Unexpected Dismounts (18 page)

I finally stopped for air. Hank stepped into the pause.

“You know how you hear things from God,” she said.

“Yeah, again, finally.”

“I hear them too, only in my case they aren’t prophecy. They’re … Let’s call them insights. It just so happens that most of them are about you.”

I drew the snot from under my nose with the side of my hand and looked at her.

“I know,” she said. “Go figure, right? And here’s the insight I’m getting now. If you want to hear it.”

“Are you serious? Tell me before I lose it completely.”

She handed me a paper towel. “You’re gifted with a sensitivity to God’s presence, not just in the cosmos, but inside other people.”

“This is a gift?” I said.

“Oddly, yes. It’s always been part of any prophet. ”

I blew my nose. “Well, you know what? This is one of those times I wish God had given my gift to somebody else.”

She folded her hands in that no-nonsense way she had and said, “Then it’s a good thing for all of us that wishing doesn’t make it so.”

Hank left shortly thereafter. There wasn’t a whole lot more to say, and I needed to at least try to get some sleep.

But I didn’t go to bed. I sat wrapped in blankets in the red chair-and-a-half the way Ophelia had just a few hours before and watched her sleep the sleep of the beaten-up.

I went over the events of the day, asking God the obvious questions and getting no direct answers. I’d resigned myself to the fact that
wash their feet
was going to be the background music in my soundtrack from here on. But the feet had been washed, and here I was, with no place to bathe the rest of this woman who was on my sofa, or the others who walked West King Street or rode in cars with johns this very night and would drink and shoot themselves up to kill the pain before the sun came up on it. Here I was, in this big house with many rooms I wasn’t allowed to fill.

I sat up in the chair.

This big house. A house some woman in a beige Mercury Sable apparently wanted to buy so much she was mad when I had a party that prevented her from seeing it.

I could almost feel Sylvia in the room, giving me the stare that could melt confessions out of me for crimes I hadn’t even committed yet.

“I know I promised you,” I whispered. “But if you could feel what these women feel, Sylvia … I’m just going to find out how much this person offers. I’ll just ask.”

I got no sense of approval from Sylvia. Or, for that matter, from God. All I knew was that I had to provide for Ophelia and Zelda and Jasmine and Mercedes and Sherry and the rest of our Sisters who were making their journey toward us. Because the pain wasn’t going to leave me alone until I did.

When my phone rang the next morning, I was still in the chair, twisted in some kind of impossible sleep position I could hardly get out of to answer it. Not that I wanted to answer it. Every time a bell rang it seemed to start an avalanche.

But Chief’s voice was calm. “Is Desmond packed yet?”

“Is he going somewhere?”

Chief gave a throaty laugh.

“Oh, yeah.” I scrubbed at my face with my free hand. “I thought you weren’t coming until ten.”

“It’s eleven.”

“You’re not serious! Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

I threw off the afghan and tried to find the floor with my feet.

“I did. Desmond said you were still asleep, so I told him not to wake you up.”

“Desmond was in here answering my phone?”

I bolted up in the chair. Then he’d seen Ophelia, who, I realized, was no longer on the couch.

“Did you tell him he was coming to stay with you?” I said as I sprinted for the kitchen.

“I did. And he’s already given me a list of food I need to buy. I’m going to need to take out a second mortgage.”

I stopped just short of the kitchen door and cupped my hand around mouth and phone. “I’m a terrible mother. I didn’t even get up in time to talk to him about this before he saw Ophelia.” I shoved my hair out of my face. “I don’t know how I’m going to handle this with him.”

“Have you seen him yet?’

“No.”

I could hear the almost smile. “I think you’ll find him handling it himself. I’ll be there in ten.”

I stuffed the phone in the pocket of yesterday’s dress pants and pushed open the kitchen door. Desmond sat at the bistro table across from Ophelia, pouring orange juice into a tall pilsner. She was curved like a question mark in the bistro chair, but half of a toaster waffle was missing from her plate. The other half swam in about a half a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s. Desmond’s Mother D persona was gone, along with the tuxedo, but he was certainly putting the servers at the Waffle House to shame.

“Hey, Big Al,” he said. “We was fixin’ to starve half to death so I went ahead and cooked us some breakfast. You want some?”

My stomach still felt like I’d eaten bad shrimp, so I shook my head. “I see you’ve met Ophelia.”

“Met her yesterday,” he said. “Only I almost didn’t recognize her since somebody rearranged her face.”

“You have such tact, Desmond,” I said.

Either Ophelia hadn’t heard or she didn’t see the point in being offended. Her right eye and cheek were less swollen than the night before, but her skin was now a heinous shade of purple. My own face throbbed.

“You want coffee, Ophelia?” I said. “I’m going to make a pot.”

“She done that already,” Desmond said. “Me and her on our second cup.”

I gave him the death stare. “Tell me you did not consume caffeine.”

He grinned. “Gotcha, Big Al.”

“Wretched child,” I said. “Are you packed? Chief’ll be here in five minutes.”

“I got it all in two trash bags.”

I poured what looked like liquid mud into a mug. “And you’re planning to get that into Chief’s saddle bags?”

“I was thinkin’ you could bring it over later and I could fix y’all a candlelight dinner.”

There was so much awry in that statement I didn’t even answer. I filled the space in the mug with milk and nodded toward his room. “Get your leathers so you’ll be ready.”

“We goin’ to the
beach,
Big Al,” he said, voice rising to that range that would soon have dogs howling all over St. John’s County. “I don’t need no—”

“No leathers, no ride.”

That came from Chief, now blocking out the sun in the side porch doorway. Ophelia slid out of the bistro table and whispered, “Is it all right if I take a shower?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I showed you where last night. I’ll be up in a minute with fresh clothes for you.”

She seemed to evaporate from the room.

“Leathers?” I said to Desmond.

He glanced at Chief’s legs, which, bless the man, were clad in chaps. “They in the garage,” he said, and went out the side door.

“How’s she doing?” Chief said.

“I really don’t know. Those were the first words I heard her say. She made coffee, though.” I frowned into my mug. “At least, I think it’s coffee. And she asked to take a shower. Every other woman who’s come here I’ve had to put in a half nelson to get them into the tub.”

“She’s not a drug addict,” Chief said.

“She’s an alcoholic, though, or at least she self-medicates with it.” I looked at the kitchen door that still swayed slightly in Ophelia’s wake. “She needs to recover from something, I know that much.”

“Then she’s come to the right person.”

I kept my eyes on the door, but my mind saw the look I heard in his voice. When I turned to him, it was there, and I couldn’t breathe.

He had just made love to me.

Right on cue, the side door banged open and Desmond bolted through it and toward his room almost in one noisy motion. One of the bistro chairs tottered as he rammed between it and Chief.

“We’ve got all day,” Chief said drily.

But Desmond slammed his door behind him, and I heard his headboard knock against the wall. That was the sound of him throwing himself across his bed, a move usually reserved for me announcing his next dentist appointment.

Chief shot up an eyebrow.

“He’s going to fight this leathers thing to the very end,” I said. “Oh, and by the way, while you have him with you, would you have a talk with him about his ‘women’? I don’t think …”

I stopped because Chief was looking past me and through the front window, eyes trained on something that brought the lines in tension. I turned to follow his gaze, in time to see a beige vehicle back out of the short driveway in front of my garage and head toward the exit from Palm Row.

“Was that the car?” I said.

Chief was already looking at the notation he’d made in his phone. “Yeah, same one.”

“Shoot. I wanted to talk to her.”

“About …” he said, eyes narrowing.

“I just want to see how much—”

“No, Big Al!”

I whirled around to see Desmond standing in his doorway, chest heaving, eyes bulging from his head. He flung himself in the direction of the snack drawer, but he didn’t touch it. Nor did he yank open the refrigerator door, although he showed every intention. When he made an aimless dive for the pantry, I knew that if I waited he would eventually proclaim me the best listener on the planet, but I feared for the condition of my canned goods.

“Desmond, what is it?” I said.

He hurled himself into the pantry anyway and then did an about-face that knocked a container of olive oil from a shelf and sent it bouncing and denting under the table.

“Don’t have nothin’ to do with that woman,” he said to me. “Just don’t.”

“Do you know her?” Chief said.

“I just know she evil.”

“Does she look evil?” I said.

Desmond swallowed so hard I could almost hear his Adam’s apple hit bottom. “Yeah. She jus’ look like she ain’t got nothin’ good on her mind. Like she nothin’ but trouble for us.”

I rifled back through what I’d just said to Chief. Had I actually gotten out that I was going to ask her if she was interested in buying the house? Or had Desmond just picked up on her interest in Palm Row property from my conversation with Owen? The boy was, after all, everywhere he didn’t need to be, hearing everything he didn’t need to hear. I supposed that was how a kid like him survived on the streets.

“Would it make you feel better if your mom promised not to talk to her?” Chief said.

I glared at him. Nice. Use the boy for your own agenda.

“If she cross her heart and hope to die right here on the floor.” Desmond’s eyes swelled again. “No. You don’t got to die. Just cross your heart and hope to spit.”

I glanced out the window. “She’s gone anyway,” I said. “Now both of you, quit doggin’ me and go to the beach.”

Desmond wriggled his shoulders as if he were shaking himself back into place. Chief, on the other hand, suddenly looked uncharacteristically embarrassed.

“There’s going to be a slight delay, pal,” he said. “I put my sis—backrest—on Allison’s bike until the new one came in and I forgot to pick it up.”

“I don’t need no backrest thing.”

We both looked at Desmond. He put his white-palmed hands up in surrender, but I could see he was going to come right out of his skin if he didn’t get on that Harley in the next seven seconds.

“Take my bike,” I said to Chief.

He looked doubtful.

“Just to go pick up the bar. Then you can bring it back here and put it on and you guys can be on your way.”

“Imma go wichoo, right?” Desmond said to him.

Chief’s lines flinched, but he nodded. “All right. Get your stuff.”

Desmond took off out the door as if he had a pack of dogs after him. Chief tilted his head at me. “I don’t like riding somebody else’s bike.”

“You’ve ridden mine before,” I said. “It’s just a couple of miles. And you are not leaving that kid here with me to scrape off the walls. Besides, I have …”

I pointed to the ceiling. I could hear the shower running in the upstairs bathroom.

“You’re pretty persuasive, Classic,” he said.

His lips brushed my forehead.

“Did I mention that I will have your head in a handbasket if anything happens to my bike?” I said.

What I wanted to say was,
I can’t stand this anymore. I love you. Now will you please kiss me?

I didn’t, and he left with my kid and my bike. But I made a vow as I watched them from the side porch that I would tell Chief that the next moment I laid eyes on the man. No matter who else clattered into the room while I was doing it.

I was still standing there, listening to my Classic fade into the Sunday sounds of St. Augustine, when another vehicle turned into Palm Row. The Mercury again, tires squealing. The driver rocked it to a stop right in the middle of the lane and threw open the door with the bell still ringing to tell her the keys were in the ignition.

Apparently she didn’t care. Her eyes found me on the porch and she marched through the gate and across the lawn, a lace-trimmed dashiki flapping around her. Her head was so tightly wrapped in a dark blue scarf, her eyes stretched unnaturally at the corners. Even at that, they were huge eyes that seemed to take up half her face. I’d seen eyes like that before.

And as soon as she stopped on my bottom step and opened her mouth, I knew where.