Odyssey (22 page)

“Sovereign,” Toni said.

“I don’t know what to say, honey. You and I both know what happened. What did your lawyer tell you?”

“He said that if the DA was right, I should take his offer and say you planned it.”

“But you know I didn’t.”

“I know I shouldn’t’a been wit’ you right after what you did to Lem,” she said.

“No,” Sovereign agreed, “maybe we should have waited for a little while.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“I suppose the truth isn’t an option.”

“This ain’t funny.”

“No.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“What are you asking me, Toni?”

“They gonna put me in prison, Sovereign. They gonna put me in jail, and the lawyer you give me has told me to turn you ovah.”

“I have to go,” he said.

“What?”

“I have to go and you have to do what’s best for you. We’re both just troglodytes trying to climb out of Plato’s cave.”

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

Sovereign, instead of answering, hung up the landline and disconnected it from the wall. Squatting there, with the slender cord between his thumb and forefinger, he was reminded of the times in his life when he’d cut off contact with family, friends, and loved ones.

Loved ones
. He let the words roll around in his mind, trying to make sense of
them. Finally admitting to failure in this attempt, he turned off the lights in his apartment, opened the window wide, and sat on the sill for hours, with his eyes closed, listening for sounds in the night.

A little before one the next day Sovereign was leaving his apartment building to go up to Seth Offeran’s. He’d made it only a few steps past the doors when someone called to him.

“Mr. James.”

It was a young white man wearing a green sports jacket and black slacks. The T-shirt he wore was yellow and his tawny hair carelessly brushed.

“Yes?”

“My name is Russ Lamply and I’d like to ask you about the charges leveled against you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m working with the
Times
and wanted just a few words.”

“ ‘I don’t think so’ is four words. You’ve got yourself a bonus.”

“Did you know the man you fought with?”

“I have to be going. Good-bye, Mr. Lamply.”

Sovereign turned and headed for Christopher Street. The reporter followed.

“I just need a statement for my story,” he said.

Sovereign suppressed a grin and kept on moving. He felt inexplicably happy.

“Your brother was being sought in connection to a bank robbery, wasn’t he?” Lamply asked as they turned right on Christopher and walked east.

“It has been reported that you and the man you attacked, Lemuel Johnson, were fighting over a woman you were both involved with.”

Sovereign was half a step ahead of his ineffectual interlocutor. Lamply couldn’t see the now apparent grin.

“What about the charges of racism leveled against you at your workplace, Techno-Sym? Or your long absence from the job for a supposed case of hysterical blindness?”

Sovereign, without realizing it, picked up his pace.

“The woman who was with Mr. Johnson in your apartment is ready to be a witness against you,” Lamply said, raising his voice.

Sovereign felt his humor turning in on itself. The muscles of his forearms clenched, and the hours he spent exercising each day seemed to be singing. He turned to face the fair young journalist, raised his hand, seemingly intent on striking the young man. Then he yelled, “Taxi!”

The yellow car pulled to the curb and Sovereign forced his angry hand down to grab the handle.

“The trial has already been set,” Lamply said in fast, clipped words. “You’d think that you’d want your side of the story in the paper.”

James threw himself into the backseat of the cab.

“Eighty-sixth and Madison, please.”

“Mr. James,” the reporter called as the car pulled away.

In the back of that taxicab Sovereign was painfully aware of the meaning of the word
psychosomatic
. His head was spinning and hurting. His fists were clenched and he could not make them release. There was also an ache in his chest and the color red somewhere between his line of vision and imagination. He had lost control, barely escaping the violence welling up inside. The only power left to him was the ability to breathe in, hold the breath for a brief moment, and then exhale.

“Are you okay?” the driver asked, looking up into his rearview mirror.

“Yes,” Sovereign managed to say.

Each breath became deeper, and by the time they had reached 14th Street the HR manager was able to splay out his fingers. He realized that he was sitting at a tilt to the left side and sat up straight.

Once he had regained control he wanted to talk to the driver but couldn’t think of anything to say. The picture on the hack license matched the face in the mirror. The man’s name was Amir Fez. He had a mustache and some hair on his chin—not enough to be called a proper beard. His eyes were dark, and though he was not smiling Sovereign guessed at great humor and concern from his expressions. None of this was the basis for a conversation, so Sovereign sat back and wondered at the possibility that he was a criminal. Maybe the prosecutor had gleaned the threat in Sovereign’s actions and wanted to take steps to protect New Yorkers from his possibly uncontrollable rage.

James took in an enormous gulp of air. He was free to breathe. All people, he thought, had this liberty. The idea of inalienable rights based on a notion of undeniable biological politics calmed him. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the window, becoming conscious of the exhaustion his rage caused.

In the self-imposed darkness, inside the moving vehicle, Sovereign felt lulled and peaceful.…

“We’re here, mister,” the driver said.

It felt like only moments since he’d escaped the journalist, but they had made it all the way to the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Sovereign gave thirty dollars for an eighteen-dollar ride, feeling somehow grateful to the driver. He stumbled out onto the curb and had to stop for a minute to allow the sleep to slough off his mind. He stood there stroking his left arm with his right hand, remembering running the same palm over Offeran’s sofa cushion when he could not see—or would not.

“… and so you wanted to hit him?” Offeran asked after hearing the story of the reporter.

“I wanted to destroy him,” Sovereign said. “If I had struck that first blow I know I wouldn’t have been able to stop. I would have killed him if I could have.”

“Where do you think this rage is coming from?” the doctor asked.

“It’s a—what did you call it?—a significant psychic event.”

Offeran smiled and nodded.

“When I was a kid I used to listen to Bob Dylan,” Sovereign said. “Him and
Jimi Hendrix. I never let anybody know that.”

“Why not?”

“Because black kids weren’t supposed to listen to them. Kids at my school would have made fun of me.”

“But Hendrix was black.”

“But he didn’t play the right kind of music. And Dylan wasn’t only white; he sang like a drowning cat. But I loved both of them and listened when nobody was around. Except for Eddie, of course. I told Eddie everything. My grandfather too. Eagle would listen to anything I had to say. I was his favorite.”

“What does this music have to do with your anger?”

“I don’t know. Or maybe … Maybe it’s just that I had to keep everything a secret. My grandfather’s pistol, my father’s parentage … Even the real job I thought I was doing underneath the job they hired me for. I’m like a spy in a foreign country, a mole in the enemy’s camp. I left everything behind me and no one knew a damn thing about who I am. I can lie up in the bed with a woman, laugh my ass off with somebody at a bar, but as close as I get, no one can really see me.”

A sympathetic hum escaped Offeran’s throat. This single sound told Sovereign that his doctor thought that he was on the right track.

“But what difference does it make,” Sovereign asked, “if you ask me where I am and all I can tell you is that I’m lost?”

“Because even if that’s the only thing you know, then you are not lost—not completely.”

That night in bed, alone and awake for hours, Sovereign tried to imagine his way out of his troubled mind. He wasn’t worried about the trial or the possibility of conviction. He wasn’t worried about the fact that he had stopped going to work even though he was over his condition.

He missed Toni, not the lover but the giggling young woman who walked with him down the streets of New York and protected him from harm.

After a long while he fell into a deep sleep, something close to a child’s slumber—even hibernation. He dreamed that he was a big hulking fish that burrowed under the sand on the ocean floor. From there he peeked out at the water above, safe from predators. The chill of the water was a comfort to him; it meant that he was safe. The currents above made a kind of sibilant music that was almost subliminal. For a long time he lay there nestled under the sand.…

And then there came a tickle and a disturbance. Something was stroking his underside like the dorsal fin of a larger creature buried even deeper, coming up after his millennial nap. Sovereign the fish moved left and then right but he could not escape the feeling of a pressure that, while not unpleasant, worked against his peaceful retreat.

Finally the erection roused him from his sleep.

Toni was sitting next to him on the bed, naked and gently teasing his manhood.

“I wondered when you was gonna wake up,” she said.

“What are you doing here?”

“Pullin’ on yo’ dick is what.”

Sovereign took her by the wrist.

“Move your hand away, Sovereign,” she said. “I’m doin’ what I wanna do right now.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“Because I liked you evah since that day I came ovah an’ you gave me that money. You didn’t have to do that, but I know you did ’cause you liked me. You only saw me for a minute but you liked me more than people known me my whole life.”

Somewhere between the words and the quick feathery motions of her fingers, a powerful orgasm rose up in James. He grunted and bucked from his hips and she grabbed on hard.

“That’s right, baby,” she said. “Uh-huh, yeah, just like that.”

She started moving her hand again and he reached out to stop her.

“Move your hand, Sovereign,” she said again. “This is my dick right now.”

Obeying her, he smiled at his own submission.

“What you laughin’ at?” she asked with a sour, sweet turn to her lips.

“You say you always liked me?” he replied.

“Uh-huh. And I only realized it when you hung up on me. Everybody’s tellin’ me that I should do what the prosecutor say, but where were they when you were takin’ me to dinner and the movies and sittin’ next to me when I was watchin’ TV and you was blind?

“When you hung up on me I felt like somebody just slammed the do’ in my face and there I was, out in the cold.”

“Are you saying that you love me, girl?”

“I don’t know about love or whatever, but I like you and you like me and that’s more than I got from anybody else.”