Charles Johnson - Faith and the Good Thing

Faith bent forward a bit farther, pushing her tight slip lower down her back; that helped, but the movement gave Maxwell the impression she was straining to hear what he said.

“It’s cash,” he announced, “cash money.” Then he slapped the checkered tablecloth with his palm. “Why, you can be as ugly as a witch, you can be evil and selfish and wicked, but cash money can make you beautiful, right?” He saw her face freeze up and softened his voice. “If you haven’t got talent, you can buy folks who do — whatever you want, whatever your Will points to is yours. That’s what I said in there,” and he tapped the back of the newspaper in her hand.

Faith said, “I see,” but she didn’t. She had changed in many ways, but not so much that she was comfortable with his ideas. In fact, she wouldn’t have recognized herself if she’d seen herself months ago in the glowing waters of the Swamp Woman’s Thaumaturgic Mirror. She would have seen, not a girl married to God in her childhood, or the terrified ethical adventurer who tarried an evening in the Hatten County bogs, but a woman with long artificial eyelashes, light rose lipstick, and crescent-shaped earrings; she would have seen pink nail polish on her long fingers, a turtled sleeveless bodice, navy shirt and jacket, and brown pumps. You wouldn’t know her. Maybe it was her makeup, her mascara, flesh-toned powders, perfumes that recalled the essence of exotic flowers, and waist-long falls that fooled you. You might have seen her legs, or noticed the brevity of her tailor-made dresses and coats, as Maxwell had a month ago when he saw her in this restaurant on Washington Street and invited himself over to her table. At that time he was new on his job as an assistant editor for The Sentry, and new to Chicago, hailing as he did from Columbus, Ohio. He found his new job of editing, rewriting, and sitting through morning news conferences quite a cross to bear. He needed someone to complain to. And like magic there appeared Faith. Once a week he’d find her at the same restaurant, at the same table by the window, looking woebegone as she sipped orange juice and studied her secretarial manual. But seeing her once weekly was not enough. She’d listen to any thing you said (he was amazed), she very rarely contradicted you (he found the sense of power unbearable), and she even agreed with you, but not before you’d finished what you were saying. It was too much. He took her to dinner thereafter on Sundays and now, since she didn’t have a job, paid her rent at Eden Green. Strange to say, whenever he left her it was hard to remember anything about their conversations but the sound of his own brassy voice.

Faith finished the editorial, handed Maxwell his newspaper, and stuck a Viceroy in her cigarette holder. This time he didn’t complain, only said, “Smoking testifies to the weakness of your will,” and lit it for her. She would have agreed with him immediately but saw, floating over the heads of the other diners at the rear of the room, a whiff of blue smoke. Tensing, she turned to Maxwell, who had seen her reaction.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” she said quickly. “Go on. I think you’re right about all those things.”

Maxwell broke into a broad grin. “You do?” And he blushed up to his ears. When he spoke again there was confidence in his voice. “Take the death of that professor a while back. The man just lay down on a park bench and gave up the ghost — no Will, no taste for conflict. You remember, don’t you?”

Faith cringed — recovered, and smiled. “No.”

Maxwell broke the delicate film over his sunny-side-up eggs with his fork before filling his mouth. He chewed largely with his eyes narrowed and mouth open. Her focus drew in from the room that framed his pear-shaped head to his face and concentrated on his cheeks, which fascinated her. Pack rats had cheeks like these, as big as overstuffed luggage when full. Maxwell shoveled in eggs and neatly cut squares of ham, slices of toast, and hash browns mechanically like an engine taking in fuel; then he began to bite and chew with a certain rhythm, the distended sides of his face decreasing in size like balloons releasing air. At the end of each mouthful he wiped his lips (yellow egg yolk still caked in his mustache and that area of the anatomy just beneath the nose, which Lavidia always called a man’s “snot-cup”) and gulped so loudly it hurt Faith’s esophagus. She wondered how he managed to taste anything he ate since he ate so fast. But her focus slipped back out again, fixing on the background behind Maxwell and the blue wisp of smoke across the room. It drifted toward them, ghostly, like mist over the fields each morning in Georgia, or gas, and she thought: Damn! Could only she see it? It figured.

“He deserved to die,” Maxwell said between mouthfuls. “I wrote the story on the old man, dug up the information on him and all that. He had everything going for him at one time, you know? — good job as a professor, published some books, but he just left all that behind. For two years nobody saw hide nor hair of that man.” He snorted. “That kind of foolishness makes me mad — I mean, somebody who’s on top of things and just throws it all away! Maybe,” Maxwell chuckled, “he lost his mind.”

Faith laughed politely. All pretense. She’d learned some time ago that if she laughed heartily with her eyes shut tight and her mouth open in a toothy grin for precisely seven seconds, not an instant more or less, she could easily slip away from the attempts at humor forced upon her usually humorless state of mind. It took a lot of training to perfect that smile, it took hours of standing in front of a mirror, timing herself, then testing the reaction on all the customers that she knew at the hotel. And it paid off. People warmed to Faith’s laughter immediately. For a second she thought about Alpha Omega Jones. Had his smile been deceit? It was tricky but she thought it through: there was what you saw — appearance, and there was what was truly real — the Good Thing; but you couldn’t have the latter. So you learned to control appearances, to construct elaborate, well-timed pretenses and lies to get what you needed to survive. Faith clicked off the seconds to the beat of her pulse and looked up at Maxwell.

“I figure I can make fifty thousand a year if my Will Power’s strong enough,” Maxwell said. “I mean, the publisher of The Sentry doesn’t have anything I don’t have, except that he’s white. I watch him a lot, y’know? He comes in that front door every morning and slams it behind him. Wakes everybody up, y’know? When he slams that door the noise says ‘Here I am!’ and everybody snaps up straight at their desks. That’s how you get respect — by slamming doors like Ragsdale does, or by letting everybody know who’s in control around there.” Maxwell reached for Faith’s cigarettes and took one. He took one puff and watched himself exhale in the window’s reflection. Then he abandoned the smoldering cigarette in the ashtray to Faith’s right. “Someday I’m gonna run that newspaper. You watch. Just as soon as I get myself together.” For the span of several seconds he looked at the manicured nails on his right hand and played with two silver rings on his left. “When that happens, Faith, I’m going to be rich.” He winked, foxy. “But I’ll still be my same sweet self!”

Faith smiled. Seven seconds later she excused herself. The mist had maneuvered itself above Maxwell’s head like a storm cloud. Her slip was again pinching her waist, and she hurried across the room to the women’s lounge and, once inside, began struggling with her underclothes. Satisfied, she moved to the mirror and fastidiously reapplied her lipstick. She stared at herself in the glass, wondering if Maxwell would propose tonight after they attended the concert at the Auditorium Theater. She had worked hard toward that end, had pulled every trick from her memory, even ones she only faintly believed in and had had to forage pet shops to complete. Like carrying tufts of his wig in her pocketbook, and the Frog Charm (somewhat complicated, but effective: Kill a frog or toad, dry him out completely in the sun — or bury him in an ant’s bed until his flesh is gone. Among his bones will be one that resembles a fishhook, and another that looks like a fish scale. To win your intended lover, hook the fish bone into his/her clothing; to expel him/her, throw the fish-scale bone in that person’s direction). She was never sure, though, if it was the charms, her charm of listening, or Maxwell’s own fatuity that brought him under her control. He was incredibly slow, but could be cajoled into anything she willed through an elaborate process of innuendo and suggestion that left her fatigued and frustrated, but always victorious. Indeed, he seemed dull to her, as simple as a three-headed treasure-guarding troll, but, she told herself, intrinsically good (unlike trolls — they’ll drink a Christian man’s blood), and harmless in a cowlike way. She bent forward, powdering her cheeks, certain that Dr. Lynch had been so right: everything was stimulus and response. Machinery. She remembered the occasion when Maxwell, set in motion by her elaborate act of submissiveness, made his first advances toward her. He’d been nervous that night, wheezing with asthma, staining his tie with brown steak sauce and spilling black coffee onto his crotch. He’d lowered his eyes self-consciously and slipped his trembling hands under the table.