“Drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“How’ve you been?”
“Could you sit down?” she asked.
Sovereign lowered himself onto the white sofa and clasped his hands.
“How have you been, Toni?”
“Okay.”
“It’s been a while.”
“I’m back together with Lem.”
Sovereign’s nod was almost imperceptible.
“You not surprised?” she asked.
“He was making his play on the witness stand. Are they going to try him for the attacks on me?”
“Only if you make a complaint.”
“Is that why you’re here, to keep me from putting him in the crosshairs?”
“I’m sorry, Sovereign, but you know I been with him what seems like my whole life. And he’s really tryin’ this time.”
They sat in silence for a while then.
“I’m not after your man, Toni. If the DA comes to me I might testify, but they haven’t called yet.”
“Lem’s sorry for what he did.”
“Is that all?”
“Do you want to go to bed?”
“Um.”
“I still like you,” she said almost dispassionately. “And I owe you at least that much.”
“What would Lemuel think about that?”
“He the one send me here to talk to you. I don’t have to tell him nuthin’.”
They sat for at least five minutes before rising at the same moment.
“I’m pregnant,” Toni said, fifteen seconds after Sovereign had come.
“That’s kinda quick, isn’t it?”
“I’m not jokin’,” she said. “All that foolin’ around we did when we thought we was goin’ to prison.”
“Does Lemuel know?”
“I’m’a tell him it’s his.”
Sovereign thought about his grandmother then, the woman he never met. Maybe Eagle wanted a child and she realized he’d never make one. Maybe this was the only way Toni could give Sovereign her love.
Sovereign James sat in the open window of his apartment after Toni left. He was waiting to see her walking down the street toward the turn to her train. The window was open wide and a strong breeze was blowing over him. He sat there teetering on the ninth floor, thinking about his mother and father, brother and sister, about all the years he’d spent working in the shadows of race and capitalism. He wanted to call Drum-Eddie but he was ashamed at his weakness. He wanted Toni to stay with him but he knew that Lemuel would always have first claim on her heart.
Maybe, he thought, if he had killed Lemuel... But no. Everything that happened was supposed to be: his grandfather Eagle shooting himself, Drum-Eddie robbing that bank.
Sovereign noticed that a few people in the building across the way and one or two people in the street were looking up at him. He was leaning forward, pretty far out, but his left foot was curled around the leg of the desk behind him.
A woman pointed at him.
The bell from the front desk sounded.
Toni appeared on the street below, walking slowly, gripping her cranberry-colored bag.
Sovereign leaned out a bit farther.
A woman from below screamed something.
Half an hour before, Toni had experienced a powerful orgasm riding on top of Sovereign. He’d held her hands down at her sides and bucked underneath.
“Do it, daddy,” she’d uttered. “Do it hard.”
And now there she was, pregnant with his child, walking down the street. They’d never see each other again. He’d never hold her or sit next to her while she laughed at some stupid comedy.
His foot let go of the heavy oaken leg.
“Don’t do it!” a man from across the way cried.
Toni turned and looked up.
Without a thought Sovereign let his weight fall. He would sail to the ground, gaining speed as he plummeted. He would hit with such impact that most of his bones would shatter. There’d be no pain, no regret, no convalescence. Death would be like his life had been, only without the distractions.
Screams attended the sway. The bell from downstairs was ringing. And then suddenly, in the middle of the fall, Sovereign’s body stopped its downward trend. Looking up and to the left he saw that his hand — of its own volition, it seemed — had darted out and grabbed the windowsill. His muscles in his forearm were taut like metal cables, and his fingers crunched the slender slats of wood.
His hand had decided to stop him. He wanted to die, to fall, to end it here and now. But this was not to be.
Toni was watching; maybe she called out.
His hand had saved him as if it were a friend or relative or maybe even a disdaining cop.
Hanging half the way out of his apartment window, Sovereign grinned.
He pulled himself back in and went to the living room, where he sat in the red chair, realizing that his old life had ended in that window and the new life had not yet begun.