Tied to the Tracks Read online

  “Soon,” Rivera promised. “Oh, no, look at that.” A tall, awkward type with a very, very short woman, both of them wobbly drunk. “That won’t last a week, but the sex will be interesting.”

  Angie laughed so hard that she almost choked on her wine, and while Rivera was pounding on her back they both caught sight of John Grant, talking to the Chanel suit.

  “Your guy, my girl,” Rivera said. “Let’s go.”

  Angie wasn’t drunk but she wasn’t quite sober, either. Otherwise she might not have done it, followed Rivera across the street and up the stairs. She walked right up to John Grant, her blood pounding in her ears.

  He was wearing an immaculate white shirt with long sleeves folded to just below the elbow, black jeans, and a day’s worth of beard. She had to tilt her head back to look him in the eyes: blue, with creases at the corners. He gave her a flashbulb smile, blinding, electric; she felt the shock of it slide up her back.

  “You’ve been watching me,” she said.

  “Oh yeah. It’s what I do.”

  He had deep voice and a very southern accent, something Angie hadn’t noticed in passing, and never anticipated. The surprise of it robbed her of what she was going to say next.

  He leaned toward her. “It was your hair first caught my eye.”

  She touched it: untamable, best ignored.

  In the noisy room he leaned closer still. “It’s beautiful.”

  Angie smelled the beer on his breath, and other things: curry, a hint of ginger. Food was something she could always talk about.

  “You went out for Indian,” Angie said sadly. More than a little drunk now, but it had less to do with alcohol than with the way he was looking at her.

  “Come on, Angeline,” he said, taking her elbow. “We’ll get you something to eat.”

  “You know my name,” she said, letting herself be directed.

  “You don’t know mine?” He drew back to look, challenging her: she could try coy, or they could get right to it.

  “John Grant. Columbia English Department. Straight and unattached. Except for—” She looked for the Chanel suit and saw her in the kitchen with Rivera, both of them laughing.

  “Gloria. Just a colleague,” he said, and steered her toward the door.

  They sat across from each other at a small table covered with dishes: lamb vindaloo, chicken tikka, a great milky bowl of cucumbers in yogurt, curried potatoes. Angie had an appetite, and food was the right distraction just now.

  They talked easily. She told him about her thesis project, the short documentary she had put together about the Armenian population in the Bronx, the company she and Rivera wanted to start up. Her family over the river in Hoboken, the diner.

  “Mangiamele,” he said. “Apple eater.”

  She glanced up at him over the rim of her cup. “You speak Italian?”

  It turned out he had spent a year in Italy as an undergraduate, but the stories he liked to tell, the ones that made his face open up, had to do with his family. He had a brother in law school who made a career out of flaunting expectations, a whole town of relatives in Georgia and another, aging contingent on the Upper West Side, but he was closer to his mother’s people down south. The apartment building he lived in on Morningside had been in his father’s family since 1910. The fact that he had accepted a tenured position at Princeton starting in the fall slipped out sideways when she asked him if he thought of moving back to Georgia.

  And all the while they kept falling into short silences, looking at each other and smiling. Never talking about the months they had just spent circling each other; not needing to.

  Then she had enough of food and of waiting, too.

  “Rivera says—”

  “Rivera?”

  “My roommate. My friend. With the”—she swirled her hand around her head—“embroidered headscarf?”

  “With Gloria in the kitchen.”

  “Yes, that’s the one. Rivera says we’ve got a month at most, but it will be good while it lasts.”

  He was trying not to smile. “What leads Rivera to such a hasty conclusion?”

  Angie was flustered now and felt the first throb of remorse. “Probably she was overly optimistic.”

  That was the first time she saw a particular look come into his eyes, a narrowing that meant he had plans. Her hand was on the table and he picked it up, pressed her fingers to his own wrist. Muscular forearms—should have gone out for crew—and cool skin; she felt herself jerk. She said, “Your pulse is racing.”

  “Oh, yeah. I got the Kentucky Derby going on.”

  That flashbulb of a smile; she had to look away.

  On the street in front of the restaurant he caught her hand again, pressed her up against the wall to take her pulse, and then he kissed her. Ivy League and old money, but he was good at it. Angie kissed him back, and meant it.

  They walked back to Angie’s apartment on West Eighth Street, no sign of Rivera or Gloria of the Chanel suit, and thank God; Angie had never been so nervous or so sure. But still she went first thing to the refrigerator and stood in its cold light, one arm on the open door, feeling him behind her and afraid to turn around. Gooseflesh on her back and arms and the insides of her thighs.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Genuflecting in front of the leftovers. It’s an Italian thing. Want something to drink?” She took a can of beer and turned to touch his cheek with it. He started and covered her hand with his own, moved the can to her throat and down.

  “Ah,” she said, and he kissed her there, up against the overfilled refrigerator, the smells of salami and Gorgonzola and very ripe peaches rising around them. The cold can pressed to her collarbone, and his mouth, warm and soft and knowing.

  That was the start of it.

  At Jin-Woo’s Copy Hop she wrote the two-sentence cover letter to the university president and watched the pages of the initialed and signed contract go through the fax machine while Ramon told her about his latest idea for a movie: Die Hard meets Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

  “Woman hires a hit man—she’s tired of her husband screwing around, you see it? But a chick shows up, a hit woman. Then she turns out to be a man after all. A transvestite. So the rich lady, she’s all confused because she’s got the hots for another woman, and then she finds out she’s a he anyway.” Ramon’s tattoos glowed in the fluorescent lights. “I’m thinking Penelope Cruz.”

  “As the transvestite?” Angie could usually coax a smile out of Ramon, but today he was wound up in fame and fortune. He frowned at her lack of vision.

  “It’s been done,” she told him. “Victor/Victoria, The Crying Game.”

  Ramon leaned across the counter, muscles in his shoulders rolling. “Angie,” he said. “Listen to me, girl. You going to grab a good thing when you see it, or let this one get away from you too?”

  There’s the question, Angie thought as she went back to the computers to write the harder letter.

  She could do this by computer, but she wanted more control. One click and e-mail was gone into the ether, as absolute and remorseless as the spoken word. The letter she could carry around in her pocket until the right moment came, and then even once it was in the mailbox she might be able to get it back; she knew all the letter carriers.

  ... we understand from President Bray’s letter that time is of the essence, and so we will be arriving in Ogilvie toward the end of next week . . .

  She went through it step by step, answering every question she could anticipate, working hard to strike the right tone: cooperative, thorough, detached. At the end she hesitated.

  We look forward to this opportunity to work with Miss Zula.

  Her fingers hesitated above the keys while she listened to the sentence humming in her mind. For whatever role you may have played in bringing this work our way, many thanks.

  It was a statement and a question, too. The real question, the one she had been pushing away since the first hint of what was coming her way, that phone ca
ll from Georgia. What she wanted to know but could not ask was, Who was it who had given Zula Bragg their work to look at? All the way back to the office, Angie tried to get that question out of her head, and failed.

  THREE

  Zula McGuffin Bragg was born in Ogilvie, Georgia, on April 2, 1930, the first daughter and second child of Martin Bragg, a music teacher, and Luisa McGuffin McCleod Bragg, a graduate of Bethune-Cookman College. In 1948 Ms. Bragg was the first African-American to be admitted to Ogilvie College. After graduating magna cum laude in 1952 she taught English at Ogilvie’s Colored High School. Her first novel, Magpie, was published by Knopf in 1955 when she was twenty-five. In 1958 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for a series of essays on voting rights in the South. In 1961 she received a master of arts degree from Columbia University and accepted a position on the faculty of the English department at Ogilvie College, where she is still active. Ms. Bragg has published more than fifty short stories, three books of collected essays, and six novels. Her work has been translated into twenty-three languages. Her novel Catch Can won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She has twice been shortlisted for the Nobel Prize. Ms. Bragg lives in Ogilvie, Georgia, in the house where she was born.

  The Dictionary of Southern Women Writers of Color

  Just when John was beginning to hope that dinner at Miss Zula’s might turn out all right after all, she pointed her sharpest gaze at him and asked the one question he was hoping to avoid.

  “Did you watch that documentary, John?”

  All faces turned to him. “Yes, ma’am, I did. Miss Maddie, might I have a little more of your fried chicken?”

  “Of course you may. Caroline, will you please eat, child? I swear, you’ve got to stand up twice to throw a shadow.”

  Kai said, “Documentary?” and that was the beginning of the end.

  John’s sister-in-law was Japanese. She had been in the States for ten years but her curiosity about things American was unquenchable. Kai Watanabe also had a doctorate in math, which meant that her curiosity was bolstered by an unflinching logic that she applied indiscriminately, whether or not the subject matter could bear that burden. On top of that, Kai was married to Rob Grant, who delighted in her apparent compulsion to say exactly what she thought and ask the questions that everybody was thinking but nobody else dared to put into words. Together at any traditionally southern table, Kai Watanabe and Rob Grant constituted a cultural revolution.

  Worst of all, Kai was the only person who could throw Caroline off balance. John had seen it happen a half dozen times and it still surprised him; he had yet to find an explanation that made any sense. Caroline, who could face down the nastiest of critics in open debate at a conference panel, seemed to fall apart when Kai Watanabe’s attention turned in her direction.

  Now Kai’s perfectly shaped face was lifted up to John’s. “What documentary?”

  “Miss Zula gave it to me. Done by the company that’s coming down to do the filming. And, yes, Caroline and I have watched it together.”

  “And?” Kai said, her fork poised. “Did you like it, Caroline?”

  Caroline cleared her throat very gently, which meant she was irritated by Kai’s questions but was struggling not to show it.

  “Yes, I did.”

  Kai’s fork hovered still. “Why?”

  “What documentary is this we’re talking about?” Miss Maddie said. “Is it the one about the opera singers?”

  “Lord, no,” said Miss Zula. “It’s the one about the old L&N Railroad.”

  “Oh, yes,” Miss Maddie said. “About the Shortt children going off to Berea College.” She turned to Miss Zula. “Who sent that to you, sister? Was it somebody from one of those northern schools?”

  As far as Miss Maddie was concerned, no institution north of Princeton had any claim to her attention, and she refused to remember their names.

  “That’s right,” Miss Zula said, smiling at Kai.

  Miss Maddie warmed to her story. “A poor farming family in . . . where was it now?”

  “Virginia,” said Miss Zula, who was watching the table with undisguised pleasure. No doubt she would write a short story about this. Miss Maddie collected postcards, and Miss Zula conversations.

  “Virginia,” Miss Maddie nodded happily. “Subsistence farmers, the very poorest, but hardworking? Oh, my. And they managed to send all five of their girls and three of the boys off to Berea College. The boys all studied to be teachers and the girls all became nurses. Every last one of them. The first one in 1915, if you can imagine such a thing. One after the other they got on the train and off they went.”

  “Yes,” said John. “Even the one who shouldn’t have gone.”

  “Now, that’s true.” She wiggled a little in her chair, a sign John recognized. Miss Maddie was settling in for a good long discussion, but at the other end of the table, Miss Zula had made other plans.

  She said, “What did you think of the documentary, Caroline?”

  John got a sudden trace of Caroline’s perfume, which meant that she had begun to perspire, a rare thing.

  “It might have been melodramatic,” Caroline said. “But it wasn’t handled that way at all. I thought it was very good.”

  “Please explain,” Kai said.

  Caroline’s smile was brittle. “Well. Let me see—the script was good, excellent cinematography, a compelling and insightful accounting of a socioeconomic anomaly . . .” Her voice trailed off. She knew how stilted she sounded, or at least John hoped she did.

  “A good story?” Kai asked.

  “Well, yes.” Caroline’s irritation was rising as surely as her color. “I suppose that would be one way to put it.” She sent Miss Zula a sidelong glance.

  “Good,” Kai said, her English clear and precise. “I would like to see it.”

  Later, John said, “She’s like a kitten, Caroline. You dangle yarn in front of her, of course she’s going to want to play.”

  They were sitting in John’s car, parked at the curb in front of Old Roses, where Caroline lived with her mother.

  “Kai Watanabe is more like a tiger than a kitten,” Caroline said. Her hand strayed toward the door handle. “I suppose I had best learn how to deal with her, and the sooner the better.”

  That was one of the things about Caroline that John liked best. She was uncomplicated in the ways that mattered most, logical where she might have been reactionary, calm at all costs. He had known her only by sight when they were children, but then last year she had come to Princeton to give a paper just about the same time he had accepted the Ogilvie offer, and they had had a lot to talk about. John had been taken in by what had seemed to him an odd combination of southern soft and academic sharp.

  John ran a finger down her arm, the skin cool and pale, her elbow a perfect right angle. “Do you want me to come in?”

  She smiled at him. “Harriet and Eunice are coming over in a half hour to look at bridal magazines with me.”

  John sat back. “What, just the two of them?”

  “The others will be by later.”

  When John thought of Caroline’s four older sisters it was always as a unit, one he thought of as the Army of the Thoroughly Married. Not happily married, all of them, but determined to draft new inductees nevertheless. Caroline went along with it because she loved them but also, John believed, because she actually liked all the wedding fuss. Not that she could admit that, even to herself, and it would have shocked her if he told her that he found this pocket of sentimentality a reassuring thing.

  “These planning meetings mean a lot to my sisters, you know.”

  “I’ve got paperwork to take care of, anyway.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “The film people and all that.”

  “Just as well,” she said. Then she leaned forward suddenly and kissed him. “Call me later.”

  The English department was deserted, quiet, and cool in the hot of the day, and John closed himself in his office and fell onto the couch to watch the shadows o
f the trees play on the far wall.

  There was a television and DVD player on a portable stand between the windows, and the remote, usually so difficult to locate, was digging into his hindquarters. He shifted, and the television burped and buzzed and came to life.

  He really didn’t need to watch the damn documentary again. There was nothing productive to be gained by it. The contract was signed, the deal was done; Angeline Mangiamele was on her way here, along with Rivera Rosenblum—there was a name out of his past, one that made him smile in spite of himself—and this Tony Russo. Whoever that was. Maybe Angie’s husband, or boyfriend. She couldn’t have stayed alone, not for five years. Surely not.