“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Don’t be so bold,” she said, and he laughed.
Aris was a sales rep for a major appliance manufacturer out of “Saint Joe’s.” Aris was in D.C., his first time, for the Home Improvement Expo at the new convention center. Aris had wrestled at Michigan State, but “that was twenty pounds ago.” Aris had hoped to check out some of the museums and the monuments while he was in town, but he would have to do it on another visit, as he was leaving in the morning. Aris was thirty-four years old.
Rachel nodded, her eyes on his, seemingly attentive but barely seeing him or registering his words. She was thinking of Eddie, her offender who cut hair and was about to get off paper. She was sorry she had not had time for him today and was looking forward to seeing him in the morning. Eddie was a good one, a genuine success.
“I guess I picked Michigan State ’cause they were the Spartans,” said Aris. “You know, with my mom and all. Plus the in-state tuition. You can’t beat the price, you know what I mean?”
Rachel crossed one leg over the other, deliberately flexing her thigh, making sure he saw the cut. She leaned forward a little to give Aris a look at her lacy bra, her breasts loose inside it, the aureole of one brown nipple edging above the lace. It was humid in the bar, and the warmth was around her and on her chest.
“You okay?” said Aris, his eyes bright.
“A little hot, is all. You?”
“Yes.”
They ordered two more drinks. Aris signaled the bartender for the check as Rachel lit another cigarette. The room doubled for a moment as she looked around it, trails coming off the men and women at the bar. Not surprising, with the red wine and now the scotch.
“Don’t mix the grain and the grape, little girl.”
“Who has time, Popi? You know I work too hard.”
“You play too hard too. I see it on your face.”
Aris wrote his room number on the check. She noticed the sun line on his ring finger as he scratched out his signature. At his age, he probably had a child as well. She guessed he had been married for seven years or so. “Seven Year Ache.” She loved that song.
“Something funny?” said Aris.
“Was I smiling? I guess I’m happy, is what it is.”
“So,” said Aris, “you gonna make me beg you for your name?”
“Rachel Lopez,” she said. “I’m a mutt, just like you.”
“Rachel, like in the Old Testament.”
“My mother was Jewish.”
“But Lopez isn’t Jewish. Your father was what?”
“Latino, born in west Texas.”
“Your folks still around?”
“Deceased.”
“Sorry.”
Both had passed within months of each other. If there was a blessing, it was that her father had gone first. He could not have handled seeing her mother, a husk of bones and loose gray flesh, in her last days.
“So you’re half Jewish and half Spanish,” said Aris.
“Latina.”
Aris smiled rakishly. “Which half is Latina?”
Rachel dragged on her cigarette. “You stop acting so fresh, you’ll find out.”
“Okay,” said Aris, squaring his shoulders, cocky, knowing he was in. “But listen, I need to use the head.”
“Pass the front desk and go down the stairs.”
“Don’t go anywhere,” said Aris, pointing at her before getting off his stool.
Don’t tell me what to do. I’m in charge, not you.
Rachel killed her drink and crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray. She walked through the bar and out into the circular lobby, nodding and smiling at the two Middle Easterners behind the reception desk, and went down a stairway to the carpeted lower level. It was empty of people and, as in all the times she’d been here, virtually soundless. She passed by the women’s bathroom, pushed on the door of the men’s bathroom, and stepped inside.
Aris was facing the urinal, shaking himself off. He glanced over his shoulder as he heard her heels slapping on the tiled floor. His face pinkened with embarrassment. Also, he looked scared.
“What, you lost?”
“Ladies’ bathroom’s too crowded,” she said, walking quickly toward him.
“No it isn’t.” He chuckled nervously. “It’s quiet as a church down here.”
Rachel came to him and pressed her breasts against his back and kissed him behind his ear. She reached around him, pushed his arm away, and wrapped her hand around his meat. It was warm and thick and already hard. She ran her thumb and forefinger down his shaft like she was squeezing toothpaste from a tube, and it grew harder still.
“Holy . . . shit.”
“Shut up,” she said very softly.
She stroked him and talked to him. His breath got short. Her touch was expert, and he came with a shudder and voluminously against the porcelain.
“Now you’re ready,” she said.
Docile and relaxed.
Up in his room, he offered her a drink from the minibar. She refused. She found the local country station on the clock radio while Aris took off his shoes as she had instructed him to do. The station was playing George Strait. She went to Aris, standing motionless as a statue in his socks, still off-balance from her bold act in the restroom, and further undressed him. She took off his button-down and pulled his T-shirt over his head as a mother would her little boy’s, then unzipped his pants and eased him back onto the edge of the bed so that she could pull the pants free. He was there on his elbows, watching her as she unhooked her skirt and unbuttoned her blouse and let both drop to the floor. She came to him in her bra and thong, and she pulled his boxers off and leaned in and kissed him deep.
As her tongue slid over his, she took his hand and guided it inside the cup of her bra. He found her nipple, and as it began to swell she put her hand over his fingers and squeezed.
“Like that, Aris,” she said.
He moved back to the pillows, in a heap at the headboard, and she followed him on all fours. She let him remove her panties and she let him stroke her. He tried to turn her over, but she would not allow it. She took his bull cock and rubbed its helmet on her thighs and clit and then between her breasts and full on her breasts until she was wet. She straddled him, impaled herself upon him, and fucked him, her hips jacked and moving fluidly. She listened to the music from the radio, thinking of the raw sensation, remembering her father and how he sang Tejano and Texas country in their house when she was a child, and her mother in her blue print dress and how she hummed along. The blood welled up inside her and rushed forward. It felt like childhood, uncluttered, when they were all under one roof, alive. She could bring them back like this, only like this, when she was in control.
Rachel’s body stiffened; she came furiously, saliva dripping from her open mouth.
She washed herself in the bathroom. When she returned, the man from Saint Joseph, Michigan, was asleep on his stomach and snoring into the sheets. Rachel got dressed.
FOURTEEN
YOU WANT ANOTHER?” said Joe Carver, reaching for the small red cooler at his feet.
“Sure,” said Lorenzo Brown. “Long as you’re buyin’.”
Joe withdrew two Miller Genuines from the cooler and handed one to Lorenzo. Lorenzo ran his hand over the bottle to remove the water and bits of ice. He and Joe hand-turned the caps, tapped bottles, and drank. Both had worked full days in the summer heat. The beer was cold and went down straight.
The porch was unlit and absent of moonlight beneath the cover of its roof. Joe and Lorenzo sat on cushioned chairs that faced the street, Joe’s feet up on the rail. Jasmine lay on her belly, also watching the street, blinking her eyes slowly, her snout hanging over the porch’s first step.
Joe liked to sit out here most nights, from spring well into the autumn. He had fallen before Lorenzo and done longer time. Ten years in Kentucky after his third conviction, a federal rap. He had refused to testify against Nigel or anyone else, and su
spected that because he’d stood tall, he had been penalized with a harsher sentence. It was a story as old as history: The soldiers fell on their swords and the kings survived.
In prison, Joe hadn’t boasted on plans or unattainable goals like some of the talkers he knew. He had dreamed of getting a job, breathing fresh air, and, when the workday was done, finding a comfortable place to sit where there were no walls. Now he was doing just that.
“So you gonna date this woman?” said Joe. He meant Rayne. Lorenzo had described her and their encounter.
“I don’t know about date,” said Lorenzo. “I plan to do something with her and her little girl, like a daytime thing. See how we all get along.”
“She know about you?”
“Yeah. She fine with it. Least she claims to be.”
“Be careful.”
“She don’t look all that dangerous to me.”
“I’m sayin’, you got your own little girl to think of.”
“Shay doin’ fine,” said Lorenzo. “I saw her this evening. Her mama wouldn’t let me talk to her or nothin’ like that, but she looked great. Happy. Looks like Sherelle got herself a good man this time.”
“You met him?”
“In a way. He seems all right.”
“My boy’s got a man looking after him too. He stay in the same place with my boy’s mama. He ain’t the father, but . . . long as they loved, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You and me, we fucked up. But that don’t mean our kids got to be fucked up because of it.”
“For real.”
Joe looked out at the night, picturing his son. “Whole lot of ways to make a family.”
They drank some more and listened to the crickets, the dogs barking in the alleys, and the swish of tires on asphalt from down on Georgia Avenue. The sounds were familiar and comforting. Jasmine sighed and closed her eyes.
“Your truck running all right?” said Lorenzo, looking at it, a ’95 Ford, the pre-jelly bean body style, parked under a street lamp.
“Long as I change the oil regular,” said Joe. “What about your runner?”
“Fine, thanks to you.”
“You miss them pretty whips we used to drive?”
“Not really.”
“Neither do I. They weren’t ours no way.”
That’s right, thought Lorenzo. None of it was real.
Joe’s chair creaked under his weight. He was a big man who’d gained forty pounds since his release. His slowing metabolism, his aunt’s cooking, and his nightly intake of beer had gotten the better of him, despite his hard daily labor as a bricklayer.
“I was thinkin’ on us and those whips earlier tonight,” said Joe.
“Why’s that?”
“I saw some boys out here earlier, jawin’ in the street. Couple of ’em was Nigel’s. I seen their car before, a black Escalade with spinners, over there on Sixth, where Nigel like to rally the troops.”
“I know who those two are,” said Lorenzo.
“Yeah?”
“I saw Nigel and them earlier, up near his office on Georgia. I stopped to visit.”
“How Nigel look?”
“Fit,” said Lorenzo. “What happened with his boys?”
“They was just talkin’ mad shit with these other two boys who had blocked the street. All of ’em got out the cars and showed their teeth. Then Nigel’s got back in their Escalade and the others got back in their BMW and all of ’em went on their way.”
“Other car was a BMW?”
“Three-Series. Silver or blue, hard to tell, way the headlights was on it.”
Lorenzo stroked the whiskers of his chin. “Describe the two came out the BMW.”
“I couldn’t make much out.”
“Don’t make no difference. I’m pretty sure it was Melvin Lee. Him and some hard kid named Rico.”
“How you know that?”
“I had a call today, some dogfights down around Fort Dupont. Lee was there, and we had some words. You remember Melvin, right?”
“I’m the one told you he came back uptown. People I know say he workin’ for Deacon again. Got a front job, up at the car wash on Georgia, ’cause he’s still on paper.”
“Right.”
“Melvin ain’t shit. Never was.”
“I know it.”
“Why you interested?”
“I’m not. Only . . .”
“What?”
“Melvin and his shadow were watching Nigel when me and Nigel was talkin’.”
“So he watchin’ Nigel and them. It’s his job to scout the other team. That ain’t got nothin’ to do with you.”
“You’re right.”
“Anyway,” said Joe, “it just reminded me, seein’ them out there, how it was for us.”
“Ain’t nothin’ changed.”
“Look around you. Why would it change?”
“But if these kids knew how it has to end . . . I mean, if you could only tell ’em.”
“But you can’t tell ’em shit. They ain’t gonna listen to no old heads, that’s for damn sure. Same way we didn’t listen. We knew it all.” Joe chuckled. “Now I got to pee in a bottle to remind myself of all the ways I failed.”
“You’re doin’ fine.”
“Tell it to my PO.”
“He on you?”
“Like a motherfucker,” said Joe. “Yours?”
“Mine’s on me too. She good, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” said Lorenzo. “She’s good.”
Lorenzo and Joe finished their beers.
“Well,” said Joe, getting up laboriously out of his seat, “let me get on inside. I got to be on that construction site at seven.”
“I’m on early shift myself.”
“It works if you work it.”
“No doubt.”
Lorenzo and Joe shook hands and patted each other’s backs. Joe went inside the house, moving quietly so as not to wake his aunt, as Lorenzo leashed Jasmine and walked her down the steps. The two of them headed for their apartment, a short way down the dark street.
MORTON STREET AT NIGHT, east of Georgia and back toward Park Morton, was alive with traffic. Touts, runners, fiends, drive-through customers with Virginia plates, and neighborhood residents walking to their row houses and apartments crowded the strip.
A couple of times every night, Fourth District cruisers would slowly make a pass down Morton and through the Section Eight apartment complex, their uniformed occupants shouting from the open windows of their Crown Vics, telling the dealers and users to move on. Less frequently, in the wake of a publicized fatality or a Washington Post investigative piece, a special unit would descend on the area and do jump-out busts. This would result in some arrests and a few convictions, but it did not in any way stop the flow of business. Drug sales of one kind or another had been ongoing in this area, and west into Columbia Heights, for over thirty years.
DeEric Green drove the Escalade down Morton, Michael Butler by his side. They had just picked up the count from a boy named Ricky Young. Young had handed the money, stashed in a T-MAC 3 Adidas shoe box, to Green, who had in turn handed it to Butler. The money, in various denominations, now sat in the shoe box on the carpeted floor of the backseat. Green had put a Rare Essence PA mix, recorded on May 15 at the Tradewinds, into the CD player and was rocking it loud.
“Busy,” said Butler.
“Summertime,” said Green.
On a hot corner up ahead, they could see some of their people, all in street clothes. On another corner stood Deacon’s, wearing long white T-shirts and loose-fitting jeans. A bandanna worn around the neck meant the seller had heroin. Around the leg, it meant coke. This type of coding, in variation, had become common in the East Coast urban trade. Deacon insisted his people use the bandanna system and made it mandatory that they wear the T-shirts. He liked the idea of them in uniform. Also, it differentiated them from the competition. Nigel let his soldiers wear whatever they pleased.
Butler hit a joint as they neared the end of Morton.
“Boy,” said Green, “you actin’ like you the only one in this car like to get high.”
“Here,” said Butler. He passed the weed, tamped into a White Owl wrapper, to Green.
The circle at the end of the block had been the gateway to the Park Morton complex until recently, when yellow concrete pillars had been erected, blocking the entrance to an asphalt road that ringed the apartments. The pillars kept dealers and killers from doing their dirt where mothers walked and children played, but they hampered the police from driving back there too. Now it was an avenue of escape for those who wanted to book out on foot. Nothing worked back here. No one was going to stop a thing.
Green swung the Cadillac around the circle and headed west, back toward Georgia.
“I got to pick up the count again, one more time, before the night’s out,” said Green. “You worked a full day. You want, I could take you home.”
Butler thought of what he would find at his apartment. If his mother wasn’t hitting it, she was looking to. Wasn’t unusual for him to come in and find her giving up her face to a strange man for the price of a high. She had no ass and few teeth, and her hair was never combed. If Butler stayed out late enough, she might be asleep. He wouldn’t have to look at her when he got home.
“I’ll hang with you,” said Butler, “if that’s all right.”
“Sure,” said Green, who was getting used to having the boy around. “This hydro’s got my hunger up, though.”
“Mine too.”
“Let’s get us somethin’,” said Green. He turned right on Georgia Avenue and headed north.
Rico Miller, idling in the convenience store lot on the corner, saw them through the windshield of his BMW. He had been cruising the neighborhood, hoping to spot Green and Butler, and had stopped here, at one of the city’s many fake 7-Elevens, to get a Sierra Mist. Miller put the car in drive.
Up at Kennedy Street, outside the Wings n Things, Green parked the Caddy near a row of brightly colored racing bikes, Ducatis and such, that always seemed to be out front in the warmer months. Butler listened to music while Green went inside and returned with a large bag. He wasn’t in there long; he had called in the order from his cell.
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