My cell phone started rattling on the coffee table, so I rolled over, taking my eyes from the ceiling, and saw from the direction of the light coming in the window that a lot of time had passed since I’d knocked out.
I reached for the phone and looked hard at the empty bottle of Jameson beside it. On the floor, the glass I’d been drinking out of had been shattered to diamond pebbles.
I wondered if maybe the guy downstairs had been playing his loud music again while I was sleeping and it had caused the glass to fall off the table. Maybe the bottle had fallen too and that was why it was empty. I’d only had two glasses. No way I drank that much. But how did the bottle get back onto the table? I looked at the floor. Where was the liquor? Maybe I’d gotten up in the middle of my nap and cleaned it up and placed the bottle back on the table. I tried to remember these events, but they were fuzzy. I’d call the apartment manager in the morning to complain about the guy downstairs. He’d led to the demise of so many of my glasses, I needed to send him an invoice.
The phone rattled again before I could open it to see that there were three text messages from Tamika:
MIKMIK (1:32 p.m.): Hey, KK. Miles will be a little late getting out of practice today, so no rush. Like 4:00pm will work. I know that time sucks for you, but thanks for agreeing to help me out . . . and spend time with your godson!
MIKMIK (3:37 p.m.): I tried to call you twice. I called your office and your secretary said you were out for the day. Guess you’re on the subway headed to Brooklyn now. I’m about to go into the fashion show. They’re taking our phones. I’ll call you when I get out. Make sure Miles doesn’t eat too much. And no fried rice from that greasy-ass Chinese spot on the corner. Thanks again.
MIKMIK (3:40 p.m.): OK. Last message . . . I promise. I know you hate it when I send these long-ass texts. But don’t let Miles go to that park across the street from the community center today. There was a shooting out there last night and you know how things have been going with those gangs on the basketball courts. I know there will be retaliation. Don’t want my little prince caught up in their bullshit. OK . . . that’s all. Walking into the show now. BABUY!
I looked at the texts and tried to recall what she was talking about. Pick up Miles? I hadn’t agreed to that. The last time I saw her we’d been at Damaged Goods and I walked out because she’d pissed me off. Maybe she thought she was texting Leah. I read through the messages again and saw that she was addressing KK, so that wasn’t it. And I knew she wasn’t asking Kent to pick Miles up from fencing. Pick Miles up from fencing? We’d talked at the bar about me spending more time with Miles. I remembered something about a fashion show. Tamika’s walking out of Damaged Goods with me, insisting she help me into a cab. But I told her I was fine. She’d walked me out? I agreed to pick up Miles? Was it Thursday already? Had I agreed to Thursday? I read the messages again and remembered the conversation outside of Damaged Goods.
“Shit!” I jumped up ready to act, but my foot landed in the pile of broken glass and I screamed “Shit!” again. I hopped away from the table and balanced on my left foot, so I could pull the other one up and inspect the damage. Luckily, there was just pain, but no glass or cuts.
By the time I slid on my shoes and hopped to the elevator and down into a cab, it was already four o’clock. It would be at least thirty minutes before I was even in Brooklyn fighting against traffic and red lights. Miles would probably know to wait for me that long, so I sat back and looked at the clock on the dashboard, counting down seconds and saying to myself that he would know what to do. He had to.
At four fifteen the cab was being held up at a red light three blocks from the bridge and I was thinking that taking the train would’ve been a better idea. I started counting minutes again to relax, and I swear, like, ten passed at that one light. We were at the mouth of the bridge into Brooklyn at four thirty, and I was trying to give the cabbie directions to get there sooner. Times like that I wished Tamika wasn’t so strict and had let Miles get a cell phone. But each year since he was seven, when I’d tried to get him one for Christmas, she’d say, “I didn’t have a phone and I survived Harlem. He doesn’t need a phone to survive Brooklyn.” Good point then. But terribly inconvenient now.
At 4:45 I tried calling Leah to see if she could get Miles, but she didn’t answer, and then I remembered that she’d gone to Atlantic City with her girlfriend.
“Come on, you can go faster,” I said to the driver when we were three blocks away and it was five o’clock.
“It’s rush hour,” he said in his thick African accent. “We get there fast, mizz.”
I opened the window and poked my head out of the moving car like that would somehow send telepathic signals to Miles letting him know I was almost there and to wait for me before he decided to walk home on his own or do whatever kids did when someone was over an hour late to pick them up—it was 5:05. I could never forgive myself if anything happened . . . not to mention Tamika would kill me.
I looked up at the sky. Clouds were swirling, and even though it was late May, a kind of winter darkness was settling in overhead. Maybe a storm was coming.
I started shaking and counted the blocks again and realized we hadn’t moved.
“I have to get there!” I said to the cabbie, but he didn’t even nod. It was like he couldn’t hear me. “I am in a rush! Drive!” My back started aching and I had a sick feeling in my gut, and that’s when I heard that familiar, unmistakable sound that echoes in the heart of anyone who’s ever lived in a place where violence is expected: a gunshot.
“Miles!” I’d screamed this three times before I realized I was out of that cab and running toward the community center. “Miles!”
There was an eerie silence everywhere. The clouds were thickening, and I knew instinctively that in minutes a mother would be crying, kneeling down over her son’s body on the sidewalk or street corner, begging anyone to explain what happened.
“Miles!” The bottom of my foot was stinging from what I would later realize was a needle-sized shard of glass I hadn’t seen during my quick inspection at the apartment, but I kept running. The cabbie was on foot behind me, but I kept running and screaming like I knew that bullet had Miles’s name on it.
“Miles!” I ran to the steps of the community center where he always waited after his practices, and it was empty. No one was there. Not a soul. Just a balled-up Bon Ton potato chip bag.
The shaking got worse. My back was fresh beef being pounded by a mallet.
I looked at each step twice. Maybe I was missing something. He had to be there.
Then I heard the sirens and the screaming. I turned to see a crowd huddled in the middle of the basketball court in the park across the street.
“Miles!” I was about to run over to the park when the cabbie jumped in front of me.
“You pay!” he screamed, holding an empty hand out to me. “You pay now or I call the police!”
“I can’t! Miles! He’s across the street in the park!” I pointed and tried to get around him, but even though he was shorter and slimmer than me, he stopped me.
“You pay now!” he demanded. “You drunk! You drunk! I smell!”
“You don’t understand! He’s over there!” I pointed, trying to break loose.
“Hurry and pay. I leave cab!”
Realizing there was no way he was letting me go, I opened my purse to hand him my entire wallet so I could run across the street, and that’s when I saw Tamika’s name on the screen of my phone.
“Mika!” I screamed, answering the call. “Mika!”
“Kim?” Tamika said too calmly.
“It’s Miles! He’s—” As if she could see me through the phone, I pointed to the scene in the park, where it looked like the crowd was dispersing.
“What is it?” Tamika asked.
“I was late,” I said. “Late and—”
“I know you’re late. I just spoke to Miles.”
“What?” I looked over the cab
bie at the crowd.
“He went home with crazy Yolanda and her sons. She was kind enough to take him when you were late,” Tamika said, her voice as cold as the cabbie’s accusing eyes.
“But I was . . . I didn’t know I was supposed to get him,” I tried to explain.
Tamika laughed but not happily. “You know, Kim, I am getting tired of this. I ask you to do one thing, and you can’t even do it.”
“I had a bad day. There is so much going on,” I said.
“Well, I’m having a bad day, too,” Tamika replied. “You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because someone left my son waiting outside on a street where I specifically told her I didn’t want him hanging out.”
“But Dr. Davis and then Paul—there’s been so much today,” I said. “I just forgot, I guess.”
“You forgot about my son?” There was that angry laugh again. “Look, Kim, I don’t know what the fuck is up with you, but you need to get right because you’re fucking up. And I don’t want to be a part of it.”
Tamika hung up and I was left listening to a dial tone.
“Hurry and pay. I leave cab!” the cabbie demanded again.
I pulled two twenties from my purse and handed them to him. “Take it,” I said.
When he walked away, looking back a few times to give me dirty looks, I saw two women who had been in the crowd in the park walking out.
“What was going on there?” I asked them.
“Some dumb motherfucker playing with a gun. Nearly shot himself,” one said.
“Fucking shame. Can’t a day go by in the hood without this shit,” the other added. “At least ain’t nobody get hurt.”
My whole spirit was about dead. I was unprotected. Like a storm had come and gone and left me wet in the rain. Something in me sank down really low and hurt me so bad I actually felt the pain in my heart. Thank God nothing had happened to Miles. But standing there outside the fencing club, I was forced to really stare at what was happening to me. How could I forget that I was supposed to pick him up? Why was Tamika angry at me? Why was everyone so against anything that I wanted to do?
I was done with riding in cabs and talking to cabbies and talking to just about anyone at that moment, and so I just started walking. I put my one sad foot out in front of my other, aching foot and took little steps, like a baby who was just learning to walk and trying to figure out how not to fall down. I was so numb, I couldn’t even feel my back. To press my toes hard and deliberately into the ground was about the only way I could know I was still standing and maybe headed somewhere. But where?
One foot. One aching foot. Three steps and then four. Soon I was on the corner looking up at the sky witnessing the twilight. Even in my sadness there was something beautiful and familiar about it. Everything in the world above me was in its place. Controlled by some silent organization that hadn’t ever failed. Hadn’t ever gotten sidetracked or derailed. Focused. Resilient. Even in Brooklyn the sun, moon, and stars were at work.
“Get your shit together,” I said to myself, turning the corner and looking out at the world before me. The sidewalk went straight forward in a path that was cracked and crumbling in places.
A sound, something that echoed like bass booming from speakers, caught my ears, and I looked up from my path on the sidewalk. There, hanging right in front of me, was a black sign with honey-colored neon letters flashing damaged goods. The name flashed slowly like the signs on those old-timers’ jazz lounges on Lenox Avenue where Kent and I used to find our father passed out.
“Jameson. Double,” I requested, finding myself on a bar stool with my wallet in my hand.
The same bartender who’d been on duty the night before was behind the bar. She smiled at me with some familiarity and went to pour the drink but then turned back, confused.
“What you want with it, Queen?” she asked in a cliché Brooklyn Puerto Rican accent that was more Rosie Perez than . . . Rosie Perez.
I heard that she’d called me Queen, but didn’t think anything of it until after I said I wanted it straight up and she responded, “Any ice, Queen?” She said it more like a name than the common way brothers in New York addressed women they respected.
“Yes. Sure,” I answered. As she poured my Jameson, I looked around the grungy bar for signs of life. The music was bumping, and it was dark and ready for the coming night crowd, but save three or four old men who were obviously locals playing pool toward the back, it was empty.
“Here you go,” the bartender said, setting my drink down.
“Thank you.” I placed my credit card on the bar.
“Tab?” She picked up the card.
“No,” I answered, then changed my mind: “I mean, yes. Yes. Bad day. Horrible day for me.”
“Right place then, Queen.” She nodded and turned to the register right behind her.
“Hey, Iesha, right? Why do you keep calling me Queen?” I asked her back as two long-haired Puerto Rican women in tight black pants and pastel thick-bottomed stripper-style stilettos walked past me from the back of the club and waved at her.
“I’m sorry. I thought that was your name,” she said, turning back to me. “Wasn’t that what King called you last night?”
“King?” I repeated, trying to sound like I hardly knew who she was talking about, but when it was apparent she was on to my attempt at minimizing, I said, “Oh, yeah. That white guy I spoke to last night.”
“Yeah, him,” she said, and giggled with a little you know damn well you remember him in her voice.
Trying to seem nonchalant, I added, “Oh, I think he just meant it like the way all the brothers call women queen. You know?”
“No. I’ve never heard him say that to anyone before,” she said confidently.
“Really?” I tried not to sound interested in the information, but the Jameson in my hand had me feeling unfastened or excited and I’d hardly had a sip.
A beautiful woman walked from the back of the club, and I saw that she had come from the kitchen.
“So, have you seen him? King?” I kicked the nonchalance up to ten, for my own benefit as well as Iesha’s; I could rationalize that I was trying to shake off my blues by focusing on something other than my bad day. “Not that I care—just asking.”
“Sure. I’ve seen him,” she said curtly, and turned to walk from behind the bar without another word. She went to the back where the woman had walked out of the kitchen.
“Okay. Guess I shouldn’t have asked,” I said to myself before looking for solace in my glass of liquor and melting ice cubes. I hadn’t started drinking or even smoking until I went to college, and for years the closest I got to hard liquor was Alizé and Hypnotiq. I liked the sweet stuff that went down easy. It made drinking seem fun. Feminine and silly. Not dark and piss-infested like the drunks I’d known growing up. I’d sip a little something and laugh with my girls or Ronald. Get a little nasty. Maybe even pass out, but still it felt innocent. When I got to law school, though, that soft, feminine liquor didn’t do anything for me. There were too many headaches in the morning. Too many vomit fests over the toilet. I had to stop it, but I still wanted to drink something. Have a little sip to take the edge off after a late night studying. Or after dealing with my mother being found somewhere down and out and there was nothing I could do about it. That’s when the liquor with men’s names came into my life and I learned to love the purity of straight alcohol with no sweet lies. Jameson became my best friend. It had bite and nerve. Let you lose control but made you feel like you were in control.
“Hey, young blood,” I heard one of the men near the pool tables say, and I looked over at the men crowding around.
In the middle of their circle of wrinkly brown skin, thick glasses, and old-school Kangols was one white face with a thin beard. It was King. It was like he appeared out of nowhere. I couldn’t tell if he’d walked in when I wasn’t looking or come out of the kitchen.
As the men chatted, laughing and slap
ping five, Iesha walked out of the kitchen and returned to the bar, where she went on working like we hadn’t spoken.
I watched the scene at the pool table for a second and then started coaching myself about not appearing thirsty or too excited to see King, or like I’d come to the bar to see him, so I turned around. I told myself I wasn’t interested in him. It was purely a product of circumstance. Desperation. I was in Brooklyn to pick up Miles, and after that went awry I needed a drink and I didn’t want to wait until I got back to my place, so I stopped at the bar. Right? Then I wondered why I was explaining myself to myself. I took the last swig of my Jameson and sat the glass down hard on the bar to signal for another.
“Somebody said you were looking for a King.” This was heard over my shoulders. The smooth baritone voice fell on the rear of my left ear with a tickle that swam down my back and made me squirm and jump a little.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, sliding onto the stool beside me. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’m not scared,” I said with more determination than needed.
He noted it, too. “Well, I ain’t never scared either,” he responded in equal register.
After a few chuckles we let an expectant silence sit between us.
“I—” I started, but he opened with the same word and we laughed again at the butting of heads. That time it was more familiar. Not like we’d known each other for years, but like we’d been checking each other out. I knew my embarrassment showed in my eyes, so I looked away. But I could still feel him beside me, and that made me more excited. His presence felt overwhelming. Like a man in charge. I blamed it on the new double, which I’d nearly finished.
“You go first,” he said.
I was about to tell him about seeing him in the Bentley in Manhattan, but I opted against it. I didn’t want to seem too pressed, like I was looking for him, and lead him into anything.
“I was going to say that I didn’t know you worked here,” I said, looking back at him smoothing his beard slowly.
Hold Me in Contempt Page 11
