Outcast

by Lewis Ericson

  He heartily embraced her and dashed out the door. En route his cell phone rang—it was Bobby again.

  “Man, I called you last night. I thought we were gonna hook up.”

  “Yeah . . . sorry about that. Somethin’ came up at the last minute.”

  “Well, look . . . you want the stuff or not?”

  Tirrell licked his lips and his jaws clenched as if he’d sucked on a lemon.

  “T, you there, man?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, you ridin’ through or what?”

  Tirrell blew a cleansing breath. “Naw, I think I’m gonna pass.”

  “Man, you bullshittin’.”

  “Sorry, Bobby. I gotta go.”

  The security gate was up at Tasha’s complex and Tirrell drove right through. He saw her car parked in front of the building, and thankfully Darnell’s was not. With his eyes shielded behind a dark pair of sunglasses, he climbed the stairs to her apartment. He knocked and waited. He could hear her moving on the other side of the door, but she didn’t answer.

  “Tasha, please. Open the door. I know you’re in there. I’m not drunk,” he teased. “C’mon, baby. Open the door. We need to talk. You heard the reverend this mornin’. Love your neighbor like you love yourself.” That was nowhere near what the pastor preached, but he wasn’t really listening.

  After what seemed like forever, the door opened. “No gas station flowers?” Tasha cracked.

  “Can I come in? Please?”

  She stepped away from the door. Tirrell apprehensively entered and closed it behind him.

  “You looked really good this mornin’.” He smiled.

  She pulled at her bathrobe uncomfortably and pushed her hair away from her eyes. “What do you want?”

  “I want to apologize for the way things went down the other night. I’m sorry I ruined your birthday. I wanna make it up to you if you give me another chance.”

  “I’ve given you a million chances, Tirrell. We’re not gettin’ anywhere. I don’t wanna keep ridin’ this merry-go-round. I messed up. God knows you messed up. I was tryin’ to convince myself that someday . . . I finally woke the hell up and realized that this situation was not gonna get any better. I need what you can’t give me, and I don’t want to settle anymore.”

  Tasha went to the bedroom, and when she returned she had a box of his things he’d left behind.

  “Baby, c’mon, don’t do this.”

  “I should’ve done it a long time ago.”

  “Okay . . . I love you,” he exclaimed. “I love you. Is that what you want me to say?”

  “No. Don’t you get it? If you don’t mean it, saying the words isn’t enough. Just take your stuff and go.”

  Tirrell sneered and snatched the box. “When did it start?”

  “What?”

  “You and this other dude. When did it start?”

  “There is no other dude, Tirrell.”

  “Didn’t seem that way to me.”

  “What difference does it make now?”

  “He’s the real reason you wanna end this, right?”

  “No, Tirrell. You are.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to know.”

  Tasha sighed. “We met at the gym.”

  “The gym? Did you screw here or at his place?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “It is my business.”

  Tasha turned toward the window and paused before answering. “It was just one time, that’s all.”

  Tirrell threw the box of his belongings on the floor. He violently yanked Tasha by the arms. She yelped.

  “So, you been lyin’ to me all this time, huh?”

  “Let go,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “No, not until we settle this.”

  “It is settled. We’re done.”

  She tried to pull away. He held fast.

  “You’re hurtin’ me.”

  “You gotta listen to me.”

  “What are you gonna do, Tirrell? Huh?”

  He backed her up against the wall. His rage was palpable.

  “See, this is why I didn’t wanna . . .”

  “You didn’t wanna what, Tasha?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You didn’t want to what?”

  Tears burned hot in her eyes. Her lips trembled. It was time for the truth, no matter how painful.

  “I didn’t wanna have your baby.”

  It was as if he’d been hit in the throat. The shock of what she said ripped through him like knives. He shook her. “What are you talkin’ about? Tell me or I swear I’ll—”

  “You’ll what, Tirrell? Hit me? Push me out the window? What?”

  He shoved her away and sank down on the sofa. “Is this what you meant when you said you weren’t givin’ up any more of yourself? Are you pregnant?”

  “No,” she whimpered.

  He looked up at her. “Were you pregnant?”

  She closed her eyes and cried, “You weren’t any more ready to bring a baby into this madness than I was.”

  He pressed his fingers to his eyes to keep from crying. “What did you do?”

  “I found out I was pregnant when I came back from visiting you in January.”

  “You got an abortion?”

  “I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do.”

  “Did you get an abortion?”

  “I was scared. I made a mistake.”

  “Answer me, dammit!”

  “Yes!”

  “It was just that easy.”

  “Hell no, it wasn’t easy. But it was what I had to do.”

  “You just made the decision all by yourself. You didn’t think I needed to know. You didn’t think I wanted to have a say?”

  “Can you honestly tell me that you would have wanted to have a baby?”

  “You didn’t give me a chance, Tasha.”

  “You were in the Army. You could have been deployed. You could have been killed. I may never have seen you again. You never wrote. You hardly called. What was I supposed to do?”

  “You could have told me. You could have let me decide whether I wanted to be a father.” He sprang up and she shrank back. “How can you tell me that you love me after doin’ some shit like that? And to top it off you messed around with some other dude.”

  “You slept around too.”

  “But I never said I loved you, and it’s a damn good thing I didn’t! How do I know it was even my baby?”

  “Because you were the only one I was with when it happened.”

  He laughed at the irony. “Damn.”

  “Tirrell, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, you sorry all right.”

  “I didn’t mean for—”

  “You know what, fuck you, Tasha!”

  With that he picked up the box of his stuff and stormed out. He jumped in the car and tore out of the parking lot.

  Learning that Tasha took it upon herself to have an abortion was not what he needed to hear. If he had second thoughts about getting high they were gone. Betty called him, but he didn’t answer. He couldn’t talk to her now.

  Tirrell circled the block a few times before finding a parking space outside Bobby’s Midtown apartment. Once he got inside he discovered why it had been hard to find a parking spot. He could hear the music pumping—vibrating the walls.

  “Yo, T. I thought you wasn’t comin’.”

  “Yeah, so did I.”

  Bobby threw his beefy arm around Tirrell’s neck—a glass of Patrón sloshed around in his free hand. “C’mon in. Join the party.”

  Tirrell offered no resistance. He licked his lips and wiped his mouth with heady anticipation.

  “Yo, dude, Crystal is here—somewhere.”

  “Crystal?”

  “You don’t remember Crystal?” He held his hands out from his chest signifying her attributes.

  Tirrell recalled the blonde he’d awakened next to when he and Bobby had gon
e out a few weeks earlier.

  “Damn, what happened to your eye?”

  “Nothin’.” Tirrell remembered the sunglasses in his shirt pocket and slipped them on.

  “You gotta go into the kitchen and fix yourself a drink.” He tapped his index finger on the side of his nose. “And there’s plenty of dust.”

  Tirrell didn’t feel like partying. “Look, Bobby. I just wanna get the stuff and go, a’ight?”

  “C’mon, man. You can hang out for a minute.”

  “No,” Tirrell insisted. “I’m serious. I can’t stay.”

  The man scratched his bald pate. “Okay, let’s take care of business.”

  Tirrell followed Bobby to his bedroom, where a couple of his guests sought privacy. A woman had her blouse off and the man she was with snorted cocaine from her exposed breasts. They were surprised by Bobby’s abrupt entrance. The woman grabbed her blouse from the bed to cover herself and the man leapt to his feet, buttoning his shirt and zipping up his pants. Bobby nodded toward the door and they hastily exited the room.

  He closed the door and locked it behind them, something the couple had forgotten to do. He then proceeded into a closet. Tirrell tried to see what he was doing. Bobby threw a sharp look over his shoulder and Tirrell turned around to face the opposite direction. This room, like the rest of the apartment, was decorated in such fashion to bring into question exactly what Bobby did to make a living. Selling drugs was the obvious answer, Tirrell surmised; after all, that’s why he was there. He took note of the primitive African masks that adorned the walls, examining them as if he were in a museum.

  “They’re prosperity masks,” Bobby said as he stepped up beside Tirrell. “This one is from Nigeria.”

  “Do they work?” Tirrell asked.

  “Look around. You tell me.”

  Bobby handed a packet to Tirrell, and Tirrell reached in his pocket for money.

  “Is this all you want?”

  “For now,” Tirrell replied. “Sorry I can’t stay. Maybe next time.” Tirrell opened the door and headed for the exit, hoping to avoid Crystal altogether.

  It had been a long day. He sat in the car in the driveway of his grandmother’s house, staring at the powdered substance in his hand. He was beginning to feel the profound effect of the loss of a baby he didn’t know he wanted. Tasha may have unburdened her soul, but this would be yet another weight he’d carry for the rest of his life. He opened the plastic pouch and tapped a bit of cocaine on his closed fist and snorted. A sudden and unexpected wave of emotion gushed forth from the pit of his stomach, causing him to cry out. He could feel the darkness closing in around him. After several minutes, emotionally depleted, he gathered himself and went into the house. He hadn’t expected to find Betty still awake.

  He quietly opened the door, slipped off his shoes, and tiptoed across the hardwood floor. He then slumped down on the sofa, set his box aside, and laid his head back. A light switched on from the back room.

  “I thought I heard you come in,” Betty said.

  “Noonie. I thought you’d be asleep.”

  “And I thought you’d be back with my car hours ago.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t get stopped or nothin’. It’s just that me and Tasha . . .”

  “You and Tasha what?”

  Tirrell wiped his hand over his face. “It’s late. I’m tired and I really don’t feel like talkin’ about it right now, okay?”

  Maternal instinct kicked in when Betty looked at the distress in his eyes. “Tirrell, what happened with Tasha?”

  He shook his head and teared up.

  Betty looked down at the box next to his feet. “What’s all this?”

  “Stuff I picked up from Tasha’s. It’s over. We’re done. For good this time.”

  Betty moved to him and wrapped her arms around him.

  “She killed my baby.”

  “What?”

  “She was pregnant, and she had an abortion without tellin’ me.”

  “Oh, Lord no.”

  “Yeah, your little nice girl turned out not to be so nice after all. And you were worried about me hurtin’ her.”

  Betty held on to him as he mourned. It was the first time she felt his heart break since his mother died, and it broke hers too.

  It had been two days since Tirrell discovered that Tasha had an abortion. He hadn’t gone to work and Betty hadn’t forced the issue. She crept quietly around the house, making sure she had everything she needed. After collecting her purse and keys she hustled into the kitchen for her thermos of coffee. Tirrell was there and dressed in his uniform.

  “Can you drop me off at the garage?”

  “Baby, are you sure you’re feelin’ up to it?”

  “I’m fine.” Tirrell inhaled deeply to ensure the maximum effect of the cocaine he’d ingested before coming into the kitchen.

  “You don’t look fine,” Betty noted.

  Tirrell discerned the pinched concern in Betty’s expression, and kissed her cheek in a vain effort to reassure her that he was better than he let on. “I don’t wanna talk about Tasha anymore, a’ight? What she did was really foul. But, maybe it was for the best. I don’t know that I could have been any kind of father.”

  “I can’t say whether it was for the best. I’m just sorry that she hurt you.”

  “I’m dealin’ with it.”

  Betty took Tirrell’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “You know I’m here for you.”

  “I know. But, I just need to process right now. Is that okay?”

  She nodded and smiled.

  “Tirrell, what the hell are you doin’?” Marquis shouted.

  “What?”

  “You were gettin’ ready to put oil in that radiator.”

  “Oh, shit,” Tirrell spat, realizing his mistake. “I must’ve grabbed the wrong hose.” He immediately righted himself and checked to make sure that he hadn’t spilled any oil.

  “What’s wrong with you, man?”

  “Nothin’. I’m just a little distracted.”

  Marquis recognized the look in Tirrell’s eyes. “Man, you high as hell.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Marquis grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. “Yes, you are. I can see it.”

  Tirrell yanked his arm back and threw the funnel down that he was holding. “Get off me, man.”

  “T, what’s up with you, man?”

  Tirrell looked around to see who was in earshot. Drills, hydraulic lifts, and jacks distributed enough noise to keep anyone from overhearing. “Tasha had an abortion.”

  “Get the fuck outta here. Tasha? It was yours, right?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “What do you mean maybe?”

  “She said it was mine, but I found out she was screwin’ this dude while I was in North Carolina.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “Damn.”

  “He showed up the other night when we were at Bone’s, all friendly and shit.”

  “So, he gave you that black eye?”

  “Hell no. I kicked his ass. Tasha got pissed and left me at the restaurant, so I went to a bar and had a little too much to drink.”

  “So, what happened?

  “I got arrested for DUI.”

  “Damn, T.”

  “Whatever you do, you can’t tell your pops. I can’t afford to lose this job.”

  “Then you need to get your shit together, man. You can’t be comin’ up in here high every day. That just ain’t cool.”

  “I know,” Tirrell said, properly contrite. “It won’t happen again. I swear.”

  Coke, flake, girl, dust, blow, toot, snow. It didn’t matter what it was called, or how he may have thought he could handle it. The insidious lure of cocaine was pulling him closer to the edge and that was the most dangerous place for someone like Tirrell Ellis to be.

  13

  “Travis, it’s Alex . . . Did the caterers call? Do they have what I asked for? Are they
going to have them on time or not? Look, call them back and tell them if they don’t want me to cancel the contract they will . . . Dammit! I think I just hit something . . . I’ll have to call you back.”

  The woman slowed down and pulled her Yukon Denali over into the far left lane of the interstate. She looked up into the rearview mirror to see that other cars were swerving to avoid a piece of plywood lying in the center lane. Pressing a button on the OnStar device in the dashboard of the vehicle, she called for the location of the nearest mechanic. She discovered there was one just off the exit she was approaching.

  The sign read Crawl’s Service and Repair; this would have to do until she could get to the dealership.

  The sight of the pearl-colored Yukon Denali pulling up on the lot didn’t garner much attention, but when the curvaceous red-boned driver stepped out from behind the wheel, everyone noticed.

  The woman leaned over into the passenger seat to retrieve her purse as lascivious eyes watched. She pushed her Versace sunglasses up on her nose and adjusted her navy-blue pencil skirt, as two of the mechanics at an open bay closest to her fought to be the first to assist her.

  “Can I help you?” Marquis leered, his glance sweeping her from head to toe.

  The woman stepped toward the back of the vehicle as Marquis turned to the others with a roguish grin on his face and followed.

  She stooped to examine the back tire on the driver’s side. “I may have a nail in my tire. I think I ran over a piece of wood or something.” She stood up, almost bumping into Marquis, who had leaned in close enough to tell what perfume the woman was wearing, if he’d known what it was. Annoyed by his immaturity, the corners of the woman’s mouth curled into a grimace. “Do you think you can check it out? The tire I mean.”

  Marquis cleared his throat. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How long do you think it will take?”

  “I can pull you right in . . . Your car. I can check it now.”

  “I knew what you meant.”

  “You can step inside and wait while I take a look,” Marquis said, pointing to the lobby of the shop. “There’s a soda machine if you want somethin’ cold to drink.”

  “Thanks. The keys are in the ignition.” The woman offered a half smile and started toward the lobby as Marquis and a couple of the others ogled her.