An Accidental Affair (24 page)

Driver smiled a courteous smile and extended a hand to the man, then pulled him back to his feet. The man stood up, two inches taller than Driver, but the fear in his eyes made him look like a munchkin facing a pit bull. The man took the money and retreated back inside his apartment, slammed his door hard as if that was the blow he
wished he’d had the nerve to deliver to Driver’s jaw. Driver knocked on the man’s door until the man opened the door.

The man looked at Driver. He wanted to look tough, but fear had him by its claws.

Driver said, “You want to redo that rude exit? I feel offended.”

The man nodded, closed his door slowly, softly, gently, and the click was barely audible. Then I regarded the crowd of spectators. Driver did the same.

With authority, Driver announced, “Fight’s over.”

Half of them applauded the way people in the business did when the credits rolled at the end of an art house film. Curtain was down. Show was over. Then they all went back inside. As soon as their doors closed, the music began blasting in a half dozen incongruous languages.

I looked down at the suit coat that Bizarro Johnny Handsome had left behind.

I told Driver, “He ran off and left his coat.”

Driver said, “He abandoned his expensive messenger bag too.”

He picked up the bag and looked inside. Then he looked up at me, his expression serious. Resting inside the bag were receipts from McDonald’s on Firestone and a loaded .380.

He said, “The McDonald’s he went to was in Norwalk. That’s one city over. My guess was that he’d met someone there to buy the gun. Then he came over here looking for you.”

“How did you come to that conclusion?”

“That’s what I would’ve done.”

“That’s what I would’ve written. Including the suit. It kept him from looking like a thug.”

“You messed that man up pretty bad.”

“He was ugly when I met him. Just uglier when he left.”

My mind flashed back to when I was in bed with Patrice. He had
been the one knocking on my door. But Patrice had run out into the hallway naked and that had thrown him off.

Her drop-in that was inspired by jealousy might’ve, on this day, saved my life.

I said, “He came looking for me with a gun inside his man-bag.”

Driver walked to the end of the hallway. He walked at an easy, confident yet cautious pace. He spied to see if anyone else was coming. I went the opposite way and did the same thing. He didn’t see anyone. Neither did I. There was no sign of Bizarro Bergs, just a trail of blood that led to the stairs, then blood spots on the wall where he had used his hands to keep from falling on his face as he fled. I was hurting, but I wasn’t going to let it show. Pain screamed as my adrenaline level came down. We rushed inside my apartment. There, along with Driver, I had two new best friends. One was named Green Alcohol. The other was named Ice.

I said, “I could call the police.”

“Not a wise move.”

“I could call the police and tell them that Johnny Bergs had sent a hitman after me. I could dial 1-800-PAPARAZZI and have my face and story all over the web in an hour.”

“Thicke. You pistol-whipped the man.”

“I pistol-whipped a sonofabitch who was coming to shoot me in the back of the head.”

“Gangster.”

“My fists were hurting too bad to hit him again.”

“Brick. Pipe. Coffee pot. Always hit a man with something. Hands are delicate.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

“I’ll bill you for that too. And I need to use your computer.”

Driver took the iPhone that I had just bought from my neighbor across the hallway and scrolled through its files. He used my USB,
connected to my Mac and downloaded all the man had recorded while I was doing battle in the hallway. Then Driver reset the iPhone, cleared all that the man had recorded, deleted all of his pictures and contacts, and put it back to factory settings. After that, Driver stepped outside my door and banged on the door across the hall. Twenty seconds later, he came back with the money he had just paid the man for the phone.

Driver said, “The hallway fight is on your computer now. The tough guy across the hallway doesn’t have a copy. No one does but you. We paid him for the phone before we took it, so he can’t say he was robbed; then we sold it back to him for seven hundred dollars.”

“We paid him five.”

“Restocking fee. Plus a nominal charge for resetting his phone.”

“So I made two hundred bucks on that transaction.”

“Fifty. I had to walk across the hall and agent the negotiating.”

“You should’ve asked for eight hundred.”

“I did. He pissed his pants and swore on his mother’s grave that was all he had.”

“You went soft.”

“I’m a gentleman. So I lowered my price for the man.”

“Kind of you.”

Driver gave me my part of the money. As I put it inside my pocket, I told him that Regina had been here. I didn’t tell him about the argument, what I said, or what she had said.

Driver rubbed his chin. “She sped away right before you came upstairs.”

“And five minutes later an ugly Bergs attacked me.”

“She brought him? Is that what you’re thinking? That she’s in bed with the Bergs?”

“No. She had just found me. He was here first.”

“Or he followed her. A Bentley is easy to follow.”

“No idea.”

“And he came with a gun.”

“If he had brought flowers and candy, I would’ve been offended.”

I took a desperate breath, a breath that didn’t slow my galloping heart. New reality. It felt like I had been lucky to get out of that one alive. I put both guns on the coffee table.

I said, “The Bergs have arrived.”

“Moses Bergs has sent his sons, at least one of them, to your front door.”

I said, “Driver. Call my wife. Make sure she is okay. If she’s not, vanish and go handle it. If she is, then she is and let her be. Either way, don’t tell me. Just call her and see.”

He took out his cellular, stepped into the kitchen, and made a call.

I stared at those guns. It looked like my .38 had had a baby and named it .380.

Driver was only on the phone for about two minutes. He ended the call and came back.

He didn’t say and I didn’t ask.

Cars blew their horns outside my window. Freeway traffic was piling up.

I said, “Driver, what you said in the hallway…you killed somebody.”

“If I told you, then I’d have to kill you.”

I nodded and left it at that. Every man was entitled to own his secrets.

He said, “But it changes you. Hypothetically speaking. It changes you.”

“What does?”

“Killing changes you. And you will not welcome the change. You will become as dark and moody and as black and ruthless as Hollywood. Murder is a thorny and complex subject.”

“Murder?”

“Self-defense. And even when it’s self-defense, it still feels like murder.”

A sudden knock at my door made us both jump and face the door.

I called out, “Who is it?”

“Holder.”

I relaxed. Driver didn’t.

I opened the door and Mr. Holder came inside. His expression was off and I read that to mean that the neighbors had been talking about the melee. He closed the door behind himself; saw me, looked at Driver, then back at my injuries. My ragged clothes and bruised and bloodied face was a novel of pain. The two guns on the table were another short story waiting to be told.

I said, “Driver, this is Mr. Holder.”

“Driver. Is that your name or your occupation?”

“It’s what you can feel free to call me.”

That drew the line between them. With that, Driver backed away and checked his watch.

He was putting Mr. Holder on a timer.

Mr. Holder asked what had happened. I told him that Johnny Handsome’s brother had found me. That meant that Johnny Handsome knew where I was. He wanted payback for that beating in the rain. I had been located. I wasn’t running away. So it was only a matter of time.

Mr. Holder said, “So Regina Baptiste left her throne and came to our part of the world.”

“She might have been thrown out of her kingdom.”

“And right after that movie star left, you were attacked.”

I touched my face, spots that ached and felt swollen. “I was attacked.”

“Just like you attacked that boy in Hollywood.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s a vicious cycle.”

He shifted on his heels and look at the carpet. “Got a minute?”

“I’m in the middle of a crisis right now.”

His jaw tightened, then released. “I just need a minute.”

“What’s going on? What did you need, Mr. Holder?”

He looked at me again, his smile rugged. “It’s personal.”

I looked at Driver and nodded. My guess was that Holder wanted to borrow money.

Driver said, “I’m going to walk the hallway and come back.”

Then he left Mr. Holder and me, left the way a bodyguard would step away from the President if he were about to have a conversation with a Prime Minister.

Mr. Holder said, “The fight you had up here, it’s the talk of the building right now.”

“Figured that. A better fight will come along before the week is over.”

“So Johnny Bergs’s brother was banging on your door with a gun in his bag?”

“Banged a couple of times, for a good minute nonstop. But I didn’t go to the door then.”

“In the bathroom?”

“In the bedroom. I was occupied. That probably saved me from being…hurt real bad.”

For a moment, the strong-backed man with dimples and cleft chin looked uneasy.

He took a shallow breath and asked, “Who were you up here sleeping with?”

I knew what he was asking. So I felt obliged to answer. “Mrs. Patrice Evans.”

Mr. Holder looked relieved; then he shook his head. “You and Mrs. Patrice Evans?”

“Yeah. She came by. She was out there the night I moved in.”

“You barely said two words to her. How did that come about?”

“Abruptly and without foreshadowing. At least from my point of view.”

“I
know
Ted. We’re not best friends, but we’re friends. He used to
come by and play dominoes with me and Vera-Anne and Isabel. Just letting you know that I know him too.”

I opened and closed my hand. Mr. Holder looked me over, still shaking his head.

He asked, “Did Ted’s wife see your Maybach?”

“No one has seen my car but you.”

“They go after athletes and lawyers. They all want to have sex with a man who is somebody. Men like you get put at the top of the list. They know you’re rich. It shows.”

“People in this complex have brand new Benzes, BMWs, and Range Rovers.”

“People here fake being rich. For them being rich is a fantasy. They have nothing.”

“As far as they know, I’m no different.”

He snapped, “Did you kiss Vera-Anne today when you were in the laundry room?”

He caught me off guard.

“Were you holding her and kissing her in the hallway in front of her kids?”

I took a breath and shook my head. “I didn’t kiss her. I’d never disrespect you.”

He took a breath and his bottom lip trembled. “James, look. Her little boy talks to me.”

“You really need to calm down, Mr. Holder.”

“He said that you had your arms around his momma. So, did you?”

“She chatted, offered me pea soup. I declined; then she went home.”

“The boy seems to think differently. And let’s get this in the open, James. She likes you.”

“Vera-Anne likes the art in my apartment. Pictures and glass sculptures. Not me.”

“Say nothing, James. Say nothing right now. Fuck. She hasn’t bought a roll of toilet paper to wipe her ass or a tampon to stop her
blood, and the moment you show up, after all I have done, after all that I have spent, the moment I leave, she’s out in the hallway in front of her kids kissing you? This is the worst moment of my life, so do me a favor and say nothing.”

“Mr. Holder, that’s not what happened.”

“I went through this shit with my daughter’s mom. I told you that. Never again.”

My face was aching, the pain from fighting Bizarro Bergs still fresh, and I was already in another unexpected fight. This was harder than the battle in the hallway. Bergs had come to kill me in cold blood and now Holder was in my space assassinating my character.

He said, “Don’t take it out on us.”

I snapped, “She came on to me.”

He took a breath, and exhaled fire and hurt. “The moment I left, she came on to you.”

“But I’ve never touched her. Not like that. She gave me a hug.”

“I see. You hugged her but you didn’t touch her. She touched you. Front to front.”

“She was crying. So I hugged her to calm her down.”

“Crying. Oh. She was crying. That’s how she ended up in my bed. By crying.”

“Well, she didn’t end up in mine.”

“How do I know that? How do I know what happened when those kids took a nap?”

“Are you serious? Look at her, and then look at Regina Baptiste. Look at her, and then look at my wife. Grab a magazine and hold my wife’s face up next to Vera-Anne’s face. There is no comparison. And my wife is a hard worker. My wife makes…she makes a lot of money…and Vera-Anne makes zero. You said that you can’t get Vera-Anne to get up and go to work and I can’t get mine to stop working. Vera-Anne is nice; she’s a good cook; but she’s not Regina Baptiste, even with Regina’s problems. Sweet Isabel pointed out that
she’s undereducated and doesn’t care. So, yeah. She came on to me. And nothing happened. Absofuckinglutely nothing. Why in the hell would I go after her? You’re my friend. At least you were my friend.”

His headed lowered and he opened and closed his hands.

I said, “I’m sorry. But when you come at me like that, you get what you get.”

“No, no. You said the truth.”

“Hate that I had to say that. Don’t mean to be disrespectful. But you left me no choice.”

“You could buy my life, but Johnny Bergs is more famous than Jesus. I don’t mean this in a
disrespectful
way, but that is the truth. He slept with your wife and there is very little outcry from a Christian nation. Immediate gratification. They’re hooked on immediate gratification. They’re tired of waiting on Jesus so they’ve made man their Jesus. What women have done to Johnny Bergs out there, the idolizing, that’s what women are doing to you here.”