by Bil Wright
—Yeah?
—Ray Anthony?
—Who you think? You called my house, didn’t you?
—It’s me, Louis.
—Yeah, I know.
— I’m at Big Lou’s. My mother sent me. And Babyback’s outside. He’s alone. I passed him on the way in. I could be wrong, but it looked like he was waiting for you. I just wanted to know if you were coming.
So alright, he didn’t like to be asked what he was doing or where he was going. If he was going to get mad, he could go ahead and get mad. Today I felt like taking the chance.
— I was thinkin’ bout comin’ over there in a while. Why? You hangin’ with us now?
Maybe it was his sense of humor and I just didn’t get it. Maybe when I was around him long enough, it wouldn’t bother me at all.
—No, I’m here at the store like I told you. But there’s a line so I might be here a while. Maybe I’ll see you. If you come soon.
—Yeah, well, don’t wait for me or nothin.’ I ain’t even dressed yet.
— No, I won’t wait. But I might still be here. I might, that’s all.
I hung up and decided to go to the liquor store and come back to Big Lou’s to give him more time. When I got outside, Crita was walking up to the car, looking back over her shoulder at Bones.
“Why you followin’ me, man? You don’t have noplace else to be?”
“Aw, Crita. Who you think followin’ your flat behind?”
Crita stopped in front of the car. “Boy, I bet if I turn around, there ain’t nobody there but you.”
I didn’t have to hide today. I stood right in front of the three of them and I was invisible. Crita reached for Babyback’s beer and he let go of it without saying anything, as if it belonged to her. Bones asked, “You got a beer for me, Babyback?”
“What do I look like? Why I’m gonna be buying you beer?”
“Well, you could shove your damn beer up your ass, Babyback.” Bones jabbed at the air. “I’ll buy my own.” He punched the air again. “And don’t neither one o’ you ask me for none neither.”
“Ray Anthony ain’t here yet?” Crita asked Babyback in her firecracker voice.
“Naw, he ain’t here. Where’s Geraldine?” Babyback whined.
“Geraldine say she don’t wanna ride by herself with you, Babyback. Ain’t nothin’ I can do about it. She say you too much man for her.” Crita doubled over and spit a spray of Babyback’s beer across the hood of his car, laughing, or at least performing a laugh. He tried to snatch the can away from her, but she pulled away so that more of it spilled.
“Then it ain’t no deal. You said if I let you an’ Ray Anthony take a ride in my car without me, you’d get Geraldine to go with me. Now I ain’t got nobody to drive around for myself and you think I’m gonna keep my part? What kinda chump you think I am?”
Crita walked up to Babyback and held the beer up under his nose. “I can’t make Geraldine do nothin’ with you she don’t wanna do, Babyback. If you don’t wanna let me an’ Ray Anthony ride in your old piece o’ car without you, then don’t. Just remember I’m the one got Geraldine to even look at you twice. If you act like you got some sense, I might could get somebody to look at your pinhead self again.”
Babyback froze, frowning down at her like an illustration I remembered from fifth grade of Gulliver glaring down at the Lilliputians. Crita stared right back up at him, holding the paper bag with the can of beer in it right up to his nostrils. Her bangs were sticking straight up like an overgrown crew cut.
“What am I supposed to do while you and Ray Anthony go drivin’ off somewhere, Crita? Stand out here on the street, in the cold?”
Crita snapped, “That’s what you been doin’, ain’t it?”
Bones came out of Big Lou’s, holding a six-pack out in front of him. Crita laughed, thumbing in his direction. “And when Ray Anthony and me get through riding around, you and Bones can drive somewhere together.”
I wanted to run and cut Ray Anthony off before he got to them, to ask him if he knew what they had planned for him. Him and Crita in the car alone together. He couldn’t have known that once he got there, he’d have to drive around alone with this beerspitting loudmouth. I squeezed the cigarettes in my jacket pocket before I remembered what they were. Damn. I’d only stolen a couple. If they were broken, I’d buy more with Mom’s money. I backed away, staring at Crazy Crita. I’d buy a pack of cigarettes for Ray Anthony and me. I had to have something to give him.
I went to the liquor store first. I got back to Big Lou’s only a couple of moments before he strutted up to the front of the store.
29
Maybe he was dressed special for New Year’s Eve. Maybe he was just in a good mood. Turquoise pants. Not blue, not green, but turquoise. High-water turquoise pants. They were so short I could see he had on those socks called Thick ’n’ Thins, the nylon ones that looked half like men’s socks and half like women’s stockings. The socks were gray, the exact shade as his shoes. The shoes were patent leather, of course. How many pairs of patent leather shoes did Ray Anthony own?
Ray Anthony in turquoise was a surprise, even more of a surprise than in his purple pants and maroon shoes. I wasn’t sure whether I thought he looked really good, in a Ray Anthony way, or like this time he’d gone too far. Crita didn’t have to think about it.
“Who you think you sposed to be, Harry Belafonte or somethin’?”
It showed how stupid she was. As much as I wasn’t sure what I thought about Ray Anthony in turquoise high-waters, I knew Harry Belafonte wouldn’t be caught dead in them.
“I didn’t think you was comin’, man. Geraldine ain’t comin’,” Babyback whined, shifting his weight from side to side. Bones snickered. “Heh, heh.” He leaned against the side of the store with a beer in his hand and an empty can at his feet.
“Babyback is still gonna let you an’ me ride around for a while. Ain’t you, Babyback?” Crita stopped staring at Ray Anthony long enough to give Babyback this look that said, don’t think about what to answer. Just open your mouth and say yes.
But Babyback didn’t say yes. He shifted from side to side again, his nose running, his lips trembling from the cold.
Ray Anthony hadn’t seemed to notice me since he got to Big Lou’s. Every time he looked across the hood of Babyback’s car I was staring right back at him, but he didn’t look like he really saw me standing there feet away from where they all were.
Bones came toward the car. His eyes were a deep pink like the lining of his lower lip against his dark skin.
“Yeah, man. Whatcha say you, Crita and me take us a ride around, Ray Anthony? I let you drive.”
“What?! You gotta be outcha mind, Bones,” Crita yelled across the car at him. “I told you before, I ain’t goin’ nowhere with you. What me and Ray Anthony want you in the car with us for?”
Bones licked his lips slowly and smiled, one of those smiles that isn’t about anything being funny.
“Man, I thought Geraldine was comin’.” Babyback looked around him as if he was lost. “I thought we was gonna take turns. You and Crita. Me and Geraldine.”
“I’m tellin’ you, Babyback, forget Geraldine. I’ll get somebody to ride with you, later. Me an’ Ray Anthony wanna go ridin’ now. Huh, Ray Anthony?” Crita combed her bangs down with her fingers and took a sip of her beer. Her hair stood back up as soon she’d taken her hand away.
Ray Anthony looked across the hood of the car and seemed to see me for the first time. He nodded and smiled. The rest of them turned around to see who had his attention.
“Ray Anthony?” Crita glanced at me and right back to him. She wanted an answer.
“Don’t make me no difference,” Ray Anthony said in his gravelly Creighton Heights Projects voice. “It’s your car, Babyback. You the one to say who be drivin’ it.” He was talking with his back turned to them, still facing me but looking down at the car.
“Go on,” Babyback said. He was running out of air, shrinking. “You an’ C
rita go on.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a ring of keys and held them in Ray Anthony’s direction. “Here.”
Crita grabbed another beer from the package and ran around to the side of the car where I was standing a few feet away. Bones stepped forward and snatched the keys out of Babyback’s hand.
“I’ll drive, man.”
“Boy, I’m tellin’ you, if you go, you be in that car by yourself!” Crita stepped away from the car door she’d started to open.
Bones raised the keys into the air, then slammed them down onto the hood of the car.
“Whatchu doin’, man?!” Babyback sounded like Bones had hit him with the keys instead of the car hood. Bones went back to the front of the store and kicked the brick wall. Then he growled at it and kicked it again.
Ray Anthony was watching the whole thing like a storm was swirling around him and here he was in the middle, not moving, not even swayed. He walked closer to the car and took the keys from the hood. He said to Babyback, “I’m tellin’ you man, it don’t make me no difference.”
Babyback looked from him to Crita. As if he was reading instructions he saw in her eyes, he told Ray Anthony again, “Go on. You and Crita. Go on.”
Crita started to climb into the car. Ray Anthony opened the blue door on the driver’s side and stopped, looking over at me. “You want a ride home?”
Crita spun around toward me and back to Ray Anthony again. I was too surprised to say anything, but I did want to be in that car with him, going home or anywhere he wanted to drive.
“C’mon,” he said. “Get in.”
Crita sucked her teeth loudly. “Ray Anthony, whatchu doin?! You know him?”
“Sure, I know him. I’m gonna give him a ride home.” Ray Anthony smiled at me and I smiled back. I slid into the backseat, with the liquor store bag in my lap.
He rolled his window down and asked Babyback, “Whatcha gonna do while we gone?”
“Just don’t leave me out here all day, man.”
Ray Anthony rolled the window back up and pulled away from Big Lou’s.
“I got you a beer. You want me to open it for you?” Crita asked him.
“I don’t want no beer.”
“Well, it’s here if you want it.”
It amazed me how fast Crazy Crita could make herself sound like somebody’s wife going on a picnic to Willowood Park in the family car, considering what was really going on. I stared out the window as if we were passing through some fascinating unknown territory while Crita turned around in the front seat and looked at me the same way.
“How long you been knowin’ him?” she asked Ray Anthony as she watched me.
“For a while now.” He was still using the thick, foggy voice. I wondered how long he could keep it up.
“Huh!” Crita snorted. Now it was me she wanted an answer from. “Whatchu got in the bag?”
I was hoping not to have to say anything to her. I knew I couldn’t sound afraid, and I couldn’t sound stupid enough to think I could be friends with her either.
“It’s scotch. For my mother.”
“Your mother drink scotch, huh?”
No, I wanted to tell her, she cleans the oven with it. “Yeah,” I said instead and tried to imitate the voice Ray Anthony was using.
“His mother got him buying scotch for her,” she reported back to Ray Anthony. She hadn’t thought of any way to make trouble for me and she was running out of time. We were a block from the parking lot where he would let me off. Surprised at how well I was doing, I opened my legs a little to look more relaxed and called to the front, “Ray Anthony, you got a cigarette?”
He looked up at me suddenly, frowning into the rearview mirror.
“What?”
I asked him again, trying to sound as if I was used to asking him for cigarettes, like it only made sense that if I’d run out, I could get one from him.
“Yeah. I got a cigarette.” I could see he was still frowning, but he reached inside his jacket pocket and took out a pack of Pall Malls. He handed them over his shoulder to me.
“Thanks.” I took one and handed the pack back to him, our eyes meeting again in the mirror. He was looking at me like he didn’t recognize me. He slowed down near the entrance to the parking lot.
“I guess I’ll save it for later, since we’re here already.”
Crita laughed one of her loud hatchet laughs. “Sissy boy, you need to give that man his cigarette back. You know you don’t smoke nobody’s damn cigarettes.”
To hell with her. I wasn’t going to answer. I reached for the door handle, but Ray Anthony didn’t stop like I expected. He sped up, away from the parking lot.
“Whatchu know?! Huh, Crita?! You don’t know nothin’!” It was his own voice now, higher, sharper. “You need to keep your mouth shut sometime.”
I sat back, wishing he had let me get out. I was embarrassed to still be there after what she’d called me in front of him, but I was too afraid of her to say anything for myself. I couldn’t even face Ray Anthony in the rearview mirror. I stared at the back of Crita’s thick neck and tried to get up enough courage to ask him to let me out or to jump out without asking at the next stoplight. The three of us rode in silence across town.
“You mad?”
It was her wifey voice again. Ray Anthony had turned onto a street that led to the thruway and I thought about Mom waiting for me to come back from Big Lou’s. Crita inched over toward Ray Anthony.
“Lemme see if you mad.” She reached across to his lap. I pictured her grimy hand on his beautiful, turquiose-covered thigh.
“You ain’t mad.” She laughed. “I knew you weren’t mad.”
Ray Anthony looked up at me in the rearview mirror. We were on the thruway in the lane that said “Fairview Cove.” He was driving to the south side, to the beach. On the last day of December.
• • •
There were only two other cars on the parking ramp overlooking the water. One of them drove off a minute after we parked. Behind us was the Fairview Cove Drive-In screen. The cement poles with speakers on either side of us looked like an army of naked blue children with huge ears waiting for someone on the screen to tell them what to do. I’d been to the drive-in twice. The last time we’d gone to a Kirk Douglas movie I forgot the name of. Mom bribed Ben into driving us by promising to pay for everybody, including him. On the way, they argued about moving. Mom asked Ben why she never heard him talk about wanting to get his family out of the projects as badly as she did. When we got to the drive-in, Ben told Mom, “Put the speaker on your side. You’re the one who hears what you want to hear. Maybe you should get one of these to go in your new house.” Mom started banging the speaker on its stand. “You ruin everything, you know that? Even when I pay your way, you can’t have a good time unless you ruin it for everyone else.” When the people around us started to stare into our car, I hid under the blanket in the backseat. Mom and Ben shouted at each other about not being able to leave because we were in the middle of hundreds of other cars and couldn’t get out.
Staring behind me at the drive-in screen, I tried to figure out why Ray Anthony had driven both me and Crita to Fairview Cove, like it made sense to him for the three of us to be there together. She leaned up over the backseat and smiled down at me.
“You can get out and smoke your cigarette now.”
I thought, if I get out, she’ll convince Ray Anthony to drive away and leave me here. I looked up at the rearview mirror. He was looking out at the beach.
“Well? Get out. Ray Anthony, tell Sissy Boy to get out the car and wait.”
“I ain’t tellin’ nobody nothin’,” he snapped at her.
“I’m gonna take off all my clothes. You think I’m gonna take ’em off in front of him?”
Ray Anthony took a toothpick out of his jacket pocket and started to pick his teeth, but he still wasn’t looking at her. “That’s up to you.”
“Well here I go, then.” When she unzipped her jacket, I jumped out of the car.
>
After a few minutes, I stole a look back. It was like watching pieces of a jigsaw puzzle move up, then over, sinking out of sight again. His back, wider than I’d imagined. The outline of her hair, his fist hitting the horn. I heard her rusty blade laugh. Then suddenly he shouted something at her I couldn’t understand. Or didn’t want to, because it sounded as if he was calling both our names at the same time and I was on the outside, not in there with him to separate mine from hers. Whatever he shouted, the part that sounded like he was calling me shot down into the pit of my stomach, no, deeper, deeper, and stayed there, aching.
Later, I told myself I couldn’t have seen anything. I’d been watching the blank white drive-in screen, trying to remember the name of the Kirk Douglas movie and how long it took us that night to get out of there.
• • •
“Hey. C’mon.”
Ray Anthony’d rolled down the window and practically whispered to me. I got back in the car and closed my eyes. It smelled, not bad exactly, but a smell that was the two of them together and didn’t include me. I opened my window until we got to the thruway. It felt like we were riding in a convertible with the top down in the middle of winter. Over her shoulder, Crita snapped, “Shut it,” and I did.
I don’t know if Ray Anthony looked at me at all on the drive back. I didn’t watch the rearview mirror to find out. When we got to the north side, he drove toward Stratfield Projects.
“What the hell do you think you’re doin’? You drive me back to Creighton first.” Crita glared at Ray Anthony until it was clear he’d changed directions. It surprised me she wanted to get out before me. I thought she’d be glad to get rid of me. When we got to Creighton Avenue, she told Ray Anthony to stop. She opened the door and turned to him, leaning in close enough to kiss him good-bye.