The upper hallway smelled of chemicals and sweat infused with the faint odor of urine wafting from doorways. There came sounds of meaningless clicking, and television sets reverberated on the hard surfaces of the walls, ceilings, and floors.
The door to his room was open. He lay in the bed and she sat there next to him holding his limp, insensate hand.
“Toni,” Sovereign whispered.
She was startled and stood up from the metal chair.
“How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “I was just walking and I remembered my doorman saying something about him being brought here.”
“Why would you come to see him?”
Sovereign glanced at the man in the hospital bed. There were bruises on Lemuel’s face and tubes in his mouth and nostrils. An IV needle connected to a clear drip bag was stuck in a vein of his right arm, and various electrodes and wires ran from the bedside to a large, many-screened monitoring device. The lights in the machine throbbed like the electronic representation of a heart.
“I didn’t mean to cause this,” James said.
“It’s like a dream or a movie,” Toni Loam murmured. “Like something that happens, that was meant to happen even though you nevah wanted it.”
“You love him,” Sovereign stated.
She looked away from both men and Sovereign felt a faint smile etch itself on his lips.
“I should go,” he said.
She returned to her chair.
“Are you coming later?” he asked.
“I... I don’t think so.”
Late that night the phone rang. Sovereign was aware of being alone in the bed. He was thinking, as the phone was ringing, that he’d had unprotected sex with the woman who was no longer in his bed — not the night before but in the morning. It had seemed so natural that he didn’t even question it — at the time.
“Hello?”
“Sovereign.”
“Drum, I didn’t expect to hear from you for at least a year — if ever.”
“I looked you up online, Brother. Damn. You’re in big trouble, man.”
“Could be.”
“Maybe you better come on down, JJ. Down here a man can get lost. At least, he’ll never be found.”
“I don’t have any trouble getting lost.”
“You know what I mean, Sovereign. Once the man is on your ass he gonna stay there like a dog on a scent.”
“Is that why you never came back?”
“We talkin’ ’bout you, man.”
“Why don’t you come home, Eddie? Come on home. You said you always wanted to live in New York.”
“That boat has sailed, brother.”
“The world is round. That boat could be coming back to harbor.”
The laugh in Sovereign’s ear was familiar, half-forgotten. It brought him all the way back to the threshold of childhood.
“You changed, Sovy,” Drum-Eddie James said. “You sound like you lettin’ the world in.”
“Will you come?”
“Mama said that you haven’t seen her since two weeks after the FBI came lookin’ for me.”
“You come here and we’ll go see her together.”
“Take care a’ yourself, JJ,” Drum said before breaking the connection.
At eleven twenty-seven that morning Sovereign James was at his desk deep into the applications of potential employees. Just one day back and his desk was already piled with work.
He enjoyed leafing through the résumés. For some reason his job seemed easier and clearer than it had ever been before. There was challenging information to decipher but no longer was he scrutinizing the words for secret codes about gender, race, and revolution. The forms were filled with truths and lies, hopes and hapless fatalism.
Hardin Pope had attended high school in Virginia and college in Atlanta. He ended his bout with higher learning at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. There he started out as a mathematician but changed his course to modular systems design. When Mr. Pope came in for his interview, Sovereign decided, the proper question to ask would be why he changed his major.
He scribbled that note on the form, placed it on the interview pile, and was reaching for another folder when someone knocked on his door. He wondered if Shelly was away from her desk. The young receptionist often was in the toilet or down at the staff kitchen flirting with the men from the mailroom.
“Come in,” he said.
The phone rang.
Darius Maynard opened the door and entered, followed by six other employees: Donna Price from accounting; Lola Alifah, who managed the new accounts in the marketing department; Winston Shatz, the security supervisor; Warren Chisel; LeAnne Moore; and finally Bob Simon, assistant to the vice president in charge of operations. Four of the men and Lola carried plastic red folding chairs.
Sovereign smiled. He had never before seen the seven African-American employees, handpicked by him, gathered together. And even though he now questioned the validity of his actions he still felt a parental kinship.
“Mr. James,” Darius began.
“Shelly?” Sovereign called out.
The phone rang for the third time.
“Shelly?” No answer.
Sovereign held up a hand to Darius. The others were settling in.
“My receptionist stepped away,” James said. “I’ll just take this and then switch it over to the automated system... Hello?”
“Sovereign.”
“Hey, Toni. I’m surprised to hear from you.”
“Lem’s mother called my moms last night. She was cryin’ ovah him,” the young woman said, bulling her way headlong into a speech that she had obviously practiced. “She said that he was dyin’ and that it was because a’ me. So that’s why I went down there. And when I saw him it hurt my heart. I know that he jumped you. I know that you went crazy because he attacked you in your own house. But when you walked in that hospital room and he was lyin’ there I felt so bad that I couldn’t even think about bein’ wit’ you. That’s why I didn’t come ovah...”
“Toni, I—”
“I know I shoulda called you or sumpin’,” she said, cutting him off. “But I was hurtin’ and I didn’t know how to talk. I mean, I was only thirteen when I first started seein’ Lem. It’s like I’ve known him since the first day I was a woman. But I don’t wanna let you go, Sovereign. I don’t want you to change the locks and tell the doormen to send me away. I know I should have called but I couldn’t, but I can’t just stop seein’ you neither...”
“I’m in the middle of a meeting,” Sovereign managed to say. “Come on by tonight and we’ll have dinner and talk about it.”
“You not just sayin’ that?”
“Come over at seven and we’ll go out for a nice French dinner.”
There was the pressure of tears behind his eyes, but Sovereign held them back. The group had settled in their chairs. He wondered what they were doing there and why the child’s words moved him so. These thoughts blended together, strained for unity, but failed.
“Mr. James,” Darius said again.
“I’m all yours, Mr. Maynard.” He hung up the phone and hit the buttons necessary to channel future calls to the answering system.
“We all got together last night after work and talked about what you told me yesterday,” Darius began. “But just to get it right... You said that you held us black job applicants to a higher standard.”
Sovereign took in a deep breath through his nostrils. He gazed around at the various shades of his secret army, wondering if maybe this was a coup or a betrayal. Then he considered the inflated nature of his thoughts. Regardless... events had taken him beyond caring about Techno-Sym and his future, or his past, there.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”
“Why?” Lola Alifah demanded. She was dark skinned, forty, with ringlets for a hairstyle, two children at home, and no husband. She’d gone to Columbia but Sovereign hadn’t held that against her.