How It Went Down (18 page)

“Hey, Tyrell,” she purrs. She grabs my hand and presses herself against my side, liquid and warm and sweet. “You gonna dance with me?” She draws me forward, toward the crush and the noise.

I look back at Brick. “You can have it like this,” he says. “Every night.”

It wouldn’t be so bad.

14.
DARK

KIMBERLY

Al says he’s working, but he’s not. The file folders are open on his lap, but he isn’t reading them. He’s staring at his own sock feet propped up on the coffee table. And stroking his bottom lip with a thumb.

My fingers click over the keys of his laptop. He’s given me a list of media outlets to email with his latest press release. One by one, he says, with their name at the top. Gets better results when they think it’s personal. I’m emailing folks at CNN, MSNBC, the networks, local and regional affiliates. Big league stuff.

My attention is divided. He hasn’t moved in about half an hour. “Are you all right?” I ask.

He stirs. “It was sweet of you to come and play with the little girl.”

“Tina? I just thought probably no one makes a point of visiting her. So I did.”

“You’re very thoughtful.” His smile reaches across the short space between us.

“She has no one to play with now. She looked up to him so much. She was always going, ‘Tariq does this,’ and ‘Tariq says…’ whatever it might be.”

“It caught me by surprise, seeing you.”

“I didn’t know you’d be there. I could have come another time.”

He frowns. “I didn’t mean that it bothered me.”

“Okay.”

He settles into silence. I stretch my arms and stand. Carry the laptop to the armchair nearer him. After two hours sitting at that desk, working, I don’t think it’s obvious I just want to get closer to him.

“You seem distracted.”

“Uh … I was thinking about my son, I guess.”

“I’ve seen him on TV.” He’s my same age, I know that much, but it doesn’t seem like a good thing to mention.

“We have now…” he starts. “We don’t really … He keeps his distance from me.”

“Sorry,” I say, which makes me think of Tina. Why isn’t there a better word? Sympathy is its own thing.

“He was always a really good kid. Like Tariq.”

I tip my head away. It wouldn’t be right to say anything.

Al looks at me. “You don’t think so?”

I shrug. “It’s not my place.”

“Tell me.”

I pick at the chair arm. “He wasn’t so nice. Everyone’s making him out to be some kind of angel.”

“That always happens when someone dies. People put on rose-colored glasses and talk about the good times.”

“I guess.”

“Maybe he was an asshole. It doesn’t change what I’m doing here. He still didn’t deserve to die that way.”

“No, of course not. But he was kind of … I feel bad for saying it.”

Al smiles. “Don’t be afraid to speak the truth. It matters.” He says it, almost wistful.

“Isn’t that what you’re doing, when you go out there?”

“Not necessarily,” he says. “It’s bigger than me. Bigger than you, or Tariq, either.”

He reaches for the remote control and changes the channel. He watches the news like it’s part of his religion. It’s still muted, but probably not for much longer.

I wonder what he would do if I went and sat beside him. If I were to curl against his side or lay my head on his thigh. Would he let me slide my fingers between his shirt buttons? Would he bring his hand down to touch me, or would he just push me away?

REVEREND ALABASTER SLOAN

It’s late at night. Much too late to be alone in my hotel room with a girl who amounts to little more than an intern. Especially one who looks at me with those youthful, longing eyes and tugs me to talk about my feelings.

“Would you like another drink?” I offer, which only serves to dig me in deeper. There’s too much to be done in advance of the march we’re organizing. No time for a detour.

“Sure,” she says.

I pour. Kimberly’s eyes shine in the reflection of the flashing TV screen. It makes her look like she’s on fire. I try to forget she kissed me once, entirely unprovoked. Or maybe she simply picked up on the truth: that I wanted it. I’m not so blameless.

I could reach for her here and now and she’d come willingly. But she’s too young. Too innocent. And already too attached.

She smiles up at me, and I dare to brush a stray wisp of hair from her cheek as I hand her a cocktail.

“You’re lovely,” I say. It just slips out. “How are the emails coming?” I down my drink too fast. Pour another while she gives me her status report.

JENNICA

It’s no different than usual, being at Brick’s place, smoking and drinking. It’s pretty much all Noodle ever wants to do. Except sometimes we drive around again after, riding in Brick’s car, usually, and cranking the music so loud the
thumpa thumpa
sets the car lurching on its tires.

It didn’t bother me before, it’s just that now, since Tariq, everything feels like it’s moving in a big circle. Like the same things are happening over and over.

Get up, go to school, go to work, let Noodle pick me up, go to Brick’s place, hope tonight’s not the night they decide to get into it with the Stingers.

Out the window at Brick’s, I stare at the mural painted on the metal security door of a shop, the kind that opens like a garage door, one panel at a time, and disappears into the ceiling when the place is open. I look down at this piece a lot. It’s one of those art pieces that disappear with the daylight and come back each night, a memorial for some King who got knifed and killed by a Stinger some months back. His name was Scoot. So says the paint across the metal. I didn’t know him. Maybe that doesn’t matter, except it feels significant. Because for all the times I stand here with these guys, I don’t really know them. Except Noodle, and Brick. And the closer I get, the less I like what I see.

So I look at the mural, to remember how there’s always more than what I’m looking at. Some of it’s good—maybe we woulda been friends, Scoot and I. No way to know.

Some of it’s bad. Knives, death, always living on edge. First Scoot. Now Tariq. There’s going to be another, and another. A great big terrible circle.

Some of it’s inevitable, maybe. The rest just happens.

WILL (AKA EMZEE)

It’s been a week, and no one’s done it. I guess that means they’re all waiting on me. I woulda let it go this time, if someone else had taken the initiative, but it stands to reason. This is the kinda respect I guess I’ve earned.

Standing up top comes with a price, though. It means I got to be the one to decide how these walls remember Tariq Johnson. I got to be the one to speak his legacy on the face of the hood.

I woulda done it on day one, but it wasn’t my place to step into it. I don’t tag for the Kings, or the Stingers either. I’m my own man out here. I paint in gray, black, and white for a reason.

Every night, I go looking for a piece done up by Spittz or Cory, the top guys who tag for the Kings. Thought they’d be tripping over themselves to memorialize one of their own. For once, the place to put it is obvious. Nice of Tariq to get mowed down just about smack in front of a big blank wall.

When I mural, I do landscapes or portraits, not much else. I don’t do words. I don’t get sappy, I don’t get political. It’s my art; just a way to put myself out there.

A portrait of Tariq might end up seeming political, but I just gotta do what I do, and try to get it right. I take the gray can in my left hand, the white in my right. At my feet are mounds of burned out candle wax, fistfuls of dying flowers blown by the wind and roughed by the ravages of the street. Handwritten messages:
Love you, Tariq. Our hearts follow you always. We miss you already. Crying 4 U.

What has happened here surrounds me, starts to fill me. I let it in, so it can find its way out onto the wall. Breathe into it. Breathe. Tagging is light work. But this is quite heavy.

Who were you, Tariq Johnson,?

The question makes me smile. I tip my wrists. Ball bearings knock against the insides of the cans. My wrists move faster. Smiling, because the question doesn’t matter. Tariq Johnson can be whoever I want him to be. Here and now. Memorialized.

My arms arc over my head. The vision bursts in front of me; I never know what I’m painting till I start. My feet nudge aside the vigil remains, giving me more room to work.

The rattle of the cans. The hiss of the spray. That tangy liquid scent that just about gets me high. A meditation.

REVEREND ALABASTER SLOAN

I’m letting Tariq’s death get to me in a way it shouldn’t. Drinking, barely working, letting Kimberly stay.

I pour another drink. It’s all right. Away from the cameras, the work doesn’t require me to be at peak form. I’ve planned several dozen memorial marches; I can do it in my sleep. That isn’t the point.

Why, this time, is it burrowing inside me? I wake up each morning to find my polling numbers up. I should be happy. I stopped, some time ago,
feeling
for each lost child. It’s just not possible. Grieving would become the majority of my job, in that case. You can’t sustain that kind of sorrow. Tariq Johnson’s death, while tragic, is no more tragic than any of the others I’ve confronted. Why do I feel this pain?

Kimberly sighs lightly. From time to time she rubs herself, unconsciously, beneath her breast. It has become my favorite mannerism. Watching her helps me fight the desire to call my son just to listen to him breathing. Kimberly bends over the keyboard intently. Her shoes are off now, stockinged toes hooked over the lip of the coffee table. Every inch of her is sexy beyond belief. Time to send her on her way, before the night gets any longer.

Except I can’t stop looking.

“What is your dream?” I ask Kimberly, which is more or less the opposite of asking her to leave. “What is it that you want?”

“I don’t know,” she says, striking the keyboard as if finishing a thought. She stretches her arms and looks at me. I must appear as a heap of a man to her, unpleasantly lumped on the sofa.

“I mean, if you could have anything,” I clarify. It’s so easy to trip toward the fantastic. What I could be, what I could have, what I’d do with all the money and power in the world if it was handed to me. How good I could be. How happy.

“I’d like to be able to set my own hours at the salon.”

I laugh. “No, come on, I mean, if money’s no object. You ask for it, it’s yours.”

She gazes at me quietly, with nothing to add. I see something powerful in her eyes, powerful, but contained. Even her wildest dreams are limited.

“Anything in the world,” I urge her. “No boundaries.” I’m expecting her to say be president, or an astronaut, or a film star, or a billionaire CEO, or the queen of a tropical isle.

“Maybe to have my own salon one day,” she says.

I close my eyes. “Yes. You could have that. Absolutely.”

“I doubt it.”

My chest crushes in on itself. Yet again, I am reminded of how my generation has failed to instill in our children what is truly possible.

“Kimberly,” I whisper. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you how amazing you are? You can be anything you want to be. In the real world.”

She ducks her head. “I don’t come from that world,” she says.

Maybe not. Compared to the world I’m used to, she seems so pure and innocent. So clean.

I push myself to my feet, headed back to the bar, but I stumble. My fingers graze the arm of the couch, and like a shot, she sets the laptop aside and is there with me.

“You okay?” she whispers, stepping into the circle of my arms.

“I guess I’ve had enough.”

“It’s a hard week.” She makes an allowance for me, though there’s really no excuse. I don’t deserve this comfort, but hell itself could not drag me from it.

Kimberly snuggles closer and I hold her against me, surer than ever that it was a bad mistake to draw her in like this. Just because I like the smell and the feel and the spirit of her doesn’t mean I have the right to hold her like this.

KIMBERLY

It’s not going to last forever, I remind myself.

The hotel mirror is perfectly clean, but for the echo of a few rag swipes in the top left corner. I lean on the speckled counter, put my face close to the reflection.

He lives in Washington. You live here.

He’s famous. You’re a nobody.

I’m not an idiot. I know how the world works. I watch TV. Guys like Al fly in and tease your dreams, then leave. I do know that.

But he’s been so incredibly sweet to me. We drink the finest liquor; room service is like a five star buffet. Even if you order a burger and fries, it comes with the most adorable little ketchup bottles, three inches tall. Al noticed that I like them, so he started ordering extra so I can put them in my purse. I have a lot of them at home now, lined up like soldiers across the front of my dresser. That’s the kind of person he is. So, so sweet.

“Kim?” he says, from the other room. “You all right?” I only walked in here to get us each a glass of water. We used the kitchenette cups for the other drinks.

“Coming,” I call. I run the water, finally.

It’s not going to last forever.

But when I look in the mirror, I can’t help seeing it. The two of us walking on a road that doesn’t end. I imagine looking over my shoulder one morning, to find Al gazing at me in that sweet way. “Come with me back to Washington,” he’ll say. I’ll pretend I have to think about it. Keep him in suspense. But the answer would already be in my heartbeat. Of course. Of course.

People need their hair cut everywhere, right? Maybe he would put me on his staff, as his makeup artist. I would go everywhere he goes. And sometimes, after a long day’s work, he would come to my small, well-decorated apartment instead of going home. I know how the place would look, even. What I would put on the walls, and the sort of furniture I would buy. I have some savings already. I could do that, and he would be impressed by how fast I made an empty place look like home. He would want to come by more and more often, just to be there. With me.