'Are you a Communist?' I asked him.
Everybody else looked shocked, but he didn't even flinch. 'No, not that I have anything against the Communists, but I believe in the same, sensible way of doing things. And there's just one solution for the Negro-'
All of a sudden I burnt up. I'd been trying to get away from the white folks to begin with. And I wasn't going to have this peckerwood coming down here among my people, playing a great white god, sitting on his ass, solving the Negro problem with a flow of diction and making me look like a goddamned fool in front of my girl, when all I could do around his people was to be a flunkey and get kicked in the mouth. And what was more, his goddamned condescending smile was getting under my skin.
I cut him off with a sudden violent gesture and jumped to my feet. That broke it up.
CHAPTER XI
When the last of Alice's guests had gone she came upstairs and stood in the doorway looking at me with a wide-eyed condemning stare. I shook a cigarette loose and puffed at it and let her stand there and stare. She had a hell of a lot of gall at that, I thought. When she saw that her silent scrutiny wasn't going to beat me down she came into the room and took a seat, crossed her legs, and looked up at me with a Bette Davis pose.
'Bob, are you trying intentionally to make me dislike you?' she asked.
I dropped into a chair facing her, gave her back some of her own scrutiny, said nothing.
'Or is it that you dislike me now?' she kept on.
I wanted her to drop it. Last night had happened and was gone and if I said anything about it at all it'd just make us hate each other. I didn't want it that way. So I said, 'I'm sorry, baby, but I took as much of Leighton as I could. If I'd known you were going to have all the wizards here I'd have stayed away. I just came because I wanted to talk to you.'
'But you insulted Tom deliberately,' she charged. 'He hadn't said anything that should have offended you. He was merely trying to tell you something for your own good.'
'Well, I ain't for it,' I said.
She frowned. 'It isn't just that. That's just one incident. You always have a chip on your shoulder.'
All of a sudden I knew she was trying to put me on the defensive. 'Now what are you getting at?' I asked. 'I suppose I'm to blame for everything that happened last night?' I said it before I thought.
She got a hurt look on and said, 'So that's it? So you're trying to get even with me now?'
I started getting mad. 'Goddamnit, if I'd wanted to get even I know plenty ways of doing it besides sitting up listening to your goddamned friends,' I told her.
'I can't stop you from hating me if that's the way your mind works,' she said.
'All right, baby,' I said harshly. 'You said it, now let's skip it.' I knew if the thing started riding me we wouldn't have anything at all for each other any more.
'Is that why you told me, this afternoon when I called, about your affairs with other women?' she went on. 'Is it because you want to hurt me now?' The thing was eating into her: she couldn't let it go.
I spread my hands. 'That isn't what I said,' I denied. 'What I said was I knew plenty chicks I could go to bed with if that was all I wanted-'
'Isn't that all you want of me too?' she cut in.
'What do you want me to say, that I believe it was an accident-a drunken episode-that I still believe you're the finest, most wonderful chick on earth?' I asked her. 'Is that what you want me to say?' I blew a stream of smoke into the air. 'Okay, I say it. Now let's drop it.'
'You have an egocentricity that borders on a disease,' she informed me, getting a high and mighty air. 'You begin by attacking my character, and then when I point out some of your own weaknesses you say, 'Let's drop it, I can't be criticized, I'm too-'
'Baby, please,' I said. 'I didn't mean it that way. I'm not trying to bring you down. I was only-'
She didn't let it touch her. 'I know you will find it hard to realize that anyone could be thinking about anything besides you,' she said. 'But believe it or not, I am thinking about myself. I am wondering why I put up with you, why I continue this farce-'
It was getting brittle now, acid, raw. 'All right, goddamnit, let's quit!' I flared. 'I'm willing to let it go, why in the goddamn hell aren't you?'
But she wasn't satisfied; she went on as if something tight inside of her was driving her. 'You're rude and uncouth and unintelligent.' She paused to light a cigarette, and I let myself go limp. I was tired of fighting with everybody; I decided to let her get it out of her system so we could have some understanding.
'There are three men who sit on my doorstep who are superior to you in every respect. They are cultured, intelligent, sensitive, prominent in the community; and any one of them could support me if I married him…'
I closed my eyes and tried not to listen.
'They understand the niceties a woman enjoys. They do anything in the world I ask them and it's a pleasure to be in their company… You're anti-social, boorish, ill at ease,' she kept hammering. 'You're not especially handsome-you're darker than I like; you dress like a gangster, you're not acceptable socially in any respect, and yet I impose you on my parents and my friends-'
It was beginning to ride me now. I kept telling myself that she just felt beat because she'd let me see her the night before and now she was trying to get over it by digging me. But it wasn't working so well; it was all I could do to keep from blowing.
'Too true, baby,' I said, trying to keep it inside of me.
'You're insanely belligerent,' she continued. 'You think you can solve all of your problems with your brawn. You have a really staggering inferiority complex, amounting to a fixation. You're disrespectful, quite ignorant, simply impossible.'
I had enough of it. 'You know what you can do for me,' I grated, leaning forward in my seat.
She gave me a long clinical stare of appraisal and then smiled contemptuously. 'I've been tremendously worried every minute since you left me last night that you would be so hurt and angry I would never see you again,' she began, then waited for it to sink in. 'I have even considered going to your room to plead with you.' Now she was sneering at me. 'I find that you are not worth it,' she said. 'You are not only willing to take it, believing that I am such-'
I told her right out of the hollow chagrin in my guts: 'That's because you're a nigger. If you were a white woman-'
She was out of her chair and across the room and had slapped me before I could finish. It was a solid pop with fury in it and stung like hell. I came up blind mad, grabbed her by her shoulders, and shook her until her teeth rattled.
'Goddamnit, I'll kill you,' I mouthed. 'I'll-I'll-who in the goddamned hell do you think you are, you-you-' I couldn't think of anything bad enough to call her.
When I stopped shaking her she looked up at me with a funny docile expression and said in a low controlled voice: 'You are a filthy Negro,' and I said: 'What about you? You're no goddamned angel.'
She sighed and said: 'But for some strange reason I love you,' and went candy. Her eyes got limpid and her mouth got suddenly wet and her body just folded into mine.
Whatever she had, it was really and truly for me. I couldn't help it. I went soft as drugstore cotton and fell into her arms as if I was going home. I kissed her eyes, her nose, her throat; I pulled her housecoat away from her neck and kissed the curve of her shoulder. I could hear her soft throaty gasping as she pressed her body hard against mine.
Right in the middle of it the thing got me again. I couldn't help it. I asked her, 'Did you ever really do that?'
She went instantly cold, put her hands against my chest, and pushed me away from her so quickly I almost fell.
'Do you just have to do it?' she asked, her eyes condemning me. 'Do you just have to keep bringing it up?' She went over and sat down and put her face in her hands. 'You destroy every emotion I have for you.'
