Cloud Nine

Chapter 23

He stepped behind me, slapped my pockets, and then repeated that we should “go in and sit down.” Sonya and I, walking beside each other, led the way to the living room, with him behind us, holding the gun. He said, “Okay, Gramie, I’ll take this sofa, and you and Sonya can sit on the other, but” — pointing to the cocktail table between the two sofas — “will you move this table out, so there’s nothing in between? So I can look up Sonya’s legs and see what she’s got?” I told him to watch his language, and he told me do as he said, but with a sudden, half hysterical note in his voice that betrayed the state he was in. I moved the table a few feet, and he said: “That’s good. Now sit down.” I sat and he turned to Sonya. “Okay,” he said, “take ’em off.”

“...Take what off?”

“Drawers. Panty hose. Whatever they are.”

“And suppose I don’t?”

“Then I will. But I might do it kind of rough.”

He lifted her skirt as though to show her, but she slapped his hand away. “Keep your hands off me!” she snapped. “How many times do I have to tell you? You stink. You smell like feet that haven’t been washed — or more like a dead rat, maybe.”

“I never smelled feet that haven’t been washed — my friends all wash their feet, and I’ve never even seen a dead rat, let alone smelled one — I hope you tell me some day where you were raised, Sonya, that you know so much about it, how feet and dead rats smell. But just right now, skip it! Quit stalling! Take ’em off, I said!”

She stepped out of her shoes, and with him still pawing at her, slipped off her panty hose. She dropped them on the table, stooped, and put her shoes on again. He said: “Sit down!”

She sat.

He sat, and slouched over to peep.

“Open your legs.”

She opened her legs.

He stared, his lips slimy wet. Then, though it cost him an effort, taking his eyes off her, he started to talk. “So what do I want? Like I said, two or three things, but let’s take them one at a time. But before I get to them, there’s something I want you to know: I heard what you said to Gramie, that he shouldn’t open that door — but don’t hold it against him, that he did what you told him not to. It wouldn’t have been any different — I have a key, and would have come in, irregardless. That’s the first thing I want to make clear: I’m playing it back just as you played it at me, key and all — I got mine from your cleaning woman, with the same song-and-dance, pretending I wanted a date, like you pretended to me, that day when you staked me out, broke up my marriage, and cut me out of my land, that I was due to inherit—”

“After you knocked her off.”

“Knocked who off?”

“Your wife, who do you think?”

“My, my, my, the way you talk! Well, speaking of knocking off, that brings up the subject of Gramie.”

“In what way, the subject of Gramie?”

“I’m playing it back at him, just as he played it to me, that day when he hit me, sneaked a punch when I wasn’t looking — and kicked me, when I was down. I’ll do the same, except perhaps harder.”

“And then what?”

“Hey, not so fast. Other stuff comes first!”

“Come on, spit it out! What are you up to?”

“Before I attend to him, there’s what I do to you — with him looking on. Last time we had two, this time only one — but he’s your husband, and so it equalizes.”

“And then what?”

“I attend to him, with you looking on.”

“And then what?”

“Well Sonya, that would be up to you.”

“Come on, jerk, say what you mean!”

“I did say it, it would be up to you! My mother’s hellbent for history, says I’m a cut-rate Casanova, or something, so I’ll spout some history too. You can be Mary, Queen of Scots — who held still for her husband’s murder, and lived happily ever afterward.”

“Until they chopped off her head.”

“Well anyway, she lived, at least for a while.”

“You think I’d hold still for Gramie’s murder?”

“Well if you don’t, dead wives tell no tales.”

“And you think your mother’ll hold still?”

To that he made no answer, being caught by surprise. She jumped up and tore in, half screaming: “You think she won’t guess who killed her favorite child, her first-born, the apple of her eye? You think she won’t know who the black man was, that she won’t see inny connection between him and that Japanese mask, or the Afro wig that you had? You think she’s not going to use it, the clout she has in this county? The political stuff she can pull? Burl, she hates your guts, and you’re looking hell in the face right now, if you have the sense to know it! You...”

“Shut up! Take off your clothes!”

“Let’s see you take ’em off me!”

He began answering what she’d said, about Mother, by reciting his alibi, the one he had fixed up, down at the Bijou Theatre, where he’d dated up the cashier, after the early show, where “I’m inside at this very minute, as nobody saw me go out, through the fire door at the side, or will see me go back in—” and more of the same, all the while facing her, as they stood almost belly to belly, there in front of me, in between the sofas. But there was something he forgot, which was what she really was, a teenage brat who kicked, as she often did me. So she kicked him right now, so fast you could hardly see it, but not in the stomach, her usual place, but in a much tenderer spot, so he jackknifed. I jacked-in-the-boxed, jumping up as though on springs, grabbing the gun, twisting it out of his hand. Suddenly it was a whole new ballgame.

I backed him to the hall, with her walking beside me, whispering wonderful things, about how proud we could be of each other, for what we’d done together, and I guess I whispered back — it looks as though I must have. Then all of a sudden she said, out loud so he could hear her: “Gramie, give me the gun and I’ll hold it — then you beat him up, like you did that other time, except now you really beat him up, so his face is just a jelly, and he stays that way for a while. That’ll settle his hash, so we see the end of him!”

“Sonya, will you call the police?”

“The police? The police?”

“Of course — eight-six-four, seven thousand!”

“But suppose he talks? Suppose it’s a mess?”

“If he talks, he’ll be putting himself behind bars, which is just where I want to see him... It’s what your father wanted to do! For once we could do the right thing, and listen to him!”

“My father wanted to kill him.”

“Oh that’ll be a help, if a mess is what we want!”

I waited, but instead of calling, she began blowing out the candles, which were pretty well burned down, but still lit, on the cake. She blew out two or three, and on the next puff got two or three more. But I jerked her back to the phone, said: “Sonya! Will you — for God’s sake — call?”

At last, she left off with the candles and started to dial. We were standing there, all three of us, so close you could have covered us with an umbrella — she at the edge of the table, having pushed the chair to one side; he sat at the table too, within a few inches of her; I in front of him, the gun pressed to his gut. I didn’t see him move. I must have been looking at her, so I’d taken me eye off him. And I didn’t see the flame — at least, at first I didn’t. What I saw was her mouth, as it opened when she screamed. Then I heard her hair kind of crackle as it caught fire. Then at last I saw the flame, where she was smacking it out, or trying to smack it out, with her hand, on her bottom. I grabbed her, lifted, and flung her to the floor, to get her horizontal, so I could smack out the fire with my hand, which I did. Then I smacked at the cake, on the table, to put out the candles, at last. Then I held her close, kissing her, and whispering: “I had to — it’s how you do, when somebody catches on fire, it’s the only way!”

She was moaning in pain, but nodded. All that took, I suppose, three seconds, but it seemed more like a year, and I give you one guess, when I looked, who was holding the gun. He was completely unexcited, as calm as a wooden Indian, but seemed to be waiting for something. Pretty soon, in a minute or so, here it came: the ring of the phone. He told her: “Answer it, Sonya. And see that you talk right!”

“Answer it: How can I talk? I’m hurt! I’m burned!”

“I said answer it. Now!”

I started to argue with him, to curse at him, to bawl him out, but she said: “No, Gramie, no — or he’ll kill us.”

She scrambled to her feet, me helping her, while the phone bell went right on. Then she answered, in a chirpy, conversational way, kind of teary, but not much: “Hello?... Oh. Mrs. Persoff — I’m sorry I took so long, but I was out in the kitchen... Yes, I did scream, I certainly did — after doing the stupidest thing! It’s Mr. Kirby’s birthday, and I got him a cake, with candles. I was just blowing them out, when I stepped too close and my sleeve caught... No, it’s not bad, but I could have burned myself, I could really have done myself in... Oh, no thank you, Mrs. Persoff, Mr. Kirby is fixing me up — I’m not dressed, and you’d just be complicating things for me. But thank you ever so much.”

She hung up. He said: “I told you, take it off.”

“Take what off?”

“The dress! Whatever you’ve got!”

“How can I? It’s stuck to me, where you set me on fire, like a rat! Listen, I need a doctor! I can’t—”

“Take it off!”

She took it off, loosening the places that were stuck, two patches on her hip, and lifting it over her head. She was stark naked except for the shoes, and livid red blotches showed, on her shoulder, hip, and neck. All around the place on her neck was a mass of singed black hair. He said: “Get in that closet.”

She stepped in the hall closet, the one I had for guests’ coats and hats. He closed the door and turned the key in the lock. To me he said, “Face the wall.”

I faced the wall.

“Put your hands flat against it.”

I put my hands flat against it.

Something crashed on my head.

I didn’t come to all at once, only little by little. First I felt pain, a jolting pain in my back, as though something was hitting me. I tried to fend it off, but couldn’t move my hand. Then I realized it was tied, that both my hands were tied behind my back. I didn’t know with what, but it turned out later it was with kitchen towels, knotted hard and wetted, to set the cloth. Then, as I tried to move, I found my feet were tied, too. The jolts to my back kept on, and suddenly I heard her scream: “Stop it! Stop it, I tell you! You stop kicking him, do you hear me?”

“I kick him where he kicked me.”

“You could kill him, doing that!”

“Oh wouldn’t that be awful!”

That went on for some time, a couple of years, so it seemed, with me flopping around, straining to pull loose. Then my shoulder was jerked to flop me on my back instead of my stomach. When at last I opened my eyes, the two of them were there, she naked as before, the red blotches bigger it seemed, and he naked too, except for underpants. He had her by the wrist, yanking her around, and the sight of it made me furious, but I couldn’t get loose to stop it. They wrestled around, she trying to break away, he trying to make her hold still, and each stomp of their feet shook the floor, so I felt it in my head, which wanted to split. I realized pretty soon that he didn’t have the gun, that he’d put it on a chair, and that that was what she was doing, trying to pull clear and get to it. But he flung her clear and picked it up. “Now,” he snarled. “Quit fooling around, get on the floor.”

“I will in a pig’s eye.”

He corrected her, with words I don’t put in, and she agreed, repeating them back at him, and twisting them around, so they applied to him. She turned and went to the side table, and he asked: “What are you doing there?”

“Getting a napkin, stupid. “Maybe I have to get raped, but let’s not mess up my rug. It’s a beautiful thing, and Gramie takes pride in his house.”

“Goddam it, okay.”

She faced him again, the napkin over one arm, and he beckoned her to him. He said: “I told you, get on the floor.”

“And I told you, I won’t.”

Then, in a saucy, come-get-me way, she sashayed up to him. But to grab her he had to put down the gun, which he did, once more, in the chair. She said: “You poor cripple, you had to have help before, two people to hold me for you, do you think you can rape me now, with no one to help you at all? Oh boy, is that a joke.”

It seemed funny, after saying that, that she didn’t duck to make him catch her. However, she didn’t. She just stood there, smiling to show her teeth, and then came marching to him, both her hands held out, the napkin flapping in one. He grabbed at her, and she slapped with her free hand, fired one right at his face. He grabbed it with both hands. Then began a waltz that made no sense, with him staggering around, his hands gripping his side, and her staggering with him, beating with her fist at something inside the napkin. It went on a long time, or what seemed a long time to me, with each lurch and jerk and stomp shaking the floor under my head. But then, just for a glimpse I saw red under the napkin, but not the red of blood. It was the red of the ice-pick butt, and I knew then what she had done — chocked that ice pick into him, that she’d got when she got the napkin, and hidden inside its folds when she turned away from the table. She was hammering the butt into him, while he fought to pull it out. Then suddenly he gasped, went straight up in the air, and came down in a heap on the floor.

My head almost split, and red flame shot in front of my eyes.