Orientation: a Journey: Trip Through Europe Asia and Africa

All Rights Reserved © 2004 by Wallace Collins

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Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

Conclusion

Remembrance

Pauline Cynthia Collins

1930/2003

That morning you slipped away from me Pauline

Just when I persist to hold on to you as mine

It was as if your time had come for you to go

When you fell away from me, not too long ago,

Gone from one’s life of hope, your life’s divine,

Like the Morning Glory, scorched without its dew,

A Flower seared in the heat, from that defaulting due.

But hush, it hurts, just like a Berry left drooping on the vine.

For, to know you, Gem, is to understand one’s worth—sublime.

Now, one struggles in a state of stunned growth

Though, if one wants to continue, one must go forth

Living in one’s diminished world that evolves, a static sphere—it is,

To one ensconced in memories of you, its one’s fate—it is.

wbc

and Diann Alexander

Introduction 

Orientation: A Journey is an autobiographical account of a group of African American tourists who traveled on a tour to Europe, Asia and North Africa. The writer inserts fictional situations in the book to enable the reader to view the bareback narrative in relation to, or as a divergence from the autobiographical portions of the book.

As reality, the autobiographical segments in the book are its core; it lends itself to the fiction the writer creates, propelled by his rush of awareness, which bares his accelerated consciousness, and carries the fictitious segments of the book on a non-liner narrative tour.

The fiction in the book conveys an asymmetrical, composition that compares, as it contrasts the reality of the New York travel group’s novel experience in the countries they travel. It speaks also, to the author’s creativity carried by his flood of consciousness that triggers his spontaneous reaction, enough to effect his non-liner, construction to the fictional narrative.

REALITY/FICTION

CHAPTER 1  

AGITATION

A MAN WALKING IN THE PARK

PufflSeretse appeared out of nowhere, like a whiff of black smoke emerging from thin air, and into the unmistakable image of an African Prince, who magically transports himself to Seville, Spain from the Bamangwato tribal village he reigned over as a Chieftain, Before Christ—saved his soul. Subsequently, he mysteriously reconstructs himself to the present where he finds himself in a Seville park to rendezvous, and later merge into Dennis, an African American from New York. He now appears as a modern young man with dread locks hair, and wearing a brown and white sear sucker suit, ambling along as if lulled into a subconscious state, and in a dream sequence that mirrors him walking in a park in Seville, Spain. His appearance foretold his presence as the forerunner to some African American tourists from New York visiting the park. In his anticipation of meeting his kith and kin from centuries past, Seretse continued to traipse hesitantly on the cobble stone street, glancing furtively in the distance, at his self, as a man walking in the park, observing his self as an entity gliding on air. He winced when he saw two figures loomed before him that immediately emerged as that of two men galloping on horseback toward him. What he saw next, in his vision, kept him spellbound as he stared at the apparition that emerged before him in the guise of two men who mesmerized him enough that, his thick, drooping moustache bristled above his full upper lip; it nestled under his flared nostrils that showed the muscles taut in his neck; the scenario gripped him in a hypnotic trance. He ogled at the two men who emerged like mysterious silhouettes, galloping through the thick, limestone, wall that separates the Town Hall from the Battle Field in the Arena outside in the Street. They emerged in a shimmering specter to a weird scenario and entered the promenade on the beachfront, at Park Side. Seretse, though familiar with Conquistadors’ armor, appeared taken aback by AK 47 Rifles slung over their shoulders, and their chest decorated with red and blue, bandana, sash, draped diagonally across the armor plate; chain mail armor hugged their torso and shoulders, protected them against foes’ thrusting sabers, rapiers, and their wielding, cutting, double edged, swords. It propelled his historical psyche enough that he regurgitates his horrors as he relived his fears; yet, he prided himself for his enormous loves in Madrid, while he disgorged his history in vein gloriously in Seville.

The contrast was as brazen as it was incongruent with the Rocket Launcher—Bazooka, slung across the saddlebag before them; a Saber secured in its scabbard, hung from the horse’s mouth in a harness, reigned in for good measure. Though Seretse is well known by the Two Horsemen, they are familiar with his African magic in Seville—their undying televising of him in bondage, made him continue to look wide-eyed at the Two Horsemen; Life and Death, one minute, then Love and Hate the next, while they rode their ponies in on him in through The Park, emerging through the thick limestone and brick, wall, like two phantoms there to spook him. He marveled at how, suddenly, they appeared miraculously before him, as if stretching in time from the Seventh to the Seventeenth Century, there before him without their horses and armor, their Bazooka rocket launchers and the saber scabbard to their horse’s mouth bridle; instead they wore sleuths’ of armor.

Seretse remained mentally and physically fixated as he watched them turn and stared at each other inquisitively, their brows furrowed with a questioning look of astonishment on their brown sugar faces that reflected their awe at what they think they saw; a well dressed, but disheveled looking, African man, wandering on their street in Seville, Spain, and not the African they were familiar with who wore red pantaloons and white, shirt, seized by agents of the state, and put down for his infidelity to the Spanish Realm, where he meets his fate at dawn to a dear inquisitor’s musket. He had come a long way since then, since his earliest beginnings in time and place when—enough that now he can own up to, and recognize, if not admit to his Akan ancestral home in Afrique. He has since come to terms with the tremendous strides he has made in every field of his endeavor in time and space, in his mortal humanity to all things living—things in his kingdom hovering in the sky of Condors that now, he can say—Yes! That is where I am from—where we all come from, and will return to begin again—all over again!

Conversely, the two men appeared in fear of Seretse with his dread-locks spewing from under his red, yellow and green, knitted, tam. It is a fear that they knew before, in their immediate past, and is acquainted with, since they recognized the apparent consequences of wild people from where they came on horseback, as they materialized through the thick limestone and brick wall, and merged at the fountain in Seville, wearing suits, amiss their armor. The men rode on horseback through the limestone and brick wall; they wore Conquistadors’ regalia in disguise, not as ghosts, but spooks that carefully watched the black and blue, African man of color and silence. Suddenly he appeared before them, in their midst, walking deliberately, aimlessly, ‘A Man Walking in the Park, in Central park, in Hyde Park or in any other park there is to walk, he walked with a military gait, high, stepping deliberately on the cobbled stone street lined with lemon trees; where the acrid, sharp scent of oranges, filled the village of Seville, and heightened the odoriferous, jasmine that scented the orange-rind, and dulled Seretse’s, Karma of time and place.

He believed that he was there before, on that same spot, in that location, and in that identical place, in the past, and another time, under another name Mute maybe, they termed his guarding the Sultan. His collective subconscious summoned him then as, Seretse Akiem, now, after his long sojourn in space from his home in Seoul’s Limbo, and away from it, his persona like his name, is now legally changed with dishonor, into that of Dennis, by name and stereotype who, with that something in his genes, told him he traveled that road before and that he belonged there—here. His soiled, white sear-sucker, suit was incredibly crushed, as if he had slept in it the night before. Seretse’s sullied, suit was in sharp contrast to his bluish-black, complexion and fuzzy, black hair, plaited in dread-locks, merged then into the aura of his black shirt, sharpened the image of the blue, polka-dot, bow-tie he wore. He did not know where he was but for the familiar orange trees that engulfed his memory as they decorate the narrow street he ambled on, walking measurably behind someone he could not discover who it was, gliding before him, someone who he could not perceive it to be, there, in his numbing, yes, but for his slumbering reality.

The officious looking men with olive, complexion, intercepted him as he traipsed into the vast opening with tall trees and huge ornate buildings, synonymous of a man walking in the park nearby, and headed toward the huge water fountain that spewed water high and wide; it mirrored a colorful rainbow mist, enough to enshroud rippling pools of water inside its cavernous basin. One man had a slight build and sported a thick moustache; he wore a powder, blue, linen suit and a red shirt, while the left, side of his jacket showed a slight bulge; the other man wore a canary, yellow, suit over a black, shirt and purple tie with a Windsor knot that looked neat on him; he too had a bulge in his clothes but it was on the right side of his yellow jacket, which seemed to malign his clean-shaven face, accentuated by his Goatee beard. He chided Seretse as he asked him where he lived, a mock, grin on his tanned face, while the other man took his cue and followed his predecessor by asking Seretse, sharply, where he lived and where he was going. The first man continued to admonish Seretse with prodding queries of where he came from and where he wanted to go.

Seretse stood with his back to the massive fountain that graced the Maria Louisa Park with the Renaissance Town Hall in the background shadowing a double spire Minaret and an onion, domed, Masque in the center. The two men stood facing him and the fountain, looking as if they would push him over into the fountain to rid him and them of his apparent, out-of-body-experience, and quell his tendency to sleepwalk. The awesome sight of the huge, curved, ornate basin structure bedeviled Seretse. He was not familiar with this Gibraltar, rock—like, structure, though he felt he knew the field and the trees and the grass and the birds that began to chirp melodiously in his head, as if to stay his answers to the two men. He could not understand what the two men were saying to him, though he knew that they might understand him for he had been there, in that place before, and they must have learned from him in the past, his dead language from ancient times in and around that recent location.

Again, he replied to their gesticulations and overt animation, by simply saying that, just to be sure that they will understand what he is saying, but did not know the language he now spoke, except that by his mention of New York, which he thought will ring a bell and toll in both their civil heads. Immediately, a thought ran into his head that he was not in the park to rake dead leaves, or to prune green leaves, lest of all, he had no intention of felling any of the trees in the park, ancient though they must be, since he was sure that he might have planted them for himself as his garden, when he was there before. Seretse’s quietude, his silence and his calm, was affected by someone in another sphere; it made the two men gently put their hands on his arms, fondled the sleeves of his white sear sucker suit, then walked him hurriedly to a Black Maria vehicle outside the city gates of Guangdong Province.

They stood him up against the back doors and demanded he tells them where in Seville he was living and why he exposed himself to the living in Taipei across the Taiwan Peninsula, and not Hong Kong where the parchment on his codpiece guarded his ‘Hanging Garden of Babylon’ hasped, padlock, dangled, exposed his real identity to Orient-alls. Then, as if by the magic of osmosis, Seretse absorbed the shifting scenario before him and straightened his blue, polka-dot, tie, then tugged at his dread-locks; he looked keenly at both men and replied, again, as if he understood what they wanted from him and knew what they were saying to him in a language he had long since forgotten in its original, Pyramidal, form—that he lives in New York; he was in Cordoba where his spirit had taken him when the sun was setting and the moon was high above—on top of the cloud, after he had given his all to the Umayyad King who eventually put him to the sword; eliminate him because he was brought up in Yemen, and his history and beliefs were threatening to his Islamic ruler.

The slim, willowy build man with thick, moustache and a winkle in his large brown eyes, released Seretse’s arm and trust both his hands deep into his jacket pocket and asked him in a sympathetic tone of voice, where he slept the night before, and where he planned to stay tonight. Seretse soliloquized loudly, as if talking to himself, and that he will go to his hotel in New York tonight, have a shower and shave, then go to dinner and see a circus act Off Broadway in his Tribal Village in Cordoba, then police the city.

This baffled the two men, who read Seretse’s expression of certainty, as trying to say something positive to them. Yet, they surmise that what he was saying to them, though they did not speak his dialect, was impossible, since they know that, even if he had a prearranged airplane flight to wherever he said he was going that he could not get back to New York then, since they had only Galleon travel to America by boat in months on the ocean. They understood that, and that even if he were rigging the Pinto; he could not reach the New World before the Nina, until in the morning. They perceived that he was someone who was not strange to their sense of his individuality, since he appeared as someone they had met in their collective subconscious before, somewhere, and at sometime. Obviously the men thought they surmised that they had left him behind from where they had rode into the park on horseback, and through the limestone and brick wall, splashing onto the cavernous water fountain in Seville, or on the Great Wall of China in Kwangtung Province, the birthplace of Sun Yat Sen, where he now

resides in Kuala Lumpur. One man unbuttoned his coat and revealed a gun in its holster, as if to intimidate the strange African they quires.

Seretse’s apparition transcends his past, perfectly as an African tribal leader that allows him to realize his present sense of time, where his identity becomes his history. His African identity now merges into his African American image as Dennis, to that of one transcendent African entity, and promotes his future as another, one who views the above farcical altercation with Seretse and the phantasmagoric, Conquistadors. It appears even more bizarre to him, as with the brown-sugar, complexion, men, who began to talk to him in English, a language he did not understand; he had forgotten it in his past life as a tribal leader in the Orient, who had ran rough shod over his neighbors. Now, and in regards to that which was, and is (gospel), he answered them in perfect Papiamento, seemingly, is his Spanish he learned in Taipei, though a language the men did not understand from the Korean dialect they knew in Seville, but for his South American—Africanism.

Reality: Detour

Dennis, now a-born-again-African—American is looking forward to the present, where he and a group of close friends are slated to leave New York with The Travel Club the following week, on a vacation tour of Asia and Europe. There is an unexpected detour to their prearranged trip that threatens to come apart while they wait anxiously to get their overdue travel documents from a ‘beautiful’ but questionable Travel Agent in Manhattan. And though, as the saying goes, if frogs had wings their butts wouldn’t hit the lily pad when they leap from one lily pad to the next lily pad, Dennis and his travel group have bought their wings—airline tickets—but have yet to get them from a ‘beautiful’ but unscrupulous and questionable Travel Agent in Manhattan. If, or when they get it from the travel agent, it would enable them to fly from one country to the other while they tour Asia and Europe on their vacation trip.

Fictitious: Reroute

Seretse merged fictitiously into Dennis’ personality. He now finds himself in a room with a washbasin hooked onto a wall and a crude toilet bowl with an overhead water tank that dangled a chain and a rubber ball at its end. He stood with his head raised looking up at the wall in the detention center, trying to urinate in a Madrid toilet. He could see clearly through the broken frosted glass window, an unfinished skyscraper that was left hanging for the past two centuries, where it abridged the wide concourse and overlooked the cavernous Real Madrid soccer stadium. The lavatory was in a police precinct the two men had left him from a Black Maria Van, after it rerouted briefly from Seville, where he now finds himself trying to flush the toilet after he’d urinate in it. Gradually, he saw that it would not flush away his urine, and his impatience grew, though he felt that he could have left the bathroom, until he saw what looked like a thick black fluid coming up through the sink and into the toilet bowl. It caused him to take a second look. He saw the situation coming from his Moroccan Heritage of another ancient life when he journeyed through Marrakech on a camel back, then flew to the Grand Socco on his magic carpet where he took a subterranean trip to Alhambra, where he now finds himself ensconced in a Madrid toilet retchhing all over the marble floor that was the old floor of the Prado. As he looked ahead into the backyard, the sullied water gushed up into the sink and completely filled it with thick, black oil, like gushing from an oil well. The sights of all that gunk in the sink that he’d seen in Bangkok and in Pataya, came to him like a visage he used to repel a feeling of revulsion that rose in him. It became real and complete in his mind as it challenged his sense of order and decency. He left the toilet in disgust, though with a feeling of fear, trepidation even, as he felt from that ignited oil well in his head, inflamed as it gushed thongs of fire and burned him with a blaze of misunderstanding, of where he was, and why he was in Agra traipsing up the marble steps of the Taj Mahal.

Interior Monologue Fictitious: In My Solitude

Allow me to soliloquize if I may, that I often get a rush of consciousness that bores in on me, symptomatic of me having a conversation with myself in isolation. It hits me like a shaft of light that propels into my head, analogous of a piece of shrapnel shredded from a projectile on the battlefield—of life, throwing me against that imaginary perfect wall of complete isolation. I would face it, deep in the guts of my mind; of which I cannot see, feel even, though I am aware of it before me. I would experience a severe agitation that wrenches my sense of disbelief as it tugs at my innards while it tells me, as if I were talking to myself in a Conversation in Isolation, clearly that the more I think I know about myself and others, the less I know about myself and the people I meet and associate with. No less, the more, or the less I know about the world I live, which, however much I try to transport myself in the simple but demanding guises of that creative masquerade call fiction, things always remain the same for me, a reality of the One, the I.

From somewhere inside my mind, I suspect that the little knowledge I gleaned from living and knowing, have robbed one of that especial wonder, and that discovery, learning and knowing about things for the first time. It has made me aware of my desire for certainty that now inhibits my curiosity about the world around and ahead of me, and how it works—for me, for you and for I. It might be that I am blind-sided by my desire for certainty, and for knowing spontaneously about the nature of things and of myself that I know I must do, about others, for me and for I.

I resigned myself to the reality of getting older and feeling safer in my thinking and beliefs, where I am disinclined to ask unanswered questions of myself anymore, and of the world at large. For when I am thinking, it seems that I know all that I need to know, and nothing else will add to my knowledge. Thus, it allows senility to take set, as it invades and severs the past in a single beacon of light, just as that shaft of light highlights the present, only to dull the future from one’s mindful, vision. It seems that I am no longer puzzled by the warp and woof of living, or do I look in every nook and cranny of human nature to find one’s answer to life. I do not labor in my mind how to speak to the fiction of this reality, to solve it. Doubtless, all of that has made me become smug in my mind, if not pessimistic of others’ reality, believing in my fiction and reality goes together, and to use both as my guide and to curry my insight in things as they are in me, by reflecting on being self satisfied with that so-called fictitious achievement—of my reality, of one’s truth and the fact of I.

Whatever the mental and physical suffering, I rest my case and plead innocent, but guilty of any exploration by me of myself, and I, as one is inclined to do with human nature adjourned or dismissed if you must. It is then that I believe that I have the accessible wonders of the world by the throat, or the balls, a cynic might say, where everything it depicts is in flux, in mine, yours, and their eyes—only. The result of which is that they have suspended, if not inhibit my creative urge and one’s latent sensibilities compared with one’s knack to experiment with words and ideas by asking why, to all and sundry things. The answers to which I often formulate a precept, an idea to a given situation, about what is or was, or where it might lead one morally, becomes mute, leaving it in that aura of light and shade, in that kind of chiaroscuro, where informed, ignorance delves. That, in itself, does not answer everything that you, they or I want to know, or sought to know about the world and myself. It really does not make my quest for learning, fruitful or worthwhile, but only effect my spirits of adventure to know better than to dream too high. Yes, no longer am I a fool who tries to go where angels fear to go or wise men dread to tread. I know it allows—there is no need to write fiction any more—no need to show, or become outraged at political or social manifestations, because I, you and they now know why things are the way they are.

Consequently, whenever I try to achieve anything worthwhile by working toward my attainable or unattainable goal to any sort of perfection, and in living a life of bliss or that of grief, an invisible Wall emerges. Though it does not vitiate my desire for a level playing field, it motivates me to take a path to reach a desired destination to achieve my goals. It is a Wall nevertheless that I may or might not rebound from time or place repeatedly. If I attempt to climb, scale or mount that Wall over to the other side—well, chances are that it must rankle as one’s passing, since that Wall is immutable and I—we—are mutable. That Wall is perfection, and I—we—by the human tragedy that led man down the garden path in Eden, is imperfect. That Wall is infinite and we are finite. It is everlasting and we are not. It is Immortal and we are mortal. It is invincible and we are vulnerable. It is Omnipotent! No man or woman will pass over that Wall and live to tell the tale of what is on the other side of that Wall, whether it is you or I, let alone one.

Further, it seems to me that neither I nor anyone else can do anything to change the way things are, since the die is cast and our fate is sealed. We are doomed to die on earth, and not in Heaven. It appears then that I have become an incurable pessimist—but have I? Well, let me try to say a little bit more about that here. I do not know what the result of my attempt here will be. Though I will try to work things out with something and build a bridge to span pessimism and optimism, a sort of dispassionateness, if not, impartial, grist for the mill. I believe I must try to work out of that conundrum by attempting to separate what is fact from what is fiction, and to distinguish what is truth from that of falsity, as it is to enable accuracy its rightful place from that of prevarication, or whatever meaning they might have for you, or me, to prevail. It is a risk worth taking—fictitious one, no doubt—a reality for me you, and I—as One.

CHAPTER 2  

FRICTION: LOST AND FOUND

A blizzard raged in New York City with bursts of wind that chased snow flakes around with gusts of wind blowing up to forty miles an hour. Three to four feet of the white stuff gathered on the ground with six-foot drifts piled on the far side of the street. Dennis looked outside the front door of his two bedroom apartment, then retreated to the rear window, where he observed the snow drift banked high up to the garage eves at the back of the building. Within the safety of his kitchen he listened to the wind as it howled through whispering tree branches in the back yard, chasing the snow that cascaded across the driveway in the back of the house, while the wind, whiplashes the snow against window panes, sending sheets of white flakes that ricochet against the garage door, escalating the rising snow drift.

Meanwhile, far away from New York, Diane sat comfortably in the living room of her Chicago home, where, outside, it was snowing even heavier than it was in New York City. The living room felt warm to her, if not, toasty as she sat comfortably in a dressing gown while talking on the telephone with someone from her distant past, someone she had a relationship with years before she got married to a police officer in Chicago. Then, they were in love with each other, but became separated because she could not decide what to do about the father of her only child, who wanted her to return to him, not because he loved her, or that she was the mother of his only child, but because he did not want her to be happy with someone else. Diane discouraged her former lover over the telephone for even trying to renew their old relationship. She told him that though she was somewhat unhappy with her husband, who was playing the field, she put it down to the nature of his job as a Chicago—constable—policeman, who worked unholy hours of the day and night, going suddenly on calls to action. After her brief conversation with Dennis years before, she thought she would never hear from him again when she recalled how proud and independent he was with her.

The hostile winter weather did not deter Diane traveling by bus through deep snow of a Chicago winter, arriving later in deeper snow in New York, simply to be with her nephew and his family in Brooklyn; she looked forward to spending quality time with her grand nieces and nephews she had not seen in years. She had felt lonely in Chicago after her husband’s death; he died fighting crime as a police officer in Chicago, where she and his former police partners thought he died a hero’s death. They reassured her that her husband was a law officer whose pursuit of criminals saw it as his utmost duty to uphold the law. After her husband’s death, Diane did not want to continue working as a dress designer for a big outfit in Chicago; instead, she took voluntary retirement to commemorate her husband’s tragic passing, and her mourning, sustained by the City of Chicago’s monetary compensation for police widows—his pension etc. Her nephew in New York has been asking her to come to Brooklyn and stay with him and his family, since the death of her husband; she declined by saying that she wanted to remain near to her late husband, to sustain her woes on the scene of her husband’s criminal murderers.

Reality sets in and eventually, Diane saw that it was time for her to continue living her life after her husbands’ tragic passing. She became aware that she had no choice but to accept her nephew’s invitation, since she felt she needed some sort of relief, if not for her sorrow, surely to escape the severe winter whether that was happening in Chicago, though it did not rid her of that abiding memory she had for her late husband. Now, weeks later, she was in New York where the weather was not better than the deep snowdrifts she had left in Chicago. Diane convinced herself that now she was with her family, and the snow and winds that lashed against the windows of the two, family, brownstone, terrace, house in Brooklyn, did not seem so bad to her then, as it did in Chicago, where the blizzard scourge and buffet against her windows from all sides. She was having breakfast in the warm kitchen with her nephew and his family, when the telephone began to ring. Her nephew got up from the Formica top, dining table, walked into the living room and answered the phone. Hello, is this the home of Mr. Gregory? The smoky voice at the other end of the line asked.

Which Gregory you want to talk to...?

I am looking for Mr. Gregory’s sister Diane, I believe she is married and her married name was Souvenir.

The nephew called out, Diane who?

Diane overheard her nephew, John, called her name. She got up from the breakfast table and casually entered the living room. She took the phone from her nephew and said, This is Diane. Who is calling?

The caller answered in a hushed voice, Marva, this is Dennis. He said it as if he wanted her to immediately recognize who he was after all these years that he remembered her pet name, Marva.

A momentary silence followed; then, she said, softly, Dennis?

To which the caller said, Yes! This is Buddy.

She laughed softly and replied, automatically, This telephone call sounds fishy to me. She laughed again, and then sighed with delight.

Both laughed at a fun characterization they shared with each other in their youth.

She said, almost as an afterthought. Jesus Christ, Dennis, how you know where to find me and to call me over the phone, how you know where I was to get this phone number and call me?

He answered meekly, Well, lately I kept thinking about you, Diane, you know, in a real sense. It was as if I could touch you, like the relationship we had with each other years before, seemed to me as if it were just yesterday. Lately, I just could not get you out of my mind. I begin to think that you might be ill, or that you might have recently passed on, and I wanted to know about you, whether you were dead or alive.

Diane gasped in shock that he would think she was no longer be living, and that she was dead. She replied, in a whisper, Thank you very much. I’m talking to you from the grave; it is my ghost talking to you now, Dennis. She laughed softly then said, in a tender voice that he knew so well, which made him become enchanted with her all over again. "I never stop thinking about you, Dennis, especially after criminals kill my husband in Chicago for doing his job. That is the death you must have imagined or suspected. That was nearly four years ago, and you know what, Dennis, it was the exact date of our ninth, wedding, anniversary that criminals shot my husband. We had planned to have a wedding anniversary celebration with friends from his work and from my job at a big

restaurant on the South Side. Her voice cracked, and she paused, then said, I’m sorry, Dennis, but every time I remember that day I get really choked up."

Well, I’m here Diane, he said reassuringly. I’m here to make you laugh, remembering how we used to laugh together about the things we would say to one another? No need to get choked-up now, I am here...I thought I lost you, but I found you; things will be different for you; it will be brighter for you, for both of us. He paused, to give her time to collect her composure, then continued, I know where to find you now, Diane, I know where you are, he said, reassuringly to her, realizing that because she is a recent widow, he must not arouse her aggrieved feelings; that is why he declined to express his heartfelt compassion for the tragic loss of her husband.

Similarly, he wanted to make her feel free to put aside her immediate past, not to forget it, but to think of his and her past together, and the resumption of that relationship as their future together. We shouldn’t. We shouldn’t lose touch with each other again. I will see to that from now on, he said with a measure of hope in his smoky, singsong, voice.

Diane felt relieved that Dennis did not convey his sympathy for her husband’s death. Though, paradoxically, she thought that his indifference to her loss eased her sorrow as it did relieve her mind to think of him anew. His deliberate aversion to sympathize with her loss quashed, temporarily, her remorse of her late husband’s death. It enables her to recoup the good memories she had of her past relationship with Dennis, without misgivings. She listened to what he was saying, belatedly, in their first conversation in years, a talk similar to what she knew they had shared with each other in their past. Diane allowed Dennis’ decline to offer sympathy for her husband’s tragic passing, to pass. She saw him not offering her comfort for her loss as his unique way in making her feel strong, emotionally. His gesture gave her new life, where she began to think about herself and how she will—must cope with the future, a future Dennis suggested to her, and of her past with him that, will now be their future with him, her old flame. Yet, again, she thought Dennis must accept her on her own terms, just as she knew she would accept him on his terms if she hoped to resume their relationship.

It was later in their conversation that Diane and Dennis agreed to meet in Brooklyn where he would take her to see a show in Manhattan, then to dinner at his favorite restaurant in the Village. There, they would dine and talk, then get reacquainted with one another at his apartment in Queens Village, where they would renew their relationship that had ended after their senseless breakup. He would make her feel comfortable in his apartment before telling her about his former wife. Dennis hoped that Diane would respond positively to the sad news about his wife’s misfortune with genuine sorrow, since they had all attended the same school together.

Interior dialogue

I felt upbeat as I looked forward to meeting Diane and taking her to a Broadway show, and then go to dinner after the show. I planned that we would return to my apartment in Queens, where I would show her how well I lived, compared to when we were together in London. I longed to relive that time with her in London when Diane wrapped her legs around my body in bed, where I would lay in her arms with my back cradled between her opened legs; she would then run her feet down the side of my body that made me felt as if I were that special man in her life, blessed and comforted in Diane’s tender embrace, as a child would in its mother’s arms. It was a feeling of nostalgia I often experienced, as momentous moments of us came to me, about her and me in action back when that made me longed for her in a way I found inexplicable. So, you can imagine how surprised I was when I answered my doorbell, thinking it was Shirley my housekeeper who came to tidy my apartment as I had previously arranged with her. Instead, when I opened the door I saw her and three other women standing behind Shirley, who had a puzzled look on her well-tanned face, masked by her auburn hair. I did not recognize any of the women whom I though was boldly proselytizing their religion at my apartment door. They must have gotten the wrong apartment, I said to myself. I began to doubt that since all three women who dressed fashionably, stood unassumingly behind Shirley, were not religious zealots selling pamphlets. I opened the door wide for Shirley to enter; she hesitated, as if in doubt that she should enter the apartment, mindful to avoid any Friction between her and the three women who seem to challenge her entry. As Shirley brushed by me through the doorway, I said to the honey, complexion, woman, imagining her to be someone from my past whom I did not recognize, but envisioned meeting her, then confronting that someone from my past with sparse dialogue,

Yes! Can I help you? I said, raising my eyebrows as I looked from one to the next. The honey complexion women got my attention; she seems to justify Shirley’s curiosity earlier and gave her the opportunity to brush by me and enter the apartment. I felt immediately attractive to this woman nearest to me, as she continued to return my stare with a wry smile on her beautiful, matured looking face. I noticed how she pursed her full lips that bore a provocative sensuality, a sexiness that I seem to recall of someone from my past. It was a look that spoke to me in an erotic language that I was sure I was familiar with and understood immediately. The woman’s pout suggests to me that I should recognize whom she was without her having to reveal herself to me. I decided to play her game of anonymity, since it appears that whoever she was, she wanted me to make her feel certain that I was the man, Dennis whom she wanted to pick up where we had left off years before. It became obvious to me that she wanted me to recognize her immediately, that’s why she remained mute, except to give a knowing look on her beautiful face. I returned her stare, looking keenly at her, noticing the expectant look on her orange complexion face as she waited for me to come to my visual senses. She pursed her full lips with a provocative pout, now slightly askew that told me, who she was; she no doubt, thought I should have recognized her by then.

I grinned, moved closer to her, then said, in a hushed voice, careful not to give the game away that we were apparently playing, on both of us, but to maintain the build up of both, of whomever we were to one another. I continued to play the part just to be blind to her need of recognition, so that I could tap into her curious game of hidden identity by calling out from behind the door, You are? I smiled—a smile that I thought she would recognize me if she were whom she should be to me. "You are.. .you resemble someone I knew some time ago. Surely that person would be older than you are,’ I said, paying her a crude compliment.

Finally, I decided to go along with the long build up of our disguised identity, with her denying revealing who she is and who she thinks I was. I had the time, since I was in my apartment, and looking at her standing, fixed in the doorway; it was my time to conceal knowing who she was or acknowledging her, enough to strung out our situation by giving her a quizzical look, meanwhile. Though I knew who she was, along with the other two women, and that I was looking at Diane, my long lost love, I thought that I should play out this farce, by affecting my ignorance of who she believed I think she might be. I began to think positively that it would only make it sweeter when both of us came to that point where we openly surrender our identity to one another. For she must know that I love to be anonymous just as I know how she liked to be popular with her friends.

I became certain that the woman standing in the doorway was Diane. I ignored the two women beside her as the devil in me, no, the good sport I often pride myself to be, induced me to go along with her mysterious game of anonymity. I revel in it, if not to see whom we eventually turn out to be to each other, right before our very eyes in the entrance to my apartment. Though that might seem wrong headed for me to pretend not to recognize who she was, just as she was adamant not to reveal who she was to me, I found a delicious mind game that

I knew Diane liked to play on me years before that often appeased both of us in our delicious emotional game of give and take. It seemed that Diane and I are now getting reacquainted, if not, reoriented to one another in this, our reciprocal anonymity; in truth, it is nothing more than our idiotic theatrics that went beyond the point of being farcical. It made me savor this climactic build up that adds only to my latent desire for Diane that reflected my heightened experience of our meeting in Brooklyn as planned.

Eventually, she said, in an accented voice, You know who I am, don’t you Dennis. Her honey complexion glowed with mischief.

Of course, I knew who she was; but what I wanted to see was how far she would go with her pretensions; I wanted to see how much she wanted me, enough that she would reveal herself and come running into my arms and hug and kiss me for all the lost years we were apart. And you are.? I said smiling from ear to ear believing that finally I had given up the tomfoolery. Hey. I know you! I said with a faint smile on my face. What you know about me? I said, and then paused for her to just come clean and confess whom she was and we would clinch, tight with emotion. I thought then that I was having a great time with the unidentified Diane of my dreams, and that I wanted to savor every inch of her squirming in my imaginary arms, as she did in reality, in my arms long ago and far away, by both of us pretending, if not promoting our anonymity. A spontaneous feeling of need surfaced in me like a lifesaver, buoying up a drowning man, or woman, for her part. I opened my eyes wide as if in total surprise and delight, then whispered, convincingly, Diane? I gave all the signs of surprise and manufactured a gasp with my mouth opened that I imagined a puppeteer pulling on my strings; I even affect an embarrassing look on my face as I surrendered my big ace in the hole and came clean to my senses with Diane. Sweet Diane? I repeated with a knowing grin as she brought her lips together in her famous pout, and then wagged her beautiful head while we held hands, now relieved from all the theatrics that occurred within seconds, minutes at best, of my opening the door.

"We did not embrace each other as we did years before when we were young and met for the first time that night, the night we met and kissed for the first time, when she responded ardently to my fondling her, and with us caressing each other. It was during musicians’ intermission at her school graduation dance that gave us time to be alone, when we found ourselves against the wall of a manse on Up Camp Road, clinching and cuddling each other in the bright moonlight shrouding the Blue Mountain in the immediate background, when cats scratched and clawed their way out of garbage cans next to where we stood. We were oblivious of them, concerned only about our desire for one another after we had escaped the nosey attention of our friends in the auditorium, and wandered into the street where we got to know one another quite well. We did not realize at the time that we would not meet each other again until later, much later, years later, at Studio 51 in London. Now, however, she decided to stick to her game, to punish me because I did not recognize her immediately, and now, she wanted to raise the value of her relationship with me, as she always did, to get me to want her more than she wanted me.

’What do I know about you, Dennis?’ Diane said gently, ‘you would be surprised,’ she continues, as if to ridicule me with that familiar look of love, withheld, in her gray-brown eyes. ‘I heard a lot about you, Dennis, that you live at this address—you said, do you remember, Dennis? You forgot who I was, but I remember who you are Dennis, how you looked then, and how might look after all these years.’

"I raised my eyebrows and smiled; it was in mock surprise that must have lit up my face, as reflected by the immediate ease with which she moved her ample hips toward me. I imagined then that she must see me as a clown who was playacting wonderment as I barked out, ‘Diane? Come in! Please! Come in! Bring your friends and let us get to know each other.’ I stepped aside, trying to allay my embarrassment at seeing Diane arriving unexpectedly at my apartment, and with me unable to immediately recognize who she was. She looked different to me then from the last time I saw her in London. She has matured enormously into a sophisticated, motherly look that made her appearance even more alluring than when we were one, in the past, enough that I felt self-conscious to embrace her, thinking that I might become hooked to her as I did in the past, or even greet her as my long lost love. The look in her gray-brown eyes said that she wanted me to hug her, as much as she wanted to embrace me; I shook her hand instead, just as I did with the other ladies with her, but for Monique, the good sport she is, who bumped and squeezed her plump, supple body between me and the opened door, as if she were trying to be some sort of contortionist.

"I recalled saying facetiously to her, an open-eyed look of incredulity on my face as I stared at the beautiful honey-colored women near me, ‘I must know you all from some place before—Heaven, maybe?’ She stared at me, a wry smile graced her light brown face, as I tried to rekindle my old impersonal taunts of her, Give us and intro,’ I said, aggressively to Diane, while turning to glance at her two friends. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends—Doll?’ I

insisted, using her pet name, while looking at her with a serious expression on my face, careful not to give the game away that we both were playing with each other.

"Diane smiled then held her friend’s arm and said, ‘Dennis, I want you to meet this fabulous woman!’ She looked me squarely in the eye, as she did in the past when she desperately wanted something from me, be it material or emotional. She nodded knowingly in her tender approval of my expected endorsement of her phenomenal partner. You remember Monique from London? She lived on the same street where you lived’. Then, she turned to the other woman; you must recognize Terri from England when we lived there. She is my cousin’s wife visiting from London to spend some time in New York at Monique’s house on Long Island’. She embraced me lightly, and then backed away from me, her large eyes bulged with awe. ‘Dennis, you still strong, you know?’ She shook her head as if in wonderment.

"’This is unexpected Diane. I didn’t know you knew where I lived and how to find me. Obviously you found it easy to get to me now’.

"’Dennis, it wasn’t hard for me to find you; it was easy. Your address stuck out like a sore thumb on my Queens map. Besides, my good friends know about you and all your moves, more than you think they know’. Diane looked toward the two women then continued, ‘though you look as if you don’t recognize any of them; who is the brunette that brush by me a while ago?’ Diane said with a touch of sarcasm in her voice.

"’Well, you’re in!’ I said to her stepping aside again and waving Diane and her two friends into my apartment. ‘Your friends must know me well enough to find where I live. Anyway, what brings you to my house unexpectedly? We’d arranged to meet at your house in Brooklyn this evening’.

"Diane looked at me wide eyed, ‘Aren’t you going to give me a real hug after all this time, or are you afraid of what the brunette will think?’ She embraced me again; this time we held hard up against each other for sometime before she released me and looked deep into my eyes, and said, ‘You don’t want me anymore Dennis?’ I had no answer for her emotional fears or my dread of nostalgia, though I could see that she was looking to feel the heat from that flame that burned in me for her, years before. ‘You’re taking yourself too seriously Diane, aren’t you?’ I said mischievously, as I took her hand into mine and squeezed it gently.

"’How’d you want me to take myself Dennis?’ She said, giving me a quizzical look.

I turned to her and said tersely, ‘with a grain of salt!’

She laughed and said, ‘you’re right Dennis. I should know better. A grain of salt.. .that’s all you has to offer me now? You should know that with me, it has to be rock salt.’

"I looked cross-eyed at her, then turned away from her, while shaking my head, acknowledging her old eroticism.

"’It was still there’, I said to myself, then, as if to change from that to civilize banter, said, ‘Diane, I’m glad we found each other again; it makes me happy to be with you, finally. I never thought this would happen to us again, us meeting in New York’. I released her hand. It felt soft and damp; I admired her long fingers with her red nail polish, and shook my head lamentably and said, ‘Diane, I was thinking, just the other day, before I called you on the telephone that I would like to know where you were after all these years. I had such a strong urge, a compelling feeling, even to know how you were and what you have been doing, or have been getting on, after all these years’.

Diane looked at me; she pursed her lips, while deep in her eyes I saw that she loved me, after all these years. She replied, in a philosophical tone of voice that made me wince with surprise.

Farce

"’The story begins when we met at a church ceremony in Hyde Park, where our friends suddenly switched the reception to Central Park after we had left River-dale Park for drinks; we then drove to LaFonatine Park, where they held the reception on ice—rink. But chilled by ice, we moved to Riverdale Park for the honeymoon sequester, after which, and eventually, we found ourselves in Central Park celebrating as nuptials for the shear hell of it, of being together. You remember that, don’t you—Dennis?’

"I was stunned by Diane’s dazzling, if not creative recount of our meeting, so much so that I continued to look at her with disbelief, then glanced at Terri and Monique, searching for an explanation of Diane’s sentimental recount to an event that happened long ago. I noted that both women seemed to recognize me, though I had grown a beard and had lost some hair on my head, which I believed Monique immediately noticed, and which brought a wide smile that opened her pleasant, sugar and spice, coco-brown, face. Things began to happen to me that I had not expected and I began to react to these three women in a way that turned into an unusual experience for me. I returned her open face stare with a look that I hoped would convey to her that I was not interested in her know-it-all, and worldly look at me.

"Meanwhile, I saw Diane eying me, then looking intently at Monique for some sort of explanation from her. Then, she walked toward my bedroom, possibly to see where Shirley was and what she was doing. She turned suddenly and said to me, her full lips in a pout, ‘I can help you! You know that, if you want me to get rid of her—for you and for me’! She had a seductive smile on her full, red painted, lips.

"’Diane, please give my housekeeper room to do her job; she is working in the bedroom now.’

"’Your housekeeper, and what else Dennis’? Diane said, in a far away voice. I took her by the hand, possibly trying to pacify her amorous intentions in broad day light, as I know she often does in the heat of the day or night, and that I know would make her feel wanted by me again, I led her onto the front porch while her two friends sat on the sofa munching the nuts I kept in a dish on the coffee table. I squeezed her hand while she gazed out onto the artificial lake in the park across the street. Immediately she moved her hips hard up against me, a gesture that drew a soft groan from her, accompanied by a painful smile.

’Shirley is my business manager’, I said in a confessional tone of voice, ‘but things are not going so well with me these days. She did not want to leave me in the lurch, so she decided to double up as my masseuse, and later became my house keeper until things picked up again for us.’

Real Time

Diane greeted Denis with familiarity when they met at Studio 51, then a noted nightclub in London where youths from the Islands meet with local nightclub regulars. She hailed him as if she had known of him before then.

You’re Dennis, right? She said with a sneaky smile on her full lips, her large eyes opened wide, as if she wanted to say something else to him, but anticipating that she might put him off, thinking that she was a regular to the night club, though observing the expectant look on his light, tan face.

Diane’s query of Dennis did not surprise him since he was quite aware, as no doubt Diane was, of the many girls he met at the club; so he answered her with pride in his voice, Yes! He gave her a challenging look, and repeated, Yea! He nodded his head assuredly to himself. Actually, he had met her months before when a friend he was doing business with as an entertainer, introduced her to him as, Diane. Dennis recalled that he liked her immediately, enough that he had smiled and said Yes! He then gave her the full treatment as he greeted her with his complimentary line of flattery with girls, High Doll!

She took it then as his take of her, which made her wince, smiled and raised her eyebrows at what she viewed as either his high, or low regard for her; at best she saw it as probably his way of viewing her as his toy, which could be his way of expressing his instant attraction to her. She visualized embracing Dennis and kissing him ardently, knowing that she alone knew how to do it for him; she could tell from his reaction to her, how well she did it to him.

Besides, Diane did it right there in the open doorway, and before Shirley, his business manager, who looked stunned, if not frightened at how she boldly showed her love for him.

Shirley realized then that what she was seeing was not a meat and potato situation happening with Dennis and this woman whom she knew only as Marva. She viewed it more as that of bells and whistles going off, which made her answer to his