Уолтер Мосли - And Sometimes I Wonder About You

“What about Shelly?” I asked.

“That man followed her up to SUNY.”

“Seldon Arvinil?”

“He left his wife and daughter to be with our little girl. I suppose she’s happy though. Who am I to deny her that?”

“You’re her mother.”

“If I was a good mother she wouldn’t have needed an older man to shelter her heart.”

Hearing these words reminded me of Sweet Lemon Charles for the second time that day. The next time I saw the prison-made poet I’d ask him what he knew about the poetry of despair.

The Hotel Brown was nestled between two Middle Eastern consulates on East Sixty-seventh, not far from Fifth Avenue. It was an old hotel with an excellent security staff and high-ceilinged rooms that were well appointed and large. Not a cheap joint.

I stood across the street and called the hotel operator with the help of 411.

“Hotel Brown,” a woman said. “How may I direct your call?”

“Marella Herzog,” I said.

There was a hesitation and then, “Who may I say is calling?”

“Leonid McGill.”

The next thing I heard was a ringing phone.

“Hello, Leonid,” she said on answering the third ring. “I was wondering when you’d call.”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“I told the front desk only to allow calls from you. It was getting so late that I thought maybe I’d have to wait until tomorrow.”

It was 9:39 by my watch and tomorrow seemed very far away.

“Are you calling about your money?” she asked when I was silent.

“I guess that’s part of it.”

“What else?”

“I didn’t get my kiss on the cheek.”

“Where are you?”

“Across the street.”

“Come on up,” she said, “room eight twenty-five. I’ll tell the front desk to let you by.”

There was a time when black men were not allowed to visit fancy hotel rooms unless they wore a service uniform and were delivering flowers or dinner on a tray. There was a time when dark-skinned women would not be allowed to stay in those rooms. But those days are long over. There’s still racism of course. People of color still struggle mightily against misconceptions that are half a millennium old. But these days I can take the elevator up to a femme fatale’s room and no one would bar my way — or warn me off.

I knocked on her door and she answered — in the nude. The nude. She wore absolutely nothing. Her entire body was an even reddish brown, telling me that she spent a lot of time on unregulated beaches.

Walking across the threshold, I closed the door with my left hand, went to my knees, and pressed my mouth into the nexus of her legs.

“Oh,” she said.

Working my head and neck to separate her thighs maybe four inches midway between the pelvis and the knee, I jabbed softly with my tongue.

“Oh,” she said with a bit more feeling.

But it was when I got the left thigh on my shoulder and stood straight up that I believe she was more shocked than I was to be received by a russet-skinned beauty at a door on the eighth floor of a room which, not all that long ago, excluded our ancestors.

She grabbed onto my hairless head but she didn’t have to worry. I wouldn’t have let her fall. Between my shoulders, hands, and tongue she either had a powerful orgasm or did a very good job at pretending.

“Let me down,” she said when the shudders subsided.

I moved my shoulder and then my chest until I was holding her in the cradle of my arms.

“You’re very strong,” she said and then kissed me for the first time.

I rubbed my nose against her chin.

“Lucky I don’t have an engagement ring in my pocket,” I replied.

She hugged my head then with even more passion than she had shown before.

“Lie down with me,” she commanded.

And so there we lay: her completely naked and me fully dressed and fully erect.

She touched the urgent bulge in my trousers and said, “We’ll take care of that in just a bit.”

“We better,” I warned, “before it takes care of itself.”

Marella laughed out loud, actually guffawed and punched my arm. She was a solidly built woman; in her thirties, as I’ve already said, but with the pampered body of a woman ten years younger.

“Do you think you killed that guy?” she asked.

“Naw,” I said dismissively.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I went back in the station after you left.”

“You did? Wasn’t that rather reckless?”

“Nobody saw us,” I said.

I considered explaining my idea of the elevator-gladiator sport.

She unzipped my blue trousers.

“He saw us,” she said while fishing around for the flesh in my pants.

“Um... he was still out.”

“How do you know that?” She found what she was looking for. Her fingers were cold.

“Oh,” I said. “He passed maybe twelve feet away from me on a wheeled gurney pushed by two women.”

“Your turn,” she told me and we didn’t talk about anything for a while.

“I think I can safely say that I have never met a man like you,” Marella Herzog said at 1:51 by the lighted digital numerals on the clock next to her side of the bed. We were both naked by then, drinking honor-bar cognac. My pants, which were neatly folded on a plush red chair that sat against the wall, had an extra fifteen hundred dollars in them.

“I can say without a doubt,” I replied, “that I have met all the failed attempts that first the Hebraic and then the Christian God made trying to come up with a woman like you.”

“You’re good,” she said. “It’s a wonder that you haven’t been shot down by a town full of frightened citizens.”

It struck me that our conversation was like an aged wine rather than a freshly squeezed juice. If I believed in the gods I swore by, or maybe their Hindu counterparts, I would have said that we were old souls that had known each other at many other times, in other reincarnations.

“So what do you plan to do about the man that wants his ring back?” I asked.

“How old are you?”

“Almost fifty-six.”

“And you laid that guy out and held me up on your shoulders like my daddy did when I was a little kid.”

“I hope not just like that.”

“No. The other way around.”

“You needed a man who wouldn’t mind the ride,” I said. “I guess I needed a woman like that too.”

She leaned over toward her end table and poured another miniature bottle into her near-empty glass. I realized, watching that supple and sinuous movement, that life was the only magic all humanity could agree upon.

“I don’t think I have anything to worry about, Mr. McGill. You nipped that problem in the bud.”

“Rich men sometimes have armies of guys like that one on the train,” I advised.

“I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” she countered. “I still have your card if something comes up in the next day or two, and after that I’ll be far, far away from here.”

Who was I to question the perfect Lilith, the precise Mary Magdalene?

“Can I sleep here with you tonight?” I asked.

“Only if you don’t mind if I wake you up once or twice.”

I was back down near Penn Station at 5:17 the next morning, making my way up the stairs of a nondescript brick building just a few blocks away. When I’d woken up at 4:00 Marella was still asleep. After an ice-cold shower I threw on my blue suit, kissed her, and said good-bye. She sighed, smiled, and turned the other way.

I left the Hotel Brown certain that my business with Ms. Herzog was yet to be completed. I was wondering if this was a good thing as I pushed open the door to Gordo’s Gym on the fifth floor of the nameless, unremarkable building.