Till You Hear From Me: A Novel

by Pearl Cleage

  “And she’s got the DNA to prove it,” Miss Iona said, which only conjured up a picture of the author striding up to the front door of Monticello, holding up a little vial of DNA, and demanding an explanation and an apology, not necessarily in that order. Tempting as it sounded to spend another evening trying to figure out the strange workings of wealthy white men’s minds, I declined.

  “Suit yourself,” she said, leaving me officially on my own. I decided to try the new burger joint that people kept telling me about.

  It was just a few blocks away, so I grabbed my coat and headed over there. I could see the flicker of the evening’s cop shows or medical dramas at the houses where nobody had shut the drapes yet. It’s a mystery to me why people are drawn to shows featuring sex crimes and terminal diseases, but to each her own. I missed the Rev’s company on my ramble, but walking alone gave me time to try to sort out some things in my head.

  Even though I wasn’t sure I could trust Joe Conner’s easy dismissal of the anti-icon plot, I knew he was right on the money about the loop. Things always move fast in Washington political circles, but with the twenty-four-hour news cycle, it’s gotten ridiculous. A day is a week and a week is a lifetime. The longer I was away, the less I could claim to have the most accurate reading of those two most critical constituencies: the people and the press.

  On the other hand, if I could come up with a good reason to be spending time here, something not connected to the Rev, or having to go to any kind of rehab, it could be a plus. Consulting with Precious Hargrove, for example, would be a perfectly respectable reason to leave town for a minute. Precious was a rising star in national Democratic politics. Helping her get elected wouldn’t be like being in exile. It would be like being in the vanguard. But working with Precious meant coming back to West End just in time to meet my mother at the airport and get sucked back into the latest saga of the reluctant soul mates and that was not an option.

  I could see the neon sign for Brandi’s Burgers & More on the front of what used to be Montre’s, a notorious West End strip club that claimed to be the first to offer a five-dollar lap dance. Those days were long gone now. Someone had given the place a complete makeover, and nothing remained of the past except a small stage and the new owner, Brandi herself, who had once been a featured dancer here in the bad old days. She greeted me, fully clothed, and took me to a table near the tiny stage.

  “This is our karaoke night,” she said, handing me a menu and an extensive list of songs I could choose from should the spirit move me. I smiled back and shook my head.

  “Not me, but thanks.”

  “I heard that,” she said. “I don’t do it either, but these fools love it. Soup tonight is Chef’s Choice vegetable. American beer is two for one until the music starts.”

  I wondered if her spotlight on American beer reflected patriotism or the preferences of her regulars.

  “I’ll take a Beck’s,” I said.

  “Coming up.”

  I was amazed at how good the place looked. Not that I ever saw the inside of it before. Strip clubs were never my cup of tea, even when a lot of my girlfriends started going just for a hoot. No way I wanted to tuck a dollar bill into the G-string of a woman who was probably just trying to feed her kids. There were tables up front, booths in the back, and lots of framed photos of Atlanta’s music business luminaries, many signed to Brandi herself, and some of which included her standing beside them, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  I wondered how she had made the transition from her old life to her new one. However she had done it, she seemed to be thriving, which is, of course, all I wanted to do: thrive. The question was, where. If it wasn’t D.C., where was my place? I needed a sign. Something to push me in the right direction. I didn’t think that I was asking too much. After all, this was West End, home to mystical women from Abbie to Iona. Seemed like the least the sisterhood could do during my moment of transition.

  I opened the menu and turned to the offerings of every kind of burger you could think of, including veggie burger, turkey burger, and a four-pound beef behemoth that you got free if you could finish it in an hour. Health food or heart attack, at Brandi’s, it was your choice. I had just about decided on a classic cheeseburger, when I glanced up and saw Wes Harper walk in the door. Did somebody order a sign?

  THIRTY-SIX

  Second-Generation Ballbuster

  HE COULDN’T BELIEVE HE HAD LEFT HIS BRIEFCASE AT HIS FATHER’S house. Trying to wrap his mind around that closet full of cards and get a handle on Major Estes’s spy versus spy act had distracted him. Wes Harper was not a man who forgot things. A firm believer in a place for everything and everything in its place, he had once broken up with a woman because he loaned her his car and she lost the keys.

  He hadn’t even missed the damn briefcase until he went back up to his suite after he left Estes and realized it wasn’t there. He had been working on a proposal for another client last night after his father went to bed and when he closed his eyes, he could see his Coach case, sitting there in his boyhood room, looking sleek, expensive, and out of place, like a Maserati in the Kmart parking lot.

  He intended to spend the night in midtown, but he still had a few things to finish up on that proposal, not being a man to put all his eggs in one basket, so he decided to drive across town, pick it up, and get back in time to give Toni some very special room service. He cruised past the Rev’s house, half hoping to run into Ida to confirm their appointment for tomorrow, but the place was dark and nobody seemed to be around. Then he turned onto Abernathy and saw a woman he was almost certain was her disappearing into something called Brandi’s Burgers & More. On a whim, he circled the block, pulled into the lot, and stepped inside. Even if it wasn’t her, he hadn’t eaten all day and his stomach growled loudly.

  She was sitting alone at a table near the tiny stage, studying the menu like it was a practice test for the SATs. She looked smaller than she had the other night and softer. The hostess, who looked somehow familiar, greeted him pleasantly, but before she could offer him a table, Ida looked up and smiled in his direction. He smiled back and she waved him over.

  “Hey,” he said. “Small world.”

  “Smaller than that,” she said. “If you promise not to sing, you can join me.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Karaoke night,” said the smiling hostess, handing him a menu and the night’s playlist. “You say it, we play it. American beer two for one until the music starts.”

  “Jack Daniel’s,” he said. “On the rocks.”

  “Coming up.”

  Wes took off his coat, pulled out a chair, and looked around slowly, trying to remember. “Didn’t this place used to be a strip joint?”

  She nodded. “Montre’s, home of the five-dollar lap dance.”

  “That’s where I’ve seen her before,” he said, looking in the direction of where Brandi was pouring his drink. “She used to be a dancer.”

  “So you’ve been here before?” Her voice was suddenly icy.

  Oh, hell, he thought. “No, not here,” he said quickly. “Of course I drove by it, but I saw her dancing at a bachelor party a couple of years ago. A buddy of mine from back in the day. She was good, too,” he added admiringly.

  Brandi sent a waitress over to bring the drinks and take their food order. They both opted for the traditional cheeseburger. He took the fries and Ida got the onion rings, but the whole time he could tell she was waiting to jump on his ass for saying he’d seen Brandi doing her thing. He saved her the trouble of having to bring it up.

  “I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable,” he said, wondering why he felt the need to explain. “Nothing happened. We never had sex or anything.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “It’s none of my business if you had.”

  He sipped his drink and smiled. This was just what he needed. A little verbal jousting with a second-generation ballbuster. Next to lying, it was his favorite kind of foreplay.

  “I just mean
t,” he said in a tone he hoped sounded conciliatory, but not obsequious—feminists can smell fear—“if we had a mutual friend who was a hell of a basketball player and you’d never seen his jump shot, I would probably mention that, too.”

  “Why?”

  She wasn’t going to make this easy, but he was up to the task. “Because when somebody is excellent at something, whatever that something might be, attention must be paid.”

  “Even dancing naked on a silver pole?”

  He counted that as a point for his side. She’d said the word “naked,” always a step in the right direction. “You ever try it?”

  “Not that I can recall. Have you?”

  He wished she was drinking something stronger than beer. He smiled a little wider. “No, but I’m sure it’s harder than it looks.”

  “It looks impossible.”

  “Well, there you go,” he said. “Our hostess is the best I’ve ever seen at a seemingly impossible task. I think a well-deserved shout-out is perfectly in order.”

  “She’s not the hostess. She’s the owner.”

  Okay, hard-ass, he thought. Here’s a little obsequious, just for you. “Which means in addition to her dancing abilities, she must also be a hell of a businesswoman.”

  And he raised his glass, a risky move because what if she didn’t raise hers. But she did. Bingo!

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  A Post-Campaign Wave of Paranoia

  THERE WAS NO DENYING HE WAS CHARMING AS HELL AND WHAT HE SAID kind of made sense. Kind of, but it was an asshole’s argument and we both knew it.

  “What exactly are we toasting?” I said.

  “How about my willingness to totally change the subject if you’ll just give me a second to pull my foot out of my mouth and offer my sincere apologies for being a big, fat chauvinist pig.”

  I clinked my glass against his and grinned. How long had it been since I had heard anybody except my mom and her girls even use the words “chauvinist pig”? “I’ll drink to that,” I said, and I did.

  He did, too. “Your mother would probably have thrown me out the door.”

  “You remember my mother?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not so much that I remember her growing up. My first wife was a big fan. In fact, it was after one of your mother’s lectures at NYU that she found the courage to leave me.”

  “That must have been during her monogamy is the death of love phase. I’m sorry.”

  His smile never wavered. “Don’t be. I wasn’t very good at marriage or monogamy.”

  I’ve never understood the guys who think it’s appealing to tell you what a failure they’ve been with the other women they’ve had sex with. Who wants to be in that number?

  “Is that why you tried it again?” I said. “See if you could get it right?”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  “How’d that work out for you?”

  He laughed. “Not so hot. I think two’s my limit.”

  “Well, you know what they say.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Three’s the charm.”

  He laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You do that.”

  “I’m glad I ran into you,” he said. “Did the Rev tell you I’m coming by tomorrow to take a look at his cards?”

  “What cards?” The Rev had said materials. That was all I knew.

  “The cards he’s got stacked in the closet.”

  I must have looked as confused as I felt. “The Rev told me you and your assistant were coming by, but he didn’t say anything about cards in a closet.”

  He sat back, surprised. “You’ve never seen them?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He took a swallow of his drink and folded his arms on the table. “When your dad registered all those people to vote, in addition to the official application, he had them fill out an index card with their name, address, precinct, and anything else they wanted to say on it.”

  “To say about what?”

  “The historic moment, voting for the first time, whatever.”

  That sounded like the Rev. Always trying to translate and transcribe that intangible moment when people first decide to stand up. “Go on.”

  “Well, they’d give their application to the registrar and the Rev would keep the other card for himself. By the time they were done, he had one hundred thousand cards with new voters’ names on them.”

  It was dawning on me that this was the mailing list. The same one that had come between me and the Rev just a few months ago. Was Wes telling me that the well-guarded, much bragged about list was still a handwritten hodgepodge of index cards stacked in an office closet? I couldn’t help but smile. All the time we were arguing over what he should or shouldn’t do with it, it never crossed my mind that first it would have to be typed.

  “My dad put the old in old-school,” I said. “Are those the materials you’re coming to look at tomorrow?”

  He nodded, smiling in a way that could only be described as rueful. “I’m hoping he’ll agree to let me organize the list for him. Put it in some kind of useful form.”

  There was that little prickle again. “Useful to who?”

  “To him, first of all, and then to whoever he decides to share it with.”

  “Including you?”

  The place was starting to fill up. I wondered if it was the burgers or the coming karaoke.

  “Absolutely including me,” he said. “Look, I don’t do the kind of courageous work your father does or help make history like you just did. I market barbeque sauce and potato chips, soft drinks and the occasional malt liquor, which is not to say I don’t have some principles. I just turned down a campaign for a casket maker who was looking to crack the inner city market, no pun intended, because I’m not a ghoul, no matter what you’ve heard.”

  I wondered where he thought I would have heard that, but I just kept listening.

  “However, in addition to my other fine qualities, I would love to be able to tell my clients I could give them statewide, targeted exposure for their goods and services. In my business, a hit like that is worth a lot. I can help the Rev come into the twenty-first century and he can help me sell all the canned collard greens Moultrie, Georgia, can stand.”

  I had never tasted canned collard greens and hoped I never would, but I got the drift. His motivations were clear: One hand washes the other. Nothing more nefarious than good old-fashioned capitalism. Maybe Miss Iona and I were just riding a post-campaign wave of paranoia that saw enemies around every corner. Maybe he wasn’t a villain at all, but a good godson come to help the Rev regain his footing and come back strong. Even I knew that no politician can resist a mailing list like that, or the genius who gathered the names in the first place.

  “Well, I’ll tell you this,” I said, as the waitress emerged from the kitchen and headed our way bearing burgers and a mountain of fried sides. “That list isn’t going to do anybody any good where it is. If you can help him get it together, you have my blessings.”

  “Good enough,” he said, as the food’s arrival took precedence over any further conversation. “Help yourself to the fries.”

  Which, of course, I did.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Me and Mrs. Jones

  THEY WERE BOTH HUNGRY AND THE BURGERS WERE AS GOOD AS everybody said they were. Now that they had settled on a time for tomorrow’s visit, Wes was free to enjoy the evening and he ordered another round of drinks as the waitress whisked away their empty plates. Toni wasn’t going anywhere and things were moving along so well with Ida, he ventured a stroll down memory lane.

  “Do you have any growing up memories of me?”

  She sipped her beer. “As a kid, you mean?”

  “Yeah. I guess we saw each other a lot, our parents were back and forth all the time and your house is right around the corner, but I can’t call up a memory of us together.”

  “I was only eight when you got that schol
arship to Exeter,” she said. “You were twelve. Practically a grown man.”

  “To hear me tell it, a full-grown man.”

  She smiled. “I caught you making out on your back porch once,” she said.

  “Making out?”

  “Right there in broad daylight.”

  He laughed. “With who?”

  “I didn’t know her, but it was right before you went away. I was cutting through your yard as a shortcut, I knew your dad wouldn’t mind, and you were sitting on the back porch swing with this girl.”

  “What were we doing?” He was loving the way this conversation was going.

  “I told you, making out.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  She shook her head and he would have sworn she blushed a little. “The usual, I assume. I wasn’t trying to commit it to memory. I was on my way to a Brownie Scout meeting.”

  “Now, I should remember you in a little Brownie uniform.”

  Brandi was directing a couple of guys about how to set up for the karaoke. Wes smiled to himself; she was still in show business.

  “You know what I actually remember most about you?”

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “How much you hated being here.”

  The absolute truth of what she said took him aback. Had it been that obvious? Even at twelve? Before he could confirm her observation, or lie and deny it, Brandi took center stage and called for their attention.

  “All right, y’all! You ready to show me what you got?”

  The crowd, gathered at every available table as well as clustered two deep at the bar, yelled in one voice. “Yes!”