Nobody's Hero

by Melanie Harvey

“Not meaning what you’re saying, but joking about it like you do. Usually at an inappropriate moment.”

  He seemed to run that through his head for a second before he gave her an approving look. “I like it.”

  “I’m happy for you, but I was making a point. You’re being it.”

  He shrugged. “Not really. But either way, I ain’t complaining. I picked this business, even if it ain’t picking me, and I can unpick it any time.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” he said, totally convinced. “I won’t … ” He slowed a little, his face changing, but she couldn’t read it. “Not if I can help it. But what I could do is I could change my clothes, pull out my earrings, fix how I walk, fix how I talk — ”

  He made a face, like he regretted saying that. No wonder.

  “I could do all those things, and I could walk away from it, and never think about being white for the rest of my life.”

  Your studies are flawed, full of broken-down cars / so you whitewash the truth with a fiscal excuse / as though being poor was the crime from the start.

  Then you believe what you want to believe / But repercussions reverberate history /And I know what happens to the people I see / with so much greater a frequency / than it does to the ones who look ‘Just Like Me.’

  He sounded like her father. She could only nod.

  “It ain’t the same thing,” Rick said, “not even close. Because even though I get pulled over plenty for driving white in a black neighborhood, I can’t even count the number a times we been pulled over in a white neighborhood. And the goddamn cop’s looking at me — ” he jabbed his thumb into his chest “ — to confirm the truth of what Terrance or Scorpion or Lamar or anybody else in the damn car just said — yeah, we did get asked up to this party after the show, officer. And once I say it, oh, well, sorry to trouble you.” His jaw clenched for a second. “And I can’t even finish — like he just told you asshole — cause he’s a fucking cop and I’m … ”

  Her father called it second-hand racism. Experiencing it up close, knowing that you chose it. Knowing you could walk away anytime.

  After the first six months of e-mails, Peter had written that he was tired of explaining what it was like to be caught in the middle, because of half of what you were. Black people apologizing every time they made some comment about whites, and whites didn’t get it. Peter’s own mother had left them, because she got it too well.

  Carolyn glanced at Rick. She hadn’t really been asking him about that. Or maybe she had. Now, she didn’t know what to say.

  “So where are we going, exactly?” he asked.

  “Back to the … ” She followed his gaze and found, not Central Park and the corner where her hotel was, but a freeway loaded with traffic. A huge green sign said they had reached the Queensboro Bridge.

  “This isn’t right,” she said. “How did we get here?”

  “You turned the other way out the subway station.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I assumed you was going somewhere else. We crossed Third and then Second, so I don’t know what you was expecting after that. Fourth?”

  Carolyn groaned. “I was paying attention to you, not the street signs.”

  She watched the cars traveling up to the overpass. Rick muttered, “Typical.”

  “Oh, don’t start — ”

  He was turning around, heading back the way they came, grinning. “You do real good underground, though.”

  “Thanks.”

  He smiled, fully, his mouth and his eyes again. Even at her expense, it was worth it. Someone passed between them, breaking their eye contact, and Carolyn felt irritated.

  “Well, I suppose there’s one good thing,” she said.

  Rick raised his eyebrows.

  “I doubt Guillotine could have just walked into Yankee stadium tonight.”

  She wasn’t sure if he’d think that was funny and held her breath for a second.

  Then he smirked. “He busy anyway. CD release party.”

  She slowed down. “Were you invited?”

  “’Course I was.”

  She stopped, but Rick didn’t notice until he was a few paces ahead of her. He turned, and she felt paralyzed when he looked at her. Who skips a CD release party?

  He shrugged. “All my fans were at the ballpark, anyway.”

  “One was pretty serious about you, too.”

  “You got a strange way of showing it,” he said.

  “Not me! That girl put something in your pocket. I’m guessing a phone number.”

  His eyebrows lifted. He must not have felt it. Carolyn was on the outside of the sidewalk since they’d turned, his left pocket closest to her. She found the scrap resting on top of his stocking cap.

  The “i” was dotted with a heart. “Sandi,” she said, and Rick made a face. “What?”

  He started walking again. “I stay away from the ones who should be doing my little brother.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Rick shot a look over his shoulder.

  “I’m speechless,” she said. “You have standards?”

  He smirked. “Tell that to Terrance. But I don’t do teenagers, redheads or black girls.”

  19: So What’s the Problem?

  Carolyn pressed a hand to her stomach. Rick slowed, stopped, then turned, his face clouded with confusion, but in a split second changed to absolute delight. “That’s it.”

  Her mouth flooded with saliva. She swallowed, and her stomach shifted again.

  Rick smacked a fist into his palm. “That’s why he be giving me all those looks.”

  Exuberant. Like he — no, they — had just solved a big puzzle.

  “Terrance,” he said. “Every time I see him — damn! I hate that shit, just say it already.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “Started last night,” he said, “when you was on TV. I didn’t notice then, I was waiting for what you was gonna say. But you don’t want to talk about that, do you?”

  He turned away, grinning and she was fighting back tears (tears!) and she didn’t know which was worse.

  “Maybe before that, and tonight, too. But it makes sense.”

  “Because you don’t date black girls.” She heard the anger in her voice. It felt better.

  Rick turned back, and she finally saw something that looked like shock on his face.

  “Did I say date?”

  She stormed past him. He caught up to her, grabbed for her arm. She yanked it away again. Her throat was so tight she could barely breathe.

  Rick backed up a step, raising both hands. “Hold up — this won’t end bad.” She thought he was talking to himself more than her. “It’s like The Simpsons, it gets all fucked up but everything always works out in the — ”

  “You think this is a fucking cartoon?”

  He jumped. “Hell no! Cartoons are funny! I hate this movie. I never know how I keep getting dragged in the damn theater!”

  She wrapped her arms around her stomach, but she felt his body surrounding hers in the subway car.

  “Oh … .” Rick’s eyes widened.

  Congratulations.

  “Hold up — no — I didn’t mean — ”

  “Me.”

  “Right.”

  “Why? Am I light enough for you?”

  “What?”

  “Or were you going to say I just don’t look black?”

  His jaw dropped. Then he swallowed. “You know, people sometimes make that sound like it’s a compliment.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!”

  “Well, I think it’s offensive. Am I wrong?”

  “No, Rick, you’re absolutely right. I can’t speak for every black — ”

  “Well, shit, I know that’s — ”

  “But yes, as far as I’m concerned, your perception is fucking amazing.”

  He let out a groan. Like she was cutting him.

  “You promised!” He clamped his fists to his temples. “You said if
you didn’t know what I meant, you’d ask me!”

  “What else could you have possibly meant?”

  She watched him struggle for an answer, but after a minute he spread his hands.

  “A’ight, that’s what I meant.”

  She slammed her jaw down on the Fuck you and stalked toward the light. Third Avenue, at least it was the right direction. Just not fast enough.

  “Wait!” He reached for her arm. When she tore away again, he glanced around, suddenly wary of the sparsely populated street. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “You goin’ hear me out?”

  She shouldn’t have even stopped. She could tell by his face that he didn’t expect her to listen. Carolyn looked away to the traffic signal as it changed. Her hand was on her throat, holding back the lump. Or protecting herself.

  “Terrance.” His voice was steady. “That’s why he kept looking at me weird. I hardly remember even thinking it, sure didn’t know I was still doing it.”

  She looked at him and read the question on his face. Could he keep going? She didn’t nod, and she didn’t look away. Rick’s gaze shifted as someone skirted her on the sidewalk. He checked her again, with some uncertainty.

  She managed to swallow. Please say something that makes sense.

  “I was born in Cleveland,” he said slowly. “But I didn’t live there my whole life. Small towns, the first half. Then I got dropped into this neighborhood when I was thirteen and all of a sudden I felt like I had a target on my back. Also I had this really bad habit of saying damn near everything that popped into my head.”

  She pressed her lips together against the traitorous smile that tried to break free.

  “First day I was there, Terrance’s mama comes over from next door and invites me to T’s birthday party that afternoon. It was … different. I got used to it. I learned to listen. A lot.”

  He was watching her, carefully now, and motionless, his body superimposed in front of a giant movie poster hanging across the street. Some summer smash-up, full of life-and-death decisions to be made by the hero.

  She swallowed. “What did you hear?”

  “Different things. Different people. Some of them didn’t like no crackers messing with their women. I wasn’t try’na make my life harder.” He shrugged. “Girls wasn’t no use to me anyway, they couldn’t get me what I really needed, which was to stay the hell out of my grandmother’s house as much as possible and at the same time not get my ass handed to me everyday. I had enough trouble with my mouth, didn’t need no more. What I needed was those guys. Every one of them.”

  “You mean a gang.”

  “It wasn’t a gang. Just a crew. Because it ain’t like you can be alone.”

  He watched her, maybe to see if she understood. But she couldn’t, she’d grown up in the suburban-like neighborhood of Firestone Park in Akron. Less than an hour away from where he was trying to figure out how to survive. Somehow the girl who’d told Carolyn’s seventh-grade self that she didn’t have any use for white girls seemed … different.

  His eyes were still wary. She read it, even though he didn’t say it. You okay with this?

  She didn’t know.

  Rick shrugged. “I started hearing some of those crackers talking — freely, you know, I was one of them,” he added, sounding and looking like he’d eaten something rotten. “Kinda started feeling the brothers’ problem with — ”

  He flinched. Maybe because he saw that she understood so quickly. No misinterpreting the catcalls that made you feel like …

  Like you’d just swallowed something rotten.

  Carolyn took a deep breath. “Nothing personal.”

  A statement or a question, she didn’t know. He exhaled and shook his head, back and forth. No. No. No.

  After a moment, he glanced toward the intersection, where the light was changing. She nodded, and the clench in her stomach faded. When she looked up in the middle of Third Avenue, he caught her eye and started to grin. She responded to it without a thought.

  “What you think, girl?” he asked. “You think I’m playing with you?”

  She didn’t know what he was doing.

  “I ain’t worked so hard to get somebody’s clothes off since I was fifteen.”

  Funny. Maybe even true.

  “Fucking baseball,” he muttered.

  She pushed him on the shoulder, and he faked a stagger, three full steps over, almost into the gutter. Smiling with his whole face. Oh, Lord, help me.

  Her words popped out, unbidden and unexamined. “Why me?”

  His grin faded.

  “You said you didn’t realize you were still doing it — why me?”

  She couldn’t read his face, but it wasn’t confusion, it was something else.

  His expression shifted, and it was gone. “Ain’t you been around a mirror today?”

  She was about to tell him she’d noticed that he didn’t seem able or willing to hide his lust, but he started across 59th in the middle of the empty street. She glanced at the traffic held up at the light and followed. Rick reached for her arm as she caught up in front of the store window.

  Women’s clothing in Bloomingdale’s? He shifted his hands to her shoulders, guiding her in front of him and nodding at the plate glass window. In the reflection, his eyes met hers. Her hair frizzed at her temples; all her makeup was gone. Her jersey and tennis shoes were a stunning contrast to the mannequin’s evening gown beyond her image.

  Carolyn saw his raised eyebrows when she reached up to smooth her hair. “You’re full of shit.”

  “Full of eyeballs.”

  “Right.” She turned away from the glass. “Everything changed because I look like Halle Berry.”

  She expected some other look to broadcast how he wanted her for her body. Or maybe a comment about how every rapper compared girls to Halle Berry. But she saw the same thing she’d seen on the subway when he said it was easier to listen when he couldn’t see her, and his desire struck her with an intensity that alarmed her.

  Then he shrugged. “Maybe that just snapped it, said Ricky you a grown man — well, mostly — and you can fuck whoever the hell you want to.”

  “No. You can’t.”

  “And there she goes again.” He started walking. “Like I missed it the first six times.”

  She grinned at the pointed look — this made seven.

  “Maybe you better give me that girl’s phone number.”

  “Oh, you’re breaking all the rules now?”

  “Not the redheads, that ain’t never going away.”

  She didn’t even want to know. “But teenagers, they’re okay.”

  “She’ll grow up. Probably before you give it — ”

  She still had the paper in her hand, and she slapped it into his.

  He dropped it in the trashcan at the corner without even looking. Then he glanced back to the can and made a noise between his teeth. “Might be sorry about that. Five years from now, ain’t nobody gonna be … ”

  His hands went back into his pockets. Carolyn waited, but he didn’t say anything else, except that there was no Fourth Avenue, so this could be a wrong turn, too. His tone didn’t harmonize with the joke, and she barely registered crossing Park Avenue, then Madison. They hit each light on green, and Rick’s pace picked up. She matched it, still wondering as they reached the corner of Fifth Avenue. He stopped, glanced past the clock’s hands marking eleven-thirty above the flowers that circled below the face like a necklace.

  She followed his gaze to the green awning of the hotel.

  “I guess you’re home. Sort of.” He turned to her and cocked his head. “You think it’s even worth shooting for eight?”

  His delivery was back on, but it wasn’t funny. “What did you mean by that? You might be sorry in five years, when nobody’s going to … what?”

  He shook his head.

  “No.” Carolyn moved closer, but he wouldn’t look at her. She reached for his unshaven jaw, turned his face to her. “What’s wrong?”
<
br />   “Nothing.”

  She pulled on his chin. “Are you lying to me?”

  His eyes roamed over her face, down to her mouth, back up to her eyes before he looked away. “Nope.”

  He backed up and she let go. “Tell me.”

  “Ain’t your problem.”

  “I know that … but … ”

  She’d seen him angry, flip, frustrated — even almost happy, sometimes. And, of course, the all-pervasive, always resurfacing, ‘you’re turning me on.’ Now she thought despair had been underlying all of it and once those emotions were gone, this was the real thing, and it was so heavy she felt the weight of it in her own heart.

  She watched his right hand tap against the clock’s square base … thunk-thunk … thunk. His gaze roamed up the front of her building.

  “I wouldn’t say anything,” she told him. “To anyone. Ever.”

  He studied her for a moment. Thunk-thunk … thunk.

  “I think I knew that already.” After a moment, he shrugged. “I wasn’t lying. I can’t come up with anything. Like I filled up three albums and I got nothing else to say.”

  “Rick … ” She tried not to laugh. “You hardly ever shut up.”

  He smirked and pushed himself away from the clock. “Well, that keeps your ass in the shit all the time, but it ain’t quite the same thing. And also … that ain’t actually normal for me.”

  She was sure she knew that already. “So. What’s the problem?”

  “Oh.” Rick smacked a palm against his forehead. “Why didn’t I ask myself that?”

  She put her hands on her hips, and he grinned. The defeat was still there, but it seemed lighter. She felt lighter.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “All I know is I can’t put three words together.”

  “Well, I have a piece of paper upstairs that says different — and a pretty quick sardine routine in my ear.” He lifted his eyebrows, and she looked away, which didn’t cool the heat that shot through her. “Look, I know it’s not the same thing, but — ”

  “I got six days,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For an entire album. I’m supposed to be in the studio on Monday. Six days from now. And I don’t got a single goddamn line. Six. Days.”

  She’d panicked on her own deadline, and all she had to do was figure out how best to write the material. Not invent it. “Can’t you postpone … ”