Rachel Lopez had bathed, and the water in the tub, drawn very hot, was now warm. The candles she had set on the tub ledges were lit and were the sole source of illumination in the room. Beside one of the candles was a goblet of California merlot. It was her third glass.
Rachel’s shadow danced on the bathroom wall. Freddy Fender sang “The Wild Side of Life” in Spanish from a portable stereo she had placed on the floor. Rachel sat naked on the edge of the tub, one foot on the tiled floor, one up on a step stool she had placed nearby. An electric fan whirred under the music, blowing air on her knees, thighs, fingers, and cleanly shaved sex.
She closed her eyes. In the darkness, pictures ran through her mind. Briefly, the man in her head was the handsome construction boss Ramos. Then he was a stranger beneath her.
The cool of the porcelain beneath her buttocks, spread so that the surface touched her anus, was pleasant. The ligaments and veins inside her filled with blood, and she felt a wash rush forth. She caught her breath and her muscles contracted violently. Her head pitched forward and she was done.
Rachel cleaned herself with a warm wet washcloth. She put on a dark red lacy brassiere and then slipped into thong panties that matched. In the mirror, with the light of the bathroom now switched on, she applied eye shadow, eyeliner, and lipstick, all in deep colors. She bought the inexpensive brands, available at any drugstore, because she found their colors more dramatic. She unscrewed the cap of her night perfume, which was strong but not flowery, and shook some onto her fingers. She lightly rubbed her fingers on the muscles high inside her thighs, reached around and touched the very base of her back and the nape of her neck, and rubbed the remainder between her breasts. Finally she ran her perfumed fingers through her hair. She stepped back and looked in the mirror. The brown nipples of her small hard breasts showed through the lace of the bra. She was aroused, not by the sight of her own body, but by the preparation itself.
Rachel dressed in a black leather skirt that accentuated her hips and womanly ass. She wore no stockings; her shapely bare legs were already brown. She put on a red shirt and unbuttoned it so that the front clasp of her bra showed. She put on medium-heeled black pumps. She hung a necklace on her chest and let its silver pendant fall on the upcurve of her left breast. She brushed out her black hair.
Rachel had a fourth glass of wine, gathered up her purse and cigarettes, and left the apartment. She drove downtown.
The BMW had sped down to Park View ahead of the Escalade. It now faced west and idled in the middle of Otis Place between rows of parked cars. Through the windshield, Melvin Lee and Rico Miller waited and watched.
“Where they at?” said Miller.
“They gonna be along.”
As if Lee had willed it, the Escalade turned off Georgia and started up Otis.
“What I tell you?” said Lee, a barely detectable catch in his voice.
The Escalade did not slow down as it approached them.
“We ain’t got nothin’ to back us,” said Miller. He was not frightened, but stating a fact.
“We ain’t gonna need nothin’,” said Lee. “We’re gonna talk, and they gonna listen.”
By giving this strong response, Lee hoped to distract Miller from noticing the lack of confidence on his face. Lee had always been cocky in his youth. That natural, youthful swagger, along with an easy access to guns, had fueled his reckless courage. Age, and the experience of incarceration, had humbled him. Now, under supervision, he could not risk being around any kind of firearm. He felt vulnerable and defenseless without one, like in those dreams he had where he was walking naked among his enemies on his own streets. But Deacon had told him to go out and send a message, and that’s what he was going to do. And then there was Rico. He had to be hard around the kid.
The Cadillac came up on them and braked just a few feet from their grille. The headlights of the Caddy, on a higher platform than those of the BMW, nearly blinded Miller and Lee. But Miller did not reverse the car. It was a given that neither driver would back up or pull over to let the other pass.
DeEric Green, behind the wheel of the Escalade, landed on his horn. “C’mon, motherfucker. Move it.”
“That’s Deacon’s people,” said Michael Butler, recognizing the man in the passenger seat of the BMW and the animal-looking boy under its wheel.
“ I know that,” said Green. “Don’t mean they got the right to block the street.”
Green hit the horn again and kept his palm on it. A couple of lights went on in the nearby row house windows. The BMW did not move.
“Fuck this bullshit,” said Green, reaching under his seat and finding the checkered rubber grip of his automatic. It was a stainless steel eight-shot. 45 Colt. Green had bought it, a Gold Cup Trophy model, because it was the most expensive one the dealer had.
Green kept the gun low. He checked the safety and racked its slide. He thrust his pelvis out and slipped the gun under the front of his jeans so that the grip leaned toward his right hand. He put the tails of his FUBU shirt out so that they covered the gun.
“Let’s go, Michael,” said Green.
Butler hesitated. He was hoping for a quiet resolution to this. He had always managed to avoid violence.
“Let’s go, ” said Green.
Green left the motor running and the headlights on as he and Butler stepped onto the street. Miller and Lee did the same. Melvin Lee stepped forward; so did DeEric Green. Michael Butler stayed back behind Green and slightly to his left. Rico Miller hung by his car. He kept his eyes, heavy with contempt, on Butler.
“’Sup?” said Green, looking Lee over, looking down on him because he had the height advantage and could.
Lee waited a moment before speaking. It was a moment too long. It told Green that he was hesitant and maybe afraid.
“Somethin’ you want to say to me?” said Green.
Lee nodded.
“Then say it.”
“Heard you stepped to our boy Jujubee this morning,” said Lee, finding his tongue.
“That ain’t news.”
“You told him to move on.”
“So?”
“Boy was on our real estate.”
Green took another step forward and got close to Lee’s face. He spoke clearly and evenly. “I made a mistake. I already discussed it with the man I needed to discuss it with, and he gonna work it out with your man his own way.”
“You -”
“What I don’t need to do is discuss it with an itty-bitty motherfucker like you.”
Green brushed his hand over the front of his shirt. Lee saw the lump there, right above the waistline. Lee, confused, looked over his shoulder at Miller. “You… you hear that, Rico?”
Miller did not answer. He kept his eyes on Michael Butler.
A Toyota drove up Otis and, blocked by the Cadillac, came to a stop. The driver gave a short, timid sound of his horn. He did not roll his window down or say anything to the men and young men standing in the street.
“You gonna be seein’ me later on,” said Lee in an unconvincing way. He clumsily pointed a finger at Green’s face.
“I’m seeing you now,” said Green. “What, you gonna act like a man later on? ”
Green laughed. He knew he was showing off. But Melvin Lee was just making it too easy. He didn’t even feel the need to prove to Lee that he was strapped.
“You had your say,” said Green with a jerk of his head. “Now take your boy and get.”
“Yeah,” said Lee, nodding his head rapidly. “Yeah, okay.” He was trying to maintain, searching for the right clever parting words. But nothing would come.
The driver of the Toyota hit his horn again. Another light came on in a nearby house.
Green grinned. “You ain’t gone yet?”
Lee turned around. He saw Miller staring at Michael Butler, smiling at him in that way of his that was all about pain.
“Let’s go, Rico,” said Lee, unable to look in the eyes of the young man who worshipped him. Miller nodded, his smile frozen in place, and the two of them went to their car.
Miller backed his BMW up Otis and turned south on 6th.
Lee rubbed at his face and turned to Miller. “He was strapped, Rico. You saw it, right?”
Miller did not respond.
In the Escalade, Green and Butler settled in. Green put the transmission in drive, turned on the radio, and headed up the street.
“How you know to do that?” said Butler.
“Wasn’t no thing,” said Green, getting low in the bucket, his wrist resting casually over the steering wheel, proud despite the nagging feeling that he’d pushed it and done wrong. “Alls you had to do was look in his eyes. His heart was pumpin’ Kool-Aid.”
“What you mean?”
“Melvin was scared. I could tell just by lookin’ at him, ’cause I been knowin’ him a long time. He used to run with my brother, James, back when.” Green blinked away the image of his brother, playing basketball down by the courts, imitating MJ with his tongue out the side of his mouth, laughing about it, having fun. “Melvin don’t belong out here no more.”
“You punked him,” said Butler with admiration.
“Wasn’t me,” said Green, a touch of regret in his voice. “Boy got his ass broke in the cut.”
As the Cadillac went up Otis, it passed the home of Edwina Rollins, Joe Carver’s aunt. Joe sat on the dark porch and nursed a beer. He had watched the conflict involving the occupants of the Cadillac and the BMW, and had listened to the muffled threats with only mild interest. He had been involved in countless confrontations just like that one in his old life. They bored him now.
Joe would have gone inside and caught a little ESPN, but it was all baseball this time of year, a sport that he had played growing up but that did not interest him on television, and anyway, he was waiting on his friend. Lorenzo would be out walking his dog right about now. Joe would just sit out here and wait for Renzo. Wouldn’t be too long before his boy would be stopping by.
Jasmine moved jauntily along, leading Lorenzo down Princeton Place. She had done her business in the ball field up by Park View Elementary and had the bounce of the unburdened in her step.
Coming upon his grandmother’s house, Lorenzo noticed candlelight on the concrete porch of the row house to the south and the outline of a female figure sitting on a glider there. As he went up the sidewalk to his grandmother’s, he heard a little girl’s voice call out and saw her braided head, in silhouette, come up over the rails of the neighboring porch.
“That Jazz Man?” said the voice.
“Depends on who’s asking,” said Lorenzo, stopping, holding the leash and Jasmine fast. “Is that Lakeisha?”
“How you know my name?”
“Santa Claus told me.”
“Santa?” said Lakeisha with delight.
“Yeah, he called me up,” said Lorenzo, walking across the grass toward the house so that he didn’t have to shout. “Told me about this pretty little girl named Lakeisha, lived in my neighborhood? He didn’t have her phone number, so he asked me to find out what that little girl wanted for Christmas.”
“I want Cinderella Dream Trunk!”
“Settle down, girl,” said Rayne, Lakeisha’s mother, getting up off the glider and coming to the edge of the covered porch. Lorenzo stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked up at her. Her face was barely lit by the votive candles she had placed about. There was music playing softly, probably from a portable stereo she had put somewhere up there. Lorenzo recognized the song.
“Evening,” said Lorenzo.
“Evening to you,” said Rayne.
“Can I pet Jazz Man, Mommy?” said Lakeisha.
“If Mr. Lorenzo says it’s all right.”
“She’d love you to pet her,” said Lorenzo.
Lakeisha descended the steps and crouched down. Jasmine rubbed her snout in Lakeisha’s outstretched hand and wagged her tail as Lakeisha patted her belly and then ran her fingers down her coat. Lorenzo leaned, with deliberate cool, against a brick post. Rayne had a seat on the top step, a glass of white wine in her hand. Now that she was out from under the roof of the porch and in the moonlight, Lorenzo could see her face and figure more clearly. Lorenzo thinking, as he always did when he ran into her, She is fine. Realizing that he was staring, he looked down at Lakeisha and Jasmine.
“She’s a natural with my dog,” said Lorenzo. “She’d be a good candidate -”
“Don’t say it,” said Rayne, smiling a little. “I got enough mouths to feed. Anyway, you off the clock, right? You don’t need to be working that pet adoption thing all the time.”
“What, you don’t think about cutting hair when you’re out the shop?”
“Please. After standing up for eight hours straight? I try to forget it when I’m not there. Trouble is, my feet won’t let me.” She looked him over. “How’d you know I was a stylist?”
“How’d you know I was dog police?”
Lorenzo and Rayne chuckled. She had a nice smile. Rayne was the first to look away. He liked the shyness of her too.
“This is pretty right here,” said Lorenzo.
“What is?”
“This song.”
“‘Miss Black America’?” said Rayne. “Lakeisha likes it. It takes me back myself. My mother had the album when I was a little girl. She used to play it for me, right here in this house.”
“That was the one with Mayfield on the cover, wearing that lemon yellow suit.”
“You remember it?”
“Just called Curtis. A friend of mine’s mother, she had it too.”
Now it was Lorenzo’s turn to cut his eyes from hers.
“You feel like goin’ out sometime?” said Rayne.
“Huh?”
“For coffee or something.”
“Sure,” said Lorenzo, standing straight. “Or, you know, we could do something, like, all of us together. With Lakeisha, I mean. Go to, I don’t know, Six Flags. Or go down to Hains Point and just walk around some. Somethin’ like that.”
“That would be good.”
“But listen,” said Lorenzo, the words coming freely from him now. “Before we go making plans, I got some things in my past that you need to know about.”
“You’re under supervision,” said Rayne. “You were incarcerated on drug charges.”
Lorenzo nodded slowly. “That’s right.”
“Seems to me like you got your head on straight now.”
“I’m tryin’,” said Lorenzo. “What else you know?”
“You got a little girl of your own, about Lakeisha’s age. She stays up in Manor Park with her mother.”
“Okay.” Lorenzo stroked the hairs on his chin. “Question is, how you know so much?”
“How you think?” said Rayne, smiling again.
“The old girl been tellin’ you everything, huh.”
“She just being neighborly,” said Rayne.
“Mama,” said Lakeisha, moving her cheek off Jasmine’s coat, where she had been trying to listen to her heart. “Can I keep her?”
“No, baby. That’s Mr. Lorenzo’s dog.”
“Tell you what, little princess,” said Lorenzo. “You can visit with her anytime you want.”
“You gonna bring her back?”
“Are you?” said Rayne.
“I reckon,” said Lorenzo, tugging on Jasmine’s leash, walking toward his grandmother’s house.
“Bye, Jazz Man,” said Lakeisha.
Lorenzo turned his head and looked back at Rayne. “I’m gonna call you, girl.”
Rayne sipped at her wine.
Lorenzo used his key to enter the row house next door. He removed Jasmine’s leash and draped it over a jacket peg by the door. The house smelled of his grandmother’s cooking.
Willetta Thompson came forward from back in the living room and hugged him roughly. She was a tall, strong woman with lively eyes, not yet sixty-five. A graduate of Strayer’s Business College, she had worked as a HUD secretary, in the same office, for over thirty years. Her hair was shop styled and gray.
“Hello, son,” she said.
“Mama,” said Lorenzo.
They thought of each other that way.
“Saw you through the window, talking to Rayne.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s a good woman right there. Responsible.”
“You just about gave her my whole life story.”
“Someone had to,” said Willetta. “Didn’t look to me like you were gonna do it.”
“That chicken I smell?”
“I saved the thighs for you.” Willetta pulled on his hand. “I put a little somethin’ aside for your animal too.”
“Dogs shouldn’t be eatin’ on chicken bones.”
“This one’s plenty big,” said Willetta. “She won’t choke on it.”
Lorenzo and Willetta went toward the dining room, walking down a plastic runner Willetta had laid on the carpet to keep it new. Jasmine’s tail wagged as she followed, sniffing at their heels.