with A-bombs. He rejected the A-bomb. Called the theory behind it ‘Jewish physics.' His wrongheaded bigotry finally did him in.”