“I am Val. What’s your name?” I said, and held out my hand to shake.
“Mane, I didn’t even ask you all that. I just need you to hook me up a drink.” He was drunk and towering over me.
“Could you give me a minute?” I asked, hoping to stall him. I turned to go back into the party, and he grabbed my arm.
“Bitch, just make my drank,” he slurred, and flicked a bill at me. A hundred-dollar bill seemed to float in slow motion to the ground. I took a step back again, and he stumbled toward me.
Trey appeared and pinned the guy against the balcony.
“Mane, forget putting your hands on her, you speak another word to my gal—naw, you fucking look in her direction—and we gonna have a problem.”
He was punching the guy, and I had a vision of them both going over the balcony wall. Trey threw him to the ground.
“Take your little red punk ass on up out of here,” he said, punctuating each word with a kick.
“That’s enough, Trey! Stop! That’s enough,” I said.
Big Lo and another man had the guy by both arms and were pulling him out of the main room of the suite. It didn’t take much, considering how drunk the guy was. Big Lo’s blazer was open, and I could see the gun in its holster under his arm.
Trey was sweating, furious. He turned to me, lifted up my chin. My eyes filled with tears. I hadn’t even thought of crying until then.
“You good?”
I nodded.
“I will be right back.”
“Maybe we should just go, Trey,” I said.
He looked over at the TV. The main event was starting.
Nile came forward. “I want to apologize to the both of you. Please stay.”
I nodded. Trey left the suite. Told me he would be right back.
I found the bathroom to freshen up. It was one of those huge marble affairs. I stared in the mirror and contemplated just slipping out into the night. Wondered if it would be possible to just disappear. There was a knock at the door.
“Val?” It was Shelby-like-the-county. I let her in. She shimmied up on the counter. “Don’t worry about him, Val.”
I started to fix my face while she talked. My eyeliner was a little smudged, but I like it like that. Usually can only get it after I sleep in my makeup, but then only I get to witness my smoldering.
“Who? He’s already forgotten,” I said, and shook my head to make it true.
“Half the dudes in there police.”
“Really?”
“Tony’s dumb ass gonna end up at 201 tonight. Off some bullshit. Your dude was ’bout it, though.”
“He was, wasn’t he?” I said and laughed. I took out my makeup bag and Shelby gasped.
“Wait! A Céline bag? And you got the whole NARS store in here!”
“I have a hookup,” I said and winked. “You have your eye on anybody out there? Even if it’s just for tonight?”
“Well,” she giggled, “the one with the good hair. I seen him on TV. I danced for him once. He doesn’t remember, though. At a bachelor party.”
The young politico. Of course.
“Why don’t we go make him a drink?”
“How did you learn all the drinks and stuff?”
“A book. A bartender’s guide. Give me your address, I’ll send you one.” I held out my makeup kit. Told her to pick something. “You know what, Shelby? Too bad about Tony going to jail tonight. All he had to do was ask.”
I checked my reflection in the wall of mirrors again. I looked a little savage, a little untamed, but a little more alive too.
* * *
I worried that it was a mistake to venture out beyond this tiny territory with Trey. It’s dangerous at the border, and something had shifted, perhaps permanently. Ours was a fragile, reckless thing that needed to be contained. Trey couldn’t get away as often. Said he was working on something important. Something big. Without his steady agitation, I began to sink back into a haze of grief. I needed a moment to get myself together. I needed to adjust my energy.
I did the things my mother taught me. Cleaned the house from top to bottom, front to back. I wiped down the walls and floors with Van Van oil. Tended to my altar. Burned sage. Dressed and lit a candle for my mother. Watered my rosemary plants. What my mother called the old ways. Knowledge. For this my alleged father’s family accused my mother of many terrible, ghastly things, up to and including murder. Every black woman on this here earth better use everything she got to survive this world, my mother said. She also said she wouldn’t abide a man who didn’t choose her of his own free will.
Leslie told me to make sure I don’t let Trey “Bigger Thomas” me. I said I would “Teacake” him first. We both let out a boisterous laugh. Leslie and I were cuzzies. First cousins. We had called each other cuzzy since we had language.
* * *
When Trey showed up again, he started right back in on the schemes.
“We can talk to my dude Nile about your paperwork, lock this down.” He gestured out toward the big house. “And until then, I got a few ideas. Look, I’m working my long game for us. This is just the short game.”
“Long game? Like what?”
The party was a success for Trey. He told me they had a foolproof plan with people at every stage of the game. From police, judges, lawyers, politicians, document clerks. It sounded like something from television. They even had somebody on the property room in case evidence needed to disappear.
“All that money gonna flow through me. Splish splash.”
“Trey, this is too much. I don’t know about this.”
“That’s for me to handle, for the future. I wouldn’t get you involved in that. Look, I hate how they treating you. You shouldn’t have to live small like this. Don’t you want something bigger? I want to give you that.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said.
His phone buzzed, and he held up his finger. He walked a bit away from me, and I stared up at the house.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t considered that the house was oppressing me, that I was stuck on this little no-man’s-land.
“I said I was on my way!” he yelled into the phone. “Just think about it,” he said to me, and departed for his own province.
I sat and watched the house above me and let the night descend around me. Up on the hill, the lights at the big house came on.
* * *
“The house will be empty for the Fourth of July.” I regretted saying this almost immediately. He had been away for about a week. I started to imagine a peaceful disentanglement. Independence Day. Freedom. A cliché, yes.
“For real though? That might be the perfect time for our little plan.” He was still getting antsy with whatever his life was when it wasn’t here, and so was I.
“I don’t know, Trey. It’s not so bad. I have a good thing here. They are family, however twisted. They could have just sent me on my way.”
Something loud and heavy hit the roof.
“The fuck?”
We jumped out of bed. Trey pushed me back and motioned for me to get down. He grabbed his pistol and edged toward the door. He opened it the tiniest bit and peered out. Quickly, too quickly, he flung the door open and stepped outside.
“What the fuck. Val, come out here.”
“What is it?” I pulled my robe together and stood at the threshold of the door.
“Come on out. You got to see this shit to believe it.” He was waving me out, laughing. There was a huge male peacock on the patio. I stepped toward Trey, and the peacock stumbled over.
“Did you hurt him?” I asked.
The peacock righted itself and took a few swaggering steps.
“Hell naw! This lil’ nigger bold as hell. Watch this.” Trey rushed toward the peacock who stood its ground.
I started laughing. “He’s drunk.”
“Drunk?”
“It’s the peaches. The fruit falls to the ground and ferments.” When I first moved here I had a standoff with a drun
k opossum, but never a drunk peacock.
“Didn’t you say they was lucky? Can’t get luckier than a drunk-ass peacock.” Trey rushed again toward the peacock. The peacock just stumbled backward a bit, but still held his ground.
“Leave him be,” I said, and we went back into the house. “What would we have to do?” I asked.
* * *
That night in bed, Trey told me how it would work. Candy from a baby, he said. He figured it would be best to just file an insurance claim, and then we wouldn’t even have to fence the stuff. He had somebody who could file the insurance paperwork and a police officer to make the report.
“No one would even notice. This is a high-crime area. You deserve it.”
Once it was decided, both of us were more settled, calmer. The wildness was one we made together, that we were constructing. Just as I was about to drift off to sleep, a fact about peacocks invaded my thoughts. I remembered that wild peacocks, like the ones on this property, stalk and eat snakes, even poisonous ones. The thought of a snake infestation unnerved me, so I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
* * *
Trey’s insurance lady told him we would need photographs to backdate their files to make it look like the policies were not brand new. I hadn’t seen him in such a good mood since that day I first let him behind these gates. I felt excited too. Like something was beginning again for me. He showed up with a huge box of fireworks from down at the state line and a big box of chicken from the Dodge store. Spicy fried chicken wings.
“Should we get something to drink down here?”
“Let’s drink high off the hog up there,” I said, finally getting in the spirit of things.
He draped his arm over my shoulder. And we walked up the wide steps of the house through the front door.
“This is a real-deal house right here. Shit, we should be living like this all the time.”
“Better,” I said.
“You getting crunk. Loose. I like it like that.”
I pressed play on the remote for the stereo, and music flooded the room. Told him where to put the food.
“Damn, your old ladies be listening to Gangsta Boo?”
“You’d be surprised at what they do. Let me show you my favorite room in the house.”
“It better be a bedroom.”
“Better. The library.”
I lingered at the doorway and let him press against me, pulled his hand under my dress.
“I want to give you the world. I want to make that happen.”
“I want that too,” I said, and reached down for him, sliding my hand in his waistband. Hungry, eager.
Just like that, the gun was in my hand.
Easy.
The door flew open, and in an instant they descended on him, Big Lo and some others. It is best not to know.
“Val, what the fuck. What the fuck is going on?”
“Val, Val, Val. That is not my fucking name.” I shook my head and took my place by Lo, though I never called him that. Not ever. “Big Lo? Your crooked cop in your pocket. Low Down Leslie Brown is what they called him when we were in high school. Bussed out of PV for academics.” I pointed to myself. “Valedictorian,” I said, then pointed to Leslie. “This one, salutatorian. My first cousin.” I could feel myself rising, becoming, claiming myself.
“Bitch, I’m gonna kill you and your whole family,” Trey said.
Leslie hit him on the head with the butt of his gun. Trey let out a yelp like a dog.
“Doubtful,” I said. I poured a bourbon for Leslie and one for me. “And you, with so much to gain, ran your mouth to me. Names, how the whole con worked. Folks who ain’t even got nothing to do with this. What happens when the feds come? Think about it. What do you really know about me?” Trey couldn’t answer; they had gagged him by then. “You should have been trying to impress him instead of me. All that info you thought you knew? Wrong, wrong, wrong. All a part of the test. You hungry, cuzzy?” I asked Leslie.
“I could eat,” Leslie said.
“Clearly you failed,” I said to Trey. The organization was full of Treys and Tonys. Hungry with ambition, good to launder money or act as muscle, but never to be let into the inner circle. Pawns to sacrifice when necessary.
“Gentlemen, take care of my lightweight. Give him that lake view he can’t shut up about,” I said.
Leslie showed them out while I fixed our plates with Trey’s chicken wings.
“Some Jo-Jo’s in there?”
“Yep.”
“You had to bring up the salutatorian-valedictorian thing.”
“But I beat you fair and square.”
“By one-tenth of a point. I was playing football while I was doing it.”
“I was at every game too. Homecoming queen. Potato salad?”
I was happy to get back into my full kitchen and opened the big stainless-steel fridge. The little house was my studio space mostly, but a good device to gauge intentions.
“Was the Gangsta Boo too much? Clichéd?”
“Cuzzy, you always did have a flair for the dramatic.”
“What do you think about marble in here?”
“Thought you said you wanted that new Viking range.”
“We will see. Insurance all set?” I had life insurance policies going to Trey’s wife and a baby mama I located in addition to the policies coming to me. I had everything I needed from that first moment at the copier.
“So, cuzzy, you use some old ways on him?”
I shrugged. Snagged another Jo-Jo. “Mostly, he saw what he wanted. A few lights on a timer. Scared schoolgirl routine. Hard to get. You men love a damsel in distress.”
“Right, right. That nigga was so sprung, he could not shut up.”
“Good thing he was talking to me.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Wait, before I forget.” I went up and got the salt and pepper.
“Yeah, you still keeping up the old ways. Mama would be proud.”
“When does she get out?” Mama and Auntie both went to jail for insurance fraud, identity theft, and other miscellaneous charges. Mama had an extra charge for practicing medicine without a license. She died in prison, away from home, but when Auntie got out, she would have a place right here.
“Pop quiz: so what’s this for?” I asked as I went to get the broom.
Leslie’s face clouded over, trying to recall. He’s had his size and his strength, so he didn’t need to lean on the old ways like me.
“Sweep salt and pepper after somebody you don’t want back. Not that we need to worry about this one,” Leslie said.
“Better safe,” I said.
“Better safe.”
PART II
MEMPHIS BLUES
The Panama Limited
by RICHARD J. ALLEY
Beale Street
He was mesmerized by the way the brown liquid moved from side to side like a metronome in the highball. It left traces on the glass, and he’d heard these traces were where the term “spirits” came from. They caught the light that flashed through the windows in time to the click-clack, click-clack of the wheels on the rails.
“This normal? This swaying?”
The man behind the bar of the club car only shrugged, the light from the windows gleaming on and off the midnight black of his bald head.
“Just seems to be listing over to port more than usual is all,” said the one they called Mort.
“Navy?”
Mort nodded.
“Normandy,” the bartender said, and raised his glass in salute before adding, “Ghosts.”
“How’s that?” Mort looked at his glass again, at the spirits there. He glanced around the club car, but there was not a soul in sight. It was around midnight, and he figured everyone else on the City of New Orleans had dozed off from a combination of the train’s rocking motion and the late hour.
“They say it’s ghosts pulling her from side to side like this, trying to turn us over. We’re all doomed.” At this the barten
der tipped his head back and laughed.
“Ghosts? Who says that?” Sweat trickled down Mort’s neck and into the collar of his shirt. He’d never been scared a day in his life that he could remember, but something had happened to him recently. Something profound, he’d say to whoever might be close, usually a waitress at a late-night greasy spoon or a whore being paid to listen.
Again, the bartender shrugged, his merriment having been put on the shelf with a cork in it along with that last bottle. “Porters. Conductors. Those what knew them.”
“Knew who?”
“Jackson LeDuc. Ma’am Toussaint.”
“They haunt this line?”
“Not in any chain-rattling way. They ain’t specters floating through walls and such. But their spirits are here, be sure about that.”
Again, Mort looked into his glass. “Spirits.”
“They was pure fire, those two, and you can’t just close a coffin lid on that; burn you up. You believe in ghosts, young man?”
Mort shook his head, but even his glass could tell his heart wasn’t in it. The bartender didn’t notice, fixated as he was on his customer’s empty glass. He refilled it, and the light passed through the pour like a haint. Beyond the windows it was all ink through the cornfields of middle Illinois, as flat and dull as day. Mort wondered at the flickering light and where it came from.
“Where you say you served, young man?”
“Didn’t say.”
“Might you?”
“Okinawa. Guadalcanal.”
The barkeep sucked on his back teeth as he put the bottle back in its slot. “Seems to me anybody spend time on them islands don’t believe in ghosts must be one his own self.”
“Tell me about this LeDuc and the lady. What’s her name?”
“Jael Jean-Baptiste Toussaint. Beautiful girl. Musicians both, she was a singer and he played trumpet better than anybody around. Better than Miles. Better than Booker Little. Better than Dizzy.” The man leaned over the bar, his own whiskey breath between them like train steam, and whispered, “Better than Pops Armstrong.”
Mort didn’t know shit about jazz, but he’d heard those names, everyone had. “They’re both dead now?”
“He is. She . . . well, ain’t no telling. Disappeared.”
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