by A. J. Downey
“Welcome back,” I whispered and she smiled, giggling, covering her mouth with her hands.
I took my hand off from over her calming heartbeat and used it to pull her hands away from her mouth.
“Don’t hide that smile from me,” I murmured, swallowing hard. “Not now, not ever, mmkay?”
She smiled and bit her bottom lip and went from shy to seductive nymph outta one of her paintings.
“Okay,” she whispered back and reached for me.
We kissed, and I gotta say, my fate was sealed with it. Because damned if I wasn’t destined to love this woman until the end of time.
“Stay the night with me,” she murmured against my lips and I smiled.
“Baby, if that’s what you want, I ain’t going anywhere.”
She laughed, the sound, one of pure, unadulterated joy, and pulled me into her arms, resting my head against her chest, ear over her heart and I was content to just lay in the circle of her arms and listen to it beat in her breast, sending life coursing through her veins. I honestly felt like her heartbeat sent it coursing through mine too, somehow.
18
Elka…
I stuck out my bottom lip in a pout and said, “I don’t want you to go.”
He laughed slightly and put a hand to my cheek, and I turned my face into it, planting a kiss on the heel of his hand. The smile he gave me was so full of emotion, so full of care.
“I’ll be back,” he murmured. “Don’t you worry about that.”
“Is it bad that I am?” I asked as he folded me into his arms.
“Yeah,” he said simply. “Whoever put it in your head that you aren’t good enough? I’d like to have some words with ‘em.”
“Some people just need a high five… in the face, with a chair.” My voice was muffled where my face was pressed against his chest and his laughter vibrated through my whole body.
“You ain’t lyin’,” he said.
He kissed the back of my head where I had it tucked and bowed against his chest and he let me go. The step I took back from him was a reluctant one.
“You take it easy today, now. Y’hear?” He fixed me with a look, and I smiled a little sadly.
“Might go back to bed,” I said honestly and he nodded.
I’d found him dressed and in my kitchen brewing coffee and now it was time to say goodbye for now. I hugged myself on my little front stoop in my satin robe and nodded.
“Think I’ll paint, and I have dinner with my dad later.”
“Well, you call me when you get home, okay?”
I nodded.
“What are you off to do?” I asked curiously and he reached out and brushed my cheek with his thumb.
“Club meeting later, work out with the hose boys for now – standing appointment.”
“Ah,” I nodded. “Sounds eventful.”
He smirked at my sarcasm, gave me one final kiss goodbye and went over to his bike. I leaned against my doorjamb and watched him go with a deep, slow, rush of breath that was somewhere between a sigh and meant to decompress me.
I reached back and pulled on the back of my neck, rolling my head back and fixing my eyes on the eave over my apartment door.
I was slightly torn between sense and sensibility… On the one hand, a relationship with Oz could be a really bad idea given how we met, on the other hand there was a much bigger part of me that wanted to throw caution to the wind and just say fuck it.
Oz didn’t just make me feel good, he made me feel whole. Like despite the Shakespearean tragedy that resembled my life as of late, he made me feel like I had my shit together and that I was okay.
I dipped back into my apartment and closed the door on the sun-soaked sidewalk outside, locking the door behind me out of habit and returning to my kitchen. I poured and doctored up a second cup of coffee and drifted from room to room contemplating what exactly to do with the rest of my Sunday before I was due at my dad’s.
The answer was that I did go back to bed for a bit, napped for an hour, maybe two, before getting up, showering, and putting on some paint clothes to work on Mia’s portrait.
Instead of the deep melancholy I’d felt every time I’d sat down since her death, I was surprised to find that a sort of hope and a deep affection had taken the negative emotion’s place. I dipped my brush into some pigments I laid out on my pallet and said, “Well, Mia… it looks like something’s changed. I don’t know if it’s for the better yet, or if it will be more of just the same, but for now, things are almost alright. What do you think about that, huh?”
Of course, there wasn’t any answer but the feelings I was having didn’t diminish in the slightest so there was that.
I painted until the hour before I had to leave, giving myself plenty of time to clean up, get dressed, and get to my dad’s two bus routes away.
He opened the door with arms thrown wide and said, “Elka!”
I hugged him tight and said, “Hi, Daddy.”
We sat at the dining room table and I was grateful not to be moving around too much. My body ached from so much good sex the night before, my hips a little angry at the unfamiliar treatment. I wasn’t exactly used to spreading my legs so far.
It was slightly awkward trying to hide my discomfort, afraid that it was glaring across my face, in my eyes, as bright as a red neon sign. I definitely wasn’t ready to explain things yet. I didn’t even know how I was going to broach the subject with my dad.
“So, what did you do yesterday?” he asked after a lull in the conversation over our food.
“Mm, I actually took a trip to D.C.”
“Oh, yeah? What’d you go there for?”
“Um, actually, Oz – I mean Officer Jones took me to the National Gallery of Art. They had an exhibit featuring Verrocchio.”
“Oh? That’s nice,” he said, a wrinkle of concern in his voice and I thought to myself, Here we go…
“What’s wrong with that, Dad?” I asked.
“What? Nothing! I said it was nice!”
I gave him a flat look and he had the grace to look embarrassed. “You… you spend a lot of time with Officer Jones?” he asked.
I shrugged. “We’re friends… sort of.” I felt so awful for downplaying it, but I was so afraid of things going south with my dad so soon after mending fences so to speak. It was frustrating because I knew he only meant well, but I wasn’t a little girl anymore. By the same token, I didn’t exactly have a good track record when it came to dating and relationships. Then again, my family had only ever seen what my ex had wanted them to see.
“Elka?”
I looked up.
“Yeah, Dad?”
He smiled at me and shook his head amused.
“You must really like Officer Jones.”
“He likes to be called Oz,” I mumbled.
“Ah, the Great and Powerful?” he asked, and I smiled and shook my head.
“No, after some television show, I guess. About a prison, because he’s a jailer.”
My dad nodded slowly and said, “Never heard of it.”
I grinned. “Me either.”
“You see him a lot?” he asked.
“Once or twice a week since he crashed through my front door,” I said and gave him a fixed look. Again, my dad had the grace to look embarrassed.
“Ah, yes, that…” he said, trailing off.
“Would it bother you?” I asked carefully.
He considered me from across the table.
“What are you asking me?”
“I-I-if Oz and I were friends or maybe more than just friends?” I stared at my dad and felt two inches tall just for asking.
“Because he is black or one of the police?” he asked.
“Um… both?” I asked quietly.
My dad sighed and I knew he knew I was thinking about Oma. His mother, my grandmother. She was long dead but had strong opinions on both the police and people of color. My dad looked surprised for a moment, then angry, then… dismayed.
He
set down his fork and folded his hands which shook with some unnamed emotion, folding them in his lap.
“Since when have you ever seen me, or your mother, treat any man or woman different from the next?” he asked gently.
“Never,” I said quietly. “Although, to be fair, you and mom weren’t exactly friends with many people of color, either.”
His head jerked back slightly, and he blinked. “I had friends from work,” he said defensively, and I cocked my head. He blushed and I know he knew we were both thinking of the same man. Frankie Johnstone was white, with a thick Boston accent, and unabashedly both sexist and racist and my dad and the rest of the guys from work always brushed his bad behavior off, stating ‘that’s just Frankie.’
“Daddy, your friends from work that would come to summer barbecues and our Oktoberfest celebration… none of them were any different in looks from you, or I, or Frankie Johnstone from work.” And as Mamma had always been swift to point out, most of the men that had come from work to those things weren’t my father’s friends.
My dad sighed and sat back in his seat.
“Your mother is the reason you and Mia turned out so well. The reason you turned a blind eye to such matters as color,” he admitted freely and the shard of truth in that statement pained me.
“Not blind,” I said softly. “Just colorblind, I suppose. We always knew the matters were there, are still here, but Mamma always told us that in the grand scheme of things, God created all of us in His image and that God didn’t make mistakes, He just had a fantastic love for every color and hue and thus painted us to match the land.”
My dad smiled, ruefully, chagrinned. “That sounds like something your mother would say.”
“So, it wouldn’t be a problem?” I asked, feeling like I was on pins and needles, knowing that pressing for an answer might not be good, but not knowing the answer, for me, would be much worse.
“I just want you to be happy,” he said and worried his napkin between his hands.
“I want to be happy, too,” I told him. “I mean, I’m tired, was tired even before Mia, of being this constant misery muffin and with Oz?” I swallowed hard and fixed my eyes on my plate. “I know it doesn’t seem right with how we met, and I know it probably doesn’t even seem very fair given it’s only been a few weeks but… I’m happy when he’s around.” I fell silent for a moment and said with more conviction, “I’m happy when I’m around him. Things are different.”
My father nodded sagely, and an understanding passed between us.
“Do you think you love him?” he asked.
I did, but I wasn’t quite ready to say it out loud. Not yet. It just didn’t seem right.
“I don’t know,” I said quietly. “I think given more time it’s more than a possibility.”
My dad smiled at that and nodded, his look saying that he knew. He also knew that I had always been the more reserved of his two daughters. The more private of the two. I felt a flicker of sadness then. My voice of doubt making an unwanted appearance, speaking in low slithering tones from the back of my mind… how awful it must be for him to be left with you.
“I just want you to be happy, baby. I will take whatever makes you so and will welcome it with open arms.” I smiled my eyes watering a bit. The voice in the back of my mind retreating back into the dark with its lies.
“I love you, Daddy. I just want to make you proud.”
“Oh, Elka. You were and always have been my pride,” he said and for the second time this week we added some extra salt to our meal through our tears.
19
Oz…
“Hey, hey, where you been at the last couple of weeks?” Skids asked as I breezed through the door at the last possible minute for the monthly mandatory club meeting. We all tried to meet at least once a month, the whole club, and while it was a fuckin’ struggle, we usually all made it to the monthly meet. If we couldn’t do it, work was pretty much the only reason good enough and if it so happened that we all made it to a particular weekly meet that fell before the monthly one we had set, then we counted it as our monthly.
I slid into my chair at the table and said, “Oh, you know – doin’ a little of this and a little of that.”
“Tell me, this and that happened to be named Elka?” Golden gave me a savage grin and I felt more than a little protective of Ellie. She was too good, too shy, and still so broken. While some of her pieces were goin’ back together, she was still so fragile, and I didn’t know if she would be cool with sharin’ her business with this pack of jokers. Not until she knew them like I did.
“C’mon, man. Don’t do that. My business is my business,” I said defensively.
“Ooo, good call Golden, looks like you’re on to something.” Backdraft winked at me from across the table, leaning way back in his chair, his hands folded behind his head.
“C’mon, guys. Leave it alone,” Skids rumbled.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Girl’s been through enough for the time being.”
Yale fixed me with a scowl from down the table saying, “I agree, so do you think this is wise?”
“Slow your roll there, Turbo. You just go on and stay your ass in the truck, now,” I said and he held up his hands in surrender. “Unless your ass knows something I don’t,” I said and my brother, the prosecutor, looked uneasy.
“Nothing I am at liberty to discuss.”
“Shit, what’s that about, Yale?” Narcos demanded.
“Nothin’ he can talk about; didn’t you just hear the man?” I demanded, taking up for him, even while I was saddled with this awful sinking feeling.
“Let’s table this discussion for now,” Skids said gruffly. “To order.”
To order. The opening words to all our serious meets. Personal stuff got shoved aside and it was all club business. For now, that meant the Little Havana block party. We all attended, I mean that was my roots. Every summer the neighborhood in Indigo City declared as Little Havana had a barbecue and block party but part of having a block party meant that the residents in that hood were on the hook for their own security in addition to paying the city to close down streets and all.
Most of the residents of that hood were too poor for both, so as my act of charity for the month of August, which was the one I drew out of the hat, we off-duty cops of the Indigo Knights volunteered our time. In exchange, we got good food, an endless supply of cold non-alcoholic drinks, and we got to listen to some of the finest live entertainment and DJ’s the Cuban community of this city has to offer.
It was more than a fair trade, and I was looking forward to bringing Ellie this year as it was in just a couple of weeks.
All the guys brought their women that had women last year, and all of them had a good time. We were all looking forward to it again this year and the guys were taking the security duties in shifts of three to have a chance to indulge. We just needed to iron out the logistics of everything.
“This thing keeps gettin’ bigger every year,” Reflash was sayin and he said it with a grin. He was a Cuban immigrant back when he was just a kid. Didn’t become naturalized until he was eighteen, but he celebrated his heritage hard – like me, even though I didn’t have much of a connection to it growing up.
My pops had never talked about it and he was where I got it from. After he died when I was a kid, I’d started digging for my roots, tryin’ to keep that connection to his past, and by extension my past, alive.
We wrapped business and the guys fell off into pockets of talk, but my gaze fixed on Yale. He was starin’ back at me and it was an uncomfortable weight to his gaze.
“How ‘bout you got somethin’ to say, you just say it, bro?” I said and the rest of the chapel fell silent.
“I would if I could, Oz. You know that.” Yale looked fairly resigned and I didn’t like this fuckin’ game. I didn’t like it one bit.
“You gotta give me a heads up, bro.”
He nodded and looked at the rest of the club, asking, “Give us the room?”
>
“Whoa, there, Yale. You’ve never asked us for something like that before. Is Oz in some kind of trouble?” Driller demanded, leaning his elbows on the table, one fist inside the other, propping up his chin.
“I know,” Yale said and again with that look like he was torn, the resignation visibly weighting his shoulders.
“Come on, now, boys. Ain’t nothing against us. You know how the system works. Let’s not put Yale between a rock and a hard place.” Skids got up from the table and gave us both a nod.
“Thanks, guys,” I said coolly, but my hackles were up. Something was going down and I was at the center of it and I didn’t know what that something was. I didn’t like it. I don’t know anybody who would like it and I was hoping when it was down to just me and Yale, he could give me just a little bit of some insight.
As soon as the door swung shut, scraping against the lintel in its signature style, the noise of the restaurant outside cut off, Yale drew a deep breath. Without any real preamble he said, “Look, the only thing I can tell you is that there were some… inconsistencies discovered in the mandatory review process for any officer-involved shooting at the coroner’s office.”
“Fuck me,” I said, leaning back heavily in my chair. “What inconsistencies?” I demanded.
“I can’t tell you that. I shouldn’t have even told you that much. The review should wrap up sometime this week, but Oz… we’re going to come talk to you.”
“We?”
“The prosecutor’s office and IAB,” he said.
“The rat squad is sniffing around this?” I asked and recoiled.
“Yale, I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.
“I know that,” he said, and I believed him that he believed me which was something, but it sure as shit wasn’t everything.
“They looking to jam my ass up?” I demanded.
“No. Nobody wants that, Oz. I don’t foresee any criminal charges or any disciplinary actions against you, at this point.”