I looked, and just where I thought the apartment would be, a foggy mass of human-like forms were pressed against the window.
“Right. I'll take a rain-check. You go back,” I told her. “I'll wait until you're inside.”
I watched her all the way to the lobby door. She turned around and looked at me for a moment, then disappeared.
22
DATING A WOMAN WITH a child wasn't something I'd ever done. In fact I'd always gone out of my way to avoid it. I found it a big turnoff. It screwed-up my self-centered, bachelor equilibrium. I was thankful La Lena hadn't told me about Soul before she invited me to dinner. If she had I might've pulled the Amazing Vanishing Dutch act. Like her mother, there was something special about Soul. She wasn't baggage. She was a bonus. I was also pretty sure that La Lena would never introduce her to a casual partner, so I concluded things were getting serious. There was still a side to her I knew nothing about though. A side both intriguing and troubling, but I hadn't exactly been forthright with her either. Part of me wanted full disclosure on both sides. The other part wanted to keep things just the way they were. Ignorance is indeed bliss.
Three days later I called La Lena at lunchtime and told her she was coming for dinner, and that I wouldn’t take no for an answer. She accepted, but I detected something in her voice. Surprise? Apprehension? I wasn't sure. Maybe she just wasn't used to men offering to cook for her, though I found that hard to believe. The girl was a knockout. She could've walked the runways of New York and Paris, and I figured there was probably a line of horny men of all shapes, colors, and sizes, just waiting to cater to her every whim. Maybe I'm just old fashioned. Most guys would rather meet for a few cocktails then screw in the parking lot.
That afternoon I got myself into chef-mode, but the contents of my refrigerator were pathetic even by bachelor standards. A thorough inventory revealed six cherry tomatoes covered in aquamarine mold, a bottle of ketchup, and a package of slimy Rapa scrapple I'd forgotten about.
Simple, healthy and visually pleasing seemed like the way to go, so I walked to the corner market and loaded up with Romaine, cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes, and avocado. I'd pan fry a few boneless chicken breasts, slice a fresh baguette, and make a homemade olive oil vinaigrette. Sounded good to me, but I wondered if my carnivorous love interest would get excited over a salad, even if it did have chicken in it.
I was plating when she knocked, my, KISS ME I'M IRISH apron cinched around my waist. I'd been looking forward to seeing her all day. More than once I'd fantasized about a passionate pre-dinner fuck-fest. My sex drive had gone ballistic. Exercise, eating right, and her firm, dark, body had stimulated my testosterone production to teenage levels. Just like middle school, except I was actually getting laid and wasn't covered in pimples.
I knew something was bothering her the minute she walked in. She hugged me limply and without emotion.
“How was your day?” I asked.
“OK,” she said, pinching me a not-too-believable smile. From behind her back she produced a small giftwrapped box with a MERRY CHRISTMAS DUTCH! card and a green bow.
“Thanks,” I said. “You shouldn't have. I'll open if after we eat.”
As I finished up in the kitchen she hovered behind me like the Grim Reaper.
“Something bothering you?” I asked.
“I'm fine,” she said. She wasn't.
The salads looked good. My flair for presentation had risen to the occasion yet again. I filled two glasses with ice, water, and sliced lemon. I handed her one, then we sat down to eat, but the pleasant silence we'd enjoyed before had turned awkward.
“How's your salad?”
“Yummy,” she said, but she was just picking at it. I'd seen her eat a steak and this wasn't the same girl. I asked if she'd like a cup of coffee. She wasn't interested. Neither was I.
“So?” I asked. It came out more rudely than I'd planned.
She sighed and looked into my eyes. I had no idea what was coming, but it was something big.
She started by telling me what I already knew. Soul was everything to her. Without her life wouldn't be worth living. She'd do anything to protect her. Then she told me something that blew me away.
When she was young she'd been naïve, idealistic and gullible. Soul's father had been involved in the black power movement. The violent and radical faction. She found him an exciting and romantic figure. His empty rhetoric and phony promises were all just ploys to get her into bed, and she'd fallen for them all. She saw it all so clearly now. What a fool she'd been. She'd just printed flyers and done other similarly harmless things in the beginning, but her dedication and loyalty impressed them, and they gave her more training and responsibilities. Eventually they taught her to make bombs. She'd taken to it naturally, believing in her heart that she was making a meaningful contribution to the cause. They never told her where they were being used, but they were maiming and killing, she was sure of it. It wasn't until she had Soul that she realized how senseless and counterproductive it all was. When Soul was born her father disappeared and they never saw him again. She didn't want to leave her already fatherless child an orphan, so she told them she wanted out. They said the cause was bigger than any man, woman or child, and that sacrifice was the only way they'd ever beat the system. She just needed to dig deep and find it within herself to continue. She'd become too valuable. She was trapped. Walking a tightrope between the lives of loving mother and fanatic agitator. When we met at the coffee shop she saw in me an opportunity to get the organization something they'd always wanted, and by doing so she calculated she could get something she'd been dreaming of too: freedom for her and Soul. All she had to do was lure me in and hand me over on a silver platter. She hadn't planned on falling in love.
“Why me?” I asked. “What could I possibly do for them?” My mind hadn't yet processed the information.
“Because you're white. You've got brains. You don't fit the profile. You can go places and do things we can't.”
“What is it they want?”
“I don't know. They'd never tell me. Do you see the position I'm in? I love Soul more than anything, but I love you too. I can't believe I'm saying that, but it's true. I'm trapped in this horrible triangle. Two things I love and one I hate. And the only way I can rid myself of the thing I hate is to sacrifice one of the things I love.”
She was talking away, but I'd stopped listening. My mind reacted the way it always did when confronted with a perplexing situation. It automatically shut down the organs that receive outside stimuli. If somebody would've asked what La Lena was wearing, or what she was saying I wouldn't have been able to tell them.
“So, they won't let you out,” I said. “What are they forcing you to do? Make bombs?”
“No, I haven't done that in a while,” she said. She was fidgeting and wouldn't make eye contact.
“What then?” I asked. She didn't speak or even look at me. Patience isn't something I've ever had much of. A family trait, from my father's side. The more she squirmed the more impatient I became.
“La Lena!” I said loudly, and banged my fist on the table.
She jumped, her eyes wide.
“What? God, you scared me.”
I told her I was sorry. I wasn't.
“They make me deliver packages for one. I'm never sure what's in them, but it has to be guns and drugs. That's how they finance their operations. And I always deliver them by myself, to dangerous places, at night. It's horrible.”
She paused, but I knew she wasn't done.
“And?”
“Something happened,” she said. “Something bad.”
I told her to get on with it.
“It was a Thursday night,” she began. “A few months before we met. I was at home. Around nine o'clock I got a call from Arnold. I was told I had to deliver a package. That I had to meet a man first to get it, then he'd tell me where to deliver it. I told him there wasn't anybody to watch Soul, so I couldn't do it. Tough he said, it wasn't a reques
t. I'd just have to lock Soul in the bathroom or chain her to the bed. Whatever it took, but I needed to be there. So what could I do? I took Soul to a neighbor's and went. After I got the package I took the bus to a bad neighborhood near Memorial Stadium. I found the house but there weren't any lights on inside or out. It looked deserted, but I went up and knocked. The door opened and a black man stuck his head out. I asked if he was Tony. The man who'd given me the package had made that clear. Only give the package to Tony. But the man didn't answer, he just stared, like he was thinking about what to say. Then he said sure, he was Tony, but it wasn't convincing. Plus he had a Jamaican accent. Nobody ever said anything about Tony being Jamaican. If Tony was Jamaican, why didn't they tell me? The last thing I wanted to do was go inside, but I didn't want to give the package to the wrong guy either. We had this tense standoff. I was just going to leave and tell them the guy wasn't there. I turned to go, but his hand shot out and grabbed my arm. His hands were huge, and strong. He pulled me in tight to his body. He was big, maybe 30. His breath was all beer, and there were cans all over the place like he'd been drinking all day. He had horrible body odor too. It was overwhelming. He took me to the floor and straddled me. He told me to take off my jeans, but my arms were pinned under him, so I couldn't. He pulled my shirt up around my neck, then rolled to the side. He fumbled with my pants but couldn't get the zipper down with one hand. It must sound crazy, but I helped him. I just wanted to get the inevitable over with. So my pants were around my ankles and my shirt and bra around my neck. I was terrified, shaking. I felt like I was suffocating. Like I'd have a heart attack or explode any minute. He was kissing and licking me, and his hands were all over me, inside me, but he wasn't erect. He must've had too much to drink. He started masturbating, but nothing happened. Then he tried to...”
“Did he rape you?” I wanted to get it over with for both our sakes. She was shaking and her eyes had gone soft and glossy.
“No. He couldn't get it up, not even a little. He rolled off me and told me I was an ugly bitch and to get the fuck out. And get this, the next time I saw Arnold he said Tony had told him I was a rude bitch. So that guy was Tony. I told him the animal had tried to rape me, and the only reason he hadn't was because he was drunk and couldn't get it up. 'You'll just have to put more effort into it next time. Maybe wear some lingerie or try a new perfume,' he told me. Then he said it wasn't attempted rape anyway, just a lonely guy looking for some companionship. Nothing to get worked up over. Can you imagine?”
“So who's this Arnold?” I asked.
She told me he was the boss. The organization's top shot-caller, at least in Baltimore.
“Jesus. Did you report it?” I asked. It was a stupid question. Of course she didn't. I knew that. Drug couriers – even unwilling ones – don't report attempted rapes. I asked her what would happen if she just refused to do anything more for them. Plain and simple, no more games. Just tell them it's over. She said they'd never explicitly threaten her. They didn't have to. The unspoken message was the most powerful. It was crystal clear. If she walked away they'd hit her where it hurt the most. Soul.
I wanted to do something to help, but what? I thought there was a chance that for women, that kind of experience was like what men face in combat. It wasn't too farfetched. Trauma. Powerlessness. Terror. It made sense. In her case at least it'd happened recently. Maybe if we nipped it in the bud she could avoid ending up like me. Perpetually angry and prone to horrible episodes from some hideous affliction. I asked her if she'd like to see someone. A counselor or psychiatrist. If she did, I'd pay. She thanked me, said she'd think about it, but she wasn't finished. What she said next boggled my already flustered mind.
She reiterated how badly the whole thing had shaken her. She'd been dangerously close to a breakdown. Hyperventilating, panting and sobbing, the whole shebang. Tony sat there smirking, trying to get his pants over his thick legs. She got her clothes back on first, then made a break for the door. The package lay in her path, and she had the presence of mind to grab it before she ran out. She didn't go straight home. She ran two blocks and sat under a streetlight trying to get herself together. When she'd stabilized she noticed most of the tape from the package was peeled back. She helped it along to see what was inside. She was dumbfounded. No .38 specials, no smack, no nothing. Magazines. Guns and Ammo. TIME. Hustler. Playboy. When she got back home and put Soul to bed she looked more carefully, thinking there must be something hidden inside, but there wasn't. Just magazines. Why they'd send her into something like that with magazines was lost on us.
I thought and thought, and what I came up with was the simplest explanation of all. This Tony guy was a player in the organization too. Maybe from another town, or even from Jamaica. He was drunk and horny and wanted to screw a beautiful, young girl, so he called this endangered species guy Arnold, and he said he'd take care of it. La Lena was the most beautiful girl around. She'd already told them she wanted out, so maybe she was expendable. Make up some phony package delivery story and send her into her worst nightmare. Two plus two equals four.
The woman I was dangerously close to falling in love with just told me she was responsible for the deaths of other human beings. White ones. And that the organization she was mixed up with expected her to be arms dealer, drug mule, and call-girl. She also told me I was her ticket to freedom, and that she loved me. The term RED FLAG came to mind.
After dinner I opened the gift she'd brought. It was cute little Christmas-in-Baltimore snow globe complete with the National Aquarium, Little Italy, Memorial Stadium, and a big blue crab in the bay. I thanked her, then went to the bedroom and got her present. The one I'd run out to buy right after she told me she'd gotten me something.
It was a beautiful, cream colored wool scarf adorned with turquoise and maroon Kokopelli figures. According to the tag it was made by hand on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona, and that in Hopi lore, the hunchback, flute player Kokopelli is a fertility deity who presides over agriculture, game animals, the distribution of unborn children to eager mothers. I removed the tag before I gave it to her because they'd stamped the price right across it, and she wouldn't have been able to read the interesting part without seeing how much I'd paid for it.
Her face lit up when she saw it, and it wasn't an act. She was thrilled. She wrapped it around her neck, gave me a hug and whispered a sweet and sexy thank you in my ear. I had no idea when I bought it, but she told me she'd always been intrigued by the American southwest and Native American cultures. She even knew the figures were Kokopellis, but if she knew about the fertility deity part she didn't say, and I didn't tell her.
That night I had a dream that would've sent Freud running for a second opinion. I had a driver, a tee and a golf ball. I was on a stairway inside a house. I desperately wanted to tee that ball up a wallop it. I got the tee pressed down into the carpet firmly and the ball placed on top, but when I tried to swing I couldn't. The walls were too close. I couldn't get more than a quarter of my backswing in. Next, I went outside this fictitious house I'd never before seen. A beautifully manicured lawn lay spread in front of me. I walked right to the middle, teed the ball up again, got in my stance, and BAM! Just when I was ready to swing two trees sprouted up. Exactly where they'd interfere with my swing, making it impossible to hit the ball again. This went on and on. In the garage, near a lake, in the middle of a beautiful fairway on a magnificent golf course too. Same thing. No-can-swing.
Funny thing is, I haven't played golf in 20 years.
23
AT ONE O'CLOCK VERONICA walked into the corner bodega with the sandwich shop in the back. BB sat at the counter drinking a Miller High Life trying to subdue his cocaine buzz. His dilettante-bookie uniform hadn't changed much. Flip-flops, cotton dress pants, Budweiser tank-top. Business casual.
“Hola chica. Ask BB and you shall receive,” he said dramatically.
“Hi BB. Good to see you,” she lied.
When he came in for a hug his beer breath made her gag.
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br /> “OK, listen up,” he said. “I had a talk with your little friend Collette. Maybe we can help each other out.”
She shrugged nonchalantly, not wanting to seem too anxious.
“I don't know if I ever told you, but I know a lot of people in Texas,” he said. “Some heavy-hitters. I used to be a lawyer in Galveston. You meet lots of interesting and crazy characters when you're a lawyer in Galveston, let me tell you. Especially when you're cheap and advertise in the Yellow Pages. So here's the thing. A guy I know wants to buy a shitload of weed and some smack too. As much as will fit in the trunk of a Cadillac is what he told me. Those were his exact words. I don't know how much you can fit in the trunk of a fuckin' Cadillac, but it's gotta be at least 100 pounds. Maybe more. The problem is I got nobody to drive the shit down there. That's where you come in. You can get to Galveston in two days if you don't dick around. I got the car all lined up. I just need someone who isn't a total flake to drive it. You interested?”
She told him she wasn't sure. That it would have to be worth her while. She had a fiancé and it wouldn't be easy to get away. He'd want to know where she was.
“I'll give you $250 up front, and $1,000 when you get back,” he said. “And that's only because I know you personally.” He winked.
Her mind flashed back to all the times she'd stood at cruddy sinks washing his disgusting semen off her hand and arm.
“$500 up front, and $1,500 when I get back,” she said. “Take it or leave it.”
It wasn't the kind of payday she had in mind. Airfare and a few month's rent at best, but it'd get them out of the city. They could figure out the rest out when they got there. Gino would have to put his money where his mouth was. She was leaving with or without him. She hoped he'd go, but she wouldn't let him hold her back.
That evening she told Gino she had an aunt on her deathbed in Florida and that she had to go. That they'd been close when she was a child, and in their culture it would be an unthinkable insult if she didn't. She braced herself for fight.
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