Know Me From Smoke, page 5
Maybe that tall, dark, sexy, good-looking guy from Wally’s?
Maybe.
Too many maybe’s and if only’s in this life. Too many sucker punches.
Too many too many’s.
Stella hummed a slow tune in her throat, rubbed her forehead.
And what was that feeling inside her that she knew the man? Maybe he was a guy she saw around the neighborhood. No, Stella knew she’d remember a man that good looking, those sharp cheekbones and firm lips. That chin, hard as metal on a hot rod’s bumper. The scar. Maybe he was familiar because she felt something when he stared at her.
Maybe it wasn’t familiarity—just something, anything.
“You have a long night?” The cab driver tapped the steering wheel with his thumbs and shot a glance at Stella through the rearview mirror.
Stella sat up, leaned forward to speak to him. “I just met a man I think I might like. It’s been a long time since that happened for me. And it’s just, I got some odd news this afternoon. The two things together—I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right that, you know, they should come on the same day.”
“What news?” The driver looked both ways at a right hand turn, floored the accelerator and the cab merged into late night weekend traffic.
“They're looking for my husband's killer again. After twenty years. New evidence and they reopen a cold case. Just when you think you might have gotten past it, you know?”
Another glance from the driver. He shook his head, rubbed the back of his neck with a pale hand. “Jeez. I’m sorry. That’s something, isn’t it? I mean, it might turn out good, maybe I should think it's a good thing. But it's a hell of a thing all the same.”
“It is. It’s good, but it’s bad.”
They swung northward—a left turn—and pushed through residential streets toward Stella’s apartment.
She leaned back into the seat, ran her fingernails through her hair. I need a bath, Stella thought. A long, quiet, candle-lit bath. And I don’t want any noise or calls from prosecutors or lazy songs I can sing in my sleep. I want silence.
The cab slowed at a stoplight and a trio of skunks crossed the road in front of them. They were barely visible beyond the reach of the headlights, shadows really, rodents slinking through the neighborhood streets. Stella sighed.
The driver said, “Those things are like rats in this city.”
“And they work in threes.”
The cab swung right again and the driver stopped outside Stella’s apartment building. “Here we are,” he said. “Look, I’m sorry to hear about what happened, and I hope they catch the guy, I really do. Just, you watch out for yourself. Things are rough all over. You gotta have some way to protect yourself. You know, just in case.”
Stella lifted her cellphone and flashed it at him through the mirror. “How about 9-1-1? That good enough for my protection?”
“How’d it do you last time?”
Stella nodded slowly, let the cab driver’s words sink into her head, run straight to her heart. “How much do I owe you?”
“Don’t worry about it. You had a bad day. I know how it is.”
“Look, you need to get paid and I have some—”
“Lady, it’s a gift from an ex-con. I want you to know…I paid my debt, and I’m still paying it. That’s my burden—let me give you this.”
“A free cab ride?”
“It’s better than nothing.”
“I’ve been saying that for so long.”
“You’re not the only one.”
Stella slid out of the cab, nodded at the driver and slammed the door. She clomped up the stone walkway that ran through scattered papaya trees with their green floppy leaves and fat fruit nodding in the sea breeze. She reached out and plucked one papaya, pulled it to her breast like a child. Oh, Virgil, she thought, I guess you never will get justice. What the hell can I do, sweet thing? I can remember you, but that’s about it.
For seven years, Stella ran the bar with Virgil. Shoot, they had it made. But then they got the big old sucker punch. The first bullet that hit Virgil spun him counter-clockwise, like a dancer unhinged by ghostly music. The second bullet hit him in the small of his back. That was the one that killed him. It took twelve hours of emergency surgery to finish the job, but it was the bullet that started it. Stella got stuck with a slug in her hip because the surgeons on duty were too busy with her husband. By the time Virgil died, they decided it best to let Stella’s wound heal and monitor for an infection. And so, for twenty years, she’d been walking around with a .45 caliber slug in her hip and a round dimple of mis-colored, coin-sized flesh risen near her panty line.
Stella unlocked her apartment door, flipped off her high heels, threw her keys on the coffee table and realized: Her and the cab driver, they didn’t talk about the other thing, the good looking guy at Wally’s and Stella wanting to see him again. Because she did want to see him again.
Just to see, you know. If only and maybe—to see.
Chapter 14
Royal stared out the driver’s side windows as the city bus merged into weekend traffic. Half-lit storefronts faded into the night and bars romped with the losers of winter beneath a facade of tri-colored—red, green, yellow—Christmas lights. He was sitting near the back of the bus, Markie and Phoenix in the seat behind him. Phoenix leaned into Royal’s ear and he could feel hot whiskey breath, almost taste it, like too much thick humidity. “You mind? I’m trying to breathe here. We better get some mints before we get back.”
“Oh, there’s nothing to worry about,” Phoenix said. “Nobody gives two shits if we’re playing by the rules. How do you think people get ahead? They cheat, Royal. Or should I call you Junior, Junior?”
Royal didn’t answer.
Phoenix pinched Royal’s neck with strong, skinny fingers. “That lady likes you, my man. How about that? You going to call her up, take her out for a malt and a burger?” He chuckled and leaned back in his seat, let go of Royal’s tensed neck. “That lady ate you up, wanted you like crazy. Now why do you suppose that is?”
Royal didn’t answer because he didn’t have an answer. How could he?
“Now you got a chance,” Phoenix continued, “to rip off the same lady twice. That’s too bad for her, but damn—it’s good for a sucker like you.”
“Who says I’m going to do anything, let alone rip her off?”
“You’re an ex-con, right?”
“You ever heard of rehabilitation?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of it.”
“And?”
“And that ain’t you, is it? I mean, tell me if it is, but I got to ask you to be honest with me. We’re friends now, and all we have is trust.” Phoenix chuckled again, let a sound like a purr come from his throat. “Are you rehabilitated, Royal? Or are you just happy to be out of the cage?”
Royal watched the city slide past him. He saw a police cruiser light up a lowered Honda Civic, watched a cyclist cross through an intersection without stopping, tried to catch the faces of the drivers headed in the opposite direction. Are all those people good to each other, to everyone else? What makes them better or different from me? How come I end up on the back of the bus with the crooks? Yeah, he thought, it feels good to be out of the cage. And that woman—Stella, the sexy lounge singer—liked me; I could tell that right away. Take it that she didn’t know who I was—fine, but she liked me. But yeah, yeah, yeah, Royal thought. He said, “I’m happy to be out of the cage.”
“And let me say this, then: You want to stay out of the cage, you need money. And you want money, you have to get it smart.”
Royal’s mind flashed on the Mexican guy he met that afternoon. “You know they got a spot where they pick guys up for hard labor, under the table money? You know about it?”
“I know about it. Yeah, who doesn’t? You talking about digging ditches now? About how to eat for cheap and keep the rent low? Let me ask you, Royal: What the hell you think a cage is? It’s something that keeps you where you are, doesn’t let you get up and move.”
“Like a prison cell.”
“Like a prison cell, okay. But think of it in another way, like where you are in the world, man. Where you are on planet-fucking-Earth, you know?”
“Stuck at the bottom, below everything.”
“Yes. Like that.”
Royal shook his head and sucked in air. He was sick and tired of his first day out of prison—it was the longest day of his life. “Like that,” he repeated.
Phoenix said, “And now you got this lady who doesn’t know you—even though she should—and who wants to get to know you—even though she shouldn’t—and I’m starting to think this might be the key to your cage.”
“What’s she got? She’s a lounge singer and I doubt—”
“Not her,” Phoenix said. “The people she knows. Who she’s close with.”
“Friends,” Royal said.
“Acquaintances.” There came that purr from Phoenix’s throat.
“Like maybe someone with money.”
“An easy someone with money.”
Royal shifted in his seat, reached up to pull the cord that signaled the bus driver to stop. The bus slowed, stopped at a red light before they could pull over at the next corner. “Just get to know her and see what comes up, huh?” Royal said it mostly to himself, like a bum mumbling in an alley.
“See who comes up,” Phoenix said.
Royal heard Phoenix slap Markie twice. The bus stuttered forward, hissed to a stop on the next corner. The three men stood, stumbled toward the exit. Off the bus, as he took in the cool night air, Royal bit hard into his bottom lip, tasted blood an instant later. “If I’m out,” he said, “why’s it still feel like I’m in a cage?”
Markie huddled into Royal, draped his full drunken weight onto the ex-con’s broad, muscled shoulders.
Phoenix laughed and ran a palm across his scarred right cheek. “Because the cage stays with you, man. You’re in it until the day you die—it’s you.”
“Unless I can—”
“Unless you can find a way out,” Phoenix finished. “But you’re going to need some help.”
Royal knew what it was to be in a cage, and he knew what it was to taste freedom. That night, before he fell sleep, he thought about his first weeks in prison. When they close that cell door on you, when you hear the loud clang, it’s as if the heart inside you is slammed shut. Royal had panic attacks. It didn’t matter that his cellmate was a decent guy who slept through the night. Royal would wake with his chest tightening down on his heart, as if it was clenched in a vice. His breath shortened and his throat closed—it felt to Royal like he was beneath cold dark water. The only thing that stopped the panic attacks was to stay awake. And that’s what Royal did for three solid weeks. He tried to stay awake each night, to stare at the hard ceiling above him, to count the snores of his cellmate, to kiss the backs of his own hands while deep in thought. He wondered on those nights: Where did he go wrong? For Royal, it wasn’t his crimes—those were never wrong to him. After all, they felt necessary when he committed them. Sure, everything they put him away for wasn’t on purpose, but it wasn’t not on purpose either. It was part of the job. And to imagine that the court put him away for life—no, not imagine—was a dreadful thought. Royal had trouble thinking of ‘life’ as a concept of time. How many years? Wait, how long? My whole life? Yes, Royal thought, you threw away your entire life.
The panic attacks drove Royal to despair and, one night, to tears. There he was, a grown man—a murderer—crying in his bunk while his cellmate snored like a cow. But the snores stopped that night. Royal tried to muffle his crying, to bury his head beneath his pillow, but he knew his despair was no longer a secret.
“Man, the fuck is wrong with you?”
Royal said, “I was dreaming.”
“Shit. I know a grown man crying when I hear one.”
Royal didn’t respond. He lay there in the dark silence, counted the cracks in the ceiling. Man, he planned to be counting these cracks the whole rest of his sorry life.
“You want me to tell you how to do this?”
“I don’t know what you're saying.”
“How to make it in here, man. The fuck you don’t know. I know you know what I’m saying. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be crying like a woman while I’m trying to get me some good damn sleep.”
“I’ll be alright.”
“You in here for life, man. Nobody is fine with that.”
“I got no choice,” Royal said.
“And that’s it—right there. Let me tell you how it is: Your whole life, you never had a choice. Not when you were a kid. Not when you were a teenager stealing cars or whatever. And not when you were a grown-ass man doing whatever the hell it was you did to get in here. Am I right?”
“Close.”
“So, if you don’t got a choice, if there’s no way out of it and it’s just you and what you got to do, what does that leave?”
“Nothing.” Royal closed his eyes.
“Except to do what you have to do. To do what you need to do, man. I been in here sixteen years. Those first few were rough. I’ll tell you the truth. I thought about the easy way out. You got to think about it too—it’s on your mind and I can tell. Don’t try to hide it from yourself. That’s the worst you can do.”
Royal did think about suicide. He thought about it a lot.
“But what you have to do is accept it. This is where you are and it is what it’ll be. Like death, man. You can’t fight God, can you? Can you fight God?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“Probably not,” Royal said.
“Look, man: The prison is God for you now. Yeah, there’s God outside of that too, above it, but you got a lower God lording over you. There’s no escape from this God. He tells you how to live, and that’s all you got. Now what you need to do is trust in your God.”
“Just let it be what it is.”
“Take it how it comes. Otherwise, you wake up with that breathing shit you have going on, that choking thing.”
Royal said, “They’re panic attacks.”
“Whatever the fuck they are, they wake my ass up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s another thing. Next time you say sorry to me, I’ll find a way to make your ass sorry for real.”
Royal nodded. Moments later, the snores started again.
Now, twenty years later, his room in the halfway house was silent. He could hear the beat of his own heart through the pillow. The panic attacks went away after that conversation, and Royal accepted his life in the cage. But now that he was out, he couldn’t accept that—he needed to be free, and free all the way. Phoenix was right, Royal was still living in a cage. A cage of a different making, sure. But it was still a cage, though it might look and feel different. And the prison was no longer Royal’s God. Hell, Royal thought, I’ll take no God if that’s what suits me. I’ll take no God and no Hell and, sure as shit, I’ll take no purgatory. I’m out—I’m free. And I need to make it permanent. I need to make this freedom real from here until I die. Take it how it comes, Royal thought.
And then he thought of Stella Radney. He thought about the succulent lines of her neck, the soft curve of her thigh, that round bullet wound on her hip. He pictured the woman in his head and heard her voice in his bones. Take it how it comes, he told himself. He kept repeating the phrase in his head and, before he knew it, Royal Atkins was sleeping like a dog.
Chapter 15
Seven days later, on a cool December evening, Stella checked her reflection in a restaurant’s front window. She looked good. She wore dark blue eye shadow and rouge lipstick over a blue, low cut dress that ran to just above her knees. Stella wore flats this night. She wasn’t sure whether the guy—the good looking buck named Junior—would want to walk the boulevard after dinner. For a moment, she wondered how it would feel to walk with him hand in hand past the coffee shops and bars, amble under street lights and holiday decorations while they chatted about life, or nothing in particular. Funny, Stella felt like a teenager again, had that familiar flutter burn through her belly when she thought about him. And more, too. Something sexual, a kind of desirous feeling that stretched from her thighs, up through her body and into her throat—Junior was attractive, and Stella wanted him.
And still, she told herself: You don’t even know the man.
When he called her, Stella answered not expecting his voice. “You got some news?” Stella asked the question without a greeting—she was sure it had to be the DA man; the call from the week before had settled in Stella like a flu. She couldn’t shake it, and every moment to her brimmed with thoughts of her dead husband and the vengeance that wasn’t and never would be his. It couldn’t be. She kept telling herself the call would come that said the whole thing was a mistake, a bureaucratic fuck up.
“Am I supposed to have some news?” The voice asked over the line.
Stella’s voice caught in her chest. She pushed it through her throat. “You’re the guy from the other night, at Wally’s.”
“So, you do remember me.”
Stella switched gears, pushed the DA man from her head. “Which one are you?” She twisted a lock of hair against her cheek, fidgeted while Junior thought of an answer. A smile surfaced on Stella’s face.
“Shit. You know it’s me. Don’t you try to lie now.”
“Most times, a guy like you doesn’t call.”
“How could I not call?”
“I’m glad you did.”
That was that. They set a dinner date for here, now, outside a neighborhood Thai-Vietnamese place with good prices and decent soup—Stella loved the soup. It was her thing. She pushed her hair behind her ears and stared at the slow moving traffic on the boulevard. Late on their first date, huh? Maybe there wouldn’t be a second.
