Too Late to Say Goodbye, page 9
And he doesn’t want to lose this spark, because her hand’s still on his leg, palm spreading warmth through the sheet and all over his leg. “Vera,” he uses his cuffed hand to talk, pointing at her with his index finger and then back at himself with his thumb, “you and I, we got something. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something here. I feel it. I see it in your face. A spark—say…,” he plays like he’s surprised now at his own words, “… a spark—that’s what we’ll call it.”
“Oh, we will?” she asks, playing along with him.
That’s a good sign.
“Oh, we will,” he repeats. “I’m saying it’s a spark. You know there’s something here. Some little of something. Something so delicate and special, I don’t want to ruin it by lying to you. See I could do this a couple of different ways. I could sit here and deny the whole thing, but let’s be real—”
“—Let’s—”
“—that’d be a whole helping of bullshit because I wouldn’t be here with that fucker over there if there weren’t some truth to what they’re saying, and being that I’ve been out of it the last few days—with the fever and such—I don’t know what they been saying, but let’s just assume I think I know what you’re talking about and so no, I’m not going to deny it because like I said, there’s some truth to the matter.”
She cuts in. “They’re saying you killed that cop.”
Franklin, playing it well now, stays quiet, nodding along with her, licking his lips, eyes cast down on that hand on his leg, inching its way up, aware of how his body’s responding because after all, he’s on the downslope of the infection hill. He’s a healthy youngish man in the presence of a woman who’s obviously digging him.
Now, ever so slowly, bringing his eyes up, flaring his nostrils a few times, getting the tears started, not overdoing it, but doing it just enough to make it look like he does after a good sneeze or before a good sneeze, all watery, red, and welling.
“Vera, I’m not going to lie to you,” Franklin says. “I won’t say I did, but I’ll say I didn’t necessarily either, you get what I’m trying to say? I don’t know if there’s any sort of cameras or something, some recording devices about.”
“There’s not,” she says, fingers crawling his way, her body leaned into him. “Hospital wouldn’t allow it. I care about my patients. I don’t care what you might’ve done. If you’re my patient, I see to your every need.” Her hand squeezes his thigh now, once, twice. “I try to keep an open mind about the people that lay here. See not everyone’s guilty of what they say someone is, you know? Like those boys up in New York, the five something or other that just got out of jail, that all them people been hooting and hollering about on Netflix. They didn’t do that murder they were accused of doing, but everyone saw some poor black boys and judged them guilty even though they weren’t.”
This will be easier than he thought.
“See, then you get what I’m saying,” Franklin says, rocking his head back and forth. He places his left hand over Vera’s on his leg. His fingers strike her hand and wrist as he talks, working the lines down between her fingers, over the back of her hand, to the veins in her wrist. He says, “See, so I won’t tell you I didn’t do it because, you know, there’s some truth to the things they’re saying. But they don’t tell you my side of things. I could, if we want to pretend I’m being hypothetical,” he pauses for a second to make sure she understands, even winking some; she winks back, “I could say, yeah, I shot that guy, but that’s not my side of things. That’s not the whole story. How was I supposed to know he was a cop? He didn’t say, ‘hey shit-bird I’m a cop.’ If he had, I would have said, I’m giving up.” He holds his hands up, both of them together, cuffs clanking on the right. “Be a good little boy and give up all righteous and shit. Let’s be real here—a drug charge for me ain’t nothing. I’m not the driver. My hand ain’t on the shit. They don’t got nothing on me. Gun in the glove box, again, I’m not the driver. Possession being nine-tenths of fuck all—that’s an easy rap to beat. All I got to say is I’m the passenger, not my shit, prove me otherwise. Do you know what would happen? Nothing.”
“They wouldn’t arrest you,” she says, showing she’s bought in now because her voice drops low and seductive.
She likes her bad boys.
Smiling as wide as he can, he says, “Oh no, they’d have arrested me. I’d be in jail for some time, but I’m looking at it in its totality. That’s what you have to do. That’s what cops do. Look at everything up against everything else, you dig?”
She nods.
He says, “Yeah, sure, I might go to sit in some six-by-six fucking box for a month or two, or less—if you get what I’m saying because money talks baby and I’ve got it—but I’ll get a good attorney. Like I said, you know what would happen. Nothing, because in this great country—just like I am today, outside of this hypothetical we got going—I’m innocent until proven guilty. Remember that when you strut your fabulous booty out that door here in a few, I’ll be watching, trust me, that I’m innocent until proven guilty. So consider this little question of yours, like Mr. Scrotum’s cat—you won’t know what I am until you know what I am—and at the end of the day, I’ll be me and you’ll be you. And I hope we’ll be passing some of the time getting to know each other.”
“Schrödinger,” she says.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“Schrödinger,” Vera says again. “That’s the guy’s name. The one with the cat in the box. Schrödinger.”
“What’d I say?”
“Scrotum,” she says, giggling.
“Oh well, baby, that’s funny,” Franklin says, smiling. “Cuz, I was just wondering what my boys would feel like in your touch.”
Now, she’s bright red, slapping his leg, landing just above the crease in his thigh to hip, telling him to stop it. He feels himself jump in response, hand right there, just a fabric fold away. He can feel the warmth just rolling off the tips of her fingers, almost touching him.
“Oh yeah, that’s what you were wondering?” Vera waits for his answer, but she doesn’t get one. “What makes you believe I’m that type of girl?”
“Because you like the way I say your name, Vera,” he says, adding it at the end, putting some emphasis on it. “Vera,” he says it slowly, “you like how I say it, but what’d I like to know is how you’re going to say mine.” He drops the line and lets it sit.
Because this is the moment.
What’s she going to do?
But then the Pakistani fucker steps back into the room and breaks the moment, destroying all his hard work, saying something about how all that blood, his blood, ruined Franklin’s knockoff shoes.
Vera jumps as the Fed enters the room, jerking her hand away from him, trying her best to not appear flustered. She smooths her scrubs and says something medical about checking his blood pressure and leans over him to check something on the left side of the bed.
“Do me a favor, baby,” Franklin whispers, not asking, telling her to do him a favor. Her large doe eyes smile back at him and that’s all the confirmation he needs. “When he leaves to piss again, let me use your phone to call my granddaddy, let him know I’m alive.”
As she turns to step away from him, she mouths: Okay.
Franklin throws his head back against the pillow. Ripe for the plucking, a delicate Vera Rose, an angel from his medical induced dreams, happy and good, and seeing an opportunity in all things. For her, helping him mend, maybe something more, but for him, there’s always an angle.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
RENALDO LUNA
ALEJANDRO GREETS RENALDO AT THE doors, turning the open sign from closed to open, jerking the dead bolt to the side, unlocking the door, opening it, and letting Renaldo inside.
Renaldo pushes the rest of his way in and parks himself on a stool at the counter. He asks his old mentor and friend, “Is your nephew Filiberto still working at the hospital?”
After letting the door swing closed, Alejandro holds up a finger, which is his signal for Renaldo to wait.
Alejandro’s Morning Joe Café is a small place, situated in a small corner of a squatty office building in East Tulsa. Barely deep enough to have inside seating, it has a counter and a scattering of tables. Everything’s white and chrome with red chairs to refresh the palate.
The café’s little owner trails behind Renaldo silently, shuffling awkwardly, wearing thicker glasses than Renaldo remembers, and slips behind the counter where he picks up his stained white apron, large brown stain, probably coffee or grease, just above the front pocket. He flips it once, holding it out wide in front of him, and then ties the apron around his body, looping it under his gut, and tying it high on his waist, just above the belt of his blue jeans.
Alejandro withdraws a pen from his light blue button-up work shirt and writes “coffee” on the ticket. He tears the ticket out of the book and places the ticket on the counter in front of Renaldo. Then, he runs his hands across the remnants of hair, just two white tufts above his ears, and reaches under the counter, withdrawing an old cabbie-type hat, grey, and fixes it on his head.
Renaldo gets comfortable in the seat as Alejandro washes his hands, telling him the kitchen will get going as soon as Flavia and Omar get in, a married couple, make good eggs. Renaldo says that’s fine, but he’s not here for the food. He just wants to talk, and he thought he’d visit because it’s been a while.
Turning, fixing his thick black glasses on his nose, Alejandro nods and disappears into the kitchen. Renaldo watches him work, moving back and forth in the kitchen, through the kitchen window, turning on the ovens and griddles, hearing the clicks of the dials. Alejandro gets everything warmed up for the morning, leaving Renaldo sitting on the stool and remembering when he used to sit at this counter morning and night, doing his homework because Alejandro wanted him to finish school, his books spread out before him. Sitting here now, he can almost see his smaller self with the pencil in hand, writing on the paper. He’d be a couple of seats down from where he’s sitting now, on the other side of the pie display, which still sits in the same place, smashed against the wall with no elbow room.
But that was a long time ago. A different time.
A time when his mother worked in the office building, a cleaning lady. Nothing for East Tulsa. Nothing in the eyes of the people she worked for. Nothing for the people whose office she cleaned. Nothing. But Alejandro Danois never saw her or Renaldo as nothing.
They were alike. His people.
And Alejandro was his protector. Mentor. Confidant. Friend.
But Renaldo’s come a long way from that little kid.
Exiting the kitchen after completing his morning duties, Alejandro finally answers him. “Grandnephew, maybe great-nephew, I can never remember which.” He waves his hand in front of his face as if he’s swatting the memory in place. Then, he turns away from the counter, biting his lip, tongue sticking out at the corner, selects a mug from the four-story rack of eggshell-colored mugs, and carries it over to the coffee pot. He sits the mug down next to the coffee pot and wraps his hand around the black handle of the industrial filter tray, withdraws the filter tray, and sets it next to the mug on the counter.
“Right, but does he still work at the hospital?”
“At night, yes,” Alejandro says. “He still does.”
“I need his help.”
Alejandro laughs. “You need his help? What about your friends? They’re not available for helping you? Here, you come visit me—say when was the last time you came and visited me? Sometimes, I look down at the wall,” he points where Renaldo used to sit, “and I feel like if I squint some, I’d see you sitting there. Not you as you are now, but you as you were. I liked you then. I don’t know you now.” Then, Alejandro waves his arm in the air, dismissing the question and the memory.
Renaldo mumbles, “It’s been a while.”
“Far too long,” Alejandro says, putting a filter and coffee in the filter tray. “We are family, Renaldo. You and me, blood, if that matters to you anymore. There was a time that mattered a great deal.”
“We are family,” Renaldo says. “It still matters.”
“Family comes and visits each other.” Alejandro presses the button for the coffee machine, starting the brewing process. “You should come and visit me more often. I need to see your face. It’s been too long. Neighborhood changes. I change. Faces change. You change. Tell me about yourself? Do you have a woman?”
“There is a woman.”
Renaldo’s mind flips to Iris. He’s avoided her, and she hasn’t called—probably because she has bigger things going on, but still. It hurts a little more than he thought it would. She said it was nothing, a fling, something to do when no one was around, but now no one’s going to be coming around, and he’s not sure she’s going to keep up the intimate side of the relationship.
“She good looking?” Alejandro leans against the counter. He folds his hands together. “Perhaps too good looking for you, no?
“She’s good looking,” Renaldo says. “White girl but good looking.”
Alejandro scrunches his nose in disgust and pushes himself back from the counter. “But here you are visiting me; you must be here because you need something, no?” He touches his temple with one finger. “That’s why you are asking about Filiberto. When’s the last time you visited your mother?”
“It’s been a while.”
“Too long I would guess. And it’s morning. You’re dressed too nicely for a place like this. This is how I know you need something.” He sticks his hands out, palms up. “You don’t come to my greasy spoon—that’s what you called it—you don’t come anymore because you thought you’d enjoy the finer things in life. Said something about leaving home. Said there were better opportunities. I suspect you’ve treated your mother much like you’ve treated me. I haven’t seen much of you, so I don’t think she has, and I don’t know what sort of opportunities you’ve enjoyed, but reading your face—now there’s something worth seeing—says to me, your face, says things maybe aren’t so nice, right now, no?”
“Yeah, sure, okay, I do enjoy the finer things. That’s true, but—”
“I’m not done,” Alejandro snaps. “You tell me, you say, ‘Al, I can’t come around no more because I have a nice job working for some heavy hitters’—white men, if I remember correctly. I said don’t work for no white man; they don’t see you as the same. Never will. No matter how hard you try. No matter how silly you dress. You can look like them, but you won’t ever be them. I warned you. Said your mother should have taught you as much. Seeing what they did to her. You say, ‘they’re going to take care of me.’ Grabbing at your collar, popping the lapels, in a shirt very much like the one you’re wearing now, and telling me you’ve moved up in the world. You told me they let you be the top dog. Added, ‘on the outside’—I remember that—you adding ‘on the outside,’ like that should mean something to me.”
Renaldo knows what’s happening right now: The old man’s chastising him, and he’s the only one left in this world that probably can chastise him. If he’s going to ask Alejandro for his help, then he’s going to have to sit here and take the verbal lashing, but it’s not easy listening to the man dress him down. There was a time he greatly respected Alejandro and what Alejandro said. Just as Alejandro could snap his fingers and things would happen in the neighborhood, Alejandro was the embodiment of power in Renaldo’s mind.
Renaldo says, “I am the number one guy on the outside.”
“Which implies there’s a number one guy on the inside, no?” Alejandro switches to Spanish. “Meaning you’re the number two guy overall. You might as well be nothing. I taught you better than that.”
“You taught me to see opportunity and take it.”
“You could have had all this.”
“What, washing dishes for you?”
Alejandro folds his arms over his chest, hands holding elbows, and gives Renaldo a look, eyebrows dropping with the corners of his mouth. He returns to what he was saying before, in English. “So, you tell me—you don’t want to come around here no more. You don’t want to be seen at this greasy spoon. ‘Caught dead,’ I believe. Smug-like when you said it. Cocky when you said it, yes?”
“Yeah, sure, okay,” Renaldo concedes. “I said those—”
Alejandro lifts his hand off the elbow, holds it up. “Oh, I’m not asking for an apology; I forgave you the moment you said those words.” He does the sign of the cross. “Your mother, she comes around still, can you believe she’s in charge of maintenance in this building? It’s her life. She stayed with me. I treated her right. I made that happen. She’s very good at what she does. Come a long way from the quiet cleaning lady who vacuumed at night and stuck me with her child.” He laughs. “So did the white man in prison do something to make you believe you might need to return home?”
Renaldo stays quiet for a moment, giving the coffee machine time to do its thing, watching the dark liquid drip into the coffee pot, then a steady stream, and then sputter. It clicks. Alejandro turns away from him, picking up the mug and the coffee pot. He pours coffee into the mug as Renaldo says, “There was a time that you were the example of power.”
“What changed?” Alejandro puts the coffee pot down, turns, and places the mug on the counter.
“I changed,” Renaldo says. “The world changed. Things changed. Priorities. Opportunities.”
