Winners (12 page)

“Yeah,” she says, still looking at Shane but talking to Jimmy, “bet you got all the opportunity in the world, too.”

“Oh, sure,” Jimmy says. “I’m thinking of running for president.”

“You fool enough to fit right in.”

“Yeah. Well enough about me,” Jimmy says. “Tell us about Samson.”

“What about him.”

“What’s he, you know, who are his friends? What’s he like to do besides basketball? How long’s he been going to this gym?”

“You think you the po-lice or something?”

“I thought maybe we could help you find him.”

“How y’all gonna find my Samson? I don’t think so. I wanna talk to you about that other thing.”

“What other thing.”

“You want to help me out? Help me out. Maybe you still living with your momma but I am the momma. I need to find me a job or something. I got to get up out of there, you know what I’m saying?”

“I been thinking about that,” Jimmy says. “I didn’t forget. She should talk to Lou.”

Shane pictures Debra sitting across a conference table from his wife, chatting about page views and butterfly models, unique selling points and calls to action. He stares at the black lines of dirt embedded in his knuckles, keeping a straight face. Debra is watching him carefully.

“My wife,” he says. “She knows a lot about the current market, business.”

“She owns her own damn business,” Jimmy says. “And it’s growing.”

“It’s this Internet thing,” Shane says. “They.” He shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, maybe. We can talk to her, it can’t hurt.”

“I think it could be perfect,” Jimmy says. “They’re hiring all these people, and no one knows what they’re doing. And don’t those dot-commers talk about diversity initiatives or whatever? But there’s just a whole bunch of whiteys, man, they don’t have no diversity. It’s a fucking joke. Lou could totally make this happen.”

“Jimmy.”

“If not Lou herself, she knows somebody. You ever use a computer?”

Shane is horrified. He expects to see her reach out and smack his brother across the face but Debra just glances back and forth between them, trying to gauge what’s going on.

“Yeah,” she says. “Not really.”

“It’s pretty easy. They want you to think it’s rocket brain surgery or something but mostly that shit’s just glorified typing.”

“Why don’t you have no job, then?”

“Hey, I could definitely do that crap except…” Jimmy waves his hands as if swatting invisible flies. “I’ve got my own things I’m working on. What I’m saying is that you sit down with someone and poke around a little bit, you could do half these jobs these little fuzz-faced twenty-year-olds coming in and getting fifty grand to do nothing. Nothing.”

“Fifty thousand dollars?” Debra says. She checks Shane for confirmation. “Is that right?”

“Listen.” Shane debates about what to say or whether to grab a fork and stab his brother in the thigh. “Let’s just put this topic on hold until I talk to Lou, okay. You have to forgive my brother. He means well but he never has the slightest idea what he’s talking about.”

“Yeah, huh.”

“Yeah. I will talk to her, though.”

“So what does Samson do?” Jimmy asks, unfazed by slander. Shane can hear the cook and the waitress talking about a movie or something, the thick sizzle of something wet hitting the grill. “Does he have a job?”

“He had a job,” Debra says finally. “For a while. He was working in a mailroom? Right now I don’t know. I really don’t know all what he’s doing.”

“Why not?”

The two at the counter laugh. Fun continues in their world. The woman at the table behind them swirls the ice around in her empty plastic glass. Debra and Jimmy are having a mild staring contest, which Jimmy seems to win as Debra looks over to see what Shane thinks about all this. A mailroom. Sam working in a mailroom. Did he wear a button-down shirt? Shane tries to picture him walking out of Debra’s door in khaki pants and a light blue oxford, hiking the scrappy project path, waiting for the bus to take him downtown for six bucks an hour. No, that couldn’t be right. How’d he work a mailroom and hit the Firehouse at noon? And hit the gym, too? Did he ever try to get a job at the gym? Shane shrugs to tell Debra: no help here, only questions. She quickly returns to Jimmy.

“So you just get in people’s business, huh. That what you do?”

“When I care about them, yeah.”

“Oh you care about him. I never heard your name. I never seen you before.”

“Five years. He been balling with us for five years, and you never knew about it. Makes you wonder, huh.”

“Don’t make me wonder. You don’t know me. You don’t know Samson.”

“That’s why I’m asking. I want to know.”

“Oh you miss your little friend, huh.”

“Don’t you.”

She stares out the window, tapping a fingernail against her teeth. “I don’t know where he got to this time.” Her voice has dropped down low and soft in the sudden quiet of the restaurant. “He don’t stay with me too much anymore. You know, he a man now and all that. Big twenty-year-old baby. He don’t like it up there. I mean, nobody like it up there. But they mess with him, you know, and they ain’t no children anymore.”

“Why they mess with him?” Jimmy asks.

“Why you think.”

Jimmy ignores the mad in her voice and considers. “I don’t know. He’s a good ball player, that’s got to count for something. He can kick half their asses on the court if he wanted to.”

She searches his face, like she’s trying to figure out if he’s making fun of her. “Yeah he good, huh,” she says finally, keeping something in. “I don’t know that make it better or worse.”

“Better.”

“Come on now. He can ball, but he’s not street, not even. I’m his momma and even I know he don’t look right. Where they’re concerned—if you ain’t hard or run your mouth, you’re not in the game? You’re nothing. I kept him away from all that. My boy a high school graduate, know what I’m saying, my boy’s never been inside, nothing like that. He got another place to stay? I don’t blame him.”

“But a month. And you don’t even know?”

She shrugs, looks around the restaurant for sympathy, somebody who can tell her what to do with these two morons.

“What about the police?”

“What about ’em?” Now she’s fishing, Shane thinks, like we know something. What could we possibly know? “They find him, I guess someone tell me about it, huh.”

“Maybe not. We got a cousin on the force, we could ask around.”

“Look,” she says. “Reason I called, you know, it’s difficult, see.” She’s tapping her nails against her teeth again, then clenches her fist tight to stop herself. “I got to get us out of there. But you talking about a job and you don’t even have a job. I don’t know why I’m wasting my time.”

“We can help you, there’s no reason we can’t.”

She nods in disagreement, weary. They’re all wasting their time, the three of them, but what else do they have? “What about you, you all quiet over there, what do you think.”

Shane watches her mistaking silence for knowledge and shakes his head, his tongue thick with nothing but questions. Where’s your family? Where’s Samson? How do I get out of this? He pictures Debra in a cubicle typing away, her right hand darting out to flick the mouse. Click click. Sam climbs up a long ladder to a rooftop where Shane’s waiting to show him how to snap the brushes together. Sure—and they all live happily fucking after. Debra’s still waiting for him, her eyes skipping around his face, his hair, his mouth. As if what comes out might actually mean something. She waits.

“It’s a good time for jobs,” he finally manages. “I’ll talk to my wife. Maybe she can help.”

They drive her home in silence. As they turn into her parking lot, Shane spots the telltale light blue jersey floating past, Tennessee and friend on an early evening stroll. Then Jimmy sees him too.

“That’s the guy,” Jimmy says.

“What guy.” Shane pulls the van forward a little faster, trying to stay unseeing and unseen. Tennessee is not someone he wants to see right now. But Jimmy is adamant. He reaches forward, touches Debra’s shoulder, points.

“That guy. Dude was here last time. Waiting for us. He knows Samson.”

“Everybody know everybody,” Debra says. They park in front of her apartment.

“They’re friends?”

“Naw, he.” She changes her mind. “Listen, y’all don’t want to talk to him, he a drug dealer, okay. He one a those, you know, police come for him in the morning and he back by lunch.”

“Huh. They got special police for up here?”

But Debra doesn’t seem to hear him. “He coulda got out,” she says softly. “Not one of those got a new car every week or something. Sent his parents back home, they from Memphis? He built them a house. He go build his parents a house and then stay up here to sell drugs? Naw, he gonna end up dead though.”

“Did Samson,” Jimmy says. “Was he messed up in that?”

Debra shakes her head. “Naw.” She reaches for the door but doesn’t open it, clicking the handle lightly back and forth.

“I guess not, huh.” Jimmy’s looking out the window, searching for Tennessee, for Samson, for someone. “First time we saw that dude, he just walked up and tried to sell us something, right off the bat.”

“Oh he try. What you think? He try with me, I seen him from a little boy he still come up and all ‘Auntie auntie, what you need.’” She almost smiles, shakes her head. “And he know I don’t do that.”

“But we coulda been anybody, right?”

“Who could y’all be?” She opens the door to leave but stays seated and then shuts it again, slowly. “Listen, these people up here.” She shakes her head. “Y’all can’t be coming around, okay. Yeah, people think I’m talking to the—they don’t know who. People be talking. Talk up here like you don’t even know.”

“We can call you,” Shane says, too quickly. Jimmy shoots him a look, hearing it, like the date gone wrong: yeah, baby, I’ll call.

“My phone’s not working.”

“Do you want me to look at it?”

“You can look at it, but that’s not the problem.”

Shane blinks. He’s getting better at not answering, at refusing to fix the problem. “Okay.” Would you mind, then, if I walked out that door and disappeared off the face of your planet? But she’s not letting him off the hook. He slips another business card off the dash and hands it to her. “Call me in a couple days, then.”

“Couple days,” she repeats. He can’t tell if that’s a long time or surprisingly soon. She scans the business card in her hand: the jolly chimney leprechaun in rooftop boogie with his broom. She points at this ridiculous character, almost smiling. “You do this, for real?”

“For real.”

“Huh. Okay. All right now.” She slips out the door and flips it shut behind her.

They watch her amble away from them, hips swinging, singing or talking to herself.

“What the hell,” Shane says. His brother moves up to the front seat, settling smug beside him. “Lock the door,” Shane tells him. “You’re not gonna talk to me first about your little scenarios?”

“When? Besides, you’d probably say no. But you wouldn’t say no to her.”

“Jesus, Jimmy. I mean. I wanna help but shit.”

“Shit what. Shit because she’s black?”

“Oh sure, that’s it. That’s the only issue we’re dealing with.”

“Come on, I know it’s not all computer geeks. They need marketing, salespeople, receptionist, customer service, office manager, you know, everything.”

“That’s not even what I’m talking about.”

“What are you talking about.”

“And what do you know about office managers?”

“I read. I listen to the radio. They’re always bitching about they can’t find warm bodies. Any idiot can get a job.”

“Except for you.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“Says who.”

“Listen. Who knows what she can do, but whatever it is, I bet she could do it for Lou.” He snaps his fingers three times, summoning a genie. “She’s quick, she got a spark, you know. Come on, you have to admit, for a guy with nothing, I’m a brilliant super genius. You gotta talk to Lou about it, at least.”

“I will. You know I will. But you got to let me do it my way. All right?”

“You got it.”

“And what are you gonna do?” Her phone. Computer. Résumé.

“Me? I’m gonna find Sam.” Jimmy jerks his head, spotting something. “Hold up, hold up,” he says and Shane obeys before he sees why. By the time Jimmy’s downed his window and calling out, it’s too late.

“Yo, what’s up. I ask you a question?”

Tennessee stares a little murder and then smiles at them as he steps their way, his body rocking in a limping strut. He reaches out and Jimmy meets his hand, the two of them doing some variation of slap grasp bump like they’re old friends.

“S’up chimney man,” he says, eyeing Shane with deep recognition. “Your lucky day, it’s happy hour.”

“We’re looking for Sauce,” Jimmy says.

“Yeah,” Tennessee says. “What you need Sauce, you got the king now. He with me. You made it to the well, don’t gotta worry now. Well don’t run dry.”

“No,” Jimmy says. “It’s not our thing.”

“Aw I seen you do your thing,” Tennessee says, staring at Shane. “Chimney and the rock stars. Y’all forget about Sauce, I gotcha. What I say, he with me, you know, his land is my land.”

“It’s not like that. We’re friends of the family. We’re trying to help his momma out.”

Disbelief tightens the muscles in Tennessee’s jaw, where a knot pulses briefly like an angry tumor. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, she don’t know where he got to, and we’re trying to help her out.”

“Help her out? She your friend.”

Jimmy nods.

“That’s good,” Tennessee says, frowning, waiting for someone to change their mind. But no one does. “She needs a friend. ’Cause that bitch owe me money. Sauce owe me money. Everybody owe me money, the whole motherfucking cosmos owe me money. And I’m getting paid. Maybe you owe me money too.”

“Naw. Not us. We just looking for our man.”

Tennessee and Jimmy stare each other down, and to Shane’s surprise Jimmy doesn’t look away. It’s the look of having nothing to lose. Tennessee glances over at Shane, calculating something, sucking in the difference between the two. “You,” he says to Shane, “you see Sauce, you tell him he better take care of his momma and my money.”