Every Man a King

32

The numberless room was a slender aisle, seven or eight feet wide but long, twenty, twenty-two feet. Above my head was a ceiling that I could reach up and touch. The bed was not quite queen-size and the floor, lacquered pine. There was a desk fashioned from pressboard and finished with a dark linoleum sheet. The chair was plastic and red and the window, not large enough to jump out of, looked out on Main Street.

It was warm on the fourth floor but not hot like out on the street. I sat on the red chair, didn’t like the way it felt, and so went to sit on the bed. After a minute or so I went into the bathroom. It was equipped with toilet, sink on a stalk, a slender horizontal mirror that was like a slash across the wall, and a shower stall with no door or curtain.

I remember thinking that this was the future of working-class vacationing. Everything you could ask for but less.

I called Roger Ferris, only getting his voice on an answering service. I left him the hotel phone number, then called Aja.

“Hi, Daddy. Where are you?”

“In Black Appalachia.”

“I thought Appalachia was all white.”

“Wherever you got poor people, there’s gonna be black skins somewhere.”

“Okay.”

“How you doin’?”

“I’m okay. Mama called. She said that she and Coleman are going back home to fix up the house. You think that’s safe?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“So he’s not going to jail?”

“Naw. He’ll turn state’s evidence and they’ll just file it away.”

“Oliya’s here. You wanna talk to her?”

“No. Not now.”

“She’s pretty wonderful. Taught me how to flip somebody if he grabs me and showed me the twelve exercises I need to be strong.”

“You always needed a big sister, honey.”

“I miss you. Come home soon.”

“I will.”

Somewhere around 10:00 the room phone rang. I didn’t know I was asleep and so the old-fashioned ring startled me up to my feet. The bell sounded once more before I was sure enough to answer.

“Hello?”

“Joseph.”

“Oh, Roger. Hey. Yeah. I left you the number. Right.”

“You need to throw some water on your face?”

That sounded like a fine idea.

In the condensed bathroom I used the lime-colored bowl-shaped sink to splash my face and neck. In the slit of a mirror I could see that I needed a shave. I had a razor somewhere. Where?

I dumped a double handful of water on my head.

“I’m back, Roger.”

“You had something to tell me?”

“I went to see Quiller just a few hours before he died.”

“He say anything useful?”

“I don’t know, maybe. They told him that he was going to a federal supermax in Colorado.”

“Okay. But him being dead means that’s hardly a problem.”

“Not for him, but how about for you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I already said for you to drop the investigation.”

“I know. I only went there to see if there was anything I could do for the man.”

“Why? He was a racist.”

I was using the banter to gather my thoughts.

“Maybe,” I allowed. “But I’m a professional. I went in and told him I was trying to prove whether he did something and if something was done to him. He was free to think what he wanted and I am too.”

“Okay. I get you. Is there anything else you need to say?”

“Yeah. What is it you wanted out of this investigation?”

“I already told you that.”

“No, man. No. You didn’t put me on this job to protect the rights of the individual under the Constitution. Uh-uh.”

“So what is it you think I’m after, Joe?”

That was the question, the only question that needed answering.

“When I got to my office last night your daughter and a couple of thugs were waiting for me.”

“Cassandra?”

“You got any other daughters?”

“What did she want?”

“The helm of MDLT.”

“And what did that have to do with you?”

I’m a student of human nature, not a master of it. But I knew the answer to that question would be like striking a match next to a vat of gasoline. Somebody was bound to get burned.

“She wants Quiller’s blackmail file and also for me to ask you kindly to step down as CEO.”

“Step down or what?”

“I think she thought you might be afraid of whatever Quiller had in his files,” I said.

“What does she have to do with him?”

Instead of responding to that query I said, “If you refuse to stand down I am to put a bullet in your heart.”

After a very long silence, Roger whispered, “She said that?”

“Yeah.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“I asked how much. After she bowled me over with a number I told her, hell yeah.”

I turned on the lamp set on a ledge beside the small bed. My long room looked shabbier under the stark white light.

“What does she want with the files?” Roger asked.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Valeria Ursini.”

The silence was intense.

“What about her?”

“Was she your girlfriend?”

“My wife was dead by then and it was only a brief affair.”

“Your daughter thinks you had Valeria’s boyfriend, George Laurel, murdered. She told me that Quiller’s files prove it.”

“No.”

“Did you have Sola Prendergast kill George?”

“No. No, I did not.”

“Definitely? You had nothing to do with it?”

“Yes, nothing.”

“Then why’s she so sure?”

“Joe, you have to believe me. I did not have that poor boy killed. Valeria and I had parted ways by the time she enrolled at Yale.”

“But she got into Yale with your help.”

“She was a straight-A student who had competed in the Olympics. My college fund simply recognized talent.”

“Then why is Cassandra so certain?” I asked. “She doesn’t seem like she’s some kind of conspiracy theorist.”

“Do you plan to kill me, Joe?”

“If I did I sure the fuck wouldn’t warn you about it.”

“You’re down in Kentucky?”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you get your hands on those files, I’d like to see them.”

With those words he hung up.

I lay back on the mattress and fell right to sleep.

Before the Quiller Case I remembered very few dreams. And even then the great majority of the reveries were about running water or some such thing so that I’d wake up and go to the toilet.

That night I was lost in a deep forest, and someone, I didn’t know who, was after me. I’d take a few steps and then stop, afraid that the sound of my footsteps would call down my enemy. That was the entirety of the dream; I’d take a few steps, get frightened by sounds of leaves rustling, then crouch down — naked and afraid.

The doorbell of the lean room was a double gong that reverberated a bit after sounding. I was sure that this was the horn of the men who were hunting me. I got so frightened that I sat up in the bed.

The red digits on the digital clock read 2:56.

The double gong sounded.

I was trying to think what kind of alarm it was when it sounded again.

“Who is it?”

“It is I, King Oliver.”

I opened the door and there stood Mathilda Prim.

She was wearing a form-fitting stark-white silk dress with black ink splotches here and there. The hem was short but still presentable. In her right hand she held a fifth bottle with no label.

“Kentucky hooch,” she said through a lovely smile.

“Come in.”

The room was so narrow that I had to back away to give her space through which to enter.

“They gave you the smallest room in the house,” she commented.

“So small it doesn’t even rank a number.”

She laughed and handed me the bottle.

“Did I wake you?”

“From a sleep that the whole world wants to come out of. Here, have a seat.”

I pulled the red plastic chair up to the bottom edge of the bed. She sat on it and I took the mattress.

Once we were settled, the repartee temporarily evaporated.

“I don’t think the man who designed this chair had much of a feeling for a woman’s posterior,” she said, trying to get comfortable on the uncomfortable chair.

“It’s not really made for people,” I observed. “We could change seats.”

“No, it’s okay.”

Sometimes, when people get together and there’s nothing to say, there are moments of quiet discomfort. We were still for a few moments, but somehow it felt... cozy.

I finally said, “I’m truly sorry about your husband.”

“He gave you the code. I was happy to see that it was you. Also that you deciphered my little peanut sign.”

That was the beginning of a longer silence. I got up and went to the bathroom to retrieve glasses wrapped in waxy paper. I brought these out and poured us both a shot and a half.

“Thank you,” Mathilda said when I handed her glass over.

She took a sip. I did too. It felt a little like a forgotten ritual that had survived all of the species of humanity.

“What now?” I asked.

“You mean after...?”

“Yeah.”

We drank a little more.

“Alfie was dealing with so much. When I met him all he had was his mind and what he hated. And then, when he tried to change, it killed him.”

“You think, I mean, you think he really killed himself?”

“One way or another.”

She raised her head and gazed at me, deeply. Her dark lips were tinted red. The eyeshadow was mild luminescence without a specific color.

“Peanut is a hard town,” she said. “And my family was the toughest nut in the bag. We came up fighting and drinking. I was in trouble since the age of fourteen.”

“Yeah?”

She grinned, at my brevity, I think.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I got tired of it and left, burned the candle at both ends and found out that I was good in school. Real good. By the time I met Alfie I’d read my way through the library. He needed me, in his mind he needed me.”

She took another sip, then moved from the chair to the bed.

With her back turned to me she said, “Hold me.”

I wrapped my arms around her from behind. She leaned back and I felt a tremor, not knowing which of us it came from.

“I always carried a knife with me since I was eleven. My brothers taught me how to fight and Daddy taught me how to drink. Whenever I read a book, it was at the private library in Miss Donaldson’s garage because the Prims thought reading was for punks.”

“They’d beat you if you picked up a book?”

“Like an egg.”

I held on a little tighter.

She lifted my hand and kissed it.

“Anyway, I left Peanut and went to Lexington. Up there I figured out that I had to get outta the South before I killed one’a them white men. I wasn’t used to white people because my whole life was spent in a colored town. Up in Syracuse, around the university, I didn’t get so mad and I hunkered down on an education.”

I kissed the back of her neck and she leaned harder.

“By the time I met Alfie I was ready to say something. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“And he was ready to listen. Up until that time I was either in my mind alone or just physically in the world. Even in school. But when I met Alfie, even though I hated things about him, we could hear each other and understand.”

I pulled her even closer and breathed in the clean scent of her hair. We stayed quiet like that for five minutes at least.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“You’re doin’ it.”

“Why did you send me that infinity symbol?”

“Isn’t that funny? It’s either infinity or a peanut.”

“Yeah. I was happy to hear from you.”

“Are you feelin’ this?”

I nodded and she turned to me.

The bed was too small but we made it work. There was something very wrong about what we were doing, but we dropped the guilt to the floor along with our clothes.

We kept the light on and watched each other do everything like teenagers discovering the power of adult connection. It was a first for me and maybe for her.

Sleep never felt so good.