Ishmael Reed - Reckless Eyeballing

Ball pushed him out of the way as the author of a collection of poems entitled My Secret Enemy: Me shouted at him, “THE JEWS! THE JEWS!” He was screaming. Randy followed Ball to the outside of the building, where Ball hailed a taxi. “Yeah, you fast all right, fast like you told us a long time ago, Ball, but I didn’t know that you were that fast, that you would side with these bitches, these collaborators who are aiding our enemies in destroying us.” Three or four cabs passed by. “You’ve broken ranks. They’ve made you into some kind of feminist.” One pulled up. Ball jumped in. “They’ve made you into some kind of girl.” Ball started to get out of the cab and kick his ass, but he had more important things to do. The cab leaped forward.

One night Ian was having plot problems, so he sauntered on over to Tre’s, as he was beginning to call her. Randy Shank grumbled something as he walked in, perhaps still smarting over their last encounter. He went up to the elevator. As he approached Tre’s apartment he heard somebody going upside somebody’s head. He rushed to the door. It was open. He ran in and inside, a thin, wide bubble-eyed-looking man had Tre over the sofa’s back and was strangling her. Ball grabbed the guy and threw him against the wall. The guy begged off. He was a wretched sight. He seemed to have slept in his clothes and his hair was wild and crazy, and he had on some weird clothes and shoes. Must be a musician, Ball thought. Then he recognized him. It was Dred Creme, the alto sax man. He was recently the subject of a long, difficult-to-read piece in one of the downtown art journals. He’d heard that Tre and Dred were tight. The only word the guy seemed to be sure of was “bitch.”

“Hero. A hero.” Dred started to reel and clap sarcastically. He could tell that the guy was high on something. To her he said, “I’m coming back later or I’ll see you on the street. And when I finish with you you’ll think that what that Flower Phantom did was mild.” He staggered out of the apartment, but not before pausing to look Ball up and down. Ball matched him eyeball to eyeball. After Dred left, she walked up and put her arms around Ball’s neck. He could feel her protuberances and her crevices. He wanted to gently let her down and gingerly fuck her on the couch right there, but then he decided that he didn’t want to mix drama with sex. She finally let him go and sat down. He went over and sat on the sofa.

“He’s always up here asking me for money to…to score with. He’s snorted so much that he has to have surgery on his nose.”

“Mind if I ask you something?”

“No,” she said, “what is it? First, let me fix you a drink.”

“I’ll have grapefruit juice,” Ball said. She went into the kitchen. He heard the mixer going. He heard her pouring the drinks. He looked at the coffee table, which had been moved to the side because of the struggle. On top was a book entitled The Complete Works of Amy Lowell , and next to that was a biography of Jane Austen, and knocked to the floor by the struggle, pages open, was Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God . Zora Neale Hurston wasn’t a joiner but Tremonisha and others had claimed her as one of their own (though being middle-class Christian women at heart they wouldn’t touch the Vodoun parts). They had joined Zora and joined her until she was all joined up. He picked the book up. She brought the tray back in and set it down on the table. They began to sip from the glasses.

“What did you want to ask me?” she asked.

“Well, if I may be frank, why do middle-class women like you go out with guys who want to beat you up and take your money?” He and the fellas always wondered why the musicians got all of the pussy. They concluded that it was because they did all of their talking with their instruments. They were nonverbal and so the bitches could run their mouths without fear of being interrupted or being called on the bullshit they were laying down. They also had theories about what the mouthpieces were substitutes for.

“It’s none of your business,” she said.

“These guys beat you up. Why don’t you date somebody from your own class?”

“Leave.” She pointed to the door. She ah…looked…well, cute when she got mad. His mother’s image appeared in his mind. She was giving him a stern look. He’d have to cool it. He wasn’t as close to any woman as he was to his mother. Mama’s boy? Why not. Ten years ago, when Freud was still riding high, you couldn’t say that, but now that even some of his staunchest supporters were stating publicly that there was no empirical foundation whatsoever for his theories, you could say that you dug your mother without anybody, you know, looking at you funny. He started for the door. She’d gone to the couch and was sobbing on her arm. No. He decided. He’d have this out. “And another thing.” She had her knees up, and he could see some of that excellent area above her knees: Her thighs were calling out to him, Ian, Ian, they were saying. He felt like pulling a Clark Gable, in that scene from Gone With the Wind , taking her into his arms — she beating his chest and kicking — and going into the bedroom to comfort her and stuff. But since he had her attention he decided to go for broke.

“I know I’m from the South, and I’m not all that hip to the way northern urban proletariat people talk, but some of the fellas say that they can’t follow the dialect in Wrong-Headed Man . I mean, if they can’t follow it, how are these white women who praise it so enthusiastically able to follow it! What do they know that the people who grew up actually speaking this language don’t know? The fellas say—”

“What do those hardheaded fools say about me?”

“They say that you know as much about the way black people talk as Al Capp knew about Indian languages—” She started screaming and shouting. Then she started throwing things. He got out of there fast. He knew that he’d fucked up this time. Randy Shank was in the lobby, sitting at his desk. He was a little drunk.

“How come she let you up there and won’t let none of the other fellas in there? Only people I see going up there are broads. Man, some of those chicks look rough. They could have gone into the wrestling business. I’ll bet you’re working on more than that play up there. Does she stopwatch the foreplay? I’ll bet a cold biddy like that times her sexual orgasms.” He then began to ramble.

“That Becky French fucked over my play. I’ll fix her. That Flower Phantom. That dude is right. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Ball started to punch out Shank. These northern guys were always pushing him. He was always having to invite them outside. Always fucking with him. He was just about around the corner from Tre’s building when Shank came running out.

“The bitch wants to talk to you.”

Randy Shank waited for him to come into the lobby. He handed him the downstairs phone. He had a silly mocking grin. Ball grabbed the phone from the sucker.

“Yes,” he said. Randy was trying to listen, peering over the top of the newspaper he pretended to be reading. Headlines read: FLOWER PHANTOM’S NEW VICTIM.

“I don’t want our…what just happened to come between us and the play. We have to forget about our differences and think of the play. I guess I lost my head. Throwing those things at you like that. We’ll work tomorrow.” He noticed Shank trying to spy. He put his hand over the receiver.

“Very well.” He didn’t want to let on how relieved he was.

They’d been working from four to eight P.M. She had smoked a pack of cigarettes. When he went to the bathroom during a break he noticed a lot of stress pills in her medicine cabinet. Their exchanges since the argument had been cordial, civilized. A word she used a lot. This or that is so civilized, she’d say.