“You didn’t -?” he said after a few seconds of silence.
“No. I’m so sorry. I thought I was going to—if only you’d been able to wait just a little bit longer.” As soon as she spoke the words, Gloria regretted them. She knew Frank. She could have bittten off her tongue!
“I’m not man enough to,” he said coldly, turning on his side, away from her.
“Oh, darling, I didn’t mean—”
“Never mind. I know what you meant." He got up out of the bed and walked into the living room.
The tears welled up in Goria's eyes as she watched him go. She pressed her face into the pillow to muffle the sobs. She cried for a long time before she dozed off.
She knew she couldn’t have been sleeping long when the crash awakened her. She grabbed up a robe to run into the living room and see what it was. She switched on the light as she entered, and the first thing she saw was the overturned end-table with Frank standing over it rubbing his knee and muttering curses.
“Did you hurt yourself?” Gloria asked.
“Damn thing’s always in the way!” he snarled.
“Why didn’t you turn on the light?"
“I’m black and I like it black around me.” His voice came out nasty, through clenched teeth.
Gloria looked at him more closely. “You’ve been drinking,” she said.
“Better than that. I’ve been getting drunk. Plastered. Swizzled. Soused. Stoned.”
“But Frank? I’ve never know you to sit alone and drink before.”
“Whv not, you mean.”
“But you’ll be all hung over for work tomorrow.”
“So what? So I won’t put in a man’s day’s work. Well, why should I? If I can’t even be a man in bed, why should I try to act like one for Mr. Charlie?”
“How much have you had?” Gloria demanded.
“Count the dead soldiers, baby. One kaput and one half-dead. Well, I guess I just better finish him off.”
He picked up the half-empty bottle of rye and raised it to his lips.
“Stop it, Frank. Stop it. That isn’t going to do any good!”
“The hell you say. I’m just conforming to the image. Mr. white man, he say Rastus like his liquor, so Rastus, he aim to please. Jes’ gwina shape up to suit Massa. Iffen black boy don’t lap it up every now an’ then, it might shake them Co-casians’ faith in us.”
“Oh, stop it now. You are drunk. And you can’t blame that on the white man. He‘s got nothing to do with it.”
“The hell you say. You know, Gloria, you get drunk enough, you just might dissolve that lily-white foot pressing down on the back of your neck.”
“Frank, when are you going to learn that not every white person is out to keep you down?”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Every damn one of them is out to do just that. Go ahead, you try to name one who isn’t.”
“Dr. Golden.”
“Ha! That’s a laugh! You think she’s really bleeding for you, baby? Well, let me tell you she's not. All she’s interested in is milking you for a sawbuck per session. She’s just come up with a new angle for exploiting the coon. That’s all. Man, the things I’d like to tell that white lady hypocrite.”
“That’s not fair. She’s not like that.” Gloria started to cry again. She really does care about me. She‘s trying to help me.”
“She's trying to help herself to ten black bucks per week, you mean. You know, I really hate her with that carrot of false hope she keeps dangling in front of you. I hate her because you fall for her line. I’d like to get her in a dark alley some night and carve her up for real.”
“Frank! Don't talk like that! You know you’re not like that. You could never hurt anybody, white or black.”
“That’s not true any more, Gloria. People change. And black people change because white people see to it that they do. Every man reaches the point where he’d had just about enough of all this sociological jazz. And when he does, he just wants to get a white throat between his hands and squeeze the life out of it.” Frank took another swig from the bottle. “I tell you true, Gloria, that’s the point I’m at. And I can’t think of anybody I’d like to blast as much as that con artist who crawls into bed with us every time we make love.”
“But she doesn’t. What happened before wasn’t her fault.”
“I think it was. No, I know it was. And I just think I’ll put on my coat and go on down to her fancy office and have a talk with her about it.”
“And will that prove to you what a man you are?” Gloria spoke without thinking, and again she regretted the words as soon as they were out. She’d never seen Frank like this before. Ordinarily, he wasn’t a violent man. Even on the one or two occasions when he’d had too much to drink, he didn’t get violent. But tonight her husband was a man she’d never seen before.
“Maybe it just might,” he answered ominously. “I owe that white lady a lot and maybe tonight’s just the night to pay her off. Sure, we could discuss your case, or maybe why Negroes are so brutal.” He drained the second bottle and pulled on his coat. “Why not?" he said over his shoulder and slammed the door behind him.
“Frank! Don’t!” Gloria’s voice was loud in the now empty room. She ran over to the window and raised it. “Frank! Please! Come back!” she called after the determined figure plodding down the street. But he ignored her, and Gloria’s only answer was the sudden gust of rain splattering her bathrobe.
She didn’t notice it. She continued looking out the window and watching the figure as it crossed over toward the north side of Central Park. She stayed at the window long after the figure vanished from sight, getting colder and wetter, and staring out into the night.
The night, rain-washing Harlem in vain, booming out thunderclaps of protest against the garbage in the streets and the filth, and the human waste. The night, split by the exposure of lightning fingers pointing at the white-made blacks, the pimps, the pushers, the prostitutes, the beggars, the drunks, the killers-for-profit, and those driven to murder by the sudden congealing of inner rage seeking white skin over which to erupt — those like Frank Andrews. The night, filled with the fury of a storm which couldn’t wash Harlem clean, not bleach black skins white, nor cleanse white hearts of their sins.
So Gloria continued to stare out into the hopeless night. And Frank cut through Central Park and walked downtown. He started west at Ninety-Sixth Street, and his fury grew with every white face he passed. The faces looking back saw a slender young black man scowling hate at them. They averted their eyes from him. It was almost as if they realized what it was they saw in his visage.
It was murder looking for a place to happen!
CHAPTER 8
God’s Gift to Women
“. . . I’M OVERSEXED. That’s what’s wrong with me, and I don’t know that I want it cured . . . Oh, sure, my name is Reginald Ivers. Call me Reggie. I’m thirty-five years old—I know, I don’t look it — so I guess that makes me the elder statesnan of the group, not Kevin . . . I’m an advertising account executive by profession. . . . I’m married, and I have two kids. My marriage stinks. I can’t stand my wife. Which is funny, because she’s just about the only woman I know who doesn’t appeal to me, the only one I don’t want to drag off to bed . . .”
Reggie forgot about the group session as soon as it was over. But he couldn’t make himself forget about the individual session he’d had with Dr. Golden earlier that afternoon. It still rankled him as he turned his car onto the West Side Highway and headed uptown.
“Don Juan complex, my foot!” he growled to himself as he recalled the words Dr. Golden had used so calmly to define his problem. “What the hell does she mean, what am I trying to prove? Can I help it if every girl I meet just rolls over on her back and begs me for it?” He liked this concept of himself, and he nodded once at the raindrops beginning to fog up his windshield as it to confirm it.