“Should I open this door?” I said.
“Depends on whether you’re a man or not.” Even drunk, Nelson didn’t slur his words.
I wasn’t in the mood to trade beatings, but maybe Nelson deserved his chance. I’d been craving some quality time with him for years. He was six-three and solid, with a passing resemblance to Richard Roundtree at his peak. He had to duck to walk into the house, since Alice had been petite and hadn’t built her doorway to accommodate strangers.
“Better judgment told me not to come here,” Nelson said. “But here I am. I have to know if it’s true.”
I almost laughed to myself. “Which part?”
“You knew he’d taken a gut shot, but you left him to chase Escobar.”
In my head, I saw Dad’s blood pooling on his shirt. Smelled it.
“I was following the orders of my CO,” I said. “That’s all you need to understand.”
“So it’s true,” he said, his red eyes blazing with disbelief. “Preach always said you’d be the death of him.”
I wondered if Nelson would be enough of an asshole to put me in jail for the fight he was starting at my house. “It’s not a good idea for us to talk right now,” I said.
“You’re so right about that,” Nelson said. “But I just couldn’t go another minute without making sure you understood the big picture, Tennyson.” His voice almost sounded warm when he said my name. “All that shit that’s on TV now? Mr. Good Time? Gigolo to the stars? He knew all that. There was a whole file on you. That madam? It came right to his desk. And do you know what Preach Hardwick—the most upstanding cop I ever had the privilege to work with—did with that file?”
Nelson ground his fist on my coffee table. “He squashed it. All of it was wiped away. You, the madam, the whole case. He soiled himself for you. He made himself a hypocrite for you. Pissed away his career—because his enemies used it against him. All that stress and strain before he retired? His heart attack? Congratulate yourself. He did it for you.”
I wished he’d hit me instead. Even if Nelson was exaggerating, it might not be by much. I’d suspected that Dad might have heard about my sex arrest in Hollywood as part of an ongoing sting, but I hadn’t known for sure. We had both avoided the subject.
“Is that all?” My voice was a monotone.
“No,” Nelson said. “Just so you know, I’m not the kind of prick who would come piss on somebody when they’ve just had a family tragedy. Not on an ordinary day. I’m sure you loved him in your own fucked-up way, and I respect that. But when I see you trying to capitalize on it, trotting out Sofia Maitlin to throw your name around—”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“It makes me sick,” Nelson went on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Physically ill. All those sermons Preach gave me about how you’d turned out all right were a load of horseshit.”
That time, Nelson missed his mark. I was glad to hear what Dad had said about me. That must have driven Nelson crazy.
“Get the fuck out of our house!”
My thoughts had come screaming to life but in Chela’s voice.
Chela was standing on the stairs, dressed in the baggy UCLA sweatshirt she’d put on the night she came back from Raphael. Seeing the sweatshirt brought that night back to life.
Nelson was startled to see Chela. Maybe he’d thought she wasn’t home, like Marcela, who was out shopping for clothes to wear on her interviews. For once, he was speechless.
“How dare you,” Chela said, marching down the steps. Her face was bright red with rage. “His father—my grandfather—just died. I’m going to report you to the chief.”
Nelson’s lips fell apart. Chela had him there. One call to the chief’s office would get him a formal tongue lashing and maybe worse.
“You remember Chela?” I said. “My daughter.”
None of the tabloids had named her, but the Enquirer had mentioned the existence of “a teen prostitute runaway” I’d raised since she was fourteen. When April brought the story to us, Chela cried for two hours straight. She had been avoiding school, and as far as I knew, she was avoiding calls from her boyfriend, Bernard. Chela had lost her privacy, too. I wanted to help her navigate the wreckage, but I was mired in mine.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that, young lady,” Nelson said. “You’ve been through—”
“You’re not sorry,” she said, continuing her march until she was toe-to-toe with him. “You didn’t care who heard it. You had to be a jerk. Well, guess what—this sucks for everybody, not just you. So grow up and leave us alone.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Nelson blinked, as if Chela had brought him back to sobriety. He gave me a long gaze. “I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I saw that Maitlin thing . . .”
“Not a problem,” I said.
Both of us might have been lying, or maybe not. We also both knew I wouldn’t report him to the chief. Ours was a family matter.
Nelson went outside to call himself a cab. I checked the peephole from time to time to make sure he didn’t try to climb into his car. I didn’t want any more death on my conscience.
“Thanks for that,” I told Chela. She was so upset she was shaking, but I didn’t try to hug her. She hadn’t come close enough for me to hug her since I told her Dad was dead.
“He’s wrong,” Chela said. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”
“That’s bull, Chela.”
“I was the one who wanted to find out who killed Maria. I’m the one who went to that club. Maria’s always been about the hustle, making a play. What else did I think she wanted?”
“She was your friend, Chela.”
“I wish I had never seen her!” Chela said, screaming again. But screams were better than silence. Her stoic wall was crumbling.
“It’s not Maria’s fault,” I said. “It’s not your fault. It’s Escobar’s fault.”
If I said it often enough, maybe I would believe it.
“But Ten, why?” she said. “Why didn’t you stop the bleeding? You could have saved him. We don’t understand.”
The “we,” I assumed, meant Marcela, who had studied enough medicine to know that Dad might as well have been dead when the bullet shredded his liver. But I hadn’t known the extent of the damage before I left him.
“He was tired of being sick, Chela,” I said. “Marcela might say she doesn’t understand, but she doesn’t want to accept it. He asked me to go. He knew what that meant.”
Chela turned away from me. I heard her sob.
We needed a team of therapists. I wouldn’t know where to begin.
“And now I have to talk to him,” Chela said, still crying. “He keeps calling me.”
“Who?” I said, right before I remembered Bernard.
I held Chela’s shoulders, and she didn’t pull away. She looked up at my face, and I saw my misery mirrored there, my twin. “This isn’t how you pictured it,” I said. “But this is what you wanted. You have your chance to tell the truth.”
“And then what?” Chela said.
“And then you’ll find out who Bernard really is.”
Chela stepped away from me, flicking her shoulders as if my touch itched. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but I kind of hate you right now.” Chela said it matter-of-factly. Nothing Lieutenant Nelson said could have hurt me more.
“I know,” I said. Join the club.
“It’s just a phase,” she said. “The first stage of grief is anger—did you know that? I’ve been researching. It’s so true. I want to kill all the fish in the tank and burn the house down.”
“Just give us warning,” I said.
I understood how being around others could feel like a chore. I’d barely spoken to April for five minutes since I’d been back in L.A.
“Is this really happening?” Chela said, the same question she’d asked me when I first called her with the terrible news.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s still really happening.”
&n
bsp; “It’s no big deal if Marcela wants to do that interview,” Chela said. “He wouldn’t care. She likes telling everybody how great he was. So what if she gets paid?”
I didn’t agree yet, but I was working on it. Chela sounded more sensible every day.
“I’m doing my best,” I said.
“Me, too,” Chela said. “So is Marcela. You should call April, by the way. She’s totally into you, and you barely talked to her at the funeral.”
“You call Bernard, I’ll call April.”
Chela didn’t smile, but her crying had stopped.
At least for another night.
WITH THE REWIND button in her head, Chela changed everything.
She never sees Maria standing in the crowd behind the set of Freaknik, or hears her calling “Che-LAAA,” because her voice gets lost in the noise. Maria gives up, thinking maybe it wasn’t really her. With her daughter in mind, Maria vows again that she’ll get her GED like she always said. She calls Mouse Girl and says she’ll skip going out to Club Phoenixx that night.
And Gustavo Escobar never sees Maria. And she never goes after him.
And the Captain isn’t dead.
And she has her life back.
As she stood in her jacket in the breezeway of the athletic center at Bernard’s church, Chela could picture the Miami sunshine, the fat crewman with his belly flopping, Ten’s ridiculous prop glasses. It could have happened the way she imagined it a hundred times over. There was no reason for the Captain to be dead.
Chela fiercely held her tears at bay while she stood in front of the wrestlers and their parents who filed out of the gym with oblivious contentment, grinning and laughing. She thought she could feel people glancing at her over their shoulders when they thought she was out of sight, wondering how she had the nerve to set foot on hallowed church grounds.
Chela had never understood the concept of wrestling at church. She played with a picture of a bearded Jesus pinning Judas down after a wicked throw, so funny it kept her tears away.
Bernard’s parents weren’t with him, as usual. Since Bernard had gotten his license to drive himself legally, his father had stopped coming to watch him wrestle at church youth-league tournaments. His father’s new job required him to fly to New Jersey a week a month, and that had killed wrestling for them. Usually, you could hear Mr. Faison yelling all the way outside.
His dad would have been proud. The first match had been embarrassingly long and ineffective for both wrestlers, but Bernard had looked like the Undertaker in the last match. Bam, bam, bam. That other Jesus freak had never known what hit him.
Bernard was one of the last ones out, since he stayed behind to talk to the coach. Bernard was a kiss-ass in every arena. All of his teachers loved him, too. He worked it without trying.
Bernard was suddenly in front of her, standing in the lamplight. He looked as if he’d grown an inch since she went to Miami, but he smelled like sweat and a dirty mat. His mouth hung open with shock. That was why so many other kids thought he was a geek; he’d let his eyes bug out, no matter who was watching.
“You saw the whole thing?” Bernard said. She was glad he didn’t start right off asking why she hadn’t returned his calls and texts. Apparently, when people close to you died, everyone else gave you a lot of room. Her mother had given her a hell of a lot of room after Nana Bessie died.
“Yeah,” Chela said. “That last match gives new meaning to the phrase ‘What would Jesus do?’ ”
Bernard made a sour face. He didn’t like jokes with the word Jesus in them, even if they were funny. “Is that some kind of atheist humor?”
“Agnostic,” she corrected. Maybe she didn’t believe in God the way church people did, but atheism sounded like its own religion. “Here’s atheist humor: ‘Life’s a bitch, and then you die.’ Get it?” Jokes made Chela feel better, even when no one laughed.
“Actually, I don’t get it,” Bernard said.
“Of course not,” she said. She felt herself trying to start a fight. Bernard annoyed her, acting as if he floated on balloons all the time, basking in Jesus. It was so childish. So what if his father had been assistant pastor at the church all those years? Think for yourself, she thought.
“I’m really sorry about your grandfather,” Bernard said. He stepped closer, but she noticed he didn’t hug her in front of witnesses. The coaches were locking up.
“Yeah, I know.” Chela didn’t want to talk about the Captain, but the next conversation was almost as bad. “So . . . it’s been crazy.”
“I figured. Can I drive you somewhere? Oh, wait—dumb question. Like you could have walked from your house. I didn’t know you knew the way here.”
“I didn’t,” Chela said. “I drove around like a jerk for a half hour.”
“We could grab some burgers, and I could bring you back.”
Chela shrugged. “I’m not hungry. Besides, I can’t leave my car in a church parking lot—you never know what kind of people are hanging out here.”
He looked at her as if he was trying to decide if she was kidding.
He would never bring it up, she realized. He would stand there and pretend he hadn’t heard anything, or that the National Enquirer wasn’t talking shit about her. Anybody who’d ever met her knew that she was the whore in the story.
“You’ve got nothing to say?” Chela said. “Just ‘Let’s get a burger’?”
“I thought it would be better to talk there.”
“Right, I want to bare my soul at Jack in the Box.”
“Why are you mad at me?” Bernard said. His brows furrowed with annoyance.
“It’s a stage,” she said. “Anger is the first stage of mourning.”
“Oh.” Bernard nodded, satisfied. “I read that somewhere.”
“It’s anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance,” she recited. Researching death was her favorite pastime on the internet. Considering that everyone in human history had died, she had expected to find more information on the subject.
“Denial’s next?”
“For me, maybe depression. That one seems to be the real bitch.”
One of the coaches, the younger one, glanced at Chela from the doorway behind them. Bernard stepped in front of Chela as if to try to shield her from his sight. He put his hand gently on her upper arm, the way the Captain’s doctors had when they had bad news. “I know where we can talk,” Bernard said. She was glad he had come up with a plan.
They didn’t walk much farther than around the corner of the building, but they were out of view of the gym and the parking lot. Suddenly, they were surrounded by squat, perfectly trimmed trees, midget trees that looked as if they’d been grown in an enchanted forest. Everything in the solar lamplight was green. Somewhere, water gurgled.
“This is our meditation garden,” Bernard said. “It’s Japanese, since we have a lot of Japanese members in our congregation. Makes you think of the Garden of Gethsemane, right?”
“Sure, whatever that is,” Chela said. Bernard often lapsed into a foreign language. She had her own language, too, and he had never heard a word of it.
“This is my favorite part of the church,” he said.
“Really? I thought it was sweaty mats.”
“My second favorite place, then. It’s easier to pray where it . . . looks like this.”
“Pretty,” Chela said.
“Exactly.”
Despite its cement backdrop behind them, the little garden did seem to have a magical hold on her. It wasn’t a long stretch of sparkling Miami beach, but it was a safe and quiet place.
“Ten meditates every day,” Chela said.
“I know,” Bernard said. “He told me.”
Chela looked at him sidelong, surprised. Since when did Ten and Bernard hang out?
“Just conversation while I was waiting for you,” Bernard said. “A long time ago. You know how parents are—trying to relate.”
It was strange to hear Bernard call Ten her parent. But she didn’t correct
him. How could she? Even the National Enquirer knew he was the guy who had saved her ass.
“It’s so crazy now,” Chela said.
“Yeah, I can’t imagine. How is Ten dealing with things?”
“Uh . . . like a robot,” Chela said. “Nobody’s having a lot of heart-to-hearts right now.”
“That sucks.”
“Actually, I like being left alone. It works well with my anger phase.”
A silence came, made larger in the garden. Chela decided to say the first thing that popped into her head. “I know what people are saying about me. And before you ask me anything, yes, it’s true.”
She dared a glance at Bernard, and he looked startled. He’d never believed it was true. He had waited to hear her side. “Oh,” he said.
“I wanted to tell you all along, but it was too gross. So think about all the highlights, and it’s probably true. I was a ho. A harlot. A whore. Pick your name for it.”
“I don’t have a name for it,” he said. “I guess . . . prostitute? But you were just a kid. I can’t believe people would—that a madam would—”
Mother must be miserable these days, with her business out in the streets, Chela thought. The tabloid had even found a photo of her that must have been taken thirty years ago, when she had darker hair and a young woman’s face. Mother was older than the Captain by now, she thought. Even tough old ladies got frail. Nana Bessie sure had.
“Bernard,” Chela said, trying to sound patient. “It’s an ugly world. She did me a favor.”
“A favor?”
“Yeah, she probably kept me from getting killed like . . .”
She stopped. He knew the rest.
“You’re so lucky Ten came along,” Bernard said.
“It wasn’t luck—she’s the one who called him,” Chela said. Mother wasn’t stupid; she had probably known what Ten would do when he found her. He wouldn’t have let Chela stay with her. Mother had arranged it for her.
“You sound like you’re defending her,” Bernard said.
“Life must be nice in Black-and-White Land, where you live.”
They both knew they were veering into more treacherous terrain. They were silent again. She and Ten had learned to leave the subject of Mother alone, too.
South by Southeast Page 20
