by Nancy Rue
I turned toward the door.
“Classic?” Chief said.
“Yeah?”
“Bring Desmond tomorrow. I want to see him.”
“You’ve got it,” I said.
I didn’t tell him that Desmond had been surprisingly willing to let me come alone. That wasn’t the Chief-worshipping Desmond either.
Hank met me on the side porch when I got home in the van.
“I’m going to go ahead and take Desmond,” she said. “I think you still ought to go out to dinner with Bonner.”
“We’ll see.”
“Um, and you have a visitor.”
Her tone stopped me midway to the door. “Who?”
“Vickie Rodriguez.”
“Vi—she’s not in there talking to Desmond, is she?”
“No, he’s in the shower. But she is talking to Ophelia.”
“No.”
“Yes. I tried to get rid of her.”
“No, it’s okay. It was only a matter of time.” I tried not to go completely concave as I added, “Yeah, please take Desmond.”
“I won’t bring him back until you give me the all clear.”
I left her to Desmond and made the dreaded walk to the living room. Walk, nothing. I might as well have been riding a roller coaster.
Vickie sat on the edge of the couch, observing the room like it was a crime scene. Ophelia was nowhere in sight.
“If you’re looking for Miss Sanchez, she went up to help Desmond find a clean towel.”
Why did the floor not open up and swallow me into the pit I was going to end up in anyway?
“Well, he’s male,” I said. “They can never find anything, even if it’s right where it always is.”
“She seemed to know its location just fine.”
I sat in the striped chair. The chair-and-a-half was where I let myself be vulnerable. This was no time to be putting myself there.
“Look, I know you know she’s staying here right now,” I said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
She shook her head, still as sleek as before. Come to think of it, she might also be wearing the same outfit she had on the last time. Or maybe she just lived in a closet and wound herself up everyday.
“I’m here because I’ve had a visit from Priscilla Sanborn and her attorney,” she said. “You’re acquainted with Ms. Sanborn, I understand?”
I forced myself not to sink back in the chair. “She came by here about a week ago.”
“And you didn’t think it would be a good idea to call and tell me she intended to try to get custody of Desmond?”
“I thought she might just be blowing smoke, especially when I didn’t hear from her again.”
“It’s more than smoke. She’s serious about this.”
I pressed my fingers to my temples. There was no point in trying to keep up the front. “She can’t take him, can she? We do have Geneveve’s signed document.”
“I hope that stands up in a court hearing.”
“A hearing? I thought we were just going before the judge, a formality, you said.”
“It’s an entirely different ballgame when someone contests the adoption. This woman is going all the way.”
“You have to stop her!”
“How am I supposed to do that when you have a woman living upstairs who was recently raped? Whether she is a former prostitute or not isn’t going to make much difference.”
“How did you know about that?”
“Our office received an anonymous tip, which, honestly, I was going to ignore until the Sanborn woman showed up. I really wish you had told me.”
“Would it have made any difference?”
“I wouldn’t have been blindsided. I wouldn’t have had to sit there looking like a complete idiot while she ran down a list of all the reasons that you are an unfit mother.”
“I’m not!”
“I know that!”
A vein stood out on her forehead, which was now scarlet. I was stunned.
Vickie pressed her palms together at her chest, and for a moment I expected a namaste to escape from her lips.
“Please hear me,” she said, voice once again perfectly modulated. “I want to see Desmond with you. But I’ve just seen too many good adoptions go south because things got misconstrued. I have an obligation to you and Desmond to keep everything absolutely aboveboard. Do you see?”
I nodded.
“If you want to keep your son, you’re going to have to find another place for Ms. Sanchez.”
I felt my head tilt. “It’s black and white, isn’t it?”
“In some aspects, yes.”
“I don’t even know if I can think that way anymore.”
“That’s my job,” she said. “If you’ll give me what I need to do it.”
I tried to smooth out my forehead with my hand. “I’m sorry I put you in a bad position with Priscilla Sanborn. I know what’s it’s like to be, what did you call it?—blindsided by her.”
Vickie stood up and eased invisible wrinkles from her pencil skirt. “Well, you’ve had a few other things on your mind. How is Jack, by the way?”
“Out of his coma,” I said, “and thankfully there’s no brain damage. He was as cryptic as ever.”
“Good. I imagine that’s what you love about him.”
I was still staring at her, gape-mouthed, when she added, “Do you have someone else to represent you?”
“We haven’t gotten that far. He just woke up today.”
“Let me know. Yes?”
She watched me until I nodded. And then I watched her from the front door until her Mini Cooper—not the car I would have put her in—disappeared from Palm Row. She was definitely human after all. I wanted to tell Chief.
While I was still standing there, Bonner drove up. It wasn’t until then that I realized Hank’s car was gone, which meant she and Desmond must have stolen out like thieves while I was talking to Vickie. I knew Bonner was going to be disappointed, but I really didn’t feel like going out to dinner. Maybe he’d settle for leftovers with Ophelia. Heaven knew there were plenty of them. Hank had cooked enough food that week for Desmond and me to live on for a year.
If we had a year.
I turned from the doorway to get the cramping pain under control. When I went back to greet Bonner, he was already inside, and he wasn’t alone. India stood next to him.
A rather diminished version of India. While she wore the usual class-act outfit and her hair was its customary mass of enviable waves, her eyes looked washed out, and there was a pallor to her skin that made her seem to have aged ten years since the day of the Feast. But, then, hadn’t that actually been about a decade of anguish ago?
“Oh, honey,” she said. “Do you forgive me?”
I just held out my arms to her and she fell into them. Nearby, I heard Bonner blowing his nose on his inevitable handkerchief.
When India pulled away from me, she held me at arm’s length. “We have a lot to talk about,” she said, “but we need to get down to business.”
“What business?” I said. “Come on, give it to me. Nothing can surprise me at this point.”
“Liz Doyle called me,” Bonner said. “Vickie Rodriguez called her—”
“Bottom line,” India said. “You need a place for Ophelia, and I want to take her home with me.”
I was wrong. I was surprised, enough to sink to the old church pew in the foyer and stare.
India knelt beside me and folded her hands on my knee. “I know I don’t have your wisdom,” she said. “And I’m not one of the Sisters or the NA people. I haven’t been through what they have. But, darlin’, I think I can help Ophelia.” She glanced downward. “Unless you don’t think I can.”
&nb
sp; I ran my hand across her head. “There is nobody in the world who would be better for Ophelia. Nobody. Just one thing though.”
“What?”
“Do I need to go ahead and order your casket?”
The glow shimmered back into her eyes. “No. I don’t think I’m gon’ drop dead after all.”
So India packed Ophelia up and took her home. Ophelia held me hard and cried before she left, but when I whispered to her that India could teach her things I couldn’t—like how to dress, maybe—she smiled into my eyes.
I hoped Bonner would leave with them, but he didn’t. Which maybe was fine, since I would have been left alone with Sylvia’s memory, looking at me like I’d just broken curfew and saying, “Now, about you putting our home up for sale.” At least Bonner I could argue with.
Still, I turned my back to him and headed for the kitchen before I said, “You’re going to try to talk me out of this sale, aren’t you?”
He stopped me in the dining room with a surprising tug at my sleeve. “How can I not?” He looked down at the table. “I sat right here and helped the Sisters pick out the colors for their rooms at Sacrament House.”
“Don’t do that,” I said. “It isn’t easy for me, either.”
“So hold off. At least for a while. Now that Ophelia’s taken care of—”
“What about Zelda? She’s not going to be in rehab forever. ”
Bonner folded his arms and stared at them.
“What?” I said.
“I would do just about anything for you, Allison. You know that.”
“Unless it went against your own conscience.”
His face came up abruptly. “How did you know I was going to say that?”
“I don’t know. I just did. But I don’t get why selling this place for me would put you crosswise with your integrity.”
“There’s just something about it that seems wrong. I can’t put my finger on it.”
I shrugged. “Well, until you do—”
“Until I do, I don’t know if I can even list it for you.”
I stared at him. “We have a contract for the Taylor place!”
“You haven’t signed it yet. And neither have I.”
“You’re just going to let the deal fall through?”
“There are other Realtors.”
“None that I trust like I do you!”
“Then don’t do this.” Bonner pressed his hands into the table and leaned toward me. “I believe in Sacrament House every bit as much as you do, Allison, but I also have to trust my gut. And it’s telling me there is something just not right about this.”
He didn’t pull his gaze from me, even when I rolled my eyes and turned away.
“Do I do that to you when you get a Nudge?” he said.
“No.”
“So you’re the only one who can have them?”
I looked back at him. There was fear in his face—fear that I’d give him the answer he knew was wrong. That I knew was wrong.
“Where’s the contract?” I said.
He closed his eyes as if I’d slapped him. “In the car. I’ll go get it. There’s a list of other brokers with it.”
“No,” I said. “How long do we have without signing it before the Taylor deal’s off?”
“Forty-eight hours.”
“Keep it for forty-eight hours, then.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know.” I swallowed the lump I couldn’t explain. “A lot can happen between now and Sunday night.”
“I hope a lot does,” Bonner said.
He left without mentioning the dinner we were supposed to have together, and I was fine with that. I needed to be alone, at long last, to sort things out.
But the minute he left, the stillness attacked me. I had to do something—something I couldn’t screw up.
I took a stab at cleaning out the refrigerator, but Hank’s assortment of leftovers made that too overwhelming. Laundry. I’d do laundry.
I ventured into Desmond’s room to collect his clothes from under the bed and over the chair and in the bottom of the closet. One random sock even hung over the side of his trash can. When I bent over to retrieve it, a penciled eye seethed up at me. I’d already drawn back my hand when I realized I was looking at Desmond’s eye-patch caricature.
I dumped the dirty underwear on the floor and pulled out the drawing. It had been crumpled, savagely, so that even after I smoothed it out, the cratered forehead was twice as disturbing as before. Who was this person? Or was it even human? The piece of Desmond’s artwork I treasured most was his depiction of God: a figure on a Harley who looked suspiciously like Chief. Could this be his rendition of Satan?
I shivered and started to re-crumple the paper, but I decided against it. I should probably show it to Chief and get his take on it.
So the clothes went into the washer and the drawing went under the cushion in the red chair and I went back to imagining Sylvia drumming her fingers and waiting for an answer.
“I don’t have one,” I said out loud. “And I’m about to flip my stuff all the way out.”
I was grateful for the sudden thought that I hadn’t told the Sisters about Chief yet. I grabbed my leather jacket and my Harley key and was all the way out on the porch before I realized I was functioning on automatic pilot.
You can.
I grinned. That wasn’t God’s voice. It was Chief’s.
You should.
I zipped up my jacket. I needed a ride. It had been so long since I’d felt that energy under me, so long since I had let my prayers and my questions roll themselves out with the throttle.
You can do it, Chief had said.
I had to trust him on that.
Chief’s Road King did feel different from my bike, heavier, maybe, and somehow more responsive to my touch. As I left the Spanish-moss-blowing-in-the-breeze part of St. Augustine behind, the soft night began to wrap itself in fog, covering the Magic Moment clientele in the gutter who had already called it a night, and leaving only the hopeful picture of old Maharry turning off the lights in C.A.R.S.
I felt There is good, yes? soothing my face in the cooling air.
Yes. There is some good.
But I didn’t feel the good when I pulled up to Sacrament House and cut off the engine. Every light in the place was on and the shades and curtains were drawn and pulled like the Castillo de San Marcos preparing for attack. As I hurried up the walk, someone pulled back the front drape a quarter of an inch.
“This is not good, yes,” I whispered to God.
Mercedes opened the door, eyes flashing.
“Come in, Miss Angel. Everybody freakin’ out in here.”
I stepped inside the door, and her face immediately changed.
“You got somethin’ good to tell for once,” she said.
They would speak of nothing else until I gave them the news about Chief. Although Jasmine cried and Sherry hugged my neck and Mercedes said mmm-mmm at least five times, whatever they were holding back bled through.
“All right, ladies,” I said. “Give it up. What happened?”
“It wasn’t anything,” Sherry said.
“Yes it was!” Jasmine cried.
“All right, just hush up.” Mercedes stared at them both until Sherry jerked her face toward the wall and Jasmine plucked a Kleenex out of the box.
“I don’t want you to hush up,” I said. “I want one of you to tell me what’s going on. Please.”
“They were already here when I got home from work,” Sherry said. “So I don’t know anything.”
“They aksed you questions too,” Jasmine said.
“Who?” I said.
Mercedes rolled her eyes. “It was two cops. Asking us if we
knew anything about what happened to Ophelia. Like we would, like just because we used to be on the street we know everything about every hooker ever lived in this town.”
I couldn’t stop a sigh of relief. “That’s a good thing. It means the police are finally getting serious about finding the person who raped her.”
“Huh,” Sherry said.
“What does that mean?”
She tightened her ponytail, inspected her nails, did everything but answer. I looked at Jasmine, who melted under my gaze.
“I don’t much like that Ophelia girl,” she said. “She was a high-price ho thinks she better than us. But it was still like a insult to all of us, the way them cops was actin’.”
“Which was how?” I looked at Mercedes.
“Anybody with two eyes could see they didn’t give a rip ’bout Ophelia bein’ raped. They just want to put it on somebody so they can go about they business.”
“What kind of questions were they asking?” I said. “Wait. Nicholas Kent wasn’t one of them, was he?”
“That freckle-face boy?” Jasmine shook her head. “Unh-uh.”
“Officer Kent wouldn’t treat us like we trash,” Mercedes said. “They was all like, ‘we know don’t nobody change that much. You can get us samples from johns and we can wrap this up.’”
“Samples?” I said. “DNA samples?”
“They think we’re still working the streets,” Sherry said. “I’m over there slaving my butt off with my father, trying to stay clean, and they come in here telling me to turn tricks so they can ‘wrap it up.’”
I was sure my head was going to explode if I didn’t physically hold it together with both hands.
“What did you tell them?” I said.
Sherry sniffed. “I didn’t tell them anything. I don’t talk to cops unless I absolutely have to.”
“Mercedes?”
“I was afraid to open my mouth.”
“They threatened you?”