Samaritan

by Richard Price

  “You know he killed somebody, right?” nudging Freddy’s portrait.

  “What?” Ray straightened up a little. “When?”

  “Two years ago. In County. Stabbed some inmate in the heart with a shank made out of a sharpened toothbrush. Grand jury no-billed, said it was self-defense, but I heard rumors that it was business-related. Three-hundred-pound man, too.”

  “Fuck,” Ray hissed, his left hand starfished over his chest.

  “Do you know how physically hard it is to puncture a big man’s heart with a weapon like that? How determined you have to be?”

  “Stop.”

  “What,” Nerese said blandly.

  “Just . . .” Ray fanned the air between them as if erasing words on a blackboard.

  “In the hospital you said to me, ‘What if I had it coming.’”

  “I don’t remember saying that.”

  “Trust me, I was right there.”

  “Hey, I had a hole in my head.” Ray shrugged, but Nerese could tell he was good and freaked by what she had told him.

  “Did you talk to him yet?” he asked with strained casualness.

  “Who, Freddy? Unh-uh. I just got through with Carla. Next stop’s Danielle.”

  “Danielle,” he repeated.

  “She’s been ducking my calls for four days now, but I have my ways.”

  Ray opened his mouth, thought better of it, looked away.

  Nerese picked up the photo of Ruby and the black girl simultaneously levitating off the hardwood during tip-off.

  “You see her yet?”

  “I called her last night from the hospital. I told her to give me a week. I’ll be in better shape in a week. The poor kid feels things deep as a river. I don’t want to shake her up unduly.”

  “She’s scared for you, you know.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks to you.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, Nerese thinking, Let him stew over Freddy, then just start to leave, abandon him to his secrets, see what that pulls out of him.

  She got up and walked to the window. “I would think you could see the World Trade Center from here.”

  “Not really,” his voice more fluid now with the change of subject. “It’s too far north. At night you can see the floodlights for the cranes; sometimes you get that dense wet-ash smell if the wind is right, but that’s it.”

  She watched out of the corner of her eye as Ray furtively tried to wrestle his right hand free of its shrimp-head curl.

  “So what was it like being a cop around here at that time?” he asked, his face a little wooden with the strain of his efforts.

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” Nerese said, walking back and retaking her seat next to him on the sofa. “You tell me why you needed to pull seventy-three hundred dollars in cash out of the bank a few weeks back and I’ll tell you what it was like around here when all hell broke loose.”

  “I’m not bullshitting you, Tweetie, there’s nothing there for you. Just drop it.”

  “If it’s nothing, why don’t you just tell me what it was for, get me off your back?”

  “Why? Because it’s my life.”

  “All right.” She shrugged, letting the marlin run.

  “You know, growing up, there was this kid a year or two older than me, Franklyn Brown,” Ray said, giving up on straightening out his hand. “Had cerebral palsy, a mild case I guess, it only affected one side of his body, but he used to walk around with his hand curled up. Left hand, I think, and, being the sweethearts that we were back then, me and all my friends, we used to call him Captain Hook.” Ray looked down at himself. “It’s almost enough to make you believe in karma.”

  “So what are you going to do now, Ray?” Nerese asked, angling for another way in.

  “Me?” palming his chest. “Eventually I’ll probably go back to LA and start over, but not now, not yet. No more cutting and running.”

  “What do you mean, ‘cutting and running’?”

  “I need to see things through. You can’t not see things through,” talking to himself now more than to her.

  “What things.”

  “I don’t know. Certain relationships. That class at the Hook. I want to pick up where I left off with those kids. That was a good thing for me to do.”

  “What relationships.”

  “Ruby. Others.” He scooped up Nerese’s two-card gambit and turned it facedown on the table.

  “Others like who—Danielle?” Could he be that stupid?

  “No. No way.”

  “Then who. Salim? That kid Salim?”

  Ray shrugged. “Mostly I’m thinking of that class.”

  “That was two hours a week.”

  “So I’ll do more. I just want to make a dent while I can. And I can as long as I have enough dough not to do anything for money. When the money runs out?” He gestured with his left hand to the framed Emmy nomination on the wall. “I can always go back to that. Some dopey show or other. TV writers, we’re like baseball managers, two minutes after you get canned by one team you get picked up by another, because there’s only so many of you floating around.”

  Nerese was still hung up on “certain relationships,” but she sensed that to push further right now would shut him down.

  “So you won the Emmy, huh?”

  “Just nominated. You ever watch the show?”

  “Not all the way.”

  “More power to you,” he said, reaching into his shirt pocket, uncapping a vial and popping two pills without water.

  “What was that?”

  “Vicodin.”

  “For a headache?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You have a headache?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re not supposed to have headaches.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “Then you need to go back to the hospital.”

  “It’s not a headache. They put a hole in my head. It hurts.”

  “And why are they giving you painkillers for it? That could mask symptoms.”

  “She’s a doctor, too.”

  “And it’s addictive.”

  “And a counselor.”

  “Popping Vicodin,” she said out loud to herself. “Ray, don’t you see what’s happening to—” she cut herself off; enough with the ragging.

  She weighed getting up to leave, decided it was neither the time nor the right note.

  “So tell me about the show,” she said.

  “About Brokedown?”

  “It’s about this inner-city high school,” making a circular unfurling gesture to get him going.

  “Hang on.” He struggled to his feet, walked halfway to the window, then turned to face her, drawing himself up as if he were about to deliver a recitation. “OK. Right. Inner-city high school, the trials and tribulations, like, ‘Rashaad, you have every chance of getting that scholarship, why are you wearing gang colors?’

  “‘Chlorine, you’re fifteen years old. You’re too young to have that baby.’

  “‘I don’t know how that gun got in my locker, Mr. Johnson! It ain’t mine, I swear!’

  “‘Chamique, you did not get that black eye from walking into a door, and I will be coming to your house tonight and find out what’s going on.’ ‘Please, please, Miss Rosenberg, don’t do that! I’m clumsy! That’s all, I’m clumsy!’

  “You know, one from column A, one from column B. It’s on a teen-based network, eight p.m. drama following four half-hour black comedies, and you know, every episode has its pat little lesson about tolerance or the hard-knock life or whatever. And I’m at best a run-of-the-mill writer but writing for TV is more like learning how to dance a particular dance. You can have a little variety here and there, a little quirky move now and then, but basically it’s one, two, cha-cha-cha over and over, so hey, I can do that.” He shrugged. “I mean, there’s probably a few well-trained dolphins out there that can do that.”

  He closed his eyes and expelled a lungful of air, Nerese sensing a deflecting performan
ce coming up, designed to both keep her here and keep her away.

  “Anyways, like . . .” His eyes popped open. “OK, for example, the show that I worked on that got the nomination? The plot, the thing, centers around this basketball hotshot, the kid is first-team all-ghetto, has like fifty college scouts at his house, cock of the walk, banging all the cheerleaders, all the Urkels are lining up to do his homework for him, everything’s all good and well, except, five days before graduation? His English teacher realizes that the kid never handed in his paper on The Great Gatsby.

  “Now this teacher, Mr. Montone, he’s supposed to be this old-time hard-nose dinosaur from back in the day when the school was predominantly white—and even though a lot of teachers have looked the other way as far as this kid and class requirements went, this crusty old sports-hating sonofabitch refuses to give him any kind of grade for the year unless he coughs up a paper. Not only that, but he calculates that in order for it to be a passing grade? This paper has to be worth at least a B.”

  “You know, I think maybe I did see that one,” Nerese said, thinking maybe she actually had.

  “Believe me, even if you didn’t, you did. Anyways, the actor who plays Mr. Montone, he had gone AWOL, you know?” Ray mimed upending a bottle. “Nowhere to be found. This ex-student of mine, the producer? He looks at me, says, ‘Fuck it, the character’s only been on twice, nobody’ll remember. You’re Mr. Montone. Go get fitted for a bow tie.’ And I’m like, Me? Shaker says the same thing he said about the writing, you’ll learn by doing. Next thing I know someone slaps a SAG card in my hand and I’m wearing makeup.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Nerese encouraging him, letting out a little more line.

  “The episode centered around two big scenes. One, I confront this kid about the paper. He’s all full of himself, ‘Yo man, I was touring colleges, playing in the McDonald’s All-Star tournament. I din’t have time to write no paper.’ You know, and then I say, ‘Well, you better make time, Mr. Jefferson’—I’m always calling my students Mr. and Miss—‘because if you don’t, you won’t graduate.’

  “He’s like, ‘Aw man, that Gatsby book, it ain’t got nothing to do with around here. Why you stressing me? Why you standing in the way of my education?’

  “And I’m, these aren’t the exact words, but, I’m like . . .” Ray drew himself up again and went all stern for her, tap-dancing for his life. “‘Mr. Jefferson? I don’t give a damn about basketball, I am not impressed by athletes, I am not impressed by celebrity. I am impressed by accountability, by personal integrity and by personal initiative, none of which you are exhibiting to me at this moment. And as far as getting in the way of your education? Unlike many a faculty member in this school, I absolutely refuse to turn a blind eye when it comes to your obligations in my classroom.’

  “‘And let me tell you, those colleges that are so, so ardently wooing you? For the most part, they could care less about your education. You’re simply an athlete to them, a source of income and prestige, and mark my words, Mr. Jefferson’—I think I actually used that expression, ‘mark my words.’ Anyways, ‘Mark my words, Mr. Jefferson, once you leave this building for the last time, I seriously doubt that anyone will ever make an academic or intellectual demand on you again beyond memorizing a playbook, which at your age, as far as I’m concerned, at your tender and unformed age, is both borderline criminal and a crying shame. And believe me, if you allow this, this, pampering to continue, you will suffer for it. So hand in that paper, Mr. Jefferson, and then, if you choose to cruise through the next four years, there’ll be no one and nothing to stop you. Certainly not me.’”

  “Damn, Ray, you’re good.” Nerese, despite her awareness of the underpinning here, was starting to enjoy the show for its own sake.

  “Why thank you,” he said. “Anyways, the kid Jefferson, he’s storming out and I call to him, ‘Mr. Jefferson, four years from now when your athletic career most likely comes to an end, what do you envision doing with the rest of your life? What will you be prepared for?’

  “And he hesitates just a tick, like I had laid some serious food for thought on him, then he storms out.

  “I mean, the reality of it is, is the kid could do a million things after four years of college ball—go into coaching, go into construction, be a cop, I mean what is any college idiot prepared for after four years? At least this kid would have some glamour, some prestige to his name, right? Give him a job in the alumni office, whatever . . .

  “Anyways, so word goes out that Mr. Montone is flunking Hammurabi Jefferson—big-ass hue and cry. Everyone’s calling for his head, he’s a racist, he’s this, he’s that.

  “So the second big scene is this huge meeting two days before graduation, demanded by the PTA and half the faculty. What’s this dinosaur still doing teaching in this school. He doesn’t like it here, he’s contemptuous of our children, he doesn’t understand the day-to-day reality of life around here, he doesn’t know what it means for one of our kids to get a four-year scholarship. Off with his head, off with his head . . .

  “And I’m standing up there on the auditorium stage in front of this mob, I’m not saying shit. Just taking it in, got a face like a rock, I shall not be moved, racial politics be damned. You want my resignation? You got it, but this kid is not passing English. I mean, this is all said without, you know, just by my expression, thank God, because I’m an actor like you’re a ballerina,” Ray immediately flinching after he said that, but Nerese just shrugged it off: Tell me something I don’t know.

  “So anyways, everyone’s going all bughouse on me and just as everything is reaching like this crescendo of outrage? I look up over the heads of all my detractors, my eyes, the camera goes to the back of the auditorium and like slowly everybody turns to see what I see and there’s the kid, Hammurabi Jefferson, just standing there and when it’s all silent? He starts walking down the center aisle to the podium and, oh shit . . . He’s got some paper in his hand and he comes right up to me, says, ‘Here,’ and hands me his report on The Great Gatsby. I’m all like thunderstruck, the crowd is wobba-wobba, you know, milling and murmuring, this kid says to me, and this actor, Tariq Howard, was a lot better than he had to be, he says, ‘Yo, I been thinking about what you said, Mr. Montone, and I realized that you was demanding stuff of me that I should have been demanding of myself all along, man. You were demanding that I be responsible, that I have respect for myself and that I have standards for myself. Man, I been skating through this school since day one, but that’s gonna stop. Next year at college? Wherever I go, I don’t care how much slack they’re ready to cut me, man, I’m gonna get me the best education I can. I’m telling you, the next four years? I’m gonna make you proud of me.’ Then he turns and faces the PTA, his parents, the other faculty. ‘I’m gonna make you all proud of me, and I ain’t talking about basketball.’

  “And then, right back at me, he says, ‘I tell you, Mr. Montone, whatever you think of that paper I wrote? Far’s I’m concerned, you’re the best damned teacher in this school.’

  “At which point I’m just supposed to give this terse nod of, I don’t know, communion, vindication, but what I do instead is, I just burst into tears on the set. I couldn’t help it. I was so, this actor kid, the scene, it just got to me, and I started to fucking sob and everybody’s like, stunned, all the extras, the PTA people, the director, the cameraman, the script supervisor’s flipping pages like crazy, but they keep shooting because I guess my crying is so, so gut-wrenching. I even heard somebody say, ‘Fucking great.’ I guess it looked like here’s this die-hard teacher Montone who’s been bucking the social winds for years refusing to give in, he’s on the verge of annihilation and he finally gets validation at his darkest loneliest hour or who the fuck knows, I just can’t stop crying. Finally the kid, the actor playing the kid, he wings it, takes it on himself to come on up to where I am and hug me, and the show fades on that image.

  “And Tweetie, it freaked me out like you can’t believe. I was so scared at
how I lost control. I . . . And the reason I’m telling all this to you instead of showing it to you on video is that I never watched it. I never wanted to watch it. I don’t own it, I never saw it when it ran, nothing. And I had offers to act after that. No way. I’d just as soon be a rodeo clown.

  “And, oh! You want to know about actors? After we wrapped, I was still so shaken and I wanted to connect with the kid who played Hammurabi Jefferson, somehow keep the communion going but like in real life? You know, find out what he thought happened between us? So I go to him and I say, ‘Jeez, Tariq, I’m sorry I lost control like that. It was so powerful. What do you think . . .’

  “And he looks at me, big grin, says to me, ‘Yeah, thanks, I thought I nailed it,’ turns and goes off with one of his honeys. And to this day I don’t know what happened to me, I swear to God.”

  But Nerese got it, was starting to get it. The guy fell apart because the moment was about gratitude; he had manufactured a situation that was to the heart of him and then personally, physically played it out like it was the real thing.

  Video arcades and football instead of libraries and Shakespeare, coming out of the blue to pay for Reggie Powell’s funeral, volunteer teaching in that shithole of a school, playing some kind of mentor-muse-patron of the arts with Salim El-Amin . . . And taking up with the jailbird’s wife. The constant white-black casting made her uncomfortable—no, made her angry; but that anger was tempered by the intuition that this compulsion in him wasn’t really about race; that the element of race, the chronic hard times and neediness of poor blacks and Latinos was primarily a convenience here, the schools and housing projects of Dempsy and other places like a stocked pond in which he could act out his selfish selflessness over and over whenever and wherever the opportunity presented itself, and that he was so driven by this need, so swept away by it, that he would heedlessly, helplessly risk his life to see it played out each and every time until he finally drew the ace of spades, or swords, and got the obituary that would vindicate him, bring tears to his eyes; key word, “beloved,” if only he could figure out some way to come back from the dead long enough to read it.