Deacon King Kong(104)

His face was seized in a crooked smile. He seemed to have trouble walking. He was sweating profusely. He looked, she thought, mad as a hatter. If he weren’t wearing the uniform, she would have had Mel, the security guard, who sat near the door and spent his afternoons reading the Daily News and nodding off, toss him. But she had an uncle who worked for Housing, and he had several colored friends, so she let him amble to the desk. He took his time about it, peering around the lobby, seemingly impressed.

“Looking for Sister Paul,” the old man mumbled.

“What’s the name?”

“Paul,” Sportcoat said. He leaned on the desk for support. He had a blasting headache, which was unusual. He was also exhausted, which was also unusual. He hadn’t had a drink since he spoke to Hettie fourteen hours ago—though it felt like years ago. The effect of not drinking was enormous. He felt weak and agitated, sick to his stomach and trembling, as if he were in a nightmare falling off a cliff and stuck in the air, spinning ’round and ’round as he fell, no bottom, topsy-turvy, just falling. He had just come from seeing Deems and Sausage at the hospital and couldn’t seem to remember what he’d said to either of them or even how he got here. The nursing home was fifteen blocks from the hospital in nearby Borough Park. Normally, Sportcoat could make that kind of walk in a cinch. But now he’d had to stop several times, both to rest and to ask for directions. The last time he’d asked, he was actually standing right in front of the place when he stopped and asked a white man, who simply pointed over Sportcoat’s shoulder, swore under his breath, and walked away. Now he was standing in front of a young white woman behind a desk who had a look on her face just like the folks did back in the Social Security office in downtown Brooklyn when he went to see about his late wife’s benefits. The same look, the irritated questions, the impatience, the demand for documents that had odd names he’d never heard of, pushing forms through the window at him with titles he couldn’t even pronounce or understand; forms that demanded lists and birth dates and more papers, and even some forms that demanded names of other forms, all of which were so complicated that they might as well have been in Greek, the whole conglomeration of document names vanishing into thin air the moment the clerks uttered them. He could not remember what a “Lifetime Sheet for Pro Forma Work Information Record” was from the moment the words came out of a clerk’s mouth, or what it was supposed to be or do, which meant by the time he walked out of the Social Security office, tossing the form in the garbage as he left, he was so addled by the experience that he worked to forget about it, which meant it was as if he hadn’t been there at all.

Now felt like one of those times.

“Is that the first or last name?” Marjorie the receptionist asked.

“Sister Paul? That’s her name.”

“Isn’t that a man’s name?”

“It ain’t a he. It’s a she.”

Marjorie smirked. “A woman named Paul.”

“Well, that’s all the name I knowed of her in my time.”

Marjorie quickly flipped through a list of names on a sheet of paper at her desk. “There’s no woman named Paul here.”

“I’m sure she’s here. Paul. Sister Paul.”

“First of all, sir, like I said, that’s a man’s name.”

Sportcoat, sweating, felt irritable and weak. He glanced over his shoulder and noticed the white-haired elderly security guard stationed near the front door. The guard folded his newspaper. For the second time that day, Sportcoat felt an unusual feeling: anger, which was overcome again by fear, and the usual feeling of utter confusion and helplessness. He didn’t like being this far from the Cause Houses. Anything could happen out here in New York.

He turned back to Marjorie. “Miss, there’s women that do got men’s names in this world.”

“Do they now,” she said, her smirk widening.

“I seen a woman with a man’s name throw a pistol on three fellas last Wednesday. Killed one of ’em dead, blessed God. Now, she was a Haroldeen, that one. Evil as any man. Pretty as a peacock, too, with feathers and all. That was a whole evil person altogether, man and woman combined. A name ain’t nuthing.”

Marjorie looked up to see Mel, the security guard, approach them. “Anything wrong?” he said.

Sportcoat saw the security guard coming and realized his mistake. Now the white folks was getting ready to start counting fingers and toes. His head was pounding so hard he could only see spots in front of his face. He addressed the security guard. “I’m here for Sister Paul,” he said. “She’s a church lady.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know where her home country is.”

“Home country? She American?”

“Course she is!”

“How do you know her?”

“How do anybody know anybody? They meets ’em someplace. She come from church.”

“Which church?”

“Five Ends is the church. I’m a deacon there.”

“Is that so?”

Sportcoat grew frustrated. “She sends money in letters every week! Who sends letters every week? Even the electric company don’t send letters every week!”

The security guard looked at him thoughtfully.

“How much money?” he asked.