Till You Hear From Me: A Novel (28 page)

“I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable,” he said, wondering why he felt the need to explain. “Nothing happened. We never had sex or anything.”

She raised her eyebrows. “It’s none of my business if you had.”

He sipped his drink and smiled. This was just what he needed. A little verbal jousting with a second-generation ballbuster. Next to lying, it was his favorite kind of foreplay.

“I just meant,” he said in a tone he hoped sounded conciliatory, but not obsequious—feminists can smell fear—“if we had a mutual friend who was a hell of a basketball player and you’d never seen his jump shot, I would probably mention that, too.”

“Why?”

She wasn’t going to make this easy, but he was up to the task. “Because when somebody is excellent at something, whatever that something might be, attention must be paid.”

“Even dancing naked on a silver pole?”

He counted that as a point for his side. She’d said the word “naked,” always a step in the right direction. “You ever try it?”

“Not that I can recall. Have you?”

He wished she was drinking something stronger than beer. He smiled a little wider. “No, but I’m sure it’s harder than it looks.”

“It looks impossible.”

“Well, there you go,” he said. “Our hostess is the best I’ve ever seen at a seemingly impossible task. I think a well-deserved shout-out is perfectly in order.”

“She’s not the hostess. She’s the owner.”

Okay, hard-ass
, he thought.
Here’s a little obsequious, just for you
. “Which means in addition to her dancing abilities, she must also be a hell of a businesswoman.”

And he raised his glass, a risky move because what if she didn’t raise hers. But she did.
Bingo!

THIRTY-SEVEN

T
HERE WAS NO DENYING HE WAS CHARMING AS HELL AND WHAT HE SAID
kind of made sense.
Kind of
, but it was an asshole’s argument and we both knew it.

“What exactly are we toasting?” I said.

“How about my willingness to totally change the subject if you’ll just give me a second to pull my foot out of my mouth and offer my sincere apologies for being a big, fat chauvinist pig.”

I clinked my glass against his and grinned. How long had it been since I had heard anybody except my mom and her girls even use the words “chauvinist pig”? “I’ll drink to that,” I said, and I did.

He did, too. “Your mother would probably have thrown me out the door.”

“You remember my mother?”

He shook his head. “It’s not so much that I remember her growing up. My first wife was a big fan. In fact, it was after one of your mother’s lectures at NYU that she found the courage to leave me.”

“That must have been during her
monogamy is the death of love
phase. I’m sorry.”

His smile never wavered. “Don’t be. I wasn’t very good at marriage or monogamy.”

I’ve never understood the guys who think it’s appealing to tell you what a failure they’ve been with the other women they’ve had sex with. Who wants to be in that number?

“Is that why you tried it again?” I said. “See if you could get it right?”

“Something like that,” he said.

“How’d that work out for you?”

He laughed. “Not so hot. I think two’s my limit.”

“Well, you know what they say.”

“What’s that?”

“Three’s the charm.”

He laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You do that.”

“I’m glad I ran into you,” he said. “Did the Rev tell you I’m coming by tomorrow to take a look at his cards?”

“What cards?” The Rev had said
materials
. That was all I knew.

“The cards he’s got stacked in the closet.”

I must have looked as confused as I felt. “The Rev told me you and your assistant were coming by, but he didn’t say anything about cards in a closet.”

He sat back, surprised. “You’ve never seen them?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He took a swallow of his drink and folded his arms on the table. “When your dad registered all those people to vote, in addition to the official application, he had them fill out an index card with their name, address, precinct, and anything else they wanted to say on it.”

“To say about what?”

“The historic moment, voting for the first time, whatever.”

That sounded like the Rev. Always trying to translate and transcribe that intangible moment when people first decide to stand up. “Go on.”

“Well, they’d give their application to the registrar and the Rev would keep the other card for himself. By the time they were done, he had one hundred thousand cards with new voters’ names on them.”

It was dawning on me that this was the mailing list. The same one that had come between me and the Rev just a few months ago. Was Wes telling me that the well-guarded, much bragged about list was still a handwritten hodgepodge of index cards stacked in an office closet? I couldn’t help but smile. All the time we were arguing over what he should or shouldn’t do with it, it never crossed my mind that first it would have to be typed.

“My dad put the
old
in
old-school
,” I said. “Are those the
materials
you’re coming to look at tomorrow?”

He nodded, smiling in a way that could only be described as rueful. “I’m hoping he’ll agree to let me organize the list for him. Put it in some kind of useful form.”

There was that little prickle again. “Useful to who?”

“To him, first of all, and then to whoever he decides to share it with.”

“Including you?”

The place was starting to fill up. I wondered if it was the burgers or the coming karaoke.

“Absolutely including me,” he said. “Look, I don’t do the kind of courageous work your father does or help make history like you just did. I market barbeque sauce and potato chips, soft drinks and the occasional malt liquor, which is not to say I don’t have some principles. I just turned down a campaign for a casket maker who was looking to crack the inner city market, no pun intended, because I’m not a ghoul, no matter what you’ve heard.”

I wondered where he thought I would have heard that, but I just kept listening.

“However, in addition to my other fine qualities, I would love to be able to tell my clients I could give them statewide, targeted exposure for their goods and services. In my business, a hit like that is worth a lot. I can help the Rev come into the twenty-first century and he can help me sell all the canned collard greens Moultrie, Georgia, can stand.”

I had never tasted canned collard greens and hoped I never would, but I got the drift. His motivations were clear: One hand washes the other. Nothing more nefarious than good old-fashioned capitalism. Maybe Miss Iona and I were just riding a post-campaign wave of paranoia that saw enemies around every corner. Maybe he wasn’t a villain at all, but a good godson come to help the Rev regain his footing and come back strong. Even I knew that no politician can resist a mailing list like that, or the genius who gathered the names in the first place.

“Well, I’ll tell you this,” I said, as the waitress emerged from the kitchen and headed our way bearing burgers and a mountain of fried sides. “That list isn’t going to do anybody any good where it is. If you can help him get it together, you have my blessings.”

“Good enough,” he said, as the food’s arrival took precedence over any further conversation. “Help yourself to the fries.”

Which, of course, I did.

THIRTY-EIGHT

T
HEY WERE BOTH HUNGRY AND THE BURGERS WERE AS GOOD AS
everybody said they were. Now that they had settled on a time for tomorrow’s visit, Wes was free to enjoy the evening and he ordered another round of drinks as the waitress whisked away their empty plates. Toni wasn’t going anywhere and things were moving along so well with Ida, he ventured a stroll down memory lane.

“Do you have any growing up memories of me?”

She sipped her beer. “As a kid, you mean?”

“Yeah. I guess we saw each other a lot, our parents were back and forth all the time and your house is right around the corner, but I can’t call up a memory of us together.”

“I was only eight when you got that scholarship to Exeter,” she said. “You were twelve. Practically a grown man.”

“To hear me tell it, a full-grown man.”

She smiled. “I caught you making out on your back porch once,” she said.

“Making out?”

“Right there in broad daylight.”

He laughed. “With who?”

“I didn’t know her, but it was right before you went away. I was cutting through your yard as a shortcut, I knew your dad wouldn’t mind, and you were sitting on the back porch swing with this girl.”

“What were we doing?” He was loving the way this conversation was going.

“I told you, making out.”

“Can you be more specific?”

She shook her head and he would have sworn she blushed a little. “The usual, I assume. I wasn’t trying to commit it to memory. I was on my way to a Brownie Scout meeting.”

“Now, I should remember you in a little Brownie uniform.”

Brandi was directing a couple of guys about how to set up for the karaoke. Wes smiled to himself; she was still in show business.

“You know what I actually remember most about you?”

“What’s that?” he said.

“How much you hated being here.”

The absolute truth of what she said took him aback. Had it been that obvious? Even at twelve? Before he could confirm her observation, or lie and deny it, Brandi took center stage and called for their attention.

“All right, y’all! You ready to show me what you got?”

The crowd, gathered at every available table as well as clustered two deep at the bar, yelled in one voice.
“Yes!”

“Okay, then here’s how we do it. You come up here and give your selection to Deejay Do Right over here.”

A short, muscular young man sporting a head full of dreads and one arm full of tattoos, waved his non-inked hand at the crowd, who chanted his name in affectionate greeting. “Do Right! Do Right! Do Right!”