My Amputations (Fiction collective ;) (8 page)

Mason Ellis sang “Diddie Wa Diddie” like Blind Blake, crossed the street at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second like the Beatles on the cover of
Abbey Road
and reaching the curb leaped into the air and coming down did a couple of steps of the Flat Foot Floogie. (Earlier, in his room at the Gramercy Park Hotel—just north of the park, he'd kissed himself in the mirror! Yes, yes he'd moved: did ya think he wuz gonna stay in that fleabag . . . ?) He climbed the grand stairway. Inside he found Reference. Selected the volumes to update “his” activities. A photocopy machine added technological sparkle to a dreary corner by a drinking fountain. He took the books there and xeroxed the pages he needed. It was like discovering a map of the unknown world: The Grand Lake the Shadow Mountain the Rainbow Curve. Then: feeling paralyzed as in a dream unable to move he stood trim, halfway between sturdy shelves where he'd returned heavy volumes and a reading table, holding the copies at chest level. His cards exposed—? the dealer dealing from the bottom . . . ? was his opponent putting the squeeze on him? Was there some recent history of “himself’ he had missed out on? What madness was responsible? Was he a man who'd missed a train because of a threat-of-loss . . . ? What'd The Impostor done since seventy-nine? Spare us. He longed for wish-fulfillment, it
alone
—and none of the above. Mason took the stairway down. Dazed—he started walking rather than taking any of the buses headed for Washington Square, or Cooper Square. As he threw himself against the Hudson winds sweeping up Fifth, choked on the gas fumes of the taxis racing down, he closed his eyes against Reagan posters pushing for president in November, against Carter posters too, everywhere—on the backs of buses, on billboards. Too much. Then
bong:
he bumped into—
what?
—a person? a light pole? a bus? Mason opened to see the big man stepping around him, cussing. But, uh, wasn't he Reverend Jack Mackins, the preacher of those wonderful reformatory sermons at Attica? Looking over his shoulder Mason felt pretty sure the huge wobbling fella
was
Mackins. A typical Sunday morning Mackins sermon: “One day each of you will open the closet door
and step inside. You'll crouch there in the dermal membrane of darkness with the Lord. The darkness will not be illuminated by your whipped trust. You will have to earn strong faith. You must hear God breathing. The skin of his eyes will glow in the dark and fill you with fear and the nightfall cry of the loneliest whippoor-will on earth because of a light pouring out. Then you'll find yourself pushing like a sonofagun for the beginning. Your own, that is: you won't find it: what you'll discover will vary.” Reverend Mackins raised his fist “to the heavens.” “No matter what your experience may be in
that
darkness,
endure
—do
not
perish! . . . Now, bow your heads, boys. Lord, save and forgive these poor boys sitting here on this holy day of rest, before me, in your care, without citizenship, locked up like cattle going to slaughter. Lord, they are not hopeless. I have walked among them and know the richness of their souls, the keenness of their minds. Lift them to your bosom. Nourish them in the wind of your voice, the fire of your breathing. Give them a chance for a life outside of crime, a sinless life: deliver them to a safe place beyond the excruciating controls of ethnic ghettos. Give them at least a little Civil Rights Movement or something to believe in. It's hell down here, Lord. (Give the women too an Equal Rights Bill: deliver them from bondage!) Dribble something down. I beseech you, One on High, perform frontal lobotomy on anybody who wants to fuck over somebody else without it being in dire self-defense . . . ” Jeux d'esprit? Mason remembered this sort of outcry as being better than gold, sharper than a Saturday-night-switchblade entering a cliché. Mackins, dammit, had imagination! Mason'd gotten ideas for stories from those upstairs-thoughts . . . One term in one paragraph on one page of the sheets in his pocket worried him. It was: “post-modern.” Mason didn't know what it meant. As he strolled southward still, he puzzled over it. Aside from its strictly utilitarian purpose—uprightness and stuckedness—it declared itself separate from modernism (so he'd read). Modernism depended heavily on the metaphoric: as a rejection of 19th Century Romanticism and its sentimentality it was made possible by many factors—among
them (and this with a straight face): one) psychoanalysis; two) Einstein's theory of relativity; three) in Physics, the breaking of that hussy link between effect and sister cause; four) the downfall of Joyce Kilmer's tree; then five) that . . . locomotive; six) the rejection of the assumption that language offered a logical means by which one might understand—. (What'd all this wooden horse-trading talk really mean? was it some sort of new-fangled way of giving a bad weather report?) Then, what was metaphor? Was Mason to believe what he'd read about himself and metaphor? Maybe Garbo's “I want to be alone,” was metaphor? or “I am.” Model for reality? Marcus Garvey's headgear was metaphor for Malcolm X's eyeglasses. Jelly Roll Morton was metaphor for Stevie Wonder. Huh? But this rejection of letting one thing stand for another . . . ? Interesting, yet . . . Maybe The Impostor
believed
the text represented nothing outside itself. I don't, thought Mason. Reverend Mackins knew God by his first name: was the name the same as the, uh, ah, spirit, I mean, body . . . ? Miss Inbetween was metaphor and Miss Acheass was metonymy. So be it. Text as permanent property—free of outside clut. Okay. Like Cubism: a peeled conceptual orange oozing Cezanne's blood and sperm: synthetic, analytical, geometric. Mason glanced up at the overcast dome. There was a promised full moon behind that shit. Hay-bob-a-re-bop. He was on his way. Hi-de-hi-de-ho. Mason still had the will to endure: while ten thousand people choked to death on their grub each year here. Saaay whaaat? To say nothing of . . . 
Hay
, shouldn't he cut out this shit and call a speakers' bureau? After all, he was a well-known author in need of some immediate action.

Everything changed. Jesus was now in jail baptized in a network of epileptic violence awaiting trial for possession. (He'd moved uptown into a foxy apartment on West
Eighty-Second and had started dealing heavy shit. So the possession charge was good luck.) Mason thought about Jesus: fed up with the witty and giddy and pleas and fleas. Blessed are the poor, blessed are the pure; blessed are the persecuted. Lying on his big bed, Mason, Mason. Busted a week ago, Jesus wouldn't get more than, say, a year, maybe two, if he got a rotten judge. Maybe he'd be lucky enough to get a liberal. Edith, Edith: where could she've hidden herself—with all her loose ends still here in the city. She'd sold her lease and split. And Brad. Well, Mason knew his story: dude living it up big, high on the hog, in the fast lane, jamming, strutting, buying drinks for his dizzy bunch of new friends, trying to fingerbop-pop with the jaded and slick crowds at the Brass Rail, Eddie Condon's, Basin Street and Max's Kansas City, and all the padded bars from Waverly Place all the way up to East Fifty-Seventh. (The hit had yielded close to four hundred-thousand split four ways: and the last time Mason saw Edith she was driving a Mercedes . . . ) Mason looked at his new typewriter, a Selectric, on the table over by the window. A sheet was on the spool: the beginning of the vita he was typing for Moreparke at Cowie Speakers' Bureau. Miss Mufinsnat'd thought his first effort needed editing down. He'd reduce it from twenty-five pages to six: something she could send around . . . Moving on with the change. Would Painted Turtle return? You're full of catfish. You flap like a bee bee-shot bluejay. Click, click. A little hemp wouldn't be bad right now. Help? He got up, went to the typewriter, sat, but only gazed out the window: sky full of goldfish. No, look again: that's the building across the street. No, I tell you it's a red sunset.

He felt it too soon to crack the ice at the invisible empire, the Magnan-Rockford Foundation. Maybe just scared? What was this nonsense about needing a solid base first?
Which base? More confidence? Step first into “his” old shoes, autograph a few books, speak to audiences from behind podiums? He'd been at Fifty-Two Gramercy Park North ten days before he broke down and bought himself a drink at the bar downstairs. It was in celebration of Moreparke's apparent trust and belief. Cool, but stay on your toes: bob like a buoy: because there's always the chance The Impostor might turn up, a-and, and what if Brad fucks up, Jesus squeals . . . The word is deep cool: swing low, sweetly. You got shoes, I got shoes. The Impostor could try a hoax. Mason sipped the White Horse hearing the rich click of ice against glass. He smoked a Camel. Hadn't it happened to Barthelme? Somebody published stories under his name. The real Barthelme got wind of it; asked the guy to stop; wrote a letter to
The New York Times Book Review
, denying authorship. And what about that guy who claimed to have collaborated with Howard Hughes on that autobiography? April fool! Simple Simon! Watch out for the trap-door! Pay attention: in a day or two, John Moreparke'd said, he might have a tentative tour outlined. They could discuss it. Moreparke felt the MRF grant'd given the writer enough recent publicity to make a domestic tour possible: people were interested in winners, in money. (“Are
you
with us Mister Mason?”) Two protein-fed guys who were participants at the annual convention of organic chemists working in the polymer field were talking shop two iron stools down. Mason'd seen the banner out in the lobby. A bespangled husband and wife with a purse the size of a canoe, farther along, were drinking gin in blue silence. All realistic. All over fifty. Mason finished his drink. Back upstairs in his large room, with sitting room and French shutters, he sat himself down again at the cold, infernal machine. This he called moving on. Time. From day one till this circlet of anxiety he'd felt the uncharitable end—which, though, he could now reason, was only a transition, was still
an
end. The jammed-up feeling of having to move on, to flail against the quickly located details . . . Everything
continued to change: Moreparke's itinerary for Mason: unpromising programs at: University of Maryland; Howard University; Brooklyn College; Sarah Lawrence; University of Washington at Seattle; University of Colorado at Boulder. Miss Mufinsnat, a scarecrow with bug eyes, had neatly typed out the schedule, complete with names and numbers of hosts on twenty-five percent rag. Mason in jeans and sports jacket picked it up from John (it was John now “please”) who was, bless his gut, a water buffalo in a suit. In defiance of “man” Mason pushed his way through the crowd at Kennedy. He was doing the “Big Foot Jump.” With his new leather carry-on, he found twenty-eight C, Smoking. The gray-haired man next to him was reading
In Defense of Man
. The taxi out was smooth. That picture of the horsefaced woman on John's desk? Cowie Junior's daughter. And Miss Mufinsnat a cousin of the Cowie's. One of the top three of its kind, old grandpa Cowie, who started the business in 1895 had died in 1931 when Junior was twenty-five. Mason stroked his lapel at his curious good luck. Yet there were worries: what was left of the hundred thousand—most of it—was not in a safe place: (locked in the trunk of the VW bug he'd bought after the hit) but taking the chance was part of his so-called defiance. The beetle was itself in a garage two blocks north of the Gramercy, parked in a dark corner three stories below the sidewalk. They were ascending now. Now they were up. All was well. Now they landed at National. February cold: damp, freezing. The taxi to flat, bleak College Park was being driven by a brown-skinned man with weepy eyes and freckles. He kept watching Mason in the rear-viewer. What puzzlement. Looking out, Mason imagined he was in Africa, in a big industrial city: the faces along the sidewalks and at intersections waiting to cross were saffron nutmeg black ivory with an occasionally pink or ivory white. And government buildings with massive columns, clusters of shopping areas. Traffic was sluggish. A membrane lampglow over everything. Early evening drizzle. Miserable shit weather. The last time he'd been here was during Martin Luther King's famous March on Washington. He'd gotten sick from the
spoiled mayonnaise on his salami sandwich. Now Mason (free of his guns) felt as “clean” and “respectable” as he had in those days: as credible. He certainly
looked
like a person of respect and position. In a way, this pigtail-jerker
was
flying “home.” Like Lionel Hampton, like Ellison's character in the short story. Home, surely was
that
profound
and
elusive. How could it be otherwise? It was not the heart of darkness: not completely: not color: not completely. Not place. He looked out again at his dark people along the sidewalk.
My
people? No confetti floated over the city as he arrived. As the cab inched its way, in bumper to bumper traffic, on the Belt, he looked over through the trees and saw what he imagined to be the lights of Georgetown. O spirit of Toomer, stay, give me comfort, direction, in this chaos! (That night Mason rigged up a branding “iron”—made of a metal
E
on a key-chain and an
M
on a tie-clasp. He branded himself with this emblem:
M/E
. Almost passed out. Later, in the mirror he thought the view of his chest impressive.)

The campus—he would later discover—was typical: young people with pink or white or gray or olive faces and soft hands, carrying strapped to their backs packs and wearing synthetic green or blue or brown jackets and blue jeans and black or brown scuffed boots. That's it. They walked carefully on dirty January icy and snow-packed sidewalks. Buildings: red, sturdy: cold brick, abstract: indifferent. One could imagine green in the Spring. A tree, perhaps a row of trees along certain campus roads. The deadness of winter now clamped the campus in its mouth like a man with a smokeless pipe clamped between his calm teeth. (Men with pipes in their mouths remind me of dogs fetching things.) His host met him where the taxi stopped—all prearranged. She was all smiles. She led him now to her office. They sat for a half hour. They kept attempting to break the
silence at the same time. Embarrassed, Mason looked over his lecture notes. Then to the lecture hall. Students coming in. After the host introduced him, Mason stood in
front
of the podium. I'll spare you the whole bit but you've got to get the drift: “Thank you,” he said, “I come here with my life before you: I am a writer whose muse ran off. I'm just beginning to find myself on my own. I want to speak to you about my new effort to recreate myself . . . ” the most interesting reference he made was to something he described as “self betrayal.” Anyway, the “body” of his talk would make you hit the ceiling. And I like you too much for that. The questions were a curious set: “Did you write a book called
Native Son?
” “No? How about
Invisible Man?
” “Are you the author of
Miss Jane Pittman?
” “If you're so terrific how come I never heard of you?” “Do you know Toni Morrison? How about James Baldwin? What're they like?” “Do you make a lot of money?” “Why not?” Clear he wasn't getting the red carpet here: nobody's said the chairman was throwing a big reception. (Oh, even Mason—who'd never been inside a university building before—knew the routine.) After dinner with Edna Coddington, his host, at a two-star Italian restaurant, he and she were pretty smashed: ready to hang out the laundry. By the end of dinner it was clear she'd been the only one interested in having him there. She liked his work. In the little sputtering car, they tried to warm each other by kissing, rubbing each other's hands—giggling together. Cold but not a dry run. Then she got the engine going. She was driving him to Howard Johnson's Motel down the main drag when she told him her life story: she was living with another young professor—a dope addict who was trying to screw all his female students and who was also busy trying to screw and claw his way to the top and into tenure. They had an uneasy, off and on relationship. Shared a big house in Chevy Chase. She had a daughter in high school who lived with them. The girl was really smart and would grow up to be a writer of genius. Roger? Roger. This was
contact
, thought Mason. Edna was up: she wanted out but Roger was violent. She was afraid. He might try to harm her. Women in her women's group told her constantly she should
leave him. He was a loser. Yet her best friend told her to hang in there ’cause he helped with the house payments plus she could see other men when she wanted to anyway. And that's the way she felt now. Her analyst hadn't given any sign of disapproval. Then she had a bright idea. If he weren't anxious to turn in, they could drop by her “best friend's” place. When he said sure she reached over and squeezed his cock and balls together in one big grip of her slender hand with its long white fingers. She turned at the next light. She'd gotten her doctorate from Harvard which gave her a certain status but she felt she wasn't getting anywhere. She'd collaborated with another professor on a book called
Milton's Madness:
a success in academic circles. But royalties weren't coming. Her lawyer was looking into the wrong done her. She had to come up for tenure next year but there seemed little support among the old guys who ruled the department: her feminism, she said. Already she was sort of planning to leap in another direction: maybe work as an editor. Easier said then done? Or going into business (what?) for herself. Her best friend, this woman called Beth, they were going to see, had
her
own business: interior decorating. Gaining a name as a designer, nobody'd ground her soon. A go-getter, Beth had a birdman's-eye view of
men
and no man was ever going to ever again put his foot on
her
neck. Edna wished she could be as
assertive
 . . . Beth and Jake were really wonderful: true people of the postmodern world! they didn't believe in sexual loyalty. What'd it have to do with love anyway. They loved each other and wasn't that enough? Edna's voice got higher, more defensive. She went through a red light, nearly killing a man with a dog on his shoulder. Oh, Jake was a little gloomy, kinda plastic. But he would like Beth—she was so
together . . . 
Beth's and Jake's apartment building was your typical highrise in the flatlands. Typical that is till Edna and Mason got into the elevator and it started moving up. “This doesn't seem to be the same elevator. They must've put a new one in.” Mason looked at the buttons: Up. Down. Alarm. All seemed normal till he looked closer: Love. Death. Apple. Q. T. Apple? Q. T.? Underneath Q. T. was this: (“Quiet Tilt.”) Halfway between
three and four the elevator groaned and stopped. The Love and Death buttons turned red. Disco music came over the intercom. A gloom shook the space: lights dimmed. Then, as though nothing unusual had happened Love and Death went out and the goddamned thing went on to four and stopped like nobody's business. Mason noticed the name plate by the door: J. and B. Marsse. Professor Coddington rang. No response. Mason felt a rising sense of frustration, uncertainty and mistrust. He blinked: a rear-end view . . . ? Juicy . . . ? Twisting. What was, yikes, this, t-this . . . ? Then the door opened and they stepped inside. Nobody was there. Only a giant TV set in the center of the floor. Professor Coddington closed the door behind them. She spoke to the TV set: “Oh, Beth, oh, Jake, forgive me for stopping by like this without calling . . . Had I known you guys'd gone to bed so early . . . I—uh . . . What?” Edna Coddington blushed. “Are you serious, Jake?” She turned to Mason. “He says he's serious.” Edna noticed Mason's bewilderment. Mason looked like a stranger in a foreign country trying to avoid speaking to anybody because he doesn't know the language. It was giving him a headache. Stiff legs. He could hardly move. Why was his heart racing so? The professor went to the remote control and turned on the set. Immediately there were fuzzy projections of two human beings: a naked man and a naked woman. Pink, slender, handsome couple. Projected directly from the screen onto the flat surface of the floor. They were on a bed. The image had combat fatigue. Mason rubbed his eyes. They focused. Edna smiled at him. “They want us to play with them. Are you up to an orgy, my good fellow?” Bring on the sodium pentothal? Tenderness perhaps? Pity? He couldn't figure out how to react. Beth looked very appealing but, well, she was all-surface, shimmering pink film . . . Moments later when Mason climbed atop Beth he felt only the vibrations from the disco music which, he suddenly realized, had followed them into the apartment. When he got his cock into her, it felt as though it were pressed against the seat of a park bench.