The Reluctant Prophet

by Nancy Rue

  “But ain’t nobody can help you like somebody that’s been there,” Mercedes said.

  My throat ached. But it was Jasmine who did me in.

  “We can love you,” she said.

  Sherry crumpled. Three sets of arms reached out to catch her, but it was Geneveve who held her up and stroked her sparsely thatched hair.

  “Jasmine, why don’t you go run her a bath,” she said. “Mercedes—”

  “Food. I’m on it.”

  Mercedes hit the kitchen, muttering, “God love her, ’cause don’t nobody else.” Geneveve sat on the floor with Sherry in her lap, rocking and stroking. I stood and watched, until I could say, “I’ll get another bed.”

  By Friday when I met Hank at the Galleon, I’d been Nudged to put Sherry in Geneveve’s room and bring in Leighanne to talk to Sherry about NA. Mercedes didn’t need any Nudging; she already had Sherry eating three meals a day.

  “She’s still sleeping eighteen hours out of twenty-four,” I told Hank. “But that’s normal for this stage. She’s actually a little ahead of where Geneveve was at this point.”

  Hank put down her mocha and slowly shook her head at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m listening to a woman who keeps telling me she has no idea what she’s doing, while she’s putting every drug rehab I’ve ever seen to shame.”

  “Even ‘the best halfway house in the state’?”

  “We’re back to Troy Irwin now.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I was standing there talking about ‘our residents’ like I have some kind of official program going over there. But how many more women can we take in? I’m already almost out of the money I use for running my own house.” I pushed away the omelet I wasn’t eating anyway. “They’re too far along for a halfway house, but I don’t know where else I could move them if I don’t take him up on it. I thought you said I was a ‘prophet.’”

  “I did.”

  “Then why am I not feeling a Nudge about this decision?”

  “If you’re using that to prove you’re not one, forget about it,” Hank said. “What do you usually do when you don’t hear a clear message—even recently?”

  “I wait. But I can’t this time. He wants an answer in a week.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “There’s no doubt in my mind. He’ll get every house on that street, including mine.”

  “So make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

  “I just don’t want to deal with him. One minute I think he’s changed—”

  “You knew him before?”

  I mentally smacked myself. “Everyone knows he’s just a slimeball.”

  Hank squinted one eye. “You deal with slimeballs all the time. It’s your new career.”

  I poked around in my purse for the Kleenex I knew wasn’t in there, for the sniffles I didn’t have. Hank was quiet. When I looked up, her mouth was in a straight line.

  “You’re under no obligation to tell me everything,” she said. “Just make sure you’re telling yourself what you need to know.”

  So much for all that facial modulating. Hank could see through a concrete wall if it had feelings. Maybe I would have opened my mouth and told her why Troy Irwin was more than just a slimeball to me, if I hadn’t smelled the faint but unmistakable odor of horse dung behind me.

  “Hey, Allison,” Lonnie said.

  I twisted to look up into the brim of his cowboy hat. He removed his toothpick.

  “Well, hey,” I said. “How’s business?”

  “Okay.”

  “Bernard okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You found him another driver, I’m sure.”

  Lonnie pushed his hat back with two fingers, revealing a sheepish face.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Look, my neck’s about to twist off. Sit down—this is my friend, Hank—” who had slipped discreetly up to the counter and was already deep in conversation with Patrice.

  “Join me,” I said.

  Lonnie looked like he’d rather stick a fork in his eye, but he perched on the edge of the third chair and struggled not to meet my gaze.

  “For Pete’s sake, Lonnie,” I said. “I was a lousy employee, and you did what you had to do. I’m fine.”

  “I’m not.”

  I sat up straight. “What’s wrong? Did you get canned too?”

  “No.”

  “I feel like I’m pulling wisdom teeth here. Just spit it out, would you?”

  He slumped in the chair and ran a hand across the beer belly that seemed to have expanded since the last time I saw him. Was that really almost two months ago?

  “I saw you sitting in here, and I had to come in and tell you I wish I had your guts.”

  “Where in the world is this coming from?” If I’d had a toothpick in my mouth, I would have dropped it.

  “You don’t care what anybody thinks—you just do what you have to do.” He stood up and pushed the chair back in one scraping motion. “That’s all I’m allowed to say—”

  “Allowed by whom?”

  He stuck the toothpick back in, took it out, stared at it, until I reached up and snatched the thing out of his fingers. “Lonnie—dish, dude. You’re making me crazy here.”

  “I didn’t fire you because you were slacking off. I fired you because I had to, or I’d lose my job. I should’ve stood up for you—”

  “Why did you ‘have to’?”

  He chewed at his lip as if the pick were still there. “You spoke the truth to the wrong people and it came back to bite you—but you just keep going on. I’d be like that in a heartbeat if I could.”

  He pulled the hat back over his forehead and hurried out. When Hank returned to the table, I was still staring at the toothpick.

  “He didn’t offer you your old job back, did he?” she said.

  “No. He just told me why I lost it.” I pressed against the table, my eyes boring into Hank. “Tell me once more you really believe this is all God.”

  “I don’t have to, Al.” Her wonderful mouth twisted. “I have a feeling he just did.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  If Lonnie was right on both counts—one, that Troy Irwin was responsible for me losing my job, and two, that I had “guts,” I had two phone calls to make while I sat in the van waiting for Desmond to come out of the school that afternoon. The first was to Bonner, who answered on the first ring. I tried not to feel guilty about that.

  “I need your professional expertise,” I said.

  “I’m full of expertise,” he said. “Whatcha need?”

  There was only a faint trace of disappointment in his voice. I tried not to feel guilty about that either.

  “Could you find out what the owner of Sacrament House would do if Troy Irwin offered to buy it?”

  Bonner’s silence was sharp.

  “He hasn’t,” I said. “He just wants to buy me out of the lease.”

  “He approached you with that offer?”

  “I approached him first about something else—”

  “What ‘something else’?”

  I pushed aside the urge to say, “Would you get out of my grillwork and just answer my question?” and told him about Troy’s hand in the park incident.

  “So you went to his office?” Bonner said. “Nobody just goes to Troy Irwin and chews him out.”

  “I didn’t ‘chew him out.’”

  “Is this Allison Chamberlain I’m speaking to? Because the Allison Chamberlain I know would’ve chewed him out.”

  “That was a little hard to do when he was offering me the moon for the women.”

  I could almost see him hitching at his necktie. “Let me tell you something about Troy Irwin: You can�
�t trust him.”

  “I know that, Bonner, which is why I’m not taking him up on the offer. I just want to know what the owner would do if he offered to buy the place outright.”

  “You have a lease.”

  “And Troy Irwin’s got more money than—”

  “Doesn’t matter. The owner won’t go for it. Period.”

  “Okay.” I could see myself blinking in the windshield. “Then I guess that’s all I need to know.”

  “Allison.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re strong and you’re stubborn and you’re even right. But don’t mess with Troy Irwin.”

  “I’m already messing with him. I’m not giving up the lease to him.”

  “Great. But swear to me you won’t take it any further.”

  “Can’t do it, Bonner,” I said. “I’m not a swearing woman.”

  “I’m serious—”

  “And speaking of swearing, here comes Desmond. Thanks—I owe you.”

  Bonner was still protesting when I turned off the phone. Through the reflection of my own face in the glass, I watched Desmond stroll across the school lawn, a pubescent female on either side. He was wearing the smile he told me he always used with “his women,” the one he demonstrated for me just that morning at the breakfast table. He assured me that the cadlike grin and the eyes at half-mast were the very thing that kept them “right here.”

  The three stopped at the flagpole, and Desmond lounged against it and looked at his adoring harem as if to say, “Show me what you’re workin’ with.” I was good for at least another five minutes.

  Eyes still on him, I called Troy Irwin’s office. The secretary launched into “Chamberlain-Enterprises-Mr.-Irwin’s-office-how-may-I-help-you?” but I snipped her off midway.

  “This is Allison Chamberlain. I’d like to make an appointment with Mr. Irwin as soon as possible.”

  “One moment please.”

  Why did they always say ‘one moment’ when they knew they were putting you on hold for at least five? I made sure Desmond was still staging auditions for the girl du jour. I really did need to have Chief talk to him—

  “Ms. Chamberlain?”

  “Ye—”

  “Mr. Irwin would be happy to meet with you this evening at seven at the 95 Cordova. You’re familiar with that restaurant?”

  “No—”

  “It’s at ninety-five Cordova Street.”

  How she said that without guffawing into the phone I had no idea. “I meant, no, that doesn’t work for me.”’

  “That’s the only opening Mr. Irwin has available unless you want to wait until next week.”

  I was sure if I’d said, “Then please tell Mr. Irwin I’ll see him when Hades freezes over,” she’d have said, “I’ll see if he’s available at that time.” I would have loved to tell him that myself right over the phone, but I had to have one more face-to-face with the lowlife scum. And then the past could go back under the rock where I’d buried it under once and stay there.

  “Shall I put you down for seven this evening?” said the secretary I’d forgotten was there.

  “Do that little thing,” I said. “And tell Mr. Irwin we’re going dutch.”

  “I’ll certainly pass on that information.”

  I was envisioning her jotting it on a sticky note when I saw Desmond strolling toward me. He’d obviously gotten one or both of his miniwomen “right there” and was making a leave-’em-wanting-more exit, still using the smile he reserved for them.

  But when he found my gaze, his mouth split wide open, its corners reaching happily for his earlobes, and I knew something I didn’t know before. That was the smile he reserved for me.

  “We goin’ for a ride on our Harley today, Big Al?” he said.

  I glanced at my watch. “Actually I have to get ready to go out someplace.”

  “You got you a hot date with the Chief?”

  I stalled the van.

  “Yeah,” he said, grin widening. “You do.”

  “I do not have a ‘hot date’ with Chief or anybody else.”

  “Uh-huh. Well how ’bout we swing by Hardee’s and get me some fries and one of them big ol’ burgers so I can have supper while you out not havin’ a date.”

  “Do you seriously think I’m going to leave you home by yourself while I go out?” I cranked the starter until it whined to life and headed us toward Palm Row.

  “If you not goin’ out with Mr. Chief, then he can come stay with me. We ain’t hung out in a while.”

  “Not since night before last. Chief’s busy—probably.”

  I had no idea if he was or not. I would just prefer he didn’t know I was having dinner with Troy. Not that it would matter to him. Not that it should matter to me. On any level.

  “Then what else I’m gonna do but hang out here, watchin’ the TV?” Desmond said.

  “Call your women—eat me out of a week’s groceries. Not gonna happen, Clarence. I’ll figure something out.”

  “You ain’t got time to figure nothin’ out,” he said, voice going falsetto. “You got to be all puttin’ on makeup and puttin’ on—”

  I stopped at St. George and Bridge and gave him a mock glare. I could feel my lips twitching. “What’s wrong with the way I look right now?”

  “This ain’t a goin’-out look you got on.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “This is a mama pickin’-her-kid-up-from-school look.”

  Someone tapped a horn behind me, and I turned the corner, mind at a tilt.

  “I know who,” Desmond was saying. “Miss Hankenstein. She cool. She can come over and cook me something I don’t know the name of. She says she givin’ me a coronary education.”

  “Culinary,” I said. “And no, it’s not going to be Hank. I’m giving your mom a call.”

  I got the immediate silence I expected. It lasted while I drove on to Palm Row and parked on the driveway, where he broke it with, “Let me just tell you why I think that is not a good idea for me.”

  “Tell away,” I said. “I’m calling her. You can spend the evening at Sacrament House.”

  I climbed out of the van to open the garage door, leaving him spewing out a list of reasons why that was going to be the boringest thing in life. I only had one reason for my case: I couldn’t let him latch onto the idea that I was the mama.

  No matter how good it felt.

  Geneveve’s voice went thin on the phone when I asked her, but there was no hemming and hawing; she just said yes. Perhaps the way a new mother says, yes, she’s ready to take that baby home from the hospital, when in truth she has no idea what she’s going to do with him when she gets there.

  Which was precisely the point Desmond made from the time I hung up the phone until we climbed on the bike to leave. His main thrust was, “She don’t know nothin’ ’bout what I like to do. She ain’t got the kinda food I like to eat,” and the most telling part, “She just don’t know nothin’ about me.”

  “Then this is a good time for her to find out.” I said. “And you, too. Now put your helmet on or we’re taking the van.”

  He stuffed his fuzzy head into it, but not before I heard him mutter, “I know everything I want to know ’bout her.”

  I ached all the way to Sacrament House.

  When we arrived, it was clear that Geneveve might not know a lot about her son, but in the two and a half hours since I’d called her, she’d knocked herself out preparing for his arrival. The windows gleamed light as I herded Desmond up the front walk, and I could hear the driving rhythm of one of my old Fleetwood Mac CDs. Mercedes flung the door open and let the light and the music and the aroma of baked sugar rush out to us. Somebody had finally learned to make cookies smell like cookies.

  “Boy,” she said to De
smond as she wrestled him into a hug. “It’s about time you got your hind parts over here to see us. You think you too good for Sacrament House?”

  I poked him in the back.

  Mercedes hung her arm around his neck and pulled him inside, where Jasmine was setting a piled-high plate on the coffee table. She clapped her hands like a proud kindergartner.

  “I hate that I have to go out,” I said. “Looks like this is where the party’s going to be.” I elbowed the kid. “Right?”

  But his eyes were on the skeletal figure sitting cross-legged in Geneveve’s chair.

  “Hey,” Sherry said to him. “You remember me?”

  “Maybe. Y’all got any milk to go with them cookies?”

  “In the kitchen, honey,” Mercedes said. “Your mama’s in there—she’ll pour you some.”

  I waited for him to get out of earshot before I whispered to Mercedes, “What was that about?”

  “He never liked Sherry much,” she whispered back. “But he never seen her when she wasn’t loaded. It’ll be all right.”

  I looked back at Sherry, who sat with her legs wrapped in a blanket, chugging a bottle of water and watching us hiss back and forth to each other like a pair of eighth-graders. She might be clean at the moment, but there was still something hostile about her. We had some work to do there.

  Desmond emerged from the kitchen with a tumbler of milk, followed by Geneveve, who looked as if she’d just successfully bottle fed for the first time.

  “Okay,” I said, “let me just grab a cookie for the road and I’m out of here.”

  Jasmine was peering through the front window, a piece of the red ribbon trailing over her shoulder. “You goin’ on a date on your motorcycle, Miss Angel?”

  “It’s not a date.”

  “I knew that,” Mercedes said.

  “No you did not,” Jasmine said.

  “Yes I did. Look at her face.”

  Geneveve studied me. “What I’m supposed to be seein’?”

  “It’s what you not seein’. What you not seein’ is that glow she get every time she around Mr. Chief.”

  The “oohs” and “mmm-hmms” and “I know that, childs” drowned out even Stevie Nicks. My face flamed.