by E. A. Barres
Deb nodded, still trying not to let a crack in her anger. She hated that Maria had said his name, how it revealed a casualness to their relationship.
He didn’t feel bad enough to stop seeing you and paying you, she thought.
“And then we started talking,” Maria went on, “and he asked me about this stuff, what I do and why and stuff like that. And I told him the deal, how I’m on the hook for a bunch of money, and he told me he wanted to get me out of it. That’s when he started paying me, just giving me money to give them.”
“He felt guilty.”
“I guess.”
Deb closed her eyes and breathed slowly.
It really sounded like the kind of thing Grant would fucking do. Like the time he found a snapping turtle crossing the street and brought it home in a box. And it had almost bit Deb’s finger off when she tried to feed it a piece of lettuce.
“The thing is,” Maria was saying. “You need to be careful. Like, I don’t know what happened with Grant, but I know he met with the guys who run me. And then I didn’t hear anything from him until today. Until you showed up.”
“Who runs you?” Deb wasn’t sure why she asked. She just wanted to know more, needed to know what else Grant had hidden.
Maria glanced down the stairs. “You’re going to have to pay me to learn anything else.”
Deb was surprised, then suddenly felt foolish. “I didn’t bring any money. I didn’t think about it.”
“You didn’t bring any?”
“But I can come back. I will come back.”
“Shit.”
“Really, I promise, I’ll pay you!” Deb felt like she was begging. And didn’t care.
“How much?”
“I don’t know. A hundred. Two hundred?”
Maria stood.
“Five hundred?”
That was a lot for her.
Deb remembered how, just months ago, five hundred seemed like a relatively small amount of money.
“I can’t really talk about this,” Maria said. “We’re not supposed to. The others would kill me. They just think I’m asking you how you found me.”
“Please. It’s the only way I can find out what happened to him.”
The door at the bottom of the stairs opened.
“I promise. Five hundred.”
“Come back Friday with the money,” Maria said, her voice low.
And then she left.
CHAPTER
17
CESSY DRIED OFF the last glass and set it in the drink tray. Two in the morning, and no customers were left in the Fells Gate Tavern. William, the bar’s owner and manager, was in his office in the back. Otherwise, Cessy was alone.
Two in the morning. She’d woken at this exact time the last couple of nights, worried about Smith and Harris. Their grim seriousness. The unrelenting sense of duty. The money they wanted.
And she thought about Barry, her repeated phone calls to the hospital that had finally revealed he was locked inside a coma because of a brain hemorrhage, which was due to a fractured skull, which, she knew, was due to trauma from a chair.
Cessy wondered if Barry was going to die, wondered how she’d feel if he did. She didn’t regret defending herself, and she didn’t feel guilt for hitting him with that chair.
But she wondered if she should.
At two in the morning, those thoughts nagged her like a rush of insect bites.
William came out of the back office. He was in his late twenties and had the benefit of a young man’s body and energy—naturally thin, bright eyes that didn’t show the effects of late evenings, mussed black hair that always looked as if he’d given up brushing halfway through.
“You’re here late,” Cessy observed.
“Just going over stuff.” He picked up a glass Cessy had cleaned, filled it with water. “How you been? Since Hector … are you doing okay?”
“I’m okay.”
Weird about Hector.
Sometimes Cessy had to remind herself that she’d once loved him, been crazy about him. That romance seemed so distant to her, almost unimaginable. The hitting had pushed it further away, until his death had seemed more like the loss of an acquaintance than a husband. Sometimes, at two in the morning, to deflect her worries, Cessy thought about the early days of their relationship. How, that fall they first met, they would walk around Bolton Hill, the neighborhood Hector lived in, every night.
She remembered how the weather was cool but not cold, the fall young. An occasional mild wind waved down the street and wide sidewalks, past white marble steps. They would pass F. Scott Fitzgerald’s house—Cessy vaguely remembered the writer’s name from school—a plaque demarcating where he had lived when Baltimore held him, a high purplish building with carved iron railings on the bottom windows and bordered on either side by homes of brick and stone. They would pass the residence of someone neither of them knew, named Edith Hamilton, another giant dwelling, but this one adorned with low-to-the-ground balconies. They would pass the statue of Billie Holliday, a green, surprised-looking statue of Lady Day singing. Cessy often felt, as they walked between the trees and the houses, that they had slipped into another world inside the city. The red brick was stout, the white marble sparkled; people congregated on porch steps to gossip and chat and commune. Sometimes she and Hector would just sit quietly on those steps, him sprawled above her, she leaning back between his knees.
“I only met him a couple of times,” William said, “when he’d come here to the bar. But it’s weird: I can’t stop thinking about you guys.”
“Really?”
“It was just so sudden.” William glanced apologetically at her. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not like it’s weird to have a killing in Baltimore, right? But when it happens to someone you know, or sort of know, things feel shaky.”
As he spoke, William seemed to turn even younger to Cessy, changing from his twenties to a teen. But she understood what he was describing, remembered the first time violence had swarmed her emotions.
Back in Arizona.
With her brother.
Something else occurred to her, and she hated herself for seeing William’s concern as an opportunity, but she was desperate.
“Hey, Will, ever since Hector died, money’s been tight. And I was wondering, well, this is really hard to ask …”
It was hard. Cessy couldn’t remember ever asking someone for money. Even when she had first moved here with almost nothing.
“Do you need a raise?”
“Kind of.”
“I can’t believe this,” William said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just … things aren’t going that well with the bar. We haven’t turned a profit for the past couple of months. The crime rate or something is keeping people out of the city, like Baltimore’s going through another exodus. Like the ones the old-timers say happened in the seventies and eighties.” He rubbed his eyes. “I think we need to do some advertising or something.”
Cessy blinked. “Wait, do you want to borrow money from me?”
Will laughed a little. “No. Not really. I wanted to ask if you’d consider foregoing your pay for a month or two. Only working for tips. Just for a month or two.”
Cessy looked him in the face. He didn’t look into hers.
And she felt hope fading inside her, like a trail of smoke from a snuffed match.
“I mean, I don’t make that much to begin with,” Cessy said.
He kept staring at the floor. “I know.”
“I can’t give it all up,” Cessy said. “But maybe a little.”
Will nodded. “I’d appreciate that. It’s just been so tough. I’ve been sleeping here lately. I got rid of my apartment, and all my stuff’s at a friend’s place. I can’t afford it.”
“I understand,” Cessy said. “I’m going through some hard times too.”
“Did you try getting a loan?” William asked. “I did that at the
beginning. I can’t go back to the bank now, but they gave me money.”
“My credit’s shit. Mainly because of Hector. It’s okay.” Cessy paused. “I have a plan B.”
But the thought of plan B filled her with dread, a turn in the road leading somewhere dark.
A place from which she couldn’t return.
CHAPTER
18
DEB BARELY SPOKE while Levi drove her back home. Instead, she stared out the window, one knee pulled up under her chin, silently crying.
“Do you need to talk?” Levi asked her.
Deb wiped away tears. “I’m not going to tell anyone what happened.”
She meant that she wouldn’t tell anyone about the help he’d given her. Levi misunderstood. “Keeping this stuff to yourself is a big mistake,” he said gravely. “Guys who work with me try that shit. It hurts in the long run. Better to talk about it.”
Levi looked at her for so long that Deb told him, “Please watch the road.”
Despite everything she’d learned, despite the urgency with which Maria had confided in her, Deb was back to square one.
She wished Levi had been wrong about Grant.
Deb had been desperately hoping for a different outcome. Hoped those girls would be baffled when she’d mentioned Grant, deny convincingly they’d ever come across his name. Wanted Levi to realize he had the wrong person.
Deb felt like she was standing on the deck of a sinking boat, grief like water lapping her ankles. And rising.
She and Levi spent the rest of the drive in silence, she staring out the window and crying. Once she felt Levi’s hand on her shoulder, two quick pats and a brief squeeze. And then his hand left.
They slowed to a stop outside her house.
“Thanks,” Deb said. She wiped her tears, pushed open her door, stepped out.
She heard Levi’s door open and close as she walked up the sidewalk.
“Hey,” he said, hurrying behind her. “Are you okay?”
It was the kind of annoying question Grant used to ask when she was obviously angry. It still annoyed her. Deb stopped and turned.
“No, Levi,” she said. “I’m pretty fucking depressed.”
“I think you should talk with me.”
“Nothing to talk about. My husband slept with a prostitute.”
The front door opened.
“You’re late,” Kim said sternly, standing in the entrance. She glanced behind Deb. “Who’s that? Is he coming to dinner?”
“Dinner?” Deb was confused. “We’re having dinner?”
Kim’s voice turned into a high-pitched whine. “Mom, I told you we were! So you could meet Rebecca!”
It took Deb a moment.
“That’s tonight?”
“Yes! Who are you?”
Levi seemed taken aback. “I’m—my name’s Levi. Levi Price.”
“And are you staying for dinner?”
“Am I what?”
Another woman emerged behind Kim, looked out the front door. “You didn’t tell me your mom was bringing someone.”
“I didn’t know,” Kim replied.
“I mean, I could eat,” Levi said, and he looked questioningly at Deb. “If it isn’t an imposition.”
A third woman appeared behind Kim. “Well, well, well, who’s this young man?”
“And Nicole showed up,” Kim added.
And that was how Deb found herself at dinner with her daughter, her daughter’s girlfriend, her best friend, and an FBI agent.
Kim had prepared dinner, but Deb wasn’t hungry, which was a shame because Kim was a terrific cook. One of Deb’s favorite memories was standing in the kitchen with her eleven-year-old daughter, Kim silently watching Deb prepare a meal, eager to learn how to do it on her own. Cooking, especially after Kim had been born and Deb had grown older and days turned tiring, had often been more burden than pleasure, but Kim’s enthusiasm brought back Deb’s excitement, reminded her of the pleasure that comes from preparation, the almost mathematical, artistic perfection of ingredients forming to produce a lovely meal.
Tonight Kim had prepared juicy roasted herb chicken, with sides of small boiled potatoes and green beans. Deb ate a little of her chicken and fiddled with the green beans, too lost in her thoughts about Grant and Maria to enjoy Kim’s cooking. Next to her, Levi shoveled his food down.
Nicole sat on the other side of Deb, occasionally leaning forward to take a quick peek at Levi.
The two girls had barely touched their dinners. They sat across from Deb and Levi and Nicole, holding hands under the table.
“So where were you?” Kim asked. “Why were you late?”
Deb picked up a small piece of chicken with her fork, set it down. “I had to deal with some things about your dad.”
Kim indicated Levi with a gesture. “And who’s he?”
“Hmph?” Levi asked, his mouth stuffed with food.
“He’s an attorney,” Deb lied. “He’s helping me go over some of your father’s things.”
“An attorney!” Nicole exclaimed.
“I’m sorry,” Rebecca said unexpectedly, her face softening. “When you came late, Kim and I thought … we’ve had to deal with a great deal of pushback.”
“I didn’t mean to give you that impression,” Deb replied. “I’m sorry too.”
Rebecca smiled at her, and Deb wanly smiled back. Rebecca was pretty. Black with long braids, expressive eyes, and lips curved in a natural, delicate pout. Deb could see why her daughter was taken by her.
“Kim said you were cool with it, but she wasn’t, like, sure,” Rebecca said.
“I’m cool with it,” Deb answered. It was nice, she reflected, to have control of her emotions in one situation. To feel happiness and have that feeling affect someone else in a good way. Everything she’d learned about Grant had pervaded too much. She needed honesty.
“I didn’t know you’d hired another attorney.” Nicole frowned.
Deb didn’t know what to do with that. “Yes?”
She’d planned on telling Nicole everything, but not Kim. At least, not yet.
Kim and Rebecca brought their hands up to the table and set them down.
“You two are dating?” Levi asked, surprised.
The women all looked at him. Kim and Rebecca lifted their joined hands.
And Deb wondered exactly how perceptive an FBI agent Levi was.
“For months now,” Kim said.
“I couldn’t tell,” he said.
Kim and Rebecca’s eyes narrowed. Nicole shook her head. Deb inwardly groaned.
“What does that mean?” Kim asked. “Couldn’t tell?”
“Oh boy,” Nicole said.
Levi hard-swallowed whatever food was left in his mouth. “Nothing bad. I just meant you don’t look, I mean …”
“We don’t look all dykey to you?” Rebecca asked.
“You done screwed up now, Levi,” Nicole put in.
Levi seemed unsure of himself. Deb might have felt sorry for him if she wasn’t already annoyed about Grant. And men in general.
“It’s this sense that people need to conform to a stereotype,” Rebecca told him, “a stereotype that the privileged hold us to. That we need to act or look in accordance to a way that makes straight white men comfortable. And anything outside of that is unacceptable.”
Levi frowned. “I don’t think that’s what I meant.”
“It’s what you implied,” Nicole added.
“Well, look,” Levi said, trying to recover, “I don’t have anything against gay people. It’s really no big deal to me. My old colleague was gay. Totally cool guy. Liked football, even.”
Deb saw Kim bristle, and decided to jump in. “Listen,” she said, “go easy on him. He’s trying.”
“Trying?” Rebecca asked.
“All I mean is,” Deb said, “sometimes people try to do good, and mean well, but they’re clumsy about it. Their hearts are in the right place, even if they’re not as caught up as everyone else.”
“But that’s the thing,” Rebecca countered to Deb. “Their hearts aren’t always in the right place. They’re fine with gay people being gay, black people being black, or poor people being poor, as long as it’s in ways that don’t bother them. Meaning we stay in our place, or our role. It’s like Harriett Beecher Stowe.”
Everyone at the table looked blankly at her.
“Harriett Beecher Stowe,” Rebecca went on, “wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And it helped bring about the Civil War. The book showed slavery in a way that bothered people, got them to act. But it was also a reductive look at blacks and one that emphasized a path to resistance that many found destructive. It brought the sins of slavery to a personal level, but not an institutional one. And that allowed discrimination to evolve into different forms and flourish.”
“What are you studying?” Nicole asked.
“English.”
“That’s where we met,” Kim put in. “English class.”
But now Deb was interested in the conversation. She liked what Rebecca had to say, found it engaging. Part of that, she realized, was the distraction from what she had learned that afternoon, but it also reminded her of the debates she’d had in college.
She hadn’t been intellectually stimulated for a long time.
Grant used to take the lead in all debates, with family or friends, regardless of topic. He was overbearing when he argued, and Deb just listened quietly.
She hadn’t realized how much she missed being part of a discussion.
“So you’re saying,” she asked Rebecca, “that people are shortsighted, and that’s part of a system that placates them? Because they don’t fully understand cultural norms. Right?”
Rebecca thought it over. “Kind of.”
“Look at you, Deb!” Nicole marveled. “I’m so impressed, especially considering how much we all drank in college.”
Kim laughed. Deb ignored her.
“But aren’t they always shortsighted?” she asked Rebecca. “Aren’t cultures always changing? When I was in school, we were learning the basics of racial understanding. I’m betting that twenty years from now, that approach will be different.”