People always commented on how they made a handsome couple, but he doubted that he was holding up his side of the equation. He still wore the clothes he’d worn to Andrew’s cookout earlier that afternoon. He needed to shave. And the last time he’d glanced in the mirror, the bags under his eyes had gained weight.
June sat on the arm of the couch. She smelled of soap and apple-scented lotion. Being near her heightened his awareness of how disheveled he looked and felt.
She touched his shoulder. “You coming to bed?”
“I’m watching TV.”
“That’s what you said last night. And the night before.”
“That’s ’cause I like watching TV.”
She watched him closely, her face lined with concern.
She wanted to know what was going on; the question was in her steady gaze. But he kept his mouth shut. He could deal with this problem on his own.
“Okay, Ray.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Have a good night, baby.”
She got up to leave. He stopped her with a touch on her arm.
“Wait,” he said. “Will you sit with me for a minute?”
He was surprised at the words that came out of his mouth. But right then, he simply didn’t want to be alone.
She settled next to him on the sofa. She kept quiet, watching the screen like she gave a damn about the latest baseball news and NASCAR races and PGA tournaments.
Lord, this woman knew him so well. She was waiting him out. She knew that when he was ready to talk about something that bothered him, he’d initiate the conversation.
But he was prepared to discuss only part of what disturbed him.
“I snapped on Andrew today,” he said. “I was out of line. I haven’t been calling him like I should, either.”
Her eyes were kind. “You’ve been stressed with work lately. Putting in long hours.”
“That’s no excuse. We’ve only started getting to really know each other.”
“And you’ve been doing great, Ray. I’m proud of you. You’ve turned things around with Andrew.”
“But I’ve got a long way to go.”
“You’re making progress. You’re bound to hit a few bumps in the road, honey. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
She was right, of course, but that didn’t make him feel any better.
Three months ago, after a life-changing experience, he’d vowed that he was going to finally set things right with his son. Be the father that he was supposed to be and stop making excuses. He had been progressing in small, steady steps, closing the gap that years of neglect had created between them.
Then the accident had happened, and his life had been turned upside down—like his truck on that fateful night.
“I want to do everything right with him,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of ground to cover with Andrew, a lot of making up for lost time. I can’t avoid calling him, can’t snap on him like I did today. Shit like that moves me two steps backward.”
She massaged his arm. “What do you think you should do?”
“I promised him we’d go to the driving range this week. I need to call him to schedule a time, keep my word.”
“I’m sure he’d appreciate that, Ray.”
He turned to the TV, signaling that the discussion was over. But June stayed beside him.
He couldn’t fool her. Not after twelve years of marriage. She probably suspected that something else troubled him.
He was tired of keeping it bottled in. He had to admit the truth: he didn’t have a solution to his problem. Denying himself sleep was only a Band-Aid fix for a deeper issue.
He needed help. He just didn’t know what kind of help.
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” he said finally. “Been having crazy dreams.”
“Nightmares,” she said. “I know.”
“You do?”
“We do sleep in the same bed,” she said. “I’ve seen you tossing and turning, and you normally sleep like a log. I’ve heard the shouting, too.”
“Shouting?” He had no idea he was shouting, for Christ’s sake.
“Yes. Shouting. It happened a couple of nights ago. I don’t remember what you said. I was half asleep myself.”
“Shit.” Shame flushed his face.
“What’re the nightmares about?” she asked.
“I never remember,” he said, quickly; not too quickly, he hoped, to disguise that he was lying. He wasn’t prepared to share the details of his dreams with anyone, not even her.
“Not a thing?” she said.
“I only remember that they’re scary as hell, whatever they’re about. Wake up shaking.”
She grasped his hand. “I want you to see your doctor.”
“C’mon, you know how much I hate going to that guy.”
“I want you to get a physical, and ask for some sleeping pills. Will you please do that?”
He was too tired to resist her. Anyway, when it came to matters of health, she didn’t play. She’d bug him until he broke down and did what she asked.
“I’ll call and make an appointment,” he said. He didn’t tell her when he would call. He would delay the visit as long as possible.
She smiled, as if she were aware again of his thoughts. “No, you’ll get too busy and put it off. I’ll call tomorrow and schedule the appointment. We’ll try to get you in early this week.”
He had to laugh. “You know me too damned well.”
“I also know what might help you get a sound sleep,” she said in a low voice. She slid her leg across his lap. Her thighs were smooth and toned, the result of the aerobics and Pilates she did five times a week. He stroked her leg. In spite of his fatigue, he felt the stirrings of desire.
She rose, and offered her hand. “Come to bed with me, baby.”
Hell, a romp in the sack would beat SportsCenter.
“You ain’t gotta ask me twice,” he said, and took her hand.
Raymond awoke sometime later that night. Screaming.
“Ray, are you okay?” June clutched his arm, as if he might be carried away by the darkness in the bedroom.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. His scream echoed in his ears. Cold sweat saturated his body.
The nightmarish visions faded out of his thoughts, and his awareness of his surroundings returned. Above him, the ceiling fan spun. Moonlight pierced the windows, blended into the shadows in the room.
He gritted his teeth. He had a fierce headache. The pain throbbed in the area of his bruise.
“Ray?” she said.
“I’m okay.” He patted her hand. “Gotta use the bathroom.”
His legs trembled. Standing up required a determined effort.
He shuffled to the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face, blotted his skin dry with a towel.
He gulped two extra-strength Tylenol. Pounding headaches invariably followed his nightmares.
He’d suffered stress-induced migraines before, usually related to matters at his job. But nothing like this.
Under the glare of the lights, he examined himself in the mirror.
It might have been his imagination, but the bruise on his head looked darker, more swollen. As if a third eye bulged underneath the skin.
“What in the hell is happening to me?” he whispered to his reflection.
A frightened man, with no answers, stared back at him.
Chapter 5
The next morning, Andrew arose at six and kicked off his workday routine.
He had been writing full-time for about nine months, after working for several years as a programmer at an insurance company, and the habit of following a routine trailed him from corporate America and into his career as a wordsmith. Some of his friends, also full-time writers, rolled out of bed whenever they felt like it, did their writing at odd times of day or night, spent months doing nothing more taxing than watching television and reading, and buckled down to work only when deadlines pressed.
But Andrew was a machine, with a meticulous routine that he
obeyed like a computer following a program.
From Monday through Friday—excluding holidays like yesterday—he awoke at six and exercised in his fitness room in the basement for one hour and fifty-five minutes. He put himself through a vigorous workout of cardiovascular training and weightlifting. A wall clock kept him on schedule; dance music on the stereo kept him pumped.
Afterward, he showered. He had a routine for showering, too: he soaped himself from head to toe and rinsed off seven times. It took twelve minutes. Slathering lotion on his body and applying antiperspirant—four minutes. Shaving—five minutes. Brushing his teeth— three minutes. Brushing his close-cropped hair took another three minutes.
Dressing was quick: jeans, a casual shirt, Nikes.
Downstairs in the breakfast nook, he read the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in his customary order: Sports section, Business, Living, and Metro, saving the front news segment for last. While reading the paper, he ate a breakfast of bran cereal and fruit and sipped a cup of coffee.
His friends loved to tease him about his obsessive-compulsive nature. But the mocking didn’t bother him, because they were right. He cherished neatness, stability, schedules, to-do lists. Those things were his means, he supposed, of imposing a sense of order on the chaos that life could so easily become. He couldn’t imagine being any other way.
He finished the paper, washed the dishes and put them away, and entered his office at precisely nine o’clock.
Ordinarily, he stayed in his office and wrote for three hours, took a lunch break, then worked for another three hours. On Tuesday mornings, however, he took his laptop to a local Starbucks and worked there for the first half of the day. He slid his computer into the leather carrying case and headed to the garage. He pressed the button to open the sectional door.
It was time to wash his car again. He drove a late model Mercedes-Benz convertible, with a silver body and a black top. He’d bought it as a gift to himself when he landed the movie deal. He liked to wash it once a week, a practice he’d started with his first car, a ’74 Toyota that he’d bought for three hundred dollars during his junior year in high school—and which had been a piece of junk even back then.
The door finished opening, admitting a flood of sunshine.
A large cat waited outside.
He paused.
Resting on its hindquarters, the feline sat on a curve of grass that bordered the driveway. It faced him, quiet and motionless, like a stone lion guarding a house.
He had the odd idea that the cat had been sitting there for hours, waiting patiently for him to appear.
He approached within a few feet of the animal.
The cat observed him with a detached, almost clinical interest. Its eyes were an intense green; its shiny coat was bluish-gray.
The cat triggered a vague sense of recognition, but he couldn’t nail down why.
The feline did not wear a collar. If the cat was someone’s pet, there was no way to know for sure.
“What do you want?” He spread his empty hands. “No food for you, kitty.”
The cat cocked its head. It was so strangely calm that if he’d offered it a saucer of milk, he wasn’t sure it would be the least bit interested.
“Go on, get out of there. Shoo!”
The cat remained still.
He heard a rustling, on his right.
Another cat, a twin of the first one, stalked near the shrubbery on the fringes of his lawn.
What the hell?
A crumbling noise, on his left.
Yet another feline, identical to the first two, stepped through the bed of wood chips at the front of the house.
All of the cats, maintaining a code of silence, watched him closely. Weird.
“They’re just alley cats,” he said to himself. Then, louder: “You guys better hope I don’t buy a pit bull on the way home.”
When he backed the car out of the garage, the cats had vanished.
The Starbucks on Cascade Road was smack-dab in the middle of a thriving section of southwest Atlanta. Stores, banks, restaurants, a library, mega-churches, and pricey subdivisions lined the busy thoroughfare. Populated largely by blacks, the area could have served as a snapshot of the “Black Mecca” that metro Atlanta was billed to be; the morning traffic teemed with BMWs, Lexuses, Cadillacs, luxury SUVs—and hoopties driven by broke college students climbing their way up the ladder of the American dream.
The Starbucks was one of Andrew’s favorite writing spots. Located within fifteen minutes of his house, it was a café where you were as likely to run into a corporate executive in a Brooks Brothers suit as a dreadlocked poet scribbling verse on a notepad. It was a people watcher’s dream land, and more than once, Andrew had created a fictional character to resemble a person whom he had seen passing through the shop’s doors.
He ordered a café mocha, and set up his laptop at a corner table. The spot provided a modicum of privacy and allowed him to keep an eye on the customers streaming in and out.
Although he often listened to music on his iPod while writing, he never brought music there. The chatter, whirring machines, and general hustle and bustle, far from distracting him, provided a soundtrack, like white noise, that allowed him to become immersed in his work.
His cell phone rang. He recognized Eric’s home number on the Caller ID display.
“What’s up, bro?” Eric said. “Wait, lemme guess: you’re at Starbucks, sitting in the corner with your laptop.”
Andrew laughed.
“Knew I was right,” Eric said. “You’re as predictable as Democrats raising taxes.”
“Watch it, I’m a Democrat.”
“So am I. That doesn’t change the truth.”
“Why aren’t you at work? Do they pay you six figures to sit at home and bug your friends?”
“Took the day off. I got it like that. Wanna stop by later and play ball?”
A young black woman entered the coffee shop. About to answer Eric, Andrew found himself unable to speak. He did something he hardly ever did: he gaped at the woman.
She was absolutely gorgeous.
Wearing a yellow sundress and sandals, the woman strolled to the counter. The dress, swishing with her confident steps, outlined an exquisitely proportioned body. All of the men in the café, gawking at her, seemed to be holding their breaths, as if breathing too hard would blow her through the doors and out of their lives.
The woman wore a gentle smile, clearly accustomed to making men pause whenever she entered the vicinity.
“Still there, bro?” Eric said.
Andrew swallowed. “Man, you won’t believe this woman who walked in here.”
“Run it down for me.” Excitement crackled in Eric’s voice. He was deeply committed to his wife, Andrew knew, but he loved to savor the single life vicariously through Andrew. “What’s she look like?”
Andrew watched the woman place her order. She moved her weight from one foot to the other, and her shapely hips shifted, teasingly.
“Not a ten,” he said.
“What?”
“Off the damn charts.”
“Get out,” Eric said. Then quickly: “You for real?”
“Most def. You know I don’t say that too often.”
“Married?”
The woman adjusted the strap of her purse. He spotted her ring finger.
“No ring,” he said.
“All right. You know what that means, player.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You know what, fool! Time to spit some game.”
The woman received her drink, glided to the side counter. She added sugar and milk to her beverage, stirred it. She moved with fluid grace, like a dancer.
“I don’t know about that,” Andrew said. “I came here to write, not mack women.”
“Man, if you don’t talk to that girl, I’ma come through this phone and drag you to her myself.”
The woman threaded between tables, found a vacant one in the corner opposi
te Andrew. Judging from the elegant way she carried herself, she might have been sitting down for a dinner at Spago’s.
“What about Carmen?” Andrew said.
“What about her? You were the one who said Carmen might not be the one. You’re only friends. Remember?”
“Yeah, but—”
“But what?”
The woman daintily sipped her coffee. She reached inside her purse and withdrew a paperback book.
Andrew could not believe his luck.
“Gotta go,” he said. “I’m gonna talk to her. Later.”
While Eric shouted player strategies at him, Andrew clicked off the phone.
Sweat oiled his palms. He rubbed them dry on the lap of his jeans. Although every man in the café continued to admire the woman, none of them approached her. He understood why. She was so beautiful that the idea of stepping to her was intimidating. It was easy to imagine that she heard and rejected dozens of proposals every day. Few men possessed the nerve to possibly add their names to the Shot Down list.
He rarely initiated conversation with women he saw in public places. He’d been introduced to most of his past girlfriends by mutual friends, or had met them at work, church, or house parties. He en-vied men who could suavely approach any women who caught their eye. He just didn’t have the nerve to hang himself on the line like that.
But this time, he had an edge: a legitimate reason to talk to her.
He drew in a deep breath. He sucked on a Certs for a minute.
Then he rose, and walked in her direction.
A few feet away from her, Andrew paused.
This close, she was even more breathtaking. Dark hair flowed to her slim shoulders in luxuriant waves. Her smooth, reddish-brown skin shone with a healthy glow.
Reading, she didn’t sense his approach.
“Excuse me, miss?”
She looked up. She had large, striking hazel eyes. Sculpted cheek-bones. Full lips.
He guessed that she was biracial. Probably had African American and Caucasian blended in her genes. He wasn’t one of those brothers who dated only light-skinned women. He’d dated sisters from all ranges of the color spectrum. To him, beauty was beauty.
Within the Shadows Page 5