by Amy Field
She closed her book and stood up. She found herself following him. He descended a set of stairs, and then stopped to look at a group of books in the local history section. She ducked behind a bookshelf, trying not to be seen. Then he headed downstairs into the basement. She followed him down there, as well. When she reached the downstairs area, she stopped for a moment. He was not there. It was though he had disappeared.
Laura took two steps forward while she looked around for him. Then, a large muscular arm wrapped itself around her chest. A male voice whispered in her ear, “You got some business with me?”
Her heart seized up all at once. Memories that she kept hidden away within herself sprang to the surface like wild animals with sharp claws and dripping fangs.
There were so much rope and a man that breathed heavy through his nostrils, and sometimes through his mouth. That man had sour breath that smelled like rancid onions. He gave off other odors as well, which were far less savory. He had... he had...
She struggled against the man’s grip to get free while she tried to shake off the memories that had come to her so suddenly, and unbidden. The man’s grip tightened for a moment. She feared that he wouldn't ever her go. A cry arose in her throat, and then died as soon as he released her. She stumbled forward, and then turned to face him.
A mistrustful expression had come across his face. When he squinted his eyes- as he did now- he looked like a man who never had enjoyed anything close to friendship in his life. He looked like someone who had lived his life alone for so long that his solitude had enveloped him in a quiet, restrictive embrace. Even though she felt unsafe around him and her instinct was telling her to get the hell out of there, there was also something that drew her to him. She had a brief thought that she was a moth on the point of burning herself.
She said, “No, I um... uh…”
She trailed off, unable to finish. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was doing following a strange man in a bookstore who did not look as though he belonged there. He looked like he belonged on a street corner where people beat each other up for the most trivial of reasons. She saw him with a baseball bat or a gun in his hand. She knew that she should have walked away from him. That would be have been the correct choice, she felt. Yet, her legs would not lift themselves off the ground. Her body did not want to travel away from him. There was something primal, something instinctive about the attraction she experienced. She couldn’t explain it, but there it was all the same.
He said, “Girl, what you playin' at? You tryin' to get me angry? Cause you well on your way.”
She said hated herself for stumbling over her words and not just coming straight to the point. That was, of course, that she even knew what the point was to begin with. She said, “Um well, I... it’s just, I think you’re interesting-looking.”
She blushed after she said it. Her cheeks became hot. She suddenly wanted to crawl into a hole and ignore the world for a little while. Seeing him scrutinize her made her feel even shorter than he was. He was taller than her by a head and a half. He was what Laura might have called - in another life that was - obnoxiously tall. She had always found herself intimidated by men who were significantly taller than herself. That, she reflected, comprised far too high a percentage of the population than she wished.
His eyes went suddenly wide. His features betrayed a split second of shock that she did not miss. In that split second, she perceived that no one had ever told him how attractive he was. She saw that he had spent his whole life around people who had put him down and made him feel bad about himself. That, she supposed, was what had caused him to be mistrustful towards others. If he had never been happy around other people, he never would have seen any reason to believe that other people could play a constructive role in his life.
Then, just as suddenly as it had disappeared, the hardened mask that he wore over his face returned. She would have missed the transition if she had not been paying attention. A sense of wonder passed through her. She had never before seen someone open themself up so plainly before her. She saw people every day of her life. They were ordinary people going about their daily business. Perhaps they were good, or perhaps they were not. She could never tell either way. People never allowed themselves to be truly known to each other unless a close friendship developed. For that reason, she found it extraordinary that he should in an instant reveal so much about himself.
He said, “Attractive? The hell you say. I ain’t no attractive nobody. I’m a thug from Harlem. Always was, always will be. You know Harlem, lady girl? Them some mean streets, let me tell what.”
The longer that she stood before him, the more her courage rallied. Under other circumstances, she might have continued to mutter until he walked away from her. Something was different this time. She wanted to speak with him. That was unusual enough, the way her life had gone. She typically struggled through so much social anxiety and depression that she had trouble getting of bed, preparing her meals, or going to sleep at regular hours. It was only by chance that she was in the bookstore to get her weekly cut of hot chocolate. That was the only luxury she afforded herself. Most weeks, it was all she had the energy for.
She said, “I’ve never been Harlem. What’s it like?”
He let out an exasperated breath. He said, “Shoot girl, you don’t know? Got to be a man couldn’t live there without he was ripping off somebody. It’s a den of thieves. Some single mothers caught in between here and there. They got no place else to go.”
“Were you raised by a single mother?”
He eyed her up and down. She shivered, sure that he was undressing her in his mind. He said, “You just full of questions. Here you be asking me all this stuff, and I ain’t even told you my name yet. How’s that for a barrel of fish?”
“A barrel of fish? You mean like sardines?”
He put a single hand on his hip. The stance he adopted set her mind of a man exasperated with his environment. He said, “Naw, I ain’t talking no sardines. I’m talking like, I came from a bad place. I’m a bad man. What you want to do socializing around with somebody like me anyway?”
“I told you. I…”
He interrupted her before she could finish. He said, “Yeah, you told me. You find me attractive. 'Cept I ain’t no attractive person. Don’t know why you keep going on about that. Nobody and nothing never did or said anything positive about me before. The world I live in- it’s an unforgiving world. You get your head cut off just lookin' at somebody wrong. God forbid you ever try to play cards. That ain’t never happenin', no way no how.”
Curiosity got the better of her. She didn’t even know the name of the man in front of her. Yet, it seemed that he was willing to answer her questions while she greatly wished to ask them. She said, “What did you do all your life if no one ever did anything good for you then?”
He shrugged, as though the answer did not matter to him. She could see that it did. He said, “Been up to Coxsackie for a five-year stretch. B&E, Aggravated, you know the drill. When I got out, they put me in this damned halfway. Wasn’t much different, just didn’t have no iron bars. Couldn’t have no cell phone, couldn’t step off the porch, couldn’t make my own money. Could hardly do nothing without permission. So I said fuck that and left. That was six or seven years ago, seems like. I ever step foot in New York State again, somebody gonna put the handcuffs on me.”
The references to New York made her confused. She lived in Concord, New Hampshire. The bookstore she entered was a locally owned and operated business run by a handful of people- two women and one man- who had decided that the old business model of selling books alone was not good enough to make a profit. They sold cookies, subs, sandwiches, bowls of soup, coffee, T-shirts, audio books, mugs, and vintage books that she thought were overpriced. She returned to the bookstore every Saturday because she wanted to try and make an effort at living in the real world. Even if it meant sweating nervously in front of a group of strangers that she knew didn’t care about her one way or the ot
her, she wanted to try. She had to try, or else her life would devolve into passing time from waking to sleeping. In between, there would be nothing. If there was nothing, she was sure that she would one day kill herself out of boredom.
She had been just on the point of ordering a cup of hot chocolate when she saw the man enter the bookstore. She had been presented with a choice: she could ignore him or follow him. She had not even ordered a cup of hot chocolate before she decided to follow the man.
She was on the point of asking him what he was doing in New Hampshire when she checked herself. That, she thought, would be taking it one step too far. Instead, she said, “What’s your name?”
“Shoot, girl. What do you want to know my name for? Names don’t matter. Only numbers. We all numbers in the system. Some of them eight numbers, some of them five numbers, some of them more. We’re just, what you call it, random bits of mathematics floating through the world. That’s all we is. My name? Huh. Might as well ask me my shoe size.”
“I’m not asking you what your shoe size is. I’m asking you what your name is. People attach great importance to their names. You take pride in hearing your name spoken in a compliment. You get angry when someone uses your name to insult you. Your name is who you are. No one can take that away from you, if you don’t want them to.”
The man crossed his arms over his chest. That only made his chest appear even more muscular than she thought it was. He said, “You ain’t got no idea, do you?”
She said, “No, I don’t. So why don’t you tell me?”
He waved a hand at her in a gesture of dismissal. He said, “Girl, you crazy. I don’t know why I’m talking to you.”
He turned away from her. Before he could walk away, an impulse shot through Laura’s body. She didn’t understand then what it was that caused both her hands to reach out, or what caused her fingers to close around his wrist.
The man reacted as if bitten by a snake. He pulled his arm back, holding his wrist. He said, “Don’t touch me. Don’t you touch me.”
“Will you tell me what your name is?”
He let out another sigh. That one was less pronounced than the first. He said, “Look, you don’t know what you’re getting into here. I can’t be trying to be friendly with anyone. It always turns out bad. People in my life, they get hurt.”
“Is that any reason not to try?”
And then again there it was- that flicker of change across his face. It happened in an instant and was gone. Laura was not entirely sure at that moment that she saw things correctly. She hoped that she didn't see what she wanted to see- what she hoped to see.
He said, “Why don’t we sit down and talk about this.”
Laura thought that was the best idea that she had heard in some time.
Chapter 2
The bookstore had once been two separate properties with a wall between them. When he bought the store, the owner had knocked down the wall that stood between what was now the reading area and the upper level where the store kept all its literature and literary criticism. A large red book that must have been seven hundred pages long bore the title, “Feminisms.” The titles of other books could not even be discerned. Some books were so valuable that a bookmark with the price printed on it stuck out from the pages. There were old books and new books alike. There were books of so many different colors that they all blended to create a cornucopia of musty white paper bound together between hardback and paperback covers.
A set of tables had been arranged in a row down a terrace that overlooked the reading area. One of the tables was occupied. A young woman with blonde hair that cascaded down over her shoulder relaxed in a tall chair. She held a book in front of her face. A steaming cup of tea sat on the table in front of her. Notebooks and papers of all sorts were splayed out in front of her. A black graphite pencil lay tucked behind her ear. She looked up when Laura passed her. Then she pretended not to notice the man with tattoos all over his arms.
Laura sat down at the table farthest away from everyone else. The man sat down across from her. That was a positive sign. He had another chance to run away from her while she was leading him up a set of stairs and down a narrow walkway. He had not run. He had kept following her. She held out hope that she might get the bottom of why it was that she found herself attracted to him. There had to be a reason for it. She wanted to know what that reason was.
He sat down, then put his elbows on the table. He interlocked his fingers and looked down. He said, “My name’s Nathaniel Whitcomb. Like one of them proper English dudes with his tea and shit. Nobody never cared enough to ask me what my name was before.”
She bit her bottom lip, wanting to tell him that she cared even while she knew that was a ridiculous thing to say. He would never believe that she cared anything for him, not after they had just spent a short time together. Instead, she said, “Nathaniel. It’s a really good name. It suits you.”
“Oh yeah? Nobody thought so before. I don’t know if I feel some kind of way about that. It just doesn't seem quite right.”
“It is right. At least to me.”
He looked away from her. He said, “Yeah okay, you say so.”
She decided to change the subject to keep him from being uncomfortable. She said, “How did you end up - how did you pronounce it - Coxie”
“Coxsackie. Like I told you, it was B&E and aggravated assault. They were too separate incidents. For B&E, I would have just got two years seeing as how it was my first stretch of time served anywhere. Now it just so happened that I had an argument with somebody right around that same time. This was a violent argument. Some fightin' and such. Nothing too major, just what happens when you live in the hood. People destroy each other, much as they can. Onliest thing to do is get up on out of there.
“Now the breaking and entering, that was me tryin' to get back something that got stolen from me. That was a little computer I picked up out of a pawnshop. I knew the man who took it from me. A dirty old bastid, he was. I never had any problem breaking into his crib to steal back what was mine. Just so happened that temptation got the better of me, and I stole some stuff that wasn’t mine. Least I tried to. He woke up and came charging out of his bedroom with a shotgun. I bolted right on out there with my computer in my hands. I dropped the television that I’d been trying to steal. That was a thirty-four-inch flat screen jawn. The screen broke open like an egg. They were glass and bits of stuff everywhere. This man who stole from me, his name was Jenorious, he started hollering like to raise the dead. I just got out of there fast as I could.
“The poh-lice, they came for me some days later. Turned out, they was two criminal complaints against me. Now look at me, I’m a big black man. You think I stand a chance in a white man’s court? Hell no, I never would. So I plead guilty right on the spot. They dropped the destruction of property charged if I promised to serve the other two charges. There wasn’t really no choice. When a black man shows up in court, it don’t matter what he say. He’s guilty. He gone be found guilty even if he doesn’t say so. Best thing is, just take the reduced sentence and start counting the time until I can get out.
“Now you might not believe me if I told you, but they decided I was some kinda security risk. Them court people, they don’t seem to understand that fightin' is just a thing people do in the hood. You walk down the street, any time of day or night, you always gone hear somebody arguing with somebody else at the top of they voice. Everybody out there is all wound up with tension. Some people just need to let it out once in a while, you feel me?”
Laura listened with growing interest. She had never met anyone who lived through prison. All she knew about it was what she had seen on TV shows and read in books. She said, “I think I know what you mean.”
He continued, “Okay. All right. So there I am on the prisoner bus chained up like some kind of slave or something. That there was a long ride. Coxsackie ain’t close to Harlem, not by a dog’s mile. That place was full of liars and cheats. Can’t trust nobody in the
prison. Especially not them guards. They got what you call a free license to hit somebody with that nightstick at any time. That’s what they do. They shout and hit and punish. That’s all they know. Even if you obey all the rules, every so often, a spark of individuality gone come out of you. People can’t help it. Just the way we are. Leastways, that’s how I am.
“Prison ain’t a place for individuals. Nor is the damn halfway house. In the future, when we make robots or some shit, we not gone keep them in our houses. We just gone throw them in prison. They be right at home there. Do this, do that, stand in a line, don’t do that, pay attention, whatever the fuck. I got tired of that life fast. Within the first two weeks, I got tired of it. All I could do was sit there and count the days till I got out. Then when I did get out, I found out some things. Let me tell how it is.
“A man never really gets out of prison. You might think that criminal background check ain’t nothing when you ain’t got nothing on your record. But when you tryin' to get a job, put your life together and such, some private investigator somewhere has the power to literally keep you from doing that. It ain’t fair. It ain’t even close to being fair. If prison is paying your debt to society, how come I can’t do nothing when I get out? Why am I still stuck to my past? I already let all that go, long time ago. You tell me - why can’t I do nothin' or get nothin' but what somebody give me? It’s humiliating. I ain’t no invalid on Medicare. I’m a grown man. I wanna work for what I have, be responsible for myself. If that fool Jenorious hadn’t shown up in my life, I’d be just fine. Never would have known no different about prison or nothing. I guess in a society where people ain’t allowed to make their money, they just gotta get up and take it from wherever they can. I don’t know; it seems like a sad thing to me.”
