Only the Strong (25 page)

“Billie! That's enough.” Artinces rocked back in her chair and glared up at her.

Billie's eyes narrowed. “Fire me if you want to,” she said, her voice softening. “But you should be thanking me. It's about time everybody stopped tiptoeing around you and told you the truth. For all our sakes, you've got to call that man.”

“I could never—”

Billie sat on Artinces's desk. She lifted the phone from its cradle and handed it to her. “Do it. Call him.”

Artinces leaned forward and placed her elbows on her desk. She rubbed her palms together. “Do they really call me that? Our Lady of Sorrows?”

“Maybe not. But it got your attention, didn't it?”

The women stared at each other in silence. Billie's lips began to quiver. Artinces made a choking sound, then a giggle escaped. Unable to contain themselves any longer, they broke into full-throated laughter. Soon tears were rolling down Artinces's face.

As their merriment faded, Billie stood up. “You won't be sorry,” she said, turning to leave.

“Billie.”

“Hmm?”

“You're still the coolest.”

Billie smiled. “Cooler than Miles Davis, baby.”

In the far corner of the print shop's parking lot, Artinces waited discreetly in her car while the men of the Black Swan gave Goode's storefront a makeover. She watched them expertly apply coats of outdoor paint, exchanging wisecracks as they scrambled up and down their scaffolding. Eventually, Goode's car rolled up with Guts Tolliver behind the wheel. Guts got out and opened the rear door, holding it until his boss emerged. Assessing the sign painters' work, Goode offered his thoughts as Guts stood nearby, his massive arms folded. Then, as if somehow sensing her presence, Goode turned and met her gaze. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

Back at her office, the hours moved at a sadistic crawl. When she had finally and guiltily shooed the last patient away, and Billie and the others had headed home, Artinces hurried through Exam Room No. 3 and opened the door leading to the alley.

She had just about given up when he slowed his New Yorker to a stop. He got out and leaned back against it, just as he had when they first got together.

“Come here,” she said, but he just stuffed his hands in his pockets. He seemed to be looking at a spot just over her shoulder.

“You're awfully far away,” she continued. Again nothing.

Okay. This is some kind of test
. She left the safety of her doorway and walked purposefully toward him. She could feel his reliable heat before she closed the distance. Confident now, she reached up and placed her hand behind his neck. She shut her eyes.

But he showed more restraint than she knew he had. “You've always known who and what I was,” he said. “I never pretended to be anything else.”

“Stop talking,” she said. She placed her palm on his chest and began to rub him gently. On tiptoes, she pressed her lips against his neck.

“Get your hands off me.”

She continued, unafraid. She knew she could make him crumble. Make him bend.

“Like I told you,” he said, “hurting people is what I do best. Maybe it's what I was put here to do.”

“Nope,” she murmured, kissing him. “It's not what you do best.” She kissed him again. “Not even close.”

And so they were on again, and stayed that way for another few years. She managed her flourishing practice and began to teach at the city's acclaimed medical school, an institution that hadn't accepted its first black student until two years after she'd graduated from Howard. Goode continued to go legit, easing further out of the underworld and into the land of the straight and narrow.

They had their minor spats here and there, the kind of low-grade tempests that would occasionally erupt between any
headstrong pair. But there were only clear skies between them when they made plans to get together in Chicago in the late spring of 1966. Artinces had a conference to attend and Goode had a couple of racehorses he wanted to scout at Hawthorne. She took the train. Goode, defying custom and shrugging off the protests of the ever-vigilant Guts, drove himself. His New Yorker, tuned up by the wizardly Cherry, purred all the way up Highway 70.

In between her slideshows and plenary sessions, Artinces dragged Goode through quiet museums and dusty bookstores. In turn, she tried not to look bored in the grandstand at Hawthorne while he followed the thoroughbreds furlong by furlong, a rolled-up
Racing Form
in one hand and binoculars pressed to his brow with the other. On their third night in the Windy City, both were in a festive mood. In a cluttered bookstore in Old Town, she had stumbled on
A Book of Medical Discourses
by Rebecca Crumpler, whose framed quote had long graced the wall of her office. In 1864, Crumpler had become the first black woman in the country to earn a medical degree. Goode, meanwhile, had found his treasure at the track earlier that day: a promising two-year-old colt worth his investment.

Back at their hotel, Goode scoffed when he saw the book. “That battered thing is what's got you all hot and bothered? I haven't seen a colored person so excited about a book since I got trapped at a revival meeting with a bunch of Bible-thumpers.”

He carefully lifted a suit out of the closet and laid it on the bed. Artinces sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes. “You've been to a revival meeting?”

“Yeah, I spent a lot of time with Miles's family. Until I outgrew that sort of thing.”

“When was that?”

“When I turned eight.” He pulled five neckties from a drawer and fanned them out around the suit.

“Maybe you should have stuck around a little longer, picked up some wisdom,” she said. “This battered thing will one day be worth more than that horse you can't shut up about.”

He leaned toward her and pecked her on the mouth. “Ha! Shows how much you know about horses,” he teased.

She nibbled on his bottom lip before she let it go. “Ha yourself,” she said. “Shows how much you know about books.”

They went to a supper club in Bronzeville, where they surprised themselves by dancing until they shut the place down. It felt so good, so free, to be their true selves in a public place, to cast their usual cares aside and whirl and sweat and clap and stomp. They kissed a lot and laughed too, especially when a photographer peddling snapshots told them they were the best-looking pair in the place. “Y'all one them couples that's gon' always be together,” he said. “Trust me, I got a feeling.”

Later, after the bartender yelled last call and they held each other and turned slowly beneath the blue lights, swaying to “I'm So Proud” by the Impressions, the man's successful sales pitch felt like prophecy.

In the hush of the hotel hallway, Artinces hugged her fur stole while Goode fiddled with the lock. He was still dancing, singing “Wee Wee Hours” under his breath. Beads of sweat glistened on his bald scalp. “I understand if you're tired,” she said, although she was hoping he wasn't. “All that dancing, well, neither of us was prepared for all that.”

“I'm tired for sure,” he said, swinging the door open. “Tired of being up against you all night without being able to touch you the way I want.”

Artinces squealed when he suddenly swept her up in his arms and carried her across the threshold, reaching back with one foot to push the door shut.

In the morning, she woke up first. She sat quietly in a chair next to the bed and watched Goode snore. It had been a wonderful three days. This is how it is for a woman who sleeps all night with the man who belongs to her. She can choose to be annoyed by his snoring or agitated by the scratchy stubble that pushes up from his cheeks in his sleep. Or she can sit and savor the stillness, just be grateful for the solid weight of his presence, the sound of his breath.
I can be fine with this. It doesn't matter if it can't get any better
.

Or could it? Later that day, she returned to the hotel from her conference, having nearly nodded off during an endless discussion about inoculations. She opened the door with a bubble bath on
her mind, only to find Goode standing eagerly in the middle of the room. Grinning proudly, he thrust forward a pair of tickets.

Artinces peeked at them, then whooped. “Harry Belafonte! Cabaret!” She leaped onto him, gripped his waist with her thighs.

Goode couldn't help laughing. “Let go of me, woman,” he said. “We got to get ready. We don't want to be them kind of colored people who show up late to everything.”

She climbed off of him and began to loosen his belt. “Aw yeah, we're getting ready,” she agreed. “But first I have something I want to do. To you.”

Something was off, she knew. But she couldn't put a finger on it. Was it something she said or forgot to say? Or was it just because things had simply been going too smoothly?

He felt it too. An ill wind blowing off Lake Michigan and settling in his bones. He fought the urge to shiver as they entered the lobby of the theater after the performance. Belafonte had been magnificent and Artinces, as expected, had been transfixed. But Goode had shifted in his seat throughout the entire show. From time to time he swept his gaze across the space, eyeballing the box seats, the balcony, and the orchestra pit, as if he expected an assassin to rise up and let loose with a machine gun. He sensed a general anger swelling in him, a mindless rage with no purpose and no target, except perhaps himself. Being mad for no reason just made him madder. He was in a lovely place with a happy, beautiful woman on his arm. Soon she would be in his bed. What could go wrong?

“Artinces! Dr. Noel! Say there!”

She paused and turned toward the sound.
Damn
, Goode thought.
Is there any place where niggers don't know her?

He looked up and saw, rapidly approaching in an impressive pinstriped suit, a barrel-chested man of medium height and multiple chins. The woman beside him looked pleasant but meek.

“Why, Bert, look at you,” Artinces said. “Look at both of you, all dolled up.”

The man's chins shook when he laughed. “C'mon,” he said. “You can't go see Belafonte without appearing as
kempt
as possible. Isn't that right, Sugarplum?”

After the woman and Artinces traded pleasantries and kissed each other's cheeks, the couple gazed expectantly and made no attempt to fill the silence.

Goode was vaguely aware of Artinces touching his elbow. “This is my—this is Ananias Goode.”

Her voice sounded slightly higher than usual, breathless. Goode glanced at her and saw himself in her eyes, as he believed she was seeing him. Crude. Unpolished. Unlettered.

“Bertram Dudley. Pleasure,” the man said. “This is my wife, Jane.”

The man smelled vaguely sour to Goode, like a pickle in pinstripes. Goode's attention wandered amid a recap of Belafonte's best moments and gossip about the medical conference. When it returned, the Dudleys were sharing their vast knowledge of the civil rights movement.

“I do hope Dr. King prevails here,” the Pickle was saying. “If he doesn't, the gangs and hoodlums will take over. King looks a little lost every time he sets foot in the big city, like a country boy wearing his daddy's suit. But I do prefer him to that awful Malcolm X.”

“God rest his soul,” Sugarplum murmured.

But her husband wasn't having it. “You mean good riddance. Either way, after all the fighting, educated folks will be left to straighten everything out. Don't you think so, Goode?”

So I'm not invisible after all
, he thought. “I ain't so sure,” he replied.

The Pickle barely paused to acknowledge his answer. “They can keep their ‘black is beautiful,'” he offered. “‘Negro' suits me just fine. Talented Tenth, all that. Once they've broken themselves up trying to fight the Man, they'll need surgeons like me to patch them back together. What's your specialty, Goode? Haven't seen you at the convention. Are you a sawbones too?”

There had been a time when Goode could look at a man for just a second longer than usual—lock him in with his silent, steady gaze—and it would be the same as sending him a mental message. The man would quickly understand that he had tarried too long and would excuse himself without further delay. Goode gave the
Pickle the look but he missed it somehow. So Goode sighed and answered his question. “Something like that,” he said.

The Pickle wiggled his bushy brows. “How so?”

“I don't mend bones. I break 'em.”

As the Pickle and Sugarplum exchanged embarrassed glances, the chill in Goode's spine gave way to rapidly spreading heat. Everything he'd worked to purge from himself oozed out of his skin like sweat.

“It's like surgery but not so neat,” he heard himself say. “And there's no painkillers.”

“I don't understand,” the Pickle persisted.

Goode stepped in close enough to spit on him. “I fuck up motherfuckers,” he explained. “Make 'em wish they was dead.”

The Pickle frowned. Sugarplum gasped. Artinces grabbed Goode firmly by the arm.