The Ruby Slippers (28 page)

‘What is this?’ she shrieks to no one but herself. As if for his daughter’s exclusive benefit, James continues, warm and expansive, to explain the situation: ‘We called it the Ruby Million so that it could be for hundreds, thousands of people from every place and every background, and nobody would have more than their share.’ She watches in dumb fascination as he grows more eloquent by the second, settling to his story. Until, that is, the host – who up to now has sat easy in his chair, nodding his head and listening intently – suddenly leans in to James like a cardsharp and oh so calmly pops his killer question.

‘So James, what is it about Judy Garland and the ruby slippers that gay people find so fascinating?’ Thrown a little, James tries to keep it simple for the man, but it all comes out huffy and defensive: ‘Oh no, this is not just for gay people. People of all kinds – every gender, age, religion, let alone sexual persuasion . . .’

‘Yeah, but what is it about? I mean, why do gays worship her? Is it about sex? In which case I don’t get it; she was no Monroe.’

‘I think you’ll find it’s many things: about ideals – people standing up for truth, innocence and the right of—’

The host is in the zone now, and he goes in strong for the pay-off: ‘Or is it a kinky thing, like with the dressing up and everything?’

Sensing a disaster in the making, Siobhan yells at the TV: ‘No, no, don’t go there!’

James grasps for something solid to hitch himself to: ‘Well, there’s always some people who . . . but this is about anybody who would like to—’

‘Yeah, but what I’m asking, I suppose, is why would any average red-blooded guy, or gal, give a damn about your campaign?’

And right there, right there on the screen, James visibly wilts, the whole goodwill thing between him and the host evaporating under the studio lights. Siobhan watches appalled as her father, wronged and wrong-footed, gives vent to his feelings for all the world to see: ‘I . . . I don’t think you heard what I . . . Why are we going down this line? What’s it got to do with—?’

‘Sorry, but I’m just trying to get to the heart of it. I mean, people out there are . . . they really do wanna know what it is with gays and the whole Judy Garland thing . . .’ The host sits back, affable again. But James is on the edge of his chair, livid. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t go on with this,’ he mutters.

Siobhan watches in horror as he gets to his feet, pulls off his mic and walks off the set. ‘Oh my god,’ she says to the bare walls. ‘This can’t be real; somebody tell me this wasn’t real!’

■ ♦ ■

Harrison stands square at Finn the dealer’s door, psyching himself up to reach out and knock. For sure he will do it – put it to them – there’s nothing to lose. It takes an age for Finn to arrive, and when at last he does scrape open the battered door, instead of making his usual greeting of, ‘Hey, my man,’ he just stands there, blinking. And when Harrison tells him that he hasn’t come to score but to talk about something cool, Finn just looks past him and tells him he has ‘company’. The sly old skinny dog, thinks Harrison, but remains staring unabashed at Finn, his battered face conveying the urgency of his call, until Finn dives back in and returns seconds later, saying, ‘OK, you have exactly ten minutes.’ Following on Finn’s heels, Harrison is a little put out to discover that the ‘company’ is in fact a guy called Curtis, a big black dude in a sharp suit, who’s sitting lounging in Finn’s miserable nothing of a back room, so laid-back and relaxed that he could be on Deck A of a cruise liner. He is in the middle of an unfeasibly long toke of a joint and pays out the smoke in a cloud, offering it on to neither of them, but demanding instead to know, ‘Who is this guy?’

‘Harrison. He’s OK. Small-time but OK,’ says Finn by way of a testimonial, and Harrison realizes that he is in the presence of someone a little more impressive than easy-going Finn. ‘So whaddya want, Harrison?’ asks Curtis, indicating by his manner that his time is short and answers should come quick. Given seconds flat to decide whether to tell this powerful stranger his secret, Harrison’s first instinct is to go straight back out the door; but Curtis is clearly miles higher up the food chain than Finn, and Harrison needs to aim high. Yeah, the man’s presence is fortunate, now he comes to think about it. ‘Well,’ he starts. ‘I have this truly beautiful proposition, but I gotta tell ya the whole story. Then you can see why I look like this . . .’

They sit back and listen as he proceeds to unfold the whole tortured saga of the ruby slippers. He relates the ups and the downs and wildness of it, watching them watching him: Finn the skinny, button-eyed white man; Curtis, the formidable black man with luminous eyes growing wider and fatter on his story. Thus Harrison becomes conscious of himself as storyteller, his words forming and flowing into shape, expression arriving in his voice. Such a good job he’s making of it, he thinks; he can see them nodding and smiling and willing it on. Convinced he has them hooked, he continues to tell them how he turned master criminal, and staked out the deli and went right in, and came up from below, and disturbed the grocer, fought him and defeated him, even though he had a knife. On he goes, describing how he later went back and saved the grocer’s life and tried to strike a deal with him, which after all was reasonable, considering the grocer’s guilt and his debt to him. He looks up again, expecting to see them nodding in agreement, sharing his outrage, but the two of them just sit there, calm and quiet, waiting for him to bring the whole thing to its end. As he moves on to the episode of his betrayal by white men unknown and the assault that was visited on him, Harrison begins to lose his composure: ‘These guys, these two big guys, they fucking beat on me,’ he says. ‘Fucking punched and kicked me to the ground and threw a hundred dollars down on me – a hundred bucks that shoulda been two-fifty K!’

His story done, Harrison stands back, pretty pleased with himself. ‘That’s a cool story,’ says Curtis, sagely and looking over at Finn.

‘Cool,’ says Finn. ‘A little fucking weird, but cool.’ They are clearly impressed, the pair of them, with what they have heard.

‘I tell you it’s true, bro, every last word,’ says Harrison, smug to see them won over, but his smile is soon wiped away when Curtis asks, bluntly, ‘So whaddya want we should do about it?’

‘Well, look at it,’ blurts Harrison, ‘there’s these two fucking shoes laying somewhere right at this moment, waiting on someone to come along and just get in on them for like hundreds a thousands.’

‘So we – you, me, whoever – we just go to the grocer, put the screws on him and he coughs up because he feels guilty and he has this big amazing debt to you?’

‘Well, yeah. Because he stole them. And I was thinking, if the right people went to him and said the right things, and he saw they was like serious and could back it up, he would have to play ball. And he can’t say nuthin’ nor do nuthin’.’

‘But he already did do something, like he kicked your ass.’

‘That was the other guys.’

‘Right, so who are the other guys?’

‘I dunno. Relatives maybe.’

‘And who has the shoes? Him or them?’

‘Uh, I dunno.’

‘So now we’re dealing with the grocer and his wife, and the two unknown guys and his dog and his cat, and in addition to that, there’s you, there’s me and whoever else we would have to bring into this and divide it up?’

‘Uh, yeah, well, I didn’t really—’

‘Like you thought it was so fucking simple.’

‘Well it still is, kinda, ain’t it?’

‘No it is not. Look at me. This is what we do, me and him over there: we buy, we supply, we count the money. It’s simple, we do it every day. This proposition of yours is not simple; it stinks, man. You would be dealing with amateurs, scared people, and you never know what they would do and who they would go to once the heat was on them. Who do you think we are, the fucking mob?’

Harrison can’t believe what he’s hearing: ‘So you’re saying no?’

‘I’m saying, you just took a half-hour of my precious time when you were given ten minutes. So I suggest you fucking disappear right fucking now.’

‘Wha—?’ says Harrison, incredulous and a little slow on the uptake.

‘You hear me?’ yells Curtis, more than a little pissed. But Harrison just stands there stammering: ‘I . . . I . . .’

‘Go, H. Just go!’ hisses Finn between his teeth and, seeing Curtis starting to rise out of his chair, he takes hold of Harrison’s sleeve and outright drags him to the door. ‘What did I say wrong?’ whimpers Harrison, while Finn manoeuvres him through the door and says in fond farewell, ‘Fuck off, jackass, and think about it!’

■ ♦ ■

The next half-hour is lost in a blur for James. Somehow, he must have made it to the men’s room, wiped the make-up from his face, put on his coat, taken the elevator down and gone out through the heavy glass doors into the chilly night. Yes, Jack must have helped him to escape from the
NYNow
building, without him even being aware, because here they are, him and the timid youngster, marching side by side along a darkened street unknown to him.

‘It’s just along here,’ offers Jack, clarifying nothing, and hops up the steps of an apartment block. ‘Come on, you need a coffee after that.’

While Jack goes off to make coffee, James sits on the little white leather couch and looks around the apartment, which is small but uncluttered, with not a single ornament or picture in view. All the same, with its soft lighting and carefully blended tones, it’s an easy place to be, and James becomes more relaxed. Soon, though, his emotions get the better of him and he’s plunged back again into the recent debacle: trapped in the gaze of the interviewer again, with his innuendos and sly, toothy smile. And so, preoccupied, James fails to notice that Jack is gone a full fifteen minutes from the room. It’s only the sound of the door clicking open again that brings him back to the here and now. ‘There,’ says Jack, stepping primly into the room and holding out a mug of coffee, as if this somehow illuminates the shocking sight he has made of himself. James looks up, then stands in his astonishment. Gone is the shy, diffident young man, and standing there, serene and shining, is Judy Garland. Or rather Judy as Dorothy – the wide, smooth, yet vexatious brow, the round brown eyes, the snub nose, and, of course, the tiny crimson pout of a mouth. And Jack, as Judy – or Dorothy – has worked other wonders, too, blending into his own strawberry blonde hair a silky pair of plaits. The pert, powder-blue dress is there as well, as are the bobby socks and a pair of replica ruby slippers, neatly pointing out from the heels, to round off the unmistakable embodiment of the girl from Kansas. ‘Apparently I look a lot like her,’ whispers Jack. ‘Uh . . . yes, yes you do,’ James finds himself saying. The alarm bells are going off, but bizarre though it is, the resemblance is striking and he can’t take his eyes off her/him, or is it him/her? And now that he looks closer he can see how every tiny detail is there, down to each individual freckle, applied one by one to rose-pink cheeks. Jack smiles happily, fantasy and reality arriving together. ‘They say I could make a living from it – if I wanted to.’

James takes a step backwards, feeling for an escape route: ‘Right. I’m sure you could. Listen, though, Jack. Uh, I really do have to—’ But then, in an instant, Jack is right up on him, his eyes fastened intensely on James’s. This is it, the thing James has only just begun to fear might happen, but has no stomach to confront. ‘You can hold me, if you like.’ James backs away, his hands up, shield-like. ‘Jack, no, please. I—’

‘Please, James. Just let me say it; I have to say it: I love you.’

And James sees with absolute clarity that Jack has gambled all that he is on this one moment, everything in him subservient to James’s wishes as the adored older man, and given into his hands. He should say something kind and forbearing and wise, but not a word comes to mind. It has been the most terrible day and it is far from over. ‘I’m sorry, Jack. I should go now,’ he mutters, shamefaced, and walks right past him to the door, knowing that there is no way he can stay and make things better, and no way he can go without trampling over the young man’s pride. As he stumbles down the stairs, Jack’s sudden rage reaches down the stairwell to him in a demented yowl that is a million miles away from the lovely Dorothy: ‘You bastard! You led me on! You played with me, you fucking prick-tease!’

Scurrying down the street, clueless for direction but heading for lights far-off, James goes over the connected moments of their friendship. No way did he give out signs. For sure, it is all in the poor guy’s mind, but he feels somehow to blame, although God knows how, and he resolves never to speak a word of this – to Jack himself or any other living soul.

■ ♦ ■

He arrives outside his own door, eager to keep out of his aunt’s way, regretting that he had told her he was going out to see Dale and Floyd – God knows why he spun that lie. So now he stands, feeling exposed and lonely – humiliated by the dangerous Curtis, mocked by the weasel Finn – and he didn’t get so much as a puff of a hit. He will get inside and slink to his room before she can bombard him with questions about how his day has gone and drown him in cakes and food. But when he searches in his pocket for the key, it is not to be found and, furious, he jabs at the bell push. She is there like a jack-in-the-box, the door flying open. ‘Come on in, honey. Ah, you poor thing; look how tired you look! Aw . . . Take off that jacket and sit down. You’re just in time for—’

‘No, Aunty, I don’t want nuthin’.’

‘Nonsense, I made your favourite: stew.’

She has a hold of his jacket, trying to peel it from his arm. And now he just can’t help himself: ‘Let go my fucking jacket!’ he rasps, irritated. On occasion she has been known to let this kind of language pass, but today she will not have it. ‘Excuse me! No cussing, thank you! You know perfectly well, young man, we don’t allow no—’

That’s it, she started it, he will finish. He pours every last ounce of his energy into the words that erupt out of him: ‘I said let go my fucking jacket, and while you’re there, shut the fuck up! You can stick your fucking stew; I don’t want your fucking apple pie, and take your fucking prayers to Jesus fucking Christ and shove the whole fucking lot up your fucking skinny old-woman ass! OK?’