by Noel Obiora
As Kenneth approached with three glasses of cocktails he barely managed to hold on to, an insouciance filled Amy. The moment she saw him, Cool Jo’s felt like a different club than the one owned by the man who’d killed Goldie. She turned to Neda, who was watching her.
“What?” Amy asked.
“I didn’t say anything.”
Kenneth joined them. Neda accepted her drink from Kenneth and stood up.
“Why don’t I take my drink somewhere far, far away from the memory lane you two are jumping on,” Neda said. Amy folded her arms across her chest and recrossed her legs. She had wondered how she would engage Kenneth so much without ignoring Neda or rousing her curiosity. She avoided looking into Neda’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get your last name,” Neda said to Kenneth.
“Brown, Kenneth Brown.”
“Thanks. I leave my friend in capable hands, I suppose.”
“Absolutely, and I didn’t mean to break you two up. We can all sit together,” Kenneth said.
“Don’t worry, you’re not breaking us up.” Neda cast an encouraging glance at Amy and raised her glass when their eyes met. “Wish me a good adventure,” she said and strutted away.
“Cheers,” Kenneth replied.
“Don’t go too far,” Amy said.
“She seems cool,” Kenneth added.
“She is.”
They looked at each other after Neda left. His boyish small chin, clean shave, and small forehead made him look under the age of twenty-five. Amy placed her hands on the table, looking at them, then looked up at him, blushing.
“It’s good to see you, Amy. I was beginning to think I would never see you again, until someone told me that they ran into you at a restaurant.”
“You stayed in Texas to go to law school, I heard.”
Kenneth nodded.
“I knew you were thinking of law school at first, but you never said anything about applying. You must have been applying in our last year. And we hung out a lot.”
“I wasn’t sure I could afford it, so I kept it to myself until Texas offered me a scholarship for the first year and in-state tuition for the rest.”
“I’m glad they did.”
“I sent you an invitation to my law school graduation.”
“Where did you send the invitation, Ken?”
“I sent it to Elaine. She told me to send your invitation along with hers together and she would see that you got it. She actually confirmed later that she gave it to you. I thought you would take the opportunity to come see Austin again.”
“I didn’t get it; I would have come. Not to see Austin, but to see you,” Amy said the latter part softly, and slowly, recalling that every time Kenneth’s name came up in her conversations with Elaine, she was always the person who brought it up, not Elaine. They were briefly silent, as though each was waiting for the other to speak.
“Which law firm are you with?” Amy asked.
“I was at the Los Angeles Public Defender’s Office, but I’m on my own now.”
“That’s impressive. You didn’t think you should have stayed longer at the PD’s to get more experience?”
“I was laid off my second year there,” Kenneth replied. Amy wished she could take back her earlier comment about his decision, but his smile was amused rather than judgmental, and his gentle demeanor felt endearing.
“Cassandra told me you worked at the DA’s, but I didn’t believe her.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t understand why you would choose the DA’s office when you could work anywhere you wanted.”
“I always wanted to be in public service, but I moved to LA for someone.”
“What does your husband do?” Kenneth asked. Amy was briefly taken aback before she remembered the engagement ring on her finger. She looked at the ring and began fiddling with it.
“Richard and I broke up our engagement about a year ago,” Amy said.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Amy nodded, regretting having to admit it. “Thanks,” she said.
“Care to talk about it?”
Amy shifted her attention to the rest of the club and shook her head slowly. The music turned to rhythm and blues.
She saw a very large man descending the stairwell, his legs covered in flowing white pants, then a rotund waist and fat arms under a white jacket. His stomach rose into his chest like the statue of an eastern deity, and his shoulders spread like a padded coat rack. She turned back to Kenneth. He was watching the same man. She looked down at her drink and began to tell him about Richard, a lawyer who graduated from Yale the same year she did and worked as a US attorney in LA.
“How about you?” she asked. “Have you settled down?” He raised his glass and drank his cocktail. A shadow passed over his face trailing a strobe light. “Or did someone break your heart?” she asked.
“Funny, you should ask that,” he said.
“Why?”
“What if I said you did?”
“I’d say you’re being very unfair.” Amy searched him, but he just smiled. “Really?” Amy asked, suddenly curious about his answer.
“No,” Kenneth said, resignedly. “You were the kindest person to me,” he added.
He turned toward the bar as he set his glass down. It was her turn to follow his gaze, and she saw the big man staring at them from the bar where they had met. There were suddenly two white men standing close to him. The big man seemed to be staring right at her. She returned her attention to Kenneth. “So, tell me, why haven’t you settled down?”
Kenneth told Amy about the law student he dated the last year of law school. They had planned to get jobs in Washington, DC or Atlanta and live together for the first few years of their employment, possibly getting married three years afterward. When she got the job in DC and he did not, her priorities changed. She moved in with a law clerk she had met the summer before graduation. He also told her about the secretary at the public defender’s office in Los Angeles, a single mother who saw so much promise in him as a deputy public defender, until the public defender’s office terminated his position and he decided to start his own practice. She had moved on. He was tempted to tell her that after that his heart went into hibernation for what he thought would be an eternal winter but decided against it.
As he spoke, he cast occasional glances at the bar where the big man stood but returned quickly to their discussion. Amy felt his sadness, but there was also hope and confidence and energy in his voice.
Soon they were settling back into their old, confiding ways, sharing stories neither of them had shared with anyone in a long time. With Kenneth, Amy felt she had nothing to lose that had not been lost long ago. What embarrassing facts any alcohol-fueled state might reveal paled in comparison to what he knew or must have heard in their younger years.
She recalled inviting him to her twenty-first birthday party at the family estate in Atherton, California. Travel arrangements had been made for him, if he accepted, but he declined. It was after they had decided to become just friends.
“Here’s to getting older,” Amy toasted.
“That’s easy for you to say, you don’t look a shade older than when you were twenty-one,” he said.
“Oh, stop. Women do own mirrors you know.”
“Then you know I’m right.”
“Alana respects me more though, now that I’m older,” Amy told him. Kenneth had never met Amy’s mother, but Amy had often talked about her. He said he thought she had always respected Amy, but Amy insisted it was more recent. “She used to call every day to find out what I wore, where I was going, what I was eating. It drove me insane. Now she only calls every other weekend.”
“Maybe she just doesn’t like you that much anymore,” he said. They both laughed. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and was quickly on
his feet. “Let me get us more drinks?”
“None for me. Thanks. I need to check up on Neda anyway.”
“Promise you won’t leave without giving me all your numbers.”
She took out her pen and scribbled her cell phone, home, and office numbers on a napkin.
“I’ll be here when you get back,” she said.
In the time that she sat with Kenneth, she had forgotten about Goldie. She recalled the interviews in the police report, of patrons who claimed they did not see Paul Jackson at the club on the night Goldie was murdered. She looked toward the entrance and realized that people inside this section of the club could not have seen Paul exit the club. The room’s exit opened into a corridor and one could not see the door to the street. About six feet of space separated the door to the street and the two doors, opposite each other, that opened to the sitting rooms. She got up and walked toward the back of the club where she saw the curved handrails of another set of stairs descending to the back of the club. It was entirely possible for Paul to enter the café from the street, turn into the room where she and Kenneth sat, climb upstairs and come down at the back, take the hallway from the back, and exit the club without being seen to have left by many patrons or those who saw him enter in the first place.
Amy found Neda sitting with three African American women and holding a cocktail of a different color than Kenneth had given her. Neda had once argued that Iranian women were “women of color” and she prided herself on her comfort in multiracial settings.
“Where’s Kenneth?”
“He went to speak to someone,” Amy explained and introduced herself to Neda’s new friends, Shawna, Lynn, and Delores. “Two white guys that look like off-duty cops just walked in here and something tells me they’re watching me.”
“Is that guy by the door one of them?” one of the women asked. Amy turned around to see that one of the white men had followed her to the back of the club. Her palms began to sweat as the man started to approach their table, and her chest tightened to the thought that this stranger was about to focus attention on her.
“Grab a chair, Amy,” the woman named Lynn said to her. Amy reached for the chair nearest her and turned it around as the man approached their table.
“Ma’am, are you Ms. Wilson?” the stranger asked.
“Who wants to know?” Neda asked.
“Mr. Clay.”
“Shit,” Amy muttered.
“Mmm, I’m guessing that ain’t Kenneth,” the woman named Shawna said.
“Sister please, ain’t no brother named Clay who ain’t gay,” Delores said, and the African American women all laughed. “You feelin’ me?” Lynn said through laughter.
Amy was not amused.
“He had you follow me here?” she asked the man in a raised voice before she realized how loud she had been.
“No, Ma’am. He said to tell you that he is outside.”
Amy turned to look at Neda. “Take me to him,” Amy said to the man and pointed toward the back exit where, according to Paul Jackson’s alibi, he was able to come through without patrons inside the club knowing when he got to the club.
“I’ll tell Mr. Clay that you’re occupied. You go back to Kenneth and let him know you have to leave,” Neda said, standing up.
“I’ll take care of it,” Amy protested, but Neda’s hand was firmly on her shoulder pushing her down. As Neda walked away with the man, Amy excused herself from the African American women to return to Kenneth.
“Amy…Footsie, honey. You be honest with Kenneth about this Mr. Clay waiting outside, you hear?” Lynn said as Amy got up.
“Thanks, I will,” Amy said and left them.
•••
“Who’s this Farrah Fawcett?” Big asked Kenneth.
“Eh. Oh, just a friend from college.”
“You know her well?”
“She’s cool.”
“I didn’t ask you that.”
“Yeah,” Kenneth said. Big’s expression suggested an elaboration was necessary. “I haven’t seen her in a long time,” Kenneth added, irritated by Big’s curiosity.
“Well, you better be sure she’s cool, nigger. You see them white boys that just got here? They’re your company, and they’re packing. You got it?”
“Yeah, thanks,” Kenneth said.
“Go tell her a bedtime story. The drinks are on me.”
“Sure, Big,” Kenneth said, angrily. Big snapped his fingers twice to get the bartender’s attention and Kenneth got his drinks immediately.
He joined Amy carrying a pair of cocktail glasses. He had been right behind her as she turned toward their booth in the crowded bar, but she had not noticed him. When their eyes met, he shrugged.
“That guy over there in the white suit bought us drinks. I couldn’t say no.”
“Why would he buy us drinks? Do you know him?”
“I know him, but he never bought a drink for me before. So, it must be you.”
Amy looked toward the bar again and Big was still there but obscured from her view. Kenneth placed her drink in front of her.
“Well, tell him thanks for me, but I have to go Ken. Something came up.”
“One last drink then.”
“Are you trying to get me drunk, or is he?” Amy asked, bending her head toward the bar.
“I like you just the way you are right now, neither drunk nor sober,” he said.
She smiled at him.
“I remember one night in Austin, after we saw that comedy troupe and returned to my apartment. You had had a bit to drink before we went to the theatre and at intermission you drank some more. Elaine later told me you were pretty drunk that night. But to me, you were so much more yourself than I had ever seen you…much sharper than when you let everything get to you. I thought, if anyone was going to take advantage of you, this was the wrong night to try.”
Amy considered him for a while, her eyes looking directly into his.
“It crossed your mind?” she asked, smiling.
“No, no, no—” he protested, but she interrupted him.
“I remember thinking just the opposite,” she said.
“Really?”
She smiled and shook her head, more in disbelief than disagreement.
“Really,” she finally responded, nodding, “I have to go.”
He stood up, too, as she collected her purse and her jacket, which was draped over the backrest of her chair. “Let me walk out alone,” she said to him. “Someone came to pick me up and he’s waiting outside with Neda.”
“Those white guys by the bar came with him?” Kenneth asked.
She nodded.
“Yes. It is good to see you again, Ken.”
“I’m glad Neda convinced you to come. Tell her she made my day.” The sincerity with which he delivered lines like that always endeared him to her. She wanted to hold him, or just touch him, but she resisted the urge.
“So, call me?” she said.
“You can bet on that,” he said, and came forward to give her a hug. They held on briefly. She buried her face behind his ear. Then she let go and started walking away without looking at him. Big was watching her when she turned the corner toward the bar and got a clear view of him again. At the door, she looked back toward Kenneth, still standing where she left him, his eyes on her. She pursed her lips playfully at him, and grinned.
11
…And The Present
The air outside came with a gentle breeze of relief from the claustrophobic ambience inside the club. Amy had not noticed how much the crowded space affected her until she stepped outside. Thomas’s SUV limousine was parked outside the curb right in front of the club. Beside it, Neda stood with Thomas in conversation, and the chauffeur waited to the side. The other man who had come into the club walked out after Amy and stood across the street, next
to another black SUV.
“What the hell is this?” Amy said to Thomas, but he only smiled coolly and looked at Neda as though he had been discussing Amy’s reaction with her.
“Amy, get in the car first,” Neda said.
“Which car? I didn’t come with him,” Amy said, her voice rising slightly. Neda turned to look at the line at the entrance to the nightclub. The line of people going into the club appeared longer, and they were looking at Amy, Neda, and Thomas.
“Your mother was worried,” Thomas said.
“My mother!”
“Let’s talk about this inside the car,” Thomas said.
“He’s right, Amy,” Neda said.
Amy turned from one friend to the other. “Let’s go in your car,” she said to Neda.
“I want to stay and get you intel,” Neda said.
“I don’t need your intel. We came together, we’re leaving together.”
Neda looked at Thomas and indicated he should wait. The two women walked across the road, and Thomas got in the car with his chauffeur. “Don’t shoot the messenger,” Neda said. “He said you told him we were going to a movie and you would come to his hotel when we got out, but your mother called with a different story, and he wanted to confirm for her that she was wrong.”
“Thomas is no one’s messenger. He knows exactly what he’s doing and using Alana as the excuse to do it.”
“I would come, too, if I were him.”
“Well, it wouldn’t do either of you any good.”
“Are you going to tell him about Kenneth?” Neda asked.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Amy said. Neda smiled, but Amy deliberately avoided looking directly at her.