"An American Fable"
Fred Jay Gordon
Published by Fred Jay Gordon at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 by Fred Jay Gordon
Discover other titles by Fred Jay Gordon at Smashwords.com:
"Benjamin grabbed his Glicken and ran"
"Blood Never Dries"
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AN AMERICAN FABLE
PART 1
I
Look. Sitting inside the glass booth, Big Brim Oscar Birmingham watched the countdown. On “Four” he picked up his head. On “Three” he opened his eyes. On “Two” he cleared his throat. On “One” he smiled. On “Zero” he breathed in. The “On the Air” sign on the wall lit up and Brim sang: “Hello again, Welcome to the Happy Show again, It’s time to rise, Shake the Stardust from your eyes, And sing with me, of the sunny day you see.” He did his famous laugh and spoke in his sun-lit, morning voice. “Yes! and hello again – and welcome! to the Big Brim Oscar Birmingham Show!”
Although the staff kept the air conditioning on icy blast, Brim mopped his brow frequently with a large, blue handkerchief embroidered with the white initials B.O.B.
Holding the corners of his mouth back and up, Brim Oscar Birmingham did his famous grin which made his voice happy as he sent himself out and over the airwaves to all his fans in the metropolitan area. Big Brim Oscar Birmingham, fat and experienced, friendly and rolly-poly, snuggled and twisted and jiggled in his extra large chair with huge rubber wheels as he famously winked to Billy Riddle, the sound engineer. Billy waved back as Brim’s voice, rising and falling in morning wake up tones, whooshed through the large round microphone and soared out to the greatest city in the world. Keeping his bleary eyes open, Brim made sure his hand surrounded the gin held in his favorite crystal juice glass. Smiling as he talked, hooting, whistling, urging his audience onward and upward, he was irresistible. He was a bankable virus and his checking account was huge.
Big Brim liked to read some of his mail on the air. His listeners’ letters were long and he had to pick out parts which were suitable. Brim described the socks, scarves, and sweaters his friends sent. He bragged about his forty-eight extra large suits made especially for him by famous designers. At the close of the show he sang to the same recorded strings: “Goodbye again, Until the same old time again, Big Brim wants to say, Have a very very happy day, And tune in tomorrow, I’ll banish all sorrow, With coffee and cheer on WUVP.”
Billy turned the show off and over to the network programs fast because Big Brim pulled himself out of his chair and yelled, “Finished!!!”
At that signal, his valet-chauffeur, Seeancy, came running in to help get Brim out of the studio. Seeancy held his boss steady as they rode down in the gold gilded elevator to the huge black marble lobby of the radio station in middle of Manhattan, magnet to the world.
It was a bright summer day in July, 1952 – the time of prosperity and dreams just after World War II and just before the introduction of color television – and Brim Oscar Birmingham stepped off the curb into his waiting bright red limousine which was the only one of its kind in New York. Not even looking at the huge golden sculpture of Atlas centered in the concrete quadrangle of immense, city buildings, Brim threw himself in the back of his car and, squeezing in his shoulders, wedged himself into the corner of the thickly padded, wide, gray seat. He covered his face with his hot hand. The most popular radio announcer on New York radio with the most heavily sponsored show with the highest cost per minute, sat mute and dazed and momentarily lost.
Seeancy climbed into the front, closed the door, and turned around. “Hey, fighter.”
Brim said nothing. The air conditioning hummed.
“I said, ‘Hey, fighter,’ and I’m needin’ your response, Mr. Brim. Oh – oh – say what? Could you repeat that just a little louder – got this hearin’ problem from the war, you know ‘bout it.”
Roused, Brim opened his eyes. He uncorked the clear bottle next to him, took a quick swig, stared at Seeancy, then barked: “Devil to the dogs, Snance, and thank you for your military might. Downtown for us, Seeancy. Time to zip on out OUT!! through the tunnel. To the mountains, Snancy-dance!”
“Yes, sir!” said Seeancy, turning to the wheel with satisfaction.
Once through the Holland Tunnel, Seeancy decided to drive on the back roads of New Jersey and soon had gone through the tunnel, driven passed the pig farms and the burning chemical factories near the turnpike, and were heading into the hills. They turned north and went up and over a green mountain. They turned left and bumped onto an unpaved road and the big red limousine’s tires sprayed clouds of brown dust behind them and the car jumped a few times in the ruts.
Brim and Seeancy rode on and into the country passing green and brown fields and gentle hills which were soft and rose up and fell down under long-leaved green grasses and bushes and gigantic trees. It was quiet in the air and the land was summer warm under the bright yellow sun. From the back seat of his sealed limousine, Brim stared out into the steamy July day which he knew would feel heavy and oppressive, claustrophobic and mortal, weighty on his available, sinner’s skin.
When they came to a crossroad, the dirt road ended and a single, newly cemented lane went off to the east and off to the west. They went east until the hills began growing into mountains. There were tall oak trees and gray birches which grew straight hiding the mountain peaks and Brim saw the trees in distance and it looked as if all the trees had been clipped because the tops were even and round like big umbrellas. They would blow back and forth in the windy wet fall but now it was hot summer and the greens were so fresh they looked good enough to eat. Brim pulled two egg salad sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off wife-Vera always made for him each morning no matter how late she stayed out the night before. Brim chomped, Brim swallowed, Brim mused: The good life was the summer life and it should always be God’s great summer. Brim’s teeth were hard and clean.
Along the country road was a long meadow that had no fence and ran parallel alongside with the car. Brim liked the yellows and whites of the wild daisies against the blue sky with no clouds and he suddenly turned his head upside down so the field was the sky and the sky was the ground. He couldn’t turn all the way because he was fat and not very good at standing on his head especially in a moving car even though Seeancy was driving slowly. The blue ground had birds scurrying across it and the field had tall grass reaching down to the ground.
Then off to the rear, galloping along with the car, was a big red horse. It was running along upside down on the sky. There was a boy with blond hair curled up on the horse and huddled against the horse’s neck. Brim righted himself in his seat and looked at the boy and the horse who ignored him. The horse started to pass the car and Brim told Seeancy to follow that horse.
The big red limousine surged forward and the horse and the car ran side by side as Brim, mouth closed, watched the boy ride that horse. Suddenly and quickly, the boy looked at Brim. They stared at each other until Brim saw the boy in his white t-shirt with muscled arms, white pants, a thickly sinewed, lean body, and yellow hair whipping in the wind. And then Brim saw that the boy had sky blue crescent eyes which surrounded Brim. They were eyes which glittered at him and walled him and cut right through him.
The boy turned away and pushed his cheek closer against the horse’s neck and the horse moved faster. It was a huge animal, shining red, coordinating its muscles smoothly and freely and the boy crouched up on the moving horse. They ran on and hard and the boy and the horse welded into one unit which raced the car and Brim. The boy and the horse blurred their red with white, and Brim, staring out at the moving object, knew that if the horse suddenly leaped up and soared through blue sky, that the boy would never slide off because he was the horse.
The red horse who had no saddle, whose sweat from its shoulders foamed white and coated the boy’s knees. Sweat from the horse’s flanks mixed with the boy’s sweat and when drops fell off the animal and splashed into the meadow, no one could tell which drops belonged to the boy or which drops belonged to the horse. And the boy’s mouth was wide open sucking in air and the smell of the horse, and the horse, nostrils round and wide, ran with the power of his animal body.
There was no noise now because the car ran quietly and the only sound was the sound of the horse lightly touching the ground to push off and fly in the air for a second and then touch the ground again to get back into the air. The horse ran faster and Seeancy pushed down on the accelerator until the front of the car was even with the horse’s head. Foam sweated from the horse’s mouth and dropped off in large, wet clumps. Seeancy drove faster and the horse seemed to rise from the ground and not touch the earth at all. And then the boy smiled and knew he and the horse would win because ahead on the road was a sign that said the road was not completed for Seeancy to follow the horse and Seeancy had to press hard and fast on the screaming brakes. Shrieking in terror, the car slid to a halt but went off the road in the dust to avoid hitting the sign.
Brim looked up and the boy and the horse were running straight and free into the woods.
Even though it was Brim who told him to drive on, Seeancy took it as his fault that the car ran off the road. He curled up on the front seat and beat into the cushions.
“Now come on, fighter!” said Brim, watching Seeancy and he hauled his fat body out of the car. “Ho hey, man, it’s hot your fault. And nobody’s hurt! Here, look.” Brim pranced and pirouetted with his arms over his head and he twisted his face until Seeancy had to laugh at Brim and laugh at himself. “There,” said Brim. “See? The car’s in one piece and you’re in one piece and I’m just as fat as I was this morning! Come on. God, and you saved my life? That’s it! Buck up, my man. Grin. The world is filled with horses and kings. Come on, king, let’s find that horse.”
Seeancy looked at Brim. Speaking slowly, he said, “I should’ve known.”
“Bull shit! Now move your ass!”
Seeancy continued looking at Brim, then grinned, sat up, and turned on the ignition.
Before Brim could even slam the door closed, Seeancy floored the accelerator and the rear tires spun dirt as the car zoomed back onto the road. Seeancy felt better now that the car was shooting at eighty.
Off to the right, behind a field and a riding ring, was a stable which had a green sign: “Watchung Stables. Riding Renting Horses for Sale Here Best in the Country.” There were pastures with jumps and pastures for grazing and close to the road was a big riding ring with smooth sandy earth. Seeancy turned the red limousine and drove down toward the stable which stood on land below the level of the road.
Deer and ducks and woodchucks and fox and maybe even an American cougar and birds and water birds of hundreds of species lived protected in the woods of Watchung Reservation which had sandy paths up and down the mountains for horse-back riding. Watchung had row boats and canoes on Surprise Lake for people to feed geese and ducks and, at the top of the mountain, was a small Trailside Museum with rattlesnakes and king snakes and scenes behind glass of stuffed skunks. The museum also had a live red fox and several peacocks and a small mountain lion which paced in a tiny cage outside in the front near the main path.
The red limousine drove slowly under canopies of trees and everywhere there were horses. Horses being walked by people. Horses in the fields. Horses jumping and schooling in the ring. They were dappled and dotted white and brown and black and bay. Horses were eating grass, they were running along the fence, they were nudging each other. And the sun was so clear, the grass shining so translucently green, the trees standing out against the bright blue sky so vividly, it was as if it were all painted with excruciating love by a dreamer who dreamed crystalline.
“You found the horses, Seeancy!” Brim pressed his face to the rear window. “Sweet man.”
They drove closer to the red wooden barn and before Seeancy could finish parking, Brim leaped out. He saw people sitting in small English saddles riding horses around and around in the fenced ring surrounded by tall pine trees. The people seemed young and thin and Brim had images of himself, of his fat, of his bald head, of his years of history until he pushed away those flickers and kicked at a mound of golden nuggeted manure.
Seeancy sat in the limousine while Brim walked toward the huge main door in the middle of the barn. Seeancy relaxed, he drifted.
Kids in uniforms with pale blue shirts and yellow ties were drawing lots for horses. Brim watched their squeals, heard their smooth faces in his ears. He walked into the barn. He stood in its middle and looked down long rows of narrow tie-stalls on both sides of the center aisle. The horses were bridled and saddled and stood facing each other, waiting to be taken out by members of the troop. Brim smelled the acrid smell of lime powder, smelled heavy horse smells, stood in red and blue plaid sneakers and felt the damp floor boards. For a moment, he stood alone in the darkened barn, looking to his left down the aisle of horses, then looking to his right with more horses chomping, waiting. Uric acid. Breathing horses. Cool barn, clean. Brim standing, fat, remembering his own spotted horse when he was a chubby eight year old and lived in the dilapidated house and single barn surrounded with endless miles of rural red Illinois earth stretching out in all directions under the huge sky and a million miles from anyone.
Bursting, the kids tried to control their yippies and yelps as they ran into the barn and searched for their horses. Little girls with string bean bodies barely hinting at future curves, squealed. Two chubby girls tried to run quickly. Brim, suddenly surrounded, stood still, was almost invisible as young boys fought to get their horses out first and started pulling them from the stalls. They all led the horses to wooden platforms outside the barn and hurled their bodies into the English saddles. Brim followed them and saw their instructor, a squat man with a thin dark moustache who was sitting tall on his very fine black horse. The man pretended to be gruff, barked out curt words, and monitored them as their high energy flew up into the saddles.
Brim grinned, but suddenly became very old watching new children riding live horses. He turned away, began walking back to his big red limousine. Just as he pulled open the car’s rear door, Brim looked up.
Off in a field away from all the others was a big red horse standing quietly next to a fence. There was a young man behind the horse who was currying and brushing the animal. They were all alone and the sun was bright on the horse’s red coat and Brim knew they were the team he had been searching for. He slammed the car door and began to walk out to the field. The boy and the horse were standing under the sun in the grass. Brim walked slowly toward them. When he was close, he leaned over the top rail of the white fence.
The horse flicked its tail and the young man stood up straight and Brim knew the boy and the horse were the riding fast angels who sped over the land and wanted to fly freedom in the sky.
The boy smiled and Brim looked at him and saw he had straight hard teeth. They were so white and evenly set, at first Brim thought the teeth could come out at night and be dropped into a solution to remove the tobacco stains because the boy had a white cigarette in his mouth. The boy continued to smile. It was a toothy smile although maybe a little too wide but showing just the right amount of pink gum hiding over white teeth.
Brim saw him blond and young as the boy worked easily over the horse. The boy’s eyes were blue crescents and when they caught the sun, they were sometimes moon blue and sometimes dark crystals so when the boy opened his eyes wide, each eye was like a crescent moon flashing and circled by dark velvety eyelashes. He inhaled his hanging cigarette, then blew two smoke rings which rose up and out and then thinned away into the summer air.
“Hello,” said Brim, hanging over the white fence.
He was tall and well-made and disturbingly good looking. “W-Welcome.” He had that easy grace of an athlete who was loved by his fans.
But it was the boy’s stutter that Brim heard and Brim blinked inside. “Nice horse,” Brim said, wondering why he stuttered. “What breed is he?”
“Not a breed, sir. He’s a cross between a Thoroughbred and a P-Percheron.”
“Oh, isn’t that interesting. Ah — what’s a Percheron?” Brim laughed and crunched up his toes. “I’ll bet a lot of people ask.”
“Just those who don’t know horses,” the kid said, grinning big and dazzling.
“I know something about them—“
With glistening sweat on his face, the young man wet two of his fingers with his tongue and then spread his saliva wet on the burning end of his cigarette until the burning went out. “Don’t look much like a horse person, but you never can tell.”
Brim burst out laughing because the boy was so direct and unexpectedly alive.
“No offense, sir.”
“None taken,” said Brim.
“See, a Percheron is a work horse. From F-France, some ancient part of France called Perche. You ever hear of P-Perche?”
“Nope, never.”
“B-Beautiful, look, isn’t he absolutely beautiful?”
Brim nodded, thought he had never seen so much muscle in a horse, wondered again why the boy was stuttering.
The boy was rubbing the red animal with a chamois cloth that made his coat shine. “But a pure Percheron is bigger and thicker than Pegasus. Heavier, too. Worked as d-draft horses.”
“Pegasus?”
The boy stared at Brim. “He almost flies.” Then he released himself and smiled his dazzling smile. “Sometimes I’m sure he wants to f-f-fly.”
“Uh-huh. Well. What — ah — what do you do here?”
“I teach.” He saw Brim’s hands holding on to each other. “Would you like a lesson?”
“Oh, no, no. Just interested.”
“Looking to buy?”
“I — don’t — think so, no. But he sure is beautiful.”
“Horses are m-magic,” he smiled. “I think they’re m-m-magic.”
“Just don’t get to see too many of them because I work in the city. Radio. I’m a radio host.”
“Oh – !” He looked at Brim. “I know you. You’re B-B-Big Brim Oscar Birmingham!” The boy rubbed his lips. “Surprised because you hear people’s voices and you imagine what they look like. But didn’t f-figure you looked like this.” He threw the cloth over his shoulder and walked over. “I’m b-b-b-blundering all over, sorry for that.” He extended his hand to Brim. “What I mean is, hi, I’m Aris B-Bellerophon.”
“Aris – ?”
“Aris Bellerophon – that’s me, that’s my name. Real glad to meet you ‘cause I hear you in the mornings. Always wanted to see you. Would you please tell me what’s it like being famous?”
“Ah – well – it’s fun – sometimes – I guess.”
“Must get to meet a lot of other famous people.”
“Oh, yes. I can.” Brim had to look up slightly at the young man.
“Do you like b-being on the radio?”
“It’s easy. Anyone can do it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause of the way I speak.”
“So you got a speech thing, so what?”
“Yeah,” said Aris, filled with puzzles. “Yeah?”
Aris looked at the man full force and waited for Brim to answer but Brim didn’t answer. Aris said, “Is the money good?”
“What – ?”
“Can you spend it all?”
“Ah – no – not really. And you always need to have reserves.”
“Why?”
The boy was so direct like lightening Brim couldn’t answer. “Never know, might rain,” said Brim, feeling thick and dumb and very fat next to this well made boy.
“Nope,” said Aris, looking up into the blue sky. “Not today.” He looked back at Brim and then at Seeancy who was leaning on the fence across the field watching them. Seeancy’s uniform was very crisp and black. “We got horses here that are really st-strong, would you like to ride? We’ll start you out s-slow and steady. I’ll take you out m-myself – be my absolute pleasure.”
“Well — not — not now. Maybe later. If you’ve got time.”
“I’m always here. Live out back there in the stone b-barn. Come by whenever you want, Mr. Birmingham.” He smiled a bright, white, corn-fed smile at Brim. “Really can’t believe I’m meeting you – like foretold –a real honor for me to be here talking here with you, s-s-sir.”
Brim was speechless. And so stunned that he couldn’t talk.
Aris just stood there beaming at Brim.
Aris blinked. “Sorry, Mr. Birmingham, but we got to go now – eating time – got to keep my Pegasus strong.” He turned away.
“Ah — well — what do you feed him?”
The young man turned back and squinted his crescent eyes although Brim didn’t think he had to squint but maybe the boy did it because he liked the way his eyes became intense, bright blue crystals in the sunlight. Or maybe he didn’t know that that happened. Or maybe he did.
“Special B-Bellerophon mix.” Aris Bellerophon did his dazzling smile again. “Molasses, oats, carrots. Alfalpha pellets. Dried corn. Bran. Vinegar. And l-live oysters.”
“Oysters!”
“It’s a secret – but – I’ll tell you. I grind them. ‘Cause they’re good for p-protein – calcium.”
He nodded but Brim said nothing.
“Got to feed him now, Mr. Birmingham, sorry, so if you’ll kindly excuse us – “
“Can I watch?”
“Ah – well, not real positive you’d want to. The oysters—well, they make funny like crunchy sounds – in the grinder. Only natural ‘cause I put them in live. That’s what’s – b-best for Pegasus.” Aris wet his lower lip with his tongue and looked at his horse. “We’re the team.” He turned and looked right through Brim and didn’t smile. Then he snapped back and said, “You sure you want to – watch?”
Brim laughed, shuffled his feet, was uncomfortable and intrigued. “I’ll pass, but thanks for the invite.”
“Okay, then.” Aris reached over and shook Brim’s hand. “Hope we didn’t – you know – m-m-muck up your car too bad in that – that race.”
“Oh, no.”
“Good.”
Aris stroked his horse’s nose. He pressed his face into the horse’s muzzle. They both held close and steady as if they were a photograph on a billboard shimmering under the sun.
Brim’s mouth opened.
Then Aris moved. He looked at Brim and grinned. He turned. He began walking away and Pegasus followed him. They were moving toward the barn.
Suddenly, Aris whirled around in the tall yellow and green grass in the country field. He shouted, “Winning’s great, isn’t it?!”
Brim nodded and closed his mouth. “Yep,” he shouted back and his voice was unusually high.
Aris waved. Then he and his red horse turned back toward the barn.
Brim began crossing the field toward Seeancy. He stopped and looked over at the boy and the horse.
Aris turned. They were looking at each other and, in the same moment, they both waved.
The field was filled with butterflies and bees and the sky was a clean, bright blue. The fat man from the city and the boy who owned the huge horse stood in the field under the July sun staring at each other.
Finally, when Aris walked on and he and Pegasus had entered the large front door into the shadows of the long red barn, Brim went back to his limousine. He climbed in, closed the door, and told Seeancy it was back to the city.
II
In front of his building in the fashionable east sixties, Chuck opened the rear door and listened to Brim ask him how they were hanging. He gave the same reply that they weren’t and war was hell. Brim slapped Chuck on the back and did not protest when Chuck escorted him through the lobby to the elevator. Brim easily walked passed the floor length. mirror without looking at it.
“The state of reserve is low.”
“It certainly is, Mr. B. Shall I go with you to the eleventh?”
“That would be ever so kind.”
When the doors opened, Chuck removed his cap to Vera who stood uncertainly in the center of the hall. She was wearing a pink house-dress.
“Vera, love, how are you?”
“Brim – hello.”
“Hello! Hello!”
“Would you like something wonderful to eat?” Vera, for Brim, wore no make-up.
“Just pile it on the plate fast as you can.”
“What, darling?”
“Yes, Vera. YES!”
“Good, lovey. Bessie. Bessie! Heat the ravioli and I’ll have the coq au vin.”
“Must you scream, my sweetest thing?”
“Of course not.” Her hands, deeply lined, suddenly rose and fluttered around her freshly scrubbed face. “But—right now—you know—it is—difficult for me. Just now.”
“Yes.”
“What, dear?”
“Yes, Vera. Yes.”
“Do wash, darling, and slip out of that sticky shirt. I’ve laid a fresh new change on the bed.”
“Vera, my love?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Comb your hair.”
“Yes, dear.”
Later in the week they had what she called a charming Vera dinner at home. Just the two of them.
“Well then you please must just let me know where I stand,” she said, after he had refused her requests.
“You stand, fall, sit, jump, and hop with me. Always.”
The decision had begun when Brim returned from the show. It was ten-thirty in the morning and Vera had said she wanted to buy a miniature zebra, she thought it was the new thing now, and she had gone to a big downtown pet shop to see if she could order one but Brim rejected the idea because it was highly impractical to walk a zebra, even a miniature, through the streets of the city. Wacked. Would you take it on a leash? With a saddle? Besides, it would be difficult training a zebra to go up and down in an elevator. Unrealistic. He was adamant in his stance.
Hearst had them at San Simeon, she said.
But there they could run. His answer was no.
Vera liked him to say no. She went to him and wiggled in his arms and wanted to make love.
“Darling,” he said, blowing in her ear, “I’d love to, but — “
“I want a son. Make me a baby I can love or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.”
“We can’t, Vera.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well, then, Brim, whatever you want, Brim.”
“I’ve got to go. I’m off and running.”
“Ah, yes. Well, no matter. Later, shall we?”
“Charmed.”
“Delighted.” She got up from his lap. “What is it, sweetheart, you look so – under all your show bizzy flourish, you look morose. How do you spell ‘morose’?”
“Just pronounce it correctly.”
“Ah, well, then you look – “
“New ratings. The Big Brim Oscar Birmingham Show slipped two notches in two months.”
“Oh, darling, the whole thing’s seasonal. Last year you – “
“Down half a notch then but we didn’t lose a sponsor.”
“Who’d you – ?“
“Auntie Ethel’s Home Made Pancakes.”
“That corporate bitch! And just because they don’t like drunks? Brim, how absurd and after all these years? Poor darling. I’ll write them scads more letters – I’ll flood them with – ”
“Ta-ta,” he said, without moving.
“Well, honey, replace them with next in line.”
“No one’s waiting for a regular 30 minute buy-block. Fleeing to television.”
“I’ll buy in on your time, Brimbo. I always do.”
“Thanks.”
“We love-aholics have to stick together.” Her hair was bleached champagne and curled and had been sprinkled with silver dust. “Do an appearance, sweetie, that can boosts ratings.”
“‘He doesn’t photograph well,’ says Missy in Marketing who’s still not married. Put on too much of this – “ he grabbed his belly and pulled at it like putty. “Getting old – getting ugly.”
“Don’t you ever, ever say that, Brim Oscar!” She put her arms around him. “I’ll have to beat again if you continue to moan like this. Now, listen, buster, I’ve got to go, but – tonight -- you and I will figure this out. Maybe you need new stuff? Let’s talk it through, Brimbo, we haven’t had to talk it through in years. Yes?”
He nodded.
She kissed his nose. “It’s just a cycle, sweetheart, not a cataclysm.”
He nodded again.
“Buck up and ta-ta to you,” she said. “Later, you wild beast, you!” and she walked out of the dining room.
Thin and boney, Vera walked into her own bedroom, closed the door, and went to the glass door of her balcony. She thought of the veins in her arms as she pulled the white cord to the draperies.
The room closed in with the dark.
III
Tulip Flower had not always called Tulip Flower. Early one morning when she was almost a year old, her mother finally came home to their huge, old Park Avenue apartment carrying, improbably, a pot of spring tulips. Still filled with the giddy adventures of the previous night, her mother stuck the bright red flowers in the baby’s crib and said, “Tulips for you, my lovely, my dahhhling, my continually being worshipped by everyone everywhere always.”
Her daughter screeched and giggled and reached for the flowers rather than for her mother. Thereafter they called her Tulip even though she had been named Tulia Flower but when the baby first began speaking she couldn’t pronounce the –ia in her name but the hard p in Tulip was easier. The name stuck even though her European father who had been born in Hungary and who wore starched white shirts with a gold stick pin through his collars thought it preposterous.
Today, seventeen years later, Mozart for keyboard and flute floated out from a big reel-to-reel tape recorder and two speakers placed on the Eighteenth Century replica desk of Tulip Flower’s pink and white chiffon bedroom surrounded by Renoir prints of boating couples and dogs being held in the laps of serenely lovely ladies. But Tulip and her long dark hair were buried under the silk pillows on her a pink, ruffled canopy bed. She gritted her teeth and cried out to the music. “Wolfgang — Wolfie Wolfgang, I can always depend on you!”
It wasn’t Tulip who was the cause of her parents separation but now that her parents were finally divorced and had agreed in their financial settlement to put the Park Avenue co-op in Tulip’s name, these were hers rooms. These beautifully preserved rooms with only one housekeeper, Persa, who lived in the back behind the new kitchen. All these walls and ornate ceilings and polished floors. She owned every part. As Tulip continued to cry, she couldn’t quite understand why she was crying but sometimes it made her feel good to feel bad.
Her parents did come and stay every once in while – separately, of course, now that she had totally given up on them ever coming back together. Not that they blamed her. It wasn’t her fault, here father said. They grew “separately not together,” as her mother said too many times. Her father visited more than her mother. Tulip actually enjoyed college downtown more than she even hoped and her teachers were good and she loved anthropology and, of course, art and art history —and the buzzings of all those new thoughts. She had two good girlfriends, Tuffy and Bernice, and they all went to dance class together. But — but –
When the big supply reel was finished and the end of the tape snapped over and over against the tape head, Tulip, emptied for the moment of her hot and inexplicable fires, turned off the machine, curled her long white creamy arms under both silk pillows, fluffed her head, licked her tears from the corners of her mouth, and fell into a deep, white, silent sleep.
A few hours later, she suddenly popped up, slid out of bed, and slipped on a reel of the Vivaldi Concerto for Two Oboes and Flute. Sitting cross-legged on her pink wool carpet, Tulip bunched herself into the speaker next to the gleaming dressing table with white ruffles, and leaned into the music.
Tulip’s eyes closed and her chin lifted to hear the oboe and flute leaping alive in a rush of magnificent melody. She said, “It’s happening – but I don’t know why but I’m so glad but I don’t know – oh!”
Quickly, Tulip lowered her head, wondered if Persa heard her giddiness from her maid’s room off the kitchen. Tulip, suddenly guilty at her joy, closed her mouth, and sounded almost scholarly. “Wolfgang, I have met the most—the most vivid boy in the world. At the Chatham Horse Show – Tuffy introduced us — she’s such a social bird – his name is Aris.” She unwrapped a piece of blue paper folded into a silk handkerchief tucked against her skin. “Aris Bellerophon! Oh, what a creature! So Greek-godish! So shockingly good looking with all of those wonderfully physical things which are very – quite – very yes unsettling. And yet – and yet there’s something more – I hope – I think – I can’t see it but I’m sure it’s there — it’s his eyes – they’re sky blue! Oh, yes, Wolfie!” Tulip rocked back and forth and giggled to herself as if she were five years old and her parents were still together, were holding hands, Mama – Cheryl – was sober, they were proudly watching Tulip sing and dance her “la-la-la’s” in their very well decorated living room with her tiny Tulip fingers waving in the air until the cassette ended. And they applauded her together, looking at each other and smiling. Tulip couldn’t have been the reason they separated.
Cross legged on the pink carpet, Tulip giggled, her heart beat so fast, the tops of her knees were skittering. “Maybe it’s Aris. Oh, Wolfie! Finally after all those others! Maybe — “
The thought of him made her mindless and guiltless and light as air.
He called her the next morning at 8:30 after she had done her morning stretching exercises. On the phone, they bubbled over talking at the same time to each other and yet hearing and understanding each other it was amazing how easily they could talk. He told her to come out and they’d go horseback riding together. Bareback.
“Bareback!” she shouted. “Oh, I love it – I do – I think I do – I mean, sure, I’d try it.”
She said for him to come with her to Paris and they could go to those oval rooms at the Musee de l’Orangerie where she would show him Monet’s lily ponds or take him to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and show him the Abstract Expressionist who were really wonderfully shocking with all those strident paintings Tulip had been dreaming about. “Or let’s go,” she said to Aris, “to see that strange image which haunts me – that other-worldly, fabulous, huge Henri Rousseau painting of The Sleeping Gypsy from 1897 where this amazing lion in the middle of a desert is almost kissing a young gypsy boy who’s sleeping next to a guitar and a walking staff or maybe it’s a flute! – I’m not really sure – you look so flushed, Aris, are you – ?”
“A gypsy?!“ shouted Aris, stunned, and overwhelmed. “Really? A gypsy? Oh – wow!”
Each of them was amazed by the ideas of the other, were giddily struck dumb and delighted just to be hearing each other.
Moments before they said goodbye, Aris realized he hadn’t even stuttered once.
Tulip realized she was about to sing a song she didn’t even know she knew but when she thought about which song it was she realized she didn’t have any idea she just wanted to sing and sing and sing.
When they hung up, each of them actually jumped. And then jumped again. And laughed and/or giggled several times with their heads thrown back and their mouths open.
Later, downtown, at noon, after her philosophy class, Tulip drove out to the Watchung Stables.
They rode Pegasus bareback, she held Aris’s waist tightly as they cantered gentle, loping rolls into the Watchung hills. He showed her his secret part of Surprise Lake where he and Pegasus went swimming. He splashed her when she was looking at him so open faced and she didn’t move except to continue to grin mindlessly back to him. He wiped the splashes from her soft face with his large, rough hand.
She loved being mindless.
Back at the barn, he took her to each horse by name and mentioned how each of them was specific and unique. She loved the leather smells of the tack room with all the saddles and bridles mounted on the walls. He showed her how neat’s-foot oil protected leather and kept it supple and clean and then coated her brown leather shoes with the oil on a big, black brush and she laughed because she felt him coating her toes.
They climbed the back stairs and explored the hay loft. They looked out over the riding ring with the little tower in the middle of the grass circle. He pointed out the fields with tall grasses and the Watchung Mountains, green, wooded, no longer filled with Indians. He talked slowly, proudly, he was excited and shy.
They went outside again and walked the wide dirt path out beyond the outside field. The air was still warm, robins and sparrows and even a hawk flew above them making their wondrous musical sounds, the sun was just beginning its dip down from the sky where later, after the magic of day, it would hide waiting for tomorrow below the earth.
They climbed to the top a sloping hill and walked into a large group of pine trees near the fields of tall grasses.
He caught her hand and they lay down in between the pines and looked up. Pieces of bright blue sky rose up and up beyond the tips of the trees. It smelled so piney.
“Some g-god made all this,” he said.
“And us,” she said.
He rolled over closer to her.
She smelled like licorice. He smelled like horse.
He kissed her softly, gently, she kissed him back – he touched her face, she caressed his fingers – he licked her, she whimpered and caught his tongue with her lips – he enveloped her with his body and her body opened to him like a door.
In a few dazzling moments, he entered her and they went blind and exploded like lava.
Afterwards, nuzzled, warm, wrapped in each other’s arms, they opened their eyes and saw how beautiful they were. Still joined, seeing only each other, she urged him and they made love again.
Later, they saw the flowers were so brightly colored. And, surprisingly, even though it was not yet night, it was only a warm spring day, when they finally released each other and, fingers entwined, lay back on their backs, they both looked up again beyond the tops of the pine trees and knew there were so many stars way way up in the sky. Everywhere.
The next day Tulip, guilt free and floating, went back to the city, called Tuffy and told her she couldn’t go to dance class for a few days and, giggling, told her why. Then, folding some of her jeans and tee-shirts and things into a large leather satchel, Tulip took the elevator down to her underground garage and drove out of the city in her red sports convertible to his little stone barn up on the hill near the big wooden barn at Watchung. She spent most of her days in the city in classes and most of her long, hot gypsy nights with him.
Summer expanded puffy and pastel. Breathless, she would crack open her eyes early in the morning and secretly watch him slip naked from the bed before the sun was up and steaming its yellow rays. Sometimes she didn’t even breathe. She watched him endlessly and was fascinated by every moving part of him, especially fascinated when his lips were on her eyebrows or on her cheek. She loved the way her lips felt when they touched his. She loved their flesh together. She loved the way he said her name, “T-Tu-lip,” as if it were the first time anyone was saying it, as if it were the first time he was saying it and desperately wanting to say it clearly without stuttering but embracing the stutter: “T-Tu-lip.” As if she were all new on earth in each moment. “Tu-lip,” as if she were the only female and he was the only male. She loved how she would be standing naked looking out through the window out into the fields where horses ran and suddenly she could feel his heat on her and she’d turn around and there he was. His eyes, huge and magnetic, on her, his skin on hers, rough like the stones in his stone barn but not hard, not hurtful, shockingly present and so different from her whole other New York City cotillion life of pink and black patent leather and people so polite they were shocked by animals in the zoo. And the first morning when she was standing naked in the daylight of the one big room of his small stone barn presenting herself to him, she was liquid as he stared at her and stared at her, memorizing her, then he swooped her up in his arms and lay her on his big brass antique bed, kissing her all over, smelling of horse and hard where she was soft, then he was huge and it was timeless.
Or in the mornings when he’d stand naked to the new sun streaming through the window panes of the front door, then he’d pull on jeans and boots and go down to feed the horses — and especially his horse – she would watch him secretly and be stunned that he could devour her and leave her with a doubled her sense of herself.
She heard violins and believed she had just danced into a pastelly representational abstract of summer flowers drawn with slashes of thick yellow, chalky sunlight by Odilon Redon.
Later, as she drove east into the city with her college books piled next to her, she flashed images of him, of her, of them together. Catalogued all their exuberant summer colors. Gazed from the back of the lecture hall at her art history teacher with a half smile aimed slightly beyond him and out toward eternity. Skipping another dance class, she would flee back to his country, to the hills, to the meadows, to see him. To walk into his stone barn, bare and smelling of earth and horse and nothing like a silent and orphaned Park Avenue apartment with a maid in uniform, Persa, who, Tulip felt sometimes, she had to entertain.
But in his cool stone barn, Tulip could lay on his bed and stare out the opened windows into his meadows and just be her blank, delicious, breathing in and out self.
One day during an early afternoon in the middle of July, Tulip sat on his white bear rug in his bedroom creaming her arms and belly and breasts with cucumber cream from Paris and chewing a braid of her hair. The dark braid was tied together with a hair from Pegasus’ mane Aris had plucked for her that morning. And now, while his cassette player was tinkling out her Wanda Landowska tape and she was trying to read Petrarch’s “Lives of the Painters” but thinking of his breath which was warm and dark and light, thinking of his body which always smelled like a horse and made her melt, wondering where his parents were really, wondering where he’d be when he arrived at that place he said his dreams were about, wondering ---
Suddenly, he walked through his front door and grinned at her creamed nakedness on his rug. She made him slightly dizzy as he kneeled down next to her.
“You’re my gypsy,” he said. He stroked her like she was his animal and he lifted her and lay her back down, she was so soft unlike anything he had ever known ever ever except maybe in his imaginings.
“I sometimes feel badly that I’m a Park Avenue special person and the rest of the world isn’t.”
He nestled up against her with his hand on her bottom as they both adjusted their weight and limbs.
“It isn’t really my fault,” she whispered, “and most of the time I feel like an orphan. I was just born rich – it was an accident – that’s not my fault, is it? And that I really deserve nothing because of all the poor children in India? Or somewhere. Am I – do you think – am I really – you know – superfluous?”
“You’re a gypsy – that’s better than a dream, Tulip. Gypsies can make magic.”
“I can make magic?”
“With me you can.”
She became very quiet. “How?”
“I’m really not good at – talking about dreamy things.”
“Yes, you are,” she said.
“With you, Tulip, but – not – usually.” He dropped way down to a very quiet part of himself, a part known mostly from dreams dreamed close, and hot, and alone. “Didn’t start – talking til I was – I think, t-ten.”
“Why? What were you doing?”
“Ah – doing? Looking, I guess – yeah – just looking – around.”
“Oh —“ she said, “I can understand that.”
He nuzzled his lips into her lips. “Didn’t really have very much to – you know – say.” She was so soft and her body smelled so sweet and spicy.
“Go ahead,” she said, feeling his whole being very close to hers. “Tell me.”
“Well,” he whispered, “a very long time ago – in my history, many years ago, Tulip – a boy who was just beginning to shave and his aunt who was – somehow – related to his mother b-but not his mother — not really — well, she and two new uncles drove in a broken down car through Wyoming — and through Arizona and — New Mexico. It was summer — hot, really dry. The country was very b-big. Wide land was everywhere under the huge blue sky. And lots of tall people — and very dark nights. And at the end of that summer, Tulip, his aunt and his two uncles decided to drive down to Mexico in a used car they bought with new one-hundred dollar bills -- very crisp — from somewhere – I’m not sure where. His aunt wanted to be funny and make him happy and she had lollipops and sour b-balls — and chocolate on her fingers which she kept licking — but most of the time the boy was quiet even when his aunt and uncles were fighting and screaming from the d-drinks, I guess. At the end of that summer, they all drove into a gypsy camp – d-deep – in the desert in Mexico. One gypsy woman was very old and had black hair and black eyes. There were – gold rings on her fingers, Tulip. Because she was the leader of the gypsy band who traveled all over Mexico. But the boy’s aunt – and those two new uncles – kept singing really loud because the three of them had been d-drinking again. They started shouting at the gypsies and the gypsy woman must have thought them strange because she had her men tie them up – except for the boy. They were put into a dark tent— but the boy had become weak and confused. He was coughing a lot. He had b-blond hair, Tulip – almost white – and the gypsies came and stared at his aunt and uncles and each gypsy carried an umbrella and a goldfish in a clay bowl. Then they started chanting in a strange language and raised their heads way up to the moon and howled. Like wolves – until the gypsy Queen gave the signal and then all the gypsies threw the water and the goldfish from the clay bowls at the b-boy’s aunt and two uncles who sat tied together. But the gypsy Queen must have liked the boy because she patted his head and made him eat sweets because he was skinny and small then. And the chanting went on for days and for days. And every morning the old gypsy Queen took the boy into her silver trailer where she’d – give him a bath and – tell him stories about his future. She had a large picture book that she said came from New York City with – color pictures about famous stories from olden times when – gods were always fighting each other and – when they came to earth like in ancient Greece – or Arabia – or – or I think maybe the Incas. The gods even had children – with human people! And the old gypsy woman read those stories to him every night. She’d brush his white hair and read to him all those stories. Her voice was old, Tulip, but soft to me – and – and sweet like cactus honey and – and she wore gold bracelets covered with diamonds on her arms and, Tulip, they glittered at night in the firelight like the most b-b-bright stars – oh, she showed me those stars that burned so high and – so strong in the black, deep, night sky.
“And, as the weeks passed, his aunt and uncles cried less. And then his aunt stopped sobbing and telling him that she wasn’t really his aunt. And his uncles stopped yelping. And every night, Tulip, every night a gypsy carried him to a bed in a very large tent and placed him on piles of beautiful blankets and – read him stories of all the gods and goddesses as the boy fell asleep and dreamed – about the stories the Queen told him from her b-bright colored book – which she said came from – an old traveling medicine man – who had come from Heaven.
“And, later, after the aunt was quiet and the uncles weren’t – foaming anymore, the old Mexican gypsy Queen sat him in the big chair in her silver trailer and, Tulip, the Queen stared into a big glass ball. She was swaying back and forth – she closed her eyes – I – I closed my eyes – she hummed and sang a strange language for a long – long time. Then she stopped and opened her eyes and I opened my eyes and the gypsy Queen looked at me and then she looked far away— far away, Tulip.
“She said, ‘Ah—my white-haired boy— your dreams will come true! Always remember that! You have fire – you have m-m-magic – but do nothing now. Do nothing until you are twenty-five. Then. Then!.’
“And she snapped her fingers and, Tulip, I forgot everything that had every happened in my whole life except her. She said, ‘Aris B-B-Bellerophon!’ and my heart grew so hot! And – and she smiled at me and – like – waved and then she died, Tulip. Right there in front of me! I saw her stop moving. She – was – d-d-dead. Just dead. But – but her spirit — oh, I saw that rise and go up into the Heavens. I saw her soul leave her body and travel to Heaven and all the gypsies came carrying candles and umbrellas and we made a circle around her trailer and they were chanting and singing such strange, wonderful songs. They lifted her body up onto a stretcher covered with fur black as night and we walked miles and miles and – we – b-buried her when the moon was high and round and brilliant white. And afterwards I was given a train ticket to New York City. And they all waved to me and we didn’t cry even though I was afraid I’d never seen them again, Tulip. And when I got – to New York City I wrote – b-but they never answered. Later, later, I heard they disappeared. But I’m here – I’m here, T-Tulip.”
“Oh – oh – you are amazing! Amazing.” Tulip was touching his hairless chest and pushing into his big hand which was caressing the curves of her belly. “Aren’t you?” she said, and loved the way his lips quivered on certain sounds because they made her musical heart quiver, too.
He closed his eyes. It was her warm, moist smell Aris loved — the smell from her skin, her hair, but mostly from her breath, mysterious, pungent, mindless like the earth smell from his horse. “And – oh – wow – you know what, Tulip? With you – Tulip – with you, I can talk!”
She was liquid and her arms were all around him.
He loved the way she moved as her heat rose up with him.
It was a blinding summer day filled with invisible, irresistible yellow streaks. They walked through the tall grasses watching blue birds and red breasted robins darting up, in and out, seeing brown ducks on Surprise Lake, walking and he began whistling a tune they heard on the radio in the mornings. It was, “Hello Again,” and when Tulip stopped and seemed to look right through him, Aris suddenly grinned and turned and stared into the sky. He told her about Brim Oscar Birmingham with his big red car and the black chauffeur. And about the race and about how he and Pegasus had won.
“Oh, I wish I could have seen it,” said Tulip, and every part of her wanted to remember him forever. “Your twenty-fifth birthday is in three days — and the gypsy Queen — has to be right.”
“I—I hope she is,” he said, and bit his lip. “I think she is. Do — d-do you, Tulip?”
“Yes! —I do, oh, yes.”
His red horse was far away in the field almost tiny and Aris’ heart was big and pounding, he was human and muscle, and his head had gone to blazes.
But Tulip, watching, watching, didn’t see him move.
Off in the field, Pegasus’ skin shimmered red gold in the sun. He raised his chiseled head and his large dark eyes looked not directly but at its odd angle out over the field and across to them both. Charging his head up and down, Pegasus whinnied, then lowered his muzzle to the grass and pulled with his strong teeth. Suddenly, he raised his head again, smelled the air, and didn’t move. He gleamed. Then, when the breezes covered his body, Pegasus shivered, lowered his head, and continued eating.
“Oh, ” said Aris, “he’s so beautiful,” and thought, The gypsy Queen must be right! “Almost like — almost like Pegasus isn’t real he’s so beautiful, Tulip, isn’t he? Isn’t he?”
From the moment Aris had seen the red horse bound out from the huge van from Montana which pulled up to the stable, Aris knew he had always wanted that specific magnificent animal.
Jack Jacks, who wore a long, bone-handled knife behind the buckle of his belt and who ran the stable with a strict and protective hand, lived upstairs alone in an apartment behind the hayloft. Jack Jacks had made his usual deal to buy ten to fifteen horses to be used as school animals for the children’s riding troops and when the new horses were unloaded by the trucker, there —suddenly — was this muscled red explosion of a horse standing proud and quivering fire as the other horses nervously whinnied and ran circles in the corral.
“Got to have him, Jack!” shouted Aris, grabbing the man.
Jack Jacks stood very still and watched the big red horse standing finely sculptured and strong legged. The horse’s eyes were huge and dark, his muzzle was elegant and long, and his ears were alert to that early spring day. “I bought them,” said Jack Jacks. “Sorry, boy, but my contract says I bought them all.”
“Anything, J-Jack, anything!”
Jack idled his fingers and touched his wooden leg, saw the sweat gleam on Aris’ face, knew that passion, that young man’s yearning. He also knew Aris would plague him. So Jacks proposed to pay Aris only forty-five dollars a week for six months and hold back the rest. And even though Aris knew that the money was much more than the cost of all the horses combined, Aris instantly agreed.
“And – in writing, Jack! Put it – all down on p-p-paper.”
“Will do, boy,” said Jacks, and he did.
And during those six months, Aris could ride the horse, but it wasn’t his. He accepted food and clothing from several friends because when he talked about Pegasus, about how some day soon the red horse would be his, his women friends glistened, their lips opened, they drank in his dreams.