Going to Meet the Man Read online

  “Miss Bowman,” he said sharply—and paused. “Well, if I were you I wouldn’t mention it yet to”—he waved his hand uncomfortably—“the girls out there.” Now he really did look rather boyish. “It looks better if it comes from the front office.”

  “I understand,” she said quickly.

  “Also, I didn’t ask for you out of any—racial—considerations,” he said. “You just seemed, the most sensible girl available.”

  “I understand,” she repeated; they were both trying not to smile. “And thank you again.” She closed the door of his office behind her.

  “A man called you,” said the stocky girl. “He said he’d call back.”

  “Thank you,” Ruth said. She could see that the girl wanted to talk so she busily studied some papers on her desk and retired behind the noise of her typewriter.

  The stocky girl had gone out to lunch and Ruth was reluctantly deciding that she might as well go too when Paul called again.

  “Hello. How’s it going up there?”

  “Dull. How are things down there? Are you out of bed already?”

  “What do you mean, already?” He sounded slightly nettled and was trying not to sound that way, the almost certain signal that a storm was coming. “It’s nearly one o’clock. I got work to do too, you know.”

  “Yes. I know.” But neither could she quite keep the sardonic edge out of her voice.

  There was a silence.

  “You coming straight home from work?”

  “Yes. Will you be there?”

  “Yeah. I got to go uptown with Cosmo this afternoon, talk to some gallery guy, Cosmo thinks he might like my stuff.”

  “Oh”—thinking Damn Cosmo!—“that’s wonderful, Paul. I hope something comes of it.”

  Nothing whatever would come of it. The gallery owner would be evasive—if he existed, if they ever got to his gallery—and then Paul and Cosmo would get drunk. She would hear, while she ached to be free, to be anywhere else, with anyone else, from Paul, all about how stupid art dealers were, how incestuous the art world had become, how impossible it was to do anything—his eyes, meanwhile, focusing with a drunken intensity, his eyes at once arrogant and defensive.

  Well. Most of what he said was true, and she knew it, it was not his fault.

  Not his fault. “Yeah. I sure hope so. I thought I’d take up some of my water colors, some small sketches—you know, all the most obvious things I’ve got.”

  This policy did not, empirically, seem to be as foolproof as everyone believed but she did not know how to put her uncertain objections into words. “That sounds good. What time have you got to be there?”

  “Around three. I’m meeting Cosmo now for lunch.”

  “Oh”—lightly—“why don’t you two, just this once, order your lunch before you order your cocktails?”

  He laughed too and was clearly no more amused than she. “Well, Cosmo’ll be buying, he’ll have to, so I guess I’ll leave it up to him to order.”

  Touché. Her hand, holding the receiver, shook. “Well, I hope you two make it to the gallery without falling flat on your faces.”

  “Don’t worry.” Then, in a rush, she recognized the tone before she understood the words, it was his you-can’t-say-I-haven’t-been-honest-with-you tone: “Cosmos says the gallery owner’s got a daughter.”

  I hope to God she marries you, she thought. I hope she marries you and takes you off to Istanbul forever, where I will never have to hear you again, so I can get a breath of air, so I can get out from under.

  They both laughed, a laugh conspiratorial and sophisticated, like the whispered, whiskey laughter of a couple in a nightclub. “Oh?” she said. “Is she pretty?”

  “She’s probably a pig. She’s had two husbands already, both artists.”

  She laughed again. “Where has she buried the bodies?”

  “Well”—really amused this time, but also rather grim—“one of them ended up in the booby hatch and the other turned into a fairy and was last seen dancing with some soldiers in Majorca.”

  Now they laughed together and the wires between them hummed, almost, with the stormless friendship they both hoped to feel for each other someday. “A powerful pig. Maybe you better have a few drinks.”

  “You see what I mean? But Cosmo says she’s not such a fool about painting.”

  “She doesn’t seem to have much luck with painters. Maybe you’ll break the jinx.”

  “Maybe. Wish me luck. It sure would be nice to unload some of my stuff on somebody.”

  You’re doing just fine, she thought. “Will you call me later?”

  “Yeah. Around three-thirty, four o’clock, as soon as I get away from there.”

  “Right. Be good.”

  “You too. Goodby.”

  “Goodby.”

  She put down the receiver, still amused and still trembling. After all, he had called her. But he would probably not have called her if he were not actually nourishing the hope that the gallery owner’s daughter might find him interesting; in that case he would have to tell Ruth about her and it was better to have the way prepared. Paul was always preparing the way for one unlikely exploit or flight or another, it was the reason he told Ruth “everything.” To tell everything is a very effective means of keeping secrets. Secrets hidden at the heart of midnight are simply waiting to be dragged to the light, as, on some unlucky high noon, they always are. But secrets shrouded in the glare of candor are bound to defeat even the most determined and agile inspector for the light is always changing and proves that the eye cannot be trusted. So Ruth knew about Paul nearly all there was to know, knew him better than anyone else on earth ever had or probably ever would, only—she did not know him well enough to stop him from being Paul.

  While she was waiting for the elevator she realized, with mild astonishment, that she was actually hoping that the gallery owner’s daughter would take Paul away. This hope resembled the desperation of someone suffering from a toothache who, in order to bring the toothache to an end, was almost willing to jump out of a window. But she found herself wondering if love really ought to be like a toothache. Love ought—she stepped out of the elevator, really wondering for a moment which way to turn—to be a means of being released from guilt and terror. But Paul’s touch would never release her. He had power over her not because she was free but because she was guilty. To enforce his power over her he had only to keep her guilt awake. This did not demand malice on his part, it scarcely demanded perception—it only demanded that he have, as, in fact, he overwhelmingly did have, an instinct for his own convenience. His touch, which should have raised her, lifted her roughly only to throw her down hard; whenever he touched her, she became blacker and dirtier than ever; the loneliest place under heaven was in Paul’s arms.

  And yet—she went into his arms with such eagerness and such hope. She had once thought herself happy. Was this because she had been proud that he was white? But—it was she who was insisting on these colors. Her blackness was not Paul’s fault. Neither was her guilt. She was punishing herself for something, a crime she could not remember. You dirty … you black and dirty …

  She bumped into someone as she passed the cigar stand in the lobby and, looking up to murmur, “Excuse me,” recognized Mr. Davis. He was stuffing cigars into his breast pocket—though the gesture was rather like that of a small boy stuffing his pockets with cookies, she was immediately certain that they were among the most expensive cigars that could be bought. She wondered what he spent on his clothes—it looked like a great deal. From the crown of rakishly tilted, deafeningly conservative hat to the tips of his astutely dulled shoes, he glowed with a very nearly vindictive sharpness. There were no flies on Mr. Davis. He would always be the best-dressed man in anybody’s lobby.

  He was just about the last person she wanted to see. But perhaps his lunch hour was over and he was coming in.

  “Miss Bowman!” He gave her a delighted grin. “Are you just going to lunch?”

  He made her w
ant to laugh. There was something so incongruous about finding that grin behind all that manner and under all those clothes.

  “Yes,” she said. “I guess you’ve had your lunch?”

  “No. I ain’t had no lunch,” he said. “I’m hungry, just like you.” He paused. “I be delighted to have your company, Miss Bowman.”

  Very courtly, she thought, amused, and the smile is extremely wicked. Then she realized that she was pleased that a man was being courtly with her, even if only for an instant in a crowded lobby, and, at the same instant, made the discovery that what was so widely referred to as a “wicked” smile was really only the smile, scarcely ever to be encountered any more, of a man who was not afraid of women.

  She thought it safe to demur. “Please don’t think you have to be polite.”

  “I’m never polite about food,” he told her. “Almost drove my mamma crazy.” He took her arm. “I know a right nice place nearby.” His stride and his accent made her think of home. She also realized that he, like many Negroes of his uneasily rising generation, kept in touch, so to speak, with himself by deliberately affecting, whenever possible, the illiterate speech of his youth. “We going to get on real well, you’ll see. Time you get through being my secretary, you likely to end up with Alcoholics Anonymous.”

  The place “nearby” turned out to be a short taxi ride away, but it was, as he had said, “right nice.” She doubted that Mr. Davis could possibly eat there every day, though it was clear that he was a man who liked to spend money.

  She ordered a dry martini and he a bourbon on the rocks. He professed himself astonished that she knew what a dry martini was. “I thought you was a country girl.”

  “I am a country girl.” she said.

  “No, no,” he said, “no more. You a country girl who came to the city and that’s the dangerous kind. Don’t know if it’s safe, having you for my secretary.”

  Underneath all his chatter she felt him watching her, sizing her up.

  “Are you afraid your wife will object?” she asked.

  “You ought to be able to look at me,” he said, “and tell that I ain’t got a wife.”

  She laughed. “So you’re not married. I wonder if I should tell the girls in the office?”

  “I don’t care what you tell them,” he said. Then: “How do you get along with them?”

  “We get along fine,” she said. “We don’t have much to talk about except whether or not you’re married but that’ll probably last until you do get married and then we can talk about your wife.”

  But thinking, For God’s sake let’s get off this subject, she added, before he could say anything: “You called me a country girl. Aren’t you a country boy?”

  “I am,” he said, “but I didn’t change my drinking habits when I came North. If bourbon was good enough for me down yonder, it’s good enough for me up here.”

  “I didn’t have any drinking habits to change, Mr. Davis,” she told him. “I was too young to be drinking when I left home.”

  His eyes were slightly questioning but he held his peace, while she wished that she had held hers. She concentrated on sipping her martini, suddenly remembering that she was sitting opposite a man who knew more about why girls left home than could be learned from locker-room stories. She wondered if he had a sister and tried to be amused at finding herself still so incorrigibly old fashioned. But he did not, really, seem to be much like her brother. She met his eyes again.

  “Where I come from,” he said, with a smile, “nobody was too young to be drinking. Toughened them up for later life,” and he laughed.

  By the time lunch was over she had learned that he was from a small town in Alabama, was the youngest of three sons (but had no sisters), had gone to college in Tennessee, was a reserve officer in the Air Force. He was thirty-two. His mother was living, his father was dead. He had lived in New York for two years but was beginning, now, to like it less than he had in the beginning.

  “At first,” he said, “I thought it would be fun to live in a city where didn’t nobody know you and you didn’t know nobody and where, look like, you could just do anything you was big and black enough to do. But you get tired not knowing nobody and there ain’t really that many things you want to do alone.”

  “Oh, but you must have friends,” she said, “uptown.”

  “I don’t live uptown. I live in Brooklyn. Ain’t nobody in Brooklyn got friends.”

  She laughed with him, but distrusted the turn the conversation was taking. They were walking back to the office. He walked slowly, as though in deliberate opposition to the people around them, although they were already a little late—at least she was late, but, since she was with one of her superiors, it possibly didn’t matter.

  “Where do you live?” he asked her. “Do you live uptown?”

  “No,” she said, “I live downtown on Bank Street.” And after a moment: “That’s in the Village. Greenwich Village.”

  He grinned. “Don’t tell me you studying to be a writer or a dancer or something?”

  “No. I just found myself there. It used to be cheap.”

  He scowled. “Ain’t nothing cheap in this town no more, not even the necessities.”

  His tone made clear to which necessities he referred and she would have loved to tease him a little, just to watch him laugh. But she was beginning, with every step they took, to be a little afraid of him. She was responding to him with parts of herself that had been buried so long she had forgotten they existed. In his office that morning, when he shook her hand, she had suddenly felt a warmth of affection, of nostalgia, of gratitude even—and again in the lobby—he had somehow made her feel safe. It was his friendliness that was so unsettling. She had grown used to unfriendly people.

  Still, she did not want to be friends with him: still less did she desire that their friendship should ever become anything more. Sooner or later he would learn about Paul. He would look at her differently then. It would not be—so much—because of Paul as a man, perhaps not even Paul as a white man. But it would make him bitter, it would make her ashamed, for him to see how she was letting herself be wasted—for Paul, who did not love her.

  This was the reason she was ashamed and wished to avoid the scrutiny of Mr. Davis. She was doing something to herself—out of shame?—that he would be right in finding indefensible. She was punishing herself. For what? She looked sideways at his black Sambo profile under the handsome lightweight Dobbs hat and wished that she could tell him about it, that he would turn his head, holding it slightly to one side, and watch her with those eyes that had seen and that had learned to hide so much. Eyes that had seen so many girls like her taken beyond the hope of rescue, while all the owner of the eyes could do—perhaps she wore Paul the way Mr. Davis wore his hat. And she looked away from him, half-smiling and yet near tears, over the furious streets on which, here and there, like a design, colored people also hurried, thinking, And we were slaves here once.

  “Do you like music?” he asked her abruptly. “I don’t necessarily mean Carnegie Hall.”

  Now was the time to stop him. She had only to say, “Mr. Davis, I’m living with someone.” It would not be necessary to say anything more than that.

  She met his eyes. “Of course I like music,” she said faintly.

  “Well, I know a place I’d like to take you one of these evenings, after work. Not going to be easy, being my secretary.”

  His smile forced her to smile with him. But, “Mr. Davis,” she said, and stopped. They were before the entrance to their office building.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You forget something?”

  “No.” She looked down, feeling big, black and foolish. “Mr. Davis,” she said, “you don’t know anything about me.”

  “You don’t know anything about me, either,” he said.

  “That’s not what I mean,” she said.

  He sounded slightly angry. “I ain’t asked you nothing yet,” he said. “Why can’t you wait till you’re asked
?”

  “Well,” she stammered, “it may be too late by then.”

  They stared hard at each other for a moment. “Well,” he said, “if it turns out to be too late, won’t be nobody to blame but me, will it?”

  She stared at him again, almost hating him. She blindly felt that he had no right to do this to her, to cause her to feel such a leap of hope, if he was only, in the end, going to give her back all her shame.

  “You know what they say down home,” she said, slowly. “If you don’t know what you doing, you better ask somebody.” There were tears in her eyes.

  He took her arm. “Come on in this house, girl,” he said. “We got insurance to sell.”

  They said nothing to each other in the elevator on the way upstairs. She wanted to laugh and she wanted to cry. He, ostentatiously, did not watch her; he stood next to her, humming Rocks in My Bed.

  She waited all afternoon for Paul to telephone, but although, perversely enough, the phone seemed never to cease ringing, it never rang for her. At five-fifteen, just before she left the office, she called the apartment. Paul was not there. She went downstairs to a nearby bar and ordered a drink and called again at a quarter to six. He was not there. She resolved to have one more drink and leave this bar, which she did, wandering a few blocks north to a bar frequented by theater people. She sat in a booth and ordered a drink and at a quarter to seven called again. He was not there.

  She was in a reckless, desperate state, like flight. She knew that she could not possibly go home and cook supper and wait in the empty apartment until his key turned in the lock. He would come in, breathless and contrite—or else, truculently, not contrite—probably a little drunk, probably quite hungry. He would tell her where he had been and what he had been doing. Whatever he told her would probably be true—there are so many ways of telling the truth! And whether it was true or not did not matter and she would not be able to reproach him for the one thing that did matter: that he had left her sitting in the house alone. She could not make this reproach because, after all, leaving women sitting around in empty houses had been the specialty of all men for ages. And, for ages, when the men arrived, women bestirred themselves to cook supper—luckily, it was not yet common knowledge that many a woman had narrowly avoided committing murder by calmly breaking a few eggs.