Cheaters (51 page)

I pushed Tammy back, made that Amazon stumble, and whatever evil she saw in my face made her run to the far side of the room.

Karen was naked in front of me.

Scared of me.

I put my finger in the middle of her forehead and pushed hard enough for Karen to fall back into the wall.

I yelled, “Do something.”

“I’m sorry.” Karen covered her face. “I fucked up, okay?”

“Don’t go soft on me. Come on, Karen, come on.”

“That’s enough,” Tammy whimpered from across the room. “Please stop.”

All of us were breathing hard, chests rising and falling.

“I want you to know something.” My voice trembled, but it had lowered enough where each of my words didn’t bounce off the walls. “Craig doesn’t have a sister.”

Karen’s eyes met mine.

“He’s an only child, just like me. He went Out with a girl named Jamala before I met him. He played you.”

Karen picked up the towel, covered herself and her slumping shoulders, turned her head, made some woe-is-me sounds.

I could tell the knowledge I’d dropped on her had hurt more than all the slaps combined.

I massaged my hand and spoke low. “A dog gets.”

Karen was trying to pull herself together.

Tammy ran across the room, ran to Karen.

I grabbed my purse and walked out the door.

Thirty minutes later, I was back. Karen was sitting on the floor in front of the patio’s sliding glass door, with an ice pack in her hand, rubbing her face on the spots I’d hit her.

She was barefoot, wearing my gray sweats and a
NO
PROBLEM
T-shirt.

Karen said, “I hope you don’t mind. I borrowed this because my clothes were, you know…”

I nodded.

Tammy was on the sofa, looking all worry-eyed. No music was on. I had come back with a vegetarian pizza and sodas.

I set the food on the dining room table. “Convicts, entertainers, let’s get ready to grub. Drama makes me hungry, so everybody wash your hands. I hate eating alone.”

I put the food on the dining table, pulled out some silverware, paper plates, cups and ice, and then put both of my hands out to my sides. I cleared my throat, blew air before I said in a raspy, tired voice, “Ladies?”

Tammy crept over and reached for my left hand, but I gave her the right. I gestured, said, “Other side.”

Tammy said, “I’m always on this side.”

“Other side. Take my right hand.”

Tammy hesitated, then changed sides.

I said, “Karen, you coming?”

Karen dragged her fingers through her hair, then came over and held my left hand. I heard Karen’s stomach growl.

We bowed our heads in silence. We ate in utter calm.

When the sun started going down and the eastbound traffic thinned out, I hopped on the 60 and drove Karen out to the police impound. She was broke as a joke, so I had to loan her almost three hundred dollars to get her car, then I followed her home.

Tammy had to go to rehearsal.

So it was just us and our tension.

I walked into Karen’s place and stood in the doorway. I turned up my nose and fanned. The air in the apartment was spoiled. Foul. Karen had left the bloody wrappings from a package of chicken in the plastic trash. With the desert heat and the closed windows, it had spoiled beyond belief. Ants were all over her counter, crawling the walls.

She grabbed a can of Raid and sprayed them until they drowned.

I stayed glued in the doorway. First my eyes were stuck on that wedding dress that was hanging like a Negro at a lynch party—yes, my thoughts were still vile and violent—then my numb gaze aimed at the daybed I’d witnessed our breach of friendship on.

Bad emotions lived inside me. Too many wicked and intense feelings that when combined could make me snap and go psycho on her ass. God, earlier I’d wanted to do some serious damage to Karen. Had wanted Karen to hit me back, match anger, so I’d have an excuse to go all out, for us to fight until one of us couldn’t breathe enough to fight anymore.

Karen said, “I want to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to hear any of it.”

I already knew too much and didn’t need to know the details. Something that I’d been trying to get over had resurfaced. The anguish from way back when had returned.

I told her, “Get your phone.”

“For what?”

“What’s Craig’s number at work?”

“He never gave it to me.”

“Karen. Don’t play me.”

“Serious.”

“Well, we’re going to take care of Craig.”

I called March AFB information, got the number for the base information, who in turn gave me the number for the base locator, who, without question or a thought, passed on Craig’s work number. It didn’t take but a hot minute to find out what squadron Craig was with. A minute after that I had the squadron’s orderly room number. The orderly hooked me up with Craig’s commanding officer. That was the HNIC—Head Negro in Charge—I was trying to find.

I primed him, gave him the 4-1-1 on what one of Uncle

Sam’s recruits had been up to, then handed Karen the phone. “Tell him everything.”

She did. Karen reported what had happened, in detail.

That sent Craig up the military creek.

This was supposed to be sweet, but it had a bitter taste.

I didn’t know if I was getting revenge from what Craig had done to Karen, or what he had done to me, or if I was intentionally putting a rift between them, or getting Karen for what she had done to me.

It didn’t matter. ‘Cause I was doing it all.

A dog was a dog was a dog.

“Keep away from the base,” I advised Karen after she hung up.

“I will.”

“Don’t talk to Craig.”

“I won’t.”

“He’ll fuck you over. But that’s up to you.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t talk to anybody but his commanding officer.”

Karen nodded. “Chanté?”

“What?”

“That girl Jamala. She was locked up with me. She was bailed out two days ago.”

“I rest my case. In the land of the expendables.”

Karen asked, “Will you accept my apology?”

“The only thing I’m accepting from you is cash. Outside of all the money I just spent, I had to take a vacation day from work. That’s a full day’s pay you owe me, sweetheart.”

Karen lowered her head. “I’ll pay you as soon as I can.”

“Did you sleep with him while we were going out?”

“No.”

“Do you have the money to pay me back?”

Karen shook her head. “I’ll get a check on Friday.”

“And your rent is due and you have to eat.”

Karen wiped her eyes.

“And you’re going to need some time to get back on your feet.” I looked around, eyed the black lacquer entertainment center, the Panasonic stereo, the wall filled with pictures of Malcolm X and others. The daybed. I said, “Until I get my money back, you’re going to have to give me some collateral. You’ve already stabbed me in the back,

and I’ll be damned if I let you twist it. I don’t trust you any further than I can spit.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

“Yeah.
Whatever.
”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I want your stereo, television, the VCR. Jewelry. CD’s. And I want you to carry all of it out to my car. I’ll help. If I don’t hear from you soon, don’t expect to get any of it back.”

“Chanté, I’m sorry. Let me explain what happened.”

“I don’t want to know. It ain’t going to change nothing. I don’t respect you anymore, and you don’t respect me.”

“I respect you.”

“Karen, I love you and I hate you at the same time.” My voice splintered. My saliva felt like quicksand. I barely got my words out. “That bothers me. I’m not gonna let you make me crazy. If you need anything else, don’t call me.”

Momma asked me, “How was your week, Stephan?”

“Calm. Not too eventful.”

“You didn’t get that many phone calls here this week.”

With a smile to mask my empty feeling, I said, “Good.”

“That made Jeremiah happy.”

Momma was spending her Saturday feeding the family, boiling a large pot of red-hot smoked sausages for Nathan, his too-cool son Nathan Junior, and big-mouth Akeem. I’d just left the gym, so after I shot the breeze with them, I went into the house. I took off my gym clothes, showered, put on my jean shorts, tennis shoes, and a white ribbed T-shirt, then hung out with my family for a few. I’d done the same thing last weekend. Came up to the house, hung out with my brothers, did some work on Momma’s car.

Akeem was running around screaming, “Westside!”

Momma yelled at him, “What I tell you about doing that?”

I grabbed an extra sausage and threw it in a hot dog bun and covered it with relish, mustard, and ketchup. Momma had chopped and cooked some onions, but I passed on those. Pops was asleep in the den, his empty plate on a tray while the television watched him. I went and rubbed him on his head.

He jerked awake with his fist balled up and saw me smiling.

He said, “What I tell you about waking me up? Mess around and get shot like that.”

I rubbed his head again.

He said, “Unass me, boy. I get mad, it’s all over but the crying.”

I rubbed his head one more time, then took his empty plate, and left him to his sleep. I wanted to talk to him. The way a son talked to a father, I wanted to talk to him. Wanted to ask him at what point wisdom moved into a man’s life.

Some other time.

Everybody else sat out back on lawn chairs and enjoyed the L.A. sunshine. I was so distracted by my own thoughts I didn’t hear much of the conversation that Momma and Nathan were having. Both of them liked to yak it up. I noticed every now and then they’d get quiet and look at me, because one of them had just asked me a question I didn’t hear.

“What?” I looked back and forth to find out who had just said something to me.

“For the third time, I said”—Nathan chuckled—“I saw Jake when I passed by the fire station. He told me to tell you hi.”

“When?”

“Hour ago.” Nathan chomped the last bite. “He was standing out front.”

“Doing what?”

“Staring at the sky.”

“How’s that boy doing?” Momma asked. “I ain’t seen him. He usually stops by to say hi. How’s he been?”

I answered, “Same as me.”

I stopped by the fire station and checked on Jake. After the things he had told me and Darnell about his dreams, I didn’t know what to say. But I didn’t want to avoid him when his life had become too thick. I saw him before I got to Slauson and Fairfax—he was standing outside shooting basketball in solitude. Seeing him doing something made me feel a little better. Seeing him doing it alone, carving out his space, had me worried. I didn’t know how he felt about what had happened to him that night. If he was going to blame me for part of it, even though none of it was my fault.

I parked across from the fire station, in the lot between Mail Boxes Etc. and LA Hot Wings. He saw me coming and threw me the ball. I went in for a slam dunk. It bounced off the rim. He caught the ball before it bounced into the fire house.

“You giving real brothers a bad name,” Jake said.

“Legs are dead from working out this morning.”

“What you do?”

“I went to the 24 Hour Fitness in the Hilton. Pushed some weights with Dwayne, worked on my abs with Stomach Man, then hit Evelyn Orange’s aerobic class.

“A lot of honeys up in Evelyn’s class.”

“Yeah. It was packed.”

He charged at me Michael Jordan style, his tongue dragging the ground and making sparks on the concrete. I tried to cut off his layup, but he made it by me too quick. I got the ball. He guarded me as I tried to drive in, but his defense was too good. I backed off to the edge for a three-pointer.

“How come you ain’t called nobody?” I asked, then missed my shot, again hitting the rim. The ball bounced back into the fire house. Nobody went after it.

“Don’t know.” Jake wasn’t sweating, but he fanned his shirt and strolled over to a bench. “I didn’t want to weigh everybody down, I guess.”

We sat in silence, stared south and watched MD-80s, DC-10s, 747s flying into LAX. A series of police sirens and a helicopter cranked up in the distance.

I asked, “You been sleeping?”

“Some.”

“You look rested.”

“As rested as I can be, considering.”

I asked him, “Dreams not bothering you?”

“Some. But they’re different.”

“How so?”

“I don’t run from them anymore.”

A couple of Jake’s co-workers came out for a minute and talked some business with him about doing this-and-that in the station. When they saw he wasn’t enthused, they walked off.

I asked, “What do you mean, you don’t run?”

“I talk to them. We talk. All of us talk.”

“You talk?”

He told me that all of his dreams had him cornered, and he stopped being afraid. He sat down and waited for them to do something. They didn’t. That was when he started talking to them. First he apologized. Begged for forgiveness. Then started asking them their names. Talking about sports with some of the boys, other things with the girls.

He said, “These voices inside my head, they won’t turn off, but they’ve turned down. Changed from screams to whispers.”

I didn’t question the sanity of what he was saying.

A sista drove up and parked across the street. A beat later, a brotha came out from the fire station. She unbuckled a car seat and helped a little girl with pink ribbons in her hair cross the street. They made their way over by a shade tree. First he squeezed and kissed his wife, then did the same with his giggling daughter. Then they all hugged and kissed and tickled each other.

Jake’s eyes said that that should’ve been him and Charlotte.

The sista had a package of Chinese food, and they sat across from us on the grass and ate together. They waved at us, then went back to their pocket universe. Fed each other and laughed.

He asked me, “What’s on your mind?”

“What makes you think something’s on my mind?”

“You look uneasy. Am I wrong?”

“Nah, you’re right.”

“What going on?”

“Darnell is hooking with Tammy tonight. At a hotel.”