The Between (16 page)

“Where’s the rest of that suit? That’s your best,” she said.

“I left it at the office,” he said with ease, too much ease. Before now, he’d never had any opportunities to discover that he was, indeed, an adept liar. He sat at the edge of the bed, near her feet. “I’m sorry I wasn’t at work when you called.”

“Wanda told me about your meeting.”

“I canceled it,” he said without a pause.

“She told me that, too.” Hilton sensed a hidden pain in Dede’s face, but it was impossible to guess its source. There had been so much pain lately.

“Aren’t you going to ask where I was?” Hilton asked. Dede looked at him but stubbornly refused to answer. He kneaded her foot beneath the blanket. “Work has been hard for me, piling up, and I can’t handle it. I took off and drove around. Back roads, mostly. I’m trying to get myself together, Dede.”

When he saw her uncomfortable concern for him reflected in her face, his skin began to burn with guilt. He rubbed his neck, wishing he had the courage to be honest, wishing he’d had the strength to remain true to her, true to himself. “I’m a mess, Dede,” he said, blinking, staring at his lap.

“You said you were going to see Raul.”

“I know.”

Her voice drifted to an urgent hush: “Hilton, it scares me to see you like this. Even Wanda asked me what’s happening to you. I said I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I try not to think about it, hoping it’ll go away and 111 have my husband back. But it doesn’t. Every day I look at you in the mornings and I can barely remember who you are. Who you were. You’re a man who lives here, you walk with that gun, you’re watching over us all the time like some sort of guardian angel. But other than that, I don’t know you. What’s happened?”

He shook his head, unable to speak.

“Promise me you’ll get help,” Dede said, sitting up, her bleary eyes sweeping over his face. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” he said, barely audibly.

“Should we cancel the party Saturday?”

“No,” he said quickly. “It might be good for us.”

Dede ventured a small smile, patting the mattress beside her. “Come,” she said. “Lie with me. As long as you can, lie here.”

He turned off the light and climbed into bed beside her, and her arms greeted him like a long-sought sanctuary. He could melt in these arms. He rested his head across her chest and felt her breathing, waiting, as heat gathered in the spots where their flesh met. But he couldn’t bring himself to touch her. He didn’t deserve to touch her like a husband, no matter how much he wished he could and how much he knew she wanted him to.

I’m sorry, he mouthed into the darkness.

Finally, after a moment, he heard Dede’s long, wounded sigh of resignation before she kissed one temple and the other. “Sweet dreams,” she said.

Hilton explores the warm, welcoming space between Dede’s legs and parts them, sliding himself on top of her with a steady pressure until her insides swallow him. He breathes a sigh and fervidly burrows his way against her flesh, retreating until he feels the heated ringing at his tip
—
never further
—
and then easing back inside until the ringing spreads throughout his loins.

“I’m sorry, Dede,” he says. “Never, never again.”

When she does not answer, he wonders if she is angry. He wonders if she refuses to stir to punish him, or if she is veiling her own pleasure to torment him.

He closes his eyes, his buttocks pinched from strain, and buries himself inside of her again. He kneads her stiff nipples with his fingertips. He can already feel the surge of his seed, a creeping from his testicles through the pulsing length of his organ. Not now, he thinks. This is too soon. A bit longer.

Her grasp around him is more tight now, a second skin lulling him helplessly to the edge of his endurance. Not yet, not yet.

The grip snatches tighter still, so jolting that he pauses in midstroke. It is pain, he realizes. Dede is so parched that he is scraping himself raw inside her. Is he bleeding? The heat he feels is entirely his own; Dede’s flesh has grown cold, and he feels it coiling through his system with a spasm.

Hilton gapes at Dede’s face. The eyes that meet his are so wide they look propped, glazed in a lifeless love stare. When he touches her, the skin does not yield to his fingertips; instead, his
hand drags across her flesh. Her body beneath him is stone.

Hilton screams, flinging himself from her and cradling his tender nakedness in a fetal curl on the bed.

“There’s no joy in fucking the dead,” a voice says from the darkness. His voice. He looks up and sees a Hilton figure facing him from the leather reclining chair. The figure is wearing Hilton’s silk pajamas, his hands folded in his lap.

A second Hilton figure, this one dressed in Hilton’s pinstriped gray suit, is adjusting his kente-cloth tie in the bureau mirror. He looks over his shoulder to glance at Hilton, grinning unkindly. “Unless, of course, you like that sort of thing. Some people do.”

“Fuck you,” Hilton says, feeling brave somehow. “All of you.” A third Hilton figure pokes his head from the bathroom, holding a dripping razor in his hand. His jaw is lathered with shaving cream, but the lather froths red from the runny, exposed flesh peeling from his face. One of his eyes is obscured by the flat crush of bone that was once his forehead, leaving him to gaze around him in a grotesque, exaggerated squint.

“How many times, Hilton?” the squinting Hilton figure calls. “Twice? Three times? How many times do you think you can die?”

“You can’t keep hiding,” says the Hilton figure at the bureau. “You don’t belong here. You remind me of a tree knocked over in a storm, its exposed roots gnarled and shriveled black
—”

“That keeps dropping seedlings,” sighs the Hilton figure in the chair, grim-faced, flipping through Dede’s legal pad.

“What’s another name for a dead tree?” calls the horrid Hilton figure in the bathroom.

“Firewood,” says Hilton at the bureau.

“Kindling,” says the Hilton in the chair, his face filled with menace. “So how do you like that? A dead tree dropping seedlings. Everything is growing wild, no control. And your hiding is all for nothing, mind you, because those seedlings will choke soon enough. We’ve found someone to do some weeding.”

“Who says it’s impossible to find good help?” chuckles the Hilton at the bureau. “Charles Ray’s dreams are like yours, easy to find. And he’s so willing.”

“He’d have almost thought of it himself.”

“And a poet, at that. Very nice touch, we thought,” says the Hilton in the chair, still glaring.

Hilton draws the sheets up over his naked body in the bed, blinking back tears. “Leave us alone,” he says, begging by now. “Why can’t we just be left alone?”

“No,” says the Hilton in the chair, pointing an accusing finger. “You leave us alone. Are we your puppets?”

“You’re offensive,” says the Hilton figure in the bathroom, scraping at his torn flesh absently with the razor. A slice of skin the size of a bacon strip drops to the floor.

“You’ve made us an abomination.”

“Imagine the gall, the cowardice, to run the way you do,” says the Hilton in the chair. “To expect to keep dying forever. Opening doors that aren’t meant for you.”

Hilton sees a flurry of movement behind the blinds pulled across the glass sliding door, and a small black boy wearing only cutoff shorts runs from his hiding place. He is Jamil’s age or a bit older, but he is not Jamil. He is so familiar. His skin is caked in glowing grains of sand.

“There’s a pool outside!” the boy cries. “Can we go swim?”

“That’s enough swimming for you,” says a woman’s voice. Hilton realizes that it is Nana, not Dede, who now lies beside him in the bed. Nana reaches over to stroke Hilton’s hand with a warm touch.

“Just a little swim?” Hilton asks her for the boy, clasping Nana’s hand.

“No more swimming,” Nana says kindly, her warmth drawing him closer and closer until he is wrapped in her arms, unafraid. The three Hilton figures have vanished. Only the boy remains, standing at the bedside with a smile and wondrous eyes gleaming with his innocence. Dried algae is tangled in the boy’s matted hair. Hilton is mesmerized by the sight of him. His eyes, his innocence, remind him of. . .he can’t remember. . .

“Stop fighting, Hilton. It’s wrong to fight,” Nana’s voice says from all around him, a tunnel. “I was wrong, too. I thought it was all for you, but I left you a curse, not a blessing.”

Those eyes. The boy’s eyes. The eyes of the unlived.

“Jamil?” Hilton calls desperately, a near-scream. “Kaya?”

In the darkness, no one answers. There is no one to answer. His words bounce against nothing and echo back to his ears.

Hilton woke up to the sound of his own cries, finding himself curled in a ball on the floor of the study, his boxer shorts cleaved to him in a bath of icy perspiration. He’d rolled off of the pallet Dede fixed for him, knocking over his makeshift plastic-crate nightstand and the clock. The room seemed to be trembling, but Hilton realized it was only his own fierce heartbeat. His chest felt so tight, so tight. Jesus, had he been breathing? One of these days, if he weren’t careful, he might die in his sleep.

He didn’t remember leaving Dede’s room. He didn’t remember allowing himself to sleep. Gasping, he sat straight up and reached for the shotgun he always kept beside him, feeling certain that they were still watching him, mocking. They were . . .

Who? Who was watching him?

Hilton tried to catch his breath, but it grew to a sob in his chest as he buried his face in the carpet of the empty room. No one. No one was watching. Only he was in here, with what little was left of his sanity.

“God, don’t leave me like this . . .” Hilton sobbed, finally acknowledging that in the loss of all hope he, like all men, was seeking refuge in a power he’d never dared allow himself to believe in. “Please, God, please . . . oh Jesus, help me . . .”

What had he done? Whom had he harmed, to deserve this? He’d tried to live a good life, that was all. He’d tried to be a good father, a good husband. He’d tried.

you don’t belong

    
come, hilton

Hilton sobbed harder, feeling the gun’s cold metal barrel in his slippery palm. He could end it all now, he could plant the gun in his mouth. That would be so much simpler, if only it weren’t for Dede and the children. He couldn’t leave them. Not now.

“Please, Jesus, show me the way . . .” Hilton begged, the muscles in his arms unsteady. “Show me the way . . . This life is worse than death . . . It’s worse . . . Is this hell I’m in? Why, God? Why?”

An answer came to Hilton in a word: Danitra. Suddenly, a small sense of hope crept inside of him. He couldn’t undo it, but he could try. He could begin his penance.

Hilton turned on the light and tore through his desk to find his message pad, where he’d taken at least one message from her months before, the day they made plans to move her to The Terraces. Yes, here it was. He continued dialing even as he glanced at his clock, which was lying on its side, and noted it was three o’clock in the morning.

The phone rang four times. He heard muttered profanity and a baby’s cries. He didn’t recognize the woman’s voice, which was distorted from sleep. “—dammit. . . Hel-lo?”

“Danitra?”

“Yes,” she said, clearly annoyed. “Who the hell is this?”

“It’s Hilton James.”

There was a long pause. “Mr. James?” she asked, confused. “What. . . I. . . What’s wrong? What time is it?”

His heart was pounding still. “I’m sorry to call this late. I didn’t mean to wake up Terrance. I needed to talk to you.”

“. . . Talk to me?” she muttered. “I don’t . . .”

“I had to apologize to you about today. It shouldn’t have happened, and it can’t happen again. I can’t sleep.”

Danitra sounded alarmed. “What you mean, Mr. James?”

“I had no business over there today. Can you understand?”

Now Danitra exhaled with an exasperated sound. She didn’t speak, so Hilton went on: “I left my jacket by there, too. Can you leave it on your doorknob for me when you go to school? I just want to grab it, and then that’s that. I’m sorry to be like this, I know you’ll think I’m a dog, but I made a mistake. A big mistake.”

This time when Danitra spoke her voice sounded more clear, more like herself. “You’re drunk, ain’t you?”

“I know what you must think, me calling like this. But—”

“I think you better just get off this phone and sleep it off or something, Mr. James. You ain’t making no kind of sense.”

“I just need my jacket.”

“I ain’t got no goddamned jacket,” Danitra snapped.

“Did you look for it? I think it’s—”

“Look,” Danitra said, her voice slicing through his words, “I don’t have no jacket, and I haven’t seen your ass today or any day since I got out. You got me confused with someone else. This is Danitra, remember? Danitra Peebles.”

Hilton was dumbstruck by the resolve and levelheadedness in Danitra’s voice. He could feel his pulse pounding in his fingertips as he held the telephone receiver.

“You there, Mr. James?” Danitra said, and he couldn’t make a sound to answer. Danitra sighed again, and her voice changed. “Wait a minute . . . Is this J.T.? Nigger, if it is, I’m gonna—”

Hilton slammed down the receiver, breathing hard. He clutched his throat with his hand and glanced wild-eyed around the room. It was happening again, just like with Stu yesterday. What was happening to him?

Hilton shuffled through the hallway to the open door of Dede’s bedroom. He stood a moment to allow his eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness and then made out Dede’s sleeping face in the light from the patio. He stared at the leather reclining chair facing him, where her pad was abandoned in the seat. He glanced at his reflection in the bureau mirror. He walked to the bathroom and could see the white glow of his disposable Bic razor on the sink.