Уолтер Мосли - John Woman

“You have to write down everything you know,” he said sternly, “every act and sin; every omission and mistake; every dark thought and belief... But you don’t have to share everything with the class.”

A sudden light emanated from the worried student’s eyes. John stifled an urge.

“You will be graded,” he continued, “on the quality and fearlessness of your work. It will be one of the few times in your experience of higher education that you will be rated on courage.”

Carlinda leaned forward, listing toward the young lecturer. He wiped the sweat from her upper lip with his thumb and then kissed her. She moved easily from her chair into his lap. There was no hesitation or clashing of teeth. Carlinda’s kisses were soft and somehow enduring. He leaned back in the hard chair. She caressed the side of his neck with both hands.

In the middle of the night, John was sitting up considering the sleeping Carlinda. The sex had been, as he expected, awkward, punctuated with hesitations and surprise. Her first orgasm brought tears to her eyes. When he asked her if she wanted to stop she shook her head, binding him in an embrace of extraordinary strength.

“Have you done this with other students?” she asked.

“No,” he answered truthfully.

They’d said a lot more but John couldn’t remember it.

How could that be? He remembered everything said or read in his presence, every word: obscure passages in Latin and Greek, the lectures of his father and the passionate revelations of his mother. John could recite word for word the sermon given by Pastor Lionel Rehnquist at Wanderers’ Baptist Church. He’d gone there by himself when he was a child of eight.

Young Cornelius asked his father what they talked about in church and Herman said, “It is your assignment to go there next Sunday and find out, an infiltrator in the house of their god.”

He could recite Rehnquist’s entire homily but the words he’d shared with Carlinda were lost.

He got up from the bed, took the smart phone from his pants on the floor and went to the deep windowsill to lounge under the desert moon.

If I am to teach history, he wrote to Posterity, then I must be history. If I am to know something I must live it. He stopped for a while to consider these words. After a few minutes he continued, Otherwise life would be like TV, like bread and circuses to the ancient Romans. Human life is a tactile experience. The mind, after all, is a physical thing no different from tomato cans or alley cats. We do not transcend physical experience; it surpasses us. Realizing this we understand that knowledge is secondary to the hunger for knowledge...

The soft sensation of her hand on the back of his neck held no surprise. She’d moved soundlessly across the room and reached out...

“What you doin’?” she asked.

She came around and sat across from him, naked and spread-legged so that he could make out the contours of her sex in the moonlight.

“I have to write a paper for the history department,” he said.

“Like personal history?”

“Just the opposite.”

“I have a boyfriend.”

“He’s a lucky guy.”

After a few moments she said, “You must have had a lot of experience.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The things you did.”

“You liked it?”

“I want to feel something,” she replied, not looking at him. “I want to be out of control, at least a little bit. I want to have to try to get away but not be able to...”

There was surety in the silences he experienced with Carlinda. He realized, with mild surprise, that he was aroused by their talk.

“I’ve never had a girlfriend,” he admitted.

“What do you mean?”

“If I were to write a personal history paper,” he replied, “one of the admissions I’d make would be that I never had a real girlfriend. Mostly I’ve just paid for what I needed.”

“But why?” she asked, turning her eyes to him. “You’re cute and funny and smart...”

“There’s not much room on my little island,” he said meeting her gaze.

“I’m not going to fall in love with you,” Carlinda warned.

“Okay,” he said, amused.

“This was just a physical thing,” she continued, “something I needed like a massage or a cold glass of water.”

John thought about his words to Posterity: his claim that the physical world was preeminent in human awareness.

“Me too,” John said.

“So you’re not going to try and be my boyfriend, my lover?”

“Things will be what they are.”

“You don’t want to get in my life and mess up things with me and Arnold?”

“You’ve already defeated me, Miss Elmsford.”

She reached over touching his erection lightly. “And what if I got on this right now?”

“We could sit face-to-face and continue our talk,” he said. “And in the morning I won’t even ask for your phone number.”

When John woke up the next morning Carlinda was gone. His phone read nine forty-seven. The desert outside was overcast. Downstairs he made coffee in a French press. Standing naked next to the ultramodern smooth-top stove John wondered about alienation intrinsic to technology and the immediacy of sex.

While watching the water in the clear Pyrex pot he felt a sudden chill at the back of his neck. He tried to ignore the sensation — as he should have ignored the sweat forming on Carlinda’s upper lip.

History is just as much superstition as it is study, Herman Jones once said when Cornelius was young and did not yet fully appreciate the complexity of abstract thought. As much as religion the study of the past takes a monumental leap of faith.

Savoring the strong coffee John picked up the smart phone to continue the dialogue with Posterity. He was about to engage the word processor app when he noticed the icon of an envelope at the bottom left of the screen. It was a message from his online news alert service.

He touched the little image with a baby finger. This called up a list of related topics that had recently been in the news.

Desiccated Corpse Found in Wall of Silent Screen Movie House was the lead headline from a New York newspaper. Dead Man Murdered and Sealed in a Wall for Over 15 Years, the Wayne Report Online declared.

There were seventeen news reports on the discovery of Chapman Lorraine’s remains. The Arbuckle Cinema House was undergoing internal renovations initiated by new owners. When the construction crew tore down a wall in the projection room they discovered a desiccated male corpse wrapped in garment bags and stored in a big aluminum trunk. In a public statement homicide officer Lieutenant Colette Van Dyne said that there was a suspect that the NYPD was actively seeking.

John supposed that Colette had taken her boyfriend’s name; that she had indeed married him. He was certain that the NYPD was looking for Cornelius “CC” Jones. France Bickman had to be dead after so long and there was no other possible suspect.

John went upstairs to don pants, shirt and shoes. Clothes were necessities for a man on the run. There was money in a safe-deposit box in Reno, Nevada. He’d created yet another identity — Reflex Minton. All necessary documents for Reflex were salted away in a safe-deposit box in LA.

Why hadn’t he called himself Robert or Bruce or even Omar? Did he want to be captured?

The clouds outside were lifting. Watching them part John thought about the chill he’d felt even before he knew what happened. The accuracy of premonition had a calming effect. He was probably safe. No one had his fingerprints. Even when he was taken by the police after the death of his father Colette made sure that he was in protective custody and not under arrest; that way they didn’t book him. The only photographs that possibly existed were from childhood, and those snapshots had most likely been lost. Lucia’s family didn’t claim him and Herman’s sister only met Lucia when she was pregnant.