If I Should Die (21 page)

“Fingernail! And you ain’t thinkin’ about goin’ there! You cuttin’ out on me? I don’t believe it!”

Her voice rose another decibel and I rushed to calm her. “Bert, listen. It’s nothing like that. I dreamed about the place and I want you to put the number in for me. Check the address with Viv.”

And without moving away from the phone or my ear, she shouted to Viv above the noise. “What’s the address of that shop you had? That’s right … 3370. Okay.”

She spoke to me again, her voice still high. “It’s 3370 so you gonna have to drop the zero if you wanna combinate it forty-sixty, okay? Or you can drop a 3 and still combinate it. Whichever way you think gonna bring you your million bucks faster.”

I listened, unable to decide. It was frustrating to be born and raised in the heart of Numbers City and not understand the first damn thing about combinating a
digit. But then, math had never been my strong point and Bert lost me after that last zero.

“Look, however you do it, it’s okay. I’ll leave it up to you.”

“So you want it forty cents straight and sixty cents combo, right?”

“Whatever you say, Miss Bert. I’ll see you next week.”

“If you hit, you gonna see me tonight. Wait a minute.” She left the phone for a second, then came back on, laughing. “Miss Viv say she ridin’ your dream with a ten and hope you don’t mind. Say she might as well get somethin’ outta that dirty deal.”

We shared a laugh and hung up. Tomorrow after class was time enough to visit the shop. By then, all the news not fit to print would have found its way into the place. I probably could’ve gotten more details from the Pink Fingernail but going there was out of the question now.

I made my way back to the table and looked at the notebook again. 3370 was on the second page and 11787 completed the entry. I remembered Bert saying that Viv had celebrated the grand opening in 1987 and “the folks was throwin’ down champagne by the truckload and put away enough food to supply ten homeless hotels.”

And she had opened on November 7, just in time to attract the big-bucks, fast-spending, Thanksgiving holiday crowd.

“There it is,” I said, “our Rosetta stone. The address of Viv’s shop is 3370 and she opened on 11-7-87. Nightlife’s body was found behind 3130 Eighth Avenue. A phone call downtown’ll tell you if the building was bought on 10-4-89.”

B
y the time we left the restaurant, the earlier bright sunshine had disappeared behind a mass of thunderheads boiling up over the East River. The temperature had dropped and I was not prepared to walk back home in my thin jacket. We hailed a cab, moved along 110th Street past the boathouse, and turned onto Powell Boulevard, where the branches of the trees on the traffic island seemed to bend like reeds in the wind.

Tad reached for my hand, and when I glanced at him, his eyes were closed.

“The shit is about to come down,” he whispered.

I looked out of the window at the hurrying figures. Two women pushed strollers fast. A lanky boy with a backpack and headphones skated around the cars. A woman with a loaded shopping cart waited impatiently for the traffic light to change. The loungers had pulled their milk crates in, vacating their usual spots in front of the stoops.

I turned to Tad again but his eyes were still closed.
His brow was knotted and the muscle near his jaw was moving like a small stone and it occurred to me that he had not been referring to the storm.

Before I could reach up to touch him, he opened his eyes. The burned brown liquid softness was gone.

“Pack Alvin’s things. Have him ready by six tonight,” he said.

I looked at him. “Tonight? That’s too soon. I thought—”

“Listen, Mali. Please do as I say.”

“What do you mean, do as you say? Tad, this is my nephew we’re talking about. I need to know something—”

He held up his hands. “You ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies. Okay?”

I was so angry I could not answer. This had been another of my mother’s famous proverbs. The whole thing was getting to be too much. I sat back and remained quiet for the rest of the ride.

I locked my door and listened as the cab pulled away, then went to the bar. It was only two o’clock but I fixed a vodka martini anyway, despite my shaking hands. How was I going to explain this turn of events to Dad when I didn’t really know what was happening myself? What was I going to say to Alvin?

The house was quiet and I wandered upstairs to his room. He and Dad had not returned from school and his door was open. Ruffin lay on the floor at the foot of the bed and looked up at me with sad eyes.

“Don’t tell me you know something also,” I whispered as I dragged a suitcase and duffel bag out of the closet. The boy had so much stuff, and all of it, no doubt in Alvin’s mind, was indispensable. I opened the chest of
drawers, feeling like an intruder, and emptied all of his underwear, T-shirts, and socks into the duffel.

In the closet were a half dozen or so pairs of jeans on the shelf and as many pairs of sneakers on the floor. I decided that five pairs of each should be enough and that once the bags were packed, there would be no additions, exchanges, or argument.

When I reached for the stack of jeans, a cassette wedged at an angle on the shelf fell to the floor. “Profoundly Blue”—the tape Dad had given to Erskin. I took it and set it aside. This time, after Alvin was safely on his way and I had nothing to think about, I intended to relax and listen.

Oddly enough, at four o’clock when Alvin came home, he was elated when he saw his suitcase and duffel by the door.

“Man! So soon! I can’t believe it. I’m gonna be scuba divin’ and sailin’. How about that?”

I watched him and thought of Clarence and how it would’ve been nice if he could have gone also. But the charges were still pending and he couldn’t even move across the street without notifying his attorney. He was out of jail technically but still dragging a ball and chain.

I guess I focused on Clarence to keep from thinking about Alvin. In less than two hours, he would be walking out the door.

Dad looked at the suitcase, then looked at me. “What happened?”

“I … don’t know. Tad couldn’t tell me but I think he got some news.”

“Unpleasant news.”

“He didn’t say.”

He glanced at his watch and something akin to panic creased his face. But a second later he straightened up and tried to smile.

“Well, son. This is it for a while. I want you to call
me every day, collect. Let me know how the weather is and how the folks are treatin’ you. Call every day. Say the word, I’ll be right there to pick you up, you hear?”

Alvin moved his shoulders and leaned his weight on one foot, then the other. “Aw, Grandpa, I’m gonna be okay. I’m gonna be fine. I’ll be swimming, sailing …”

“Yeah, I know. All those good things. And me, left here in the city to sweat it out.”

We tried to make small talk, but when the bell rang at 5:45, we fell silent and stared at the door. No one moved until it rang a third time and Dad stepped forward to open it.

Tad’s car was double-parked and he moved quickly to place the bags in the trunk. Something rose in my throat and I struggled to get the right words out and to hold the wrong ones in.

I thought of Alvin’s swim trunks and flippers packed among his jeans and tees. At least I had taught him how to swim. At least I had done that. He could handle himself. He would not die in some faraway place.

“Don’t go out too far,” I said, hugging him, not wanting to let go. My throat was about to close and my voice was barely above a whisper.

They looked at me, and Dad was the first to laugh. “Don’t go out too far? The boy’ll be diving from the rigging of a schooner.”

I looked from one to the other. Diving from a schooner? No! Wait! His mother—!

Just as my panic mounted, Tad put Alvin in the front seat and came around the car to me.

“Listen, I can see it in your face. Don’t get upset. I’ll call you as soon as we get there. Everything’ll be all right. I love you, baby.”

He kissed me and I stood in the rainy street watching the blinking taillight grow smaller, then it turned at the corner of Eighth Avenue and disappeared.

B
ack in the house, I moved through the silent living room and into the dining room to sit at the table with my head in my hands. Downstairs, Dad was preparing for a special gig. I listened to the small noises and knew that when he left, I would be truly alone. The emptiness of the rooms was already closing around me, and if I listened hard enough, I could hear those peculiar echoes that tend to float on the dead air of unoccupied space.

Let Alvin be safe. Please. Bring him back to us …

I jumped when Dad touched my shoulder.

“Everything’s gonna be okay, sweetheart.”

I shrugged, unconvinced, and he pulled out a chair to sit beside me. “Now listen, you can’t become paralyzed every time the boy leaves your sight. What happened to Benin was a one-in-a-million accident. One in a million.”

“I know, but—”

“But nuthin’. You gonna think yourself into a nervous breakdown if you keep this up.”

Think myself into a breakdown. The wonder is that it hasn’t happened already. If I could only describe to him the bits and pieces of memory that won’t remain buried, that keep bobbing to the surface when I least expect it. I’m surprised. Nothing had prepared me to deal with that one-in-a-million thing. Everything I ever learned in training went right out of me that day. Everything
.

I insisted on identifying her. I didn’t want you to do it, Dad. You never would have survived it. You could not have stood in that cold room without flinching when they rolled that steel drawer out. But I did. I had to. I looked at a body with so little skin left that the only recognizable area was the crescent-shaped birthmark on the inside of her left ankle
.

I looked but I had not been prepared. The training academy had only prepared me for certain emergencies. And certainly not for that time on my midnight tour when my partner and I had retrieved a broken little body from a trash-filled alley and then talked our way into a roach-infested room to arrest the mother. A woman who could not remember the last time food was on her table. Or the last time she washed her hair
.

In the cold room with the steel drawer, I was not prepared but I looked at Benin’s hair. She had streaked it with that funny-looking orangy highlight to make the dark part look darker. I recognized her hair. Her face had been … left clinging to the sides of that crevasse. I never blinked but absorbed it all—hair, birthmark, and wedding band—took it all inside me to remember. You could not have done that, Dad. I would have lost you too
.

“Mali. Are you listening?”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to stay in this house alone. You think too much when you’re alone. Come to the club. There’s something special happening tonight. I’ll reserve a table.”

“No. I want to wait for Tad’s call.”

“But they’re drivin’ to Maryland, not New Jersey. They won’t be calling for a couple of hours, at least.”

Outside, a horn sounded twice. The club had sent a car for him and he rose to slip his jacket on. “Will I see you later?”

When I didn’t answer, he said again, “Don’t stick in the house. I’ll hold your table.”

He kissed me and I watched him head for the door, envying the way he was able to step into his music so easily, the way people stepped into another room.

I turned the lock and leaned against the door. He was right, as usual. Get out of the house.

The club was crowded for a Tuesday night and the rush of excitement seemed to push my anxious feeling aside for a time. I persuaded the waiter to switch me to a table in the corner several rows away from the bandstand, which gave me a less than perfect view of Dad but a far better view of the crowd.

Most of the tables were occupied, and although April had come and gone, many minks, lynx, and foxes had not yet found their way into storage. They were draped over shoulders and chairs in such abundance I began to wonder if I’d missed the warning of a cold front heading our way.

Still, I admired the sisters for looking good.

The set had not started and small talk floated around the tables, talk that stopped completely when the door opened and Johnnie Harding walked in with Maizie Nicholas on his arm. Judging from the fur draped on her shoulders, a serious blizzard was kicking up right around the corner. Her floor-length red-dyed, sheared mink literally flowed over her black satin gown as Johnnie led her down the inclining aisle. They moved slowly, completely absorbed in their entrance. Johnnie waved to someone
here and another there as the manager, smiling and obsequious, led the way.

At their table, the manager bowed and whipped out his handkerchief to flick invisible dust from the linen cloth before pulling Maizie’s chair out. Then he hovered nearby, ready, it seemed, to drop to one knee on command.

Maizie detached herself from her coat and yawned slightly, covering her mouth with fingers so diamond-heavy I wondered how she was able to raise her hand. The stone on the engagement finger stood out from the rest, for its sheer size alone.

I glanced around to see everyone else gazing—if not at the fingers, then surely at the coat. Johnnie leaned back in his chair scanning the watching crowd, then beckoned to the manager, who bowed again and left. Seconds later a bucket of champagne was at their table just as the lights were dimming. I couldn’t see their faces, but when the two glasses touched, the diamonds on Maizie’s hand sent a small sparkling shower into the darkness.

The ensemble gathered and a brown woman with a full figure and throaty voice joined them. Her delivery was cool and relaxed and forty-five minutes and several songs later the crowd would not let her go. Two hours later, after much applause, the stage went dark and Dad sat facing me.

“Glad you decided to come out. The boy’s gonna be okay.”

“I know he will but it bothers me that he had to leave at all.”

“Well, your friend said whatever’s gonna happen’ll happen soon. And speaking of happenin’s …” He turned and nodded in the general direction of Johnnie’s table. A platoon of waiters was wafting down the aisles with towel-wrapped bottles of champagne and pouring at every table. “They finally gonna do the thing.”