The Final Play

by Shelly Ellis

  * * *

  Jamal didn’t know how long he stayed on his hallway’s hardwood floor, breathing deeply, sweating buckets, but he was shaken out of his stupor when the smoke alarm went off. He blinked and gradually made it to his feet. When he staggered down the hall back into the kitchen, he saw smoke rising from the oven.

  “Shit,” he muttered, then rushed toward the oven door, coughing through the smoke.

  When Melissa arrived at his apartment five minutes later, both the living room and kitchen were filled with smoke, but, thankfully, the beeping had stopped. He swung open the front door. When she saw him, she gaped.

  “What the hell . . .” she murmured, squinting at him. “What the hell happened to you?”

  He loudly grumbled and threw out his arm that wasn’t in a sling. “I burned dinner. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, I can smell it,” Melissa said with a slow nod as she followed him inside and shut the door behind her. “But I’m not talking about dinner. I’m talking about you.” She reached out and ran her hand over his shirt. “You’re soaking wet, Jay! You look like you took a shower with your clothes on. Do you have a fever or somethin’?”

  He looked down at himself. “I just . . . give me a few minutes while I change my clothes, okay?”

  She gradually nodded. “Okay.”

  When he returned to the living room fifteen minutes later, wearing a T-shirt and drawstring basketball shorts, he found Melissa reclining on his couch, watching television. The remote was in her hand. She sat upright when he entered the room.

  “You’re back!” she said with a smile.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry again about dinner.”

  “No apologies needed. Lucky for you, I had a big lunch,” she joked when he walked around the sofa and took the cushion beside her. She turned off the television and leaned her elbow against the sofa cushion, propping up her head. She nudged his knee with her own. “You still didn’t tell me what happened though. Why were you sweating like that? What the hell did I stumble into, Jay?”

  He shook his head, preparing to tell her a lie, to give an excuse, but he could feel her assessing him with those dark, penetrating eyes. He took a shaky breath. “I was . . . I was having a panic attack. That’s why I burned dinner.”

  “A panic attack? Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “I’ve had a few of them since . . . since the shooting. I was hoping I was getting better, but I guess not. The cops didn’t believe me when I told them who I thought was behind it. It wasn’t that kid. I know who it was—but they didn’t believe me. So in the back of my mind I keep thinking, what if it happens again?”

  She reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t know you were going through this. You should’ve said something!”

  “What were you supposed to do if I told you?”

  “I don’t know!” She dropped her hand from his shoulder. “Recommend a good therapist? Be your panic attack buddy to talk you back down?”

  “Thanks,” he said dryly and gave a morose laugh. “The worst part is, I can’t even find peace in my own damn home! Every time I walk down the hall . . . every time I step in my bedroom, I think about the moment that I got shot. That shit pisses me off! A person should be able to lie in bed without feeling like they’re dying, right?”

  “So then you need to go back to the cops. You’ve got no other choice.”

  “Go back to them and tell them what, Lissa? I already told them I didn’t think the kid was working alone. I told them who I thought was behind it. The detective literally laughed in my face.”

  “I don’t know, but you need to make them listen. You can’t live like this!”

  She was right. He couldn’t. But how was he supposed to convince the detective differently?

  “I wish you would tell me what you’re tangled in. It might help. That’s what friends are for, right? Offloading stuff.”

  He stubbornly shook his head.

  “But—”

  “No, Lissa! You’re better off not knowing. Trust me.”

  The last person who had found out about Mayor Johnson’s dirty dealings had ended up dead. An attempt had been made on Jamal’s life, too. The only person who had managed to remain unscathed was Derrick, and Jamal suspected that was only because he had no connection to Derrick anymore.

  If he told Melissa the truth and it got back to the mayor, her life would be in danger. He was sure of it, and he couldn’t stomach the notion of something happening to her.

  “I don’t like being kept in the dark,” she said. There was a harder edge to her voice.

  Kept in the dark . . . He knew she was talking about Derrick and how he had carried on an affair behind her back. It had broken her heart to find out the truth.

  “I know. But I’m not doing this to lie to you or hurt you. I’m doing it to protect you,” he argued.

  “Different reason. Same result, Jay.”

  “I’m not blowing you off. I’m not dismissing you,” he whispered. “I would tell you the truth . . . I want to tell you, Lissa, but I can’t. I just can’t! If that means you being pissed at me—so be it. At least you’re safe. That’s all that matters.”

  Melissa raised a hand to his cheek. “You’re really not gonna tell me, are you?”

  “No,” he said firmly.

  “Fine.” She lowered her hand. Her body language changed; she shifted away from him and went stiff. She stared at the blank screen of his television. “Have it your way, but I thought we were here for each other. I thought you trusted me.”

  “We are and I do,” he assured her, reaching out for her with his working arm, drawing her close again. “And if I really had it my way, Lissa, things would be very different.”

  He wouldn’t feel like he was a hunted animal. He would’ve quit his job as deputy mayor months ago before it all went left. If he had his way, Melissa would be his woman, not his “friend.”

  But you can’t always get what you want, he thought.

  “Do you believe me?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Do you trust me?”

  She nodded again. “Yeah, I do.”

  She gazed into his eyes, leaned forward, and kissed him. It was like a salve. It didn’t take all his anxiety and apprehension away, but it came close. Jamal kissed her back, sliding his tongue inside her mouth. They kissed for several minutes until she pulled away.

  “Well, I obviously can’t fix whatever is going on with you, and I don’t think I can banish your panic attacks,” she said, as she stood from the sofa and tugged her shirt over her head, revealing the black lace bra underneath, “but I can definitely give you a more positive association for your bedroom.” She tossed her shirt to the hardwood floor. “Come on.”

  Jamal quickly pushed himself up from the sofa and followed her out of his living room. “You’d be willing to do that?” he asked, now grinning.

  She nodded as they strolled down the hallway. She unclasped her jeans and lowered the zipper. “I think I could make the sacrifice.”

  He looked down at his sling. “We gotta work around my arm though. Do you mind?”

  She laughed again, turned to him, and lowered her hand so that she was cupping his dick though his drawstring shorts. At her firm touch, he instantly felt a twinge. His heart began to race for a very different reason. “As long as everything below the waist still works, we’re good, Jay.”

  She then turned and strolled into his bedroom, pushing her jeans down her hips. He wasn’t far behind.

  Chapter 10

  Ricky

  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .

  Ricky remembered reading that line in a book in high school, but he hadn’t paid attention in English class long enough to recall the title or the author.

  It was one of those dead white dudes, he thought absently as he changed his son’s soiled diaper, learning from a previous pee mishap to get the diaper on first before he started fiddling with the tabs to seal it closed.

/>   The line from a book seemed appropriate for his life right now. It was the best of times and the worst of times for him. For the past month, since Miles’s birth, Ricky teetered between the best he’d felt in months—maybe years—and a growing sense of foreboding, like storm clouds where gathering in the distance, getting bigger and bigger, closer and closer, ready to dump rain and lightning on his head.

  “All right, big man,” he said, gently patting Miles’s round tummy and snapping closed his striped sleeveless onesie. “I think we’re good.”

  Miles gurgled in reply as he gazed up at Ricky with wide doe eyes like his mother’s, making Ricky smile. Ricky lifted him from the changing table and carried him from their bedroom down the hall to the eat-in kitchen.

  Ricky wished their lives could stay like this. Their little family was suspended in a protective bubble of domesticity—a life Ricky hadn’t had since his grandmother and sister were alive.

  Mary regularly brought Ricky, Simone, and Miles enough food, household items, and baby supplies with the money Ricky gave her so they rarely left the house they were renting from her. They also didn’t get any visitors besides Mary. She had stopped by a few times in the past few weeks, once to take Miles to a pediatrician in town who agreed to examine and immunize the infant for a thousand dollars in cash, no questions asked. Miles was headed to his second checkup today. Once again, his parents couldn’t go with him.

  “There he is,” Simone said as Ricky walked into the kitchen. “I told Mary you were getting him ready.”

  “Oh, look at him! He’s getting so chunky,” Mary gushed with a smile as Ricky handed him to her. “I love it!”

  “Everything should be in the diaper bag.” Simone pointed to the gray polka-dot bag that now dangled on Mary’s shoulder. “Change of diapers. Some breast milk that I pumped a couple of hours ago. Baby wipes. He’ll probably sleep most of the car ride.”

  “I don’t know,” Ricky said with a frown. “He’s been kinda fussy today. He might not sleep.”

  Mary waved off their concerns as she turned toward the front door. “Don’t worry, folks. He’ll be fine! We’ll be back before noon—less than two hours. I’ll let you know what the doctor says.”

  “Thanks, Mary,” they replied in unison as they walked her to the door.

  He and Simone stood on the porch, watching as she loaded their son into his car seat. They waved a minute later when she pulled off.

  “I know it’s only two hours, but I hate being away from him,” Simone whispered, watching as Mary’s sedan kicked up dirt as she drove off the four-acre property. “I wish I could go with her. I wish I could take him myself.”

  “I know,” he said, rubbing her shoulders. “I do, too, baby.”

  “How long do we keep doing this?” She turned to him. “How long do we hide?”

  He exhaled. “As long as it takes, until we know it’s safe.”

  And he couldn’t say for sure when that would be. He knew Dolla Dolla might still be looking for Simone, since she’d been the only surviving witness to two murders. The idea of the drug kingpin or his goons finding her weighed heavily on him. Two to three times a day, Ricky would stand on the front porch and stare warily in the distance when he thought he heard a car approaching. Each time, it proved to be his imagination, but he didn’t know if a day would come when it wasn’t.

  He watched now as Simone’s shoulders slumped at his answer. She turned away from the dirt road and headed back inside with her head bowed. He lingered on the porch a minute longer before joining her inside the house. Ricky looked around him. The house seemed achingly quiet without Miles—his cries, his gurgles, and the tinkling of his mobile over his baby swing. He had become their nucleus; they orbited around him.

  Miles dictated their schedule from when he napped, needed a feeding, or needed to be changed. He still wasn’t sleeping through the night, so they would take turns waking up every three hours to feed him or just walk him around their bedroom and rock him back to sleep. When he was asleep they talked, watched television together, or made love.

  Ricky had been nervous the first time they had sex after Miles’s birth. He worried whether they should wait longer, but by the third week, they both couldn’t resist the urge anymore. Now they made love regularly, languishing in the comfort and delight of one another’s bodies. Though they had been rowdy in the past, they’d learned how to keep silent with a slumbering infant in the bassinet beside them or in the next room. The best moments for Ricky nowadays weren’t slamming her against the wall or the rush when he came. It was after they made love, with Simone naked and asleep in his arms and Miles asleep in his bassinet.

  Ricky would stare at the ceiling and think, “I wish it could stay this way forever.” But he would always feel that annoying, unseen clock ticking, telling him this tranquil time would be coming to an end soon.

  He felt it even more when he heard his cell phone buzz. His heart rate kicked into overdrive when he got calls from Dolla Dolla, asking him what was up.

  “Where you been, bruh?” Dolla Dolla had asked him two weeks ago. “I haven’t seen you at the spot lately.”

  “I’ve just been busy. Been hustlin’. That’s all,” Ricky had lied.

  “You know what they say about all work and no play, nigga. Stop by tonight. Let me hook you up with some bitches that’ll set your mind right.”

  “I want to, but I can’t tonight,” Ricky had said. “I got some shit lined up. I’ll try to stop by next week though, if I can.”

  Ricky had held his breath when he heard silence on the other end. He didn’t usually tell Dolla Dolla no, and he knew his business partner didn’t like hearing the word.

  “All right, nigga,” Dolla Dolla had said. “Your ass better stop by or I’m gonna start to get offended. And you don’t want to offend me.”

  “No, I don’t, Dolla,” he said, feeling like he was eating shit even as he’d said it.

  At least Dolla could be held off though. Detectives Ramsey and Dominguez, who Ricky had been working with as an informant since the end of last year, still expected him to do regular check-ins with them in the city and he hadn’t done one in a month.

  “Where the fuck are you, Ricky?” Dominguez had barked into his phone only a week ago. “You’re supposed to report back to us! We stopped by your apartment and you weren’t there. You understand what you agreed to, don’t you? We can still throw your ass in jail for a very long time. Call us back!”

  And Simone had officially been listed as a missing person. Every now and then her smiling face would flash on the television screen during a news broadcast asking for information on her whereabouts. It was surreal. If it was up to Ricky, she would remain missing. He didn’t want Dolla Dolla to know she was still alive.

  He walked down the hall into their bedroom and saw her sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing in particular.

  “It won’t be like this forever,” he said, leaning against the door frame.

  She glanced up at him. “No, it won’t. But it’s not gonna end until Dolla’s gone—or I am.”

  “Don’t say that,” he replied tightly.

  He didn’t want to even contemplate the possibility of her ending up like Skylar and her mother.

  She lowered her eyes to her clasped hands. “Sometimes I think about leaving the country. It might be better for you . . . for me. It would probably be better for Miles, too. Just hopping on a plane with him and disappearing to the Caribbean or Canada or Europe. Change my name. Start all over again.”

  At those words, a knot formed in the pit of his stomach. He had thought about it, too. About sending them away, but the idea made him feel the same sense of loss as when his sister and grandmother died.

  She shook her head. “But I can’t do it, Ricky. I can’t! I can’t do this all alone. On the run with a one-month-old?”

  “You don’t have to.” He walked toward her and sat down on the bed beside her. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “I’m he
re. I’m always here, baby.”

  “You don’t know that.” When she looked up at him, he could see her eyes were filled to the brim with tears. “Anything can happen. We’ve been separated before. It could easily happen again.”

  “And I’ll track you down. I did it before.” He leaned in and kissed her brow. “I’m not gonna let anything happen to you two. You hear me? I swear it on my life.”

  She raised a hand to his bearded cheek and the tears finally spilled over. He tried to kiss them away as she clung to him. The kisses shifted to her mouth and they deepened. Within minutes, he’d peeled off her clothes and they were making love. Her tears were replaced with whimpers and moans. Two hours later, Ricky disentangled his limbs from hers and rose from the bed. Simone rolled onto her stomach, still lost in slumber. He glanced at the clock on their night table and saw it was 12:19. He frowned.

  Mary should’ve been back by now, he thought. She’d said the trip would take less than two hours.

  He tugged on a pair of boxers and jeans and walked in bare feet to the front door. He opened it and leaned against the railing of the front porch, peering at the acres and acres of open land surrounded by trees. No car was in sight. His frown deepened and he turned around and headed back inside the house.

  One hour went by and then the next. Still no Mary. They called the cell phone number she’d given them to reach her in case of emergencies, but there was no response. By five p.m. they’d left a half dozen messages.

  “Something’s wrong,” Simone said after she hung up the eighth time. She started pacing the living room. “Something happened. That has to be it!”

  He stubbornly shook his head. “You don’t know that.”

  “What else could it be?” she cried. “She hasn’t called us back! She hasn’t shown up! Something must have happened to her!” Simone slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, God, Ricky. What happened to her? What’s happened to our baby?”