“Well,” Ellis said, “people should be allowed to enjoy their lives, right? Especially when they’re young.”
“I’m not judging,” she said. Then she studied him for a moment, and he noticed the unsteadiness of her gaze. He felt himself reaching for the soft fabric of his tie. “I don’t think you’re old enough for the wise guru bit, mister.”
The way she said “mister” canceled some of what he’d detected in the rest of her words. “Are you gonna go back in?” he asked. He’d had no intention of going back tonight, but realized this woman-child could change his mind.
“I’m going home, before I turn into a pumpkin.”
“It’s way past midnight,” Ellis said, and then suggested a car service. He imagined hailing the cab for her, holding open the door as she got in.
“I don’t live far. I’ll just mosey on up the block.” She dropped her cigarette and stepped on it.
“Well, like you said, it’s late. This neighborhood used to be a little dangerous.”
“And so it isn’t anymore.”
Ellis glanced back at the door. It seemed to vibrate from the music and motion inside, a portal to an entirely different place.
“Are you gonna go back in or walk me home?”
“You’re okay with that?”
“The neighborhood’s not dangerous,” she said. “Are you?”
Ellis walked not quite beside her, but just behind. Her head barely reached the height of his chest and her thin sweater showed the shape and power of her shoulders. Her wavy brown hair, blown back at him by the breeze, had a slightly sour smell. He liked what it suggested, that she was casual, that she was okay with being just a little unclean.
“It’s pretty interesting working at the art store,” he was saying. “You realize how many people live these artistic lives in secret. You get to hear what they’re working on, and sometimes you get to see.”
Allegra looked back at him for a moment and gave a little hum.
“I get a discount there, which is nice. I dabble in drawing—well, more than dabble actually. I’ve been drawing since I was a kid. My parents put me in classes. Once, I got to show my work with other local artists, at a Laundromat. It was nice. Lots of people came, even a few who weren’t there to wash their clothes.”
“Hurry,” she said, and jogged across the street against the light to avoid an approaching car. Ellis ended up stuck on the corner, and just watched her hips and legs as she went. After the car sped by, he caught up with her.
“Can’t run, old man?” she said with a laugh.
Ellis couldn’t think of a clever response so he just laughed too. He tried to pick up the thread of their conversation, the exhibit in the Laundromat, but he didn’t know how to do that either.
They stopped at a corner grocery store because she wanted to grab some milk. Ellis had been in there before but the interior was different, cleaner, more brightly lit, with expensive organic products on the shelves. “Just a couple more blocks,” Allegra said as they left, but then she fell silent again. Ellis forced himself to talk, telling her about the bar, how it was sort of a second home to him, telling her things about it that only the folks knew, about Dyson’s strange outbursts, about Julius and Yolanda, about Sadie’s Clifton lost in time. “Oh wow,” she kept saying, changing the tone of the words to suit the subject. Finally, to hear her speak again, to pin down her voice, he asked about her.
“Well, I’m from a little town in Illinois, and my parents named me Allegra.” It suggested her parents had certain expectations, she told him, expectations Ellis sensed she’d never met. “My name towers over me,” she said, sounding like a perceptive child. The comment made Ellis think about how far he’d have to bend to kiss her, how awkwardly she’d have to reach up to put her hand on his cheek. No matter how awkward, however, he wouldn’t make the same mistakes he’d made before, not being bold enough, being too timid to cross boundaries he’d been given license to cross. And it must be, he thought, that she was telling him to cross. She didn’t seem very drunk. Maybe his words about enjoying life had struck her, or maybe she wanted to match her friends, or outdo them, by spending her night with him, an older man, a black man. Why else would she invite him to walk with her?
“I’ll be twenty-five next year. Twenty-five and what do I have to show for it? Almost every dime I make goes to bills and rent. I’m broke enough to prove I live in New York, and I’ve kissed enough city boys to know what that’s all about. God,” she said, “what am I doing here?”
Ellis walked beside her now. From what she said and how she said it, and the way she avoided looking at him, he expected her to cry. Instead she pounded a fist into the palm of her left hand.
“Fuck,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dump all that on you. I don’t even know you.”
They walked in silence for a while alongside a large building that Ellis knew as Kingsbury Hospital. Recently it had been turned into an apartment complex. He had heard the folks in Clifton’s gossip about the renovation and complain about the high cost of rent, but this was his first time seeing it since the change. His mother had been born in Kingsbury. He saw, as they passed several entrances to the complex, that it was now called New City Gardens. They approached the end of the block and Allegra stopped at the last entrance, in front of two barred, heavy-looking glass doors. She turned to face him and smiled. “Well, thanks for walking me, mister,” she said.
Ellis felt himself sweating, as if they had walked for miles. “You live here?” he asked.
“Welcome to my palace,” she said sarcastically.
“This used to be a hospital.”
“I know. It’s so gross. Don’t remind me.”
Ellis wiped his forehead. He cut through the noise of his racing mind by telling himself he couldn’t wait. He knew what waiting, especially in the presence of a woman, could do to him. He tilted his face to hers, let his mouth go slack.
She made a noise of disgust and turned her face, her cheek now curtained by her hair. “Hey, sorry,” she said, “but it’s not that kind of party, okay?”
“I thought—”
“I don’t know what you were thinking,” Allegra said. She took a step back from him. “God, I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He took a step forward and said, “I’m sorry, but I—”
“Are you going to make this difficult?” She glared and reached into her purse.
Ellis understood the threat and moved away from her. “Of course not,” he said. “I’m not dangerous, remember?” He smiled weakly, ruefully.
She didn’t respond. Her key turned in the lock and she shouldered her way in, her eyes on him the whole time. Before darting up the short staircase, she pressed a palm to the glass, quickening the door as it closed and clicked shut.
Ellis walked through the warm streets, wondering how the possibility had been lost, if he had said something about himself, about his life, that gave him away. Maybe she felt his job at the art store was pathetic. Maybe saying the bar was a second home made her think he was a drunk. Why had he gone on like that? He knew a woman didn’t owe him anything, but there had been a possibility there, he was sure of it. Even if only for a night, one night of being open to the world.
Then he felt anger rising in him. It was unbelievable that people lived in the old hospital, that she lived there. It would have made me sick to go up there and make love to Allegra, he kept telling himself. It would have been wrong. An insult to his mother’s name.
Several minutes passed before Ellis realized he was going back in the direction of the bar. He stopped a few blocks away, on Bedford Avenue, concerned for a moment about his pencils and sketches, but the work was poor, the pencils easily replaced. And the last thing he wanted was to hear what Sharod would have to say, to see that picture still taped up among the bottles. He thought about the terrible loudness of the place, that awful crowd, and changed direction, heading south toward his apartment.
“Can you help me?” Th
e voice of a woman behind him, another woman in need. No need to worry, he thought, the neighborhood’s safe. Just go home. You’ll probably find a doctor there. He kept walking.
“Can you help me, please?”
Ellis wondered if this woman had her pepper spray ready too, in case the gentle-looking black man in the new and improved neighborhood ended up being dangerous after all. He could see it: One hand open, pleading for assistance or love, the other with its fingers wrapped around the canister.
“Please, young man. Can you help me, baby? Somehow I’ve lost my way.”
It was “baby” that he heard first, and then it was “young man.” He turned and found Sadie there, close enough to kiss. The old woman was tall, much taller than Allegra, nearly Ellis’s height in heels.
“Miss Sadie? Is everything okay?”
“Wouldn’t be asking you for help if everything was okay, baby. This ain’t no April Fools.”
“Does anyone know you’re out here?”
“Yes,” she said. “You.”
“Where are you going?”
“My, but you do have some silly questions. I’m going home! What you think I am, a lady of the night?”
Ellis apologized. “Don’t worry, I’ll take you home.”
“There you go. Wouldn’t be no good to me if you didn’t.”
“You have your house keys, Miss Sadie?”
“No, baby, I figured you could slide me down the chimney like Santa Claus.”
Arm in arm they walked toward Lafayette Avenue. All the folks knew where she lived. Because of her shoes, the heels of different heights, she shambled along, her body chopping the air to the left of her. She was fragrant with perfume and cooking oil, her hand and forearm dotted with cornmeal and flour.
“Miss Sadie,” Ellis said, “where’s your purse?”
“Oh, that? A nice white man a few blocks back said he’d hold it for me. I told you I didn’t have no keys.”
Ellis stopped walking, and she did too. Who knew how long she’d been wandering around alone? What man had she encountered? He should have taken her home from Clifton’s. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“Right as rain now,” she said, and he couldn’t help but believe her. Her smile was so serene, her tilted head held effortlessly, poised as if on a pillow. Aside from the brier of her hair, she looked fine, otherwise untouched by whatever had happened to her.
“We’re almost there, Miss Sadie,” Ellis said, offering his arm again. “Let’s go.”
“Hang on, baby. Isn’t it beautiful out? Just look at it.”
She observed the sky, her gaze drifting across it, as if she weren’t in the city and could see the galaxy, thumb-smeared along the dark glass of night. She was gowned in the glow of streetlights and, looking down at his shoes and creased pants, Ellis found himself oddly glossed as well. The nearest light hummed electric above them, a hard bright disk from which illumination was drawn to the two of them like tiny moths spiraling, helpless and particulate.
The feeling of Sadie’s hands on his startled him, but he didn’t resist her touch as she undid the buttons of one shirt cuff and then the other. Carefully, she folded up both sleeves.
“Gotta let yourself breathe,” she said. “There, isn’t that better?”
She linked arms with him again, and against his wrist her skin was warm, her bracelets cool.
To Ellis’s relief and dismay, both the doors to her building and her apartment opened with a simple turn of the knob. “Miss Sadie,” he said at her threshold, “you’ve gotta remember to lock your door.”
“If I had done that, we wouldn’t be able to get in,” she said slowly, as if explaining to a fool. “Now don’t just stand there. Come on in. I’ll fix you some chamomile tea.”
Ellis stepped inside and chuckled a little.
“Tell me the joke,” Sadie said. “I wanna laugh too.” She flopped onto her sofa. “You gonna have to give me a minute with that tea.” She removed her shoes and held the pair in her hands. One was a black pump with a heel two inches higher than the other, a pink sandal. “Well, would you look at that,” she said. “Is this what you were laughing at, baby?”
“No, of course not, Miss Sadie.”
“My feet are killing me,” she said. “Might have to soak ’em.” She stretched her feet and rubbed their soles. Spider veins lined her calves and ankles, and her long toes were bunched together. “Well, what was it then?” she said. “The joke.”
“Just men and women is all.”
“Oh, that does seem like a joke, don’t it?”
For a few moments, Ellis heard himself saying some of the things that might have crushed his possibilities with women over the years, the boasts about the art store, the illusions, the premature declarations of love. Or, more often, saying nothing at all. He saw himself as he’d been, as they had seen him, with the receding hairline and longing eyes, the fedora that didn’t suit him, the neckties that were maybe a touch too garish.
“I’m not sure what else it could be, Miss Sadie.”
“Not sure what else what could be?”
After spending that first night talking to her until dawn, Ellis began a regular habit of seeing Sadie at her apartment. At first it was two or three times a week, but then, with nowhere else he felt comfortable going except maybe the art store and his own home, he started seeing her every day. She often cooked for him, insisting on doing so, dazzling him with the many dishes she could make beyond the fried chicken and fish he knew from the bar. If she felt up to it, she would get dressed up to go there a little before midnight. Ellis made sure her shoes matched, that no spots of ink grew on her dresses. He walked her as close to Clifton’s as he could bear and then went home. He did what he could to make sure folks looked after her.
More and more often, however, she didn’t feel up to it. On those nights, when her mind was too confused, Ellis sat with her. He listened to her complain about Sharod and the other family and friends who helped keep an eye on her during the day. He listened to her talk about people she may not even have known.
“It’s so sad about Julius,” he said to her one evening.
“Who?”
“Your friend, Miss Sadie. Julius. He passed away. He’d dead.”
“Some friend—why didn’t he tell me?”
It had been several months since the night Ellis escorted her home. In the last twelve years, since he’d first started going there, he’d never spent so much time away from Clifton’s. He didn’t miss it as much now as he had during that week away. Mr. Edmonds may have been right—it just wasn’t the same anymore. It may never have been what Ellis had wanted it to be.
“You should think about a facility,” he said to her one day. “Where they’ll look after you. A place for long-term care. I’d visit you. All the time.”
After a few moments she said, “That’s where you go when you don’t want to be found, baby.”
“That’s where you go when you need help.”
“Then you go,” she said.
Things started to get so cluttered in Sadie’s mind that she stopped leaving her apartment entirely. It seemed as if the mess there was so vast she could do little more than sit and stare at it. She refused to go to appointments with her doctor, and appeared not to care, or even notice, when she was told news about the bar. Some folks called it neglect, just letting her waste away like that. Others felt that the way she spent her final years was up to her. Any elder deserved to make that choice for herself, they said, even if she lost all good sense.
By this time, Ellis’s hours at work had been reduced. A big chain had purchased the art store, and soon he would have to look for a second job. He spent one free Wednesday in his apartment, making a detailed drawing of Sadie. He used a pastel pad instead of regular copy paper and worked from memory, re-creating her image from the night he had helped her get home. With some details he hesitated, but he ultimately decided to render her exactly as she was. He took the drawing from the pad and pu
t it in a nine-by-twelve-inch frame, giving it luster with a paper towel and a few sprays of furniture polish. When he was done, he got dressed, wrapped the drawing in tissue, and took an evening bus over to Sadie’s apartment.
On the bus he recognized a woman who must have lived in or near his neighborhood. He’d seen her on this route before, and more than once he had longed to talk to her. She was about his age, maybe a bit younger, her long neck wrapped in a thin scarf. She looked pretty in her late-autumn clothes, her long skirt and boots, but Ellis had no desire to talk to her. He smiled to himself, thinking how strange it was to be out in the world and not feel it: his old everyday ache.
Sadie was in pajamas when he arrived, her hair frazzled and in need of a cut. A dress lay beside her on the sofa, even prettier than the one she’d worn all those months ago, prettier than the one in his drawing. It was cobalt blue with shorter sleeves, and the modest neckline had black and white lines shooting from it, the way the sun’s rays are depicted by a child.
She looked up from her hands writhing in her lap and smiled. “You’re here,” she said.
“Hello, Miss Sadie.”
“Oh, we going for the formalities now? All right, Mr. Man. I guess you have been away a long time. I should be furious with you. I know what I said—it was wrong—but how could you stay away?”
Ellis tried not to frown, but she was more confused than ever. “I haven’t been away long at all. I was here just yesterday.”
She smiled again. “Just a blink of an eye when it comes down to it.”
“I have something for you.” He held the framed drawing out to her. In the past few weeks certain objects—a photograph, an old book of stories, a skein of yarn—had helped to tidy her mind. He hoped he’d gotten the drawing right this time, that he’d seen her as she would want to be seen.
Her eyes went from suspicious to approving to something he couldn’t quite discern. “Another gift?” she said. “Ain’t you slick. You’re always getting me gifts.” Moving her fingers precisely, she peeled away the tape and slid the frame from the yellow tissue. “Such a pretty wrapping. Almost matches your tie.”
A Lucky Man Page 24