“You want some help?”
A lump catches in my throat. “Yeah, I want some...help. Because, I gotta be doing something wrong. Before, I could blame it on the drugs. But in the last year, I don’t have that excuse anymore. So, yeah, I could use some business advice.”
“OK. No problem. I have some ideas we could try.”
We hang on the phone a little longer. Just like kids. I decide to pull off the band-aid, because that’s the only way it works. “OK, Deck, really looking forward to seeing you later. Bye.”
“Me too. Later.”
I kill the call before my heart can stop my brain from doing it.
I put away my fold-out sofa-bed and then drop for a second on the sofa itself. I feel easier. More relaxed. I feel, suddenly, like I’m not so alone anymore.
Like I could actually go out and catch this sucker and make a meal of it! Like I could actually do something to pull me out the rut I haven’t been able to get out of since Savva...you know. Even thinking of her doesn’t get me down that much—in this precise moment.
But then my phone buzzes.
And my elated mood disappears quickly.
-3-
Xavier: We need to meet. TODAY.
Blaze: Why?
He calls. “Chiquita. Que passa?”
“Xavier.”
“Wanna get a drink?”
“No, I don’t.”
“OK. Fine. Maybe one day.”
“What do you want, Xavier?”
“Just sayin hi.”
“Well, hi.”
“You gonna be so cold to me after all I did for you?”
It takes all the will I have not to charge at him on that one. “Xavier, what do you really want? I mean, I know it’s all great and grand that you suddenly got me this deal at House Market, and now we’re into Sacrament. But I gotta wonder about it all. I mean, what’s in it for you? Why now? Why after a year? Because you keep calling me. You keep hinting at us getting together for a drink. Look, our days are over. You have to accept that. They died with Savannah.”
He’s silent for a second.
“I always stay in touch with old clients.”
I almost throw my phone against the wall. But I can’t afford a new one—yet. “Is that all I ever was to you? A client?” You make me sick. “Like I said, I appreciate what you’ve done for me. And if you wanna rake in a cut from whomever you deal with in the background for my music, do it. But that’s all it was to me. A favor.”
In an ingratiating tone, he says, “Blaze, honey, you no need to worry about Xavier. Xavier understands. I just lettin you know that, if you need anything, I here for you. OK?” His accent’s coming out, because he’s getting into the role. If you need anything...
I shudder. “Look, have you actually gone and visited her at all? Put some flowers on her grave or something? I mean, do you actually realize she’s gone, and what our role was in making that happen?”
Silence.
“Xavier?”
And, just like that, I sense Hyde disappearing, and Jekyll entering. And maybe this is where I make the mistake. No, I know this is where I make the mistake. Because that’s always been my problem: I’m too trusting. I’m always looking for the good in people. Always expecting the best.
And endlessly getting the worst.
Jekyll says: “Blaze, you’re...you’re making this hard for me. I just want us to go back...back to what we had.”
“Xavier, we can never go back—”
“See me. Please, Blaze. Please, I’m begging you. Look, you’re right, I got you the gig because I wanted something. But would you believe that all I wanted was to be with the only person who was ever a real friend to me? Please. I’m begging you! When Savva left, then Patryk... You’re all I have left, Blaze.”
And I can hear the sincerity. Jekyll. No evil whatsoever in his voice.
And I’m too trusting.
“OK. Fine. One hour. Because I can’t afford more. I need to practice.”
When he says, “Thanks, baby,” I can’t figure out which of the two characters I’m talking to. And that makes me nervous.
“Xavier, don’t be high when we meet.”
“Honey, I’m never high. I don’t do drugs.”
OK, that made me even more nervous.
-4-
We go to the Swallow Café, a coffee bar with a huge blue swallow painted on the brick wall outside, the words ESPRESSO BAR across its chest. Last time I was here, I recall there being a laminated sign on yellow paper near the restrooms inside which said: “CAFÉ” IS NOT FRENCH FOR “RESTROOM.” IT IS FOR PAYING CUSTOMERS ONLY.
Xavier’s in shades (it’s cloudy outside so I assume he’s hiding red eyes) and a purple-pink Panama hat, rosy dress-shirt, and his signature cream Armani suit.
He doesn’t take the shades or the hat off when we get inside.
A coffee grinder goes mad in the background, then a milk steamer. “At least we can talk privately,” he says.
“And it’s spacious.” I gesture around. “And no one will give a shit what we’re talking about anyway.” I can’t take my eyes off his shades. “Take your shades off, Xavier.”
Hesitantly, he does. His eyes are white as china. Too white.
“You baked?”
A moment’s pause. Then, “I told you I wouldn’t be.”
“But your eyes look like they’ve been treated with eye drops. And your pupils are a little dilated.”
“It’s dark in here.” He glares me down. Only, it isn’t much of a glare. It’s more like a deadpan, stoned gazed. I sigh. Shake my head.
I quickly remember running around with Xavier and Savva in the playground when were kids, how he used to throw mud on my dress...
Different times.
And:
Things change.
“It’s not too late, Xavier. You know. To get out of it. To get out of the life. It killed your sister. Surely that should be enough for you to take stock and step back from it.”
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.
-5-
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.
-6-
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.
LUCKY THIRTEEN
OR IS IT?
-1-
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.
“Son...p—please, sit.”
Here goes nothing.
-2-
I was gonna rip his heart out and watch it pulse its final beats in my hand. That had been my plan.
But Trev calmed me down in the car.
And he convinced me that it’s time to lay this dog to rest. That it’s time to either have my say out with him, and end it for good; or have my say out with him, and start a new relationship with the dude.
I opted for the former.
We sit. “Would you boys like a drink?”
I shake my head. I’m ready to go into it, but dad’s politeness is throwing me off my feet.
“Water, sir.”
“Deck?”
I shake my head again. I don’t feel steady enough to speak. When pops is out the room, Trev puts a hand on my shoulder. “Easy, homeboy. Easy. Just breathe.”
I bite my fist. Tears fight to get out my eyes.
Mom.
The night she died, I think, you were fucking that...puta!
He brings in the water, a fresh can of PBR in his hand. “Trevor, that was a great game against the Wildcats this season.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Look, I know you and me’s had our differences. And...I just wanna say...I’m sorry...for attackin’ yo’ race an’ all. I was...just very angry about things and...you was in the way. I just want you to know that...if you’d been Mexican, I woulda made a wetback statement. Hell, if you was white, I woulda prob’ly called you a cracker. I was just...angry. Punchin at anythin in the way.”
Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) Page 21
