A bucket slammed down on the sidewalk, and someone began to wash off the tile. A homeless guy. Green army coat, black sneakers glistening with fallen foam from his brush and rag, and black jeans shiny with wear and dirt. His hair was thin and nappy, and a brown spot showed on the side of his head, like the entrance to an anthill.
Grady. No. Uh-uh. Grady?
He’d had ringworm in Mississippi, when he was a kid, and he’d always combed his natural over that place. Grady. His hand moved back and forth over the tile, washing off fingerprints and smudges. He was missing the end of his right ring finger.
I couldn’t do it. I pressed myself against the building across the street. Hey, Grady, remember me? I wish I could get to know you again, have lunch, tapas or sushi, and then take a couple weeks before I tell you Glorette got killed by somebody in an alley, and she still only loved a guy who left her.
I watched him for ten minutes. He washed the tile, wiped down the door, and polished the gold handle with a different rag. Then he stepped back and turned to look at something above my head.
I didn’t move. His eyes crossed over me but didn’t pause. He went inside, and he never came back out.
Other people stepped in now that the door was open. Two actors from The OC. Three young women wearing heels and carrying briefcases. A guy in a suit.
I crossed the street and went inside. This was not a dive. It looked like Liberace had decorated, with chandeliers and black pillars and even little lamps with gopher shades in gold. I squinted. The jukebox played Al Green. My eyes hurt from saltwater and darkness, and I didn’t see Grady Jackson.
The bartender leaned forward and said, “You okay?” He had a two-tone bowling shirt on, and a porkpie and sideburns.
“Does Hattie Jackson work here?” I said. The bar was cool under my fingers.
“Who?”
“She’s about forty. She was a bartender here.”
A young woman—Paris Hilton–blond but with cool black roots, and a satin camisole—came up behind the bar and squinted. “She means Gloria, I’ll bet.”
Gloria was in an alcove to the side. It was like a little liquor store, and she was arranging bottles of Grey Goose and Ketel One. Her nails were red. But her lips were thin and brown. She looked old.
“Hattie?”
“Gloria Jones,” she said to me. I leaned against the wall. My hips hurt, somehow. She knew me. She said, “When I came here, you had Pam Grier and Coffy and all them. My mama named me Hattie after the one in Gone with the Wind. Who the hell want to be a maid? I changed my name long time ago. After you was here with my fool-ass brother.”
“Was that him? Outside?”
She nodded. “Comes to clean, and then he walks again. He got five, six routes a day. You know. He goes all the way along the river till Frogtown. Comes back later.” She pushed the bottles around. “I don’t get much tips over here. People don’t buy this shit till they ready to go to a private party.”
“You’ve been here all this time.”
She shrugged. “Seem like not much longer.” She wore a wig. The hairs were perfect. “After my senior year. I was fine as wine, but even the hookers in LA was something else. Hollywood was crazy. I came downtown to get me an apartment and wait for the right movie. Did the dancing place for a month.”
“The dancing place?”
“Over on Olympic. The men dance with you for ten dollars and they gotta buy you them expensive drinks. But they smelled. Lord, they all smelled different, and some of them, the heat comin off their underarms and neck and you could smell it comin up from their pants. Even if they had cologne, just made it worse. I couldn’t do it. I came here, and I was behind the counter forever serving drinks. The guys would tip me good, all the old drunks, and I went to the movies every night after work. Now the theaters are all Spanish. I just get me a video after work. And I sleep till I come in. I live next door.”
I didn’t know what to say. Her eyes were brown and muddy, as if washed in tea. “They were filming your building today.”
She shrugged. “Always doin somethin. Now that Downtown is cool again. Grady can’t even get his food in the alley now. Miss Thang at the bar like a hawk.”
“He comes back for dinner?”
Gloria looked around and nodded. “I used to take my plate out there early, before we got started. Take me two enchiladas and rice. Hold a extra plate under there and gave him half. Used to have Mexican food in here. Not now.” She glanced out over her counter. “Now the little old actors be out in the alley. Think they big time.”
I walked away from her alcove, past the bar, the bowling-shirt watching me with a puzzled look—What is she? Brazilian?—and out to the alley. It must have been just a place to dump trash before—but now huge couches covered with velvet and pillows lay at each end, and the OC boys were already collapsed on one, with two girls. It was cool to be in a dive, in an alley, drinking Grey Goose martinis.
“Where does he eat now?” I whispered to Hattie, to Gloria, as she marked off bottles on a list.
“In the other alley. Next door,” she said softly. “At six. Every night, I take me a smoke break out there. And I take my purse.”
I waited for Grady there. I ignored the other homeless men, the drunks from down the street who stumbled past the Golden Gopher, the snide comments of one girl wearing a slinky dress who said, “Uh, the library is on 5th, okay?”
I saw him turn the corner and lope slowly toward me, steady, knees bending, arms moving easily at his sides. He stopped about ten feet from me and said, “Fantine?”
I nodded.
He said, “I been waiting for you. All this time.”
His hands were rimmed with black, like my father’s when he’d been picking oranges all night. His eyes were tiny, somehow, like sunflower seeds in the deep wrinkles around them. All that sun. All those miles.
“You told me you was gon come to LA. And you left for college. I married Glorette. I married her.” His four top teeth were gone, like an open gate to his mouth. “Didn’t nobody know. We went to the courthouse. Me and her.”
I said, “Grady, I came to tell you—”
“I knew you was somewhere in LA. Me and Glorette went to the courthouse after Sere Dakar was gone. He played the flute. But he wasn’t African. I seen his driver license one time. Name Marquis Parker. He was from Chicago. Call hisself Chi-town sometimes. Told me he was goin to LA and play in a band. Glorette was havin a baby.”
“He’d be seventeen now,” I said. “Her son.”
But Grady stepped closer, the ripe sweet smell of urine and liquor and onions rising from his coat. “No. My son. I was gon raise him. Dakar was gon leave every time. So I got him in my truck.”
I tried to remember. Grady had an old Pinto back then. “You didn’t have a truck.”
He trembled, and breathed hard through his mouth. “Fantine. All this time I waited to tell you. Cause I know you won’t tell nobody. You never told nobody about the car. About Pomona.”
I shook my head. My brothers would have beat his ass.
“I waited till Dakar came out that one bar where he played. I told him I had some clothes to sell. Then I busted him in the head and put him in the trash truck. It was almost morning. I took the truck up the hill. To the dump.”
“Grady,” Hattie said from behind me, “shut up.” She dipped a hand in her purse and brought out a foil-wrapped package. “Eat your dinner and shut up. You ain’t done nothin like that.”
“I did.”
“You a lie. You never said nothin to me.”
“Fantine—you was at the barn that night.” He held up his hand, as if to stop me, but he was showing me his finger. “Chicago had a knife. When I got to the dump and went to the back of the truck, he raised up and took a piece of me with him. But I had me a tire iron.”