No Time to Die (6 page)

“You know, when I came to my senses and really thought about his situation, I think he was mad and mean all the time ’cause he was kinda—how you say—anatomily—”

“Anatomically?”

“Yeah. I heard that word the other day and had to go look it up. You know, the way they talk about how homeless people is supposed to be ‘residentially challenged.’ Ain’t that some shit? Homeless mean you can’t afford these ass-high rents, that’s why you out to the curb.

“Well, so like James was ‘anatomically challenged.’ You know what I’m sayin’? There was a show on TV about that. Some guys talkin’ about the operations they had to make their wee willies more wonderful. I tell you, some men spend money on the damnest things.”

I closed my eyes and thanked Mother Nature or whoever was responsible for Tad.

“Now, personally,” Marie said, “I look at it this way: it ain’t the size of the boat, it’s how you rockin’ it. It’s the motion in the ocean. That’s what counts.”

On the screen the batter had lined to third and the baseman hustled, caught it, and spun around arming it to first. The runner was out, ending the game. The screen went dark and someone notched up the jukebox.

Marie lifted her glass and drained it. Another song came on, but the tune, something called “A Perpetual
Blues Machine,” was not familiar to me. Marie knew it and hummed along with the deep, cutting rhythm of the harmonica and guitar. I listened, nodding my head absently, and watched her somber reflection in the dimly lit mirror behind the bar.

I was acutely aware of Benin’s absence now. If she had been here, Claudine would have confided in her. Claudine had never mentioned to me any physical problems she’d had with James—except that he couldn’t keep his hands off other women and couldn’t keep his fist out of her face—and she never talked about anything dealing with sex. She had left that to Elizabeth and Deborah and me and rolled her eyes whenever the talk got to be too much for her.

I wondered now why Claudine chose to hang out with us. When we were younger, Deborah was cool but Elizabeth and I had earned several nicknames from our parents: “wild life” and “free spirit” were some of the nicer ones. Elizabeth’s father had once threatened to send her to boarding school in Alaska and my dad had threatened to send me to a psychiatrist to try to understand, if not necessarily cure, my wild ways.

Benin and Claudine had been conservative, Deborah was somewhere in between, while Elizabeth and I had been the sisters who knew what life was about. The brothers we attracted had to come with a strong game.

If Benin had been here, perhaps Claudine, gentle and pretty, wouldn’t have fallen into the fine web spun by the weak and handsome James:

“Got my applications in for law school,” he had boasted. “Post office a temporary thing. Tuition, you know. Ought to hear from Hofstra or Fordham any day now …”

They had married quickly and Claudine later found that James had barely squeaked through high school
one point past the bottom line of a GED and had later flunked out of three different colleges. Law school had been a dim mirage which receded from his low horizon the minute she’d said, “I do.”

“Listen, Mali,” Marie said, tapping my hand. “I know James had some problems. He was mean and quick-tempered and fast with his fists, but I don’t know. I can’t see him actually killin’ anybody. I mean, he had plenty reason to come after me ’cause of that hot-oil thing, but he didn’t …”

“Maybe he knew enough to leave you alone,” I said. “Some men will only abuse those who’re willing to put up with it. And some women put up and shut up for the sake of love, marriage, or the children. You did what you had to do and walked.”

“Ran—”

“Whatever. But before you booked, you left a message he’s not likely to forget.”

I watched her hand smooth the bag in her lap. It slowed, then moved again in small circles, and I wondered if she was thinking what I was thinking: that James did not forget but was simply waiting for the right moment.

Two hours later I was ready to leave. The crowd had grown large waiting for the birthday girl and the music had gotten louder. Several drinks were sent our way and Marie had switched to Rémy and was no longer interested in talking about James. She raised her glass, and her smile triggered more drinks, which flowed toward us in a steady stream. I decided to stop at three.

“Listen, Marie, I appreciate you taking the time. If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

I gave her my personal card and moved from the stool.

“You sure you don’t want to stay? Party’s just gettin’ started.”

“Another time,” I said, “and thanks again.”

I made my way toward the door. Space was tight, drinks were moving, and conversation was loud. I moved slowly, and a short distance from the door, I recognized a familiar voice. James was leaning into the face of a young woman sitting at the bar.

“Say, beautiful, you don’t mind if I call you that since we haven’t been formally introduced yet? But you
look like a Libra. Am I right?” He was as smooth as Olestra and just as bogus.

The woman looked through him, yawned, and picked up her glass.

James persisted. “Okay, it probably ain’t Libra. So, what sign
are
you?”

“Dollar sign,” the girl said through teeth so tight it probably pained her.

“Oh,” James said, “in that case, lemme go check my ATM.” He stretched a grin but stepped back as if she had slapped him.

Before he had a chance to look my way, I turned around and edged through the crowd again to the end of the bar. A tall, dark, powerfully built man with a shaven head was deep in conversation with Marie and she was smiling up at him. She waved. “Say hello to Clyde. He’s a coworker, the one sent all the drinks.”

He shook my hand. The grip was as strong as he looked and his voice was low bass against the rhythm of the Dells pumping from the jukebox.

“Changed your mind about leavin’? One a my buddies had wanted to talk to you. Said you had the prettiest eyes he ever saw. Brother was hypnotized.”

I smiled and shook my head, pulling at Marie’s arm. “Another time, okay? I’ve got to tell Marie something …”

He shrugged, disappointed, as Marie slipped from the stool and followed me to the ladies’ room.

“Your face lookin’ funny. What’s up?”

“James is here. At the end of the bar. I thought you should know.”

“Shit. I don’t need him messin’ up my good time. I been tryin’ to get next to Clyde for a while now.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, I ain’t leavin’, that’s for sure. I’m hangin’ with Clyde for the duration. James see someone that size, he ain’t likely to start no shit. Besides, I got my backup in my bag, remember? But thanks for lookin’ out for me.”

She touched a comb to her hair and freshened her lipstick and we left the room. I made my way through the crowd again, carefully, trying to spot James. He was gone, probably blown out by the Dollar Sign Sister.

When I stepped outside, a silver stretch had pulled to the curb and the chauffeur raced around the side, shooed the crowd, and opened the door. Betty, the barmaid, stepped out wearing a see-through sheath with clusters of silver sequins that glittered like Fourth of July sparklers when she moved.

She was tall and slim and had a bottle of Cristal cradled in one arm and a bouquet of yellow and red long-stem roses in the other. She spotted me and waved the bouquet.

“Mali, baby, you’re not leavin’, are you? When will you see a night like this again? I’m celebratin’ my half a hundred. Won’t see this again. Come on back inside.”

“Betty, I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I could. The door of the bar popped open, releasing the rhythm of Stevie Wonder like a hot current. Its undertow pulled people inside and I was sorry, truly sorry, that I couldn’t stay. “Have to get home. Dad has a gig.”

“Club Harlem?”

“Yes. I’ve got to be home before he leaves.”

“Tell ’im to drop by when he finish up, you hear?” I smiled and waved. “Catch you at the next fifty.” Someone opened the door again and she stepped in,
sailed in, to the rhapsody of Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday.”

The small crowd that had gathered when the limo pulled up followed in her wake. All except James, who had been standing directly behind me. When I turned, I nearly tripped but he did not move. He stared, playing the childish street game of waiting for me to move around him. I knew the rules: moving around meant backing down. I felt the bile rise at the back of my throat and did not move but gave him eye for eye. Up close, his skin was like broken stone and he was wrapped in the odor of stale alcohol. No wonder the Dollar Sign Sister had turned away. I imagined vapors strong enough to light a candle when he’d opened his mouth.

“Step off, James. You know I don’t play.”

“Neither do I,” he whispered. “I peeped what went down. You talkin’ to that bitch in there.”

“What bitch? Nobody introduced me to your mama.”

He stepped back, his eyes narrowing into one of those taut Freddy Krueger nightmare stares, and began to circle me. I stood my ground, feeling my blood pump hard as I went into a slight crouch. I had on my size 10 hoochie heels, just out the box, and intended to aim and hit what Marie had missed with that hot oil.

The standoff might have lasted until the bar closed, but someone, a cohort in as bad a shape as James, came rushing out.

“Man, they poppin’ free champagne! Free! And they got free food! What you doin’ out here?”

James turned, but before he walked, he whispered, “When you was on the force, you was big and bad with
backup. It ain’t that way no more. You be hearin’ from me.”

“It’s not about the force and you know it, James.”

“Whatever. But you’ll be hearin’ from me.”

“And I’ll be ready,” I called after his retreating back.

At Malcolm X Boulevard the group of young African women standing in their usual circle at the IRT listened to the subway train pull in. As the doors opened, their chant began, soft, like singing in church. “Evening, madam. Braids, madam? Beautiful braids, right upstairs.”

One took a solo as I passed. “Sister. Braids will make you especially more beautiful. Won’t you visit our salon?”

I smiled and shook my head. I had neither the nine hours to spare nor the ninety dollars to spend in order to find out. I walked past the Casablanca Bar, the bright and busy lights of Sylvia’s, and the takeout line at Majestic’s Seafood.

Thin streaks of purple still dotted the western edge of sky and I walked quickly, moving past sad rows of tenements dotted with buildings sealed up and businesses that had given up. Retail shops that had once opened with promise and fanfare and plastic pennants fluttering in a “V” now announced failure, reflected failure, in graffiti-patterned steel shutters.

James receded to the back of my mind as I walked past block after block of desolation, thinking of the empowerment zone. Empowerment dollars. Money and power flying right past lives and buildings crumbling brick by brick onto crumbling sidewalks. Dad had described the sixties’ War on Poverty where the warlords stashed the booty and left the poor still waiting for the miracle.

I managed to cool down a bit when I turned into 139th Street, a block of neo-Italian Renaissance and neo-Georgian houses. W. C. Handy, Noble Sissle, and Eubie Blake once lived here, and Dad swears that he feels their spirit in his work. This block of houses, designed by Stanford White in 1891, had been nicknamed Strivers’ Row because of the number of black professionals who bought homes here.

I composed myself before I put the key in the door, but when I walked in, Alvin, my not-quite-teenage nephew, glanced up from the television, then stared at me.

“Who’d you run into? From the look on your face, if you’d been driving, there’d’ve been nothing left to scrape up, but here you doin’ road rage on foot.”

I preferred not to answer. Getting the last word on James by calling up his mama was low. The poor woman was probably as disappointed in him as everyone else was.

And Dad once said that back in the day, some folks died from “playing the dozens.” Some got killed on the spot and he knew of one who had managed to do himself in: a young guitar player in a traveling band who had ascribed the b-word to his girlfriend so often, eventually they both forgot her real name. Her memory resurrected quicker than his, and when he came in from a
trip one time, he spent three days studying the goodbye note bannered with her real signature. They found him in the bathroom, his head between his knees and the “works,” flushed pink with blood, still in his arm.