Memphis Noir

by Laureen Cantwell

  “Trey sent this. This from Trey.” Trey never introduced himself to me, but I knew exactly who he had to be.

  Trey had come into the branch right before closing. He was gesturing at the copy machine, pointing at it like he might be trying to shoot it with his finger. I appreciated the regulars, getting to understand what people want, what they need, but each stranger feels like a potential catastrophe. I try to brace myself for them, prepare. I spray perfume in the crook of my elbow so that I smell it when I shelve. I pilfer pills. I wear underwear in lurid colors under my shirtwaists from the Midtown or East Memphis Goodwills. Spike my thermos of coffee. Neaten. Straighten. Order.

  I kept my face closed and glanced at the big clock right over his head. I didn’t answer him, but headed toward him. When he saw that I was on the way he let out a huge smile. Tribulation worked its way through me.

  “Mane, I done fucked off all my lil’ change on this here machine,” he said.

  I shushed him and gestured over my shoulder. “Do you see those children?”

  He glanced over his own shoulder, stretched to his full height, and then leaned down to me and lowered his voice. “My bad. I don’t mean no harm, ma’am, but those kids probably curse worse than me,” he said. I could smell the Black & Mild smoke and mints on his breath.

  “They are prolific cursers, but that is beside the point,” I said. The diamonds in his ears were at least a karat.

  “You got jokes?”

  “A few. Let’s see what you have here.”

  He handed me the papers and explained he just needed to take a signature off so he could replace it with his own. Fantastic. A bit of petty forgery right before close. I once watched a nearly blind little old lady in a crooked wig forge a document for Social Security. I usually chastise the younger ones, but all I could do was admire the work she had managed by typing with just two fingers. Who am I to judge?

  “I’m in a fix. I need some help. Just a little help? Please.”

  “Please?”

  His hand brushed mine and let loose something quivering inside me. I went to work: ruler, scissors, Sharpie, correction fluid. Library forgers probably keep Wite-Out in business. When I was done, I pulled the newly blank form off the glass and handed it to him.

  “I need an extra copy of that, if you please,” he said.

  He signed the form. I made the copies.

  “Let me thank you. Take this.” He was holding out a twenty.

  I waved him away. “It’s my job,” I said and went to the back. Neaten. Straighten. Order.

  The next day, the lunches started arriving.

  * * *

  I love being alone in my library. I sent Miss Anne on to choir rehearsal and got the shipments ready to go out to other branches. I had a cousin who once drove the van that delivered the books from branch to branch. It tickles me to think of my big, burly cousin being the book delivery fairy. He moved on to other things, but I’m still here. As soon as I stepped outside, I saw him. Trey was leaning against his Escalade. He had parked in the farthest space. I suppose this was to keep from spooking me, but I jumped when I saw him. He held up his hands like I was holding a gun on him and started walking toward me.

  “Look, I don’t mean no harm,” he said.

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “Damn. You think I’m a robber?” He shook his head, trying to shake off the insult. “I just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”

  He approached me slowly, like you might approach something wild. I held my keys in my fist like they teach girls to for protection.

  “You know, I love me a gal with short hair. You just my flavor of Kool-Aid.”

  I smiled in spite of myself. Just a little smile, but it was enough for Trey. I have been holding myself together very carefully since my mother died. He recognized my tiny surrender. I was ready to be disturbed. I leaned back against the hot metal of the library door, and he put his hand on it, over my head. With his free hand he traced my jaw line and collarbone. He rested his hand over my heart, traced my nipple with his thumb. Traffic flew by, but we were invisible to the people getting off work, going to work, hurrying elsewhere.

  I turned and unlocked the door. He pressed against me. He was already hard.

  He lifted me up on the counter where we label the books. Mystery. Thriller. Romance.

  Trey peeked inside my dress like he was looking behind a curtain. You don’t get to see actual shock often. People know too much these days. Think they have it all figured out. See what they are already planning to see.

  “You ’round here with this sexy-ass bra and no draws on?”

  I opened my legs, and he pressed his lips on me, gently, almost tenderly, but not. I trembled so much I was embarrassed. He slipped his fingers inside me, working me until I came. The tears were a surprsie, something in me unlocked.

  He lifted me off the counter and bent me over the bins of books awaiting pickup. With less to prove, he made quick, vigorous work of fucking me. I was floating somewhere above us, converging, dismantling, becoming.

  “Tie me back up,” I said when it was over.

  I watched his big hands fumble to get the bow just right. Zipped him up.

  “Shit. Look what I done found in PV. My gal in the Valley. Valley. Val.”

  He claimed me, just that quick.

  Once upon a time I did everything I could to keep from being marked by PV—“Pussy Valley.” There was a time, but this was now.

  I set everything right. Tidied. Wiped things down while he watched. I unlocked the door, startled by the bright sun. I locked what we had done inside and turned to him.

  “Don’t ever come back here again. Ever.”

  “Let me drop you off.”

  “My ride is on the way,” I lied. “You should go.”

  “You gone do me like that?”

  “You should go.”

  He was riding an Escalade with illegal tint. The paint looked black, but the job was custom. It had an iridescence that made the paint blue, purple, green, depending on how the light caught it. He walked toward the Escalade, stopped and looked back at me.

  “Go. Please.” I put on my sunglasses and lit a clove.

  He finally got in the Escalade and pulled off. I watched myself disappear in its inky sheen. I stared until the car balled up Third Street, headed downtown. I waited, collecting my nerves and watching to make sure he didn’t double back and follow me. When the quivering finally subsided, I started for home.

  * * *

  Trey didn’t stay away. He would show up at lunch or at the end of the day. Each time I would tell myself that I would send him away.

  I did not send him away. I would suck him off in the Escalade or let him finger me until I was hot and glistening. For those brief moments, I felt like a roiling river in a rising storm. I was being reset, realigned. Every time, he would beg to take me somewhere else, to give me a ride home, and I would say no. This, I could say no to. I kept us contained.

  “Val, why you do me like this?”

  “This is your window. Don’t make me close it.”

  “Window?”

  “Right now. Right now is your window,” I said. I didn’t bother to point out that he was married, since he hadn’t even bothered to take off his ring.

  “Do you see this shit?”

  I looked at where Trey was pointing. Traffic was just starting to pick up, headed south toward the Tunica casinos. But strutting down the sidewalk was a magnificent peacock. It was a beautiful beast. The bird spread the fan of its tail feathers, and I was entranced. I remember when my mother first pointed one out, right here in the middle of the city: “He better get away from that chicken house there before they fry him,” she said and laughed. Peacocks have been my familiars ever since.

  I watched the bird strut across the street, almost get hit by a car, and then hop the fence to the big tumbledown house on the hill. Missing my mother got tangled up in Trey’s beautiful body, that dimple in his cheek, the sharp lin
es of his goatee, the glimmer of gold in his mouth.

  “It’s your lucky day,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrow at me and smirked. Rubbed his hands together. “Is that right?”

  I hit the dash and pointed the way out of the library parking lot and up the street.

  “Pull up right here.” We had gone less than a mile.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  Again, shock. It was refreshing. I got out and walked over to the gate and waved him through, then locked the gate behind him. I felt the tribulation in my spirit, but I was aching for something to happen to break me from my grief, to make me real again.

  “I didn’t even know this was back here. You live here? In this fucking mansion? It’s a whole fucking Graceland tucked off in the cut. Pink Palace or some shit.”

  It was my turn to raise an eyebrow.

  “Oh, ’cause I’m from that North-North you think we didn’t go on no field trips? Please.”

  The house is impressive. The property sits up on a hill, right in the X that Horn Lake and Third Street make. Like a woman crossing her legs, Mama used to say. That’s where the power’s at. The property has become so overgrown since the owner died that you can barely see it from the street. There is a wide stone porch with steps leading up to it. It looks like someone dropped a Mediterranean villa down in the middle of South Memphis. There’s even a fountain lit from underneath. I still get startled by the creepy shadows it casts. Up on the hill you can almost forget that pawn shops, strip clubs, fast food joints, and gas stations are your neighbors. A private Eden.

  “All of this shit right up here by PV.”

  Even though the housing project has been demolished for years now, L.M. Graves Manor is still the major landmark of the area, but no one I know ever called it that. Everyone calls it PV. Pussy Valley. Shorthand for fast-tailed girls and mannish boys (women and men too), but only the girls ever carry the weight of that shame. When I was doing my library training, I looked up Dr. L.M. Graves and found a grainy black-and-white photograph of him standing at a microphone. The photograph was from the dedication of a housing project. I squinted at the caption and connected the men (Edward F. Barry, L.M. Graves, Walter Simmons, H.P. Hurt) to their legacies: Barry Homes, Graves Manor, Walter Simmons Estates, Hurt Village. A village of hurt? A manor of graves? Those names—the stuff of Memphis fairy tales. Or nightmares.

  Trey started walking toward the big house. I grabbed his hand.

  “We are going there.” I pointed to the little cottage down the hill from the big house.

  “Okay,” Trey said.

  I made him a drink, and we sat on my patio with the big house hovering over us. Every now and then Trey would glance up at the house with an expression that looked like longing.

  “Do you really want to be a librarian?”

  No one had ever asked me that before. It wasn’t the sort of thing people questioned. “I don’t know. Maybe. I like keeping order.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Do you want to see my place?”

  “You told me to enjoy my window.”

  “You’re behind the gate now. Might as well.”

  I gave him the nickel tour. He looked around, opened my fridge, and seemed to be surprised to find food there.

  “So you cook?”

  I slid my hand into the waistband of his shorts. I went down on my knees and smiled up at him. He was such a gorgeous mistake. My cousin Leslie keeps telling me that I need to make more mistakes.

  “You think I don’t eat unless you feed me?”

  “Are you for real?” he asked. His hands were on my scalp sending shivers all through me. I was electrified, ready to take flight.

  Afterward I made us Old Fashioneds with homemade bourbon cherries. Warmed the rib eyes and creamed spinach and scalloped potatoes he brought with him.

  “A nigga could get used to this.”

  “Don’t get used to this,” I said to him, to the both of us. Just then the lights turned on at the main house. We were out on my patio, the sky turning purple. I was curled into him on the chaise longue. I nuzzled into his thick neck and inhaled.

  “Who lives up there?” he asked.

  “My father owned that house, and he never claimed me,” I said, listening to his heart. “He never lived in it while I was alive, but my mama used to work for him. The big house was willed to her, but it didn’t work out like that. None of his real family even want to live out here. All out in East Memphis or gone from the South completely. One last old-lady cousin still in the house, too mean to die.”

  “For real? You ought to let me put my lawyer on it.”

  “I don’t know. This little place is mine. Free and clear. See them try to sell it with me here. Sometimes this is my favorite place of all. Sometimes I hate it.”

  We strolled along the property, and I imagined that we were elsewhere, some other place, some other time, some other selves.

  “Look,” I told him and pointed. About half a dozen peacocks were gathered in a little grove.

  After I told Trey about the house, he kept coming up with schemes for me to get my due. He had experience in these matters. From what I could gather, Trey owned a string of car detailing operations that likely laundered money. These schemes ranged from the mundane “Sue them tricks!” to complex schemes involving fraud and violence. Trey’s obsession exhilarated and disturbed me. I would egg him on and then beg him to just let it be. We both needed a distraction, so I let him talk me into going to a fight party together.

  * * *

  He waved me over to make introductions.

  “Big Lo, this is my gal.”

  “Val,” I said and extended my hand.

  “Val?”

  “Like valley,” I said. I had let the name settle on me. It made it easier to keep the me I was with Trey confined to its own territory.

  “Hey Trey, let me holla at you for a minute.”

  Big Lo and Trey stepped away, and I pretended not to pay attention. The other guy kept his voice to a low grumble. He lifted his eyes toward me and then back to Trey.

  “My girl good, mane. A librarian. Don’t nobody know how to be quiet better than her. Can you believe that I found that over by PV?”

  “She don’t look like the girls I used to mess with in PV,” Big Lo said.

  I pretended not to know what they meant and let them enjoy their joke. As director of the health department, Dr. L.M. Graves once coauthored a report blaming the poor health of Negroes on their immoral behavior. I wondered what he would make of the housing project named after him being renamed Pussy Valley. Prophecy? Proof? What about the unnamed namers of PV? Was the naming a rebuke, an epitaph, a shame, or something trickier? When I was a girl, I would have taken not appearing to be from Pussy Valley as a compliment. But that was then. I know now that closed legs and proper talk won’t save you. And there are Pussy Valleys everywhere, even if they aren’t called that.

  There were about a dozen men and half as many women or girls there. My dress, though it was one of the scantiest ones I owned, could make three of theirs.

  We made our way through a crowd that seemed to be a mix of above-board and underground dudes. This seemed to imbue the atmosphere with an illicit vibrancy that happens when boundaries get crossed. The undercard match of the fight blared in surround sound. I was overstimulated already. I just wanted to get out on that balcony to get a glance at the Mississippi.

  Then, a man—tall and handsome. He wasn’t kitted out in ill-fitting Greg’s menswear suits or sagging jeans. This dude was wearing immaculate white jeans, a crisp black linen shirt, tortoiseshell glasses, and shiny oxblood loafers.

  “Trey, good you could make it out.”

  “Fo sho, fo sho. Hey, this is my gal, Val.”

  “Val?” he asked.

  “Valley,” I said. He was curious, interested in the kind of unnerving way that powerful people can have.

  “It’s a family name,” I added, and leaned back against Trey.


  “I’m Nile,” he said.

  “That’s a lot of name,” I said.

  “So it is. Please, help yourselves to anything you wish.”

  “Baby, hook me something up. Hook Nile up with something too,” Trey said.

  “What would you like?”

  “Surprise me,” Nile said.

  I nodded, happy to be unmoored for a moment. There was a bored-looking young woman behind the bar.

  “Do you mind?”

  We switched places, and I checked the selection. Nice. Folded a napkin down. Scooped ice into a glass to chill it. Sliced a little citrus. Got things set. The girl was mesmerized.

  “You look so familiar to me,” she said.

  “I get that a lot,” I said.

  “I could swear that I know you from somewhere.”

  Memphis is a really big small town, and the last thing I needed was for someone to report to one of my remaining relatives that I was hanging out with low-level riffraff.

  “Don’t think so. I’m Val. It is very nice to meet you.”

  “I’m Shelby. Like the county.”

  I mixed Trey’s cocktail. An Old Fashioned. His usual. The men at this party were higher up on the food chain than he was. I didn’t want the name of a drink to trip him up; he was clearly trying to impress them. I dispatched Shelby-like-the-county over with his drink.

  Next I turned my attention to Nile’s cocktail. Surprise me. This was the kind of man Leslie kept telling me I should date, not that what Trey and I did would be considered dating. Maybe by Shelby-like-the-county, but not by me. This one I mixed and delivered myself.

  “Enjoy,” I said.

  He took a sip and nodded. “A Manhattan.”

  I nodded.

  “Excellent. Quite excellent.”

  “Enjoy,” I said again. I walked away and resisted looking back.

  A roar went up among the other partygoers. The underdog in the undercard fight snuck in a sucker punch, and the undefeated champion went down.

  It wasn’t often I got to see the city from this high up, so I wanted to take full advantage of the view. I was also tired and wanted a bit of air. Trey would want something soon. Maybe Nile would want something too.

  “Hey, hook me up one of them dranks,” said a tall light-skinned dude. It wasn’t a question.