Winners (21 page)

“Fuck the truth. What truth?” She raises her hand like she’s about to dash a delicate and invisible object to the ground. She lets it go. “His whole life, what I tell him? You got to get out of here. You got to stay in school, stay out of trouble, stay alive. And he do. Stay alive up here means stay away. And he do. But you gotta come home sometime. That punk got him clocking down there, you know, selling to the white boys, what’s he gonna do? He hate that shit. He playing basketball with y’all, he down at the gym, bringing home some money, being my man of the house at home, sleeping with some faggot cross town. What world is that? How do you explain that when he can’t even explain it himself? The truth.” She tips back her beer, drains it. “Yeah and I drink. And my shit stink too. The truth. You wouldn’t get it you had a thousand years.”

“That what you tell Tennessee?” Shane doesn’t know where the anger comes from but it’s there, rippling through his wounds, throbbing in his hands. “When he says he killed your boy. When he says where the fuck’s my money.”

“I don’t say nothing to him.” She looks away, though. “He just talking. He just looking for a play. He think you the daddy. Yeah. He think he following the money. Samson and his rich white dudes. He like every other nigga up here, just trying to get paid.”

“Me.”

“I told him. But he got these ideas about you and your friend and the rest of y’all at that gym. Y’all got money. I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know what to do. I’m desperate enough to go down to the Silly Valley, you know I’m desperate. That’s the truth.”

“What friend. My brother?”

“Naw. That richie rich you come up here with. That black Beemer. Heard about that bling-bling, too, none these niggas ever seen a Rolly like that before. I thought you were with him.”

“He’s not my friend,” Shane says. “And I don’t go to that gym.”

“See I don’t know about that. Talk about drugs, though, you a straight hypocrite. You up here that night. Who buys the drugs? Somebody selling, somebody buying.”

“Who do you think I am,” Shane says.

“What about your friend? All you all, just use them up and spit them out. All you all.”

“Who do you think I am,” Shane says again.

She stares at him and then at the carpet, looking for a lost something. “Some guy,” she says, finally, in a sad voice. “I don’t know.” She peeks up at him. “I don’t know, I guess you a good man but I just don’t know. I don’t know you. Maybe you are, maybe you are a good man.”

“No,” he says. “Look at me. You’re right. I’m a fuck-up too. But that’s all I am. Just a fuck-up who cleans chimneys and wishes he really knew your Sam and you and everything. But I don’t.”

“No you don’t.” She smiles. “I believe you.” She watches him as he shakes his empty can, a golden flash of light to distract them both. The last thing he wants to do right now is think.

“Did you take those beers away?” he says.

“Yeah. I shouldn’t have done that.” She pops out of her seat and disappears, returning with the brown bag. She opens two more beers and they lean together to clink cans, the dull tinny sound making the room seem smaller than it is.

They’ve been drinking for an hour or so, one tall can after the other. “Were you ever married?” he’s asking her. The music keeps on coming, JJ Soul Sounds of the Sixties announcing one hit after another, serving up blasts from the past.

“Nope.”

“Do you ever think about it?”

“You proposing? I accept.” She grins, smacks the table with her hand a bit too hard, then leans back on the couch, rocking her shoulders to the music. “I’m not opposed to it. But shit, these niggas out here? Getting married ain’t any kind of answer. I got to depend on myself before I depend on someone else. And then. And then you got to find one that’s worth a damn. The kind that even knows what married means.”

“What kind’s that?”

“I already told you I accept. Naw, all right, I like ’em a little darker than you, regularly. Let’s see, you want the whole list, okay make it tall, dark, good job, don’t tell me no all the time, don’t tell me yes all the time, be a man, you know. Up here, come on now, man mean in jail or headed there or strung out, you know what I’m saying. Shit. I had me a man until just recent but there’s always something. These girls up here they smell one coming around they all around my front door. Batting their eyes and laughing at the spit coming out of his mouth. And he right there grinning and squeezing on them like I ain’t even there. No, you go get your own man, know what I’m saying. Finally I just be like uhn-uh, y’all have a good time and good night for real.” She smiles. “He try to have it both ways, boy know what he missing but no no no. You don’t treat me right, you out.” She shakes her head. “Samson didn’t like him either.”

“No?”

Another can hisses open. “Wooo, Samson don’t like any of them. You know, same old story, who gonna be the man of the house. I get a man in here, maybe I don’t see my boy for days. But what I gonna do, I can’t be waiting for no golden stamp of approval. Shit. You just supposed to be a momma, that’s it, right? Well I am a momma, but you can’t take care of them up here, you can’t, you can’t.” Her voice is riding up thin and high. “You be at it 24/7 and they still disappear on you, still something happens to them. They still clocking or faggots or killed. You don’t have no kids, right?”

“Not yet.”

“You should have some. You make a good daddy.”

“That’s what I say.”

“But watch out they come back on you. Samson don’t like me drinking, don’t like anything, he thinks he’s my daddy. You gonna be my daddy you better take care of me not the other way around. I go down there to the Monte Carlo to drink some beers, it’s fun down there, shooting pool and dancing to the jukebox. And leave him to take care of the kids, he’s grown you know, and I come home late? He’s waiting up for me, bitch me out, like damn. After that I don’t go out no more. But see what happens.”

“Where do your kids go?”

“I got a girlfriend she watch them, I do the same for her.”

“You got some community up here, then.”

“Here? We watch out for each other, there always someone home watching the house but you know, not that you could call close friends. One day they come over and ask for that cup a sugar and then they asking to use your phone and borrow twenty dollars and unh-uh. Best to just be polite you know but mind your own business. This here’s just a stop, you know? but I’m getting back on the bus and getting out.”

“And they’re not?”

“No. That’s a different mentality. These girls around here be sitting around gossiping stuff, all day she said she said. That shit’s straight-up boring, what it is, like you don’t got nothing better to do? I don’t play that, best to stay away. Once you get in that shit, uhn-uh. They out there like chicken pecking at every crumb come their way. They don’t miss nothing. What, you think it like a country club up here or something, all of us be singing ‘We Are the World’ and holding hands? Nah, ain’t like that. Like that we wouldn’t be up here. That’s it, you know, people up here I respect they take care their own business and move to the next thing. There was one girl lived here a year ago, JB, she was all right, I liked her, she talk all day but she was a lot of fun, you know, she always dancing and joking around. She just a shit starter, she was a lot of fun. She got out, though. These other ones, they ain’t going nowhere, they be out here ’til they tear down these projects and move all these niggas to the next one. And they start the same thing up there. Uhn-uh,” she says again, “I don’t really be hanging out with anyone around here. I don’t got no one, really, when it comes right down to it.”

“So you’re the only decent shit starter around here now.”

“That’s right,” she says, sliding him another beer.

“I doubt that.”

“Who else I got? Oh, I got you, right?” She smiles at him. “You on my team, huh?”

“Yeah. I guess I am.”

“Yeah and look at you.” she says. “No, I’m playing, that’s nice. That’s a nice feeling. I mean, when you knocked on the door tonight, I felt bad for you getting jumped you know? I mean you got no business coming around here at night. And under the circumstances. But I was glad to see you anyway.” She takes a big long pull on a fresh beer. “You a good one.”

“I don’t know what I am.”

“I see you, you a man but you a good one. No one helped me out with nothing for a long time. You just, you got to be careful. You looked like shit, boy.”

“I bet.”

“I knew it was you. That’s a nice feeling. I forgot. Have someone coming for you, taking care of you.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“You look all right now. That jaw make you look better, I think. Like you got you some character.”

“You’re better than all this.”

“Shit you talking, you don’t think I know that?”

“I just don’t know how to.”

“You know that you wouldn’t be cleaning chimneys would you?”

“Don’t know what I’d be doing.”

“How old you think I am?”

“You’re thirty-four.”

“You ain’t supposed to get it right.”

“Sorry. I did the math.”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what.”

“Like I’m doing something wrong. We all adults here, ain’t we?”

“I sure hope so.” Lou could be home by now, she could be drunk beneath the great wall of wine. Adults.

“Yeah, you got your ass kicked, I fucked up my best shot for a job in how long, we having some cold ones and chopping it up. Well we almost outta beer and I’m tired of talking and what we do now? You could listen to me talk all night, huh? Or I’m boring you.”

“You’ve never bored me yet.”

“I’m boring me. Oooh,” she says, pointing into the air. “I like this song. You like this song?”

“Yeah. I like all songs.”

That sounds suspicious to her. “You don’t like the OJs? Come on now, you don’t like the OJs you just don’t like music.”

“I like them. Sound like the Temptations or something.”

“They better than Temptations. Come on now. I grew up with this. You ain’t too dead you can’t dance with me. Now’d you got some character.” She turns up the music and drags the coffee table out of the way. He gets his can off it just in time but their empties tumble onto the floor, leaking their last neglected drops into the carpet. They don’t seem to care. She dances. She bends her knees and twists and turns in front of him, rolling her shoulders and neck. She stumbles a little to one side and puts out her hand for support and pushes over a cheap standing lamp. The light pops off in a death flash as it hits the ground and they both laugh. It’s dark now except for the light from the kitchen and hall, throwing her long shadow against the beat-up wall. She turns her back to him and dances with her own shadow while he watches her thighs and ass and then she whirls around and catches him looking. She laughs and puts her hands on either side of her breasts, runs her own hands down her body.

“I want to see you dance,” she says, laughing as if that might be about the funniest thing in the world. She reaches down and takes his hands, pulls him to his feet. If his body hurts he can’t feel it anymore. She keeps dancing. He stands there, watching her, still touching hands while she moves and waits.

“Oh so you don’t dance, huh,” she says. Her mouth is close to him and serious as she moves his hands to her hips where his thumbs slip under her shirt to meet soft skin as she leans in and presses her breasts against his chest and keeps dancing. She can feel him hard against her and maybe his heartbeat too as she keeps her eyes on his. “Can’t dance, got nothing to say.”

“I want this.” He can barely hear his own voice.

“I know it, I know, I want this too.” She takes his good hand and moves it down between her legs. Her mouth hisses in the air next to his ear. “I need this, I need to feel this.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

“I need to fuck you.”

“Oh yeah,” she says, “definitely.”

***

He’s thought about that sex long before it happens: Debra and him half-drunk and desperate on the worn rug of her living room. But even though he’s already fucked her about twenty times in his head, twenty times in all the ways he could think of as he’s stood in the shower at home, it still surprises him. All those times, in all the ways he could think of, but there are details he hasn’t thought of. How she smells when she sweats, something fruit fermenting in the sun. How long and strong her fingers are. How it would hurt. He can’t imagine what it would be like to fuck like this all the time, absolutely without shame. They break things. They lose their minds—lose them, two bodies flopping around without a working mind between them. He doesn’t believe you can live like that. He guesses people don’t.

They say nothing that whole time, except for once when he is sitting on the edge of the coffee table while she sits on top of him. It’s muscular, this configuration, he holds her absolutely in with his arms looped under her thighs and her hands linked loosely behind his neck, she lets him have her weight as he moves her up and down. She slumps on him like a body you had to carry from a fire except for her hips which never stop moving. Maybe she thinks he is getting tired, or is going too fast, but suddenly she says in a sort of sad voice: “Don’t.”

“No,” he says, and it doesn’t matter if they know what they are talking about or not. Whatever it is, he won’t do it, there is nothing more important than that. His body is his body. She knows it, and he knows it too: their bodies are the one thing that can’t, won’t let them down.

Eventually they go to bed. She is sleeping, soon. The whole thing is so peaceful. If you paint the walls in there, replace the dresser, put in a couple lamps beside the bed, hang a picture or two on the wall, some new curtains, it could be just another bedroom anywhere at all. Outside is quiet, an occasional car going by but not much more than that. He thinks about Tennessee, this kid who grew up calling her auntie and flashes his gun sometimes and teases her because she isn’t buying. Auntie, auntie, what you need. You sell drugs and save up enough money to build a house for your parents back in the homeland, back in mythic Tennessee, and your parents leave while you stay in San Francisco in the projects doing what you do best. What a crazy story—Tennessee. He’ll be dead soon, Shane thinks. I can just drive away tomorrow and never come back but he stays until someone kills him. It’s quiet out there right now, Shane thinks, maybe he’s closed up shop for the night, maybe he’s sleeping too. Shane wonders if the kid’s surprised every time he walks out there through the broken glass and gloom to take his rightful place: holy shit, check it out, another day.