Too Beautiful to Die

by Glenville Lovell

  14

  IT WAS DEEP into the day when I sprang from the deep chill of a dream with a terrifying knot in my stomach. I thought I heard a jackhammer in the room but it was the telephone. Frozen in a zone of disbelief, I waited for my brain to catch up. Light seeped through the yellow venetian blinds, giving the room a pale glow.

  I dreamed I’d accidentally shot my brother instead of the drug dealer he was buying cocaine from. What a fucked-up thing the subconscious is. Nightmares are every bit as powerful as reality. The phone stopped ringing.

  “Blades?” Precious’ whisper was barely audible from the other room. Her head came into view at the door.

  “There’s a woman on the phone. Said her name is Anais.”

  “Shit!” I grabbed the cordless from her, which she was holding like a bomb. She looked apologetically into my eyes.

  “Hello?”

  “Who’s that woman answering your phone?” Anais’ voice was cold and hard.

  “Her name’s Precious.”

  “You fucking her?”

  “Look, Anais—”

  The next sound I heard was a deafening click. Precious was a few feet away, leaning on the doorjamb, one of my silk robes pulled around her like a blanket. I was naked. We looked at each other awkwardly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Not your fault. I don’t think she was coming back anyway.”

  “I’m still sorry.”

  “What time is it?” I looked around for my boxers.

  “Eleven.”

  I straightened up. “Eleven? You sure?”

  “You were sleeping so soundly I didn’t want to wake you.”

  I gave up searching for my shorts and looked up at her. Her dancer’s neck seemed even more elongated and graceful this morning.

  “Did anybody else call?”

  “No. I’m making you breakfast. You like pancakes?”

  “Yes, I do. I’ll take a quick shower. If my partner calls, tell him I’m not gonna make it to the store until after lunch. His name is Leroy. And I love lots of butter on my pancakes.”

  She laughed. “How do you stay so trim eating like that?”

  “I love butter. Only thing tasting better is you.”

  Her high-pitched laughter rang out furious as a summer shower. “You’re such a flatterer. I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  “I don’t remember any other girls before you. You erased my memory last night.”

  “Ooohh, lover boy. For that you get another taste after we eat. Unless you’d rather chocolate for breakfast.”

  “You shouldn’t tempt me like this. How’m I gonna find time to look for your father?”

  She patted my butt. “Maybe you can erase all that from my memory.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Anything.”

  “Do you ever wear underwear?”

  She laughed out loud. “Not in summer if I can get away with it.”

  I walked off to the bathroom, a fat smile on my face but with a weighty heart knowing that what little chance there was of Anais returning from the West Coast was now flattened.

  IT WAS HOT in the kitchen so we decided to eat in the bedroom, where the air conditioner had been going all night. Dressed only in black boxer briefs I called Milo to tell him I wouldn’t be in until later. Precious had not relinquished my robe and sat across from me, her back resting on the headboard.

  She’d evaluated my CD collection and found it lacking in quality reggae music, but a few cuts had met her approval. A Beres Hammond joint was now playing on the stereo in the other room.

  She stopped eating and stared off through the window. Sunlight filtered through the thin leaves of the tree outside the window to settle around us.

  I put my fork down. “What’s the matter?”

  “I want you to know I don’t often do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “I got the impression you and your wife were separated.”

  “We are.”

  “But you still love her.”

  “It’s very complicated.”

  “What’s so complicated about love?”

  I sat back. “If it’s so simple why do people break up?”

  “Men don’t know their own minds, that’s why.”

  “Oh, you subscribe to the ‘men are children’ philosophy?”

  “Does she still love you?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, it’s complicated.”

  “Do I remind you of her?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “I don’t know. We’re both actresses. We both used to dance. What does she look like?”

  “Do you really want to talk about her?”

  “I’m sorry, but seeing the look on your face while you were talking to her was very upsetting.”

  I took a sip of coffee. I wanted to tell her that I wished Anais was out of my life, but what a lie that would’ve been.

  She said, “I’ve been without a man for over a year. Not by chance. By choice. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “What about Jimmy?”

  “What about him?”

  “I thought you two were close.”

  “There’s nothing between Jimmy and me, if that’s what you’re hinting at. You think I would fuck you if I was fucking Jimmy? Aren’t you two good friends?”

  “I’m not always sure about Jimmy. He can be a little erratic at times. He has a tendency of disappearing on me. I need to talk to him. Have you seen him?” I said. “I must’ve written down the wrong number. The number I called was disconnected.”

  “Not since the day he introduced us.”

  “Isn’t that odd?”

  The phone rang and Precious flinched. It rang for a while as I imagined Anais’ angry voice swelling in my head.

  “Aren’t you going to answer?” Precious said.

  I picked up the phone. It was my mother.

  “Carmen! Thank God you’re there.”

  “What’s the matter, Mom?”

  She started to cry. Her voice faltered as she tried to speak through her tears.

  I started pacing. “Calm down, Mom. I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

  She stopped talking. I could sense her gathering the storm of her emotions. When she started to speak again, her voice was soft but steady.

  “Jason,” she said.

  “What about Jason?”

  “He left for New York last night right after you did. He hasn’t come back yet.”

  “That’s only a few hours, Mom. Did he tell you where he was going?”

  “He put on that shirt you brought him and said he was going to play baseball.”

  “He leaves Jersey to play baseball in the middle of the night and you let him go?”

  “He said they have parks in New York with lights. How do I know? He hasn’t called once. And I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before, but the small painting in the dining room next to your photograph is gone. It’s worth about a thousand dollars.”

  “You think he took it?”

  “Who else?”

  It was a bad sign when recovering addicts began stealing. I was tempted to tell her we should let Jason fall on his own sword. But I knew what her response would be, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I said that and something terrible happened to him.

  “Is he driving his car?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll find him, Mom.”

  After I hung up I stood staring at a painting my father had given me before he went off to live in Barbados. The bright blue seaside scene, one of many he painted while he was there searching for his roots, held little cheer for me right now.

  Precious came up behind me. She opened her robe and collected me to her sweat-glazed body, her breasts, like warm bread, pressing into the muscles of my back.

  “You okay?” Her voice begged me to forget my concerns, to dismiss the world and sail off on her magical body.

 
; “I gotta go out,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “Personal business.”

  “Please, do you really have to? I don’t want you to go.”

  I didn’t want to turn around, to look into her eyes. It’d been so long since a woman pleaded with me not to leave her, my bruised ego was eager to pimp my brother’s weakness for her embrace.

  “Don’t you have rehearsal today?” I said, still not turning around, afraid to present my vulnerability.

  “I’m free for a whole week. My character has gone off to visit an old friend. And all my calls to the apartment automatically bounce to my cell. So I’m yours as long as you can stand me. How long will you be gone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll stay until you come back. I’ll cook for you. Don’t look so surprised. I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth.”

  I laughed.

  “You’re so beautiful when you laugh,” she said.

  “I bet you say that to all the guys.”

  “Only the ones who whisper my name in their sleep.”

  “Did I do that?”

  “It was lovely.”

  I turned to face her now. Her eyes were full of passion and the darkness of her pupils was so pure they seemed to glow.

  “There’s a spare set of keys on top of the fridge in case you need to go out,” I said.

  “Just point me to the nearest fish store. Do you like fish?”

  “Try Fish Tales. On Court Street. Just ask anybody. It’s a neighborhood landmark.”

  IGOT DRESSED quickly, throwing on a pair of jeans, gray Perry Ellis polo shirt and sneaks. Precious was in the kitchen when I went to say good-bye.

  “Hurry back,” she said.

  I kissed her. She clung to me.

  “I’ll call as soon as I can,” I said.

  She nodded.

  I went out the door and down the stairs. On the first landing I peeked over my shoulder. She was still standing in the doorway, the robe open, watching me with a wide smile. I wanted to turn around.

  15

  AFRIEND OF mine—a former cop turned college professor—once said that we live in a nihilistic culture, a culture without feeling, where the quest for meaning, for truth and love, is meaningless because everything has been reduced to a game. Even ideology is a game. If, as Potts said, the rich are obsessed with playing the stock market and the rest of us with winning the lottery how can we expect to have a sense of loyalty, of fairness?

  I was fifteen when my brother, then a junior at North Carolina, brought his girlfriend to spend a weekend with us on spring break. We lived on Garfield Place in Park Slope, one of the truly mixed neighborhoods in New York. Jason introduced first my mother and then my sister to his girlfriend. When he got to me he said: “This is Carmen, my brother.”

  His girlfriend said, “Oh, he’s your adopted brother.”

  “No,” Jason said. “He’s my brother. Biological.”

  “But he’s black,” she protested.

  “Nobody said he wasn’t,” Jason replied.

  “Does that mean you’re black too?” the girl said.

  “Would you have a problem with that?” Jason said.

  She didn’t reply. I don’t know what else was said between them in private, but a short time later, two days prematurely, his girlfriend left to take a flight back to Chapel Hill.

  No matter what was going on in his life, I always felt that Jason loved me without reservation. And all my life I’ve tried to love him that way. At times it was difficult. Especially when I saw him so balled up on drugs he was unable to unbutton his own shirt. Through it all we’ve remained loyal to each other.

  I suspected Jason had gone off to get drugs. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to search for him. Most times, however, I’d had the vast resources of the NYPD at my disposal, including beat and patrol officers, as well as friends in undercover who would tip me off if they saw or heard anything. Quite a number of times I’d found him around 116th Street in Manhattan. I got the impression he was comfortable with the addicts and dealers in that area.

  I drove around hoping to spot his car. Around two o’clock I hit jackpot, spotting the brown 1990 Honda Accord outside an abandoned building on 120th Street.

  With a high fence around it, the building looked empty from the outside, but I knew not to let appearances deceive me. Addicts were famous for taking over abandoned buildings. I walked around to the front of the building, looking for signs of life inside. All of the entrances were boarded up, but a trail of empty beer cans and Burger King wrappers led me to a hole in the fence at the back of the compound.

  I crawled through the space and up a flight of steps. The piece of plywood that had guarded the back entrance had been ripped off and lay on the ground. Graffiti scribbled on it read Death to the Diallo Cops.

  I walked into the dark building and stood still, letting my eyes adjust to the blackness. For a minute I considered fleeing the stench of rot and decay. The smell was overpowering, and I could not imagine Jason spending any time in this place. But this was the process. I had to eliminate every possibility before moving to the next one.

  I called Jason’s name as I explored each room. They were all empty of life but overflowing with blight. Carcasses of rats were nailed to the walls, as if the addicts had dedicated this as a museum to how low they had sunk. Makeshift beds made of boxes and crates cluttered one room. There was a room with books. Good literature was high on the minds of some addicts, it seemed. Soiled and rotten clothing had been trampled into the floor.

  “Jason!”

  “Will you shut the fuck up? I’m trying to get some sleep over here.” The voice echoed from a deep chamber somewhere in the building.

  “Where’re you?”

  “In heaven, muthafucker. Wanna know how I got here?”

  I traced the voice to a room near the front. Sprawled on a bed made from IBM computer packaging filled with blankets and sweaters was a thick bump of a man. He was shirtless, and his head was covered in knots matted to his scalp with dirt.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he said.

  “I’m looking for somebody,” I said.

  “You’ve come to the right place,” he said. “I’m waiting for Godot. He should be here soon.”

  “I’m looking for a big white guy. Over six feet. Two hundred and fifty pounds. Long hair. He’s wearing a Dodgers baseball shirt.”

  He scratched his head. “Dodgers. Baseball. Duh! If you say Dodgers you don’t have to say baseball. Capisce?”

  “Capisce. Have you seen him?”

  “You the police?”

  “I’m his brother.”

  “You Blaze?”

  “Something like that. How’d you know my name?”

  “The nigga was here. Kept saying he got a brother who’s black. Said your name was Blaze. We didn’t believe him. You adopted?”

  “Where’s he now?” I said, ignoring his question.

  “Maybe I know. Maybe I don’t.”

  I took a twenty out of my wallet and held it in my hand. The addict’s gaze shifted to the money, a lurid gleam in his eyes.

  “Try Brooklyn,” he said.

  “What part of Brooklyn?”

  “She said she was from the Marcy projects.”

  “She?”

  “The bitch he with.”

  “Did he say why he was going to Brooklyn?”

  “He didn’t say shit. He and the bitch rolled me. When I woke up they’d bounced like Jell-O. But I got mines before she left.” He smacked himself in a self-congratulatory manner on the thigh and rolled his eyes, laughing.

  “Who’s the woman?”

  “A thief. Stole my money, the fat bitch.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Said her name was Cherry. We met her in the park last night. I bet she lying. She definitely didn’t feel like no cherry. More like a watermelon, you know.”

  “What’d she look like?”

  “I just
told you. Fat.”

  “Black? White? Short?”

  “Fat short black bitch. That enough of a description for ya?” He looked at me with one eye closed and scratched his crotch. “Now you gonna give me that money or not?”

  “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”

  “You gonna try to shake me too, muthafucker?”

  “I don’t like you.”

  “Well, I ain’t aiming to suck your dick neither.”

  “You spend too much time with your head up your ass, you know that.”

  “Go piss on yourself,” he taunted. “At least I know who the fuck I am.”

  “You like being a crackhead?” I took a step toward him, my fists clenched.

  “Yeah, I like being a crackhead. I’m a nigger crackhead and I like it.”

  “You’re a nigger crackhead, alright.”

  “And you a nigger who think he white. I know all about your fucked-up family. That’s all the nigger would talk about. Excuse me, your brother. Your mama likes black dick, he likes black pussy. And you like to pretend you’re all one big loving family.” He started to laugh.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Your black-dick-loving mama.”

  I wanted to crank him, but I knew I would’ve probably killed him if I touched him. I turned and walked away.

  “Hey, you cheap wanna-be-white muthafucker,” he screamed.

  I kept walking.

  ICALLED TIM at the precinct as soon as I got outside. As I waited for him to answer the phone, I inspected Jason’s car. Why did he leave it? Had it broken down? Tim picked up after the fourth ring.

  “Detective Tim Samuel,” he drawled.

  “Tim, my man,” I greeted.

  “Not now, Blades. I’m busy.”

  “I need you, Tim.”

  “You always need me. I must be your wife.”

  “Who needs a wife these days?”

  “I do. That’s why I gotta go. I got somebody on the other line.”

  “Just listen for a second, Tim. I’m looking for my brother.”

  “Good luck. Bye.”

  “Tim, I need your help. He’s in Brooklyn. Probably the Marcy Houses. He’s with a fat black chick. Name’s Cherry. Might be an addict. Or a prostitute. Can’t be hard to spot a big white dude in the projects.”