“I’ll give her the other three,” Black said. “Let’s just get outta here.”
“All right,” Leroy said, looking at Pookie with glazed eyes.
“The shower’s upstairs,” Clarisse said. “There are new razors and toothbrushes in the bathroom cabinet, and some men’s clothes in the closet in the master bedroom. They might be too big for you and Leroy, but you’ll be wearing coats, so I guess it won’t matter.”
“What you doin’ with men’s clothes?” Black said.
“None of your business. And wake that bitch up. I don’t allow any sleeping in here.”
Leroy splashed water in Pookie’s face while Black went upstairs to shower, stripping off his clothes as he climbed the stairs and hoping that Clarisse and Pookie could stop themselves from killing each other for the next five minutes or so.
“Throw your clothes in the trash can up there!” Clarisse yelled up the steps.
Black didn’t respond. He was too busy hiding his thousand dollars between some towels and rummaging through the bathroom cabinet for a toothbrush. Finding one, he unwrapped it and hastily squirted toothpaste across its bristles before stepping into the shower.
“Everett?” Clarisse said, and he ignored her again as he turned on the water, watching the steam rise slowly against the glass shower doors as he scrubbed the toothbrush feverishly against his teeth.
Black could hear Leroy talking, and then the sound of someone coming upstairs, but it sounded like it was only one person, so he knew it wasn’t five-o. Not that he cared. This was a shower, and nothing was going to stop him from getting it, because showers were special, particularly since he had begun living in the street.
Most of the time, he would just go into a McDonald’s bathroom and wash up in the sink. Other times, he would spend the night at Ridge Avenue Shelter and shower there, or he’d go to 802—the place for the homeless on Broad Street—and sign the shower list. But a real shower in a real home? Black hadn’t had one of those since his family had stopped letting him in the house. Maybe that’s why he didn’t hear Clarisse come in and slide the shower door back.
“Everett,” she said, her mouth almost next to his ear.
Startled, he jumped and turned around to see her naked body draped in a cloud of steam.
“Don’t be sneakin’ up on me, Clarisse.”
“How else would I get to see you in the shower?” she said, moving closer and stroking him gently as the water dripped down between them.
“Clarisse, we ain’t got time for this.”
“I know. I just wanted to ask you something.”
“What?”
“I wanted to ask you if you meant what you said about loving me if things were different. I mean, how do you know you don’t love me now?”
“How you know I ain’t love you the first time I saw you? When you walked in Miss Shaw class in sixth grade wearin’ that yellow sundress and those black Mary Janes.”
She tried to respond, but Black put his fingers to her lips and kissed her. Then he lathered his washcloth and bathed her. When he finished, he quickly washed himself and stepped out of the shower.
“I gotta shave. Go get Pookie and Leroy and tell them to get in the shower. Then we can find us something nice to put on.”
“How about a nice yellow sundress?” she said, smiling flirtatiously.
“Stop playin’. You got two sets of men’s clothes in the closet?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Shoes, too?”
“Yup.”
“I guess we probably need some hats and sunglasses, too,” Black said as an afterthought. “You got men’s coats, too?”
“One. But I’ve got a trench coat that looks like it could belong to a man or a woman.”
“We probably be better off wearin’ all women’s clothes anyway,” he said. “Then they really won’t recognize us.”
“You might be right. I have a blue rayon skirt set that is definitely you, honey.”
Clarisse chuckled as she walked out of the bathroom wrapped in a terry-cloth robe. When she went downstairs, though, the laughing stopped. Pookie was still unconscious—and going into convulsions.
“Oh my God,” Clarisse said quietly. “Oh my God!” she said again, almost screaming.
Because the row house on one side of her home had been demolished, Clarisse only had one set of next-door neighbors. The Scotts, an elderly couple who had known Clarisse’s parents, had watched Clarisse grow from a skinny little girl to a beautiful young woman, so they knew her better than anyone in the world. And since her parents’ death in a car accident ten years before, the Scotts had tried to fill the void for her, gladly becoming more like family than neighbors.
They had taken on the role of surrogate grandparents. They had watched Clarisse graduate from high school, go on to nursing school, and struggle to become a registered nurse. They had encouraged her as she built a career and a life on the tail end of a tragedy that would have destroyed a lesser young woman. They had watched her socialize, and date, and laugh and cry. And now, they thought, they were watching her kill herself.
She was losing weight, disappearing before their very eyes. Her hours were becoming erratic, even for a nurse. She was speaking to them less and less. Truth be told, she was starting to avoid them. Even so, they convinced themselves that her strange behavior was due to the stress of a demanding nursing career. And for a while, that explanation worked for them. But when they noticed the young man who had started to visit her from time to time—the one they’d seen coming out of the drug house at Broad and Pike—they knew it was something more than stress.
But knowing Clarisse’s problem and approaching her about it were two different things. They wanted to help her. They just didn’t know how to begin. So, like so many families held captive by their loved ones’ addictions, they ended up stuck between their desire to be there for Clarisse and their desire to distance themselves from the violence and depravity that had invaded their neighborhood along with crack.
It was only after much contemplation that they decided there was nothing they could do for Clarisse except to continue to pray for her and leave it in the hands of the Lord. That decision, they hoped, would allow them to sleep easier. And it did, until that night.
“Did you hear that?” Eldridge Scott turned over and asked his wife, Mildred.
“Hear what?” she said from beneath the covers.
“It sounded like a man said, ‘Shut up!’ real loud like.”
“Eldridge, you know them boys always walking ’round here talkin’ loud. Now, go to sleep.”
“It sounded like it was next door,” he said, reaching over and turning on the bedside lamp.
They both listened.
“You sure it was next door?” Mildred asked.
“Well, you know she be havin’ that boy over there smokin’ that stuff.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“What else she doin’ makin’ all that noise five minutes to two?”
“Maybe she watchin’ television. Don’t she have one o’ them big-screen televisions?”
“If she ain’t sold it to the dope man yet.”
“Eldridge,” she said in an admonishing tone.
“Well, Mildred, you know what she doin’ just like I do. Now, we already talked about that, so don’t act like it’s somethin’ brand-new.”
He paused for a moment, realizing, not for the first time, how much it hurt him to see Clarisse hurting herself.
“I love her as much as you do,” he said finally. “But we got to face the truth.”
They both fell silent, listening for the next sound, but they didn’t hear anything. After a full five minutes, they began to breathe easier.
“Eldridge, can you turn off the light and go to sleep now?”
“I coulda swore somethin’ was wrong over there,” he said after listening a moment longer. “But I guess it was just the television.”
“I tried to tell you that,” Mildre
d said, clearly relieved.
But as Eldridge reached for the light, he heard a woman yell, “Oh my God!”
It sounded like Clarisse.
“That’s the television, too?” Eldridge said, picking up the phone on the nightstand. “I’m callin’ over there.”
Mildred sat up in bed, hoping her husband would turn to her in a few minutes and tell her that everything was all right, that the sounds they heard were nothing.
“Fast busy signal. Phone must be off the hook.”
“Eldridge,” she said, biting her lip. “Call the police.”
“You think I wasn’t?” Eldridge said. Then he cleared the line and dialed 911.
“I think she may have a concussion,” Clarisse said, “But she’s . . .”
Pookie convulsed, her eyes opening wide in a look of pure terror. Clarisse took off her robe and covered Pookie with it, mumbling something about Pookie going into shock.
“Man, she ain’t in shock,” Black said. “She be shakin’ all the time. Leroy, take her upstairs and put her in the shower with you.”
“No, you can’t move her,” Clarisse said. “We have to keep her still and warm.”
“We ain’t got time for all that,” Black said. “We gotta roll.”
“We can’t go anywhere until she’s stabilized,” Clarisse said, checking Pookie’s pulse.
“Well, I guess we just gotta leave her.”
“I-I ain’t leavin’ her,” Leroy said. “And you ain’t, either.”
“What? We ’bout to get sent up for a body, and you talkin’ ’bout we ain’t leavin’ her? Man, lemme tell you somethin’. When we on death row, strapped down, waitin’ for some dude to give us a hot shot, she gon’ be right here, down Broad and Erie, suckin’ the next man’s—”
“Don’t say it, Black.”
“Or else what?”
“Just don’t.”
“You’s about a dumb-ass,” Black said, shaking his head in disbelief. “But if you wanna roll like that, go ’head.”
Leroy looked at Black expectantly, as if he thought he were going to walk out on them.
“Look, Leroy,” he said, sighing heavily. “Go upstairs and shave, wash up, and be ready to leave in five minutes. I said I would get us outta this, so I’ll do that, even if we gotta drag Pookie with us.”
Leroy nodded and bent down to touch Pookie’s forehead. Then he ran upstairs and turned on the water in the shower.
“You got her from here, right?” Black said to Clarisse. “ ’Cause we gotta get outta here. You said the clothes in the upstairs bedroom?”
“Yes. And bring me something down, too.”
Black went upstairs and started rummaging through her closets for the men’s clothes. He found two suits, complete with ties and shoes. There was a rayon skirt set hanging near the suits, so he took that out for Clarisse and hoped the shoes he picked out for her were right. He picked out another skirt set for Pookie, and coats for everyone. He found two pairs of sunglasses in her bedroom drawer. And in the top of her closet, there were hats.
Once he’d gathered everything into a bundle, he walked back downstairs.
“Finish undressing her, Everett,” Clarisse said without turning around. “And tell Leroy to put her in the shower. If we get stopped, I don’t want anybody to smell like anything but perfume.”
“All right,” Black said, dressing quickly in a blue suit that was at least two sizes too big.
Clarisse began to dress in the skirt set he’d brought down for her, carefully watching Pookie as she began to come around.
“I think she’s all right,” Clarisse said as she put on her stockings.
Black cast an accusatory glance in Clarisse’s direction.
“I wasn’t trying to kill the girl, Everett,” she said defensively. “But something about her just . . . I don’t know.”
“She probably remind you of yourself.”
“Please,” she said, as if he’d uttered the unthinkable.
“How you know she ain’t never have no job and no house and all that?”
“I don’t. But—”
“But nothin’. Keep smokin’ crack, you ain’t gon’ have none, either.”
“How can you tell me anything?” she said, her voice drenched with sarcasm. “Look at you.”
“That’s right. Look at me. Look real close, ’cause you gon’ be lookin’ just like me in a minute.”
They finished dressing in silence. Black put the coats and hats on one of the dining room chairs, then undressed Pookie and carried her upstairs to the bathroom.
“I got her, man,” Leroy said, taking her from his arms.
“Here, well, get this, too,” Black said, handing him the gray suit and the other skirt set he’d taken from the closet. “And gimme the clothes you had on.”
Leroy passed his old clothes through the bathroom door.
“Clarisse,” Black said as they stood outside the bathroom door. “Let’s take me and Leroy clothes and put ’em in a trash bag. We can dump ’em somewhere when we get from around here.”
“Why don’t you just leave them here and I’ll get rid of them when I get back? It’s not like anyone saw you come in here. And if they stop us and search the car with those clothes in a bag in the trunk . . .”
Black tapped on the bathroom door as he answered her. “If they stop us and find the dope and the money, we goin’ up anyway. You wanna leave the dope and the cash, too?”
She just looked at him.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said as Leroy opened the bathroom door. “Leroy, we goin’ downstairs.”
“I’ll be right down,” he answered.
When Clarisse and Black got downstairs, he started straightening up the mess in the dining room, trying to leave the place in some semblance of order. He was funny that way. Even in the house on Park Avenue, when everyone else would be throwing stuff everywhere, Black would always be the one trying to keep the place neat.
“What are you doing?” Clarisse asked, clearly amused.
“What you should be doin’. I’m puttin’ your house in order.”
Leroy came downstairs dressed in the oversized gray suit with his tie undone. Pookie, groggy and bleary-eyed but dressed smartly in a skirt set that almost fit, followed him.
“Tie this for me, Black,” Leroy said.
“Clarisse, go outside and start the car,” Black said, reaching over and tying Leroy’s tie in a half Windsor.
“Y’all got everything?” she asked.
Black nodded.
Leroy reached down and patted his sock. “Yeah, I got everything.”
“Well, I don’t,” Clarisse said, holding out her hand.
Black reached into his inside pocket and gave her three hundred-dollar bills. Leroy peeled another three from the roll in his sock.
“All right?” Black said, reaching for one of the four trench coats and hats he’d brought down earlier. “Now let’s get outta here.”
“What’s takin’ them so long?” Eldridge Scott said to his wife as he picked up the phone to dial 911 for the third time.
“You know they take their time comin’ down here,” Mildred said. “You almost gotta tell ’em somebody been shot just to get a police car to ride down the block, let alone stop.”
“Hello,” Eldridge said as the call taker answered. “Yes I called earlier about a disturbance at 3934 Dell Street. Well, it sound like they shootin’ over there now.”
Mildred looked at him, surprised at the lie.
“I heard the shots less than a minute ago,” he said, looking back at Mildred defiantly.
The call taker asked him another question.
“No, I don’t have any description of the person with the gun, but I—”
The call taker interrupted him.
“Yes, I think the person’s still there.”
Again, there was a question.
“Look. Stop asking me all these damn questions and get somebody over here!”
Af
ter he’d slammed the receiver into the cradle, Mildred waited a few minutes before she said anything to him.
“Sweetie,” she said as she reached for the remote control and clicked on the television, “I don’t think that’s going to make them come any faster.”
“Time they finish askin’ all them questions she could be dead. Suppose somebody really do have a gun over there? They could—”
“Eldridge,” she said, reaching over and stroking the hair that framed the side of his head. “Calm down, honey. The only thing we can do is wait for them to come. Now, you called three times, so we might as well just see what’s on the television, since we ain’t goin’ to sleep no time soon.”
“I ain’t studyin’ no television,” he said, turning over and pulling the blanket over his shoulders.
“Well, I’m gon’ see what’s on,” Mildred said, turning up the volume on the television set.
“And this just in,” the reporter was saying. Mildred looked closer, because he was standing in front of a house around the corner. “The two males who are wanted in connection with the shooting here on Park Avenue have been identified as Leroy Johnson, thirty-four, and Samuel Jackson, twenty-four.”
As the reporter droned on, giving physical descriptions of the two men, their pictures, obviously taken from past police mug shots, flashed on the screen. Mildred tapped her husband on the shoulder.
“What is it, woman?” Eldridge said as Mildred struggled for words and tapped his shoulder again.
“What in the world is it?” Eldridge said, angrily jumping up.
Mildred pointed to the television, and his gaze followed her pointing finger to a picture of the man they’d seen visiting Clarisse’s house.
“Eldridge,” she said, finally finding her voice, “the boy done killed somebody.”
“Dear God,” he said, and picked up the phone to dial 911 again.
The call taker had only worked in the Radio Room for three months, and she hated it. Not only were there too many supervisors, but the people who called were rude, obnoxious, and most of the time liars. The pay was good, though, and once you got in with the city, you could switch to another department and make just as much money doing a less stressful job.
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