by Joe Ide
“Can I have a cigarette?” she said. “I guess I do need one.” He slid the pack and lighter across the table. She took one and lit it. They smoked in silence, eyeing each other through the lazy curlicues of smoke. The chatter was gone, the pretense was gone. The only sounds were surges of canned laughter and the occasional car going by. It was humid and close. She was sweating. There was nothing left except the inevitability of her death. His gun was in his shoulder holster. She imagined him reaching for it, aiming at her, and pulling the trigger. How long would that take him, two seconds? Porkpie looked more powerful than overweight. A neck like a fire hydrant. Hairy hands. Could she get to the cattle prod and stick him before he shot her? No, not possible. She tried to read his face. Tight jaw and tired eyes, like they’d seen everything, like they’d seen too much. He doesn’t want to do this, she thought. He was drawing it out, giving her as much time as he could. He leaned back in his chair as if to gain distance, to disconnect. Drops of sweat trickled down his temples, his face sodden with resignation. He could have been a prisoner in front of a firing squad. She could feel the pendulum slowing down…slower…slower…stop. He tensed and flicked his cigarette away. The time had come.
She thought about pleading, begging for mercy, but she felt herself getting angry. Who was this fuck, this shit, this inhuman son of a bitch about to take her life? Who was he? He was allowed to kill her? Murder her like Walczak had murdered her dad? No. Fuck you, you shit. You will not take my life. She leapt to her feet, upending the table on him; he fell backward, the table on top of him. She got to the counter and grabbed the cattle prod. He couldn’t see her and fired blindly. BLAM BLAM BLAM! She ran from the kitchen and out the back door.
Isaiah heard the gunshots. “Grace!” he said. He sprinted around the side of the house and saw Porkpie galloping off into the dark, waving a gun. He’s after her. He’s going to kill her. Isaiah ran. His ribs hurt and pain pounded on his brain, but he kept going. He lost them in the dark. He stopped and listened. He thought they were to his left. He ran through brambles. He couldn’t see. He tripped on a rock and fell down. He got up, stopped and listened. He couldn’t locate them. They were getting away. He shouted, “Grace! I’m here! I’m here!”
“Isaiah!” she called back. More gunshots. BLAM BLAM. He saw the flashes. He ran. If you killed her you’re dead. If you killed her you’re dead. He was getting close to where he saw the gunfire. He stopped. It was so quiet you could hear the air molecules brushing against your eardrums. He heard rustling at his two o’clock. He thought about rattlesnakes. He crouched and edged toward the sound. He saw a bulky silhouette and the outline of the hat. Porkpie was turning in one direction and then another, looking, listening. Stay where you are, Grace. Just stay where you are. Isaiah had to get behind the guy. He hunched over and moved heel-to-toe, easing up when his foot touched a twig or a leaf. Porkpie was fifteen, twenty feet away, hard to tell in the dark. Isaiah was even with his shoulder. He had to keep moving. Porkpie heard him and whirled around, the gun in a two-handed grip. Isaiah went still. He breathed through his nose, small breaths, his T-shirt a wet rag. A few terrifying seconds went by. Porkpie turned away and moved off into the dark, disappearing again.
“Shit,” Isaiah whispered. He had to find Grace before Porkpie did, but all he could do was lurch around in the dark. Take the high ground, he thought. There was a pile of boulders. He’d get a better view from there, but he’d also be easier to spot. He clambered up like a slow-motion gecko. He peered over the top, scanning, scanning, the hawk eyes keening. He saw movement. Slight. More like something going from dark to darker. More movement a little farther away. Hunter and prey? Which was which? He got down from the boulders and army-crawled in that direction. He stopped. That amazing quiet again. Movement. A short quick burst. He crawled some more. Someone tore off running and someone bigger gave chase. Isaiah ran. He couldn’t see them, only hear their footsteps, their scrambling. He heard Grace cry out. She’d fallen. He visualized her curled up in a ditch, her ankle broken, brittle with fear, Porkpie grinning, creeping toward her, finger on the trigger.
He had to do something but he didn’t know where they were. He picked up a rock, threw it. “Over here, asshole!” he shouted. He hit the ground just ahead of the gunshots. BLAM BLAM! “You missed!” He rolled behind a log. BLAM BLAM BLAM! Local cops carried Glocks with a ten-shot magazine. Porkpie was out of ammo. Isaiah was about to move when he heard a new mag click into place. Shit. What was Porkpie doing now? He wants to get Grace, but he knows I might attack him. Grace was injured and not likely to go anywhere. Porkpie’s coming for me, he decided. Lead him away, not too fast or he’ll go back for Grace. He moved, shaking a bush and turning abruptly, flipping over rocks, trying to make Porkpie think he’d taken a position. He waited. No gunshots. He waited. Still nothing. Panic snatched away his breath. He was wrong. Porkpie’s going for Grace! His instincts or God guided him, because he didn’t trip and he didn’t fall down. “Grace! Grace! I’m coming!” he shouted. Porkpie stepped out of the dark and shot at him. BLAM BLAM. Missed by a grain of sand. Isaiah heard the bullets zip past him. He dived and rolled but couldn’t get up fast enough. Porkpie’s doomsday silhouette was coming toward him, not hurrying, knowing it was all over. Isaiah got up. “Shoot me, motherfucker,” he said. If Grace gets away I don’t care. Porkpie raised the gun—and Grace appeared wraithlike, waving a stick. A stick? Porkpie turned but not in time. She poked him with it. What’s she doing? He’s going to shoot her! Porkpie screamed like a flaming baboon. He twisted around, shooting as he fell, BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM, Grace and Isaiah, arms around each other, hobbling into the night.
Chapter Seven
I Am Satiated Beyond My Concepts
Juanell had gone out and the baby had finally fallen asleep. Cherise was exhausted, eating a Yoplait, a poor substitute for the quarts of strawberry ice cream she inhaled when she was pregnant. Didn’t matter. All that was over with and soon Micah would be growing up and she’d miss the time when he was a baby and made little gurgling noises and laughed when she made a funny face; when he was a miracle and God’s gift and bless his Holy Name.
Her mother came in, fussing and criticizing like she always did. What was it this time? Juanell left the refrigerator open. Juanell forgot the Pampers again. Juanell is drinking too much. She was the same way when she was vice principal at Carver Middle School. Students and teachers alike stayed out of her way.
“Do you know what Juanell did?” Gloria said. “He left the toilet seat up and there’s hair in the shower drain. That man is like some kind of wild heathen. He’s not even civilized.”
“Mama, he lives here,” Cherise said.
“Why are you always making excuses for him? You listen to your mother, she knows a thing or two. Take your thumb off a man for five minutes and all you’ll end up with is a bum sleeping in your bed. That’s their true nature. Lazy, shiftless, and completely unreliable. Look at your father, ups and runs off with some half-wit barmaid.”
You gave him plenty of reasons, Cherise thought. “And you think Juanell might do that too?” she said.
“He might, or something worse.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“No, I don’t,” Gloria replied. “I don’t know that at all, all those women he meets at the food truck. Probably giving away chicken as we speak.”
“Juanell doesn’t need fried chicken to seduce someone,” Cherise said, “and if he was cheating I’d know. He couldn’t hide something from me if he was a flea on Isaiah’s dog,” Gloria replied.
“That’s what I thought with Josiah. And look how that turned out.”
“Why are you always on him, Mama? You know I love him. Why can’t you accept him?”
Gloria raised her chin as if the moment required more gravity. “You are my treasure, Cherise,” she said, “and I always wanted you to have a man that deserved you. Somebody who would treat you right and give you everything.” Her voice trembled, tears lingered on the edge of h
er eyes. “Somebody who was like Josiah before he married me.”
“Oh, Mama,” Cherise said. She hugged her and held on.
“Oh, stop it now,” her mother said, stepping away. “I’ve long since forgotten about all that. Would you like me to make you some lunch?”
Cherise knew, of course, that Juanell had sold his half of the truck to Deronda and that he’d partnered up with Isaiah. Did he really think he could keep that a secret in a neighborhood where people knew if you were getting food stamps and that your husband was messing around with a half-wit barmaid? That he had lied to her made her angry, but she felt bad for him too. She knew he wouldn’t—couldn’t stick with the food truck. Selling fried chicken was as dignified as anything else, but it wasn’t for her Juanell. The swaggering, smiling, ever-confident, ever-fearless man of her dreams was turning into a dreamless worrier, wrapped up in paying the bills and little else. Cherise also knew about Deronda’s success and that made her feel worse. Her husband, who always thought he had all the angles and knew all the moves, had outmaneuvered himself, and now here he was, struggling to support his family and keep his pride intact at the same time.
And something else was bothering him. Something unusual, something disturbing, not part of the usual rat race issues. She’d given him openings. Are you okay, baby? You seem worried about something. Are you catching a cold? Is there something on your mind? But he’d passed it off as too many hours in the truck or Deronda getting on his nerves. Cherise had gone back and forth with herself, but in the end, she decided to let him come to her. If she didn’t trust him, what was the point?
Deronda drove the Miata along Anaheim. She kept the top up so she wouldn’t mess up her hair. She was going to meet Dodson at a club called Night Out. She couldn’t believe this shit with Chester and Junior. All that nonsense happened years ago and here it was again biting her in the ass. The past never passed, did it? She thought about her son, Janeel. He was conceived in a bathroom stall at an underground club in Compton. She couldn’t remember the guy’s name or what he looked like and she was glad for that.
When she found out she was pregnant, she thought it was the worst day of her life. The fuck was she gonna do with the goddamn baby? Her nights would no longer be her own. There’d be no more smoking weed or swillin’ back Seven and Sevens or partying with Nona and them. Her lineup of baby daddies would disappear as fast as her belly grew. She thought about getting rid of it but her father said he’d disown her. She didn’t believe all that stuff about a baby changing your priorities. How could a little thing like that turn you into somebody else? But when the baby arrived, it was like God had tapped her on the shoulder and shed his grace on thee. She loved to watch Janeel get out of the car and walk his little self into day care. Or lie on the floor with him and wonder at his tiny fingers building something unrecognizable out of Lego, and she loved cozying up with him on the sofa reading Who Was Harriet Tubman? more than he did. She was proud of how she’d finagled the loan and built up the food truck business. She wasn’t some down-and-out homegirl working at Rite Aid and feeding her son mac and cheese out of a box. She was a businesswoman, she was somebody, and her son would be somebody too and he was the only reason why she had done what Dodson told her and got dressed up like the ho she used to be. A satiny, thigh-length, steeply cleavaged dress, stiletto heels, glitter in her lip gloss and eye shadow. Her dad said her perfume smelled like a fruit basket exploded in a candy factory.
She grilled Nona and finally got the truth out of her. It was Christmas, and Nona’s family had gathered at her mother’s house for dinner and to pass out presents. After the ceremonies were over, the young people went out into the yard to party. It was a warm night, everybody was drinking, having a good time and swapping stories. Nona didn’t have any stories so she told everyone about Deronda, Dodson, and Isaiah robbing Junior. One of the listeners was her cousin Sylvia’s husband, Chester. Sylvia was a strange woman who had a little money from an inheritance, which gave her time to be a voodoo queen. She dressed all in white and walked around like Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost. She also sold gris-gris charms, which usually amounted to no more than a dried-out chicken bone. She also passed herself off as a practitioner of hoodoo, the equivalent of a Chinese herbalist. Her handful of patients said her concoctions never did anything but give them cold sores and constipation.
She met Chester when she went into his shop looking for a ceremonial dagger. She collected them. Nona liked to say she used them to cut up more gris-gris charms from her next three-piece at Popeye’s. Sylvia knew instantly that in a past life, she and Chester had been vampires together in New Orleans. His sharpened canines were proof of their relationship. Three weeks later they got married. The ceremony was conducted by an old lady who was something like a high priest or a witch doctor. There was a lot of drum beating, chanting, and African-type dancing that went on for hours. Nona said Chester danced like a polar bear with a Hula-Hoop. She went home when the old lady brought out a snake.
Unfortunately, Sylvia’s vampire heritage didn’t save her from falling off the pier in Rainbow Lagoon and drowning. She and Chester had gone out for a late-night walk. Chester, who grieved for a week, two on the outside, found himself a widower and the sole owner of Sylvia’s condo. Perhaps out of loneliness, he continued to appear at family events, no one wanting to tell a man who made knives for a living and had teeth like a coyote that he creeped everybody out.
“I’m sorry, Deronda,” Nona said. “But that’s how it happened. Did I cause some kind of problem?”
“No, this ain’t no problem,” Deronda said. “This is a goddamn disaster.”
Dodson and Deronda entered Night Out, which was somewhere between a small club and a big bar. From Junior’s perspective it made sense as a hangout. Too small and it had no cachet. Too big and Junior would be lost in the crowd. There was the usual dance floor, the usual DJ and ear-shattering rap music, the atmosphere dense with alcohol, weed, and sex.
“Brings back memories, don’t it?” Dodson said.
“Yeah,” she replied. “And not all of ’em are good.”
Junior was holding court in the VIP area; a cluster of plush sofas, oversize ottomans, and low tables enveloped in pink light and haze from a fog machine. It looked like heaven on a sitcom. Junior was seated on a sofa, no doubt drinking his favorite drink, Parks Punch. It was a ghetto cocktail made up of vodka, Crystal Light lemonade powder, margarita mix, and Coca-Cola. Deronda couldn’t think of a nastier combination. Seated next to Junior was Booze Lewis. He’d always been big and muscled up but now he looked like a giant bullfrog in a leather jacket and a Kangol cap.
There were the usual bunch of hoes and hangers-on, drinking and partying and trying too hard to look like they were having fun. Deronda remembered herself in that same scene, laughing too loud and buying cocktails she couldn’t afford.
“I only met Junior once or twice,” Deronda said. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Find out where he keeps his money,” Dodson said.
“That’s crazy. He might not even remember me.”
“Tell you what. Walk over there backwards and see if his memory comes back.”
Deronda made her way over to Junior. He looked the same, like a pug with cornrows, his sunglasses too big for his tiny head. He was dressed nice if you liked shiny green track suits, colossal gold chains, and four diamond studs in each ear. She wondered if he could hear straight.
She forced herself to smile. “Whassup, Junior?”
“And who might you be?” he said like he was offended. “Are you and I correlated or do we coexist in separate realities?”
Junior talked that way because he thought it made him seem smart, but to Deronda’s ear, it sounded like he’d swallowed a dictionary sideways. She sat down next to him and crossed her legs. “You remember me. I’m Nona’s friend, Deronda. I met you at a party and then at that club, the one over near the freeway?” Junior glanced at the burnished thigh bridging the space between them and looke
d her over again.
“On second thought,” he said. “I do believe I retrospect our assignation. You was walkin’ away and I retained an image of your morphology.”
“That was me.” She was tired of people talking about her booty, if that was what he was referring to. What was so fascinating about a hump on your back? If it was all that exciting they should go to the zoo and look at the damn camels.
“May I requisition a drink on your behalf?” Junior said.
“You may,” Deronda said, edging a little closer. Before she could tell him what she wanted, he snapped his fingers at a passing waitress.
“Could you convey a Parks Punch to my counterpart?” he said. “And one for my eminence as well.” The waitress blinked twice and moved off.
Booze was too wasted to say anything and sat there like one of the sofa cushions. Junior’s phone buzzed. He looked at the caller ID, got up, and walked off a ways. She was starting to lose her nerve. Yes, she’d been with a long list of dog-ass losers but the idea of spending time with this little monster was beyond the beyond. She was about to get up when Michael Stokely and three other thugs showed up. Stokely was the former enforcer for the Crip Violators and scarier than ever. He wasn’t as big as Booze but he was harder, more indestructible. You knew if he took off his shirt all you’d see was a stack of cinder blocks. He had evidently done some more time, his brown skin nearly black with prison tattoos, which hadn’t lightened his mood any. He had the same look he’d always had, like he came here to kill somebody with malice of forethought. His three homeboys looked like they were at a casting call for merciless brutes. These are the people who would come after you if Chester spilled the beans, Deronda thought. The waitress brought the drinks. She took a sip and almost spit it out.