Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) (33 page)

He scratches his head
through his hat. And by the ease with
which he leans back, I just know he’s on something!
Punk!
“You know baby, I know Savvy is
up there in the sky. And she never took no shit from me until
later, you know. So, my conscience is clean.”

I look away.
“I know the ghost I have to live with, and I’ll
never
stop
living with
it, OK? Is that why you wanted to see me?”

He leans forward, and squeezes my wrist.
An incredibly
reminiscent
gesture. Sure, we’d been high, in love with the world and
everyone in it. But still...

He slides the hand slowly toward my fingers.
I snap it away.

“
That’s not why I wanted to see you. I just
want us to bury the hatchet,
Buwhazhay.
”

“
Don’t call me that.”

“
Why? It is your name.”

“
It reminds me too much...of the
past.”

Silence. Xavier leans forward,
talks softer. “Blaze, you need
to let her go. She did it to herself. You gave her her first Adam,
but she
took
it.
OK?
She
took it. You
didn’t force it down her throat. Just like I didn’t force George
Smack into her veins.
She
took it. I warned her about it. But she wanted it. If she
didn’t get it from me, she woulda gotten it from someone else.
Maybe even someone who steps on the shit, you know, cuts it with
bleach or some shit. Or
worse
!
What if she’d gotten Krokodil from some beat artist who wanted to
make a quick buck from her? That stuff’s fobbed off as H all the
time to newcomers. Her skin would’ve been
eaten alive
from the inside after her first hit, Blaze! You
know the Russian crowd here’s bringin that shit into the
country.
Eaten alive!
Would you have wanted that? Would you?”

“
No! Of course not.”

“
Blaze, she made her choice. Just like you
did. Just... Just like I make my own choices. Like I
made
my own choices. Then
and
now. Look, this is what I do.
You know Mama was never able to provide for us. How else is a
Cubano supposed to survive in
dis focken
country? The son of an illegal immigrant! You remember how
it was for us, Blaze. We had
nuttin, man
!”

The accent. The role.
He’s in full gangsta mode
now...

“
Xavier, it took your sister’s
life!”

“
NO!” The rest of the bar looks at us now
because we’re both talking louder. Xavier raises his hand to them.
“Sorry. Sorry.” He looks back at me, speaks softer, but not less
forcefully. “No,
she
took her
life! She did it, Blaze. And that is the one thing you need to
accept.
She
did
it—”

Through clenched teeth, I say, “No,
the
drugs
did it!
The drugs
you
gave her!” I
point at him, accusing him! “And, yes, she started dropping and
smoking weed because of me. I confess it. And I have to live with
it. OK? But you need to face what
you
have to live with as well! We all did it to her! We
could’ve stopped it!”

He sits back, sighs. Takes his purple-pink
hat off.

Puts it on the table.

“
I know.” He says. “I know.” He runs a hand
down his golden face, flicks his hair back. “Look, Blaze, let’s
start again. OK? Please. I...” He shakes his head. “I need you,
Blaze. I... You’re right. You were the only real friend I ever had.
I lost two girls that day. Please. Just a coffee.”

He always knew how to get
“his girls” to go along with
him.

He still does.

We actually manage to have a normal
conversation. We both order a coffee (made with a French plunger)
and bagels. We don’t laugh much, because there’s too much history
there for the air to be light between us. It always will be
so.

He asks me how my practice is going. He
asks me what I’ve been doing the last year (“Mixing, struggling for
rent. Thinking about her. Crying.”) He tells me he tried to stop
dealing—really tried—but didn’t go more than a month.

I veer the conversation away from this
because it makes me uncomfortable.
And unhappy.

Finally, I ask him the question I’ve been
avoiding all along
. Even
though I also saw him sniffing wildly at
House Market
, like Deck did, I didn’t want to believe the
truth of it then.
Too difficult to face
. “You still doing lines these days? And what about
shooting up—still doing that too?”

Like a wounded dog in a corner, he says,
“I have it under control. I’m not addicted.”

“
You sound just like your
sister.”

“
But I really
do
have it under control, Blaze.”

I shake my head. “Xavier, I can’t go
through this again. I just can’t. I... I just can’t. It’s as simple
as that. I can’t let myself get close to you. And not only because
your choice of ‘profession’ disgusts me to my core, but I
can’t...allow myself to remember...that we were friends once. Good
friends. I’ve lost one already. I won’t lose another
one.”

“
We were more than friends.” He leans
closer. My hand’s back on the table and his fingers touch mine. I
fire it back again. Put my hands in my lap.

“
We were
friends
, Xavier. Friends on drugs. That’s all.”
And that you took
my virginity is something I will never let you discover. Because it
didn’t feel like I lost it when we slept together
.

Disappointed, he eases himself back into
the chair. “Fine. Whatever.”

I don’t comment on the apparent startings
of a hissy fit.

After a grueling few minutes of silence,
he says, “I gonna go to da bathroom.”

He’s gone for five minutes.
When he comes out, he does so
with a swagger, wipes his nose with the back of his hand. And
sniffs.

He grins like The Man. Squares his
shoulders and looks at the barista as if he’s gonna eat
him.

Then he sniffs
loudly again, like there’s some irritant up his
nose.

Oh. Shit.

Xavier’s favorite name for Nose Candy was
never Angie or Bernice or even Big Charlie. It was always
Dama
Blanca
—the White
Lady—or, if the “shit was really good,” really
prime, esseh
:

Standing there now, he says to the entire
café, “Hola, putos. Me jus’ got me a blow from
mi
mujer
!”

My
woman
.

The only
one who never leaves his
side.

He flicks out his lapels.
Looks at me.

The next things happen too fast for me to
react:

His hand flies suddenly to my
wrist,
and
squeezes!

He
rips me off the bench so hard that I fall onto my knees
below him.

And then he raises
a hand high to strike me, eyes wild with
chemical fury.

Declan Cox

I
bang on pops’s third floor apartment door. The bottom of my
fist starts hurting. Two P.M., asshole should be here. It’s not
like he’s working or anything.

Faintly, I hear,
“Eh, I comin OK?” A woman’s voice.

Her
.

She opens up, and I have to look away
because her tits are damn near popping out of her floral print
robe. Sadly, the image brands itself in my mind. My dad’s slut.
Dark black underwear, golden skin, tumbling black hair, smoke
billowing from her mouth, the cigarette in her hand. And huge dark
nipples that, even if the robe was closed, would likely still be
visible.

I think I’m gonna be
sick
.

“
What da fuck do
joo
want,
esseh
?”

If bitch wasn’t a woman, I’d fucking slap
her.
“My business is not
with you.”
It never has been
. “I’m looking for my pops.”

She
drags her cigarette, then looks me up and down. I actually
feel breakfast rise up to my throat.

She blows the smoke out, eyes Trev out on
my left. Then she bellows out, “Raymond. Is your son.” Her eyes
never leave my body, and she even starts smirking.

I snap. “Can you put some fuckin clothes
on? You look like a goddamned whore.”

Trev’s hand finds my wrist. “Chill, bro.
Just chill.”

“
Joo
should listen to
jour
friend,
puto
.” When she
looks at him, she grins even wider, sucks her smoke like
it’s...well...his fucking
dick
or
something.

This time I have to say it louder. “I
really do think I’m gonna be sick.”

“
RAYMOND! WHAT DA FUCK YOU DOIN?” She
clutches the smoke again. “What business you got here,
Deck?”

“
Declan
, Catalina. It’s Declan.” I’ve always hated her
own fucking name. I wished she’d been called Maria or Dora or
freaking Irene or something. But, no, she had to go and get a
goddamned sexy pornstar name like
Catalina
.

Urgh.
Disgusting.

“
Pft! Whatever.” She turns with a wild
sway, her ass far too visible from underneath the silk gown. She
leaves the door open, and sits on the couch. Stretches her leg
erotically onto the table.

“
What a fucking slut,” I tell
Trev.

“
Dude. I hear you. Now, chill the fuck out.
I told you, I’ll kick your fucking ass if you lay a hand on him.
This is
not
gonna be
that kind of visit again. We’re making good on that, OK? You have
your say. And then we leave.”

“
I heard you the first time.”

When dad appears a few feet from the
doorway...

I fly at him
with cocked fists
and knee him in the nuts while simultaneously whirling at him with
punches so hard and heavy that his face is quickly blue and red
from broken teeth and bruises.

...I imagine hurting him. A little.

His
shirt’s undone, belly protruding. But he’s still big. Pops
was always broad-shouldered. An old footballer himself. But age has
gotten him, and I can almost smell his fear at seeing me. He looks
at Trevor, and I see him chill out a little.
Yeah, because my “nigger
friend” won’t let me lay a hand on you. And you know that, don’t
you?

“
Trevor. Son.”

“
Pops.”

“Hello, Mr. Cox. May we come in?”

He turns to look at
Catalina. “Cat, leave us be for a little
while, would ya?”

“
If you lay a hand on him, puto, dis time I
ain’t gonna show no fucken restraint, you hear me? Dis time is
gonna be
pow-pow
—straight
to your fuckin
cabeza
.” She
fires an imaginary gun at me, blows imaginary smoke from her
finger.

I don’t doubt it, bitch.

“
Catalina! Please! Let me talk to my
son!”

She gets up like a petulant
child—
oh
goddamnit I just saw her fucking left tit!
Urgh!!!!!
—and storms to
the bedroom. I hear a spray of curse words from her in there,
bitching about how pops doesn’t treat her right
(
Old Dogs,
baby
) and doesn’t love
her and—she’s back out in the lounge again, dressed, now storming
past him, then in my face, index finger treacherously close to
poking my eye out—“You lay a fuckin hand on him and I gonna
kill
you, you little piece of
chit
!
Joo
lucky dis
negro
punk got you outta here last time you came over.
Dis time I
not
gonna
miss—”

“
CATALINA! ENOUGH! PLEASE LEAVE ME AND MY
BOY ALONE!”

You know, men are taught
to never hit a woman. You
have
no
idea how
fucking hard it is to keep that rule in sometimes.

I sigh relief when she’s too far for me to
reach her. Because I came
that
close, I swear to you.
That
close. She decides to go for a walk or something, because
she storms out the house.