Three-Fifths

by John Vercher

  This night needed to end.

  There was an hour left until close.

  Aaron hadn’t seen Darryl and his friend, or he was too drunk to care. All of Bobby and Michelle’s tables had their food, so Bobby joined her as she stood at the bus stand. She cocked her head towards Darryl.

  “That looks like trouble,” she said.

  “It ain’t good,” Bobby said.

  “You think they’re here for you and Aaron?”

  “Darryl knows the kitchen’s closed,” Bobby said. “So, I doubt they’re here for dinner.”

  Michelle let out a breath. “Everybody’s eating,” she said. “I’ll go drop the checks.” She walked off before Bobby could argue. The tables that didn’t pay right away flagged her down by the time she’d brought change and credit slips back to the ones who had. They closed out all their checks soon after that. It had been a good night. Together they made more than Bobby had ever pulled in on a double. He took a twenty from the pile and slid it over to Michelle but she wouldn’t take it. Bobby reluctantly pocketed it and looked back to Darryl and his friend. They watched Aaron who looked almost asleep, still seemingly unaware of them. Michelle took off her apron and her baseball hat and ran her fingers through her hair.

  “Hot date?” he asked.

  “Get your friend and go home,” she said. She walked towards Darryl’s side of the bar and Bobby reached for her arm. She stopped.

  “Why?” he asked. “After what Aaron said to you last night. Jesus, after what I said. You don’t owe us anything.”

  “Because it’s hard to do the right thing,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Thank you.”

  “See you tomorrow, huh? We’re a good team.”

  She walked away and came up behind Darryl and his friend and put her hands on their backs. They turned around in their stools and put their backs to Aaron. Bobby quickly counted out Paul’s tip share and joined Aaron at the bar as he ordered another shot from Paul. Paul pulled the tequila bottle from the well while Bobby put his tip share on the counter and gave him the “cut him off” sign. Paul shrugged and replaced the bottle, scooped the money from the bar, and walked away to tend to the others.

  “It’s time to go, Aaron,” Bobby said.

  “I’m fine,” he mumbled. “Where’s my shot?”

  “Where are your keys?”

  He pointed across the bar to Darryl. “See our boys over there?”

  “Yes, Aaron. I see them. Keys? Before they see us.”

  “I don’t know what happened to his cousin, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Darryl’s cousin,” he said. “I don’t even know who he is,” he said. “I might have heard his name before. Just said it to piss him off. Think it worked.”

  “What about the spiderweb tattoo?” Bobby asked. Aaron chugged the rest of his beer and waved to Paul for another, but Bobby held his hand up.

  “I didn’t mean it,” Aaron said. “What happened to him. The kid. I’m not. That’s not me. I swear.”

  Aaron pushed back and his stool fell over but Bobby caught it before it hit the floor. He kept an eye on Darryl, still distracted by Michelle. Aaron stared at Bobby and steadied himself on the bar. Bobby reached out and put the palm of his hand on his cheek and gave it two gentle pats. Aaron’s voice shook.

  “I couldn’t help it. You believe me, right?”

  “It’s time to go, man,” Bobby said.

  Aaron scrunched up his mouth and nodded, dug into his pocket, and handed Bobby his keys. His knees buckled and locked as Bobby walked behind him, his hands guarding Aaron at his sides. Across the bar, Michelle and Bobby met eyes for a moment and Darryl turned to see what she saw. Bobby kept his hand at Aaron’s back and guided him down the steps and when he looked back, he saw Darryl getting his friend’s attention. Bobby didn’t look back again and hurried Aaron out the doors into the freezing cold night.

  It had started snowing.

  The truck roared to life and the back end fishtailed as they merged onto McKnight Road. The hour was late and the traffic sparse. Bobby’s eyes shuttled from the road to the rearview. A pair of headlights appeared as pinpricks in the relative darkness over the hill and Bobby’s pulse quickened. He slowed the truck to the speed limit and moved to the right lane. The change caused Aaron to shift in his seat, and his head came to rest on the passenger side window. He grunted and reclined his seat, then lay back, open-mouthed. The dots of light grew larger and brighter, more quickly than Bobby wanted, until they were within ten feet of his bumper. His foot pressed the accelerator. He’d meant to stay slow, hoping they’d pass, but fear took hold. The truck pulled away and the car flashed its high beams. The traffic light ahead went yellow, but Bobby’s terror granted him brief clarity of thought, and he realized that speeding increased his chances of getting pulled over, which made his story go from the truth of a confession to the excuse of someone who’d just been caught. He slowed to a stop. A heavy bass track thumped as the other car stopped behind them.

  After she had left Robert and Bobby, Isabel waited until she got in the car and locked the door. Then she screamed. Then she cried, hard. Then she laughed as she hugged herself tight until she let it all out, until her stomach ached, and her throat felt raw. When all that was done, she drove home.

  She turned up the radio on the way. She usually left it off; the signal was weak, filled with static such that she could never find a good channel, but she needed a soundtrack for her celebratory drive home. The jazz station played an upbeat Miles Davis number and she turned it up as loud as she could stand. Then she realized that she still didn’t like jazz. It had been just another thing of which she’d convinced herself when it came to Robert, even after all these years. She laughed as she snapped off the music and tapped her hands on the wheel to a random, meandering tune that she composed as she went. When thought about how happy she was, she felt surprise when she realized she was truly happy, though not for herself.

  Robert would fall in love with Bobby as hard as she had. He’d want to be a father to him, and Bobby would want him as his father. There would be questions, so many questions, some regret, maybe even some anger, but when they could get past all those necessary things, they could get on with the business of father and son. It occurred to her more than once on the drive that Bobby might not need her anymore, but then he hadn’t for a long time. The way he spoke to her before she left made her think that it wasn’t even a matter of need, but want. If he decided to go, to somehow leave with Robert and start again, well, then he deserved that. They both did. And that would be all right.

  Bobby wouldn’t be home for hours and the apartment looked like hell. Isabel guessed it always had, but tonight she saw things in a much harsher light. She didn’t know why, but she wanted the house to be perfect when Bobby came home. The nozzle of the tile cleaner had crusted over from disuse and the window cleaning fluid dried to a blue film at the bottom of the spray bottle. She unscrewed the cap and pressed out a few drops of gel and scrubbed the counters with a mildewed rag they had tied around the pipes to the kitchen faucet to keep them from leaking. Swept the linoleum, scrubbed the tub, wiped down the refrigerator shelves, made the bed, took out the trash.

  Tried to polish shit and hoped it didn’t smell.

  She opened the freezer, forgetting she’d finished off the last bottle of vodka the first night she ran into Robert, so she went to the cabinet and took down the jelly jar and counted out thirty bucks. Just thirty. They were so close on the rent and Bobby was working tonight. They deserved to celebrate. Maybe he’d even have one drink with her. Tomorrow they’d all toast each other. Isabel started for the door, then stopped. The money wasn’t right. Had she miscounted? She went through the cash again and there was more than enough for one month’s rent. Had he picked up more time without telling her? Christ, had he taken on another job?

  What are you doing, Izzy? You want to celebrate? You want to pretend any booze you buy’s going to be for anyone but you? No.
You’re sabotaging this whole thing, that’s what, and I know it’s what you do but you have to stop that now. At least tonight. At least for tomorrow. Give this, give Bobby, give them the chance they deserve. You think Bobby’s going to forgive you if you’re drunk and stumbling over your own tongue? Don’t you do it. Don’t you fuck this up for him. Who are you celebrating for?

  “For him,” she said.

  Isabel walked back to the kitchen and put the money away, then walked down the hall to the bedroom and climbed under the tightly pulled sheets. Her pictures of the two of them were still in the nightstand and she took them out and held them to her chest. It had been almost a full day without a drink again. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the throbbing in her head.

  A car horn blew at Robert at every red light that turned green. He couldn’t focus. He worried he wouldn’t be up for the long hours and wondered if he would be competent enough for even an hour of work, let alone talking to Marcus’s parents after their son had just died. The last thing they needed was to hear any kind of news from a doctor whose head wasn’t in the game. And his head was most certainly not in the game. After another missed green light and another angry beep, Robert pulled off Fifth and put the car in park. He turned off the radio and replayed the last twenty-four hours in his head.

  When Izzy first told him he was her son, he’d been furious. He’d gone back to work right after the miscarriage, and it had been too soon. He and Tamara were more than comfortable financially; they could have afforded to have them both be home, but the house, for all its extravagance felt crushing. Tamara folded in on herself and Robert had no one else. He’d prepare meals for her day, pack them in glass containers in the fridge and then make his escape.

  He and Tamara had spent thousands on tests, changed their diets, their sleep cycles. Robert switched to boxers and stopped hot showers. They set timers for sex and only in certain positions depending on where she was in her cycle, definitely not twice in a row and certainly not after drinking. They had gotten so clinical about conception that as a couple, they had gone sterile. It was no wonder they fell apart after the miscarriage. There was simply nothing left of them.

  Robert and his father often argued at length about the ways Robert wasn’t “black enough,” and how, to Robert, his father’s version of black just meant fulfilling the stereotype he was expected to occupy and how he would never do that. Pledge Kappas, Omegas, Sigmas, catch a whooping by your own people in the name of brotherhood, with all the dignity of an oversized wooden paddle, when our people died escaping from beatings. Spin that cane and step, shuffle those feet, show those teeth. Dance, nigger, dance. Keep it real.

  How could you want me to do that? he’d asked him.

  Yet here he was, another brother with a white girl telling him he was a daddy.

  Wouldn’t his father be proud?

  He argued with himself about all the reasons he should walk away while he could. But he couldn’t be like the brothers who shamed him, the type he and Tamara would deride over drinks about the way they had been mocked by them, both as they grew up and even as adults. He wouldn’t be the punch line to some joke white people looked over both shoulders before telling.

  Marcus’ parents had only spoken to the neurosurgeon and the attending. Robert felt a pang of guilt at having been spared “the talk.” Though he was well practiced at it, he had failed to summon the callous he would have needed this time. This case in particular felt too close to home. His emotions too high.

  The rest of the night in the ER was unmercifully slow. It was an evening of lingering colds, mystery pains and burning urination, with gaps of too much time to think in between. Robert looked at the same page of the same chart for a half an hour, searching not for information, but for the answers. Where did this put him with Isabel? Would he owe child support? Would Bobby want to live with him? Would Robert want him to live with him?

  He closed the chart and went on to the next patient with the hopes for answers in the light of the next day.

  She awakened to pure blackness. The pulsing in her temples converted to pounding. She despised drying out. She switched on the light on her nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed and wished for the mercy of a hangover headache, far more forgiving than a sober one. It was after two in the morning. The excitement of the day had taken it out of her and she couldn’t believe she’d slept that long. Bobby would be asleep on the couch and she knew she should let him rest, but she couldn’t wait until morning to talk to him about what he and Robert had said. Sleep when you’re dead, she’d tell him when she couldn’t get him up for school.

  No light in the hallway. No lights in the living room, except an orange glow from the streetlight that came in from the window cut-out in the cinderblock where the wall met the ceiling. Isabel hand-walked her way down the hall until her eyes adjusted and she sat on the arm of the couch. When she reached for Bobby’s leg, it wasn’t there. His pillow still sat on his folded blanket.

  Bobby wouldn’t touch a drink. He worried that Isabel had passed on more to him in her genes than the curls in her hair, so he was never, ever, out late. He never wanted to spend the money, never when rent was due, or any other time, either. She stood to turn the lights on, to go call the restaurant, hoping he was somehow still there. Maybe some table camped out in his section after closing and refused to pay the check. But this late?

  Before she made it to the switch, the room filled with red and blue from the dome lights of a police car traveling slowly down the street. It was nothing unusual in this neighborhood, at this hour, but Isabel felt pressure in her chest and her arms felt heavy and she couldn’t pick up the phone.

  The car continued its crawl past their window.

  Still she couldn’t pick up the phone. She wouldn’t turn on her lights until theirs went away, but they never went away. They lit the room a little less as they moved further past the window, and then stayed flashing until they stopped.

  Shut off. Not faded away.

  They had parked.

  She told them no.

  In the dark of the kitchen every sound reverberated like an explosion in her ears. The white noise from the off-air television next door, the refrigerator kicking on, the closing of one car door outside. Then another. The sound of her breathing, the rush of blood in her ears, the sound of footsteps in the hall, too slow to be an emergency, too slow to go past her door. The gentle knock that said they weren’t there for her, but they were there for her.

  She told them no.

  Bobby stared at the halogen headlights in the rearview, the glare left orange spots floating across his vision when he looked away. The muffled bass vibrated through the truck, into his chest, but fell far behind the rhythm of his heart. The driver gunned the engine, then laid on the horn.

  Aaron sat up, sleepy-eyed. “Light’s green, dude.”

  Bobby hadn’t seen it. He took his foot from the brake and the car revved its engine again before taking a sharp turn around the truck and it tore down McKnight road, their taillights leaving a comet-like trail until they disappeared into the night. Bobby placed his foot back on the brake, half expecting the car to turn around at any minute, to see Darryl and his friend through the tinted windshield. But the street remained empty, save another car that passed Bobby on the left and honked.

  “What’s your problem?” Aaron asked, slurred and irritated. Bobby put his hand up in apology and passed under the now yellow light and proceeded down the road. He laughed to himself.

  Thank you, Michelle.

  Aaron moved in and out of consciousness on the drive, the restless sleep of the stone cold drunk. Bobby suspected Aaron didn’t share the same feeling of freedom Bobby did from their respective revelations. He alternated looks from the road to Aaron and back again. He seemed so calm in his relative slumber, his shoulders relaxed, the lines in his jaw faded, the anger at bay, at least for the moment. He wondered if he ever truly slept since that first night in prison. It occurred to him that he might not
remember the way back to Cort’s. He had driven in such a heightened state of fear, he hoped his body would remember. How different this drive seemed from that one. Now that the threat of Darryl and his friend had passed, Bobby felt a sense of serenity that the path that awaited him would be of his choosing.

  That this night would not end like that one.

  The streets of Oakland were empty once again, and Bobby couldn’t ignore the sense of déjà vu, though this feeling had meaning and reason, the memory concrete, not a whisper of a residual of the events of someone else’s past life, though many times it felt that way in the hours and days that followed. He ignored the Original as they passed and looked to see if Aaron took notice of where they were, but his head remained back against the rest, lolling with each bump in the road. Bobby saw just past him that the patrol car across from the police station was lit from the inside where there sat two officers. He resisted the urge to speed up.

  He made the light. No one followed.

  Minutes later, Bobby slowed as he approached a stop sign at the corner of Cort’s street. He looked right and accelerated into the turn, but as he looked left, he slammed his foot to the brake. Parked out in front of Cort’s apartment sat two patrol cars, dome lights flashing. Bobby’s elbows locked and he gripped the steering wheel as four officers headed towards the apartment building. Bobby turned to wake Aaron and flinched back in his seat when he saw Aaron was already upright, eyes wide and glaring at Bobby.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  “Aaron, I swear, this wasn’t me. The newspaper. They said there were cameras. Security tapes.”

  “Go straight. Slowly.”

  “Aaron.”

  Aaron opened the glove compartment and retrieved the .45. “I said drive.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, okay, okay,” Bobby said. He eased off the brake and slowly crossed the intersection, eyeing the cops until they were out of his view. He made it to the end of the block and heard no sirens, no screeching tires.