Atlanta Noir

by Tayari Jones

  As if he could read her thoughts, he stepped forward and snaked his arm around her waist. He pulled her close. “Long live the new mayor and first lady. Is that what I’m supposed to say?”

  His voice was at a frequency so low that she heard it with her bones, rather than her ears.

  “You don’t have to stay with him. Fuck high society. We could move to Birmingham, start over . . .” He released her and changed his tone back to ordinary mailman banter. “It’s gonna be eighty degrees today. Can’t beat that after it’s been near a hundred all week.”

  “No, I guess you can’t,” Lorraine replied as she flipped the package in her hand. She watched a bowlegged Jonathan walk back down to his mail truck. She closed the screen door, but she didn’t close the house door until she saw the mail truck disappear around the corner.

  Lorraine sat down on the sofa. She touched her finger where Jonathan had touched it. Was she imagining it, or was her finger burning hot? Oh, that man. She grabbed a tissue from the box on the end table and dabbed at the sweat gathering at her cleavage. He was a dear boy, but couldn’t he recognize when things were complicated? He, of all people, should understand. He had known her when she was living in the projects, sleeping on her grandmother’s foldout couch, when “success” was finishing high school and not getting pregnant. If he knew how far she’d come, why couldn’t he understand that she had to make sacrifices to keep what she had gained?

  “Wonder if that girl won that car,” she said aloud to herself as she squeezed the large bulky envelope. It was too late to know now. She would find out when the big wheel was spun.

  Lorraine flipped the package over and over in her hand and examined the writing. Her name was printed neatly in large print, but there was no return address. The postmark was metered, and showed that it’d been mailed from the post office over by the Atlanta Civic Center.

  The package opened easily. Booker’s old wallet fell out onto the floor. “Well, well,” she said. “I guess miracles happen after all.”

  The wallet had been stolen when Booker was robbed and beaten in Downtown Atlanta. He’d traveled all over the world without so much as a whisper of a problem, and yet he was robbed in the very city that he worked so hard to improve. It was so difficult to see her husband laid up in a Grady Hospital bed with his head bandaged and purple bruises dotting his swollen body. “God curse the man who did this to you, Booker,” she’d lamented as she fed him lukewarm soup from a small hospital bowl. “May God strike him down. May he reap what he sows a thousand times over.” Lorraine wasn’t much for religion, but religiosity was a second language to her.

  She flipped open the wallet and glanced at the contents. Several credit cards were there, along with a plethora of business cards. There was also a picture of the two of them. Booker’s driver’s license and Social Security card were wedged behind the credit cards. It was like a DIY starter kit for identity theft, but here is was, untouched.

  She stuck her hand inside the envelope, and pulled out neatly folded pages. They were yellow and lined, the top edges scraggly, like the sheets had been hastily ripped from a pad of some sort. She flattened the papers on her lap, and saw that it was a letter. She raised the reading glasses that hung around her neck on a thin gold chain to her eyes and began to read:

  Ma’am,

  I am returning your husband’s wallet to you. I stole it. I am returning it, but I kept the money it contained. Yes, I kept the 1280 dollars that was there. I want to apologize for keeping the money. I am sorry, but I needed it. And after what your husband put me through, I deserve that money.

  It was a Friday, 9 months ago, late in September. I was a bit down that week because I’d gotten a ticket for speeding and running a red light. (I’d only recently moved to Atlanta. I live in a nice condo in Midtown, but I only rent. I am not a person of means.) I tried to explain to the officer that I was still getting used to driving in the area, but he wouldn’t listen. I later found out the fine for the ticket would be over 600 dollars. I am a secretary, and I go to school at night. This was something I couldn’t afford.

  I’d just gotten paid that Friday and I decided to go out for a drink. My coworkers wanted to go out for drinks at Dugans. The price was right, but I am too old for such frat-boy hangouts. Anyway, I really just needed to be alone and have a good drink and a cigarette. I’d quit smoking, but stress always brings the worst out of me. So I went to the bar that’s located atop the Peachtree Plaza. When I was little, I would come to Atlanta to visit my auntie and she always promised that one day we would have dinner up there and look down at the whole city. My aunt recently passed so I decided to go up there and keep her promise to me.

  I felt self-conscious up there since I was the only person who seemed to be pinching pennies. I asked if there were happy hour specials and everybody looked at me like I had farted or something. I asked for a menu so I could see the price range. I am not much of a drinker. I usually have whatever wine is on happy hour and then I go home.

  The bartender placed a drink in front of me and asked me if I would be a “test subject.” He called it a Georgia Peach and since it was free, I drank it. It had triple sec, peach schnapps, Ciroc, and orange juice. He even put a few cherries on top. And they weren’t none of those cheap fire-red plastic-looking cherries. I hate those. But these cherries had been soaked in vodka for days, and right there, I should’ve said no. I know good and well I don’t deal with nothing like that. After drinking only half of the drink, I felt a little light-headed. I drank it too fast, I guess.

  More people came in later that night. I had been sitting there for two hours, sipping my drinks. I was a bit lit and I knew I needed to sit there until I felt ok to drive. But by that time I had been test-subjecting all evening! That was ok because the bartender was keeping me company.

  The bartender took my empty glass and gave me another. I told him no, I couldn’t drink anymore, and that I needed to sit there another hour to sober up so I could drive home. If I drank another I would probably end up sleeping it off outside in my car.

  But he said it was sent over compliments of a gentleman who had been admiring me from the far side of the bar. I looked down that way and the man smiled, lifted his drink, and nodded at me.

  I didn’t know what to do. I was taken aback because I am not the prettiest woman in the world. I am tall, real dark. I am skinny like Olive Oyl on a diet and I hadn’t had a man pay attention to me in a long time. So it felt good to have this strange man send me a drink. That alone made my day.

  Each time my glass was about empty the bartender would refresh it. I tried to tell him no, but the drinks were paid for. Each time the mysterious man at the end of the bar would raise his drink and smile wide and wink. I did the same even though I wished he had bought me something to eat instead of all that alcohol. But I was too shy to admit that I was hungry.

  At that rate, even though I lived close by, there was no way I was going to be able to drive home. I’d closed my eyes and was enjoying the music when someone behind me cleared his throat. I opened my eyes and looked over my shoulder. It was the man who’d been sending me drinks.

  Now, my grandmama told me never to trust a man who had conked hair, whose hair was prettier than my own. She said they were trouble and I should cut loose and run fast in the opposite direction. But I only thought about that for a minute. The liquor was running my mind so my mind wasn’t quite running right, if that makes any sense.

  The man was polite enough, asking if I minded if he sat and talked with me. I said no. He said his name was Johnny Bird and he was the youngest son of jazz great Charlie Bird. Now, I didn’t know much about jazz but I had heard of a Charlie Bird.

  Johnny said he was downtown on business. A bellhop at his nearby hotel recommended the bar. He thought it would be a good place to get a quick drink. He didn’t know he would be so blessed as to meet a fine woman like me. Even in my less than sober state of mind I knew he was just flirting. I was happy to laugh.

  What p
ulled at my heart strings was how he talked about his nasty divorce from his wife. She’d gotten everything and he’d gotten nothing. He said that they had a big house off Cascade and she was living in it with the mailman while he’s living in a shack behind the baseball stadium. He said it wasn’t the money so much as the betrayal. He was a little lonely and wanted to someday get back in the dating game.

  We talked for a while and I told him about my traffic ticket woes and my trouble getting adjusted in a new city. He nodded every so often and stared into my eyes while he sipped whatever was in his tall frosted glass.

  The music got louder and faster and more people came in. It was hot. Johnny Bird asked if I’d like to go someplace a little less crowded where we could continue talking. I saw nothing wrong with that. He was handsome and kind. I started thinking that maybe what they say about Atlanta isn’t a lie—that there ARE nice men here, even gentlemen.

  He slid off the barstool and removed his wallet from the breast pocket of his suit jacket. He laid two crisp hundred-dollar bills on the bar and told the bartender to keep the change. I was touched that he would tip the bartender so well even though he was having financial troubles of his own. Johnny Bird offered me his arm and we left the bar. I felt like my life had turned into a romantic comedy.

  He suggested we go to his hotel. He said he was staying there because the little house he was renting was being fumigated. Under normal circumstances I would have been skeptical but the night felt magical. You, being his wife, must know how he can make a person feel. He took me to the Savannah Suites hotel in the south part of Midtown, over on Pine Street. Now I was a bit surprised by that. That was a sketchy area. I thought that hotel was “by the hour” if you know what I mean. I am not saying that I frequent such establishments but I know one when I see one. I was wrong, I suppose. I wanted to say something but I was afraid that I would hurt his feelings. You know how men are sensitive about anything to do with money.

  He could see my apprehension. He reminded me about his terrible divorce and how that place was a nice extended-stay hotel and he needed to save his money for the lawyers. This hotel was cheap but clean. Why did I think I was too good for the simple things in life? I was drunk and this made a sort of sense. Like I said, I am a woman of modest means. And maybe this was some kind of test. You know how the man pretends to be poor to make sure the woman is not just trying to get his money.

  We got to the hotel and sat on the sofa and talked. He opened a bottle of wine and the taste was slightly bitter. Again, I didn’t want to offend him so I drank it down without a word.

  By 3 a.m. it was clear that I was not up to going back to my car, so I asked if I could stay until morning and sleep on the sofa. He said yes, if I’d allow him a kiss. That didn’t seem like it would be a problem. After all, he’d been very nice to me.

  The kiss was nice, as I expected from such a gentleman. He said he wanted to have sex. It was the first time in a long time that he’d been with a woman who helped ease the pain of his divorce. And it had been a long time for me too. And I did feel sorry for him. I felt a bit strange because I’d never been with a man old enough to be my father. We lay in bed and drank some more. I even fell asleep.

  I awoke to him lying beside me. And my hands were tied to the bedposts. He proceeded to do things to me that I don’t care to write about. If you are his wife, I imagine you know what I am talking about. A man like this does not control himself. Suffice it to say that he called me every horrible name besides my own and he more than injured my body, he raped my spirit. But ma’am, this is what happened to me. At least I am alive to write what Johnny Bird did to me.

  This is how I choose to think of it.

  I was able to escape when he allowed me to use the restroom. I stumbled into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub. All was quiet save for the hard knocking of my knees together. I didn’t come out until I heard his loud snores.

  Johnny lay on the bed spread eagle, naked to the world, in a hard drunken sleep, which I unhappily am familiar with because of my stepfather. I quickly gathered up my clothing but I couldn’t find my panties. I decided to leave them. The longer I stayed there, the more of a chance he’d wake up.

  I happened to look up and catch the reflection of my face in a large mirror that hung over the sofa. My eyes were near swollen shut, my cheeks purple with bruises. A trail of blood flowed from my nose. I was grateful that I wasn’t able to see the harm done to the rest of me.

  I had to get out of there. I remembered him placing his keys and wallet in the pocket of his jacket. His jacket lay across the back of the sofa in the living room. I dug around in it and found his keys and wallet. There was money in there but what I noticed was the picture of you, ma’am, and your husband the so-called Johnny Bird. The date on the back of it said it was taken a couple of weeks before that awful night. It had your names and the date of your wedding anniversary, the day the picture was taken.

  It was your face that did it to me, ma’am. You reminded me of my auntie, the one who said that she would take me to the Peachtree Plaza one day. She was like you, proper and respectable. She always wanted me to have the better things in life, like education and a good man. She talked the talk and walked the walk but it was not enough to save her. Like you, she was married to a terrible man. The reason I keep telling you how happy I am to be alive is because my aunt was not as fortunate.

  The next thing I knew, I was standing over Johnny Bird with an empty wine bottle in my hand. For the life of me, I can’t remember walking from that living room and into the bedroom. I never believed when someone would say that they didn’t remember committing a crime. I thought they were lying.

  Now I understand.

  This is what I can piece together not from memory but from the chaos in the room when I came to again. I think I knocked him upside the head with that bottle so hard that it broke, glass splintering and going everywhere. He woke up with a start, his face bleeding from the broken glass. He was handcuffed to the bed and duct tape covered his mouth. I must’ve done that too, but ma’am, I can’t say that I remember.

  I showed him the picture of you and him together. Told him what he was doing wasn’t right. I told him all about my auntie and he didn’t care. He kicked his foot out at me, knocking me hard in the thigh. I knocked him in the head with the lamp and the phone from the nightstand. I smashed him in the face with the Gideon Bible. Blood was everywhere. He passed out.

  I ran from the room and saw the wallet on the floor next to his keys. I snatched up the keys, trying my best to find the one to his car. Then I remembered when he placed the hundred-dollar bills on the bar. I looked in the wallet and there was a stack of hundreds there. I shoved the wallet in my coat pocket and ran out the door.

  I did my best to compose myself, walking among the homeless people meandering around. I wandered among them for an hour, watching to see if the police would come. Some kind homeless woman even offered to share her water and half-eaten sandwich with me. I gave her one of the hundreds from the wallet and she said she would pray for me.

  Ma’am, I was afraid for several days. I turned on the news every day and night, expecting to see my face on the TV as a part of the crime-stopper reports. It never happened. But I did see a picture of your husband on the TV, and something about him being mugged and how he was recovering at Grady Hospital. He was a councilman, someone big in the city government. My heart stopped at the thought of it. I would be going to jail. I knew they were looking for me. I’d watched enough crime shows. There was enough blood at the scene to find me. I was so scared. I kept the wallet in the back of my closet as I was pondering whether to turn myself in to the police or not. No one ever showed up at the door.

  Instead, some two weeks later, I went in for my court date and paid my speeding ticket in full and in cash.

  I was afraid. I kept my head down as much as I could. The police didn’t recognize me. They called me ma’am, showed me respect. I paid the fine and left with my record cle
ar.

  My conscience was not clear though. I kept thinking about the wallet and the cash. Your husband is a man with a problem but that didn’t mean I should’ve taken money from him. That was money that he earned and I was taking food out of your family’s mouth.

  So, I am returning the wallet. I kept the money. I ask you to forgive me, but after all I went through I told myself that God was blessing me in the process. I know that this is a lie and I should not involve God’s good name in this mess. But the least I can do is return this wallet and say that I am so sorry.

  Ma’am, I just wanted you to know that your husband is a very sick man, but I imagine that you know this already. He needs to get help before somebody gets hurt worse than me. God forbid he kill a woman. If you know him, you know that I am not exaggerating. So I am coming to you with this information in the name of my dearly departed Auntie Twyla.

  Again I am sorry.

  Sincerely,

  Jane Doe

  Lorraine stared at the letter for a long time. Then she looked up at the television just in time to see the girl on The Price Is Right lose her showcase. She had overbid by just a few dollars.

  “Too bad for her,” Lorraine whispered.

  * * *

  The noon news came on after the game show. There was Booker, with a crowd of people around him, dignified as always, his hair neat as ever even in the blowing wind. She’d permed his hair the night before so that it would be perfect for the announcement. She’d ironed his shirt and carefully laid out his suit and shined his shoes. Lorraine never got used to looking at the television and seeing her husband there. This time she muted the set so she didn’t have to hear his voice. She knew he was telling the reporters how he was outraged with this or that, laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s big announcement.