Donnelly was on his feet now. He was not dancing like the Africans, he was sort of stomping in a rhythm all his own, and Hilliard looked at him and thought how irremediably white the man was.
What, he wondered, was he doing here? What were any of them doing here? Besides having a grand cross-cultural experience, something to wow them with next time he got Stateside, what in God’s name was he doing here?
Farquahar was up, dancing. Bouncing around like a man possessed, or at least like a man determined to appear possessed. The bastard hadn’t even paid for a private ceremony and here he was caught up in something, or at any rate uninhibited enough to pretend to be, while Hilliard himself was sitting here, unaffected by the gloppy lawn clippings, unaffected by the slapped palm, unaffected by the goddamned drums, unaffected by any damn thing, and four hundred dollars poorer for it.
Wasn’t he supposed to have a private ceremony, a ritual all his own? Wasn’t something supposed to happen? Maybe Atuele had forgotten him. Or maybe, because he had come here without a goal, he was not supposed to get anything. Maybe it was a great joke.
He got up and looked around for Atuele. A man danced over, behaving just as weirdly as the women, and slapped Hilliard’s palm, then held out his own palm. Hilliard slapped him back. The man danced away.
Hilliard, feeling foolish, began to shuffle his feet.
A little after midnight Hilliard had the thought that it was time to go home. He had danced for a while—he had no idea how long—and then he had returned to his chair. He had been sitting there lost in thought ever since. He could not recall what he had been thinking about, any more than he could remember a dream once he’d fully awakened from it.
He looked around. The drummers were still at it. They had been playing without interruption for five hours. A few people were dancing, but none were twitching as if possessed. The ones who had done that had not seemed to remain in trance for very long. They would go around slapping palms and spreading energy for ten frenzied minutes or so; then someone would lead them away, and later they’d return, dressed in clean white robes and much subdued.
The Belgian women were nowhere to be seen. Donnelly, too, was missing. Farquahar was up front chatting with Atuele. Both men were smoking, and drinking what Hilliard assumed was whiskey.
Time to go.
He got to his feet, swayed, before catching his balance. What was protocol? Did you shake hands with your host, thank your hostess? He took a last look around, then walked off toward where they’d left the cars.
Donnelly’s car was gone. Hilliard’s evening clothes were in the backseat of his own car. Marilyn would be sleeping, it was pointless to change, but he did so anyway, stowing his khakis and safari shirt in the trunk. It wasn’t until he was putting on his socks and black pumps that he realized his sandals were missing. Evidently he’d kicked them off earlier. He couldn’t recall doing it, but he must have.
He didn’t go back for them.
In the morning he waited for Marilyn to ask about the party. He had a response ready but was never called upon to deliver it. She went out for a tennis date right after breakfast, and she never did ask him about his evening.
They played bridge the following night with a British couple. The husband was some sort of paper shuffler, the wife an avid amateur astrologer who, unless she was playing cards, became quite boring on the subject.
Sunday was quiet. Hilliard drank a bit more than usual Sunday night, and he thought of telling his wife how he’d actually spent Friday evening. The impulse was not a terribly urgent one and he had the good sense to suppress it.
Monday he lunched with Donnelly.
“Well, it was an experience,” he said.
“It always is.”
“I’m not sorry I went.”
“I’m not surprised,” Donnelly said. “You went really deep, didn’t you?”
“Deep? What do you mean?”
“Your trance. Or don’t you even know you were in one?”
“I wasn’t.”
Donnelly laughed. “I wish I had a film of you dancing,” he said. “I wondered if you were even aware of how caught up you were in it.”
“I remember dancing. I wasn’t leaping around like an acrobat or anything. Was I?”
“No, but you were . . . what’s the word I want?”
“I don’t know.”
“Abandoned,” Donnelly said. “You were dancing with abandon.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“And then you sat down and stared at nothing at all for hours on end.”
“Maybe I fell asleep.”
“You were in a trance, Alan.”
“It didn’t feel like a trance.”
“Yes it did. That’s what a trance feels like. It can be disappointing, because it feels like a normal state while it’s going on, but it isn’t.”
He nodded, but he didn’t speak right away. Then he said, “I thought I’d get something special for my money. An egg to rub into my scalp or something. A pot to hold on my head. A private ceremony—”
“The herb was your private ceremony.”
“What did it do? Drug me so that I went into the trance-that-didn’t-feel-like-a-trance? Farquahar got the same thing for free.”
“The herb contained your spirit, or allowed the spirit to enter into you. Or whatever. I’m not too clear on how it works.”
“So I’ve got a spirit in me now?”
“That’s the theory.”
“I don’t feel different.”
“You probably won’t. And then one day something will click in, and you’ll realize that you’re different, that you’ve changed.”
“Changed how?”
“I don’t know. Look, maybe nothing will happen and you’re out whatever it was. Four hundred dollars?”
“That’s right. How about you? What did it cost you?”
“A thousand.”
“My God.”
“It was five hundred the first time, three hundred the second, and this time it was an even thousand. I don’t know how he sets the prices. Maybe a spirit tells him what to charge.”
“Maybe if I’d paid more—” Hilliard began, and then he caught himself and started laughing. “Did you hear that? My God, I’m the original con man’s dream. No sooner do I decide I’ve wasted my money than I start wondering if I shouldn’t have wasted a little more of it.”
“Give it a while,” Donnelly said. “Maybe you didn’t waste it. Wait and see.”
Nothing was changed. Hilliard went to his office, did his work, lived his life. Evenings he went to diplomatic functions or played cards or, more often, sat home watching films with Marilyn.
On one such evening, almost a month after his ceremony, Hilliard frowned at his dish of poulet rôti avec pommes frites et haricots verts. “I’ll be a minute,” he told his wife, and he got up and went into the kitchen.
The cook was a tall woman, taller than Hilliard. She had glossy black skin and a full figure. Her cheekbones were high, her smile blinding.
“Liné,” he said, “I’d like you to try something different for tomorrow night’s dinner.”
“Dinner is not good?”
“Dinner is fine,” he said, “but it’s not very interesting, is it? I would like you to prepare Togolese dishes for us.”
“Ah,” she said, and flashed her smile. “You would not like them.”
“I would like them very much.”
“No,” she assured him. “Americans not like Togolese food. Is very simple and common, not good. I know what you like. I cook in the hotels, I cook for American people, for French people, for Nor, Nor—”
“Norwegian,” he supplied.
“For Norjian people, yes. I know what you like.”
“No,” he said with conviction. “I know what I like, Liné, and I like Togolese dishes very much. I like chicken and yams with red sauce, and I like Togolese stew, I like them very hot and spicy, very fiery.”
She looked at him, and i
t seemed to him that she had never actually looked at him before. She extended the tip of her tongue and ran it across her upper lip. She said, “You want this tomorrow?”
“Yes, please.”
“Real Togolese food,” she said, and all at once her smile came, but now it was in her eyes as well. “Oh, I cook you some meal, boss! You see!”
That night, showering, he felt different. He couldn’t define the difference but it was palpable.
He dried off and went to the bedroom. Marilyn was already asleep, lying on her side facing away from him. He got into bed and felt himself fill with desire for her.
He put a hand on her shoulder.
She rolled over to face him, as if she’d been waiting for his touch. He began to make love to her and her response had an intensity it had never had before. She cried out at climax.
“My God,” she said afterward. She was propped up on one arm and her face was glowing. “What was that all about?”
“It’s the Togolese food,” he told her.
“But that’s tomorrow night. If she actually cooks it.”
“She’ll cook it. And it’s the expectation of the Togolese food. It heats the blood.”
“Something sure did,” she said.
She turned over and went to sleep. Moments later, so did Hilliard.
In the middle of the night he came half-awake. He realized that Marilyn had shifted closer to him in sleep, and that she had thrown an arm across his body. He liked the feeling. He closed his eyes and drifted off again.
The following evening Liné laid on a feast. She had produced a beef stew with yams and served it on a bed of some grain he’d never had before. It was not quite like anything he’d eaten at the native restaurant, and it was hotter than anything he’d ever eaten anywhere, but with all the flavors in good proportion. Midway through the meal Liné came out to the patio and beamed when they praised the food.
“I cook terrific every night now,” she said. “You see!”
When the serving girl cleared the dishes, her little breast brushed Hilliard’s arm. He could have sworn it was deliberate. Later, when she brought the coffee, she grinned at him as if they shared a secret. He glanced at Marilyn, but if she caught it she gave no indication.
Later, they watched Dr. Zhivago on the VCR. Midway through it Marilyn got up from her chair and sat next to him on the couch. “This is the most romantic movie ever made,” she told him. “It makes me want to cuddle.”
“It’s the spicy food,” he said, slipping an arm around her.
“No, it’s the movie,” she said. She stroked his cheek, breathed kisses against the side of his neck. “Now this,” she said, dropping a hand into his lap, “this,” she said, fondling him, “this is an effect of the spicy food.”
“I see the difference.”
“I thought you would,” she said.
“Good morning, Peggy,” he said to Hank Suydam’s secretary.
“Why, good morning, Mr. Hilliard,” she said, a hitherto unseen light dancing in her brown eyes.
“Alan,” he said.
“Alan,” she said archly. “Good morning, Alan.”
He called Donnelly, arranging to meet him for lunch. “And you can pay for lunch,” Donnelly said.
“I was planning on it,” he said, “but how did you know that?”
“Because it clicked in and you’re eager to express your gratitude. I know it happened, I can hear it in your voice. How do you feel?”
“How do you think I feel?”
He hung up and started to go through the stack of letters on his desk. After a few minutes he realized he was grinning hugely. He got up and closed his office door.
Then, tentatively, he began to do a little dance.
Hot Eyes, Cold Eyes
Some days were easy. She would go to work and return home without once feeling the invasion of men’s eyes. She might take her lunch and eat it in the park. She might stop on the way home at the library for a book, at the deli for a barbequed chicken, at the cleaner’s, at the drugstore. On those days she could move coolly and crisply through space and time, untouched by the stares of men.
Doubtless they looked at her on those days, as on the more difficult days. She was the sort men looked at, and she had learned that early on—when her legs first began to lengthen and take shape, when her breasts began to bud. Later, as the legs grew longer and the breasts fuller, and as her face lost its youthful plumpness and was sculpted by time into beauty, the stares increased. She was attractive, she was beautiful, she was—curious phrase—easy on the eyes. So men looked at her, and on the easy days she didn’t seem to notice, didn’t let their rude stares penetrate the invisible shield that guarded her.
But this was not one of those days.
It started in the morning. She was waiting for the bus when she first felt the heat of a man’s eyes upon her. At first she willed herself to ignore the feeling, wished the bus would come and whisk her away from it, but the bus did not come and she could not ignore what she felt and, inevitably, she turned from the street to look at the source of the feeling.
There was a man leaning against a red brick building not twenty yards from her. He was perhaps thirty-five, unshaven, and his clothes looked as though he’d slept in them. When she turned to glance at him his lips curled slightly, and his eyes, red-rimmed and glassy, moved first to her face, then drifted insolently the length of her body. She could feel their heat; it leaped from the eyes to her breasts and loins like an electric charge bridging a gap.
He placed his hand deliberately upon his crotch and rubbed himself. His smile widened.
She turned from him, drew a breath, let it out, wished the bus would come. Even now, with her back to him, she could feel the embrace of his eyes. They were like hot hands upon her buttocks and the backs of her thighs.
The bus came, neither early nor late, and she mounted the steps and dropped her fare in the box. The usual driver, a middle-aged fatherly type, gave her his usual smile and wished her the usual good morning. His eyes were an innocent watery blue behind thick-lensed spectacles.
Was it only her imagination that his eyes swept her body all the while? But she could feel them on her breasts, could feel too her own nipples hardening in response to their palpable touch.
She walked the length of the aisle to the first available seat. Male eyes tracked her every step of the way.
The day went on like that. This did not surprise her, although she had hoped it would be otherwise, had prayed during the bus ride that eyes would cease to bother her when she left the bus. She had learned, though, that once a day began in this fashion its pattern was set, unchangeable.
Was it something she did? Did she invite their hungry stares? She certainly didn’t do anything with the intention of provoking male lust. Her dress was conservative enough, her makeup subtle and unremarkable. Did she swing her hips when she walked? Did she wet her lips and pout like a sullen sexpot? She was positive she did nothing of the sort, and it often seemed to her that she could cloak herself in a nun’s habit and the results would be the same. Men’s eyes would lift the black skirts and strip away the veil.
At the office building where she worked, the elevator starter glanced at her legs, then favored her with a knowing, wet-lipped smile. One of the office boys, a rabbity youth with unfortunate skin, stared at her breasts, then flushed scarlet when she caught him at it. Two older men gazed at her from the water cooler. One leaned over to murmur something to the other. They both chuckled and went on looking at her.
She went to her desk and tried to concentrate on her work. It was difficult, because intermittently she felt eyes brushing her body, moving across her like searchlight beams scanning the yard in a prison movie. There were moments when she wanted to scream, moments when she wanted to spin around in her chair and hurl something. But she remained in control of herself and did none of these things. She had survived days of this sort often enough in the past. She would survive this one as well.
&
nbsp; The weather was good, but today she spent her lunch hour at her desk rather than risk the park. Several times during the afternoon the sensation of being watched was unbearable and she retreated to the ladies’ room. She endured the final hours a minute at a time, and finally it was five o’clock and she straightened her desk and left.
The descent on the elevator was unbearable. She bore it. The bus ride home, the walk from the bus stop to her apartment building, were unendurable. She endured them.
In her apartment, with the door locked and bolted, she stripped off her clothes and hurled them into a corner of the room as if they were unclean, as if the day had irrevocably soiled them. She stayed a long while under the shower, washed her hair, blow-dried it, then returned to her bedroom and stood nude before the full-length mirror on the closet door. She studied herself at some length, and intermittently her hands would move to cup a breast or trace the swell of a thigh, not to arouse but to assess, to chart the dimensions of her physical self.
And now? A meal alone? A few hours with a book? A lazy night in front of the television set?
She closed her eyes, and at once she felt other eyes upon her, felt them as she had been feeling them all day. She knew that she was alone, that now no one was watching her, but this knowledge did nothing to dispel the feeling.
She sighed.
She would not, could not, stay home tonight.
When she left the building, stepping out into the cool of dusk, her appearance was very different. Her tawny hair, which she’d worn pinned up earlier, hung free. Her makeup was overdone, with an excess of mascara and a deep blush of rouge in the hollows of her cheeks. During the day she’d worn no scent beyond a touch of Jean Naté applied after her morning shower; now she’d dashed on an abundance of the perfume she wore only on nights like this one, a strident scent redolent of musk. Her dress was close-fitting and revealing, the skirt slit Oriental-fashion high on one thigh, the neckline low to display her décolletage. She strode purposefully on her high-heeled shoes, her buttocks swaying as she walked.