“They blame you for that?”
“My writer, my password, my fault.”
“Oh, Bob,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “Not a good day.”
“What does Toussaint have to say for himself?”
“Haven’t been able to reach him. He’s not taking my calls. As a matter of fact, I’m headed to his house when I leave here.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
This surprised him. “How do you mean?”
“You’re obviously upset.”
“Don’t I have a right to be?”
“Sure, you do. But what’s the point of going to his house? The only thing that can happen is an argument—or a fight. I don’t see how either of those outcomes helps you any.”
“The man ruined my life, Janeka. I’m entitled to my pound of flesh.”
She regarded him for a moment. “You know,” she said finally, “they used to call you Bobby Peaceful back at school. You were so committed to all that stuff we used to sit up and talk about: nonviolent revolution, the weapon of love, passive resistance, peacefully challenging the social order.”
“Yeah, I remember all that,” he said. “So?”
“So you really have changed.”
“Haven’t you? Haven’t we all?”
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose that’s true. But I’m curious about something. When Toussaint brought that column to you, did you try to reason with him? Did you suggest ways he could make the same point without the inflammatory language?”
Bob was incredulous. “His point was that white people are full of crap,” he said. “I don’t know any kinder and gentler way to say that.”
“Actually,” she said, “I think his point was that he’s tired. Wasn’t that what he said in the first or second line?”
For a moment, Bob did not speak. Was she actually going to sit there and defend him? This woman of all women was going to defend the man who cost him his job?
“Malcolm Toussaint,” he said, speaking slowly and with great care, “drives a Corvette and lives in an exclusive neighborhood. He hangs out with presidents, he appears on television, he writes best-selling books and he makes, I would guess, probably three times my salary. So tell me, Janeka, please: what in the hell does he have to be tired about?”
She looked at him. She held up the surrender hands again. “I apologize,” she said. “This is obviously still a very raw subject for you and it’s not my business to be telling you what I think you should have done. Let’s talk about something else.”
“No,” he said. “Let’s talk about this. Explain to me what he has to be tired about.”
“Bob…”
“Explain it to me. Please.”
She sighed. “He explained it to you himself, didn’t he? Right there in the column? He said something about giving up on the notion that white people can be influenced to give up the idea that color dictates intelligence, morality, or worth.”
“Is that how you feel? White people are all lost?”
Her eyes sparked like struck flint. “If that was how I felt, Bob, I wouldn’t be sitting here,” she said.
“Then what’s your point?”
“My point is that I understand why he might feel that way. The Bob Carson I used to know would have understood it, too. Or at least been willing to try.”
“Bobby Peaceful has left the building.”
“So I see,” she said. “Maybe I should join him.” She picked up her purse.
“No,” said Bob, reaching to touch her arm, “please stay.” She hesitated. “It’s been 40 years,” he reminded her.
“Maybe it should be 40 more,” she replied.
“Okay,” said Bob, “I deserve that. But I’m serious: I do not understand how Malcolm Toussaint can feel the way he does. Or why you can sympathize with him, even if you say you don’t quite agree.”
She removed her hand from her purse and sat back, her eyes warning that this was only a conditional surrender. “It’s not about whether I agree or disagree,” she said. “I just know where he’s coming from.”
“So help me to understand it,” said Bob. And when he saw the skeptical look on her face he said, “I’m serious. Please.”
Janeka released a soft breath of exasperation. “You know, white people always do what you just did.”
“What did I just do? Say please?”
This actually made her laugh. “No, Bob. I mean before. You talked about Toussaint’s money and the good life he has as if because of that, he has no right to complain about the effects of racism, no right to be frustrated.”
“I’m just saying it hasn’t kept him back.”
“We don’t know that,” she said. “For all that he’s made and all that he’s achieved, we don’t know that he could not have made even more and achieved even more except that somebody who could have made a difference looked at him in some pivotal moment and didn’t see a talented writer, but only a black man.”
He opened his mouth to reply. She held up a hand. “But assume you’re right,” she said. “Assume he has achieved exactly what he would have achieved even if were white. You think that makes it any less frustrating? In a way, it’s more. You go to school, you build a career, you check off all the boxes of achievement, you’re feeling pretty good about yourself and yet, invariably, somebody will come along and remind you that for all that, you’re still just a nigger.”
“Why should he care what some random idiot thinks?”
“It’s more than a few random idiots, Bob. That’s something else white people don’t get. And anyway, it doesn’t take but a few idiots to make your life miserable. You said he drives a Corvette?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he ever tell you about the time—or maybe the times, plural; I don’t know—he got pulled over by some snide cop who thought he was a carjacker?”
“That’s such a cliché, Janeka.”
“Things become cliché because they are repeated. And because there is truth in them.”
“You’re so sure that’s happened?”
“I would bet money on it,” she said.
“Okay,” said Bob, “but even so, it’s just a bad cop. Stuff happens. It happens to everybody, no matter what color you are. So why can’t he accept it as just one of those things and keep on moving? That’s what I would do.”
She smiled without humor. “That’s easy to say when it never happens to you. Or when it happens rarely. What if that and a dozen other indignities like it happen every day, not just with cops, but also with doctors, waiters, cashiers, bosses, friends? It’s like walking around your whole life with a pebble in your shoe that you can never remove. How long before that makes you crazy?”
“A pebble in a shoe? That’s your explanation for Toussaint?”
“I don’t know Toussaint,” she said. “You do. I’m just trying to explain what you asked me to explain. All I’m saying is that white people always think having a fine car or nice clothes or money or social standing puts you beyond racism—and it doesn’t. That’s the whole point. That’s why it’s racism.”
For a moment, Bob didn’t know what to say. “Janeka,” he finally managed, “I’m sorry. I have to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For dropping my bad day in your lap. For asking you to explain how somebody else feels.”
“The man I used to know would have had more empathy, even if he didn’t understand.”
“The man you used to know.” He chased the words with a bitter snort.
“What’s so funny?”
He looked away from her. He would not be able to admit what he needed to admit if he was looking at her while he said it. “Janeka, I’ve got to tell you the truth. Sometimes, I think the man you used to know grew up and became a stone racist. Because you’re right: I don’t have the empathy I used to have. I don’t have the patience. Toussaint writes about that stuff all the time—all the time—and I read
it and I’m thinking, ‘Stop whining. Get over it. I’m tired of hearing it. Just sick and tired of hearing it.’”
Bob lowered his eyes to the table. “I don’t know what’s happened to me,” he said. “Sometimes, I’m not very pleased with the man I seem to have become.”
“Bob?” He lifted his head until his eyes met hers. “If you’re sick and tired of hearing it, how do think Toussaint feels, living it?”
Bob nodded. He didn’t trust himself to do more.
She smiled to lighten the mood. “Listen to me,” she said, “lecturing you about race. I would think that’s the last thing you’d want to hear from me.”
“No, it’s okay,” he said. “I asked for it, remember?”
“You know why I wanted to see you?” she said, and there was a bright note in her voice that he did not trust.
“Why?” asked Bob.
“Well, because it’s been 40 years, of course. But I also wanted to see you because I felt I owed you an apology.”
“An apology for what?” asked Bob.
She took a deep breath, seemed to gather herself. “For the last time I saw you,” she said. “It has always—” she paused, and he could see her searching for the right word “—haunted me, the way I left things between us. The last time we spoke, I was lecturing you on this same subject. And I said a terrible thing I never should have said. I was such a young fool, so full of myself, so full of revolution. All you wanted to do was love me. And that should have been enough for me. I know what I said hurt you; I could see it in your eyes. And I’ve carried that knowledge with me all these years because I never had the guts to find you and ask you to forgive me.”
It was the last thing he had expected. Bob Carson felt something shift inside him. It scared him. “Janeka,” he said. And then his phone buzzed.
It was sitting on the table where he’d placed it after Doug’s call. The screen lit up with a text message and he only glanced down, not even intending to pick it up, not wanting to lose this moment. Then he saw what was written there. The words were in urgent capital letters and he snatched up the phone in alarm to read them closer. Janeka called his name uncertainly. He held his hand up.
The message was from Doug Perry. It said:
PICK UP THE PHONE—WE THINK YOU MAY BE IN DANGER!!
Then the phone rang.
“Yeah?” said Bob.
“Finally,” said Doug Perry.
“What’s this about me being in danger?” asked Bob. He saw Janeka’s eyebrows dart at the question.
“I’m at Mercy Hospital,” said Doug. His voice was breathy like he was walking fast. “I’m on my way to see Amy.”
“Amy? I just saw her an hour ago.”
“I know,” said Doug. “She was assaulted. I mean, not sexually, but, you know…”
“What? Is she okay?”
“I think she’s going to be.”
“What happened?”
“She got back to the building and some guy jumped her in the garage. Beat her up pretty good and took some computer disk she had.”
“Computer disk?”
“Yeah. Near as I could piece together from talking to the kid at the security desk, this skinny guy with this bizarre haircut shows up at the building this morning with a disk he says he has to give to you. Well, actually, he said it had to go to Toussaint’s boss, but, well…you know…”
“Yeah, I got it,” said Bob, eager to get Doug past the awkward moment and on to the point.
“Well anyway,” said Doug, “Amy’s passing by headed down to the garage and she says she’s going out to your house and she can give the disk to you. So he lets her take it. But he must have followed her or something because he knows she didn’t give you the disk. He’s waiting for her when she gets back to the garage. And he coldcocks her and snatches the disk from her.”
“Who is this guy? What’s on the disk?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Doug. “I have no idea. But if he followed her, then he knows where you live and probably what you look like. So I just wanted to make sure you were aware. You need to be careful. If I were you, I don’t think I’d go home right now.”
The waiter was putting their plates in front of them. He asked Bob if he wanted ground pepper. Bob waved him away impatiently. He caught a look at Janeka’s eyes. She was watching him with concern.
“You think the guy might be looking for me?”
“He was as of a couple hours ago. Oh, and there’s one other thing: Malcolm is missing.”
“Yeah,” said Bob. “Amy told me. You think the one has something to do with the other?”
“I don’t know,” said Doug. “Be a hell of a coincidence though, wouldn’t it? Two of our people in the same day?”
It took Bob a moment. “Wow,” he finally said. “Doug, what’s going on here?”
“I don’t know, buddy. But you need to watch your ass.”
Bob felt dazed. “Yeah,” he said. “Will do. I’m having lunch now. Maybe I’ll go by the hospital after and look in on Amy.”
“Good deal,” said Doug. “Stay in touch.”
Janeka was staring at him as Bob set down the phone. “My goodness,” she said. “What’s going on? Is everything all right?”
Bob shared with her the details of the call from Doug. “My goodness,” she said again.
“Yeah,” said Bob. Their meals were still untouched. “Eat,” he told her.
She ignored him. “So he thinks this individual might be after you?”
“That’s what he said. Seems like a reasonable assumption, I guess. Eat.”
“You have to call the police.”
“I have no idea what I would tell them. Or even what I’d want them to do. Now come on, your steak’s getting cold.”
She looked at him a moment. Then she picked up knife and fork and began to eat. For a few minutes, neither of them spoke much.
“How’s your steak?” Bob finally asked, because the silence was becoming uncomfortable.
“Delicious,” she said. “And your fish?”
“A little undercooked.”
Silence intervened again. Finally, Janeka said, “Bob, before the phone call, we were talking about the way we left things between us all those years ago.”
Bob kept his eyes on his plate and did not speak. He had been hoping she would let that go. She wanted to apologize and that was all well and good, but what could he say to her in response?
That’s all right, Janeka, I forgive you?
It wasn’t all right and he didn’t forgive her. He didn’t know if he could. He didn’t even know if he wanted to.
“I have to be with my people,” she had told him, even as blood was dripping off his chin. Seven words. But they had abruptly shown Bob Carson his place in the scheme of things. Seven words. But they had rearranged the very architecture of his life.
And now, here she sat a lifetime later seeking…what? Forgiveness? Absolution?
“I meant what I said,” Janeka was saying. “I am sorry. I am truly sorry. Please forgive me.”
He heard a note of pleading in her voice and it pleased something small and cruel inside him that he had never known was there until just this second.
Please forgive me?
Too late, lady. Four decades too late.
He finally brought his eyes up, trying to think of some curt and humiliating way to say this. He never got the chance.
A man was standing over their table. He wore a windbreaker and had a hand in his pocket curled around what looked to be the butt of a gun, except that the gun was…pink? The man was skinny and had a bizarre haircut. He grinned at them through bruised and swollen lips, revealing a mouth full of dead things that once had been teeth.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said.
sixteen
Here is what Dwayne McLarty loved most about meth: It was like plugging your brain into a nuclear furnace. It gave you clarity, brought the world around you all at once into diamond-hard focus,
supercharged your mind, filled it with a million new thoughts and ideas, all banging around inside like electrons in an atom or something. And it gave you this inexhaustible energy, this immunity from fatigue, this raw, electrical jolt, to put those ideas into action.
He’d had this particular idea while sitting there beneath the El in the stolen red Ford, thinking how much he needed—how much he deserved—this hit of Go Fast. Yes, Clarence would disapprove. Clarence always disapproved. Fuck him.
Dwayne had applied that jet of blue flame to the glass bowl of his pipe. The smoke rushed up the stem and into him and brought with it that familiar, white-heat blast of wow. And with a suddenness, he realized:
He didn’t need to stake out the guy’s house and wait for him. The hell with that. The guy had said he was going to lunch, right? Dwayne had heard that, right? The guy worked at a newspaper on Michigan Avenue, right? And the guy was a rich asshole, right? So no way he was going to some pizza place or burger joint like a regular guy. No, he would be in some fancy place where they served you at your table and you ate with linen napkins and metal utensils. And since he worked on Michigan, that was probably the area he knew best, probably the place he’d pick to eat.
So Dwayne would just search every single restaurant on Michigan Avenue.
That decision made, he’d sat back in his seat and took another pull on the pipe, marveling at how obvious the answer was with the magic smoke lighting up his brain.
Then he’d gone to work.
He had spent the last fifteen minutes methodically driving south from the newspaper office. Parking was a bitch in that area, so he left the truck in taxi stands and hotel driveways, ignoring the yells of consternation from valets and cabbies, marching in to restaurants past the astonished protests of maître d’s and waiters. Silently, he stalked through the dining rooms, scanning each patron closely. They stared back, confused, even angry.
“What’s your problem, pal?” more than one man asked.
Dwayne didn’t bother to answer. He searched each restaurant quickly and efficiently, then moved on. This had been his fourth restaurant, this joint with the cow over the front door, and what did you know? There was the guy, big as life, and he was sitting in a booth having lunch with some nigger bitch. It could not have been more perfect.
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