The next morning, Scott Fenney felt like he had the morning after he had run for 193 yards against Texas: he hurt less because his opponent hurt more. Sure, he had lost his rich client, all his cash, his dining, athletic, and country club memberships, and his Mexican maid, and he would soon lose his Ferrari and his mansion. But Mack McCall had lost the White House. Scott Fenney had beaten a Texas roughneck at his own game.
How about those brass knuckles, McCall?
How’s that for hardball, you mean son of a bitch?
So as he pulled the Ferrari into the parking garage beneath Dibrell Tower a little after nine, Scott was smiling. And why not? He was still a partner in Ford Stevens LLP, the most profitable law firm in Dallas. He still made $750,000 a year (although he would have to recruit new clients to replace Tom Dibrell’s fees). He was still a local football legend, still able to bring a smile to any SMU alum’s face, still able to turn on the famous charm and flash that movie-star smile.
Scott Fenney was still a winner.
He stuck the key card into the slot on the entrance gate and waited for the gate to rise. And waited. He stuck the key card in again and waited. Still nothing. He punched the button that rang Osvaldo over in the exit booth twenty feet away. When Osvaldo turned and saw him, Scott waved him over. Osvaldo exited the booth and walked over. Scott held up the key card.
“Card won’t work,” Scott said. “Raise the gate.”
Osvaldo retreated a step and said, “No card.”
“No, I’ve got a card. It’s not working. Open the gate.”
Osvaldo was now shaking his head. “No gate.”
“Open the goddamned gate!”
Osvaldo held his hands up. “No card. No gate.”
“Jesus Christ!”
Scott backed out and parked the Ferrari on the street, pumped a few quarters into the parking meter, pissed off until he remembered that the Ferrari would be his for only nine more days. Fuck it. Two-hundred-thousand-dollar car gets scratched, it’s the bank’s loss. By the time he hit the front door of Dibrell Tower two blocks away, he was whistling.
Rebecca Fenney was crying. She was still in bed, hiding from Highland Park. She had bet her beauty on Scott Fenney and lost. Her house. Her car. Her status. Her life. Everything she had acquired over the last eleven years would soon be gone. And it hadn’t been lost to a twenty-two-year-old blonde with big tits and a tight ass-to a girl by the pool-but to a heroin addict, a whore, a…Rebecca never said that word because even in Highland Park such words are best said only behind the brick walls at the club, but she thought that word now: nigger.
Her husband had sacrificed her life for a nigger’s life.
There. She had said it. Or at least thought it. As everyone in Highland Park was thinking at that very moment-the town is so small, so insular, that nothing escapes notice. Not that this could have escaped the notice of anyone in America, her husband on national TV, for God’s sake! And today at lunch, her (former) society girlfriends would order Caribbean salad, tortilla soup, sparkling water, and for dessert, Rebecca Fenney. She would be today’s scandal souffle.
Oh, how they would gossip! And how they would laugh!
There’s nothing the girls love to sink their sharp teeth into more than a juicy scandal: a lesbian affair; a good Highland Park girl knocked up by a black SMU athlete; botched cosmetic surgery; drinking, drugs, and STDs at the high school; criminal fraud committed by a scion of an old Highland Park family; a Democrat in Highland Park; failure in Highland Park. They lapped it up like the family dog laps up leftovers.
Rebecca Fenney had gossiped so many times about other women’s scandals. Now everyone in Highland Park would be gossiping about her-at the Village, at the club, at the gym, at every restaurant and in every dressing room. They would all be gossiping and laughing-at her expense.
How could she ever show her face in this town again?
She was crawling back under the comforter when the phone rang.
Boo quietly pushed open the door to her parents’ bedroom and stuck her head in. She saw her mother sitting on the far side of the bed and heard her talking on the phone. Her voice sounded strange.
“ What?…Sleeping with Trey?…Where’d you hear that?…It’s all over town?…Everyone knows?… Oh, my God! ”
She hung up the phone and put her hands over her face.
“Mother?”
“Oh, God.”
“Mother?”
“Oh, God.” Finally she turned to Boo. Her mother looked like a frightened little kitten. “What, Boo?”
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Can I help?”
“No. What do you want?”
“Is it okay if Pajamae and I go to the Village? We’ll be real careful crossing the street.”
Mother waved her hand. “Fine, whatever.”
“Okay. See you later.”
Boo started to shut the door, but her mother said, “Boo, wait. Come in. I need to talk to you.”
As soon as Scott stepped inside the lobby of Dibrell Tower, he stopped whistling. A tidal wave of reporters and cameramen came rushing toward him, all shouting questions on top of each other.
“Mr. Fenney, what’s her name, the woman Clark raped?”
“What are the names of the other women he raped?”
“You brought down Senator McCall-are you happy?”
“Do you think Senator McCall will be indicted?”
“What about Tom Dibrell-will he be indicted?”
Scott squinted at the bright camera lights and ducked and weaved his way toward the elevator bank. But at the speed at which he was advancing against the mass of reporters defending their ground, he wouldn’t get into an elevator before noon. He was about to retreat when two enormous blue blazers stepped in front of him. Two black men, Dibrell Tower security guards, were now running interference for Scott Fenney. The reporters had a choice: get out of the way or get run over.
They got out of the way.
The two guards pushed forward until they arrived at the elevators where a third guard stood blocking the doors of an empty elevator. He stepped aside to allow Scott entrance, then again blocked the way. He was joined by the other two guards, three huge bodies in blue blazers protecting Scott Fenney from the reporters and cameras, black guards whom Scott had never before even acknowledged; they were just inanimate objects in the lobby, like the big bronze Remington sculpture. Scott reached over and punched the FLOOR 62 button, then fell to the back of the elevator. Just before the doors closed, the middle guard turned to him and said, “Thanks, Mr. Fenney.”
“For what?”
“Standing up for that girl.”
Pajamae followed Boo out the front door and down the walkway to the sidewalk. Boo said, “Boy, my mother was acting really weird this morning. The stuff she was saying.”
“Is she sick?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“’Cause Mama says weird stuff when she takes her medicine.”
They turned left down the sidewalk. Boo was talking, but Pajamae was watching. Mama had taught her to keep her eyes peeled when she went outside in their neighborhood, watching for strange people. Of course, in their neighborhood grown men hung around outside the liquor stores on every corner and drank malt liquor out of brown paper bags and peed right into the street whenever nature called, so strange here in Boo’s neighborhood was a different thing altogether. But Pajamae still noticed something strange.
A man in a car.
He was sitting across the street and down one house from Boo’s. He stared at them as they came down the sidewalk. He was a big man with a bald head in a black car. When she and Mama were outside and a white man looking like him drove into the projects, everyone would stop what they were doing and shout, “The man!” The police. The bald man in the black car looked like a policeman.
Pajamae noticed the car door open partway and the bald man’s black shoe come out. She was about to grab Boo and hightail it back to their house when an old man stepped out the front door of the house they were walking in front of. He came down the path toward them, but he stopped and picked up a newspaper on the grass.
Boo said, “Good morning, Mr. Bailey.”
The old man smiled and said, “Why, good morning to you, Miss Boo Fenney.”
Pajamae looked over at the black car. The bald man’s foot was back in the car and the door was shut, but he was still staring. They continued down the sidewalk and came to a busy road named Preston and turned right. Pajamae glanced back and saw that the black car was gone. She shook her head at herself for being so silly: You’re not in the projects, girl!
They walked on and Pajamae soon found herself enjoying the stroll through Boo’s neighborhood, what she called the Bubble. She always felt nervous and scared if Louis was gone and she and Mama had to walk alone through their neighborhood to the nearest liquor store to buy some bread or eggs, even in the middle of the day. Mama always told her, “If I say ‘run,’ you run, girl.” But she wasn’t nervous or scared at all in this neighborhood. The sidewalks were so clean, no beer cans or liquor bottles or syringes or those funny long balloons Mama told her never to touch. And no men hanging around outside liquor stores-in fact, there were no liquor stores. No pimps or pushers trying to recruit her or sell to her, no older boys driving by and yelling out nasty words, no loud rap music from cars and boom boxes, and nobody cussing each other ’cause they just got evicted. It was so quiet!
Boo’s Bubble was nice.
They stopped at an intersection and waited for the light to change. When it did, they looked carefully both ways and hurried across four lanes of traffic and a short parking lot and onto the sidewalk of-
“Highland Park Village,” Boo said.
They were standing outside a store named Polo/Ralph Lauren in a fairyland place Pajamae had never imagined existed, fancy cars lining the sidewalk shaded by little trees and fancy white women getting out of those cars followed by pretty little white girls looking like princesses and giving her second and third glances like they had never seen a black person their whole lives, and leaving behind a smell so sweet that Pajamae breathed it in several times and was reminded of the old fat ladies at church each Sunday morning-only these ladies weren’t fat and they didn’t gush over her and pinch her cheek. The white women and white girls just hustled by and into the store, the cool air from inside rushing out, making Pajamae’s face feel like it did when she stuck her head in the freezer to cool off, as she often did down home in the projects.
Boo said, “Do y’all have shopping places like this?”
“We don’t have any place like this.”
When she and Mama went shopping, it was generally at yard sales and the Goodwill store, not someplace where she couldn’t begin to pronounce the names, and sometimes one of their neighbors would get a good deal on sneakers or stereos or TVs and sell them right out of his car trunk, at real good prices ’cause the stuff was a little warm, Mama would say, although Pajamae was never exactly sure what she meant. And before school started each year, Mama would work extra and Louis would take them to buy her school clothes at the JCPenney, but it wasn’t like this.
“Where- as,” Pajamae said.
They walked down the sidewalk in the shade of the awning, Pajamae feeling like it was Christmas, checking out every window display, fancy clothes on skinny mannequins wearing makeup, and past a kid’s store-
“That’s Jacadi Paris,” Boo said. “My closet is full of clothes from here.”
“Does this stuff cost a lot?”
“Mother bought them, so they must.”
When they arrived at a store called Calvin Klein, Boo said, “Britney was here a few months ago.”
“Britney who?”
“Britney Spears, the singer. Everybody went crazy.”
“White girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. We don’t listen to white girls down in the projects.”
Boo shrugged. “I don’t listen to her up here either.”
And on they went, past stores named Luca Luca and Escada and Lilly Dodson-“Mrs. Bush bought her red party dress here, when George W. got elected the first time,” Boo said-and Banana Republic-only they sold clothes not bananas-and they crossed the parking lot and got ice cream cones at Who’s Who Burgers.
They walked outside and Pajamae stopped short. A bad feeling swept over her small body: the bald man in the black car was driving by slowly and giving her a creepy stare. She got really scared, and Pajamae Jones didn’t get really scared easily.
“Boo, that man’s following us.”
“What man?”
“That man who just drove by, in that black car. See him? The bald guy?”
Boo laughed. “This is Highland Park. Nothing bad happens here.”
Boo tugged on her arm and Pajamae followed reluctantly. They walked past more stores then went inside a store with the same name as the old wino with no teeth who lived three apartments down. Harold.
“This was my mother’s favorite store,” Boo said.
A saleslady was on them before they made it five steps, and Pajamae thought at first she was going to run them out. But the lady smiled and said hi like she was really happy to see them. She was very pretty for a white girl, with hair that bounced and smooth skin and lips that were painted red. She looked at Pajamae and leaned down, putting her knees together and her hands on her knees, and said, “My, aren’t you the cutest little thing!”
Pajamae was wearing Boo’s denim overalls, a white T-shirt, white socks, and white sneakers; her hair was in cornrows; and she was licking her ice cream cone.
She said, “Thank you, ma’am.”
“So how do you like living in Highland Park?”
Pajamae glanced at Boo, who shrugged. How did this woman know that she was living with Mr. Fenney?
“I like it just fine, thank you.”
“You tell your mother to come see me, my name’s Sissy. I’ll make sure she’s as well dressed as any woman in Highland Park.”
“My mama’s in jail.”
The lady snapped up straight with a confused look on her face. “ Jail? Aren’t you the new black family’s little girl?”
“I don’t have a family. I only have Mama. And Louis, he’s like an uncle only he’s not.”
Boo said, “What new black family?”
“The black family that just moved into town, the first black homeowners in the history of Highland Park.” The saleslady was now staring at Boo when a hint of recognition crossed her painted face. “You’re the Fenney girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I almost didn’t recognize you with that hair. Where’s your mother been lately”-her thin eyebrows raised a notch-“and your handsome father?”
“My mother’s being weird and A. Scott’s been real busy.”
“Helping my mama,” Pajamae added, and the lady’s head swiveled to her. “They say she killed the McCall boy, but she didn’t.”
The saleslady slapped her hand over her mouth. “She’s your mother?”
Pajamae licked her ice cream cone and said, “Unh-huh. Mr. Fenney, he’s her lawyer, so everybody’s mad at him.”
The saleslady’s face suddenly looked like that boy’s face that day in the projects when he tried to get a freebie from Mama and when she refused, he called her a “white man’s whore.” As he turned to run away he ran smack into Louis-and that black boy’s face turned white. Just as this lady’s face had turned two shades whiter. She must not have known what to say, so she said, “Maybe you girls should leave now.”
“Mr. Ford wants to see you,” Sue said.
Scott grabbed his message slips and walked to the staircase. He greeted his fellow partners along the way, but all he got in return were odd stares, averted eyes, and shaking heads. No doubt they had seen his network interview last night and didn’t care for it. Fuck ’em. He found Dan standing by the window in his office.
“Dan, what’s up?”
Dan turned; his face looked like he hadn’t slept last night.
“Come in, Scotty. Shut the door.”
Scott did as instructed and said, “Dan, can you talk to Ted at the bank? He’s being a real asshole. He called the notes on the Ferrari and my house.”
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because, Scotty, as of right now, you’re no longer a partner in the firm.”
“You’re demoting me?”
“I’m firing you.”
Dan’s words knocked the air out of Scott as fully as a football helmet in the solar plexus. Scott stumbled back and fell onto the sofa. Dan returned to the window and stared out, his hands clasped behind him. Scott struggled to find words.
“You said I was like a son to you.”
Without turning from the window: “You were. But when my son embarrassed me with that homosexual nonsense, I disowned him. Now I’m disowning you.”
“Why?”
Dan turned to face Scott; he was now an angry father figure.
“Your little spectacle last night! For Christ’s sake, Scott, what the hell were you thinking?”
“McCall tried to destroy me, that’s what I was thinking!”
“So you go on national TV and accuse the senior senator from Texas of obstruction of justice? Extortion? Bribery?”
“I was just trying to do the right thing!”
“The hell you were! I know you too well. You were giving McCall a little Scott Fenney payback. You weren’t doing it for the hooker; you were doing it for yourself. And even if you were doing the right thing, it’s no better. I told you, Scotty, this firm doesn’t exist to do the right thing; no law firm does. We don’t do the right thing; we do what’s right for our clients. And destroying Mack McCall’s presidential ambitions isn’t right for our clients. But you took care of that, didn’t you?”
“What was I supposed to do, let him take everything I have? My club memberships, my car, my house, my best client? McCall did all that.”
Dan Ford was now staring at Scott with an expression Scott had seen only once before, five years ago. Scott had stood next to Dan in a state district court as the judge read his ruling, a ruling against their client, against Ford Stevens, against Dan Ford, who had made a substantial contribution to the judge’s last campaign. Dan’s expression then and now was that of a man betrayed, but a man with the power to do something about it.
“No, Scotty, he didn’t do any of that. I did.”
“You?”
“Yes, me. When you refused to do what I asked, I wanted you to see what your life would be like without all the things success buys- It’s a Wonderful Life starring Scott Fenney. But you’re stubborn, Scotty, too stubborn for your own damn good. McCall asked me for a small favor, to get you to leave his son’s past in the past where it belongs, so he could be president. And I asked you for a small favor, so I could be the president’s lawyer. And after all that I’ve done for you, how did you repay me? You betrayed me.”
“ A small favor? Dan, without that evidence, Shawanda will be sentenced to death!”
“So?”
“What, she’s just a nigger?”
Dan laughed. “Oh, yeah, I’m a racist. My son grew up wanting to be Michael Jordan and my daughter’s in love with Tiger Woods…No, it’s the other way around, my daughter wanted to be Jordan and my son’s in love with Tiger. Anyway, I’d love to have both of them as clients. Because they’re rich. Because they pay their lawyers lots of money. Scotty, the color of law isn’t black-and-white, it’s green! The rule of law is money-money rules! Money makes the law and the law protects the money! And lawyers protect the people with money!”
Dan’s face was red and his neck veins were purple cords. He paused and gathered himself.
“Scotty, this firm is my life. I built it from nothing to the richest firm in town. No one makes what we make. No one! And no one’s gonna hurt this firm, not your hooker, not you, not anyone. I’ll run over anyone who gets in my way.”
“What about me, Dan? You gonna run over me, too?”
Dan sat down in his chair, reached over and buzzed his secretary, then looked back up at Scott and said, “I think I already have.”
Scott stood in the middle of the office, surrounded by Dan’s trophy heads. Their sad eyes seemed to look down on him, as if they were saying, We’ve saved a place up here for you. And now Scott knew how John Walker and the others had felt standing right here when Dan had fired them without warning. He had chuckled when another lawyer had shown him John’s ad in the TV guide-one day a successful lawyer in a big firm and the next day just another
shyster trying to sleaze out a living. Now his mind conjured up his own ad, situated between ones for a psychic and an escort service: CAR ACCIDENT? DIVORCE? BANKRUPTCY? CALL A. SCOTT FENNEY, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. WE CARE. E-Z TERMS. SE HABLA ESPANOL.
This can’t be happening, not to me!
The door behind Scott opened and two of the three black Dibrell Tower security guards from downstairs were standing there, puzzled looks on their faces.
It was happening to him.
“Your personal belongings will be delivered to your house, Scott,” Dan said. “Firm policy.”
The game was over. Scott Fenney had lost. There was nothing more to do but to walk off the field. The guards parted and Scott walked down the corridors that he had so proudly strutted just days before, A. Scott Fenney, Esq., Tom Dibrell’s lawyer, wired on success. Yesterday, the other lawyers had greeted him like a star; today they averted their eyes as from a patient dying of AIDS. Dead lawyer walking. Scott Fenney’s legal career as he knew it was over.
He and his escorts walked down the staircase to the sixty-second floor and ran into Missy walking up, looking sexy in a tight knit dress. But she did not wink at Scott Fenney today; she did not act like they were on the brink of an affair; she acted like he had a contagious disease. They continued down to the landing, where Sue stood, holding out his briefcase and 9-iron. Before he reached her, Sid Greenberg walked up to Sue with a stack of documents.
“Sue, I’m putting these documents on your desk. Copy them and get them up to Dibrell ASAP. Put the originals in Scott’s…I mean, in my office.”
“Yes, Mr. Greenberg.”
“Sid?”
Sid spotted Scott and said, “Oh, hi, Scott. Sorry to hear the news. Good luck.”
“You’re taking my client, my secretary, my office? I taught you everything you know!”
“Yeah, Scott, you did. You taught me practicing law is just business. Nothing personal.”
“I wasn’t talking about me!”
Sid shrugged lamely and walked off. Scott turned to Sue, her hands extended toward him. Scott took his briefcase and 9-iron from her.
“Good-bye, Mr. Fenney.”
“That’s it? Good-bye? Eleven years you’ve been my secretary. Don’t you care?”
Sue got a look on her face he had never seen and she seemed to grow six inches.
“For eleven years I’ve fetched your dry cleaning and coffee, run your personal errands, paid your personal bills, shopped for gifts for your wife and child and clients, lied to clients for you…Did you care about me? About my life? You never once asked about my life. Do you know I have a handicapped child and that’s the only reason I’ve put up with you for all these years? Because I needed the money? You didn’t know and you didn’t care. Did you care when Mr. Walker got fired? No. Like every other lawyer here, you care only about yourself.”
Scott turned from this stranger standing on the marble floor in the lobby, talking to him like that in front of a gathering crowd. Followed by the two guards, he walked to the elevators and pushed the down button. The doors opened and they stepped in. One of the guards said, “What happened, Mr. Fenney?”
“I got fired.”
“’Cause of what you did, standing up for that girl?”
“Yeah.”
“I know where Mr. Ford parks his Mercedes down in the garage. You want I should flatten his tires?”
“Yeah.” Then Scott shook his head. “No.”
The doors started to shut, but at the last second a hand pushed in and the doors receded. Standing there was Sue. She said, “John Walker’s wife died last week.”
They stepped outside the store and Pajamae froze.
“Boo, there he is again.”
“Who?”
“The bald man in the black car.”
“Where?”
Pajamae motioned with her head to the parking lot. Boo turned that way, but Pajamae said, “Don’t look!”
They turned and faced the store window. In the Village, cars could park in slanted spots right at the sidewalk. Then there was a little one-way road for cars to drive around the center and then two more rows of parking in the middle of the open parking area. The bald man in the black car was parked there, maybe thirty feet away. Boo acted casual and kind of looked around at different things and finally got around to glancing at the bald man in the black car: he was staring straight at them. Boo turned away.
Pajamae was frantic. “Let’s run, Boo!”
Boo took Pajamae firmly by the arms. “No. Act normal. He can’t grab both of us, not here. He’s just trying to scare us.”
“Honey, it’s working!”
Boo started patting around her pockets.
“What are you doing?” Pajamae asked.
“I’m pretending I’m looking for something.” She threw up her hands and pointed inside the store. “Now I’m acting like I left something inside. Come on, we’ll go back in and I’ll call A. Scott. He’ll come for us.”
“He better get here fast.”
“He drives a Ferrari.”
They walked back inside and Boo went directly over to the same saleslady. “Ma’am, may I use a phone? It’s an emergency. I need to call my handsome father.”
Scott had always enjoyed the ride home at the end of each day, jumping into a $200,000 automobile, exiting the parking garage, saluting Osvaldo like the president saluting the Air Force One attendants, and pointing the Ferrari north toward Highland Park…Driving leisurely through the Uptown area just north of downtown where the singles commingled, young men and gorgeous girls, their heads swiveling his way as he passed by, envy written all over their faces, wondering what it must be like to be living a perfect life like the handsome man in the Ferrari…And finally entering the Town of Highland Park, where the kids are smart, their parents are successful, and everyone is safe and secure.
But today was different.
He wasn’t enjoying the ride home. Because at the end of the ride, he would have to tell his wife and daughter that he had been fired, that he was no longer a partner at Ford Stevens, that he would no longer be bringing home money each night, that he had lost the family fortune. That Scott Fenney was now a loser.
How could he face his wife as a loser? His daughter? His neighbors in Highland Park? Scott hit the right turn signal and braked to turn onto Beverly Drive…but at the last second he changed his mind and accelerated straight through the intersection and continued north past Highland Park Village. He couldn’t go home. Not yet. A few blocks later he turned left and pulled over in front of the Highland Park High School football stadium, where life as he knew it had begun the first day of fall football practice his freshman year.
Inside a stadium that shamed many college stadiums, this year’s team was practicing on the artificial turf. Scott cut the engine and got out of the Ferrari. He walked over to the fence and watched the boys working out on the field while the cheerleaders went through their routines on the sideline, white boys dreaming of being another Highland Park football legend like Doak Walker or Bobby Layne or Scotty Fenney and white girls dreaming of being another Hollywood starlet from Highland Park like Jayne Mansfield or Angie Harmon, but knowing that if their dreams were not realized they could always fall back on their daddies’ money, fortunes that assured them futures as bright and certain as the blue sky above. And he wondered if he had fooled himself all these years, thinking he belonged here, that his football heroics were enough to make him one of them. Maybe the son of a construction worker is always the son of a construction worker. Maybe a renter is always a renter. Maybe the poor kid on the block is always the poor kid on the block, even if he lives in a mansion. Maybe you are what you’ve always been.
His dream had begun right out there, on that very field, twenty-one years ago when he was fifteen. And that dream had ended today. And he found himself wondering, for the first time since that day so long ago, what he would do with the rest of his life.
He walked back to the Ferrari. Now he would drive home and tell his wife and daughter that he had lost everything, his only consolation being that there was nothing more for Mack McCall and Dan Ford to take, nothing more for Scott Fenney to lose.
When he opened the car door, his cell phone was ringing.
A. Scott said he’d be there in less than a minute. He didn’t lie. They were standing on the sidewalk outside the store again when Boo heard the familiar roar of the Ferrari’s engine. She turned and saw the bright red vehicle veer sharply into the Village and accelerate through the parking lot. She held her arms above her head and waved wildly and jumped up and down. And then she pointed directly at the bald man in the black car. He sat up quickly when he saw her pointing; then he saw the Ferrari coming toward him. He started his car and drove out of his parking place and turned left, but another car was backing out of one of the slanted spots by the sidewalk.
His car was blocked.
The red Ferrari screeched to a stop behind the bald man’s black car. A. Scott jumped out. He didn’t even shut his door. He ran up to the black car with a golf club in his hand.
Why did A. Scott have a golf club in the Ferrari?
Boo’s lawyer-father, wearing one of his starched white shirts and a silk tie flapping over his shoulder, reared back and swung the club at the driver’s window.
WHACK!
The glass cracking sounded like an explosion and froze everyone within earshot. A few old people ducked. Ladies from inside the store rushed outside. Now it was the bald man’s turn to be scared. A. Scott yanked on the man’s door, but it was locked. So he stepped forward and swung the golf club again and again at the windshield of the car and screamed words Boo had never heard him say:
“You’re following my girls, you sonofabitch!”
WHACK!
“McCall sent you, didn’t he!”
WHACK!
“You come around my girls again, I swear to God I’ll fuckin’ kill you!”
WHACK!
The car in front drove off. The bald man gunned the black car and sped away and around the corner. A. Scott stood there in the middle of the Village parking lot, red-faced, breathing hard and sweating, and holding the golf club over his shoulder like an ax. He looked like an action figure. Shoppers were staring, shocked at such a commotion in Highland Park. Boo was grinning: it was great! The same saleslady was standing next to her.
“God, he’s handsome,” she said.
Boo Fenney had never been so proud of her father. She ran to him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and clutched him tightly. Pajamae joined them.
“You girls okay?”
“We are now. Who was that man?”
“Delroy Lund.”
Pajamae said, “Mr. Fenney, you’re the man!”
Boo said, “A. Scott, you said the F-word.”
“Yeah.” His breathing was calming. “I’m sorry.”
The adrenaline rush had receded by the time Scott turned the Ferrari into the driveway at 4000 Beverly Drive and drove into the back motor court. The girls were doubled up in the passenger seat.
Pajamae said, “That’s why Louis walks with me and Mama. No one messes with him, not even in the projects.”
Scott cut the engine, grabbed his cell phone, and hit a number he had recently added to the speed dial. When a familiar voice answered, he said, “Louis, this is Scott Fenney. I need your help.”
He hung up and they climbed out of the car. There was still his wife. He still had to tell Rebecca the bad news. They entered the house through the back door. It was quiet.
“Rebecca?”
Boo said, “Oh, I forgot. She’s gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“On a trip.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. She just said she had to leave.”
Scott took the stairs two steps at a time and ran down the hall to their bedroom. He found Rebecca’s letter on the bed, a handwritten good-bye. He had lost her home, her cars, and her chair of the Cattle Barons’ Ball. In short, he had ruined her life, she said, so they were through, just as she had promised. And since she could no longer hold her head high in Highland Park, she was leaving with the assistant golf pro at the country club. He was going on the PGA tour. She would be a golfer’s groupie.
“When is she coming back?”
Scott looked up to Boo standing in the door.
“She’s not.”
Boo was crying facedown in bed. Every girl she knew had a mother — even Pajamae! She felt Pajamae’s arms around her, hugging her tightly.
“Boo, I don’t have a daddy and now you don’t have a mama, maybe your daddy and my mama could get married. We’d be sisters.”
“Pajamae, A. Scott can’t marry your mother, she’s…”
Pajamae’s hug went soft. Boo felt her pull away. Boo wiped her face and sat up. Pajamae had a funny look on her face. Her fists were on her hips, like Mother when she got mad.
“She’s what?”
Boo shrugged. “She’s twenty-four. That’s way too young for him. He’s really old.”
Louis arrived an hour after Scott’s call. He pulled his old car around back. Scott met him in the motor court. They shook hands this time.
“Thanks for coming, Louis.”
“Ain’t no problem, Mr. Fenney. I been watching over Pajamae most of her life. Been missing her.” He looked around. “Course, you probably don’t get as much shootin’ up here.”
“Come on inside, Louis, I’ve got a bedroom for you.”
“Aw, no, sir, Mr. Fenney, I don’t feel right with that.”
Scott could tell that Louis was uncomfortable with the idea, so he didn’t press him.
“You can stay in the cabana. Consuela, our maid, lives out there, but she’s gone for a while. INS.”
“No, sir, that her place. I sleep in my car. In the garage. I can keep a better eye out back here.”
“It’s air-conditioned, there’s a full bath. I can fix up a bed for you…and I’ll bring out a TV and a recliner.”
“TV and chair be nice, but not the bed. Back seat of my car work just fine.” Louis smiled. “And, Mr. Fenney, don’t you worry none. Ain’t no one gonna hurt them girls now.”
Scott would not be spending the rest of his day in his fancy office on the sixty-second floor doing the things lawyers do and eating lunch at the swanky Downtown Club and working out among gorgeous girls at the athletic club. He did not feel special today, sitting in the den at home and staring out the windows at the pool and the professionally landscaped yard. His career was gone, his wife was gone, and his house and cars would soon be gone. Mack McCall had won. And his prize was Scott Fenney’s perfect life.
For the first time in his life, Scott felt defeated. He didn’t know if he could get up off the ground this time.
Twice Boo came downstairs and crawled up into his lap and they cried together. The third time Pajamae came with her. The two girls sat on the wide arms of the big leather chair and buried their faces in his broad shoulders and cried until his shirt was wet. They never said a word.
Scott sat there as the sun’s rays moved slowly from one side of the den to the other. He heard the girls in the kitchen, and Pajamae brought him a scrambled egg sandwich, but he had no appetite. When the sky turned dark, he pushed himself out of the chair, climbed the stairs, and put a brave face on for the girls. He found them huddled in bed and his chair next to the bed. He sat and they said prayers.
Then Boo said, “I don’t want to read tonight. I want to talk.”
Pajamae said, “We want to talk.”
Scott removed his glasses. “Okay. What about?”
“We saw you on TV last night,” Boo said, “with Pajamae’s mother. I know I’m not supposed to watch TV at night, but I went downstairs and saw Mother watching you on TV, so I had to, you know that.”
Scott nodded. “And?”
“And you have some explaining to do, A. Scott.”
“Ask your questions.”
Scott knew better than to launch into a narrative with Boo. He always made her ask the questions. He figured if she asked, she was ready to know.
“What’s sex?”
He hadn’t figured on that question. That was a question for a girl to ask her mother, but when her mother runs off with the assistant golf pro, it falls to the father. And now he had two girls facing him, their legs curled under them, hands in their laps, apprehension on their faces, asking about sex.
“That’s a boy’s thing, right, Mr. Fenney?”
“A boy’s thing?”
“You know, a boy’s privates. Like, when I go outside in the projects, some boy’s always saying, ‘C’mon over here, little girl, an’ I shows you my sex.’”
“Oh. Well, sex is when a boy and a girl…I mean, a man and a woman…when they, uh…”
“Do the nasty?” Pajamae blurted out. “That’s what the big girls call it. I told Mama what they said, and she said I couldn’t play with those girls anymore.”
“Look, do either of you have any idea what sex is?”
The girls shook their heads.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because Mama said the dead man gave her money for sex.”
“Oh.”
“Then he hit her, and boy, that was his first mistake. My mama, she doesn’t let any man hit her, not since my daddy. So she kicked his butt good.” She smiled. “Like you beat up that man’s car, Mr. Fenney.”
Boo said, “That was awesome! You were great! Did you ruin your golf club?”
Their attention thus diverted, Scott did not have to explain sex to two nine-year-old girls. After the girls had relived the scene at the Village, Boo said, “Clark wasn’t very nice, was he?”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“And now his father, the senator, he’s mad at you because you’re trying to help Pajamae’s mother?”
“Yes.”
“To keep the po-lice from killing Mama?”
“Yes.”
“That man today, he works for the senator?”
“Yes.”
“Is he going to come after us again?”
“No, baby, he’s not.”
Pajamae smiled. “He’ll have to come through Louis.”
Boo said, “Do we have to sell our house?”
“Yes, Boo, we do.”
“Why?”
“Because I got fired today.”
“You’re not a lawyer anymore?”
“No, I’m still a lawyer, just not with the firm.”
“And that means what?”
“That means as of right now, I don’t have any income.”
“No money?”
“We have some money, but not enough to keep this house.”
Boo nodded. “When Cindy’s dad got fired, they had to sell their home. You said that would never happen to us.”
“I was wrong.”
“And you’ve got to sell the cars?”
“The bank will just take them.”
“Are we poor now?”
“No, Boo, we’re not poor. Poor people are like-”
“Mama and me,” Pajamae said.
“So all these bad things, Consuela, the cars, the house, your job, Mother leaving, it’s all because McCall’s mad at you?”
“Yeah…well, maybe not your mother.”
“Mama always says she’s bad luck.”
“Pajamae, your mother’s not to blame. I made a decision. And decisions have consequences. Sometimes bad consequences.”
They were quiet for a long moment then Boo said softly, “Mother was crying. She said I’d be better off without her.”