“No.”
“Or lick Cool Whip off my-”
“No, no.”
“I’m not into games. Or pain, I draw the line at pain.”
“Nothing like that, I promise.”
“What, then?”
“I’ll show you.”
He let go of her, put his hands on that briefcase of his instead, and showed her. Whipped this thing out of there that for a couple of awful seconds looked like some kind of dead animal.
‘Yo, what is that?”
He shook it out, extended it toward her. Long and blond and hairy “A wig?” she said.
“A wig,” he said.
That was what it was, all right. About three feet of blond hair so pale it was almost platinum, straight except for some tangles and end flips. She stared at it hanging from his fingers like some kind of trophy scalp. He was staring at it, too, hot-eyed, his mouth hanging open a little as if he might start drooling on it.
“What you want me to do with that?”
“Wear it,” he said.
“You don’t mean in bed while we-?”
“Yes.”
“Man, what for?”
“It excites me.”
“… Yeah, so I see.”
He wiggled the wig. “Put it on,” he said.
“No,” she said.
“You won’t be sorry. It enhances my performance.”
“Not gonna be any performance with that thing on my head.”
“Come on, now, it’s just a harmless fantasy-”
“I don’t do fantasies. I don’t do wigs.”
“The sex will be fantastic, you’ll see. Best you’ve ever had.”
“Oh, sure. Blondes have more fun, right?”
“Don’t you want to find out?”
“Uh-uh. No way.”
“Tamara, it’s important to me that you wear it.”
“Must be. What, you carry it with you everywhere you go, just in case you get lucky?”
“I won’t dignify that question with an answer.”
“Dignify? I don’t see much dignity in a black man hauling a Marilyn Monroe scalp around in his briefcase.”
“It’s just a wig. You make it sound like something obscene.”
“It is if you don’t wash it.”
“What?”
“Bet you never wash it. Expect me to put it on my head with all your other women’s cooties still in there.”
“For God’s sake-”
“Listen here. You want a white woman, why don’t you go find yourself one instead of messing with me?”
“I don’t want a white woman. I don’t date white women.”
“Black woman in a blond wig? That what boils your pot?”
He blinked. His mouth thinned down tight. The wig wiggled. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Any black woman, right? Just so long as she’s wearing Marilyn’s hair.”
“This isn’t Marilyn’s hair!”
“Looks like it from where I’m standing.”
“And you’re wrong, it’s you I want-”
“You sure about that?”
“What do you mean, am I sure?”
“Can’t help but wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“If it’s a woman you really want. Or just that scalp.”
He puffed up like a toad and made a couple of sputtering sounds.
She was on a roll now. No longer horny, no longer interested in Mr. Clement Rawls, and with her claws out in frustration. She said, “You ask me, you’re in love with that thing. The way you hold it, look at it, practically drool on it. Wouldn’t surprise me if you pet it and hump it all by itself when there’s nobody else around.”
“You can’t talk to me like that! You smart-ass bitch, who do you think you are!”
That was when she threw him out.
And that was the end of that.
Sad and pathetic, all right. But the worst thing about this Saturday night almost, aside from the fact she hadn’t gotten laid, was that now her story had a new twist that made her feel sorry for herself in a different way. A cheating chump cellist wasn’t bad enough, oh no. Now the Man Upstairs had to go and throw in a scalp-sucking stockbroker fool and turn a tragedy into a Whoopi Goldberg farce.
21
I was driving down a dark, twisty road, going somewhere in a hurry. Trees, houses, fence posts materialized and dematerialized like wraiths in the stabbing headlight glare. There were other people crowded into the car with me, front seat and back; I couldn’t see their faces in the blackness, but I could feel them close around me, somebody’s fetid breath moist on the back of my neck. I was sweating from all the body heat. A disembodied voice kept saying, “Slow down, slow down, slow down,” and I kept driving fast, rustlings and whisperings all around me as the clutch of passengers shifted position.
Up ahead something took on sudden definition in the headlights: railroad tracks, flashing red semaphore lights, a crossing arm that was just starting to come down across the road. One of the faceless people shouted, “Look out! Train coming!” Another one in the backseat threw an arm around my neck and yanked my head back. I struggled to loosen the grip so I could breathe. And then I could see the eye of the locomotive bearing down from the left, big and bright like a madman’s eye, growing larger and larger until it took away most of the dark. I hit the brakes, hard. The car slewed, skidded, came back on a point. Warning bells began to clang as I brought us to a grinding stop nose up to the crossing arm. The locomotive was a roaring giant now, its headlamp as painfully blinding as the sun at midday, and the bells kept clanging and jangling One of the faceless women said, “Who’s that at this hour?”
I said, “What? What?”
Kerry said, “The phone, there’s somebody on the phone.”
And I was sitting up in bed, damp and disoriented, part of the sheet in a stranglehold around my neck. The lamp on Kerry’s nightstand was on; the light made me squint. I fought off the sheet and blanket, fought off the remnants of the dream, and got my hand on the phone and finally shut off the noise.
I growled something half coherent into the receiver. A woman’s voice said my name, then rushed into an apology for calling so late, and then there was a jumble of words that didn’t signify. What did come through was the emotion behind them: they were soaked in the raw fluids of panic.
“Slow down,” I said, “I can’t understand you. Who is this?”
“Lynn Troxell.” Raggedy breath. “Oh God, I didn’t know who else to call…”
That got rid of most of the sleep fuzz. “What is it, what’s happened?”
