Atlanta Noir

by Tayari Jones

  “What time’s your flight?” she asks, turning her face away. She doesn’t want you to leave.

  You light the L in the ashtray, take a puff, and let out a cloud. “Not until nine.”

  “Let’s get breakfast.” She parts your lips with her tongue just in time to take in most of your second puff, and then lets it out of her nose. “Good boy,” she grins.

  “So I’m a dog now?”

  “No. But I keep you on a tight leash. I ain’t done with you yet.”

  You watch her feet pad prints on the finished wood as she wanders back into her bedroom. She has work in a few hours, the first of her four weekly shifts of fixing the skin of the rich and famous. She turns on the sixty-inch Vizio and your eye sockets burn in the face of a Geico commercial with an action star kicking and punching bad guys while on the phone with his mother.

  Glenn Burns, looking more like a game-show host than weatherman, says that the rain will continue all week. The water in her condo runs scalding. Hence the bathroom is flooded with more steam than that in Risky Business. You kiss hungrily in the shower, wet hands wandering toward all the parts you just finished playing with. But you won’t go all the way again because there isn’t time. You both need to take your place and lock into preestablished alibis.

  * * *

  Rain ends despite the forecast. The sun rises into partly cloudy skies. Now the two of you are sitting at the counter of the Waffle House in Paces Ferry. It’s just after three a.m. and the pecan waffle and side of hash browns with scattered onions, OJ, and coffee land in front of you. Her hand rests gently on your thigh. She takes a forkful of your hash browns and eases it into her mouth.

  “Grease always tastes so good.” She is gym-obsessed, worried about the fifteen she wants to lose. You tell her you’ll take the weight off the next time she comes to see you.

  You sip from her juice. It’s all yours now. She will give you whatever you want. No strings attached. And you know this. That’s why she’s worth it.

  You tell her about always stopping at the Waffle House in Durham, back when you used to rip-and-run 85 South for various parties, the days when you still needed heat on your hip, when you didn’t see what was coming way before it got there. You tell her that you used to think of her on those runs before you went inside, back when you were all babies, and loyalty and honor were more than buzz words memorized by the chain of fools you couldn’t cut loose from. As it turned out, the same link that brought the two of your together was the only thing keeping you apart.

  Her hair is the same color all these years later, that jet black with integrated extensions woven with the Sacagawea mane hiding underneath. You flashback to the weight of her thighs wrapped around you, and the scent that covers you like the clouds bordering the gates to Nirvana.

  You remind her of that tape she made you. It was all rappers from the NO. Early shit. P and C-Murder. Silk Tha Shocker. Big Tymers. Some voices you didn’t know with that gumbo-thick slur that was so different from Georgia. She said she had made it for you because she couldn’t officially get you anything for your birthday. So she waited two weeks and then gave you the tape in a case cover that was made out of “backshots” from XXL Magazine. She didn’t think you’d like her because she didn’t have a whole lot back there.

  But Cam always got real jealous when he saw the two of you alone. So she did the tape on the sneak, hoping you wouldn’t say anything. You tell her you kept your mouth shut because you felt guilty about having a crush on her. She smiles in a way that makes her blush. That was the secret you had kept from the world for what seemed like a century. You are both glad that it’s all out in the open now.

  The scar above her eye is gone. She says she used the aloe from a plant she bought, the only one in her house that didn’t die from her forgetting about it. You ask her if she feels safe now that the problem is handled. She says she always felt safe when it was just you and her.

  To her, you were the one who always kept Cam from popping off. You both knew he was prone to smashing shit, like a little kid throwing a tantrum. She says he punched her four times in ten years, always in the face so the world could see the swelling and the bruises and know who it came from.

  “He ain’t gonna do that no more,” you say. “He ain’t here no more.”

  She lets out a deep exhale, the kind that comes once you’ve finished an exam, and it is what it is. Her eyes cut away from you toward the cheap steaks frying on the griddle behind the counter. They smell like they need salt.

  “You didn’t just do it for me, did you?”

  You could tell her yes. But that wouldn’t be true. Cam had it coming. He sold you out over his bullshit elastic ego. But as you look into her chocolate eyes you see that all the plans and the plots, all the moves and covers you made in those years back then, were about getting ahold of something you didn’t have to steal, something you’d overlooked that might even have been yours to begin with.

  You are not a killer. But you have killed . . . more than once. You feel more guilty about those dudes from Club Garage who took the door to your crib in Midtown off the hinges. All they wanted was to get back what you and Cam took. But you were twenty-four and from Hope Homes. You weren’t going out like that.

  Those two big niggas went down whimpering like unfed puppies. Cam deserved something slower to remind him of all the years you lost. But when you saw him, broken and solo, without even kids to keep him warm, you realized that he had been dead for years. He just didn’t know it.

  She leans toward your ear and whispers it like a secret. “I love you,” she breathes.

  A knot that’s been inside your gut for twenty years begins to relax. Then the two of you sync into each other. Your hand rests perfectly on the curve of her hip as you sit side by side in the booth, watching the cars streak by on the stretch of 75 just beyond the Motel 6 and the BP station. She puts her head on your shoulder and for a while you forget about all those years you lost.

  Just then you are back at The Beautiful sneaking glances at legs that have miraculously remained the same, and chocolate eyes that instantly erase your misplaced loyalty and the foolish choices made in youth. You are not young anymore. But you are not too old either. There is time.

  Four in the Morning in the New Place

  by Jim Grimsley

  Little Five Points

  The girl who sold him five dollars’ worth of pot lived upstairs; she would sell him any amount, really, provided she was holding, but he thought of her as the five-dollar dealer because she was willing to give him just that little, wrapped in plastic and stuffed into a paper sack. Sometimes five bucks was all he could scrape together. She left the bag at her door for him to pick up since she was not at home, and he shoved the money into her mail slot, a wilted bill he had picked up while bussing tables a couple of blocks away at the Little Five Points Pub. She was a rock star in the Netherlands. Sort of a rock star, she said. She had a band named Pony Pony, all women, and they sang alternative rock songs while wearing bright makeup and shaking their hair and sometimes jumping up and down. One of their singles got airplay in Holland, though nobody called it Holland over there. The name of the single was “Purple Night,” and tomorrow she was traveling to the Netherlands with the band to play at a music festival. What a trip, she said, it was a trip to think about flying out of a country where nobody knew her, really, except in a few clubs around Atlanta, and then to land at an airport where the band would probably have fans, actual fans, to greet them, with signs that said, We Love Pony Pony, or maybe something more original than that. She hoped for something more original. But he got what she was saying, right?

  She was telling him all this after she got home from work at the feminist bookstore; she had come down the stairs to his apartment for a visit and was pacing back and forth in front of the sofa he had found on the curb just down the street. The sofa was covered in orange velvety something-or-other with a brown stain along the front, but it smelled all right and was otherwise in good
shape. She had brought a joint so he was relieved about that and happy to see her, because they were smoking her pot and not his tiny five-dollar stash. Which would have to last him till she came back from being a rock star in Holland, when he could buy more. She was walking up and down his living room and talking without stopping, Life is such a, a, wow, a thing, she said, with a gesture like she was trying to grab it, life, with both hands. So cool to think about the two of us in your ratty little apartment, you know what I mean, right? And one day I could be, like, this big rock star and you could be, like, this famous actor. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with your apartment but these are all ratty little rooms in this house.

  Here they were, talking like this and smoking, and over there in the Netherlands people were playing her record and listening to her sing that song about a night turned purple and hazy, and he wondered briefly why haze was always purple in songs but gray and dull in real life.

  He had lived in the house on Sinclair Avenue for only a couple of weeks and he knew that the rooms were not especially nice, but he hardly cared to have her say so. He had been buying pot from Molly for a lot longer than two weeks, and when she told him there was an apartment downstairs that he could rent if he wanted—they had become chums by then, not exactly friends—he talked to the landlady and moved in as soon as he could pack all three boxes of his belongings. Molly’s friend Winona, who also lived in the building, borrowed her boyfriend’s Toyota truck to help with the move, which took about ten minutes of loading and about the same of unloading, including the boxes and his clothes. He had been hoping Winona’s boyfriend would help them too, but he was at Georgia State modeling for an art class; Winona mentioned this at least three times, because she was proud to have a boyfriend who was so good-looking he could model for artists, though she didn’t say that part so bluntly, of course. She was something of a dumpling herself—short, her body shaped a bit like a yeast roll and basically the same color, unbaked, pale. She had cheeks so plump a person wanted to pinch them—John James wanted to pinch them, certainly, and it was all he could do to keep from doing so to both Molly and Winona, they had such similar chubby cheeks. But they were helping him move into the new apartment so he refrained.

  Later, they all smoked a joint out of Molly’s stash, though Winona puffed it in short bursts as if she were trying to blow smoke rings, and coughed in a prissy way, laying her palm flat across her bosom to indicate that drugs were a struggle for her.

  Now, after two weeks in the new place, with his boxes unpacked, he was watching Molly pace from one corner to the other, long strides ending with a little bounce. She was walking the length of the apartment, one corner to the other, including the room with no windows where he had put his bed. She had a round face, moonlike, and full lips with a natural pout, the kind of lips that appeared at their best when placed near a microphone; she had big, round eyes of a startling pale color, almost gray, and lashes that curved extravagantly upward, fine and dark. When you saw her you had to look twice, and it was easy to watch her in general. She was big-boned, tall, not fat but rather rounded and full. He found himself appraising her, considering what he might think if he saw her on an album or on the cover of a music magazine. She had brought her boom box and the room throbbed with her voice, the harsh guitar—“Purple haze in a purple night,” she sang, repeated for the chorus.

  He never thought of her as pretty, but if asked he would have said yes, she was, but not in any standard kind of way, with her moon face and pop eyes. He would have described her as if she were a doll with a bendable waist and long legs and a face that one wanted to watch; he would have spoken of her as though she were slightly disembodied. But he was not the kind of man who thought of kissing her or holding her.

  He was the kind of man who thought of kissing and holding Winona’s boyfriend, a wooly headed man with olive-colored skin of a rich, smooth texture, muscles stacked on him in tidy patterns head to toe. What drew John James to the boyfriend was the usual—the fact that the guy was self-involved and cocky, judging from his walk and general bearing, his way of shaking his long, dark curls. Such precise, clean, planned appearance, perfect and regular as a bouquet of narcissi. John James first saw the boyfriend months before he moved into the building, during one of the visits he paid to Molly to buy pot from her. He had walked through the front door, past the mailboxes, to the middle of the house where a staircase climbed upward. The boyfriend was there, knocking on the door of the apartment that would one day soon belong to John James, the boyfriend wearing navy-blue gym shorts, the rest of his body snaky with muscle and skin, glowing in the dim light. The door opened and he stepped inside quickly. For one second the boyfriend looked at John James, eyes that swallowed the house, and asked, Are you watching me? Are you pleased? A moment’s rush, and then John James climbed the stairs.

  But now he lived here. And in short: on Thursday, Molly packed her bags and the band’s sound gear and headed to the airport to fly to the Netherlands. She was having her moment. Wearing tight jeans and a fake fur jacket, leopard print. Smoking cigarette after cigarette, lips bright red, like a tiny pool of blood. John James helped carry her luggage and trunks to the battered Toyota, once yellow, now mostly rust. Away drove the future rock star.

  * * *

  John James walked the local streets in the afternoon, looking for furniture that people dragged to the sidewalk. A cool, cloudy morning, rain likely. No luck that day, but on Saturday he found a coffee table in decent shape, sitting next to the curb; this was in the morning, John James out looking for the early worm, and here it was. He pulled the coffee table into a nearby hedge of sweet abelia and hurried home.

  John James knocked on the door to the apartment upstairs and the boyfriend answered; yes, he would be glad to help get the coffee table with his truck, he said, his voice very deep, stiff at first, then more willing. He stood in the doorway with one hand on the lintel, his arm nice like that, showing off in a sleeveless shirt. Yes, he would be glad to help, and turned, heading back to a shadowy corner where he lifted a set of keys, Winona’s high voice saying, Where are you going?

  John wants me to help him move a table he found.

  Winona asked, When are you coming back?

  As soon as we move this table. He answered her questions in a flat tone, contrasted with the strained, bright sound of her voice. That okay?

  Sure. I’ll be here. Winona in a burst of light: she watched the boyfriend with an expression at first placid, then hollow, tugging down the tail of her shirt with one hand, a reflex gesture that she repeated a moment later. Slowly, with fingertips, she smoothed one dark strand of hair across her forehead, behind her ear. Pressing that palm over her bosom again, as if she were having trouble getting breath.

  So the boyfriend drove John James in the truck, the two of them shoulder to shoulder in the small cab, the boyfriend, whose name it turned out was Leonard, shifting gears with a bit of a grind. The truck was bouncy like a pony on the cracked and pitted streets. The day was too crisp for Leonard to be wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, but that was the point, wasn’t it? Leonard hefted the table out of the bushes and carried it to the truck without any help, holding it in front of him like a shield, both arms flexed, with momentary glances at John James, the two of them meeting eyes, brief moments when John was aware of his heart pumping, a feeling of falling in the belly. He had not been making this up in his head after all, maybe, perhaps. It was possible that something would happen this time. But he stopped the thought there and they climbed into the truck together.

  It was a cracking day in late autumn, leaves tumbling in a wind, high oaks and elms and poplars on all sides, the city as much a forest as anything else, greenery overwhelming every patch of untended space. Blackberry bramble covered the front yard of one of the abandoned houses on Seminole Avenue, beer cans partly buried in the fallen leaves under the thorny thicket. Wind ripped through the treetops. A drunk had fallen on his backside on the sidewalk at the back of Seven Stages—the man struggl
ing to his feet, breathing heavily, bag wrapped around a bottle cradled against his midsection, the way he would have held a child. A modest knot of teenagers in leather jackets and dog collars stood near him, shuffling their big black boots, watching as he stumbled and cursed.

  Never a word said by Leonard. He made a slight humming sound as he drove, a note of pleasure almost, so content was he to be himself. In the small space, one of his arms was constantly moving close to John James, who watched it, fascinated; why were some men’s arms so much more pleasing than others? The exact tone of olive or bronze, the perfect arrangement of silky black hair, the triceps and forearm dancing as he steered. This was Leonard the boyfriend, speaking. He was a performance.

  John James had a loud mattress, full of squeaks and groans, box springs gone aural, a noise that carried even through the old plaster walls of the house. He had a new coffee table and a thoroughly disciplined backside, all in one afternoon. Anybody in the house could hear it. Winona surely could hear it. She would know. But Leonard took his time and did a thorough job atop John James and afterward went nonchalantly home.

  What pleased him most, in the quiet of the apartment after Leonard the boyfriend had gone, was the fact that something had happened this time, that he—John James—had lived through an event, something that was outside his head, where most of his romance had dwelled up till then. Cleaning and polishing the coffee table, he felt as if his life was coming together. He worked his shift at the pub in a state of hyperawareness, noticing details of smell, cologne hovering over the shoulders of the men as they sat at the bar or in booths, stale beer in back of the bar, spoiled food in the garbage can, wisps of cigarette smoke in the smoking section of the restaurant. Newspaper with a picture of President Reagan soaked in coffee sitting on one of the chairs. For some reason that image stuck with him, the president emerging from a plane and waving to somebody, that movie-star hair piled on his head, dressed just so, all soggy and drowned.