The Old Man in the Club (23 page)

“I said, ‘You don't look straight.' And his whole weekend was messed up.”

The two friends shared a good laugh.

B
y the time the evening rolled around, Elliott's conversation with Henry dissolved from his mind. That happened because he was at the opulent restaurant STK, attending an event called Magnum Mondays, and there was an overflow of distracting eye candy.

He rolled in around 8:30 and was astonished to see that the place was packed with beautiful, young people. It had the feel of Las Vegas, with showgirls and high fashion, oversized bottles of champagne served with sparkles sprouting, a deejay and elevated energy.

The week before, Elliott went to The Green Room, a coffee shop/ bookstore in Buckhead, to read and overheard two young ladies at the counter buying the caramel cake and talking about how much fun they had there the previous week.

“I'm sorry,” he said to the young women, “I heard you talking about this event. Did you say at STK?”

They looked at him and wondered why it mattered; it was too young a crowd for him. But they answered anyway. “Yes, sir. STK in Midtown, by the Loews hotel,” one of them said. “You know where that is?”

“Oh, yeah, I do,” Elliott said. “Thanks. Maybe I'll see you there next week.”

The girls glanced up and down at him, smiled an awkward smile. One said, “Okay then.” Then she giggled.

So it was kismet that he ran into those two young ladies as soon as he entered the building. “Well, hello there,” he said to them. It took them a second to place him. “We met briefly at the Green Room. You told me about this place.”

“Oh, yeah,” one said. She wore a puzzled expression that said,
What are you doing here?

“Nice to see you,” she said, and they walked off, snickering.

Elliott was used to the surprised looks and was unfazed by them. He was in his element.

This is happening on a Monday night? Wow,
he said to himself. He made his way to the bar, which was long and up against an off-white-painted brick wall that was dramatically backlit with sweeping art of the same color hovering over it. It was three-deep to get to the actual bar, which did not bother Elliott because he had had that French Connection earlier with Henry. Besides, he was not there to drink.

In truth, he was not there to meet anyone, either. He loved the freedom that came with being out, the noise of conversation and music. It took him away from his existence. Sometimes he liked to be in the mix, feel the energy of the city. If a woman caught his eye, that would be a bonus. Because other women had fallen off as Tamara became somewhat of a fixture, he had room to add another prospect.

He noticed some people he had seen out over the last year or so, men and women. But no one there approached his age.

“I met you before,” he said to a young woman who was sitting on a lounge chair with three friends.

“Don't all you men say that?” she responded from her seat, looking up at him.

“You don't remember? Now I'm offended,” he said. “We were at Frank Ski's on a Wednesday night. Half off bottles of wine. Frank treated me to some good stuff, and you were there with a girlfriend. I told the bartender to get you a glass and I shared my bottle with you. You don't remember that?”

She perked up. “I remember,” she said, rising from her seat. “You have a car dealership or something with cars, right?”

“Elliott,” he said, extending his hand.

“Yvette,” she said. “This is my friend, Brian.”

The men locked eyes. They knew each other, too. But from where?

They shook hands, but stretched their brains to recall how they had met. After a few minutes of cordial conversation, Elliott excused himself. A moment later, Brian came up behind him and patted him on his lower back.

“I remember you now,” he said to Elliott. “You were the guy who got smart with me at Compound that night.”

Elliott looked away as if to visualize what Brian was referring to. And it hit him. They had had a contentious few minutes when Brian was talking to Nikki, when Elliott returned from the bar.

“Yeah, what's up?” he said. “I do remember meeting you briefly.”

“You was talking shit,” Brian said, with anger in his voice. Elliott could smell the alcohol on his breath. “You said you were her bodyguard. Well, you need a bodyguard tonight.”

“Look, man, I don't know why you're all angry,” Elliott said. “But I do know you'd better back up off me.”

He surely did not want a fight, but he had been conditioned from prison to not allow someone to get the angle on him and to protect himself by scoring the first punch, a knockout punch. So he positioned himself to do that. If Brian had said the wrong thing or moved the wrong way, he would have been decked.

“Yeah, okay, old man,” Brian said. “I'll see you again.”

He turned and walked away and Elliott kept his eyes on him until he was at a safe distance. He thought:
I guess I do need a drink.

He returned to the bar area, but there was such a crush that ten minutes later he still had not made his way close enough to order. His night was blown by then anyway. He had reverted to prison mode in the moment he felt threatened by Brian. Instead of watching women, he watched out for Brian.

Every instinct in him told him to watch his back. And so he soon was uncomfortable among so many people. Many prison stabbings came in crowded conditions, where the attacker could emerge from the crowd from behind to make his assault. Elliott went to the bathroom, but waited at the door before going in to make sure he was not followed. He urinated as quickly as possible, fearing Brian would come in and attack him while he was vulnerable.

After finishing and washing his hands, he decided to leave. It had been a long day and he had a lot to consider. So he searched for Brian as he headed toward the door, but did not see him. Stepping outside into the warm night air gave him a sense of relief, and he let out a big sigh. He had not felt that kind of anxiety about his safety in some time.

His car was parked across the street in an open-air lot. He stood at the corner of Twelfth and Peachtree and watched two attractive ladies exit their car and walk into the spot. He shook his head, as much in response to his relentless interest in women as to their beauty.

He crossed Twelfth Street to his car, using the remote to unlock it as he heard a chime alerting him he had a text message. When he noticed it was from Lucy, he stopped in his tracks instead of entering the car to read it.

Things went dark after that. Brian came up from behind him
and smashed the right side of his head with a tire iron. Elliott crumpled to the ground, his phone and keys dropping a few feet from his body.

Brian stood over him for a moment, looking around to see if anyone witnessed the attack. He saw no one, and kicked Elliott several times in his midsection before the lot attendant noticed his movements from a distance.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he yelled, and Brian fled the scene to a car waiting for him on Twelfth Street. The attendant hurried over to tend to Elliott. He saw a gash on the side of his head and blood flowing down his face and neck. He was scared.

“Please hurry,” he said to the 9-1-1 operator. “He's unconscious and bleeding a lot.”

In minutes, the police arrived, retrieving Elliott's phone and keys and asking people nearby what they had seen, particularly the escape vehicle. Not long after, the ambulance pulled up, tended to Elliott and whisked him off to Piedmont Hospital, which was minutes away. En route, Elliott's eyes opened and he slowly regained consciousness. He was confused. He did not know where he was. Then he felt his head pounding, and that's when he became alarmed.

The EMS technician spoke to him. “Hey there. You're going to be fine. We're almost at the hospital.”

Elliott remained confused. The blow was so exacting that his short-term memory was erased. He closed his eyes in the hope that the pain in his head would diminish as they hurried him out of the EMS truck and rolled him into emergency.

“Can you hear me?” the doctor asked when he arrived in an operating room.

Elliott nodded his head. “Good. I'm Dr. Roland. You have a gash
in your head that we have to close up right now. It will be all right. We'll close it, get you some more blood, because you lost some, and get you all fixed up.”

He asked Elliott questions about what he was allergic to, past surgeries, previous head injuries, if he were on medication, et al. A nurse looked through his wallet to find an emergency contact number, but there was none. The police provided his phone and she went through it and dialed the last numbers called. Those were numbers for Henry, Daniel and Tamara.

She reached them all and explained what happened. Before long, Elliott was in surgery, where he had ten staples in his skull to close the gash and three ribs tended to.

In the waiting room, Daniel, Danielle and Lucy arrived first and were directed to an area to wait. Danielle cried, even though she had no news about his condition. The police came to the visiting room and questioned the family.

They wanted to know if Elliott had any enemies, if he complained about someone threatening him. “I spoke to him today,” Daniel said. “He was happy and hopeful.”

One officer told them the parking lot attendant did not see the initial blow, but did see Brian kicking Elliott. He gave the cops a description of the car and one of the valet workers at STK caught some of the numbers off the license plate. Lucy took his business card and shared her information and was told she would be kept up-to-date on the investigation.

After more than an hour of waiting and worrying, Dr. Roland came over. “He's sleeping now. He took a really nasty blow to the head by an iron object, believed to be a tire iron. He's lucky. Maybe an inch lower and it would have struck his temple, and it could have been fatal.”

Danielle cried more and Lucy put her hand over her mouth. Daniel listened intently. “But he's going to be fine. Mr. Thomas is in great shape, especially for a man his age, and that is serving him well. We closed the hole in his head with ten staples. Once his head heals, the scar will, too, and it will hardly be noticeable over time. But he does have a concussion, so his head will hurt for a while and he'll have to return for tests.

“He lost a lot of blood, but we're replenishing that. Also, he apparently was kicked several times and suffered three badly bruised ribs. So, he'll be sore for a few days and will be moving kind of gingerly. But we'll manage the pain with medication.

“We're going to keep him overnight to monitor his head and make sure no more damage was done that we believe. We have to be really careful with the brain. He should be discharged tomorrow afternoon if he tests out okay. I would say in the next thirty minutes we will have him moved into a room and you can go and see him.”

“Wow, this is crazy,” Daniel said as the doctor left. “I was just talking to him about your client, Mom, who you spoke to the day she died.”

“That's exactly what I thought about,” Lucy said, “because I texted him tonight around the time this happened.”

They sat back down and looked up at the TV that was set on CNN. President Obama was speaking from earlier that day, but the sound was muted. There was relief that Elliott was okay.

Henry came hurriedly into the emergency room next. Lucy noticed him because he wore the same Atlanta Hawks red T-shirt he wore when she last ran into him, at Philips Arena the previous month at a playoff game.

He hugged Elliott's ex-wife and kids. “What the hell happened? I was just with him today. We had lunch.”

They explained what the doctor had shared. But they were curious about a friend Henry had with him. It was an obviously gay man who stood off to the side. No one said anything, but Henry noticed them glancing over in the man's direction.

So, Henry waved him over. “This is Harold,” he said, introducing him. “We were finishing dinner over at Einstein's, which isn't too far from here.”

Daniel's attention rose and suspicions were confirmed. Einstein's was a restaurant in Midtown, the area of town where many homosexuals lived. That restaurant, on Juniper Street, was a favorite spot for gays in Atlanta.

They all sat down, with Harold, light-skinned and soft-spoken, leaving to find a men's room. When he got there, he sent Henry a text message that read: “This isn't the time to bring your personal stuff to this family. I will wait in the car.”

Henry was relieved and appreciative of his friend's gesture. But Daniel had questions.

“So, Mr. Henry, I haven't seen you since, you know, the funeral. How have you been?”

“I was sitting here thinking about how much I hate hospitals,” he said. “Really, I guess, you either hate hospitals or love them depending on when you come. When my son was born, it was a difficult delivery for his mother, but the doctors were great and he came out fine. I loved hospitals then.

“But to be in Grady that night, and for them to tell me that my son was gone… I hated hospitals then.”

It was more of an answer than Daniel expected, and no one said anything. Then Henry went on. “I told your father today, ironically enough, that I would never be the same after losing him. There's a hole in my heart that cannot be filled.”

Lucy moved over a seat and rubbed him on his back. “I know,
Henry. I don't even want to imagine. You're obviously a strong man to move on with your life.”

“It hasn't been easy. But friends like Elliott and Harold have been very helpful.”

Daniel got a little concerned then. He had seen the movie,
Waiting to Exhale,
and recalled the part where the son learned his estranged father was gay. Here was Elliott's friend using Daniel's father and this obviously gay man's name in the same sentence… Daniel wanted to know more. He
needed
to know more.