Lola

by Melissa Scrivner Love

  Mrs. King, as Lola now deems her, because she can’t imagine calling this woman by a first name only, sees three restless boys at the corner. The lookouts. Lola can see now that they can’t be more than sixteen. They have the fidgety faces and hands of those with no satisfying outlet for their time and energy. The sight of them brings Mrs. King to her feet. Darrel’s mother is so pissed Lola can see the woman’s furrowed brow from her parked car.

  “Sherman Moore. You got a good reason you’re not home helping your mama?” Mrs. King has the booming, sure voice of a principal.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the tallest of the three pipes up. The other two hide snickers in their overstuffed jackets, storage facilities for bindles and blades, Lola guesses. If the cops were to drive by, these three would be fooling no one.

  “What would that reason be?” Mrs. King continues.

  “Workin’,” Sherman replies.

  “I don’t see any work happenin’ on that corner.”

  Sherman is silent. Lola checks to see if the boy has the tormented look of a child wanting to rat out an adult to another adult. She’s guessing Sherman isn’t home helping his mother today because he is both looking out and dealing for Mrs. King’s son. But Lola sees Mrs. King’s chiding has started a change in Sherman. He stands up straighter, his chest puffs out, and Lola can make out the beginning of muscles rippling under the sweatshirt he has outgrown. None of this bravado is frightening to Lola. The only thing that surprises her is when Sherman’s eyes go dead. He does not like Mrs. King’s scolding. Even from here, Lola can tell he would have no problem taking a life.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sherman says in a flat tone.

  “Don’t you ‘ma’am’ me when you don’t mean it.”

  Now Sherman looks right at Mrs. King, and the dead behind his eyes would make bumps pop on even Lola’s arm if she weren’t carrying a blade.

  There is quiet between Sherman and Mrs. King now. The kid is standing up straight not out of respect, but defiance. Darrel King better be careful, Lola thinks, or this lieutenant of his is going to make a play to become king. From Mrs. King’s silence, Lola gathers the older woman can see what her son can’t—that Sherman Moore is dangerous.

  “You get on home now,” Mrs. King says finally, but the big block front door behind her opens and Darrel emerges.

  “Momma,” he interrupts. Lola again takes note of his muscles, rippling this time beneath a cotton T-shirt and jeans with just the right amount of bag. She pictures him sweaty for a little too long, skin gleaming in sunshine, then she remembers this man is her rival. Yet his eyes are kind as he reaches out a gentle hand to touch his mother’s arm. He will let her think she’s the boss. “I’m starving. You make me some eggs?”

  “Don’t see the point, you just eating the whites. Barely any nutrition there,” Mrs. King mumbles, but she disappears inside with a smile. Lola feels a pang at her lost opportunity at daughterhood—why couldn’t she have a pain-in-the-ass, up-in-her-shit, love-smothering mother like that? There is no point asking this question. She has what she has, and she makes what she makes of it.

  Darrel King turns to Sherman. “She giving you trouble?”

  “No, sir,” Sherman says. This kid is stupid smart, Lola thinks, respecting his elders, never giving more answer than the question requires.

  “Didn’t think so,” Darrel says, and his voice contains a smile that Sherman, cautious, mirrors.

  “Want us to stay here?” Sherman asks. Then, too late, “Sir?”

  If Darrel has noticed the initial omission of feigned respect, he doesn’t show it.

  “Better move on down the block,” Darrel says. “She catches you out here again, she’s liable to call your mother.” With that, Darrel turns his back on Sherman and company. The other two boys take this movement to mean the end of their conversation.

  “Hold up. We gettin’ a piece of the next package or not?” Sherman. Stone-cold killer, even if he doesn’t know it himself yet.

  Darrel turns toward Sherman. Mistake, Lola thinks. She would have kept walking as she answered. Let the little shit see his question wasn’t important enough to stop her. But she can see Sherman doesn’t care about the answer. He just wants to be the one to end the conversation.

  “Yeah. There a problem, Sherman?” Darrel asks. Again, Lola thinks, Mistake. Darrel is opening a bunch of tiny doors that add up to a coup.

  “No. Sir,” says Sherman, then, to the other two, “Time to get the fuck on outta here.”

  Sherman leads the way down the block, the other two following with the plodding, tired movements of young people who have seen too much for their years. She feels for Darrel, living his own lie, hiring teenage guards to protect his domain and keep his mother in the dark. Even Sherman didn’t give her, a twentysomething woman, a second glance, despite her skin color. It could be that Sherman considers the job of lookout beneath him. Still, Lola can’t say a more dedicated guard wouldn’t have done the same. She is underestimated in every neighborhood, including her own.

  As she watches the three boys turn a corner, she spots an oddity rounding the opposite one. The timing is too perfect—to appear just as the three corner boys disappear—and the couple, or one of them, doesn’t belong. The girl is black, of this place, but she moves with the quick, darting moves of a sitting duck. It’s because of her companion—brown skin. Lola doesn’t have to see any more of him to know he shouldn’t be here, with this girl, walking in broad daylight like he belongs. Idiot.

  Then he gets closer, and Lola sees him just as Darrel does. She picks out the familiar gait, the eyes, the slight shrug of one shoulder. Hector. Her brother. Out for a tense Sunday afternoon stroll in rival territory with his girl, Amani. A flash of anger explodes in Lola’s heart, but it turns to sadness quick as a douse of cold water extinguishes a flame. Why is Hector putting himself in danger? Has Maria’s disappearance so affected him that he doesn’t give a shit if he lives or dies? Lola’s not going to let her baby brother ruin his life grieving for their washed-up drug-ridden asshole of a mother. But Darrel King has already seen Hector, and, whether or not he recognizes him, he knows Hector doesn’t belong.

  Lola doesn’t think further than getting out of the car, letting Darrel’s eyes land on her. Target her. Hate her.

  “The fuck…” she hears her rival utter. Good. She has the elements of both surprise and confusion. Darrel doesn’t have any more of a plan than she does, so utterly ridiculous are the circumstances in which Hector’s appearance has put them. To Darrel, it must look like Garcia can’t control his girl and her baby brother.

  “Hey!” Lola calls. Hector sees his sister, and Lola’s heart softens as she sees his face go from could-give-a-fuck to oh, shit.

  “Lola?”

  “Get your ass over here,” Lola says, but she keeps moving toward Hector. She has to get him in her car. She has to get him out of here. She’s not going to wait for him to come to her.

  “Is that…” Amani speaks with quiet questioning.

  “Amani!” Darrel shouts to her. “What you doing out here? You need to get on home. Now.”

  For a second, Lola and Darrel lock eyes—two parents calling their star-crossed children inside where they can protect them.

  “Hector, goddammit, I said get over here,” Lola says. She’s losing her shit on the inside, pissed as all get-out, but she has to play up that Darrel terrifies her. The more scared of getting shot she looks, the more Darrel won’t feel the need to shoot them.

  “Lola. This is Amani,” Hector tries, standing up straight, defiant, but Lola has no time for his naive sense of justice. If he wants this girl to fuck and love and feed him, he has to get fucked and loved and fed in private.

  “Nice to meet you,” Lola says to Amani, because as far as Lola can tell, Amani is smart and kind and takes good care of her baby brother. Lola doesn’t mind—as long as it’s behind closed doors.

  “Amani,” Darrel calls again, and this time Lola hears the implied countdown in his voice. She
has to get Hector out of here.

  “Hector,” Lola says, out of breath as she reaches the couple. “We have to go.”

  “Why?”

  Lola fights the urge to say because she said so, something their own mother never said because even Maria had the good sense to know her judgment was a few steps below questionable.

  “Because he’s gonna shoot you,” Lola says.

  “What if I don’t care?”

  “After he shoots you, I gotta shoot her,” Lola nods to Amani, who accepts Lola’s statement without surprise. The way of the world.

  Hector’s eyes blaze at Lola. She wants to slap the gullible rebel out of him, to get him to see she knows what’s best. She wants to tell Amani she seems like a lovely girl, that it’s just business.

  When Lola turns to get Darrel back in her eyeline, she sees the gun in his lowered hand. A warning, subtle but clear. He’s keeping the weapon where Lola has to strain to see it, by his side. He’s giving her a chance to get Hector out of here.

  “Come on,” Lola says. Hector sees Darrel with his gun. He looks at Amani.

  “Go with her,” Amani says.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah,” Amani says. “You have to.”

  At least this girl understands you have to obey the rules, even if they’re not fair. Amani is an adult. Hector is behaving like a child, and Lola blames herself.

  She would have killed any other soldier who fucked up her drop.

  When Hector moves in to kiss Amani good-bye, right here in the middle of Darrel King’s concrete and potholes, Lola feels hot flushing up her cheeks.

  “Fucking idiot,” she says, disgust soaking her voice so that Hector, surprised, has the nerve to look wounded. Fucking puppy love, Lola thinks, although she can tell Amani feels her same disdain for Hector right now. The girl pulls away from Hector’s lips and crosses her arms over her chest.

  “I gotta go,” Amani says.

  “I’ll call you,” Hector says, and Amani nods in response, crossing her arms tighter and turning her back on them both. She wants to get home, a place she belongs, in this neighborhood, away from Hector.

  Lola doesn’t tell Hector to come on now. Instead, she turns and walks toward the car, and he follows like a kicked puppy, lovesick eyes on Amani’s retreating form. Lola sees Darrel clenching the gun at his side, waiting for them to get the fuck off his streets.

  Inside the car, Lola starts the engine as she says, “You were supposed to be hooking up a sit-down.”

  “Wanted to see Amani first,” Hector says.

  “You think she respects that? Man who can’t get his shit done without letting his woman say jump first?” Lola says.

  “You tell me,” Hector tries. Lola swallows the pinprick pain, keeping her face stone.

  She has to remind herself Hector is only eighteen. He must be smarting from her calling him a fucking idiot. Or she must be making excuses for him.

  “I’m gonna drive you home. Then you’re gonna get in your car, drive out to Venice, and get this shit done,” Lola says.

  As she speaks, she hears the sound of Darrel’s front door opening. Mrs. King walks out onto the porch. Darrel whips around, tucking pistol into pants with the ease of a man accustomed to living a double life.

  “Looks like Darrel’s scared of his momma,” Hector says with a laugh, and Lola doesn’t like the low, bullying rumble she hears in his delight.

  “So?” Lola challenges him, and Hector’s laughter stops. For a second, Lola thinks she’s gotten through to her brother, but the thought evaporates as the front door rumbles open and shut again, and a second woman with a second coffee mug emerges from the house in a ring of shared laughter.

  Maria. Manicured and coiffed to match Mrs. King. She takes a seat in the wicker chair opposite Darrel’s mother, the two women gabbing in fits and starts, sipping, rocking, bonding.

  “Jesus,” Hector says. Lola knows she should feel some sort of thankful that Maria is okay, but seeing her mother safe and happy, all she feels is nothing.

  Lola puts the car in gear as Darrel looks at her, caught keeping his two-million-dollar hostage healthy and polished. He must know from the look on Lola’s face that he’s never going to get his two million dollars for this version of Maria—clean, smiling, gossiping.

  “That’s Mom. She’s here,” Hector shouts, despite the fact that Lola’s sitting right next to him. “Where you going?”

  “Home,” Lola says.

  “What the fuck?”

  “We got shit to do.”

  “Darrel has Mom.”

  “Never seen her happier,” Lola says.

  Hector stares at her. “You knew. That she was here.”

  “Yeah,” Lola says, casual. She puts foot to gas and guns. If Hector were to stop, drop, and roll into the street, to run back for Maria, Lola would respect him. Instead, he sits, mute, in the passenger’s seat, letting her drive him away without protest.

  Hector is still a boy. Lola has to change that.

  The barista hands Lola a repurposed, recycled, brown paper coffee cup peppered with proclamations of Earth friendliness. His nametag reads, “Gordon,” and he’s too handsome to be frothing lattes behind a thick wooden counter forever. Actor, Lola thinks. Lola’s not in the entertainment industry, but even in her own head, the term actor carries equal parts awe and disdain—awe for the hotness, disdain for the idiocy of anyone willing to stand in front of others and be judged, day after day.

  “You have a nice day now, Lola,” Gordon says with a smile. What is it with this kid? She notes that sweet, dear Gordon spelled her name correctly, the block letters written in Sharpie identical to Darrel’s ransom note.

  Lola finds a table near the window where she can see the coffee shop’s comings and goings. This place is not Starbucks. The line stretches out the door—hipsters in skinny jeans and Converse, middle-aged hippie ladies with wiry orange and straw-colored hair, yuppie couples with dogs instead of babies, and a few daring tourists trying to comprehend the concept of coffee as religion. While Lola often buys her daily dose of caffeine at a neighborhood bodega where they leave the dregs percolating for hours, she can appreciate a cup of coffee that undergoes an actual brewing process.

  She scans the line of people out the door again, but there’s no sign of Eldridge.

  Earlier, Lola had sent Hector out the door with the briefcase of money and a warning that he shouldn’t come back until he had unloaded the offering on Eldridge. The ride home from Darrel’s had been silent, but Hector had obeyed her orders once they were back in their own neighborhood. He had delivered the cash to Eldridge, who wanted to meet the leader of the Crenshaw Six this afternoon, Monday, at this very coffee shop.

  “Excuse me, excuse me.” Lola hears a voice that shouldn’t be familiar but is. When she looks to the entrance, Lola sees Mandy, Eldridge’s wife, ramming the baby stroller through the coffee shop’s door, rolling over toes and disgruntling patrons.

  “There’s a line,” growls a hipster man who’s too old to still be a hipster. Lola might be a banger, but even in the hood, people can unite in their shared hatred of these pretentious, trust-funded, pale faces. This particular man’s skinny jeans encase his chubby thighs—fabric fighting fat—and his gut spills over the top, an exposed sack of flab between T-shirt and denim.

  “I know, I know.” Mandy sighs, as if she can’t believe the injustice of it either. “But the baby’s crying and I’ve got to get home before my decorator arrives.”

  The baby is not crying, but cooing up at his mother, happy as a goddamn bug in a rug. The old hipster has no idea how to respond to Mandy’s entitlement, and Lola catches herself smiling.

  As Mandy weaves her way to the front of the line, other patrons step back, letting her pass. They have overheard the conversation with the aging hipster and must not feel like fighting a losing battle. When Mandy arrives at the counter, she booms, “Good afternoon, Gordon,” as if she’s known him her whole life, but Lola can tell even frien
dly Gordon doesn’t have a fucking clue what to do with this particular woman except stare at her. “How are you today?”

  “I’m fine. Good.” Gordon gulps, as if Mandy’s wielding a gun instead of a stroller. She doesn’t hear Gordon’s response, because she’s turned to coo at her baby. The whole line inhales, about to express impatience at this woman who not only cut the line but now can’t be bothered to place her order. Then they remember the aging hipster and everyone holds their breath.

  Lola can’t take her eyes off Mandy, even to tell the person grabbing the chair across from her that this seat’s about to be taken.

  “Gonna use that,” Lola says.

  “I know,” a man’s voice responds, and then Eldridge Waterston is sitting across from her. “My wife’s something else, isn’t she?”

  “That your wife?” Lola asks as if she didn’t know. Eldridge turns to her with a short yell of a laugh, sharp as a sniper’s rifle ring. The coffee shop patrons turn as one to face Eldridge.

  “Honey? Do you want anything?” It’s Mandy, voice singing across the sea of puzzled patrons and landing like a kiss on her husband.

  It amazes Lola how, if you act like you own the place, you can.

  “No, thank you, sweetheart,” Eldridge responds in drippy sweet dulcet. Lola wonders if this gushy husband and wife duet is an act or some sick version of a too-healthy relationship. She and Garcia would never soak a public place in their aching affection. But maybe every happy relationship is happy in its own fucked-up pleasures.

  “You sure you’re at the right table?” Lola asks. “Only two chairs.”

  “My wife doesn’t like to sit still,” Eldridge says.

  “Doesn’t seem like it,” Lola says, taking a sip of coffee and letting the caffeine arm her like so much steel.

  “If you’d prefer to pretend you haven’t done a little intelligence work on my family, I’m fine with that.”