I can’t make the decision for him, though I think it’d be a leap into a solidified future for him and his wife, considering what he came to me and said a while ago. He’s allowed concerns, but if truth be told, it’s as much his corporation as it is mine. He’s made contributions to help Jen Juice rise to the global platform – something that a select number of corporations achieve, if ever. He’s intelligent. He’s dedicated. He’s driven. He graduated from one of the more distinguished institutions in the nation. I acquired knowledge from listening to, and shadowing, far-along businessmen and reading hundreds of books on business development. He has the same adamant approach as me, essential for flourishing in this industry. I hope he takes into account his wife’s opinion because I’m sure she wouldn’t mind seeing him promoted to chief executive officer. She’d be honored. She’d be thrilled. She’d be prouder of him than he’d be of himself.
“Alright,” he agrees.
Relief engulfs me as I exhale quietly from my lungs.
“Under one condition,” he says, straight-faced serious like me.
“Name it.”
“Sell it to me.” He whips out a checkbook, an ink pen. “How much?”
I look him square in the eyes. “A dollar.”
“You can’t be serious. A dollar?”
“As an extra scoop of ice cream wanted by a fat kid.” I load up the word processor installed on the sleek laptop positioned on the desk in front of me to type an agreement letter. I arrange signature lines for the seller and the purchaser a distance beneath the final line of its particulars. I select the office button at the top left corner of the screen to print the agreement, to retrieve it from the print-fax station and go back to my seat; Romulus is floored. I pick up the landline from my desk. I page the certified notary agent we have on staff into the office for her to bear witness. I sign my name, Romulus signs his, and she then comes behind each of us to ink hers and notarize the agreement with a certified stamp. I round from behind the desk to hand him a crisp copy of the agreement with her departing back to her office. “Believe me now?”
As much as I want to continue my reign as chief executive officer, there’s something much more important that requires not just a fraction but all of my love and support. I’m quite certain if I were in her place, she wouldn’t be wasting time anyplace else – as I have been doing here with the position I hold here – held as of now. I need to focus on being there for her and nothing else. I even considered contracting a member of the staff to handle the paperwork I’ve been straining to manage, once, but I couldn’t bring myself to force more work on someone who was already busting their behind to make sure Jen Juice continues excelling. It’s not who I am as a person. I managed as best as I knew how until now.
I hold out a hand. “I believe you owe me a dollar,” I say, joshing.
He rises from the guest chair, going inside his back pocket for his wallet, and compensates me for the owed amount.
“Congratulations, Rome.”
“Thank you,” he says, firmly shaking the hand I extended him with an honored look. He then leaves for the day to, I assume, go celebrate the news with his wife.
As for me, I round all of my belongings into the duffle bag and head to see Charlotte with the proof of sale to attain access to the account savings for retirement. I’d been depositing hundreds of thousands of dollars into it since my first check from Jen Juice.
The plan was to have a tenth of a billion dollars of earnings set aside for retirement after a sale, or just for when my days were done, but dire circumstances restructured the system I’d mapped to achieve that objective. I don’t regret the decision, though. I don’t feel as if I should’ve taken time to ponder things through. I feel great, sincere, secure with the decision made to regain all of myself – spiritually, emotionally, and physically – so I can be there for Jennifer. I should’ve never attempted managing both. I should’ve withdrawn from my position months ago, so I could’ve better been near the side of the reason I breathe, the reason I am better, the reason I smile, the reason my life has remained brilliant for all these years – my light Jennifer Haden.
I drop in on Jen to spend hours chatting with her, her fair natural complexion now blanched. I laugh about a few of the amusing moments we shared.
I hit the streets to drive around downtown Chicago, without any place in particular to go. It’s dark. It’s a little late. It’s the escape I need to refresh from seeing her in the same coma she’s been in all along, except she’s much deeper now. The sidewalks are jammed with droves of people flocking to nightlife venues – women dressed to make impressions, men to nightlife standards – and of course, dealers, addicts, seducers, and pickpockets making runs amongst and apart from the crowd of people in motion. I turn from one main street onto another, and I cruise with the interior atmosphere of the automobile as silent as a boondocks forest as I keep my attention straight ahead through the windshield.
It’s depressing. It’s sad how dealers and addicts and seducers tarnish the wondrous sections vacationers drive or fly long distances to see. But before I begin attempting to think about the motes in their eyes, I first have to consider the beam that once was in mine. That could be me roaming the streets, pushing, murdering, abusing substances, had I not chosen the proper choices coming up, because illegal options were there. It’s by favor I was able to see through the fog and make the choices that led me in the right direction. I’m not proud of some of the boneheaded decisions I made. I’m wiser because of lessons I learned from. Jen was there through the beatings my father would give my mother, when my mother attempted to slit her wrists, when he floored an outdated Buick off an embankment trying to end us all with me and my mother seated as passengers, when he attempted to burn our impoverished home to the ground because she denied him sex in the wee hours of night. Jen was there when everything was looking south for me, when I needed a rock to be my strength, when I needed a set of insightful wings to raise me past more situations than those. The lessons learned can’t be put into words.
I turn the corner of the main street for a less populated avenue that leads into one of the more dangerous – gang-related and impoverished – sides of the city to continue abiding by the speed limit. Pondering about life, I think about her. I think about me. I think about us and the misfortunes we have overcome as well as the ones that almost conquered us. It’s an honor to be able to have faith, trust, and persistence boat our companionship through dire times. Just as I bring myself to the cusp of realizing the rarity of a love like ours, amongst a generation blinded by false realities and bold misconceptions, the engine of my automobile suffers a smooth shutoff. I take a gander at the dashboard – only to have the sudden shutoff justified by the fact the fuel gauge says the automobile is out of fuel, the tires continuing to roll as I steer into a nonexistent parking space alongside a mucky street deep in a section of the city I shouldn’t be in. I had zoned out – pondering about the things – when I’d made the turn onto the avenue that led here.
Half an hour from the hospital, considering the hellacious traffic on the main streets I turned from minutes ago, I take in my surroundings. It’s unclean. It’s marked. It’s claimed by the hands of the most ruthless mob of people, who, unlike commoners, are mean, heartless, and will gun down an infant without the slightest inward or outward appearance of concern. A fuel station, attended by a Caucasian male, beckons from a lot on the opposite side of the street, northwest of the strip of adjacent businesses that extend for the northern stretch of sidewalk just outside the front passenger door. The fuel station is west of the entrance to a deep, dark alley that halves the stretch of sidewalk. A look through the windshield as well as one in my side mirror shows little to no traffic for this nine p.m. night.
I can’t walk back to the office; I can’t go home because the place now belongs to the Maitlands. I can’t just sit here in this automobile. As soon as they see me in it, a Caucasian gentleman in this part of the city, I’m as good as robbed at gunpo
int. Maybe even dead. And I can’t ask Dr. Jamison to let me take shelter in Jen’s hospital room. I’m quite certain the people above her position would conspire a method to increase the bill. I’m not the cleverest when it comes to street smarts. The nearest I’ve come with happenings in places like this is me having known people in high school who lost their lives among gang-claimed sections of the city like this. I do, however, understand somewhat how things work, to the point where I refuse to jeopardize my life over something materialistic that’s not even worth defending, something that, with no trouble, can be manufactured and shipped again.
I step outside the automobile to stand out of the path of oncoming traffic. I open the rear door nearest me. I grab the duffle bag from the backseat. I shut the door. I place the duffle bag’s shoulder strap over me, aiming the control pad of my keyset at the steering wheel to hitch the locks, activating the alarm system. I step around behind the automobile onto the sidewalk to look ahead of me and grasp the ambiance of the place I now have no choice but to call home.
I have no place to go. I have no money. I have nothing but an automobile which I am about to leave behind because I refuse to let the likelihood of finding myself facing an aimed gun lead to me not being there for my girlfriend. No chance will I jeopardize my chance to be there when she opens her eyes. I must be there. I will be; nothing on earth will keep me from being there. Not me, not that automobile, and definitely not the fact that I am now homeless.
Five
The late night feels noticeably cooler than expected, the cold season between autumn and spring two months from nipping the atmosphere with its blistering degrees. And I am walking the sidewalk leaving behind the automobile that let down moments ago.
Of all sections of Chicago, I ran out of fuel in the one that is home to the most ruthless gang of the third most-populous metropolitan area in the nation. Nearing the alley up ahead on the right, I notice a disturbing sound of punches and stomps into flesh and the helpless voice of an older gentleman pleading for dear life. The closer I get¸ the more the sounds increase. The instant I step to begin passing by the entrance, without turning to steal a look, I notice through my peripheral vision a gang of Hispanic men standing over a battered middle-aged gentleman – a gentleman I think I may have seen someplace before, but a recollection fog keeps me from remembering where or if we’ve even met for sure. It’s deep. It’s a dead end. And the gentleman seems decades older than the tattooed men, tattoo sleeves inking their buff arms while they stand over him with tank-tops and sleeveless tees as their shirts and saggy pants and cargo shorts as their bottoms. Their message to him is something about an unsettled debt. I put a pep in gumshoeing past the entrance as if unaware of the matter, for the future half of sidewalk that stretches for yards before bending right to make a corner, which I assume continues the hard-surfaced path for pedestrians alongside the two-lane street that intersects with this one. Before I can make it past the alley one of them happens to turn and spot me and makes known my presence before I arrive midpoint.
The heart inside me picks up a speed that trumps the gallops of a racehorse, hammering like a muscle that wants to plow its bass pumps out of my chest. Like a deer in headlights, I turn. I notice the gang of men shifting their eager-for-bloodshed attention from the deathly still gentleman sprawled on the cement near a dumpster. The bulkiest man, standing in the forefront – the leader, I suppose – furrows his brows at me and clenches his lips. The men in his wake stand licking their chops as if expecting to be commanded or unleashed after me. I, judging based on their narrow eyes, can sense the fact all of them would murder in a heartbeat and not think or feel or flinch out of regard for anything.
I’ve never been in a more horrifying predicament in my life. I thought not knowing if Jen would ever open her eyes was, or not knowing what the future held after being told I could no longer participate in baseball. Neither of them caused me trembles at heart like this. I don’t know if I should speak. I don’t know if I should run. I don’t know if I should apologize for being present in the wrong place at the wrong time and hope to be excused and allowed to walk without having life taken from me. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t say anything. I…
“Matarlo!” The leader commands, the men in his wake tearing out after me.
The strap of the duffle bag suspended across my shoulder, my eyes widening in panic, I strike out across the street with little to no traffic causing for a stop. When a sudden gunshot pops off, like an earsplitting firecracker through the atmosphere, I halt on a dime, raising my hands to the dark sky in the middle of the street. I turn. I let the bag drop. They’re standing in the exact formation as in that moment when all of them shifted their attention to look at me, the leader, dark-olive complexion, standing in the forefront, except this time armed.
“Listen, I don’t—”
“Silencio!” He confronts me. “Wasn’t thinking about not wanting trouble when you was over there watching,” he says, raising the nine millimeter to press it against my forehead.
“See that Mercedes over there?” I give a downward bob in the direction of the parked automobile, making sure I keep hands raised.
The one in the forefront turns his head for a brief look, his followers mimicking him.
“It’s yours, if you let me go,” I tell him.
“How we know you not a snitch?”
“I promise I’m not.”
“Promises don’t mean shit in the streets,” he says, scrunching his nose, squeezing his trigger finger. “I dunno. For all I know, you’re bluffing about that whip over there.”
He has reason to feel as he does. If I were leader of the most ruthless gang, and a Caucasian male in his mid-twenties with buzzed hair showed up in these parts claiming an automobile no one would dare risk driving into such a place, I would think the same.
In spite of speculation, I hope he extends me a chance to validate the truth. I can’t have my life end here over something as irrelevant as an automobile. I hope he gives me a chance, hope he doesn’t make assumptions or jump to conclusion about my intentions, although I’m about to attempt to bribe my way out of being gunned down in the middle of this street – which not a single automobile has passed down since I exited mine to grab the duffle bag, standing backed out of the commuting path of an Oldsmobile. I’ve an understanding why. I’ve no clue what I was thinking, making the turn that led here. Other than the locals fueling up at the pumps and those out of their automobiles making purchases inside the station, there’s not a soul around. Well, there’s one automobile going by. But instead of braking to help, the snail-driving elderly lady drives her outdated, slightly rusted Grand Marquis right around us in the street, ignores the sly imploration I give her through a brief look, and continues about her business.
“Know I’m not supposed to move or talk.” My nerves monkey-fit like those of an insect stranded in a web that belongs to a cluster of gruesome spiders. “Let me reach inside my pocket, get the keys. I’ll prove it.”
He drop his eyes to the street in contemplation. “Better make it count,” he agrees, giving a villainous bob of the head as if multiple shots to the head will be the consequence for a lie.
With imperativeness about me, I retrieve the keyset from a pocket. I aim the control panel at the automobile to unhitch the locks, deactivating the alarm system with each of them witnessing. If not for the modern headlights lighting up and going out at the press of the unlock button, I’m certain I’d be buckling to the paved street with bullets in my forehead, most likely dead before my strong back strikes down on this public thoroughfare. I’m sure my face’s masculine square shape, and its prominent structure, would be unidentifiable, considering the way the man behind the leader taunts me with his machete.
I’ve read headlines about investigators suspecting him of four hundred murders. I understand what he’s capable of. Relatives of his victims – who can’t seem to prove their loved ones were murdered by him – still mourn, struggling to bring themselves to the
realization that they’ve to cope with. I’m sure a number of them know he murdered their loved ones, but, however, refuse to mumble a word out of fear of the same thing happening to them or their children. I understand not jeopardizing the lives of their children, as I do with them refusing to risk theirs as well. Investigators only care for solving cases, not one thing more, and then they move forward, not providing the protection needed to keep the innocent safe.
“That’s a nice whip, ese.” The tallest man – about six foot nine inches – of the gang comments from his place near the back, a distinct design tattooed across a whole half of his face.
“I dunno, ese,” the leader says back, skeptical. “Something ain’t right about that car.” He taps me on the forehead with the muzzle of the nine millimeter. “Think about it. Why’d a nice whip, like that, be parked there on the side of the street in a neighborhood like this? Begging me, you, one of us, for a stick-up. Think he undercover, ese,” he says, squinting his eyes, thinking deep into his mind to, I assume, see if he has ever spotted me among the policemen he has had past, and continuing, run-ins with.
Of all things, of thousands of occupations here, he thinks I’m undercover.
“No, ese. He ain’t no undercover.” The tall man in the back steps through to the front. “I know undercover when I see one. He ain’t. Betcha he some loaded businessman that happen to roll up on the wrong side of town. Car prolly ran out of gas on ’im. That’s it. Betcha that’s it.”
“Better hope so,” the leader says, glaring me square in the eyes, taunting me on the forehead with the nine millimeter. He snatches the keyset from the grip of my dominant hand. “Hit up the gas station over there,” he says, tossing the keys over his shoulder at the tall man. “Grab a keg, fill it up. Let’s see if the businessman tryna hoodwink me.” He refuses to unpin his attention from me as he returns the nine millimeter under his belt. “I find out you tryna pull one over me, I’ma make sure the police never find you.”
My Bridge To Forever Page 6
