Just Wanna Testify (3 page)

The place was already full when Blue walked in. The West End News was a popular coffee shop and well-stocked newsstand, and Blue’s base of operations, maintained from a suite of rooms in the back where no one ventured without an invitation and an escort. Behind the counter, Henry Graham, his right-hand man, and Phoebe Sanderson, who’d been working there part-time since high school, were making cups of perfect cappuccino and teasing the
regulars who stopped in for their daily fix of caffeine and gossip. When he looked up and saw Blue, Henry nodded imperceptibly and Phoebe followed his eyes to the door.

“Good morning, Mr. Hamilton,” she said cheerfully, as Henry took off his big white apron and reached for his suit jacket hanging nearby. He wore lots of hats at the West End News. With his shaved head and unlined face, it was hard to gauge his actual age, but he seemed to be a pleasant, muscular man of about forty. When he was behind the counter, he always wore a white apron over a crisp white shirt and dark tie. When Blue arrived, all he had to do was take off the apron, slip on his coat, and be suddenly transformed into a successful businessman or a particularly well-dressed bodyguard, depending on which part of Henry’s story you heard from somebody who acted like he knew.

“Good morning to you, Ms. Sanderson,” Blue said, removing his hat with a small formal nod in her direction and a general smile for the starstruck patrons who knew that a sho’ nuff Blue Hamilton sighting was the best watercooler story anybody would have that day, no matter who had won the celebrity dance-off the night before. It wasn’t that he didn’t make himself visible around the West End News frequently. It was simply that the way he moved through with such mysterious cool, once he was gone, folks could never be sure they’d seen him at all.

“How’s business this morning?”

Phoebe grinned. “Couldn’t be better.”

“Good.” Blue nodded approvingly while Henry moved to stand at his side. “Don’t know what we’re going to do without you when you head back up to school.”

“Maybe I won’t go back,” she said, teasing him because she could. “Maybe I’ll open another coffee shop down the street and give you and Henry some competition.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Blue said, moving toward the rear of the store. “Morning, everybody.”

“Good morning, Mr. Hamilton,” his customers said in unison like
a well-trained group of fifth graders greeting their homeroom teacher, their eyes following him and Henry until they disappeared down the short hallway. Outside the smoked-glass doorway to the private suite, Henry paused and laid a hand on Blue’s arm.

“What’s wrong?” Blue’s voice was a low, melodic rumble that had earned him a place in R & B history as a young hit maker when he was only seventeen and later as a fabled live performer who had such an electrifying effect on women that they had been known to faint at his feet.

“There’s already someone waiting to see you, Mr. Hamilton. I thought it was better to let her wait back here.”

Blue frowned and slipped out of his overcoat, handing it to Henry along with the Homburg. He wasn’t expecting visitors this morning, and certainly no strange females. “Alone?”

“Jake’s with her.”

“What does she want?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said, shrugging his massive shoulders. “But she looks … different.”

“Different how?”

Henry didn’t blink. “Just different.”

“Okay,” Blue said. “Well, let’s see what’s on her mind.”

The woman’s back was to the door when Blue opened it and stepped inside, nodding at Jake who immediately withdrew from his post and joined Henry in the hallway outside, pulling the door closed silently behind him. The woman, wearing a long black trench coat and black stilettos, didn’t move. Tall and alarmingly slender, she was standing in front of a large-framed black-and-white photograph of two little girls who had grown up around the corner. She appeared unaware that anyone had entered the room.

“They will be freshmen at Spelman in the fall,” he said.

At the sound of his voice, she turned around slowly and Blue found himself face-to-face with the finest vamp he had ever seen. Her large dark eyes were heavily lined in black, and her hair was pulled back into a tight knot. Her golden skin was nothing like the
usual pallor of her kind, but with that slash of red mouth and that emaciated frame, there was no mistaking what she was.

“I’m Blue Hamilton.”

“I’m Serena Mayflower,” she said without a smile. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Regina didn’t call her friend before she walked the four blocks from her house to Aretha’s studio on the top floor of the four-unit building where Blue still kept an apartment across the hall. Downstairs, Abbie conducted her visionary workshops on one side, and on the other, Blue maintained a fully furnished guest suite that he made available to a small circle of trusted friends, usually musicians looking for a place to rest up from the road and maybe jam a little if Blue was in the mood.

At the moment, it was empty. Blue was at the West End News and Abbie was getting ready to head to Tybee Island for a few days, so Regina knew the sound of Bob Marley could be coming only from Aretha’s place.

“There’s a natural mystic, blowing through the air …”

Regina smiled to herself. This was such a familiar scene it was almost déjà vu. The day she’d arrived in West End, looking for an
apartment, she had wandered around enjoying the carefully tended yards and blossoming pink dogwood trees. Watching women walking with their children past men who nodded their heads or tipped their hats and said good morning, she felt almost as if she had fallen down the rabbit hole and emerged in some kind of Afro-urban paradise. No wonder she didn’t remember seeing any For Rent signs. Who wouldn’t want to live in a neighborhood like this one?

Turning down Lawton Street that day, she had heard Marley’s voice then, too, and followed the sound like a moth to a shimmering, dreadlocked flame. When she located the source and stopped out front to listen, she remembered thinking how perfect this building with the bright blue front door would be if only it had a vacancy. That’s when Blue Hamilton opened that very same door, and said that he owned the building and she could move in immediately if she wanted to, which, of course, she did.

That was also the day she met Aretha Hargrove. When Regina first arrived in West End, Aretha was a young artist just finding her vision, always engaged in projects about which she remained passionate even as she moved on to the next one. The Door Project was one of the most visible and it was in full swing the day the two women met. Aretha had recently read a book that said some North African people believed painting the front door a certain shade of turquoise was the best way to ward off the evil eye. The same article also said that getting small children to make handprints in the wet paint increased the effectiveness of the mojo.

Aretha went to Blue and proposed painting the front doors of all his properties as part of a project that would be both aesthetically pleasing and possibly spiritually significant. Blue agreed, although he drew the line at the handprints, and Aretha did about fifteen or twenty doors before a rumor started that those blue front doors signified a special relationship with Mr. Hamilton, which set in motion so many requests for the doors that Aretha had to hire a crew just to keep up.

The project even drew a television news crew to the area, curious about this quiet, well-maintained little neighborhood, just a few minutes away from downtown Atlanta and unknown to almost everybody who didn’t live there. That was, of course, the way Blue liked it. When a second news crew showed up, he suggested that perhaps Aretha could find a less public way to keep any demons at bay and she agreed. But the blue doors were still a unique feature of West End, like the hex signs on the barns in Pennsylvania Dutch country, and Aretha still got requests regularly from people who wanted one, or who had one that needed a little touching up around the edges.

This one sure didn’t need any touching up, Regina thought, heading up the front walk. It was practically glowing with a fresh coat of paint that was almost exactly the color of her husband’s eyes. The outside door wasn’t locked. She knew it wouldn’t be. Nobody ever had to lock a door in West End. The neighborhood hadn’t had a rape, robbery, or homicide in more than a decade.

That was one of the things Regina loved and admired about Blue, even though she still worried sometimes about the role he had taken on. He hadn’t just complained about the sorry state of too many African American communities, he had fixed one. He had stepped up, moved in, and taken control. He had demanded a high level of personal responsibility from the men and women who lived there, and in return he had promised that he would provide the necessary protection they needed to reclaim their community. And he did.

At the top of the stairs, Aretha’s door was open into the hallway. Bob Marley had moved from the purely mystical to the sweetly sensual, but Aretha herself was standing at her worktable laying out the equipment she would need for the first day’s shoot, which included five cameras: two digital; one old, large format for portraits; another old Polaroid for test shots; and her beloved Leica, which always hung around her neck more like a talisman than a tool of her trade. Aretha liked to work here even though she and her daughter, Joyce
Ann, lived in a little house a few blocks away that had plenty of room for a studio. She loved the light, she told Blue when she asked him if it was okay to take over the space when Regina moved out.

What she didn’t say, because somehow she felt he already knew, was that she needed a space where she wasn’t required to be anything other than an artist. A free space where she could go wherever her imagination nudged her without having to stop for spelling homework or dinner dishes or the mailman at the door.

Aretha was so focused on the task at hand that she didn’t even notice Regina smiling in the open door.

“You know where I can find a hotshot fashion photographer around here?”

Aretha looked over her shoulder and threw up her hands. “This is a terrible idea! I don’t know why I let you talk me into this,” she wailed.

“I never talked you into anything and you know it,” Regina said soothingly.

“But you didn’t talk me out of it.”

Aretha never played up her looks, but even when she was agitated, Aretha’s beauty was undeniable. She wore her hair cropped very close, which drew attention to her big, dark eyes with their long, thick lashes. Tall and athletically built, she had a strong nose and full lips that turned up at the corners just enough to make people think she had a secret worth telling. Aretha looked like a model herself, Regina thought, if models looked like the very best that real people had to offer instead of another species all together.

“You’re mad at me for not talking you out of doing an
Essence
cover spread with the hottest models on the planet?”

“Listen to yourself,” Aretha groaned. “How can you even say the words
hottest models on the planet
and not gag?”

“Because, my high-strung friend, my finder’s fee for setting up this little gig is enough to buy three computers for Sweetie’s kindergarten class.”

Aretha looked at Regina, who smiled angelically.

“That’s right, throw the kids up at me.”

“I only threw my own.” Regina laughed. “But if I need to add Princess Joyce Ann to the mix, I will.”

Joyce Ann was a huge fan of the Disney princesses line and anytime she had a say in the matter, she would don one costume or another, from tiara to slippers, and move among her family and friends with what can only be described as a decidedly regal demeanor. Accordingly, Aretha’s friends had begun to call her daughter
Princess
, over her laughing objections that if they weren’t prepared to move in and function as her highness’s ladies-in-waiting, they needed to stay out of it. Blue and Regina’s daughter, Sweetie (whose real name was Juanita, but who had been Sweetie since the first time her daddy held her in his arms and pronounced her “the sweetest baby girl ever”) idolized Joyce Ann and had already inherited a few precious gowns after the original princess outgrew them.

“All right,” Aretha said, “you win. But you better stay close enough to keep reminding me this is all for a good cause.” She picked up the old portrait camera and fit it carefully into a silver camera case lined in gray foam with cutout spaces for its precious cargo.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Regina said. “You don’t think I’d let you have this adventure without me in my own backyard, do you? I told Blue this morning not to expect to see me around much until you were done shooting.”

Aretha was stalking around the small space, grabbing all manner of expensive-looking equipment that Regina couldn’t begin to identify by form or function and tucking it firmly into her various camera cases. There was clearly a method to her madness, but Regina couldn’t have said what it was. She decided her best course of action was to stay out of the way.

“I thought you were up for this. What happened?”