It hit like pain, was pain; knotted his belly and pushed all air from his lungs, so that he rocked on the stool and clutched the counter. He looked around (only his eyes were closed) taking small gulps. All inside vision blanked at images of glory, inevitable and ineffably sensuous till he sat, grinning and opened mouthed and panting, fingers pressing the paper. He tore his eyelids apart, the illusory seal, and looked down at the notebook. He picked up the pen and hastily wrote two lines till he balked at an unrevealed noun. Re-reading made him shake and he began automatically crossing out words before he could trace the thread of meaning from sound to image: he didn’t want to feel the chains. They drew across him and stung.
They carried pain and no solution for pain.
And incorrectly labeled it something else.
He wrote more words (not even sure what the last five were) when once more his back muscles sickled, his stomach tapped the bar edge, and inside the spheres of his eyes, something blind and luminous and terrifying happened.
Those women, he thought, those men who read me in a hundred years will…and no predicate fixed the fantasy. He shook his head and choked. Gasping, he tried to read what he had set down, and felt his hand move to X the banalites that leached all energy: “…pit…” There was a word (a verb!), and watched those either side suddenly take its focus and lose all battling force, till it was only flabby, and archaic. Write: he moved his hand (remember, he tried to remember, that squiggle is the letters “…tr…” when you go to copy this) and put down letters that approximated the sounds gnawing his tongue root. “Awnnn…” was the sound gushing from his nose.
Someday I am going to…it came this time with light; and the fear from the park, the recollections of all fear that stained and stained like time and dirt, page, pen, and counter obliterated. His heart pounded, his nose ran; he wiped his nose, tried to re-read. What was that squiggle that left the word between “…reason…” and “…pain…” indecipherable?
The pen, which had dropped, rolled off the counter and fell. He heard it, but kept blinking at his scrawl. He picked the notebook up, fumbled the cover closed, and the floor, hitting his feet, jarred him forward. “Mr. Newboy…!”
Newboy, standing by the booth, turned. “…yes?” His expression grew strange.
“Look, you take this.” Kidd thrust the notebook out. “You take this now…”
Newboy caught it when he let it go. “Well, all right—”
“You take it,” Kidd repeated. “I’m finished with it…” He realized how hard he was breathing. “I mean I think I’m finished with it now…so—” Tak looked up from his seat—“you can take it with you. Now.”
Newboy nodded. “All right.” After a slight pause, he pursed his lips: “Well, Paul. It was good seeing you. I’d hoped you’d have gotten up again. You must come sometime soon, before I leave. I’ve really enjoyed the talks we’ve had. They’ve opened up a great deal to me. You’ve told me a great deal, shown me a great deal, about this city, about this country. Bellona’s been very good for me.” He nodded to Tak. “Good meeting you.” He looked once more at Kidd, who only realized the expression was concern as Newboy—with the notebook under his arm—was walking away.
Tak patted the seat beside him.
Kidd started to sit; halfway, his legs gave and he fell.
“Another hot brandy for the kid here!” Tak hollered, so loud people looked. To Fenster’s frown, Tak simply shook his grimacing head: “He’s okay. Just had a rough day. You okay, kid?”
Kidd swallowed, and did feel a little better. He wiped his forehead (damp), and nodded.
“Like I was saying,” Tak continued, as blond arms with inky leopards set Kidd a steaming glass, “for me, it’s a matter of soul.” He observed Fenster across his knuckles, continuing from the interruption. “Essentially, I have a black soul.”
Fenster looked from the exiting Newboy. “Hum?”
“My soul is black,” Tak reiterated. “You know what black soul is?”
“Yeah, I know what black soul is. And like hell you do.”
Tak shook his head. “I don’t think you understand—”
“You can’t have one,” Fenster said. “I’m black. You’re white. You can’t have a black soul. I say so.”
Loufer shook his head. “Most of the time you come on pretty white to me.”
“Scares you I can imitate you that well?” Fenster picked up his beer, then put the bottle back down. “What is it that all you white men suddenly want to be—”
“I do not want to be black.”
“—what gives you a black soul?”
“Alienation. The whole gay thing, for one.”
“That’s a passport to a whole area of culture and the arts you fall into just by falling into bed,” Fenster countered. “Being black is an automatic cutoff from that same area unless you do some fairly fancy toe-in-the-door work.” Fenster sucked at his teeth. “Being a faggot does not make you black!”
Tak put his hands down on top of one another. “Oh, all right—”
“You,” Fenster announced to Loufer’s partial retreat, “haven’t wanted a black soul for three hundred years. What the hell is it that’s happened in the last fifteen that makes you think you can appropriate it now?”
“Shit.” Tak spread his fingers. “You take anything from me you want—ideas, mannerisms, property, and money. And I can’t take anything from you?”
“That you dare—” Fenster’s eyes narrowed—“express, to me, surprise or indignation or hurt (notice I do not include anger), because that is exactly what the situation is, is why you have no black soul.” Suddenly he stood—the red collar fell open from the dark clavicle—and shook his finger. “Now you live like that for ten generations, then come and ask me for some black soul.” The finger, pale nail on dark flesh, jutted. “You can have a black soul when I tell you you can have one! Now don’t bug me! I gotta go pee!” He pulled away from the booth.
Kidd sat, his fingertips tingling, his knees miles away, his mind so open that each statement in the altercation had seemed a comment to and/or about him. He sat trying to integrate them, while their import slipped from the tables of memory. Tak turned to him with a grunt, and with his forefinger hooked down the visor of his cap. “I have the feeling—” Tak nodded deeply—“that in my relentless battle for white supremacy I have, yet once again, been bested.” He screwed up his face. “He’s a good man, you know? Go on, drink some of that. Kid, I worry about you. How you feeling now?”
“Funny,” Kidd said. “Strange…okay, I guess.” He drank. His breath stayed in the top of his lungs. Something dark and sloppy rilled beneath.
“Pushy, self-righteous.” Tak was looking across to where Fenster had been sitting. “You’d think he was a Jew. But a good man.”
“You met him on his first day here too,” Kidd said. “You ever ball him?”
“Huh?” Tak laughed. “Not on your life. I doubt he puts out for anyone except his wife. If he has one. And even there one wonders. Anyplace he’s ever gone, I’ll bet he’s gotten there over the fallen bodies of love-sick faggots. Well, it’s an education, on both sides. Hey are you sure you didn’t take some pill you shouldn’t have, or something like that? Think back.”
“No, really. I’m all right now.”
“Maybe you want to come to my place, where it’s a little warmer, and I can keep an eye on you.”
“No, I’m gonna wait for Lanya.” Kidd’s own thoughts, still brittle and hectic, were rattling so hard it was not till fifteen seconds later, when Fenster returned to the table, he realized Tak had said nothing more, and was merely looking at the candlelight on the brandy.