by Adam Rapp
Lemon Tidwell asks her if the authorities are looking for Channing, and she nods and sniffles and wipes some mucus from her nose with the back of her free hand, and then pulls a napkin from the dispenser on their table and manages to paw the mucus off her wrist without having to wrest her other hand from the warmth and comfort of his.
And then she cries some more, mostly because her nerves are just so completely shot, but also partly because she knows she likely just smudged the rouge and foundation that she’d spent over an hour so carefully applying.
“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Lemon Tidwell says comfortingly. “I’m sure of it, Marlene. Here, take this,” he adds, and passes her a piece of the aforementioned chocolate caramel mocha taffy, which seems to materialize out of nowhere.
“Oh, thank you, Lemon,” Marlene says, gently wheezing.
“Eat that. It’ll make you feel better.”
“I will,” she says. “I will eat it.”
But she doesn’t. Instead she simply clutches it with her free hand.
They stay this way — Lemon Tidwell’s arm draped across the back of Marlene Bledsoe’s shoulders, both of them facing Bardstown Road now, sitting beside each other in the far rear booth of Burritos As Big As Your Head! — for two more songs.
As Marlene Bledsoe swallows her mewls and whimpers, she basks in his aftershave. For the briefest moment, she feels the sandpaper of his beard. She imagines him shaving early in the morning, what his back might look like, that space between the shoulder blades . . .
Behind the counter, acne-riddled Kyle is busying himself with his smartphone, and only one person enters, who orders a burrito for takeout.
This is Heaven, Marlene thinks.
I have truly died and gone to Heaven.
They hardly move as Marlene fixes her gaze on the recently polished turquoise in Lemon Tidwell’s ring.
“Hello?”
“Who’s this?”
“Um, Corinthia Bledsoe.”
“The tall girl.”
“Is this Lavert?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Lavert Birdsong?”
“This is he.”
“So formal.”
“Is this the tall girl or not?”
“It is. I am the tall girl. In fact, I might even be the tallest girl.”
“I just like to know who I’m talkin’ to.”
“Hello, Lavert Birdsong.”
“Hello, Corinthia Bledsoe.”
“You remember me, right?”
“Yeah, I remember you. By the way, there was another one of them Fums down in the band room. I had to clean it off the tuba.”
“That’s probably because I played tuba my freshman year.”
“You played the tuba? That big, crazy thing?”
“For me it was more like playing the French horn.”
“You don’t play no more?”
“It’s not so easy on the lips. Plus you get tired of carrying that thing around. And all that blowing makes you light-headed, too. Especially if you have to do an eight-bar solo, which is rare, but it does happen. I should’ve played the triangle.”
“The triangle?”
“The triangle’s a perfect instrument. Almost impossible to screw up. You just strike it with a little wand a few times a song.”
“That itty-bitty little thing?”
“It’d certainly make for easy transport.”
“You’re funny.”
“Lavert Birdsong.”
“Speaking.”
“I just like saying your name.”
“Yeah, that Brasso stuff ain’t no joke — that’s what I used to clean the tuba. I thought turpentine was strong. But anyway, my gramamma said you called.”
“I’m glad she gave you the message.”
“Yeah, Gramamma’s good like that. Sometimes she’s forgetful about takin’ her medicine, but she’s good about most things.”
“She seemed nice.”
“Don’t get her started on the electric company. There ain’t nothin’ nice about her when she gets to carryin’ on with those people. . . . So, what’s up, Corinthia? Why are you callin’ me?”
“What are you doing?”
“Right now?”
“Yeah, right now.”
“Just chillin’. Why?”
“I was wondering if maybe you’d like to get something to eat.”
“With you?”
“Yeah, with me.”
“For real?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“Oh, Lord, what?”
“I don’t know, Corinthia.”
“Why not?”
“Ain’t you s’posed to be in high school?”
“So?”
“So, I’m a grown-ass man.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Adventure? Adventure’s the last thing my troublesome butt needs.”
“Your butt is troublesome?”
“. . . When?”
“Now.”
“I can’t eat now.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I got a treatment in the morning.”
“A treatment?”
“Yeah. And if I eat after a certain time, it’ll make me sick to my stomach. . . . I mean, I’ll sit with you. But I ain’t gonna eat nothin’.”
“Okay.”
It’s quiet at Uncle’s 24-Hour Waffle House. Corinthia and Lavert Birdsong sit across from each other in a recently reupholstered red-pleather booth.
Before Corinthia walked the half mile to Main Street, she put on eyeliner — just a hint — and two dabs of her mother’s Calvin Klein Euphoria behind each earlobe. She worries that she used too much, that the subtle notes of black violet as described on the Calvin Klein website aren’t so subtle. She’s also applied her favorite bubble-gum-flavored lip gloss. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and she wears a baby-blue halter top featuring a crocheted rainbow.
Corinthia sits before a stack of classic syrup-and-butter-slathered waffles and a trio of sausage patties.
Lavert Birdsong, wearing pressed jeans and a short-sleeved red-knit polo shirt, his fingers interlaced around a mug of chamomile tea, watches Corinthia. Every few bites, Corinthia looks at him, and he meets her gaze for a second or two, his mouth barely open. And then he closes it, swallows, and looks down. There is no doubt in Corinthia’s mind that this man is hungry.
After greeting each other with a formal handshake, during which Lavert Birdsong twice cleared his throat, they were seated by the man rumored to be Uncle himself (strangely, his first name is Cousin). Cousin, who knows Corinthia by name, led them to their booth without judgment or the least bit of circumspection, dealt them a pair of menus, and told them how all the booths on their side of the waffle house had recently been redone and that his daughter, Julie, would be by lickety-split to take their orders.
It took a minute for Corinthia to negotiate her legs into a comfortable position under the table, after which she and Lavert made some inconsequential small talk about Lavert’s car (a silver Dodge Neon that he is leasing from a local dealership), the post-tornado weather (cloudless skies), and the surprising lack of mosquitoes, which usually hang around this part of Illinois well into September.
The conversation caught some momentum when Corinthia brought up the damage suffered at Lugo Memorial and how nice it was that Lavert and all the other men in blue jumpsuits helped clean up, but just as Lavert was about to comment on the workforce, which Corinthia was certainly more than a little curious about, Julie arrived with glasses of water and took their orders.
Corinthia ordered the waffles, sausage patties, and a large orange juice, and Lavert ordered his chamomile tea, and Julie was nice and, like her father, didn’t appear to be freaked out by this unlikely duo.
“Uncle’s Classic Triple Play Waffles with sausage patties, a large OJ, and a chamomile tea, coming right up,” Julie said, and moved away.
Corinthia has freque
nted Uncle’s several times, mainly because their booths have more legroom than most other places in town. In fact, she and Cloris Honniotis have spent hours at the very booth she’s sharing with Lavert. They will sometimes each bring a book and drink the bottomless drip coffee and order the Classic Triple Play and read.
After Julie walked away, things got pretty quiet. The low-playing music (Neil Diamond, Simply Red, Sade) filled the silence so effectively, it was as if someone had been stationed in the back of the waffle house for the sole purpose of turning up the radio during conversational lulls.
And now Corinthia Bledsoe and Lavert Birdsong are officially beyond the small talk.
Julie has delivered their food, and Cousin came by to make sure everything was okay, and now here they are, with no more interruptions.
Corinthia eats her waffles, luxuriates in their sweet, buttery warmth. Her sausage patties are bathed in maple syrup. She drinks from her large orange juice.
“You sure you don’t want some?” she asks after a big swallow.
“I really can’t,” Lavert says.
“Because of your thing tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I prolly won’t eat anything substantial till the late afternoon.”
“Don’t you get hungry?”
“Sometimes it feels like cats are crawlin’ around inside me. But I can’t tell if it’s hunger or my condition.”
“Condition?” Corinthia says, cutting the first sausage patty in half with her fork.
“I got cancer,” Lavert tells her. “In my pancreas.”
Corinthia sets her fork down. She swallows. Everything goes dry in her throat. She drinks from her water glass and swallows again.
“Tomorrow morning I have to do chemo,” Lavert says.
“Oh,” Corinthia says. “Oh.”
“Another three-week cycle.”
“Oh . . .” Corinthia says yet again. “I had no idea. . . .”
After a brief silence, Lavert goes on to tell her that the pancreas is a glandular organ in the digestive system that produces important hormones like insulin as well as special juices that help the body absorb nutrients in the small intestine.
“So mine is all messed up,” he adds.
She looks at him for a moment, grabs her fork, and then sets it down.
Corinthia says, “And you still work . . . in your condition?”
“Only when I’m feeling up to it. I just can’t climb no scaffolding. I mostly sweep up, paint walls, turpentine stupid words off of bathroom doors.”
Corinthia musters a smile.
Lavert says, “Now I’ve gone and spoiled your appetite.”
“I was finished anyway,” she assures him.
“I normally don’t go around talkin’ about my medical problems.”
They are quiet. The music can be heard again. A Phil Collins ballad from the eighties, “One More Night.” It seems as if the deejay is playing a cruel joke, considering the circumstances.
“How bad is it?” Corinthia eventually asks.
“Stage three,” he says.
Corinthia tells him she’s sorry but that she doesn’t know what “stage three” means.
“Stage three basically means it’s spread to my lymph nodes,” he explains. “My oncologist tells me that in rare cases it does get better. I’m hopin’ I’m one of them rare cases.”
Corinthia can feel a wad of sorrow forming deep in her throat. She wishes she could scoop it out with her spoon. She can feel it sinking into her heart.
“If they had Maalox on the menu, I mighta got that,” Lavert says, attempting levity.
Corinthia asks him how long he’s been dealing with the cancer.
“Got diagnosed two months ago,” Lavert says. “Started treatments pretty quick after that. I was already stage three when they started me on the chemo.” He drinks from his tea and adds, “I was down in Du Quoin up until about six weeks ago, so I had to start the first round of chemo there.”
“What’s Du Quoin?”
“A work farm.”
“You’re a farmer?”
“I was in prison,” Lavert says. “I was up at Stateville for most of my sentence, but I’ve been at Du Quoin for the past four months. I got an early release for good behavior.”
“Oh,” Corinthia says again.
“Yeah, all them dudes in the blue jumpsuits? We used to be at the work farm. It’s a program that helps transition former convicts back into society.”
Corinthia nods.
“Yeah, you picked one real accomplished nigga to watch you eat pancakes.”
“Waffles,” she says.
“I mean waffles.”
Phil Collins turns into Huey Lewis and the News. “I Want a New Drug.”
Lavert says, “Man, this song sounds just like the song from Ghostbusters.”
Corinthia smiles and wipes away a few waffle crumbs from the front of her crocheted rainbow halter top.
She says, “So, you got out early for good behavior.”
“Kept my head down up in Joliet. Didn’t do nothin’ thuggish.”
“That’s where I was born,” Corinthia offers. “Joliet.”
“Don’t know much about that place,” he says. “Except they got them gamblin’ boats.”
“What’d you go to prison for?”
“Armed robbery. A friend and me hit up a gas station in Quincy.”
“With a gun?”
“We had this little snub-nosed thirty-eight. My friend shot and killed the attendant. I don’t even think he meant to do it. Knucklehead got amped and pulled the trigger. Judge gave him life.”
This information hits Corinthia square between the eyes like a stone. She drinks from her water glass. She may be sitting with someone who was an accomplice in a murder.
“And you?” she says.
“I got twenty years,” he says.
“And you got out early.”
“Thirty-seven months early,” he says. “Yep.”
“So your friend’s still in prison?” Corinthia asks.
“He’s dead,” Lavert says. “Killed himself at Cook County Jail the night he was sentenced. Hung himself. Apparently the guard on duty let him have his belt. Prolly felt sorry for his youthful ass.”
“Do you miss him?” she asks.
“Yeah, I miss him. He was my boy. Hopefully he in a better place now.”
“What was his name?”
“Demetrius Purvis, but he went by Dee.”
“Dee,” Corinthia says.
“Yeah, Dee.”
Something in Lavert’s face softens when he says his friend’s name.
“How old were you when you got sent away?”
“I was eighteen. Dee was nineteen. The D.A. wanted to give Dee the death penalty, to set an example, but the judge gave him a break ’cause we were still kids. I don’t think Dee could handle the idea of being put away with a bunch of grown men.”
Lavert drinks from his tea, sets the mug down, and adds, “If you wanna go, you can go. I’ll pay for this.”
Corinthia says, “I’m not going anywhere.”
He says, “What, you wanna write a paper on me?”
“I just like talking to you,” Corinthia replies.
“Waffles with the ex-con,” Lavert says. “Watch him sip on old-people tea and act like a good, rehabilitated nigga?”
“Are you rehabilitated?” she asks.
He says, “Do I seem like I am?”
“When I met you the other day, I thought you were just a nice guy cleaning some graffiti off my door. You seemed like a gentleman to me.”
“Then the good system must be workin’,” Lavert says, smiling, no doubt half joking — or to Corinthia, at least, it seems that he might be — revealing that missing incisor again. “I’m definitely on good behavior now,” he adds. “Got no choice. I mess up once, and they’ll send my butt back down. Cancer or no cancer. I can’t even steal the crackers from this waffle house,” he says, pointing to the little basket in the center of the
table containing packages of individually wrapped Saltines.
“So then behave,” Corinthia says.
“I plan to,” Lavert replies, still smiling. “I have no idea what little bit of time I might have left, but the last way I wanna spend it is pickin’ soybeans and recyclin’ doggone cardboard in Du Quoin. Believe me, I plan on bein’ a saint.”
“How old are you, anyway?” Corinthia asks.
“Old enough,” he says.
“Old enough for what?”
“Old enough to know when I’m sittin’ across from trouble.”
Corinthia says, “You think I’m trouble?”
“Nah, you seem cool,” he replies. “Maybe a little too sharp for your own good, but you straight.”
Corinthia drinks her orange juice, sets it down.
“You don’t look old,” she offers, wiping her mouth, but careful not to ruin her lip gloss any more than her waffles already might have.
“Black don’t crack,” Lavert jokes, tapping his cheek playfully. “See?”
Through the opening of Lavert’s polo shirt, Corinthia notices part of a thin gold chain snaking over his collarbone. She briefly wonders if he took a shower before coming to meet her, if he’d studied himself in the mirror and applied an unscented facial moisturizer like she had, if he’d Q-tipped his ears and checked for offensively long nose hairs. Offensively long nose hairs are one of Corinthia’s greatest daily fears. She towers over everyone, after all, so her nostrils are on display for the rest of humanity.
“Do you feel bad about what you and Dee did?” she says.
“I feel bad about that boy that Dee shot. Just some kid mindin’ his business, doin’ his job, clockin’ minimum.”
“What was his name?”
“Dennis Foley.”
“How old was he?”
“Sixteen.”
“Was he white or black?”
“What do you think?”
Corinthia picks up her fork and starts on her second sausage patty. Her mind is suddenly flooded with questions. When Lavert committed the robbery, was he wearing a mask? Did he shout awful things at the boy after they burst through the doors of the gas station kiosk? Was it in fact a kiosk or more of a mini-mart? Did they have a specific goal? A dollar amount they wanted to run off with? Where did they get the thirty-eight? Did they want to get caught?