Do or Die

by Grace F. Edwards

  We had gotten Sara Lee to the hospital Friday and the following Monday evening, when Tad stopped by to see me, I had the not-so-pleasant experience of watching his eyebrows scrunch up, his lips flatten into a straight line. And as best I could, I tried to ignore the ominous throat-clearing sounds as if he were gearing up for a speech before a joint session of Congress.

  Actually, it was his eyes that did it. It was his eyes. The warmth drained away and glaciers seemed to form around the irises. The look was more effective than any words he could have mustered.

  I should’ve felt chastened, or something, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I knew I had done the right thing and that, I thought defensively, was that.

  We sat in the living room, he on the sofa and me in the chair facing him, listening to the intermittent sounds of Dad’s bass floating up from his studio. A recording of a piano solo by Ozzie accompanied him, filling in the space. Over the weekend Dad had called several times before Ozzie had finally picked up the phone late Sunday night. Few words were exchanged and Ozzie had said that that was the way he wanted it.

  He had hung a DO NOT DISTURB sign on himself, the same way Chrissie had done aboard ship, except Ozzie had a real tragedy to deal with. Chrissie had only her smart-ass self.

  “Can I offer you something to drink?” I said, surprised at the calm formality of my invitation. I gazed at his profile, watched his brows unknit slightly even though the jaw muscles remained tight enough to bend steel. He mumbled something, a sound which I loosely interpreted to mean yes, and I went to the bar to fix a Walker and water for him and an Absolut and orange for myself (double shot to calm my one last nerve).

  This time when I returned to the sofa, I sat beside him, but minutes later we were still sipping in silence. At least I was.

  “Mali,” he finally whispered, the traces of anger gone but replaced by something I couldn’t name. “Mali, I don’t know how else to impress upon you, to make you understand the danger you place yourself in, when you …”

  I listened quietly, I really did, but he must have seen something in my expression when he caught my glance. A look that said, “Yes, yes, I hear, I understand, but you know how I am and that’s why—partly why—you love me, right? Am I right?”

  No answer because I couldn’t ask. As angry as he was, I wasn’t about to step out on that particular limb. He might have surprised me with an answer I didn’t want to hear.

  In the silence, I listened to the clink of ice cubes falling together as he shifted the glass from one hand to the other. And I heard the sound of irritation as he drew in a deep breath.

  Finally (and formally), he placed the glass on the low table next to the package he had brought and rose from the sofa with military precision. I remained seated and looked up to gaze at a stranger, someone I’d never seen before.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” he said evenly.

  I remained on the sofa as if I’d been planted and I did not look around, even when the door slammed shut behind him.

  Well, I thought. And thought some more. What to do? I sat there for several minutes waiting for the sound of the bell. So I could run to the door and hear him say, “I forgot something.” And I’d say, “Oh. Your package.” And he’d say, “No. Not that. I forgot this.” And he’d look long and hard and would melt and I’d step close, close, the extraordinary vision of him blurred by tears of repentance and passion, and I’d feel his arms slip to my waist and his mouth begin to explore the curve of my neck and finally my mouth would open in a deep breath and …

  But there was no bell, dammit! He was gone. I sat there staring at his drink, barely touched. And at my own glass, as clean as if I had washed it. Even the ice cubes were gone. I glanced at the unopened package on the table near his glass. These were the pictures we had taken on the cruise, pictures that we were supposed to look at and maybe laugh over together.

  The packet was thick, probably held about a hundred photos because we had snapped and clicked and flashed and posed and smiled and vogued the entire seven days. Pictures port, starboard, fore, and aft. Pictures in the Chart Room, with its concert-grand pedal harp, and snapshots of the two of us seated at the Chappell grand piano, an impressive walnut antique that had once graced the ballroom of the RMS Queen Mary and was probably worth more than the QE2 itself. In the 1950s, the piano had been stolen. This huge piano, which weighed close to a thousand pounds, had simply vanished when the ship was docked in New York. It had taken twenty years to recover it, traced by its serial number to a secondhand shop in Chelsea.

  I stared at the packet, trying to imagine other scenes and bits of information without disturbing the wrapping. The minute we’d returned to New York, Tad had put the film in the shop and we had planned to reminisce about those good times and plan for more.

  Maybe I should wait, not look at them until he comes back, then we can share the memories …

  Share what??

  It was Mama’s voice. Just when I needed to hear her.

  Girl, if you’re waiting to exhale, you’ll die of respiratory failure. Didn’t I teach you anything? Open up that package. Give you something to do besides sitting there moaning and groaning like an old woman. And even old women don’t do that nowadays. All that is definitely not healthy. Get yourself together and get real. So the man’s angry, upset, hurt, provoked, offended. So what. Too bad. He shouldn’t be surprised at anything you do and you shouldn’t be surprised that he’s angry. You know him as well as he knows—thinks he knows—you. Come on. I raised a better child than this.

  And so you did, Mama. So you did.

  I broke the tape on the package, turned it upside down and the packets slid out. I opened the first envelope and stared at the photo of Chrissie posing in front of her cabin door, one hand on the knob and the other on her hip. I flipped to the next photo and there she was again, smiling her tacky smile straight into the camera. The phone rang as I was about to shred the pictures and I snatched the receiver from the cradle.

  “Well?”

  “Well, my goodness, girl. Do I have the right number or are you not accepting unsolicited calls this evening?”

  “Elizabeth?”

  “Yes. Should I hang up and try again?”

  “No. No. But I’m damned pissing fighting mad,” I said.

  “I can hear that. Come on down to Perk’s and talk about it. I’m sitting at the bar.”

  Through my own anger, I heard the strain in her voice. “Elizabeth, what’s going on with you? Are you all right?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Travis has been arrested.”

  19

  I called downstairs to Dad, stuffed the photos into my shoulder bag, and quickly left the house. Ten minutes of fast walking brought me to 123rd Street and Manhattan Avenue, where the soft lights of Perk’s Restaurant spilled out over the corner. Inside, the even softer seats made the place a welcome watering spot for the weary.

  As I approached, my mind fastened on Ozzie holed up inside his home just around the corner. Although Dad had spoken to him, he still had not seen him. Friday, he had hoped up until the very last minute that Ozzie would pull himself out of the house and maybe show at the club but it didn’t happen.

  The piano man from Brooklyn, who loved jazz, was happy to sit in once again and the crowd, Dad said, had loved him.

  But Ozzie was absent and I knew how Dad felt. Now Travis had been arrested.

  I stepped into Perk’s and the bar area was crowded—young rising stars of industry, finance, and other professions were there as were the usual crew of fishers and anglers out to get their hooks into a suitable specimen. And, as at most gatherings, there were the players and trollers, interested only in the catch of the day.

  The crowd was cool: the women threaded to the nines in Versace with add-on hair, nails, and contacts, and gazing with slightly bored, Mona Lisa smiles into the pink glow of the mirror behind the bar. The truly bored—those with no prospects—were frowning
hard enough to embed a permanent wrinkle in their foreheads.

  The guys, even cooler, raised brandy snifters with studied nonchalance, and all were listening to the latest sound of Silk.

  I scanned the buffed and polished lineup then spied Elizabeth seated at a small table near the window.

  She gathered her purse and her glass and we walked down the short flight of steps to the dining room.

  “So what happened?” I asked once we were seated and the waiter had disappeared to fill our order. I spoke low, aware of the proximity of the other diners.

  Elizabeth leaned forward. “I thought Honeywell would have told you already. The police traced the weapon that killed that pimp, Henry Stovall—Short Change. It belonged to Travis. Now they’re trying to say that Travis also killed Starr. You know, wrap it neatly and close both cases.”

  “What’s the motive?”

  “Something easy. Jealousy.”

  I nodded, thinking of my close encounter with Chrissie Morgan, thinking of those damn pictures contaminating my purse, and thinking how delicious it would feel to press my fingers into that chicken-wattled throat and to shred that weave until her bald scalp gleamed in the sun.…

  “Mali?”

  “What?”

  Elizabeth reached across the table and tapped my hand. “Okay, we’ll get back to Travis. Tell me what’s eating you.”

  I was too angry to speak so I pulled out the photos and spread them before her like a losing hand in a poker game. Elizabeth looked from me to the pictures and back again. “Where’d you get these? This is Travis’s wife.”

  “So it is,” I murmured. “It seems that Tad was quite busy with his camera on the cruise. And the woman came on to him as if I wasn’t even there. He hasn’t seen these yet, but we got into a little misunderstanding about a half hour ago and he walked out. That man actually walked out. Now I wonder—”

  Elizabeth held up her hand. “Don’t even go there, girl.”

  “Too late. I already went. And words were exchanged. Jealousy,” I said, “is a damn dangerous thing.”

  The waiter returned with the drinks and despite my earlier indulgence, I had no trouble appreciating the subtle, soothing smoothness of this new round.

  “Jealousy,” Elizabeth said, stirring a Madras—a concoction of vodka, orange and cranberry juice on the rocks—“is only dangerous when you act on it incorrectly.”

  “Well, hell. What else does one do?”

  “One plans,” Elizabeth said. “One organizes, strategizes, optimizes.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I mean, you look at the situation and figure out how the hell you gonna kick the bitch’s ass.”

  “Elizabeth!”

  “With the least repercussions, of course.”

  She raised her glass to her mouth and I watched in suprise as my friend—respected attorney, pillar of the community, member of her church’s usher board, and assistant Girl Scout leader, who spent much of her spare time lecturing in local schools about the power of proper language—was now expressing herself most improperly.

  “I don’t believe I heard you correctly,” I said.

  “I know. I know. I wanted to get a rise out of you. And the situation doesn’t call for that long face. Wait a few days, Mali. Then call him, tell him you’d like to talk about whatever it is that’s coming between you two.”

  She flipped one of Chrissie’s snapshots and studied it closely. “I certainly don’t believe this over-the-hill potential butterball is even in your league. So, what ticked him off?”

  “My usual nosiness,” I sighed. “Remember a few years ago when the tour director of the Uptown Children’s Chorus was killed? I was told to let the police handle the investigation, not to interfere. But Erskin Harding was my friend. I saw him murdered. I had to do something.

  “And I felt the same about Thea, the barmaid killed in that alley behind the Half Moon Bar. All the signs pointed to Bert’s brother, Kendrick, remember?

  “Now with this latest incident, Tad warned me once again to mind my own business, that they’d look for Ozzie. Well, I’m glad they didn’t find him. He’s holed up in his house, you know.”

  “Probably never really looked for him. They got Travis instead.”

  “Meanwhile Ozzie’s deteriorated to the point where he’s completely isolated himself, and probably battling a deep depression. Dad has no idea what to do and he’s not in very good shape himself. I’m not sticking my nose in everyone’s business, just trying to figure out how to help Ozzie. But I’ve drawn a blank. I’ve been in and out of Short Change’s stable, spoken to most of his women, and I’m still no closer than I was on day one. Now they’ve arrested Travis?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you this off the record,” Elizabeth said, picking up one picture and then another to study. “Travis’s wife is a real piece of work. He’s her third hubby and she’s fighting like hell to hold on to him. He’s a few years younger than she and she probably feels this is her last go-round.”

  “If she’s fighting so hard to hold on to her husband, why was she coming on to another man, specifically my man?”

  “It’s psychological, I guess. If a person is losing on one front, sometimes they focus on another just to prove to themselves that they still have what it takes. All of us want to feel attractive, Mali. All of us. Sometimes, when a man looks at a woman, some days she will settle just for a smile. Other times, if bad things are happening in her life, she mistakes that smile for something else, for a declaration of love.

  “Now with Tad, I can understand Chrissie and a whole lot of women zoning in. I mean, what do you expect? Look at that bod and that beautiful skin. And need I mention his hair—all edged in silver while every other man his age is losing theirs? Don’t tell me he wasn’t the best-looking brother on the boat.”

  “Listen, Elizabeth, you’ve known me for a long time, ever since we were kids—and during that time, you know I have never gone to war over any man. A few days ago, only a stroke of luck saved her sorry soul.”

  Elizabeth sighed, returning Chrissie’s picture to the pile on the table. “You know, what I see is a woman who should have appreciated her husband for who he was instead of what he had. Instead, she drained Travis dry. You should see the financial albatross the guy has hanging on him. Bills that would make Trump’s babes blush. Saks, Bloomie’s, Bergdorf’s, Versace. She’s practically on a first-name basis with most of the boutiques on Mad Ave.”

  “What about Travis’s relationship with Starr? Could some of those bills have come from her?”

  “Not unless she signed Wifey’s name on those slips. And so far all the signatures look alike to me. Simply put, Wifey is afflicted with a severe case of credit carditis.”

  The waiter returned with a tray of a half dozen appetizers, which we had ordered in lieu of entrées.

  Everything looked good but it took major effort for me to lift a fork.

  “Do you think Travis did it?”

  “Did what?” Elizabeth glanced up from her plate. She may have had a setback but her appetite was still intact.

  “Do you think he—”

  “—I don’t know, Mali. I can’t talk about that.”

  I returned the pictures to my purse, then concentrated on Tina Turner’s crackling lyrics pulsing through the hum of conversation. My thoughts focused on Tad as I listened.

  “You’ve barely touched your plate,” Elizabeth said.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said, trying to block out the wail of “Steamy Windows.” Tad loved Tina’s music, said every time he heard her voice, he closed his eyes and saw my legs moving. High heels, black stockings with rhinestone-studded seams. The man had imagination.

  Snap out of it, girl. Dreaming won’t do anything but give you heartburn.

  “You’re right, Mama.”

  Elizabeth looked up. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said, looking at my watch. “What do you say we take a walk over to Bert’s place. See what’s going on
.”

  As in other neighborhoods, the beauty business in Harlem has its slow days and most shops, hopeful of walk-ins, remained open with bright lights blazing and television blaring even if all the chairs remained empty. We stood outside Bertha’s closed shop and shook our heads.

  “It’s not even that late,” Elizabeth said, checking her watch. “Maybe we should’ve called first.”

  The shop was dark except for the dim light illuminating the spiral stair in the rear that led up to Bert’s apartment. Next door to the shop, the entrance which led to the other apartment and accessed her own place was locked. I thought about ringing the bell when the door opened and Bert stopped in surprise when she saw us.

  “Girl! I just called you. Left a message on your machine. Y’all got to come with me.”

  “What happened?”

  “Tell you as we movin’,” she said as she stepped into the street and held out her hand. When the cab stopped, we piled in and she gave the driver an address on 148th Street near Frederick Douglass Boulevard.

  “And I want you to drive like a life depended on it,” she said.

  The cabbie turned to face her with a worried smile. “One of you sisters pregnant?”

  “No!” Bert snapped. “And if we were, it ain’t none a’ your business.”

  “Okay. Okay. Just asking. Just need to know how soon you—”

  “Look, just get us where we got to go, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he whispered, thinking of the tip he might have already talked himself out of.

  “So what’s going on?” I spoke low enough to exclude the driver, whose ears seemed to grow like antennas.

  “Would you believe it, it’s Franklin’s mama. I mean it’s Franklin—”

  “What happened?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Well, you know he got a touch a’ diabetes, which he’s been controllin’ with diet, but lately he been havin’ some dizziness. He went to the doc and he was put in the hospital right away for tests. Went in yesterday and wasn’t supposed to complete everything for another few days.