(1964) The Man (65 page)

Prentiss had been definitely upset. Ten of the White House Detail had been dispatched to Paris to look things over at Chantilly and Versailles nearby. Two others were in bed with influenza. There would be no one to substitute for Beggs but that new kid, Ross, transferred to the Detail from Baltimore only a week ago and still unfamiliar with the White House routine and the President’s habits. Maybe the doctor would give Beggs a clean bill of health, and he could report for duty anyway, even if a little late. Momentarily, Beggs had wavered—duty—but then he had revived his resentment toward Prentiss and Dilman, Negroes who had put him down, were still trying to put him down, trying to keep him from one of their girls. It had been difficult for him, but he had insisted, in a pained voice, that he was just too sick, and he’d check back with Agajanian tonight.

Working his way through back streets toward Ruby’s apartment, to be sure that no neighbor would observe him, he had worried briefly that Agajanian might be concerned and call the house, and Gertrude would learn of his deception. But that was unlikely, he had decided, for he had told Prentiss he would be at the doctor’s long enough for a complete physical examination. Furthermore, Agajanian was too busy to give him a second thought at any time. The new kid, Ross, could do the job.

A half hour after his arrival in Ruby’s small walk-up apartment through the private entrance to which she had carefully directed him, his last lingering guilt about dereliction from duty had been washed away by the two generous servings of gin and Ruby’s provocative warmth.

She had asked how he had managed to arrange seeing her, and he had told her that there had been nothing to it. It had not been really easy, yet it had been easier than he had expected.

He saw her pleased face, and was in turn pleased himself by his aggressive independence. This was worth any risk. She was the most beautiful dark animal on earth, and he was alone with her.

She was saying, “You mean, Otter, I’m more important for you to see than the Pres? You mean you don’t mind givin’ up p’ofessional work jes ’cause you wanna be with me?”

The gin, and the scent of her, now mixed together behind his temples and made him light-headed and reckless. “Honey, I’d rather be here than anywhere on earth. This is all I’ve been dreaming about, day and night, being with you like this.”

“Whee!” she exclaimed, and suddenly she was up on her knees, reaching out for him. “Man, I sure like you sweet-talkin’ me, makin’ me tingle all ovah—you is deservin’ a reward—”

She was over him, to his surprise, playfully mouthing little kisses upon his cheek. The fluttering opening and closing of her soft lips aroused him. Unable to control himself further, he threw his arms around her, and handling her as easily as a flexible plaything, pulled her down to his chest, pressed his lips hard against her half-open mouth. She responded with her lips, and wriggled her body in his grasp, until the sensuous movements of her back and the sides of her breasts against his palms almost suffocated him.

When she came away from him, eyes now open and staring up at him, gasping to breathe as he gasped too, she said, “Man, you sure is potent—you gittin’ poor Ruby’s naycher stirrin’ up a mile high an’ wantin’ to go—”

“Honey—”

She pushed herself off his lap and came around to stare at him solemnly. “Man, you know what you is doin’ to me?”

“Ruby—”

“You sure enuff full of powers, man, got me hot and full up with naycher—better lemme change—wanna let lil Ruby change?”

Bewildered, frightened, Beggs said, “Whatever you want, Ruby. Yes, you’d better.”

“Yum,” she said. She jumped off the sofa, and then abruptly sat on his lap again, her back to him, one finger pointing behind her. “Unbutton me, darlin’, so’s I can change.”

His thick fingers fumbled at the buttons, and he had difficulty opening them, but at last the back of her blouse fell apart revealing the smooth black shoulders and ridge of spine and the white band and clasp of her brassière. Her head came around, and her lower lip pouted. “Otter, you been ’round too much for this lil pickaninny. Ummm—” She kissed his nose and stood up, chastely holding up the front of her unfastened blouse with her palm. “Won’t be more than a minute changin’. Wanna freshen the drinks?”

“Sure thing.”

“You be waitin’ for lil Ruby—oh, mothah me! Dog my cats! I loves you, man—”

She went quickly, hips and skirt swinging, out of the small living room into the bedroom, half closing the door behind her.

Otto Beggs sat unmoving. She was gone, but the fragrance of her flesh still enveloped him, entered his pores, kindled his desire for her even more intensely. She had said that she wanted to “change.” What did that mean? Change to what? He had an idea to what. Still, would she? Was it possible? Of course, it was possible. She had said that she was hot and full up with “naycher”—meaning, he woozily deducted, that her natural instincts, her primitive instincts, had been aroused by him. Criminy, what did a colored girl do, how did she behave, when she felt like that? It was a mystery to him, yet his wonder at the unknown was secondary to his great expectations. Shortly, if he had not misread her, he would be initiated into the club—the club of coarse jokes—to be one with all those who had changed their luck.

He left the sofa for the kitchenette, dropped ice into the glasses, poured a double amount of J and B over her ice, and a long shot of gin over his, and forgot about the tonic. He walked back into the living room, holding her drink, taking a swallow of his, and suddenly he stood still. There she was, and he had never seen anything like it except in the movies and men’s magazines.

She posed, one hand on a hip, standing between the mosaic coffee table and the sofa.

“How you like it, Otter?” she asked, and as she pirouetted gracefully, the dark definite lines of her body were clearly revealed from behind the flimsy, long lemon-colored negligee. “I had to git myself some expensive underwear, price of three LPs, jes for this occasion with my Otter.”

“It fits you great,” he said, embarrassed by the thick huskiness of his voice. “This is sure a treat.”

“Don’t sweet-talk cottonpickin’ me—you a big hero with all them fancy whitegirls fussin’ ’round you—”

He took another drink, and protested, “None of them hold a candle to you, Ruby. You look like a movie star, no kidding.”

She lowered herself to the sofa, crossing one leg over the other in a new pose, this one of languor, and watched him. He placed her drink before her and looked down at her, at the ebony flesh running from the hollow of her throat to the exposed cleft between her breasts. She raised her hands behind her head, and he was hypnotized by the shifting and spreading of the mounds of her bosom, no longer covered by the brassière, hardly concealed by the transparent negligee.

She patted the soft sofa beside her. “Come on, Otter, ain’t you gonna show this woman no friendshipness?”

Stiffly, almost asthmatically wheezing, he moved between the sofa and table, drinking again. Then, daringly, he sank down beside her, one arm high on the sofa behind her, his free hand holding the drink. Without trying to look, he could see the reddish bikini panties she was wearing, and the flesh of one broad dark thigh as it lay over the other. He tried to lift his eyes to her face, but he could not help holding his gaze on her protruding breasts.

“Thirty-eight,” she said.

His head came up quickly. “What?”

She cupped her hands beneath her breasts. “Size thirty-eight,” she said. “Figger you’d wanna know exactly.”

He brought the trembling glass to his flushed face. “You should be an actress, Ruby, something like that.” He drank to reinforce his giddy hopes.

“Naw, like I told you before, I been there bein’ leered at by the whiteboys. I don’t like paradin’ myself before any ol’ body. You—you is somethin’ special, Otter—”

She reached out, gently but firmly removed the glass from his clutch, set it on the table, and squirmed closer to him, head against his shoulder, fingers playfully opening his shirt, and then her hand slipping underneath his shirt and caressing his hairy chest.

He dropped his arm from the sofa down around her shoulders, loosely, listening to the throaty sounds of her, like a cat’s motor-purrings. He was not positive what he should do next, take the plunge at once, grab her, start it, or tell her first what he wanted, or be more subtle and find out if what he thought was being led up to was really understood by both of them. If he came right out and made the move, or the demand, and she was just teasing around, it would be embarrassing and ruin everything. He had to be positive. Also, there were some women, even among the paid ones, who liked to go slow, and maybe she was one of these. If she was, he didn’t want to spoil his chances. There was time, plenty of time.

“Why do you think I’m so special, Ruby?” he asked, feeling foolish. “I like hearing it, believe me, but you must’ve known plenty of young men.”

“Not so many, Otter, an’ no somebody like you—you is handsome and strong—Jee-sus—you feels all muscle—an’ a hero with them medals, botherin’ ’bout lil pickaninny me—nobody me, sep I admit to bein’ thirty-eight where it counts—” She enjoyed this, and giggled. “You knows what, Otter, I was thinkin’ last night. You is too impo’tant to be wastin’ time even guardin’ the Pres of the U.S.A.—you knows that? You too impo’tant in you own right to be wastin’ time on a finky culludman Pres who ain’t half the man you is. Thass what I think of you, Otter. You is better than him. Mothah an’ Lordy, you sure is.”

“Thank you for the compliments, Ruby, but he is President of the United States, and nobody’s more important.”

“Ummm. You smell jes good . . . you is more impo’tant. That black man in the White House ain’t fit to shine you shoes.”

A little more, he thought, a little more of this aimless chatter, and he’d be sure, and take the plunge. “Last time we talked, you had no feelings one way or the other about President Dilman. What’s happened since, Ruby? You don’t have to answer—who gives a damn about him—except I’d think you’d be happy about a Negro in—”

Suddenly she removed her hand from his chest and turned on her side, her silky, cooing voice turning resolute and strident. “I ain’t happy ’bout him no more. Lots been happenin’ to him and us. Dilman ain’t good enuff to be colored man or whiteboy, either. He ain’t good enuff to be any ol’ thing. He a turd, nothin’ better. Lookit him bannin’ the Turners, not liftin’ a finger for poor ol’ Jeff Hurley. Lookit him even takin’ away the crummy minority law money from my kinfolk. Otter, that man you guardin’ with you life no good for nobody—he spellin’ only evil—”

Silently Beggs cursed himself for inciting her with a conversation that he had meant to use only as a bridge to the ultimate seduction. Now, judging from the indignation in her eyes, he saw that her mood was anything but sensual. Desperately, he tried to sidetrack her. “Ruby, just as you said before, he isn’t important enough to get riled up about. I don’t like him much either, I can admit it to you since we’re so close, and not because he’s a Negro or for what he’s doing to Negroes—I don’t know much about that, except the whites are plenty sore at him too for vetoing that bill, throwing his weight around—I don’t like him because he’s a weakling. That’s the main thing. That banning, somebody else did that for him, that’s how weak he is. And the veto, hell, that showed no guts, only he got scared of the banning and tried to make up for it—”

Ruby shook her head. “You too charitable, Otter—my friends and relatives, they don’t think that Dilman weak—they think him evil all day long, ’cause he resents his color, thass what.”

There was imagining and there was performing, and Otto Beggs had had enough of the imagining and was ready for the performing. He lowered his arm further, and encircled her tighter, feeling the spongy give of her breast beneath the lingerie.

“Aw, forget him, Ruby. He’s not worth you and your friends getting so sore about. Believe me, and you know how well I know him, take my word for it from the inside, he’s scared of his shadow, and that’s why he acts the way he does.”

She seemed hardly aware of Beggs’s arm or hand or increasing ardor. She sat up a little. “What is you meanin’—thass why he acts way he does? Don’t tell me he ain’t ’shamed of his own people an’ actin’ against us.” Her tone had become concerned. “You knows somethin’ different, bein’ with him? I won’t believe anythin’, sep if you—”

Ruby, listen.” He was determined to end this conversation fast, and get going with her. “Like I said, I hold no brief for the guy, and I don’t like being put in the position of defending him. At the same time, I think enough of you not to want to see you all worked up and angry, for no reason. So let me tell you the truth of it, between us, strictly you and me—”

“For sure, I promise, Otter.”

“—and let’s get you relaxed and at ease again, and have ourselves a ball. Few people have had as close a look at the President as I have. You agree to that?”

“Sure enuff, Otter, but don’t you think he—?”

“He’s no more against Negroes than you are or your friends are or I am. He’s just on the spot being President, being a colored President, and he knows it and feels it. He knows whatever which-way he turns, a whole bunch of people will think he’s wrong, simply because he’s a minority person. Whenever I get sore at him and at myself for having to spend my good time guarding him, guarding a man who is contributing nothing to improve us, I remember a couple things I’ve seen and heard, and then, instead of being sore, well, I pity him. That’s true, Ruby, I’m not puffing myself up, but me,
I
pity
him
.” He paused. “You know why? Because even though he’s sitting where F. D. R. and Harry and Ike and J. F. K. and Lyndon and The Judge and T. C. sat, he still feels he’s sitting in the back of the bus, because that’s where a lot of people around him make him think he belongs. I don’t know politics, but I’ve got eyes and ears. Certain people are trying to run him, and to make it easier they’re pressuring him, letting him know he doesn’t belong, and he feels it and suffers like a dog, and that’s the only thing he’s got from me, my sympathy.”