The Cosmopolitans (16 page)

“Earl and I are
friends for life
.”

Earl was disgusted. “Bette!” He reached for the bottle, and for a moment grabbed it like a truncheon, not knowing what he was defending. His own right to do or say whatever he damned pleased whenever he damned pleased to say and do it, that's what. It wasn't his job to make sense. The world didn't make sense. That wasn't his fault, don't blame him. He wasn't taking the blame for every single thing. That was for damn sure.

Bette stared at him clutching the bottle. He could commit mass murder and put them all out of their misery. But he put the bottle back onto the table and felt disappointed.

Earl realized that he had somehow, in some unarticulated
way, expected Bette to just go along with everything. He hadn't thought it through, everything was happening so fast. He didn't have a backup plan.

“Shut up,” he said to the silence. And it obeyed.

Bette did not understand why Earl was being cruel to her. Why was he punishing her? His actions. His reactions. His treatment of her. None of that made sense.

“Cousin Bette! Cousin Bette!” Hortense wanted her attention now. But Hortense did not deserve her attention. “Cousin Bette! Say something.”

Hortense lifted herself from her knees and brought her face into Bette's line of vision.

“Cousin Bette? Cousin Bette? Say something. Your face. You look so ugly. Why won't you say anything? Cousin Bette. Say something!”

Bette could not.

It was that kind of moment. One person destroys another one's life but does not expect a reaction. When the reaction comes, even if it is the first gasp of shocked silence, the reaction itself is dehumanized. Hortense and Earl seemed outraged that she didn't know what to say. Didn't they imagine that this was shocking? Only if she wasn't real could they falsely construe her reaction as will.

“Bette,” Earl said blandly. “She's innocent.”

“Cousin Bette!” Hortense shrieked. “This is better than my dreams.”

Bette's neck snapped. “
Your
dreams?”

Under other circumstances Bette might have said, “What do
you
know about dreams?” But this was beyond response. How does one reason with an arsonist?

Chapter 16

W
ait! What happened here?

In order to understand the proper sequence of events, consider going back forty-eight hours in time.

Let us return to not the day before the night in question but
two days
before. The end of that shift where once again Earl worked a hard, gross, painful, boring day at the Lazio Brothers' Slaughterhouse and finished it off, as usual, by taking a long shower, putting on dry clothes, and dusting off his street shoes. Back to, as he briefly reminisced in Chapter 11, those few moments of transition in the locker room when Earl had noted a kind of “softening” on the part of young Leon.

That day, instead of glaring at Earl like the daddy who'd taken away his supper, instead of purposefully stomping over to the far corner of the locker room and dressing furtively as though needing to be very, very careful, instead of all that rigmarole, Leon stood casually by the next bench over and slowly took off his dirty, bloodstained workshirt, put his street pants over
his arm, walked demurely into the shower. Returned glistening wet, overly dressed for locker-room etiquette with his clean trousers already belted, but still shirtless, and took his merry time finding and putting on that slow-buttoning, long-sleeved shirt. Both the excessive modesty and the excessive display were clearly for Earl's benefit. And that double message signified the poor boy's conflicts. How operative they were.

Well, well
, Earl thought to himself.
I guess that's Leon's way of saying, “I'm sorry, now can you suck my cock?”
Then Earl laughed out loud.

“What's so funny?” Luis asked, stark naked like most of the guys.

“Life,” Earl said, putting on his soft jacket.

“What else is new?”

And all the walk home, Earl tried to calculate how many days it would be before Leon hit on him in some way, some crazy-ass, duplicitous way that would probably lead to something very, very hot and then for sure another blowup as that guy, that cat, that sleek young thing, that
boy
was not reliable to act right.
Ah, Leon
.

Earl remembered Bette saying, “
I'm sorry, but he's out. Draw a line through his name. Next!”

“Next,” Earl said to himself, coming upon the guys playing chess. “Next, next, next.”

“Earl, baby, what's happening?” That was Jerome, waving him over. “You got time for a game of chess?”

“Don't you have to be home for supper?”

Jerome sat longingly before the table, chess board laid into the concrete, pieces tantalizingly already in place and ready to go.

“My wife has her club night. Dinner is waiting for
me in a chafing dish, so I can eat it any old time I want to. Besides, my wife doesn't make me come home for supper. I go home for supper because I want to.”

“Glad I got that straight.”

They both started laughing.

“Don't you believe a word,” Jerome whispered and twinkled his eye. “Come on, Earl, let's play a game.”

“You know I don't play chess.”

“I know that yesterday you did not play. But this is today. You can never imagine what may transpire over night.”

Earl flashed on Leon's chest.

“Now that's the truth.”

How come Earl never really hung with these guys? With Jerome? They liked him. They were good men, kind. Family guys, some of them, okay, but others had question marks around them. He could make some friends here, in the park. He knew that. Earl surveyed the crew. There was George. Now George had a wife, but that was a joke. Whatever makes fairies go out and get wives? Of course, Earl knew exactly why they did that. They had to. Didn't want to live on the edge of everything like Earl did. He, of all people, could understand that. From all the married guys he'd had sex with or romanced through the years, Earl had come to the conclusion that black, white, or indifferent, most queer guys were married. Or was it that most married guys were queer? Or that most guys were queer? Or was just everybody queer? Well then, if everyone is queer then everyone is whatever . . . so that explains how George pulls it off. But a man could not pull the wool over every set of female eyes, that's for sure. Like
that Lynette Carter. She was a nice person. They could have been friends. Earl finally admitted to himself that he felt terrible about how he'd treated her and that he, in fact, owed her an apology. That was it, he resolved to apologize. Just as soon as he got home from Washington Square Park, he would call on his telephone. Shit, the only calls he ever made on that thing were to his actor's service. Time he started using it to . . . apologize. Maybe call Leon. Now that was a bad idea.

Truth was, he could marry a Lynette Carter as far as the companionship side of things went. She had her own life going on and was smart and wanted a family; that would occupy her, too. But the problem would be in the bedroom, of course. There was no way Miss Lynette Carter was letting Mr. Earl Coleman get away with not having a clue as to what he was doing, not one clue. It just wouldn't pass. She'd notice right away, and then she'd track those wistful gazes at all her male cousins and her strapping handsome father. And within two nights and a day, she'd be annulling his ass. And then another black woman would have been used by some man, and all the problems of the race would be replicated by Earl, and once again everything would be his fault. All he was trying to do was get out of the line of fire so he could have a moment to breathe and figure out how to live. That's all he was trying to do. So how does George pull it off?
How does that faggot do it?

“Hey, George?”

“Yeah, Earl, what's happening?”

“Oh, not much. How's the family, George?”

“They good. Thanks for asking. My son is going to City College in the fall, did I tell you that?”

“No, congratulations. That's huge.”

“Yep. We're so proud.”

“I'm sure you are. How's your wife?”

“Sarah's good. She's taking classes at night now to become a home nurse. Inspired by our boy.”

“Night classes, gives you a lot of empty evenings, hey George?”

George looked scared for a second, and then he got a lascivious look. “Why?” George's voice got all smoky. “You got some empty nights?”

Earl watched the switch. Frightened to turned-on in under a second. That must be the key, after all. George got turned-on by being scared, scared of the truth. What could be sexier than that? Wow. Everything! Earl was not turned-on by being scared. He just wasn't. He wanted relations with men to be smooth and loving and on the up and up. Why was that so fucking hard?

“It's okay, George. Don't worry,” Earl said. He was feeling kind right then. He was feeling benevolent toward George. “It's okay.” He was feeling sad, all of a sudden. “See you later, George. Congratulations on your boy.” And Earl slowly stood up off the bench and waved the fellows goodbye.
Not everyone gets a way out
, he thought.

He stopped in the Chock Full o'Nuts to buy three doughnuts from Sheila.

“Why three?” she asked, smiling with that edge that Sheila had. She was a smart one and good-looking. Always nice to customers, always doing her job.
Was she married?
He looked at her ring finger.
Yes, she was
. Suddenly Earl was flummoxed, he didn't know how to answer that question. He was buying three doughnuts
so that the two white women he had dinner with every night could each have one and he could have one too. Why was he going home to two white women when neither of them were
his
woman and he didn't even want a woman, anyway? At least if he was going home to a woman, she should be
his
. The situation was just too hard to explain.
I'd rather be going home to Leon, believe you me. If Leon was my man, I'd be bringing home a dozen doughnuts
. But the most that Leon was ever going to be was a blow job and a punch in the jaw. Earl's jaw ached already, not from the blow job, but from the punch. Poor boy. Leon was a mess.

Earl knew how he'd gotten here, but it was too hard to explain. Sheila just wouldn't really understand.

Coming out of Rubin's Deli with his beer bottle wrapped in a sheet of newspaper, Earl noticed immediately that the neighborhood kids' attention was focused across the street.
Shit
. That fucking Greta Garbo and her goddamn luxury sedan parked again in front of Betty Parson's gallery.
What were those two ladies up to anyway? Bumping in the Bentley? Goddammit
. Earl knew he had to go talk to Frankie. Give him some kind of explanation. So, doughnuts in hand and beer under his arm, Earl crossed the avenue, doing one of those things that good people always have to do—apologize for being wrong when the world itself is the problem. Not make excuses when there are a million legitimate ones to make. The problem was, as Earl knew all too well, that it was somehow
unreasonable
to expect normal people to think that someone they knew might be a fruit, to take that into consideration. One could argue drunkenly on the corner of a corner bar that they
should
, but they were just not going to do it. So then what?
You can't expect . . . well, you just can't expect a thing. Not a fucking thing
.

“Hey, Frank.”

Frank was looking beautiful, standing at attention in his suit and tie, his matching cap, shined shoes, smoking a cigarette. He was a beautiful brother, and that was the truth.

“Frank!”

Lost in thought, the man looked up, and the expression of disgust on his face caught Earl entirely off guard. Frank hated him.

“I don't want to hear it,” Frank said and turned his back.

Just like Leon. Turning their backs on Earl when it is all a lot more complicated than that. Okay, okay, Earl shouldn't have run out on that girl. It was wrong. He should have walked her home to Chelsea—and then what? Then-the-fuck what? Made some excuse? What kind?

“
Sorry sweetheart, I thought your father wanted to bone me, love me, and move into my bed and be my man. I guess there was some kind of misunderstanding.”

He just couldn't say that, and everyone else would agree.

“Look, Frank, I'm sorry.”

“Get away from me.”

Frank tightened his shoulders. Earl found himself looking. He looked at the nape of Frank's neck. Why was this happening? Wasn't there any way out? Any way at all?

Was there any way out?

And that's when Earl turned and just floated back into his apartment building on a cloud of no solutions, on a cloud of
that's my fate
, in a kind of existentialist state like those cats in Paris. And on automatic he climbed the stairs, turned the key, and walked in on Bette and Hortense reading out loud from Hamlet.

As you may or may not recall, the night of
Hamlet
ended like this:

The end of the evening was now inevitable, and yet Earl and Hortense had communicated to each other, silently, that there could be more fun. If only they had been allowed to stay up longer. But they could not. Because Bette needed to sleep.

At the door, Earl held out his hand. Hortense took it, and they shook good-night. But when it came to Bette, impulsively, he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

“Oh my,” Bette said.

It was unusual. The gesture
.

Then, thirty seconds later . . .

Earl staggered back from Bette's to his apartment, reciting Hamlet, holding the brandy bottle, and setting it up to be finished by his bed. He hated his apartment and yet he loved it. It was always there and had seen it all.

Thank you, walls
.

He pulled himself up off of the bed and kissed the walls.

Thank you, floors
.

He placed his cheek against the wood.

Then, stiff, he crawled back onto the bed and took
a sip of brandy. Comforting himself, dick in hand, he leaned back and took a drink.

Leon
, he should call Leon.

Earl reached over and grabbed the phone. Receiver tucked under his chin, he was half-hearted about his own cock but excited at the possibility of talking to Leon. He dialed zero.

“Operator.”

“Hey, Operator, how you doing?”

“All right.”

“Can you give me the number for Leon Waters? In Brooklyn?”

“One second, please.”

He reached for another drink.

“I have two Leon Waters in Brooklyn. What is the address?”

“Oh no,” Earl was sad. “I don't know his address.”

“Well, hold on, we'll figure it out,” she said, Brooklyn accent, that New York mix of Italian and Irish that can't be found anywhere else on the planet.

“Okay. Thanks.”

“One Leon Waters is in Park Slope and one is in Bushwick. Which do you think it would be?”

“My friend is a Negro.”

“Well then he ain't in Park Slope,” she said.

“Bushwick, then.”

“Here's the number, Fulton 9-7669”

“Thanks,” Earl's heart was racing. “I'd vote for you for Miss Subways.”

“No problem.”

Earl was bouncing on his knees on his bed now, like
a teenager—that was it, he was still a kid.
Oh well
. F-U-9-7-6-6-9.

Busy signal.

Fuck
. He hung up and dialed again.

Busy signal.

Who was Leon talking to at two o'clock in the morning? Who the hell was he chatting up? His mother in Chattanooga? His auntie in Chattahoochee?
Get off the phone, chat boy
.

That's when he heard the knock at the door.

What the hell?

“Earl?”

“Who is that?” He zipped his pants, put the phone on the sideboard. “Who's there?”

“Let me in, it's cold out here.”

“Hortense?”

He opened the door and she jumped into his arms, hands around his neck, and kissed him on the lips. She barely knew how to kiss, but she was wearing a thin nightgown and no underwear, the feel of her lithe, horny body, the free access, the smooth skin, her breasts pressing against his chest,
strange and in the way
. The way she went wild, pressing her crotch against every part of him, rubbing on his leg—she wanted to get some, but she didn't know how. Kissing, kissing.