A Good Dude (41 page)

Candace made it to the top of the stairs. She flipped through her key chain as she bolted to her door. Without looking back, she knew the man was closer now. In addition to his footsteps, Candace could hear his pants rubbing together as he ran. They were made of windbreaker material. It was a sound Candace would never forget.

Zwush.

Zwush.

Zwush.

She found the right key and stabbed it into the hole, but it didn’t work. She flipped it over and jabbed again, but still it was a no-go. Her fingers were too shaky. She scratched shiny, bronze lines around the jagged keyhole.

Candace cursed and gave it one more try, but the key definitely didn’t fit. She studied it closer and realized it was her old apartment key from when she lived with Rilla. Why the hell did she still have that damned thing, and why did they all look alike? Why didn’t she find the right key
before
she got out of the car like they teach on those self-defense videos?

Candace jingled the key chain and found the right one, but it was too late. A large, cold hand grabbed the back of her shoulder. She spun like a tiger, striking out with the only claws she had. The keys glistened in the lamplight, coming very close to the perpetrator’s eyes, but CC sidestepped her swing easily. He stared at her and chuckled. His chest rose and fell rapidly.

“Damn, girl. What you . . . . what you trying to hit me for?”

Candace’s eyes were wide, her breathing ragged. Blood rushed in her ears. She didn’t hear what he said, but his presence alone incited a rage in her. Her anger quickly overwhelmed the fear.

CC’s hair was braided down in eight shiny cornrows. He wore a black sweater with a black T-shirt underneath. He had on black cargo pants. His sneakers were blue, but not light enough to give him away if he decided to, say, creep through the shadows. He sported a full goatee, and even though Candace loathed everything about him, she couldn’t help but see her daughter in his eyes.

“Why are you following me?” she hollered.

CC smiled. His mouth hung open and he took big gulps of air. “I’m not following you, girl.” He looked behind her to the apartment number nailed to her door. “This where you stay?” he asked with a snicker.

Candace wasn’t an advocate of violence, nor was she accustomed to violence, but for the first time in her life she wished she had a gun. She wished she could reach into her purse and pull out something to make that priggish grin fall right off his face.

“Why are you following me?” she asked again. Her eyebrows bunched. Her nostrils flared.

“All right,” CC said. “All right.” He put his arms out in a
who me?
gesture. “I
was
trying to find out where you stay. But I wasn’t gonna hurt you. Why you so scared?”

“Why do you want to know where I live?”

He stared at Leila, then reached for her. “Is that Rilla’s baby? Let me see.”

Candace moved her bundle to the arm farthest away from him.

“Don’t you ever touch my baby!” she shrieked. Her snarl was real, and her teeth were bared. CC saw something in her eyes that made him back away.

“You still a old
sadity
bitch, ain’t you?”

“CC, why can’t you leave me alone?” she asked, almost in desperation.

“I’m doing a favor for my nigga. He wanna know where his baby staying at. Delia told me you stayed over here somewhere.”

Candace felt like the ground dropped from under her.

Why? Why can’t they leave me alone? I don’t deserve this.

“Is Rilla still in jail?” she asked. She hated speaking civilly with this creep, but CC wasn’t over here for nothing. He had some kind of information.

“He’s getting out,” he said. “Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”

A thousand thoughts went through Candace’s mind upon hearing those words. She knew she had to move, that was a given. She knew she should go back to New York. It was the end of the semester. This would be the perfect time to go. She could be on a plane tomorrow and have all of her belongings either sold or shipped. She had a million reasons to leave, but only one reason to stay. And though that one reason was important, she couldn’t put Tino before her baby.

“I told you, I’m not with Rilla anymore. I don’t want him over here.”

“I know,” CC said. “I heard you got you a
Mexican
now. You stupid. Don’t you know Mexicans hate niggas?”

“If Rilla comes over here, I’ll call the police,” Candace threatened.

CC chuckled. “Bitch, you can’t stop him from seeing his baby.”

It’s not his baby!

But she couldn’t say that. The last time she accused CC of fathering this child, he took a swing at her. What would he do now that the baby was here? Candace imagined he would grab Leila by the ankle and throw her down the stairs, screaming,
That’s not my baby!

“He needs to go to court,” she said. Her voice hitched, but she tried to be strong. “If he wants to see Leila, he has to go to court and get some paperwork.”

CC shook his head. “The hell with court. This the streets. You wanna go to court, then take
yo
fonky ass to court. My nigga ain’t gotta go to no judge to see his baby. He coming right
here
.”

With that, CC turned and dipped down the stairs. As soon as he was out of sight, Candace put the right key in the door and stormed into her apartment. She slammed it closed and bolted all of the locks. She put Leila on the sofa and unwrapped the blankets. Once free, Leila kicked and giggled at her mother cheerily.

So sweet. So innocent she was.

Candace went through her apartment and checked to make sure all of the windows were locked before she called her boyfriend.

“Hello?”

“Tino, what are you doing?”

“Waiting on you to call.”

“CC was over here,” she said. Her hands were still shaking.

“
CC
? Rilla’s friend?”

“Yeah. I think he followed me from Trisha’s house. He says Rilla’s getting out tonight, or tomorrow.”

“Oh, shit. What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know. I might have to move, Tino. I might have to go back to New York.” She was almost crying as she said this.

Tino didn’t respond.

“Can you spend the night with me?” Candace asked. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Tino knocked on her door eleven minutes later. He looked as stressed and haggard as Candace, but at least they were stressed and haggard together. She clung to him like an infant when he walked through the door. Tino made her feel strong again. With him, she knew she wasn ’t all alone in this.

“Have you called the police?” he asked.

Candace hadn’t. She called Detective Judkins, but no one answered. She left a desperate message on his voice mail but wasn’t very hopeful for a reply.

Later, she and Tino sat on the couch for most of the night. They listened for sounds at her door or on the stairwell, but these sounds never came. Leila dozed off at 2 a.m. Candace took her to the crib and went back to the living room to cuddle with Tino. She savored his every caress, as their days together appeared to be numbered.

* * *

She slept in Celestino’s arms that night. They didn’t make love, but being close to him was just as intimate. Before they fell asleep, Candace asked again if he would go to New York with her if she had to leave. Tino said he loved her, and he really wanted to, but he was pretty sure he couldn’t.

* * * day. She woke Tino up at nine. They ate together and tried their best to make everything normal, but things could never be the way they were before. They ate quietly, both thinking about the move back to New York. That was a last resort, but there would be stress as long as that option was on the table.

After breakfast, Candace tried to get in touch with Detective Judkins again. The calls kept going straight to voice mail. Candace left another message but had to accept that maybe he didn’t want to call her back. He might be on vacation for all she knew. All they could do was wait.

They watched television and played with Leila and talked. Every passing hour was good news in Candace’s opinion.

“I don’t think he’s out,” she told Tino at eleven-thirty. “Why do you say that?”

“Because he hasn’t come by.”

Tino chewed his thumbnail.

“He hasn’t called, either,” Candace said.

“He has your number?”

“My cell hasn’t changed in a year.”

Tino nodded. “You’re right. He would call at least.”

“He’s not coming,” Candace said matter-of-factly. “He talked to CC. He knows he has no business over here.”

“Unless he wants to beat you up,” Tino teased.

“Then he should have beat me up already. I’ve been waiting on him all day. Either he’s gonna put up or shut up.”

Tino laughed. “You want to get something to eat?”

“I’d love to.”

* * *

Tino took them to The Lotus, an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant close to his apartments. Candace thought she wasn’t hungry enough for a buffet, but when they got there her stomach had other ideas. She didn’t eat at all last night after work, and she had barely gotten anything down at breakfast.

Candace loaded her first plate with pineapple shrimp, sautéed shrimp, and Hunan crispy shrimp. She went back for pan-fried sea bass, spinach fried rice, and saltand-pepper eggplant. Tino’s eyes got big when she still had room for a third helping of yuen-yang spicy beef, with crusted scallops and a little miso soup.

“At least one of us has their appetite back,” he said. Candace smiled. “I think I’m eating so I don’t have to think about things.”

“Is it working?”

“It was, but now I’m thinking about it again because of you.”

Tino grinned and swiped a scallop from her plate. He swallowed it in one bite and smiled up to heaven.

“It works, right?” Candace said.

“Yeah.” Tino licked his lips and grinned divinely. “I have no idea who Rilla is now.”

“Jerk.”
i

They got home at two and there was no evil letter propped under Candace’s windshield wiper, as she expected. There wasn’t one on her front door, either. Candace started to feel more and more comfortable about things, but she didn’t tell Tino that. He’d taken kindly to his role as protector, and she liked having him around.

They read Leila a book later in the afternoon and watched a couple movies on cable when the baby took her nap. They snuggled on the couch like newlyweds, and there was some stress, but Rilla wasn’t the overwhelming theme of the day. There was a life past Raul Canales, and if Candace could convince herself of that, she might be able to stay with Tino after all.

At five o’clock things got
sticky
again when it was time to go to work. Tino followed Candace to the bedroom and pleaded with her as she got dressed.