Lady in the Lake(57)

“I just saw you last night,” Seth said. He had. Another desultory dinner at the Suburban House. He’d chewed with his mouth open. Maddie had drunk coffee. Nothing on the familiar menu had appealed to her. She had begun reading the New York Times in the Star’s library, copying recipes that appeared under a man’s name, Craig Claiborne. She was particularly taken by a recent piece on leftovers. It had never occurred to her that one could fry a chicken ahead of time and then eat it cold on purpose. She had thought cold chicken was a default food, something to be eaten in front of the icebox, as Milton always had on the late-night raids that had added pounds to his midsection, which had led him to the tennis club at Cross Keys, which had brought Wally Weiss into her life and led her here. Just last week, she had presented Ferdie cold chicken and broiled tomatoes as a proper meal, and he had been impressed by her chicken. She did not tell him that it was from a newspaper recipe. She sensed he would find that ridiculous, following a recipe for fried chicken.

“Is there a rule that you can’t see me two nights in a week?” Maddie had asked.

“I have plans,” Seth said.

“A date?”

“Mom.” He packed at least three syllables and so much disdain into the word that Maddie didn’t have the heart to pursue the matter. She let him go. And when Ferdie came by later that night and they were sated, on steak sandwiches and beer and sex—the same article on leftovers had recommended grilling an extra steak and making sandwiches later, not that Maddie had any business buying steak on her salary—she asked Ferdie: “Do you like baseball?”



Not quite twenty-four hours later, they enacted the charade of two strangers, chatting pleasantly after finding themselves seated next to each other at Memorial Stadium. That is, Maddie chatted. Ferdie, it turned out, loved baseball and the Orioles. His eyes seldom left the field. He clapped and cheered with vehemence. Once, when a particular play delighted him—Maddie had been daydreaming, so she wasn’t sure what had happened—he jumped to his feet so suddenly that the people around them started. Most Orioles fans tended toward a restrained politeness.

He was the only Negro in their section, Maddie realized. But, of course, they were very good seats. Her eyes traveled the stadium, searching the more affordable bleachers, the upper reaches. Almost all the fans were white. It was entirely possible that there were more Negroes on the field than there were in the stadium’s seats. Didn’t Negroes like baseball?

She almost touched Ferdie just then, but realized in time that she could not. She had a ticket, he had a ticket. It was happenstance that they were seated together. They chatted as strangers in a stadium might, polite and distant. Do you like baseball? Yes, I played in Patterson Park when I was young, usually outfield, although I could pitch, too. At Poly, I played center field. In some ways, she was learning more about him than she ever had in bed.

An Oriole swung, number six, his bat catching the ball and sending it into a backward arc toward them, but it landed a few rows up. Ferdie, his eyes following the trajectory, could have been a teenager; his yearning for it was that pronounced. He watched the lucky man who barehanded it give it to a little boy behind him and nodded, pleased by the man’s generosity.

Sex that night was better than ever, which surprised Maddie. She didn’t know it could keep getting better. But Ferdie seemed exhilarated—by the Orioles’ victory, by the saucy naughtiness of their game, and he kept at Maddie with such enthusiasm that she was worried her little cries could be heard in the street, over the sound of the box fan in her window.

“I don’t like that fan,” Ferdie said.

“Because it’s loud?” She had been grateful for the whap-whap-whap of the old-fashioned blades.

“Because you have to keep the window open when you use it. It’s not safe, Maddie.”

“You picked this neighborhood for me.”

“I know. But—I was thinking of me, really. I needed a place I could come and go, without anyone caring. I thought this was safe enough. In the winter, when I met you, and things—windows—were locked up tight and the only reason I cared about the fire escape was for me to come up and down it before you got a phone. But now—I worry. Remember how we met.”

Maddie looked at the African violet, huge and velvety.

“It’s worked out okay. It’s walking distance to the Star. Saves me bus fare. And when I take buses or cabs on assignment, they pay me back.”

“Word is that you went to see Cleo Sherwood’s parents.”

This surprised her. “Word where?”

Ferdie sighed. “You’re going to get hurt, going to neighborhoods like that. People are rioting everywhere. It could happen in Baltimore, too.”

“It’s Negroes getting hurt. Have you seen the news out of Cleveland?” Two black men had been murdered there, several white men arrested.

“There’s no story in Cleo Sherwood being killed, Maddie. She was just a girl who went out with the wrong man.”

“She had a boyfriend. Maybe he got jealous, maybe—”

“The bartender at the Flamingo described the man she left with.”

“A man who wasn’t her boyfriend.” She was proud of how she made this a declaration of fact, how knowing she sounded, but she had no idea if this was true.

“The bartender at the Flamingo isn’t anybody’s boyfriend,” Ferdie said.