by JM Holmes
The woman next to him had fallen full asleep. Her arms were crossed and she was mouth-breathing. The bus still hadn’t showed and he was fucking heated that Mone hadn’t given him a ride.
At work, his phone threats escalated as the hours passed—
It’s a good neighborhood…for now.
You hear about that minister in CF?
Hello, Mara Silva? Is Raymond in? No? Well, do you know…And then Dub thought about what Sylvester would do. Dub’s own mother slept with a lead pipe next to the bed ever since he and Nick had moved out. Shit, in his own kitchen he often thought of which pans could be used in a moment.
Does he work nights often?…Yeah, my mom was the same way growing up. He paused, having given something of himself. It’s nice having a full house. He tried to be vague enough, heard her voice waver. I had a brother. We kept each other company…Oh, I was calling—He passed the thirty-second mark and Sylvester hovered behind his station. There were no cubicles. The idea was that watching other people make sales motivated the team. The team wins—the company wins. Bullshit, niggas just got jealous of one another and threw hate around in the lounge. I’m following up on a system your husband ordered. Silence. He let the lie linger. Yeah, we spoke last week…Are we still on schedule for Friday? I could call back, but my manager is here. He looked over at Sylvester, who mouthed Don’t let them hang up. Dub added, He said we could upgrade you to the premium for no charge. It covers everything.
The line was silent. He thought of the news paranoia—opposite of the dream. They’d foreclosed on his mom’s house. He later learned how common it was. He taught himself about predatory loans. They were the dream. Then the nightmare. After his family was moved out, some local artist painted a mural of Jurassic Park dinosaurs on it. Little kids still played make-believe games in front of it. No one tagged over it. It didn’t sell.
Dub heard motion in the background. Sylvester held up a sign that said TALK UPGRADE. We can upgrade you for no charge…Well, if he calls back, I don’t know if my manager will be here…Of course I understand, I just don’t want you to miss out. I’m trying to help you. That’s what they were taught. He softened his voice for help. You wanted the buyer to feel like a winner. Like they had a need. I use Safeworks at my home. He thought about how ridiculous he sounded, how much of a fucking liar he’d become. My mother lives not two blocks from you and she sleeps with a pipe by her bedside. I know how tough it can be. It was the truth but it felt heavy and awkward. I understand that your husband is usually home, but criminals aren’t stupid. They watch. He took a deep breath. They’re sick people. They know your space, the layout of your home, your schedules, maybe even what you do for work. He heard movement and thought she was hanging up. But the line didn’t go dead. Was she looking out the window? He felt sick. Was she clocking the parked cars? Sylvester held his thumbs up and Dub had no choice. I understand that, Mara, but I want you to think. He paused for a second to think himself about how fears creep in from nowhere but then make themselves at home. Do you really feel safe?
DESPITE THE SALE, he was fired two weeks later. He couldn’t bring himself to ask his boys for money. Instead, he asked Rolls if they needed any help in the shop, but Rolls’ father said they couldn’t afford it.
There was a silence.
“You good?” Rolls asked.
Dub said he was straight.
To make matters worse, the price on the Parkside house dropped. Dub desperately kept up appearances with Mone.
She called him after she scored in the ninetieth percentile on her dental-school admissions test. At first, he didn’t know if it was to gloat, but she wasn’t the type. He finally breathed a little easier now that the freeze was over. They were having a real conversation for the first time in months. He talked about the improvements he would make on the house. She even agreed to come over for a celebration dinner. With the last of his money, he ordered their favorites from East Garden—General Tso’s for him and beef and broccoli for her, pork egg rolls for both. He worried that the lights would be turned off in the middle of the meal.
She watched him struggle to eat. There was nothing in the fridge, not even juice, and there was always juice. She didn’t know where they were headed, but she knew never to pry. He was the type who would yell and walk out the door. It was hard for her to keep a smile on her face. She felt fake. There was only one light on in the whole apartment. They were looking at shadows of one another.
Mone scheduled interviews at Howard and Mercy Detroit. She scheduled them for weekends so she wouldn’t miss work. During the process, she lived off fast food and hardly saw L at all, but she imagined him wasting away and knew her leaving might leave him assed out. She got accepted to the Mercy program the same week Cameron finally called and gave her the date of the exhibition. L deserved to know. She called, but all she could bring herself to do was invite him to the exhibition.
DUB FELT LIKE a clown, showing up to a red-carpet event unemployed, but he couldn’t tell her as much. He had felt the distance closing and thought of this as a chance to push it all back to good. She wanted him on her arm and that was the most important thing. She wasn’t embarrassed by him, above him, leaving him in the past. They’d put too many years into this thing of theirs. She must’ve come to the same conclusion. He started thinking about this night as their unveiling rather than as an exhibit where Simone was one of many models. Somehow all those eyes would force them closer. What if the artist had made her look bad? He thought of having to comfort her. He imagined a skinny man in black with trendy glasses. He could have that type of man shitting himself. He also knew Mone would never forgive him if he started something. She’d told him long ago that testosterone only gets a man so far. But he’d never believed her. It’s about money when you don’t have it. It’s a man’s world.
Then, a few days before the exhibition, Dub came home to a thick orange envelope from the city. He didn’t realize he was a whole two months late. He tried his kitchen sink anyway. No water came from the tap. He sat on the outside steps for a long while. He sat until his legs started to fall asleep before he decided to ask his younger brother for help. He called Nick, lied on the phone and said he wanted to check on them. Maye, Nick’s wife, was pregnant. His bro told him not to come, but Dub said he’d already gotten the day off. It took him a while to find the right bus to Lincoln.
When Dub got there, Nick pushed open the door and turned back toward the kitchen. As Dub closed the door, he noticed it had no peephole.
The house smelled like lime and garlic. The rooms were clean—plastic-covered couch, religious shrines, scented candles.
“L,” Maye said. She cut a slice of lime and held it out to him like it was normal to suck on limes. Even pregnant, Maye had a quick smile. It made you look away from her warped-barrel stomach. She wasn’t glowing like women always said. She looked sluggish and weighed down, but still she smiled.
Dub took the lime and thanked her, all the while watching his brother move around the kitchen somewhat frantically. Nick slapped Maye’s ass and kissed her on the cheek even though the force could’ve tipped her uneven frame. She smiled and went back to the stove. Dub chewed the lime slow.
“Baby, you seen my thick socks?” Nick asked, taking up the whole doorway in his pants and undershirt.
“You earn any mall-cop stripes?” Dub put his peel down.
Nick stared at his older brother. “Private security, bro,” he said.
Maye’s eyes bounced between them and she turned off the burner below the rice. It went out like a gasp.
“Tough guy, now, huh?” Dub said. It’d been more than a year since the wedding. Dub hadn’t seen him all that often since then. His brother did seem more settled into his body.
“Laz, you look like you could eat. Would you like something?” Maye said.
Dub registered again how hungry he was and how good the food smelled.
Maye started putting some rice on a plate. “I don’t cook the chicken until Nick get
s home, but I could heat you up some leftovers.”
“You’re not going to eat before work?” Dub asked.
“I’m late.”
“I came all the way out here—”
“I told you today wasn’t good.” Nick picked his black button-up shirt off the back of a kitchen chair.
“I need to talk to you,” Dub said.
“Then come back this weekend.”
“I need—”
“First day on the new contract, bro.”
Maye was still near the fridge, but she was silent. The hum of the fridge became noticeable for a second. It was one of the stainless-steel types, military-looking.
“Nick,” Dub said.
His brother turned, still in his undershirt. Maye was staring and Dub hated that it had to go down like this. He wasn’t lazy. It shouldn’t have to be this way. He remembered his coaches telling him to work smart, or work hard. Maybe he’d done neither.
Maye had her hand on the fridge and he couldn’t help but think of what she might pull out to go with the rice—pork, maybe even steak caballo. Nick’s girl could cook. Who knew how much food was in that mammoth fridge. Nick could eat. He and Maye were both homebodies. They were well suited that way. That’s what it was all about, Dub thought—being well suited. So many weren’t. Maye had blue nails and perfect cone fingers. They looked small wrapped around the handle of the fridge. There was probably fruit and ice cream and whole uncooked chickens and juice and milk and ribs—
“What?” his brother said.
Dub turned away from the fridge. His brother had become a man, and this was his space.
“Don’t waste my time, bro.” Nick pulled his shirt on.
Maye ran water in the sink. The sound drowned the room. There was a window above the sink like in sitcom kitchens.
Dub started to hate their home. It was fake. At least he and Mone still went out, remained alive and not cooped up like an old white couple. Then he thought that maybe Mone just didn’t think he was the right man to be cooped up with. She had loved the shitty little house. It wasn’t shitty. He’d imagined sitting at the table with her and staring off out the sliding glass doors at the backyard.
“We gotta talk,” Dub said.
“I gotta work,” Nick said.
Maye pulled open the tank fridge and took out something wrapped in tinfoil. Dub thought back to when Nick would bring his friends to the party and jock him for introductions to older women or for weed or to buy him LQ. Dub couldn’t believe he was being treated like a fucking bum. Maye put a bag of marinating chicken back in the fridge. Outside, the spring light dropped and outlined all the trees in soft dusk light.
“I need money,” Dub said, still looking outside. He waited awhile before he turned to see his brother grinning.
ON THE AFTERNOON of the event, Simone showed up at L’s to find him in a suit and tie already. Her stomach was knotted from putting her mom to bed after an MS flare-up, but the sight of L in a pastel purple tie and a black suit made her laugh. It would have worked if L was a sports anchor on ESPN.
“They’re not those type of people,” she said.
Dub wanted to get mad—he couldn’t stand feeling dumb—but he took a few breaths through his nose. “So what type of people are they, then?” he said.
“First off, your coat is going to get wrinkled in the car,” she said and slid him out of it, enjoying the width of his shoulders still, after all these years. “You should know that.”
He wanted to tell her that this was the same suit he’d worn to his brother’s wedding, but he didn’t. He remembered the look on Nick’s face when he wrote out the check a few days earlier. He wanted to tell her about that too, and for her to tell him that it was okay to ask for help. They hadn’t been open like that lately.
She dug in his closet to find the only pair of formfitting pants he owned, which happened to be black jeans. “Here,” she said, handing him the pants. “They’re these type of people.”
He held them up, wondering if they’d even fit. She undid his belt slow, then pushed her hand down over his dick. He caught a whiff of her perfume and jumped to attention. Sometimes he hated how she had that over him. Sometimes she would just exit the room and leave him that way.
She felt anxious and on top of the world all at once and she loosed it on him. When they were done, she helped him dress and rested her head on his shoulder, and they looked at themselves, their reflections not as old as they imagined.
THE GALLERY WAS all glass and angles, concrete floors and blank walls. The space was much larger than necessary for the dozen or so paintings, but it was twisting and there were rooms to slip in and out of. Simone dragged L this way and that. People approached her to shake hands and congratulate her as if she’d painted the portraits herself. The servers wore white shirts and dark ties. The wine tasted average. The fancy women guests wore collared shirts, hair pulled back. L smoothed out his untucked gray shirt beneath the jacket. His shoes felt tight in the toes. Mone pointed out Cameron. Dub thought Cameron was posing, all the people revolving around him. Dub wanted to chop it up with him.
Simone walked slow past the paintings, giving equal time to each, pretending she wasn’t looking for herself. A few white people came up to her to say What an honor and How fun. Another tried to ask questions like a reporter—maybe she was about subverting expectations and breaking the mold. Out of the corner of her eye, Simone watched Cameron kissing some well-dressed people on the cheeks. She assumed they must be other artists or critics. L stood in front of one painting—a black woman decapitating a manly white woman—his hands stuffed into narrow pockets, letting the party swirl around him like fog. She wondered if they saw the portraits the same.
She came up behind him and whispered in his ear, “What do you see?”
He had been staring at the woman’s hands—strong-looking hands. He tried to take the whole painting in, think of something smart to say. “What kind of fucking question is that?”
He let his hand drop to her ass and she smacked it away.
“Watch yourself,” she said.
“Don’t pretend you don’t like it.”
She stepped back and cut her eyes at him. The suit jacket from the wedding was a little too dressy for the jeans. “I know what you’re trying to do.” She focused back on the painting.
“Who are you trying to be?” The words were out before he could stop them, then Mone was gone. Some people approached her and she smiled like the sun was sitting in her lap, like he didn’t matter.
CAMERON FOUND MONE studying a portrait of one of the models that he had painted from behind. The event was still buzzing, journalists and critics glad-handing.
“This isn’t you,” he said.
She wanted to suck her teeth at him for thinking as much. She knew it wasn’t her, but she was daydreaming about where the paintings would wind up. A bald white man had said it would sell for a third of a million, almost enough to buy her dream house twice over. She wondered if they’d all sell for that much.
She watched L trying to button his jacket up as he approached them.
“Have you seen yours?” Cameron asked.
L froze on the edge of the conversation. Mone glanced at him. He waited to be introduced.
Mone tried to stay relaxed. Her body tensed up and she didn’t know who she wanted to do right by. She calmed herself by cataloging their humanness. Cameron was short. Dub was reckless.
“You’re mysterious,” Cameron said.
She’d heard that a lot. Too many people took her silence and patience for mystery.
L brought his eyes this way and that, then stepped in front of his girl and stuck a hand forward. “I’m Lazarus, her fiancé,” he said.
Simone coughed a little.
Cameron took Dub’s hand slowly. “Biblical,” he said.
Dub threw an arm around Mone in an awkward gesture. “It’s not all that. She calls me L,” he said, and tried to smile.
“That’s nice,” C
ameron said.
“We’re going to my portrait,” she said.
“Oh, it’s yours to keep?” Dub said. He looked directly at Cameron, who was silent. He waited for Cameron to fidget. He didn’t.
A few people spotted Cameron and came to kiss the ring, sensed something, and waved instead.
After taking them down another corridor, Cameron turned to Simone. “Here.”
The painting was in its own alcove. Almost three feet by two feet. The likeness was impressive. Dub focused on the lips and eyes. Cameron got them right. Mone’s skin was church-smooth, like Sundays before service. Her head was slightly cocked, chin held to the side. The eyes got to you. He wondered how long it had taken Cameron to make the skin shine like that on canvas.
He looked over at Cameron, who was locked onto Mone.
“What do you think?” Cameron asked.
Her gaze didn’t leave the canvas. She wanted to touch it, to feel the texture. “Do I really look like this?” She bet it would be coarse, wanted to run the tips of her fingers along the edges of her face, leave some of her DNA on it for real, even a fingerprint on the frame, before it was whisked away. She finally met Cameron’s eyes. He smiled warmly. There were no angles in his look.