“Yeah. I guess that’s why I always wondered why you ever even talked to me. I mean, I don’t know the first thing about any sport.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You don’t know a baseball from a hockey puck.”
We both laughed, though I’m sure neither one of us felt the least bit happy.
“When you told me about the magazines your wife worked on, I went out an’ bought some,” he continued. “I read her articles. Damn, I read the whole magazines.
“Those are the kind of publications that call a faggot a homosexual, right?”
I had never heard Cass use either word. It seemed odd that he used them then, but I nodded, admitting the truth to his claim.
“My friends, Joey and a hundred like him, say faggot. They laugh at ’em. Some of ’em might kick one’s ass if he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
I was lost by now. What could any of this have to do with me?
“You see, Ben,” Cass said then. “The one thing, the only thing, I never tell anybody is that I’m a faggot too.”
I stared at my work friend of five years, feeling blunted and senseless. I shook my head and crinkled my nose.
“I ain’t a girly man,” Cass said. “I don’t wash the dishes or want a relationship. I’m a man’s man, a real man. I fight and fart and wear clothes until they fall apart. Everything about me is man. Everything.”
“But what about Joany Winters?” I asked.
It was rumored that there had been a passionate affair between Winters, who was married, and Cassius during his first two years on the job. Secretaries gossiped about how Cass would go into her office for an hour at a time and that she would come out with her hair a mess and her clothes all rumpled.
“I fucked that woman so hard that she had to have two abortions,” he said. “There wasn’t no way she could explain a black baby to her English hubby.”
“But you say you’re gay.”
“No. I said I’m a faggot. It’s your wife’s magazines use ‘gay’ and ‘homosexual.’ Whenever I get anyplace, I find a girl like Joany and do her for a while. I don’t mind havin’ sex with a woman; it’s just that’s not my deepest thing. If you come into a place like Our Bank and get that pussy right off, ain’t nobody gonna question you after that. They just see you talkin’ to a woman and they know you gettin’ somethin’.”
I had too many problems on my mind to worry about Cass’s sexuality. I don’t know if I would have worried about it anyway. What did I care?
“I know this don’t mean nuthin’ to you, Ben,” Cass said, as if he were reading my thoughts. “That’s why I’m friends with you. I know that if you knew all about me that it wouldn’t make you no nevermind. You don’t care. You don’t care about nuthin’. That’s what I like about you.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re right. But why are you telling me this after five years? Does it matter?”
“A man named Harvard Rollins came to my office this morning,” Cass said, and I went cold. “He told me that he had information about you and that his magazine was doing an article based on this information. He didn’t want to embarrass the bank and so he was giving me the chance to help him and limit the effect on the company.”
“What did he want to know?”
“Did we have any information about any criminal investigation against you? And if we didn’t, could we help his magazine, Diablerie, I think, in asking for Colorado records.”
“Did he say why they were doing this or what they were looking for?” I spoke deliberately, softly.
“He wouldn’t tell me, not exactly, but he did say that it was a crime that they were looking into, a serious felony, he said.”
I sat back in my chair thinking about Mona, about her asking Harvard Rollins what he was going to do about me. She wouldn’t even tell me. After all those years of marriage she wouldn’t even warn me about some chance that I’d be arrested.
“Did you rob a bank or kill somebody?” Cass asked.
“No.”
“What did you do?”
“I don’t know. I mean... when I lived in Colorado, I was a drinker. Every night I did in a bottle of something — whiskey, brandy, gin. A lot of those nights I just don’t remember.”
“You’d black out?”
I nodded.
“And you wouldn’t remember a thing?”
“Sometimes I did. Most times I’d have a general notion of where I’d been, but people would still tell me things that I had no recollection of whatsoever.”
“Shit,” Cass Copeland said. “Well, you didn’t rob any bank during a blackout. How about cars? Did you ever get into a fight when you were drunk?”
“A couple of times I showed up at home beat-up or bruised with some cuts, but I don’t remember anything serious. Except one.”
“What was that?”
“I ran off the road once. I was drunk.”
“That doesn’t seem newsworthy,” my friend said.
Cass sat across from me, staring into my eyes, shaking his head.
“How long ago did you leave Colorado?”
Twenty-four years.”
“And you’ve never been back?”
“No.”
“Then why all of a sudden would they get on you?”
I stared into Cassius’s eyes, wondering if I should share what I knew with him.
“Ben,” he said. “The reason I told you about me was because I wanted to tell you that you could trust me. If it got out what I was, if my family ever heard about it, I’d have to kill myself. My father used to tell us boys when we were children that if he ever found out that we was that way he’d kill us with his own hands.”
I believed him. I didn’t think that he was plotting against me. After the passage of an extremely long minute, I told him what Barbara “Star” Knowland had said to me at the Diablerie party.
“Listen, Ben,” he said. “If it’s just this witness, we could do something about that.”
“Huh? What?”
Cass just stared at me, the look on his face as blank as death.
“I need to think about this, man,” I said. “I appreciate what you’re saying. And you know I would never betray your confidence. But you can see how confused I am. I don’t even know what it is I’m being blamed for.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. It’s when you don’t know what’s comin’ you get the most worried. But hear me, Ben, whatever this is I will try and help you. I’ma string this Rollins guy along for a while and act like I’m his friend.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Listen, I’m not hungry. I’m going to head out.”
Cass held out his hand to me. It felt like a lifeline, maybe my only chance for safety. I didn’t want to let go. He waited patiently until I had the courage to stand up and walk out of there.
“Hello?” Lana said later that night when I called.
“Hi, baby. I’m just calling to say that I’m not gonna make it tonight.”
“You are home?”
“Naw. At a hotel. I just need a night alone.”
“I could come and visit for a while,” she suggested.
“No,” I said. “I’m just gonna lay up here and watch some pay-per-view movies and try to get some sleep.”
“Are you mad about something?”
“No. Not at all. But you know I’m going through a lot of stuff right now. I’m trying to figure it all out.”
“If you leave her,” Svetlana asked, “will you come to me?”
How could I tell Svetlana where I might go tomorrow? I had no idea where’d I’d been or if maybe I’d be in prison later. But she read something else into the silence.
“Please talk to me, Ben, darling.”
“Don’t worry, Lana. I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
“Is that what you think I want?” she said, suddenly angry. “You think I am worried about your money? I know men who have much more than you who want me, who tell me that they will give me anything I want.”