It took me a moment to speak, my tone softer. “You’re shaking me down for money?”
“You abandoned me. Will you give the fifty thousand to me or not?”
I had to sit back, take a breath. My head wanted to explode. “If this is how you feel, if this is the way you see me, if you think I’m this horrible deadbeat dad who does horrible things to people, since you’re so righteous, why do you say you want me to stand in your wedding?”
“Who said that? I never said that. I don’t want you to stand with me.”
Being facetious, I said, “Oh, so I’m not invited?”
“You can come. As a guest. Come see the wedding you didn’t give my mother.”
“And you need me to help come up with fifty grand to make this fairy tale, the one where I show up and watch my bohemian daughter get married, where I show up persona non grata and stand on the sidelines; you want me to dig deep into my bank account and make that happen.”
“So is that a no?”
“It’s not a yes.”
Margaux put her fork down, wiped her hands over her jeans, actually played patty-cake on her toned legs. She shook her head three times before she slid her chair back. She rose from the table, picked up her purse, pulled out several tissues, then began nodding.
I told the colorless, grungy, rebellious child, “You have dewdrops in your nose.”
She took out her wallet and let two twenties fall to the table, and they fell like leaves from a tree when the seasons had changed for the worse.
I stood up. “Sit back down.”
“You don’t tell me what to do.”
“I read people. I read body language, so I know when someone is lying, and I read between the lines. You call me for fifty grand, saying you’re pregnant and now you’re going to get married, saying your boyfriend has people who owe him money. That and the forty-eleven stories you’ve told me in the last five minutes make no sense. First, you’re pregnant.”
Hand over her stomach, she nodded. “I am.”
“Then you want to get married.”
“I do.”
“Then you want to penalize me because you think I was a deadbeat dad.”
“You were.”
“That didn’t work, you pulled your trump card, pulled a name out of your hat, and made the last threat. Don’t end up going down a steep road with no brakes. Watch yourself.”
“For whatever reason I want it, or need it, get me fifty thousand.”
“And you say your momma told you about Florida.”
My daughter shifted but gave no answer.
I leaned toward her. “I think you or your boyfriend are in some sort of trouble.”
“Think whatever you want.”
“I think that’s why you need fifty large. People need that much money all of a sudden when their backs are up against the wall. And that would be the only reason you would call me. Your back must be against the wall, and coming at me was your last resort. I don’t know if someone is shaking you down and now you’re shaking me down, but that’s the feeling I get.”
“You’re smart as a kakapo.”
“Insulting me won’t make my wallet open.”
“But it could make a jail cell close.”
“Or it could seal the lid on a coffin of someone who don’t know who they’re messing with.”
“Is that a threat? And this is why you will never win Father of the Year.”
“I think you’re after me because someone is after you.”
“Why would anyone want to shake me down?”
“Cheating. Gambling. Paternity. Embezzling. A long list of white-collar crimes. Sex with a minor. Compromising photos. Murder. Drugs. Pornography. Incest. Passing. I’ve heard it all.”
“You’ve had an interesting life. The life of a liar and a man who instigates violence.”
“I don’t instigate anything.”
“Violence and murder.”
“You insult me, and you came from between the legs of a cheat and a liar.”
She repeated, “Balthazar Walkowiak.”
“Saying that name will dig a grave big enough for you and anyone putting you up to this.”
“That’s a threat?”
“That’s a father trying to protect a daughter who doesn’t know what she’s fucking with.”
“You’re no father. My grandfather and grandmother assured me of that. My mother told me how both your mother and father disrespected her when she met them for the first time.”
“And your East African relatives were less kind to me the day I took them to dinner.”
“You’ve never been much of a father. I have no evidence of you ever being present. I have seen pictures of me and my mother from the day of my birth, but there are none of you.”
I bit my bottom lip, inhaled emotions. “I’m as much a father as you are a daughter.”
She stared me down, made her tongue ring clack. “Fifty thousand, Ken Swift.”
I surrendered an irritated smile. “Fifty thousand or what?”
We held it right there. Her eyes filled with tears.
I asked, “What are you afraid of?”
“Balthazar Walkowiak.”
“You think this is a joke?”
“Look at that expression.”
“Don’t ever say that name again.”
“That is what you’re afraid of.”
“Ever.”
“That’s all I need to know.”
She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, then threw her snot-rag into my clam chowder. She sashayed away like she had thrown water in my face. Mohawk bouncing, heels click-clopping across the tile, her quick and heavy steps took her through the bustle, chatter, and cheers of the crowd at the packed sports bar. It sounded like the world was cheering for her. I should’ve known this would be the worst day of my life when I saw the coldhearted way she looked at me.
Anger rose and I felt like slamming someone’s head into a wall until it exploded.
Jake Ellis saw her leave, finished his drink, then left the energetic bar, made his way through the rambunctious crowd, smiling at attractive women along the way. Women noticed him too. He glanced in the direction Margaux had gone. Jake Ellis had on off-white jeans, a tan fitted T-shirt paired with 1000 Mile boots and a cream hoodie, sleeves pulled up to his elbows, all his gear high-end and trendy. Jake Ellis loved clothes and loved to be fashion-forward. He had great posture and confidence, a Denzelesque walk, strong arms, and a V-shaped torso, just like me.
When he got to me, he did the African-finger-snap thing. “That was really Margaux?”
“Yeah. Talk about a surprise.”
Jake Ellis glanced toward the bar. Three sisters grinned at Jake Ellis, their nonverbal communication a lustful love song. They had moved from looking at his face to staring at his body, that thing that women couldn’t help doing when they were sexually attracted to a man.
I told Jake Ellis, “I’m forgetting something. My gut is telling me I’m forgetting something.”
“Bruv, you’ve said that three times since I picked you up.”
“You sure we didn’t have a second job?”
“Today? Just Pasadena. You okay, bruv?”
“Get me out of this place. Before I hurt somebody.”
We stepped outside into the heat wave, stood on the sidewalk facing Starbucks. I didn’t see any bad news. No cops. No league of East Africans had come with Margaux to attack me in the heat of the sun as they had once done in the rain because of Jimi Lee. No slave catchers came after me. Margaux had my body temperature up. I was sweating. LA was in a drought and the hottest days since the dinosaurs were upon us. It was still over one hundred, arid heat that felt like a convection oven.
My mind was on one direction, and my road dawg Jake Ellis had his mind on another
. A couple of sisters with amazing natural hair parked and came our way, sashayed from the searing heat rising from the blacktop lot toward the urban chain restaurant, hair lightened in the color of summer. Loved the way a black woman moved. The rhythm in her hips, the bounce in the backside, the eyes that said look but don’t touch. Both were dressed summer sexy and Afrocentric, like they had bought their amazing Kente-patterned outfits from either Congo Square or the shop Lagos over in Leimert Park. Or maybe they had been to Nigeria or East Africa.
Jake Ellis said, “Bruv, hold on a second.”
The Ghanaian went to the ladies, flashed his smile, said a few words. They laughed, and then he kissed the prettiest one right there on the spot. When that moment was over, Jake Ellis smiled, waved good-bye to the woman, and peacocked away like it was no big deal. She fanned herself, grinned so hard I could count all of her teeth, and went inside the restaurant.
I asked Jake Ellis, “Who was she?”
“Never seen that pretty woman before in my life.”
“How do you get women to do that?”
“Sometimes all you have to do is ask.”
We did a fist bump, dabbed, then headed toward Ellis’s convertible Mustang.
He glanced at his watch. “Hot as hell. Are you sure you want to go to Pasadena before dark? Gonna be a lot hotter up that way, and you know how I feel about this dry desert heat.”
Mind ablaze, I ignored the question and cleared my throat. “We need to roll by Home Depot and get anything?”
“I have gear left over from the Arizona job in the car. I’m prepared. Saw and hammers.”
“Pasadena is a Princeton graduate, a supposed hard-ass from Boston.”
He nodded. “So was the man in Arizona. Hard-ass was talking shit, until we arrived. How much does this man in Pasadena owe San Bernardino?”
“More than two hundred thousand.”
“Since when?”
“Six months or so ago. He stopped taking San Bernardino’s phone calls last month.”
When I opened the passenger-side door, that new-car smell rose. Last month Jake Ellis had rocked a Range Rover. Now he leased a convertible for the summer. Jake Ellis changed vehicles every six months so he never had to register the car with the state and have tags. License plates were easy to trace. People could do that online nowadays.
I moved the book Them by Nathan McCall from the passenger seat and tossed it in the back, where it landed on a library. Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana was next to Voices from Leimert Park Redux and five other hardbacks. Jake Ellis had just as many relevant books in his spot as I did.
While he was struggling to get out of the crowded parking lot, we passed Margaux. She was sitting in her ride. An old Nissan covered in bird shit. That told me wherever she lived, she parked outside on the streets, and under a tree. We made eye contact. She was broken down. My daughter was crying. A fist squeezed my heart. I told Jake Ellis to fight traffic and loop back. By the time we made that journey, my daughter was gone.
Jake Ellis asked, “You have Margaux’s number?”
“On my other phone.”
“Where is it?”
“Only brought my San Bernardino phone. Left my personal one on the charger.”
The parking lot was a disaster, its ingress and egress horrible, making it difficult to exit. Cars pulled in and out of parking spaces and made it too damn hard to turn around. That was when I saw three helicopters flying over the area. Heard sirens coming from all directions. Police cars in the lot. The Bank of America had been robbed again and the slave catchers were a day late and a dollar short. I didn’t care about the bank robbery or the po-po, only Margaux.
I said, “She’s gone.”
Jake Ellis looked up at the sky, frowned at the ghetto birds. While we were stuck trying to get out, a dilapidated brother came up to Jake’s window. Jake had a .22, held it down low.
He talked fast: “Hey, bro, Imma be honest and look I need twenny to buy some crystal meth and I don’t want to rob nobody and so you can give me twenny so I don’t end up in jail.”
Jake Ellis said, “Nah, bruv. Can’t help you, not with that.”
I said, “Brother, you’re in bad shape. You need to be in rehab.”
“I did rehab. Chicago in 2012. I’m from Stone Mountain, Georgia. Out here by myself.”
I reached in my pocket, handed the man two dollars.
“That’s it? Muh’fucker, I asked you for twenny. What two dollars gonna get me?”
He threw my money back in the car window, cursed me like I was the devil.
Jake Ellis drove on, fought to get by the police, the flashing lights, then passed a group of Mexicans who were on the corner, holding up signs, trying to collect money to pay for a funeral.
“Something is wrong, bruv. I know you. What went down between you and Margaux?”
While he drove, I gave him the play-by-play of my lunch date with my daughter.
Jake Ellis said, “Bruv, Margaux cursed you? Your daughter cursed you?”
“If I had had a son and he addressed me the way Margaux just did, I would’ve beat his black ass from one end of Sepulveda Boulevard to the other. Then I would’ve taken him to In-N-Out Burger, and we would have sat and eaten Double-Doubles and had fries and milk- shakes, ate like father and son while we had a hard talk like a father and son should.”
“I just would have kicked his ass.”
With the sun shining down on us, Jake Ellis fought his way over to La Brea and struggled north toward I-10, downtown LA rising in the distance.
“Bruv, I see Margaux’s mother wasn’t with her.”
“My daughter was riding alone. I can’t imagine her mother putting her up to this.”
“You haven’t seen Jimi Lee since when?”
“Since that night her second husband caught her in my bed.”
“Yohanes?”
“Yeah. That motherfucker.”
“She cheated on you with Yohanes too. Cheated on you first. Then left you, married Yohanes and cheated on him with you. You put up with it for years.”
“I was in love with a woman who never learned how to love me back.”
“Young, dumb, and full of come.”
“That too. Not young and not dumb anymore.”
“That’s debatable.”
“Rachel Redman?”
“The Eskimo. The singing Eskimo with roots that go back to Eritrea.”
Someone else was in my life, a nice, beautiful woman, a singer named Rachel Redman. But Margaux’s mom had snared my heart. I’d never loved another woman as much as I had Jimi Lee. Not for lack of trying. I thought I was free from what had happened two decades ago.
In my mind I saw her, eighteen, with warm brown skin, hair wavy, cascading down her back. I tried to blink her beauty away, but I was pulled in deeper. Again I was twenty-one, in bed with Jimi Lee, making love to the girl I thought was the most beautiful woman in the world, rocking the bed and making so much turbulence I expected oxygen masks to drop. I met her on Sunset Boulevard at a place called Club Fetish. Three hours after we met, she was in my bed, in heaven. I was the second lover she’d had, and the first boy hadn’t put enough loving on her to make a difference. Her first orgasm was with me. We fucked all night and she came back the next day for more. I took Jimi Lee from her boyfriend that night. Literally pulled her out of another man’s arms and she fell into mine. It was at the beginning of a wild summer. I was going to be her boyfriend for half that summer. But a few orgasms later, she was pregnant, and by the end of summer we were married, living together in Leimert Park. Pregnancy changed everything for both of us. She had given up Harvard. I dropped out of UCLA. Mississippi married Ethiopia and had a child.
Five years of lying, cheating, and unhappiness followed. She cried all the time. I found f
ault in everything she said or did. Because of the pregnancy, her father had kicked her out of their home, sent her away penniless. We had conflict and I broke away from my family. We went from fucking like rabbits to no sex. After she lost her chance at Harvard, she withdrew from the world. Years later I found out she had been on antidepressants. Those had numbed her moods and probably taken away her sex drive. Her moods were up and down, uneven: one day smiles, the next day screams. Her best friend, Lila, had told me about the antidepressants.
Then I was angry because my wife had kept that a secret.
I had been rejected sexually and emotionally and it didn’t feel like much was left spiritually. I had been shut out of every part of her life. Like I was a stranger. I was hurting inside, depressed too, secretly crying my own dry tears, but I never stopped loving her.
After she left me, after she ripped Margaux from my life, Jimi Lee came back to my bed. I don’t know, but maybe she was off the medication by then. There were a few years of us hooking up a couple of times a month, rocking the headboard and cheating on other people. That ended when Jimi Lee’s second husband came banging on my front door like a madman. Yohanes banged on my door while I banged his wife. He sent the Horn of Africa after me.
Bad Men and Wicked Women Page 3