A Good Dude (45 page)

“
Candace
!” Trisha yelled.

But Candace didn’t need the warning. She shot to her feet as quickly as Delia did and was already moving towards the front door. Trisha jumped between the two women and held Delia back like an offensive lineman.

“Candace!
Get out of here
!” Trisha yelled.

“
Bitch, I’ma kill you! I’ma kill you
!” Delia wrestled frantically to reach over or around and even under Trisha’s bulk, but there was no gap in that protection. Candace could have stood behind her friend and hurled insults at Delia for a whole five minutes if she wanted. Tony Romo didn’t have protection this good.

“Let me go, Trish!
Let me go
!”

Candace opened the front door and then turned back and stared at the women wrestling behind her. Trisha had her feet planted, and though Delia lashed out with every limb, she wasn’t making any headway. Little Sammy sat up and giggled at them. Delia caught Candace’s eyes and stopped struggling long enough for what was to be her
final decree
.

“I’ma get you, bitch. Best believe, I’ma get you.”
Just like an idiot
, Candace thought. Attack the problem, rather than the source of the problem.

“Trisha, I’ll call you later,” she said, forgetting that her friend didn’t have a phone.

“
Go
, Candace! Get out of here!” Trisha pleaded. “Thank you,” Candace said. “I love you, Trisha.”

“Bitch,
I’ma kill you
! Uhn-uhn!
Let me go
, Trisha!”

“
Go, Candace! Hurry up!
”

Candace took one last look at the apartment, feeling like she’d never see this place again either, and then stepped outside and closed the door behind herself.

* * *

Contrary to the madness she had experienced that day, Candace skipped down the stairs with a smile on her face. She heard her cell phone ringing before she reached ground level, but didn’t make it to her car quickly enough to answer it. Rather than load Leila in the back, Candace sat in the front seat and plucked her cell phone from her purse. She frowned when she read the display.

Six missed calls.

She pushed the button to make the calls show, and Candace’s heart fluttered. All of the calls were from Tino. The last one was less than a minute ago. She called him back hurriedly and let out a pent-up breath when he answered.

“Hello?”

“
Tino! Oh, my God
, I’m glad you called back.”

“I called you
six
times!”

“Tino, this has been the craziest day.”

“Rilla’s out?”

“Yeah. He came up to my job. I was so scared. I thought he was going to take Leila.”

“You got her?”

“Yeah, I just did. I almost got in a fight up there.”

“Why?”

“I got into it with CC’s girlfriend. I’ll tell you about it later. I gotta get away from here. I don’t know where Rilla is. He could be anywhere.”

“Where are you now?” Tino asked.

“I’m still over here at Trisha’s apartments.”

“Oh. Are you coming home? I’m standing right outside your door.”

The hairs stood on Candace’s arms. “You’re standing right outside
where
?”

“I’m at your apartment.”

Candace’s head began to pound. “No, I’m not coming home, Tino! What are you doing there?”

“I got your message,” he said. “I didn’t know what was wrong. I thought you needed me.”

“I don’t need you
there
, Tino! That’s the worst place to be! Was anyone else there? Did you see anybody outside?”

“There’s always people here,” Tino said.

Candace knitted her eyebrows. She reached up and bit off half her pinkie nail without noticing. “Tino, you need to leave. Head toward your house. I’ll call—”

“CC’s light-skinned, right?”

Candace’s heart stopped altogether. “Tino, please don’t do that.”

He spoke a little softer now. “No, I’m serious, Candace. There are two guys . . . .”

Candace’s eyes glossed over again. No way did God hate her this much. She refused to believe that. “Is one of them Puerto Rican?” she asked. “You know what Rilla looks like . . . .”

There was a pause.

“Candace, I’m scared.”

Her nose filled with moisture. Her bottom lip quivered. “Tino,
please
don’t say that.
Please
.”

“No, Candace, I’m serious.” He still spoke just above a whisper. “When I came up, I
did
see some guys downstairs. I parked right next to them. I didn’t think anything about it, but—”

“Tino, leave!”

“I parked right next to them.”

“Just run, Tino! Run the other way!”

“Oh, shit, Candace! They’re coming up the stairs. Is CC light-skinned? His hair’s braided? Please say no.”

“
Tino, run
!
Get off the phone and run! I’ll meet you at the front!
”

“Candace—”

“
Run, Tino!
”

“I gotta go.”

The phone went dead in her ear.

Candace’s keys were still in the ignition. She slammed the door closed and started the car without moving Leila to the back. She backed away from Trisha’s building going fast, too fast. She looked up to the rearview mirror in time to see the grill of a Ford F-150 coming at her. Candace stomped on the brakes with both feet, but her Sentra slid on the loose gravel. She came to a stop only after her bumper collided with the parked truck.

Candace’s head jerked back and slammed against the headrest. Stars erupted behind her eyes, but she would not pass out again.
Dared not
.

Leila got a much softer cushion against her mother’s
belly upon impact, and Candace’s grip on her baby was
true. She looked down, and Leila smiled up at her
mother. She giggled as if they were on one hell of a ride.
Candace knew she was lucky but still didn’t take the
time to put Leila in her car seat. She put the Nissan in drive and peeled off like Jeff Gordon. She made it to the apartment’s exit in less than thirty seconds, but her dart across the street was impeded by a string of headlights coming in both directions. She laid on the horn and poked her front end out a little at a time.

“Come on. Come on.”

The right lane was finally forced to slow for her. Candace punched the gas as soon as she got a bit of daylight. She shot across the street like a rocket and jumped the next driveway fast enough to soar for a moment. But there were people out, and she had to slam on the brakes again to avoid plowing down a family of four.

The father of the brood snatched one child out of the way and glared at Candace as she flew by them. He might have yelled something, too, but Candace couldn’t hear anything over a steady moan that spilled from her own lips. It was a weak, desperate sound.

She saw Rilla’s car as soon as she rounded the corner of her building. Candace pulled to an uneven stop next to the Fleetwood and jumped out with little understanding of what she was doing. She heard the sounds of war immediately.

RIIIIP!

WHOMP!

“Aaah!”

“Hold him, cuz!”

“I got him.”

HUMPH!

“Stop!”

“Get up, nigga!”

“Uhn!”

“You got that?”

“Hey!”

WHAP!

“Watch him, cuz. He trying to—”

“Please!”

“Stop!”
Candace screamed. She jetted up the steps more quickly than when CC chased her the night before. Her breaths were ragged. Her baby was heavy in her arms.

With all of the flights she had climbed lately, Candace was getting skilled at working those stairs, but her luck gave out just as she reached her floor. A few pebbles tripped her up in full stride, and Candace fell into the concrete steps awkwardly.

She held Leila with her left arm, and broke her fall with the right, but not before her knee smashed into the last step, exploding with a pain almost as vicious as childbirth. Candace’s torso never touched the ground, and neither did Leila. Once again she avoided killing her child, and Candace knew God was still with her.

Or maybe He wasn’t.

She looked up weakly, and cried out like the mother of a stillborn. At the other end of her breezeway, the scene was much worse than she imagined: Tino was still there. He lay on the concrete balled into a fetal position. And although this pose left him defenseless, Rilla and CC still bent and punched and kicked and stomped. They tried to pick Tino up by his jacket, but the garment ripped in their hands. The whole sleeve came off. Tino struggled to keep his arms over his face.

Rilla had on the same white shirt as earlier, but it was soiled now with dark stains Candace knew to be blood. CC wore blue jeans with a blue T-shirt. He delivered a devastating kick to the back of Tino’s head and then looked up and saw Candace crawling towards them.

“
Stop!
” she screamed, but it felt like she was speaking through the wrong end of a funnel. Her throat squeezed tight, and she could manage little more than a crackling whine.

“
Stop!
”

CC’s face was a mask of destruction. He looked from Candace to Rilla quickly, and instead of alerting his friend to her presence, CC reached into his back pocket and produced what Candace thought was a cell phone. But then he flicked the device with his wrist, and a three-inch blade popped out. He looked at Candace again and she knew he was crazed.

CC looked down at Tino. The blade glistened in the lamplight.

Rilla kept punching, with his back to his ex-girlfriend. He reached into the pile of folded flesh and tried to get his hands around Tino’s throat.