THE LIGHT IN THE WINDOW
"I can't do this," he had said.
The white boy had simply smiled and said, "You will. Someday you will."
He had laughed and shook his head. White boys and their fantasies. He had played out plenty of fantasies in the past with this white boy and with others. But this one was never going to happen.
The white boy had smiled, given him a hug, and left, leaving the manila envelope on the dresser.
It was the last time he called the white boy.
Not a boy, of course. Not really. But a boy in the sense of their roles. He had been slim, with a pale soft ass, and he had dirty blond hair that always seemed a few weeks past a haircut. He was in his late twenties, but in every other respect -- his soft submission, his giddy laugh, his flirty smile that curled up into a mischievous corkscrew of a grin -- he was a boy. He would always be a boy.
Alonzo had thumbed through the contents of the envelope and then had placed it in the top drawer of the dresser. Two keys. A guest parking pass. A map. A photograph of a six-story apartment building with one of the windows circled. A note on the back of the photograph.
Apartment 325, the note had said. Look for a green light in the window.
Every month, like clockwork, the guest parking passes would expire. And every month, like clockwork, a new pass would come in the mail to Alonzo.
On a whim, Alonzo had taken the envelope with him in the white Mercedes and had driven past the apartment. And as promised, the green light had been on in the window. Third floor. Fourth window from the left.
Alonzo had smiled to himself, slipped the envelope under the driver's seat, and continued on his way.
"I will be waiting," the boy had said. "Asleep, alone, and completely vulnerable. The apartment will be dark. The deadbolt will be unlocked."
"It's ten inches. It would split you open," Alonzo had said. "It would hurt like hell."
"That's my problem," the boy had said.
"You would scream like a stuck pig," Alonzo had said.
"Not if you covered my mouth," the boy had said.
"I can't do this," Alonzo had said. "It isn't right."
"You will," the white boy had said. "Someday it will feel right."
Alonzo's ex-wife dropped the girls off at the house for the weekend. Tabitha was twelve. Alisha was eight. Melanie (not his--Melanie was from her second marriage) was four. By the divorce decree, only Tabitha and Alisha were part of the required allowed visits, but Melanie always wanted to come, and it seemed to keep things in better balance. The bitterness of the divorce had over the years mellowed into a rapproachment. Not friends -- Alonzo and his ex-wife would never be friends again -- but civil. An understanding.
"How is Beatrice?" she asked him.
"Bad," he said. "It has completely metastasized. Spread to her lungs, liver, and brain. It's only a matter of weeks."
"I'm so sorry," his ex-wife said.
"Mom and the rest of the family are in town and taking turns staying with her at the hospital."
"Please give your mother my best," his ex-wife said. "I'll be praying for all of you."
"Thanks."
"I need to switch visiting weekends for the girls next month," she said to Alonzo. "Harold has business in St. Croix, and spouses are expected to come."
"Which weekend?"
"The third. The girls will be staying with Harold's mother, and it's hard for her to get up here."
"Okay," he said. He knew the reason was a lie -- Harold's mother was able to get anywhere she wanted to get (and usually under her own power) but the less he saw of that woman the better.
Some nights he dreamed about the white boy. And then in the mornings he would wake up, shower, and go to the office.
The partner selection committee was meeting in three weeks. And just like the previous year, the interoffice bullshit was heating up.
McClerran had sent a memo copied to the executive steering committee about the Vander case. It ws clearly a letter bomb intended to derail Alonzo. The case had been all but settled, the I's dotted and the T's crossed, and it had been good clean work. The only outstanding points had been a few stray outlyers about timing and terms of the settlement. The substantive stuff was solid, and the remaining stuff was trivial and would be wrapped up with a quick final meeting.
So, what the fuck? A memo to the steering committee? The fucking steering committee?
Alonzo stared at the memo and let the words blur together in his vision as his neck tensed in anger and a dull gray sensation spread through his stomach. The bastard. The motherfucking bastard.
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge above his nose, breathing slowly, trying to pull it back together.
He tried the usual script, the one he had used all the times before. They'll see through it. The steering committee aren't idiots. Surely they would know a transparent backstab when they saw one. Surely they wouldn't let it interfere...
Surely.
He sighed and felt something collapse inside him like a dead weight.
Surely. So why hadn't they promoted him yet?
He knew although he didn't want to think it. But he knew all the same.
"It's not a game," he had said to the white boy. "You don't know what you're asking for."
"I know exactly what I'm asking for."
"You think you know, but you don't. You think it would be a hot scene, something with acted-out roles and a safe word."
"I don't want a safe word."
"You don't want one now. But you would regret it the minute it started."
"You need it," the white boy had said.
"Don't tell me what I need," said Alonzo. "I know damn well what I need and what I don't need."
The white boy shook his head. "No," he said. "It's there as big as life and you've buried yourself so deep that you can't even see it."
"Ah," Alonzo said. "The dime-store psychologist speaks. And what, pray tell, would I have buried?"
"Your rage."
Alonzo rolled his eyes. "I knew that's what you'd say."
The traffic on the freeway was hateful that Thursday. Cars swerved in and out of lanes like death wishes on wheels. Horns blared. At certain points, the flow would suddenly stop, a jarring chorus of brilliant red taillights as brakes slammed and tires squealed.
Alonzo gripped the wheel, jaws clenched, eyes screwed in his sockets dry and screaming, the throbbing in his upper-right temple clawing its way down the side of his face.
Word around the office was that Kessler was a shoe-in for the promotion.
Kessler. Alonzo had mentored him when he first arrived at the firm. And it was clear very early on that the boy was a wholesome-looking, corn-fed idiot.
An idiot with family connections, though. So Alonzo had gone easy on him. Spun his evaluations as best he could given the kid's incompetence, and breathed a sigh of relief when the mentoring period had ended, grateful to have survived without serious disasters, exhausted from double-checking, correcting, and then double-rechecking the kid's work and covering his mistakes.
Kessler. The bone-headed fratboy with the amiable smile and absolutely nothing going on upstairs.
Kessler. Who would soon be leapfrogging above Alonzo in the food chain if the rumors were true.
The traffic was effectively dead, not going anywhere at all, so Alonzo muscled his way over to the right lane and took the next exit. The side streets, even with all the stoplights, would be better than this.
Alonzo wandered through side streets and neighborhoods, turning left and right as the spirit moved him, not taking the quickest path, but always tracking in the general direction of his home. Left. Right. Left. Right. North. East. North. East.
His wanderings took him through affluent, tree-lined neighborhoods, the kinds of homes that top-ranking partners in his firm might own. Bucolic settings, speed bumps, children crossing signs, parks spaced every quarter mile or so.
He felt he almost belonged in this place. His entire career, his years of law school, his long nights at the office, had all been leading to this place.
But he also felt like a child standing outside the window of a department store that had closed for the night. Looking in, knowing that he should be inside, but also knowing that on some level, he would never really belong. Even if he made the promotion at the firm, even if he bought the house in the tree-lined neighborhood, on some level he would still be on the outside. It sometimes bothered him, sometimes stayed pushed down below the surface, but it was always there.
As if drawn by its own ghostly navigation system, the car took him in the direction of the North-South Freeway, just at the point where it met Feenberg Parkway.
Alonzo knew where he was headed, so he went with it.
He pulled to the side of the street, killed the motor, and watched the window. The green light, of course, shined under its little lampshade cover, a cheap bedside lamp from a big-box store with a green party light bulb set on the window sill. Third floor. Fourth window from the left.
Alonzo's cell phone buzzed. It was his older brother, in town from Atlanta and doing his shift at the hospital.
"You need to come now," his brother said. "She's about to go."
Everything built so carefully, and everything falling apart.
His ex-wife was moving to the east coast with her new husband and the girls. New job for the new hubby.
"We'll have to do it as longer visits every few months. Like a vacation for the girls."
He had been their father. Now he was going to be their "vacation."
The hospital late at night was an efficient, quiet place. Nurses in white therapeutic shoes glided from room to room like uniformed specters. Electronic beeps emitted through half-closed doorways from unseen machines. Whirring. Clicking. Inhaling. Exhaling. Clipboards resting in wall holders with checkmarks, Latin words, and metric units written in neat hand by nurses. Instructions scawled in cryptic glyphs by doctors.
His brother met him in the hallway and shook his head. It was over. Alonzo looked past his brother into the room, where the rest of the family was already gathered.
A doctor was speaking to Alonzo's mother in hushed tones, his back to the doorway. Alonzo couldn't hear what he was saying, but he knw what he was saying. His mother broke into a sob.
The doctor's hands were held firmly behind his back. In one hand he held a ballpoint pen, which he compulsively clicked on and off.
Click. Click. The doctor shifted his weight uncomfortably. Then he muttered a few more words, gave a quick nod, and ducked out the door, squeezing past Alonzo. Embarassed.
Alonzo watched the doctor move to the nurse's station and saw his body posture relax. The doctor leaned over to the nurse, whispered something to her, and the nurse suppressed a smile.
"Go in slow first. Let me get used to it."
That's what all the white boys had said to him.
And he had gone in slow. Let them get used to it.
It was a physiological necessity. Ten thick inches can only fit into a tight sensitive place with some coaxing and patience, at least if it was going to be done without unbearable pain.
Sometimes the coaxing had taken longer than the actual fucking. And Alonzo had learned the importance of being patient about it.
"Okay. Leave it in and let me adjust."
"Okay. Wait! Start slowly. Not quite so deep."
That was almost always the way it went.
The family stayed at the hospital for about another hour, then Alonzo's brother urged them all to go home. He would stay and wrap things up there. Then they would meet the next day at an aunt's house in the area and finalize the funeral arrangements.
Alonzo floated to the seventh-floor elevator, numbed, and pressed the button. As the elevator car glided up to him from the ground floor, he could hear a faint chime behind the steel doors as it passed each floor. Ding. Ding. Ding. He also heard a buzzing sound, but he knew that was entirely in his head.
A white couple made their way to the elevator and stood next to Alonzo to wait. They were speaking softly. Obviously, someone close to them had died, although perhaps not as close in relation as Alonzo's sister had been to him.
"That doctor was extraordinary," the man said.
"Such kindness," said the woman. "To stay with us for an entire hour on his schedule."
"And the way he spoke to the kids."
Alonzo couldn't help himself. He had to ask:
"Which doctor?"
"Dr. Crawford," said the man.
"Yes," said the woman. "Dr. Crawford. He was so kind and patient."
Alonzo pictured the doctor -- Crawford -- the same doctor, standing in his sister's room, shifting on his feet, clicking his pen behind his back.
And anxious to get away. From them.
His phone buzzed with a text message. Kessler had gotten the promotion. As his new boss.
And in that moment, the force of it all hit him. Everything. His sister. His babies flying off to the east coast. Daddy is no longer your Daddy. Daddy is now a vacation. Fetch the coffee, Alonzo. The chuckleheaded frat boy likes his with cream.
Nice suit, Alonzo. You clean up real nice. You talk real good. You've got the right attitude.
But you'll always be on the outside looking in. The department store is closed, Alonzo, and it will never open. Not for you.
But go in slowly, Alonzo. Let the boy adjust. Let him get his pleasure before he sends you on your way.
It didn't come on him as a growing burning sensation. Not this time. It didn't creep up his neck and gradually warm up his eyes like it had the times before.
No, this time it just hit him. Hard. A blunt instrument swung with brute force. The impact instantaneous.
The hallway in front of the elevator was suddenly awash in shades of red. The faces of the couple next to him were suddenly blurred. They were no longer faces at all. They were just ugly splotches of white.
And in his mind, Kessler's idiotic grin was gone too. Another ugly splotch of white.
Dr. Crawford. Splotch of white.
The executive steering committee. Splotches of white.
The elevator chimed louder, and the doors finally opened. The white couple stepped into the car, and Alonzo stepped in with them, and then the doors closed behind them, and it seemed to Alonzo that they had all stepped into an oven, and he was the fire heating it. Burning them all alive. Consuming them to ash.
But by the time the elevator reached the ground floor, it was no longer an oven. It was a freezer. And the world was no longer red. It was gray.
And as Alonzo made his way through the parking garage to his car, the realization of the thing settled in and made itself at home. Something inside him had died. Something inside him had changed.
And he knew exactly what had changed, what had died. The part within him that had said: "I can't do this." It was dead. It was more than dead. It was as if it never was.
Alonzo sat behind the wheel for a moment, absorbing the new reality. His cock was rock hard, pressing against the front of his pants, straining to be unleashed, but there was no passion or warmth within it. Only cold brutal rage. It no longer even felt like a cock but more like a weapon.
And right now, it felt right. It felt exactly right.
Alonzo started the car, pulled out of the parking garage, and headed down the street towards the apartment with the light in the window.