In the Nick of Time

by Laveen, Tiana

  His mother didn’t drink much except an occasional beer here and there, that’s all. It simply wasn’t her vice, her thing, her medication. His thoughts drifted somewhere deeper, darker, wetter… like alcohol pouring into a shot glass in the middle of midnight under a pitch-black sky. The sound it made as the liquor hit the glass and filled to the rim rang like an angelic orchestra from the very core of heaven. King Curiosity arched his bow and hurled it in his direction—made him question things. He wondered whether his mother knew of his problem. That question nagged at him to the point of irritation.

  Ma, did you know I was an alcoholic and would be a drug addict, too? Besides being a thief, a loafer, and cheeky, did you know I’d end up like this? Did you know I was stealing alcohol out of the kitchen? Did you know when I stole money out of your purse that it was for alcohol? One time I gave it to an old drunk so he could buy him and me a beer? Did you know? Did you know, Ma?

  …I survived the holocaust of disease and poverty but I didn’t really endure at all…I just pretended to…

  Fraud.

  Frieda’s voice broke through his dampening, dismal thoughts.

  “Well,” she looked at the clock on the wall. “We only have a few more minutes left and—”

  “Wait.” He placed his hand up and slowly rose from his seat. He shot Oliver a glance; the bastard wouldn’t make eye contact with him, kept his cowardly glare away. This had been his way since their altercation; the motherfucker knew better than to say two words to him, and he liked it that way.

  The hell with Oliver. He won’t stop me from doing what I need to do. I’m not here for him; I’m here for me.

  “Yes, Nick? You wanted to speak?”

  “Yeah.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ve got something to say.”

  “Great.” She smiled wide, and gestured to let him know he had the floor.

  He looked casually over at Taryn. Her head was cocked to the side, ever so slightly, and a half grin creased her face. She leisurely crossed her long legs and ran her fingers slowly up and down her arms, as if experiencing a sudden chill.

  Wish I could hug you, keep you warm…

  “I want to share a story with you all, a page from my life, if you will.” Several people nodded, seemingly quite interested as they moved about in their respective seats, giving a listening ear. “As you all know,” he said, placing his hand against his ribcage, “I’m a police officer. Obviously I’m on a much needed leave of absence.”

  This caused a few chuckles.

  “Well, when I was a teenager, sixteen to be exact, I was having a really hard time. It was one of the worst years of my life. Matter of fact, those twelve months of me being sixteen were pure hell. To me, it was a joyride at the time.” He looked around the room, grim-faced. “Me and my friends would do all kinds of bullshit, and I lived for the moment, never the future. If asked what I was doing the next day, my response was, ‘Who cares? I might be dead. Ask me what I’m doing in the next ten minutes…then I’ll have an answer for you.’ And you know what? That wasn’t any show. I meant that. I believed that my life could be over at any minute. I’d seen it happen too many times to others, people I knew. I was a hardcore, hardheaded hoodlum without hope, a hurt little boy believing I was a man. By the end of that year, things changed.” He pointed ahead of him at nothing in particular. “I didn’t know it, but I had truly turned a new leaf. I say I didn’t know because I never gave myself any credit for it. Unfortunately, right before I turned seventeen, my best friend died.” He paused, took a deep breath, and heard someone whisper, “Take your time…”

  In that moment, he recalled Frieda pulling him aside several days ago, and calling him into her office. She handed him some faxed papers, let him look them over. Jonathan’s killer was dead as dead could be. Santiago had bitten the dust some time ago. It gave him a sliver of peace, something to hold onto… but it also brought to the forefront more memories that he’d buried and needed to sort through.

  “He and I were thick as thieves. Literally.”

  This caused another roll of chuckles.

  “Jonathan was a good guy though…better than me.” He swiped his knuckle gently below his right eye, curing an itch. “He was smarter than me, nicer than me, and had great potential. Well, he and I and a group of other teenagers, the ‘Outlaws’, would sometimes get into it with other guys in the neighborhood. This caused some animosity. People eventually wanted to hurt us.” He shrugged, “That’s nothing new, right? You give it, be ready to take it. We weren’t a gang by the traditional definition, and we weren’t organized enough to hold that title either, but let’s just say we had a gang mentality.” He took another deep breath as he slicked his hands in his jeans pockets.

  “Well, apparently, there were a few guys in our hood who didn’t take too kindly to getting their asses kicked by me and my friends a couple weeks prior to his death. They’d been watching us for days, and one night, they decided to get even. Up high on a rooftop loomed fate.” He raised his hand in the air and waved it about like a streamer.

  “Fate invited Karma. And Karma invited Death. Death declared them a Trinity, and it was time to come home to Jesus.” Closing his eyes, he worked hard to reel his emotion in and regroup. “As Jonathan and I were walking home from a party, two young men stood up on this building, waiting for us. One had a gun, but the damn thing jammed, and the other had a bunch of bricks. We naturally were unaware of this at the time.” He paused, took a long look across the way and met eyes with his damn heart. She gave a slight nod, encouraging him to go on and on and on until he beat this demon the fuck up… Her eyes sparkled, and she mouthed, “You can do it…”

  She has faith in me. She believes in me. She doesn’t see the thief or cop, the drunk or drug addict in me. She sees the power in me. Thank you, baby…I got this!

  “As we neared where they were standing, we were still none the wiser, completely oblivious. We were laughing, joking around, talking about girls we’d seen at the party we’d just left, things like that.” He sniffed. “So, we went past, and one of our enemies timed it just so…just right…” His eyes narrowed as he lifted his right hand upward, held it out as if pinching a tiny shot glass of truth serum… “And he dropped a brick. A huge cinder block, and then another, and then another… Two missed him, one got him, and the one that got him fell right smack dab in the center of his head.

  “Oh man…” someone uttered. “Damn.”

  “I screamed out in shock, in total disbelief. I looked up, and saw the guys surrounded in darkness, like, instead of glowing like angels, I remember it appeared as if black halos—nebulous shadows—waved around their bodies like some sort of demonic force… It was the strangest thing, like a warning that came far too late. One of the boys kept waving a gun, but he was stomping about, like he couldn’t get it to shoot. A crowd began to draw, and the two boys fled but I was left there with my dying friend… I saw him trying to live, trying to hold on to a tiny fragment of life. I panicked, trembled in fear. I felt angry, cowardly, and enraged all at once. I wanted to run off, afraid the cops would get a hold of me.

  “You see, just less than a month before this party, I’d gotten into some trouble and decided to turn my life around. I had a few rough starts. Kind of like what happens in recovery. This is a process, a never-ending voyage. It’s not twelve steps; it’s a lifetime of paces. We oftentimes relapse, and in this situation, I relapsed, too. My friends talked me into going out to this party and I missed them,” he said with a shrug, “so I thought ‘Why not?’ I lived to regret that decision. I always blamed myself for Jonathan’s death. I often asked myself, ‘Why did I live and he didn’t?’ I wondered why God took Jonathan, the easy going one of our group, the smart one, the fella with the most potential, the encourager, and not me?

  “I couldn’t wrap my head around it and, to make matters worse, I figured if he’d been alone, or with someone else, maybe they wouldn’t have targeted him. You see, that fight we’d had a few weeks
earlier with these guys—I instigated that. There was a boy I didn’t too much care for. I saw him, kicked his ass and then, the rest of my friends jumped in. What happened to Jonathan was retribution for something I had done. I knew it deep inside, and it has haunted me my entire damn life!” His voice trembled as he clutched his hands over and over, coming undone, emotional wounds gaping and bleeding all over the place. He looked down at the floor, his vision glassy, broken up into disjointed waves as heat flushed his core. He quickly swiped at his face and continued on.

  I’ve never told anyone about this! No one! Are you crazy, Nick?! You can do this… She said I can do this, and I can…

  “Then, a few years later, I lost my mother—happened suddenly. One minute she was here…” He pointed to the left side of the room. “Then, she was gone.” He pointed to the right, and snapped his fingers. “Just like that! I betrayed that woman’s trust on a daily basis. I always believed she’d be there, alive and breathing! I never imagined Ma not being around. She appeared healthy, spritely even… Looks can be deceiving…

  “In the middle of all of this death, loss and denial, my mentor, a positive guy, brilliant and warm, was accidentally gunned down during an altercation that had nothing to do with him. So, I lost three of the closest people to me in fast order, in a matter of a few years.” He held up three fingers. “It’s like I was being punished. Instead of dealing with it, feeling the losses, accepting the nature of grief, I ran from the emotions. I became cold, focused, hard. As stated, I had already decided to change my life around before all of this happened. So…I focused on that. I felt like I was doing my mom, Jonathan, and Frederic proud by just keeping on task. That was all an excuse, though. I used it to bury the process…and we must go through the process.

  Taryn, you will NOT be the only witness… I will tell others of my pain. I will set myself free…

  “We must allow ourselves to feel it all. We have to acknowledge the pain, all of it, or it will come back again and again and again until we can control it, or it will control us!” He swallowed hard.

  “Yes!” someone called out.

  “I never cried at my mother’s funeral. I refused. I never cried at Jonathan’s funeral either. I didn’t cry at Frederic’s funeral, so…I cried in a bottle. That’s what I did. I pretended those drops of alcohol were my tears, but they never really were a good replacement. Matter of fact, they made it all the worse. I was in the land of make-believe. I grew up in an atmosphere where boys wanted to be men, because our fathers were absent, and men don’t cry. But no men were there, so we tried to be our future selves, believing we didn’t think we’d even live to be an adult in the first place. We grew up right then and there.

  “Once I made it out of that state of mind and got myself together, I put everything into being the best cop I could be. I wanted to prevent what happened to Jonathan and Frederic, somehow exonerate their deaths by doing ‘good deeds.’” He put his hands in quotes. “I was afraid to grieve, or to come even remotely close to it. You see, in our grief lies one of our most vulnerable states in our lifetimes. We are broken down, humbled, sad, missing someone, feeling pangs of guilt, replaying times we had with that person, and regretting things we said and wishing we’d said this or that before they left us.”

  “It’s time to go,” Oliver whispered as he pointed up at the clock.

  “Shut tha fuck up, man!” someone screamed out. “Fuckin’ asshole!”

  “Nick, please continue,” Frieda quickly encouraged.

  “Okay, damn, what was I saying?”

  “You were talking about regretting not telling loved ones things before they passed away,” Frieda reminded.

  “Yes, that’s right. So, if I stayed in that spot too long, the mourning phase, I was convinced it would take me outta here. I couldn’t tolerate it. I hated myself in some regard, but was completely unaware of this fact. And then, as my career began to suffer from my addiction, I realized that I just might be worth saving…but I knew what that would entail. I’d have to do this. I’d have to finally look at these three people I’d lost, their place in my heart, acknowledge it all and let go!” Tears streamed down his face. “And I’m ready, now!” he said, his voice breaking. “I miss you all so much! But it’s time to release it, time to make peace. Jonathan, Ma and Frederic, Go bless you! I hope to see you again; I am letting you go now, all the pain and guilt, too. I’m letting you all go, angels! YOU’RE FREE! I’m ready to say, ‘goodbye’! Descanse en paz. Te amo!” (Rest in peace, I love you!)

  He covered his saturated cheeks with trembling, cold hands, shaking and shivering in his spot as his knees buckled. Before he fell to the ground, arms swarmed him, embraced him, all over his body…uplifting him, taking him higher and higher. Male and female voices of encouragement rained down on him. He sat cocooned in love, accepted in assurance, and forgiven in optimism. One voice stood out amongst the rest, and though he couldn’t see her, he could feel her warrior presence, and her words had him emit a heart-felt sigh…

  “This is the first day of the rest of your life, Nick. Welcome home…”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Red Hot Chili Peppers crooned, ‘Under the Bridge’, an all time classic. Nick moved about in his seat, enjoying the music of yesteryear, which made him feel like a little kid all over again. It had been a rather mundane afternoon, but the sun glimmered in his eyes, and he was relaxed.

  “’Sup Nick,” Travis, another resident he’d gotten cool with, said as he shuffled past.

  “Hey man, how are you doing?” Nick leaned back and looked at the guy saunter by.

  “Good…good.” And then the man disappeared down the hall.

  After a few minutes, Naked Eyes crashed through the airwaves, ‘Always Something There to Remind Me.”

  “Oh wow, the staff is really trying to make me smile today!” He chuckled as he tapped his foot to the beat.

  “Oh, you like that song? Old music makes you happy…”

  He shot his sights to in the direction of the warrior voice.

  “This song is the shit! What if they mixed it up with like a salsa or reggae beat? Wouldn’t that be dope?”

  “You need to stop!” Giggling, she approached him and sat right next to him.

  “They’re playing good music today. I like this. Almost like we’ve got a DJ or something.”

  She shook her head. “You are so silly… So, what have you been up to, today?”

  “Just got out of a one-on-one with Charles… Before that, I was in the all male group.” He yawned. “In an hour and a half, I’m supposed to be going to ceramics. I think it’s pretty messed up how you convinced me to sign up for that class, and then you dropped out!” His brows bunched, causing her to burst out laughing.

  “I wanted to take the poetry class and they were at the same time! I didn’t know it when I first signed up.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He rolled his eyes and smirked. “Now I’m stuck in there making tiny vases. All of my shit ends up looking the same, like asses or some deflated dick.”

  At this, she hollered, which had him almost fall off the chair in laughter, too.

  “It’s the truth. I suck at it. I thought about dropping it, but I told myself I’d finish whatever I started in here.”

  “Good. Besides, you may improve and it is a good stress reliever.”

  “No, it’s not. It actually causes me stress!”

  She started cracking up again.

  “You could at least pretend to sympathize.” He smiled.

  “What for? No sense in me frontin’… This is hilarious.”

  He looked her up and down, studying her lips, the way they moved and wrapped carefully around each word.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Her eyes narrowed.

  “Because you’re sexy…”

  “Don’t look at me like that.” She bent down and ran her hand smoothly across her ankle as if she had a slight itch.

  “Don’t tell me where to look. They’re my eyes
and I’ll put them where I want to.”

  “Don’t try to get messed up, now! Sitting there getting smart… You might be a cop out there.” She pointed towards the front of the building. “But in here, we are equal!” She laughed.

  “Your lips are amazing,” he uttered, ignoring her threats and female bravado.

  “Are they, now?”

  “Yeah…”

  She leaned in closer to him. “You want me to show you something really neat they can do?”

  His heart beat a bit faster.

  “You know I do…”

  She winked at him and stood, as casual as can be.

  “I’m going to my room,” she whispered. “Meet me there in five minutes…” And then, she was gone.

  He immediately looked at his watch. His cock asked for thirty-second updates as it thickened in his boxer briefs. Soon, he was on his feet, strolling, looking both ways, checking out the scene. Like the slippery reformed thief that he was, he turned the knob and slid inside her room, his pants practically half down as he closed and locked the door behind himself. Pulling at his zipper, he looked around her room. The sunlight grazed her bed… but the damn thing was empty.

  “Taryn!” he whispered, “Where are you?” He approached her small bathroom, turned the knob and opened the thing. He flicked on the light…but she wasn’t there. “Taryn?” he said a bit louder, feeling silly now with his pants around his ankles as he shuffled about. And then… it hit him.

  “Oh,” he said aloud, kicking his pants the rest of the way off. “You want me to find you, huh? Seek you out; play my favorite game. I know you’re in here. I can smell your perfume.” He heard a faint giggle, and laughed. Rubbing his hands together, he approached the window, flung the curtains back. He knew she wasn’t there, but he also knew she was watching him, so he decided to put on a show.