Bright Lights, Dark Nights (31 page)

“Lester's harmless,” Naomi said, brushing aside everything else I'd said.

“Maybe you should be with Lester, then,” I said, and instantly wanted to take it back. I needed to get out of there, fast.

“You are ridiculous,” Naomi said, standing up herself now. “Relationships are hard. Sometimes there're bad things, hard times. You
really
need to learn to deal with them.”

“How do you know what relationships are?” I asked. She didn't have any more experience than I did.

“Well, how do you know?” she retorted. It was a good retort. I chuckled. “Don't laugh. This isn't funny. God, it's only been, like, what, a month? Two months? And already we're—”

“I should leave,” I said. I was in Naomi's hyperconfrontational world, and I didn't know which way was up here, or what wrong word was going to break us up.

“Walter, do
not
leave,” Naomi said, shaking her head and moving toward the door.

“I have to,” I said. “I have to because this is heading somewhere bad. I don't know where, but it's bad, and I want to go before we get there. I'm not ready for that.” I got my coat and faced the door, with Naomi in front of it, and waited.

“Fine,” Naomi said, as distant as I'd ever seen her. She turned away from me. “I'll lock the door.”

Possibly a million different options at that second presented themselves: go, stay, talk, touch. But I felt I should follow through. I said I'd leave for a reason. I grabbed my stuff and fumbled my way down the mostly dark staircase and threw open the door as hard as I could. I still had that anxious, awful, angry energy tensed up in my body. The fast walk to Naomi's seemed like miles heading back. I could see the occasional headlights, the dull round areas my flashlight pointed to, and some twinkling lights that were mostly behind me, all in the distance.

I didn't want to go home. I wasn't ready to face Dad, and without home and Naomi's, the most I could do was wander and walk off some of the tension. Right through the war zone. Dad would flip. Truthfully, it was dead quiet out there save for a stray cat that I could barely make out.

My blood was pumping, head racing. Maybe that was how everyone else always felt, and why they fought so much. Admittedly, there was some life to it. It was natural, after all. The world was antagonistic by nature. Everything you did was a fight, every breath was a fight against death, every choice you made, every decision you made was a fight against another decision. We fought instincts, our better judgments—we fought nature. They say every story is broken down to a fight, man against man, man against nature, man against society. Everyone was against everyone, and it was tiring. Why couldn't we just be for someone, or for something? Why couldn't there be ideas we didn't fight, because they were good ones? Why couldn't we close our eyes and let nature guide us and pray everything turned out all right? But it was never that easy, and I was guided through the streets like I was drawn to a magnet; I realized I was chasing noise. There were other people out there.

The lights popped back on like a good idea well before I'd gotten home. Ahead of me in an apartment complex parking lot was a group of kids, Lester, Frankie, others I didn't know, five or six in all. Beardsley was there. They were standing there smoking, first in the dark, then in the light, posed like they belonged there, and me walking alone like I belonged there, and we looked at each other like this was expected and unavoidable. I was as ready for my ass-kicking as I'd ever been. Honestly, as I got closer and saw that face, I didn't care at all anymore.

“Wally Wilcox,” Lester said with his usual grin. “Alone, walking down Lincoln Street. Must be coming home from Naomi Mills. How is the princess?”

I didn't answer. He was probably just testing to see if he could go pay her a visit.

“She isn't still mad at me, is she?” Lester asked, and took a drag from his cigarette and exhaled. “I was out of line that time—I know I was. I blew it.”

“You didn't blow it with Naomi,” I said. “You never had a chance with her to blow it.”

Lester laughed—the whole crew laughed. “All right, you got me. I had a big crush on her, man,” Lester said, walking closer to me. “I used to come over to the house, hang with Jason. She'd come out of the bathroom, hair all wet from her shower. Smelling like … What's that stuff girls use?”

“Lilac?” Frankie said. Lester laughed and shook his head.

“Yeah, we'll use that, lilac,” Lester said, then turned back to me. “Sucks to like a girl and know you're never gonna see her naked.”

“Don't talk about her like that,” I said. Lester laughed. He might have been a charmer or whatever, and he was your classic alpha male, but he was still a big, dumb, brainless, violent—

“I see how you look at me,” Lester said. “Like I'm some kind of animal—you can say it. You think I don't get that all the time? But here's the thing. I'm smarter than you. Surprised? Look at you, fists all clenched up, breathing heavy. Tell me, what do you think of this? You may be dating a black girl, but I still think you're racist.”

That wasn't fair. He can't play the role of an animal and then accuse me of noticing it. I wasn't racist for thinking he was a bully when he was being a bully. I might have thought he was an animal, but he backed it up with his actions. He was planting the images in my head.

“You're picturing me heading up to Naomi's right now, checking in on her, big, strong black man on a scary night. That just pisses you off, doesn't it?” Lester taunted. His friends were laughing. “You dogged your friend Jason. He doesn't respect you, and neither do I. Your dad belongs here more than you. You don't belong here. You don't know poor. You definitely don't know black. Get it? You don't get to be with a black girl, and especially Naomi Mills. She's too good for you.”

It was inevitable. I was weak. I wasn't good enough for Naomi; she should end up with Lester.

He turned to his friends. “Let's get out of here,” he said, and put out his cigarette. He thought he was done with me, that the conversation was over, that the final line involved me crawling back into my hole and losing everything.

“Don't turn around on me,” I said—I think I said. I wasn't weak. No, I wasn't going to roll over.

I've never fought anyone, not physically, but I ran right into Lester. He couldn't have seen it coming, because it felt like moving a truck with surprising ease, and we hit a parked car behind him. I got two or three fists and forearm punches into Lester's face before he tossed me back maybe five feet with one big shove. I ran back into him.

Rage and adrenaline really worked wonders because I had knocked Lester off his feet. Lester's arm swung. I thought he hit me with his muscle. I grabbed a rock while I was on the ground, but before I could do anything stupid with it, the rest of them were on me again. I was yanked into the air like I weighed nothing. The things I remembered after that were like snapshots, brief little snippets or ideas, images mostly. I remembered Lester laughing and touching his face, an uneasiness that broke when I was hit by someone in the stomach. I remembered my ribs hurting. I remembered my knee hitting the ground and trying my best to stay on my feet so they'd only be using fists.

“Knock it off,” I remembered an older person yelling from a window somewhere. “Leave that boy alone!”

I also remembered someone on a doorstep talking on her phone.

I remembered swinging my arm, but I didn't know if I was trying to hit someone, or who if I was. Eventually I did get hit in the face. My glasses fell off. I got put in a headlock and saw blood on the ground. I wondered if it was mine.

I didn't remember the fight stopping, but I did remember the police car and the headlights streaming on me. Ricky asking me who did this and telling him “just some kids.” Ricky held up some fingers, but I couldn't tell what he wanted me to do with them. Two fingers. Three. What did it matter now?

It would be a great story for Dad. Seventeen-year-old kid gets beat down on the night of a blackout, four on one, and get this:
he started it
. Maybe he had it coming. The kids all got away.

That energy still hadn't burned off.

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

“No ambulance,” I said as Ricky moved my head around, taking a look at my injuries. “It's my first fight. I'll take it like a man.”

“Yeah, take it like a man, then,” Ricky said sarcastically. “Great idea, wake up with a real manly concussion you can brag to all your friends about.”

“I'm fine,” I said. I didn't know if I was fine or not. Nothing actually hurt, I felt a little numb, but I had adrenaline rushing through me, too. People were out watching us. I saw my breath glow in the flashing lights of the police cruiser. Ricky reported something into his walkie-talkie.

“I'll take you home, but I'm calling your dad first,” Ricky said. I groaned. There was nothing warm and inviting waiting for me back home. “I'm not letting him wake up tomorrow to find you like this, Walter. You know that. And if he wants you to go to the hospital tonight, that's his call, okay?”

Dad was up waiting for me when I got home. Ricky came in for a minute to drop off the goods. Everything was somber. I put a cold press on my face and settled in for the lecture. At least we had power now. Sort of, anyway. There was one dim lamp on, and Dad was in his pajamas with a cup of coffee, waiting. It was shortly after midnight.

“You didn't listen,” he said. I hadn't seen my face yet, but it was sore enough that I imagined it might get me some empathy. That was not the case. Mom would have empathized. “I'm a cop, you think I don't know what goes on in this city? You think I don't know what I'm talking about? I'm your father, which is reason enough for you to shut up and take notice when I talk, but I'm also an officer of the law. And you were very stupid disobeying me.”

“Listen to yourself, you don't know anything that happened, but you act like you know everything,” I said. I wasn't in the mood for this again. That same angry blood was coursing through me.

“You're damn right I do. Compared to you, I do know everything,” Dad said, pointing at himself. He'd probably been rehearsing this since I left. “I've been a father nineteen years, a cop for more than that. I know every damn hoodlum and thief in this city. I know every crooked cop. I know girls, all right; I know how they get in your head. I know right from wrong. I know what's important, and that's your family, so you listen to me when I talk. You want to know what I know?” Dad nodded, confident. “I'll tell you exactly what this is: it was
black kids
. This was
revenge
. This was a message for
me
.” He pointed at himself again, a smug smile. He hadn't even asked me what had happened. Not only was this a lecture when my cheek felt like it had it's own heartbeat, but it was a lecture filled with flat-out unhidden hate and unchecked ego.