“ Damn, girl.”
“What?”
“I’m about to bust.”
“You afraid you’re gonna mess up the seats?”
“More like your hair.”
“Quit boasting.”
“I’m sayin, I’m a young man. I got velocity.”
“C’mon, let’s get in the back.”
“For real?”
She kissed him. “Come on, Chris.”
Afterward, they went to dinner at a pho house in Wheaton, because they liked the soup and it was cheap. The restaurant was in a commercial strip of Laundromats and Kosher and Chinese grocers. The diners sat communally at tables similar to those found in school cafeterias. Except for Chris and Katherine, all of the customers were Vietnamese. No one talked to them, or seemed to notice the sweat rings on Chris’s shirt or Katherine’s unkempt hair. At the end of the meal, Chris bought an inexpensive bottle of Chilean red at the deli next door, and they drove back to his place in Silver Spring.
They made love properly, but no less energetically, in his bed. Chris had lit votive candles around the room, with his small stereo set on WHUR, playing the old EWF tune “Can’t Hide Love.” The candles and the music were on the corny side, but Chris was a D.C. boy all the way, and Quiet Storm was in his blood. His parents had listened to Melvin Lindsay, the originator, spin Norman Connors and Major Harris when Thomas and Amanda Flynn were young and making love on hot summer nights just like this one.
Katherine, lying naked atop the sheets beside Chris, reached over and traced her finger down the vertical scar above his lip.
“Your dad finally talked to me today,” said Katherine. “Susie sort of made him. In her own sloppy way, she let him know that you and I were together.”
“Did he call you honey or sweetheart?”
“I think it was ‘darling.’ ”
“That’s my pops. He has trouble remembering names. Odd for a salesman, but there it is. He’ll remember yours now, though.”
“Why’s that?”
“My parents had a baby named Kate who died before I was born. Dad still talks about her. Like she’s going to come back and be everything that I’m not.”
“Your father cares about you, Chris.”
“Like you care for a lame dog. You know Champ is never gonna win a show or a race. But you look after him anyway, out of the kindness of your heart.”
“It’s not attractive when you feel sorry for yourself.”
“I’m not. I never do. I’m sayin, this is how I think it is from his eyes. I don’t have a problem with who I am. Far as I’m concerned, I’m doing fine. But my pops looks at me like I’m some kind of cripple. My past still eats at him, Katherine. There’s got to be a reason for the troubles I had, and he needs to know why. Look, my parents didn’t cause me to jump the tracks, and I never meant to hurt them. I was selfish and full of fire, and I wasn’t thinkin right. That’s the best way I know how to explain it. Truth is, my fuckups were mine and mine alone.”
“When I dropped out of college,” said Katherine, “I could hear my parents whispering, and then arguing, behind their bedroom door. It was all about the bad decisions they thought they had made along the way. How they should have moved out of PG County, or put me in a better high school, got me away from my friends and other bad influences. How they should have pushed me harder to get better grades. But I just plain didn’t like school, Chris. I didn’t like it when I was a little kid. Not everybody goes to college. Not everybody can get more education than their parents, or make more money than them, or live in a nicer house than the one they grew up in.”
“I hear you. But they want it for you anyway.”
“It’s natural for them to feel like that.”
“Way your mom looks at me, seems like she’s made her mind up that I’m not the right one for you.”
“My mom’ll come around,” said Katherine. She moved beside him and pressed her flat belly against him. “You know, if you weren’t an installer, if I hadn’t dropped out of school and taken that dumb job in the office…”
“We wouldn’t have met.”
“So everything’s been to the good, far as I’m concerned.”
They kissed.
“This is right,” said Chris, holding her close.
“You can feel it, can’t you. We’re supposed to be together, Chris.”
“Yes.”
He told her about the bag of money that Ben had found earlier in the day. He told her that he’d convinced Ben to put it back in the space under the floor.
“You made a good decision,” said Katherine. “I guess.”
Chris chuckled. “You’re not so sure, either.”
“Who wouldn’t think twice about keeping it? But it seems like it would come to bad if you took it. I mean, it’s not yours. Technically…”
“It’s stealing. What I’m worried about is, did I do right by Ben. At the time, I thought I did. I felt like I was tryin to protect him by leaving that money there.”
“But you’re not positive now.”
“Back in Pine Ridge, Ali told me that I was always going to be taken care of in some way, ’cause of my father and mother. And he was right. But Ben, he’s got nothin. No family and no kinda breaks. To him, fifty grand in a gym bag is a gift from heaven.”
“He’s not angry with you, right?”
“No, we’re straight.”
“So why are you stressed about it?”
Chris stroked Katherine’s arm. “I’m just worried about my friend.”
FOURTEEN
Ben Braswell heard a knock on his apartment door. He got up from his chair, walked barefoot and softly to the peep, and bent his tall frame to look through the glass in the hole. He sighed audibly, stood to his full height, and considered his next move.
There was little chance that Lawrence could know that Ben was home. If Ben stood here quietly, eventually Lawrence would give it up and go. Ben knew that a drop-in by Lawrence meant that Lawrence’s hand was going to be outstretched in some way. But Ben could not just stand behind the door like a coward, and it wasn’t in him to be deceitful. Lawrence, low as he was and could be, was a man. He deserved respect until it was no longer warranted. Ben unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door.
“My boy,” said Lawrence Newhouse.
Ben raised his hand warily and they touched fists. Lawrence’s eyes were pink and the smell of weed was on him.
“What you doin here, man?”
“Can’t a friend visit?”
“It’s late.”
“Night owl like you? Shit. You was always the last one asleep at the Ridge. Talkin to yourself in your cell at all hours. Remember?”
“Come on.”
Lawrence walked in. Ben closed the door behind him, leaned his back against it, and crossed his arms. Lawrence went to a chair that had been new in the 1970s and had a seat. Ben dropped his arms to his sides and spread himself out on a worn sofa near the chair.
“I got work tomorrow,” said Ben.
“That’s good,” said Lawrence. “Wished I did, too.”
“Thought you had a detailing thing.”
“I do, but it’s slow. Gas prices go up, people don’t be drivin their cars. They don’t take ’em out the garage, they don’t feel the need to clean ’em. You know how that is.”
“You got a place of business?”
“Nah, my shit is portable, man. I bring my supplies in a grocery cart and wash and detail the whips right at the places where people stay at. Most everybody got a hose. If they don’t, I carry one with me. All my, you know, transactions are in cash, so I don’t have to fuck with no taxes. Don’t pay rent, either. I got a good thing. But like I say, right now it’s slow.”
Some business, thought Ben. But at least Lawrence is doing something halfway straight. Least he’s not shootin at anyone. Or getting his ass beat regular.
“Why you come to see me?” said Ben.
“Damn, boy, you just short and to the point, ain’t you?”
“Told you, it’s late.”
Lawrence rubbed sweat theatrically from his yellowish forehead. He head-tossed his braids back off his face. “Hot in this piece.”
“Air’s on. Maybe it’s you.”