Drive Me Crazy (19 page)

“Get out of my office, Driver. And the Pilot pen you pilfered this morning,
put it back
.”

He said that like he was the boss. Like I was simple, nothing more than a petty thief. Like knowing a few ten-dollar words might help me win a few games of Scrabble, but those words would never earn me the titles to a Lamborghini and a Cessna. Like I could memorize a dictionary front to back and would still be a man living lower than the soles of his shoes.

Like he was white and I was black.

I told him, “Add it to the fifteen thousand I owe your wife.”

Again we stared. If he asked, I was gonna tell. I didn’t give a fuck.

He turned his back on me and left, that James Dean swagger rushing him to the woman who wanted to commit mariticide. Wanted him dead so all he owned could be hers.

Carl’s Jr. hamburger joint was one block east of the Hilton. I hoofed it down there and went inside, ordered two grilled chicken sandwiches, fries, lemonade, and a diet Coke. Ten minutes later Panther walked in. She had on pink and gray running shoes, tight jeans, gray Nike sweatshirt, and a baseball cap on her long hair. She didn’t have on any makeup, looked like a college student on break. She had an old, worn, black backpack with her. The kind that went unnoticed. I had caught a booth and she sat across from me.

By then I was on my cellular, venting to Pedro. He was at Back Biters serving spirits.

I ranted about Lisa. Panther wasn’t paying attention, her attention and eyes on the front page of an L.A. Times that someone had left behind. The headline said that more soldiers had been killed in Iraq, three shot and dragged from their Jeep, beaten with concrete blocks in public. Five more had been killed when their helicopter crashed north of Kabul, read that a minute ago.

Pedro told me, “You’ve got elephant-sized balls.”

“C‘mon, man.”

“Fuck a man’s wife every way but loose, then go work for him.”

“You better than anybody knows how hard it is to get a job with a record.”

“Inexcusable. Just keep away from my wife unless you want to end up in a taco.”

Pedro gave me a hard time, but he understood the walk I was walking. We were descendants of people who worked the fields, cotton and oranges. We knew trying to survive at all costs pulled some men into a spiral of evil. In hard times, morals didn’t put food on the table.

I told him about the lion and the jackal. Described the six-foot-tall square-head lion, his football build. And the narrow face, slanted eyes, and pocked face on the thin jackal.

He said, “Never heard of those guys. I’ll ask around.”

“Niggas showed up in front of my crib last night.”

“
Get the fuck outta here.
She sent some bullyboys to your door?”

I asked him for a favor. Offered to break my piggy bank and pay. He said he’d see what he could do, pro bono. I reminded him that his wife worked at a grocery store and they were in the middle of a long strike. Despite his situation, he declined my offer. He told me that if he could get me what I needed it would be pro bono. I thanked him. Then we hung up.

I sat there wrestling with my fate, my own dark and cynical demons. I wondered how many people in this city wanted somebody dead. A lot of people did, but they wouldn’t admit it. They wished someone wasn’t alive, or not born, a coward’s way of wishing somebody dead.

If I had done what I had been sent to do, I could be riding Easy Street right now.

Panther took a chicken sandwich and the Diet Coke, skipped the fries. She had taken the bread off her sandwich, put it to the side with the trash, and cut up the charbroiled chicken patty.

She lowered her head, closed her eyes, prayed over her food. I waited out of respect, watched her give praise, thanks for waking up this morning and her charbroiled special.

This table held an ex-con and a stripper, two people who didn’t live in a sugarcoated and ideal world. Then I looked at Panther. We were both of
that
world, the one where every man had a price and every woman had a past. Maybe vice versa. People like us only had two kinds of luck, bad and worse. When things were going well, Fate stuck a foot out and tripped us up.

She asked, “You okay?”

I snapped out of my thoughts. “What?”

“Looked like you were in the middle of omphaloskepsis again.”

That got a laugh out of me. It was small and misplaced, but it was appreciated.

She shook her head. “You and your faux-cabulary. You crack me up.”

Right now I wanted to find a place I could go and get swallowed up, take my friend JD with me, but I had to make some hard choices. Soft choices had never been a part of my world.

We ate without saying much. She was shifty. Bouncing her leg. Tapping her fingers.

She asked, “When can I see you again?”

That surprised me. “You want to see me again?”

“That’s what I just asked.”

“Maybe tonight, if that’s cool. You working tonight?”

“Not sure.” She shrugged. “Depends.”

“I got some things to take care of.”

“Call me. Even if you can’t come through, ring my phone and let me know you’re okay. We don’t have to do anything. Just want to make sure you’re okay, Driver.”

I asked, “Why?”

Worry showed in her full lips and the corner of her brown eyes. I reached across the table and held her hand. I felt more than lust, much more than that, but not enough at the same time. Fear was an inhibitor. Love handicapped a man the same way it handicapped a woman.

She shook her head, sighed at me, then took a bite of her cut-up grilled chicken.

My head was in a dark, bad place right now. Plus I’d never been good with women, not when I had to read between the lines, that place called Venus where most of their emotions lived.

She said, “I just left the shooting range. Everything works.”

“What I owe you?”

“This meal is enough.”

“C‘mon now. How much this set you back? I want to kick you back your cash.”

“Maybe you could take me to dinner and we could call it square.”

We finished our ten-dollar meal and she came over to my side of the table, checked my head wound. I touched her lips and she trembled. She recovered, looked nervous, then she leaned over and kissed my lips, got up from the table and left without saying good-bye.

My lips had never touched hers before. It was nice and warm, made me want more.

I watched her cornbread and buttermilk sashay, watched her shoulders soften, watched her get in her red sports car. She turned on her headlights. First her reverse lights came on, then changed back to her parked lights. She sat there for a few minutes, idling and thinking. Her reverse lights came back on. She backed out and zipped into the madness on Century Boulevard.

My cellular rang less than a minute after she had vanished. I answered.

Panther’s voice was both urgent and unsteady. “Can’t you just leave town?”

“I’m not running from no motherfucker.”

“Because you have a gun.”

“If for no other reason.”

“Driver, you ever shot anybody?”

“Why you ask?”

“Ain’t as easy as it seems. Maybe you should consider your options.”

“I’m not running.”

“I didn’t say run. Why can’t you leave for a while? I have people in Alpharetta.”

“Shit. I heard you talking to your momma this morning. I know they can’t get that confederate flag issue resolved, sounds like they’re still lynching niggas down that way too.”

“Stay inside the perimeter and keep away from the white girls in Rome, Georgia, and you’ll be cool.”

“Panther. Look. Can’t. Look ... I ... I have a brother. Need to stay here.”

She said, “Take him if you have to.”

“He’s ... my brother is ... he’s sick.”

She waited a moment. “What kind of sick?”

I almost told her that Rufus’s immune system had been compromised. That he was cash-strapped and the meds to keep him in a healthy state cost a grip. That his being a kept man gave me angst, but it cost a lot to keep him well, money I didn’t have, at this rate never would have.

I said, “Look, he’s cash poor and I have crumbs lining my pockets so I can’t afford to take him and I can’t disappear on him. Gotta stay nearby. We’re the end of the family tree.”

I licked my lips. Tapped my fingers on the table and swallowed my discomfort.

She said, “Didn’t know you had siblings. Or cared about ... about family.”

We held the phone, traffic sounds coming through on her end.

Panther said, “I have a sister and a brother. I’m the oldest.”

“I’m the oldest too.”

“I guess we’re setting good examples, huh?”

We actually laughed.

She said, “My baby sister just turned twenty and she has two children by two men who would be more than happy to set fire to the ground she walks on.”

“Kinda like Rita Hayworth.”

“Yeah, I think that’s why that documentary made me so sad. My baby brother is with the 10th Mountain Division. Army. In Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

I held the phone, but my eyes went to the newspaper she had left behind. She’d been reading about all the young men getting killed over the country’s Bush-shit.

She whispered, “Hard to sleep at night with all that madness going on over there.”

The anxiety medicine I’d seen in her bathroom was on my mind too. I didn’t hold that against her. Rufus had shit like Videx, Ziagen, Viramune, and Crixivan in his cabinets. I’d seen them. Looked them up on the Internet. That medicine cost a grip and a half. Only the rich could afford to stay alive. In this country a man with no insurance died a slow and horrible death.

I asked Panther, “You crying?”

“Only two kinds of people in L.A. People who were born here and people who came here to be stars. The first kind doesn’t know how to leave. The second kind leaves with their tails between their legs. It might take them a while to give up, but they leave.”

I said, “I’m the first kind. L.A. is all I know.”

“And I’m the second. L.A. ain’t all that. You should leave this bitch.”

“I know. She ain’t much, but she’s my bitch.”

“Ever tried to leave?”

“Tried once. When I was married. Was gonna go live in Alabama.”

“What happened?”

“Long story. Came right back as soon as I got out of jail.”

She paused. “Just be careful, okay?”

“Panther—”

“Had two dreams about you. In the first dream, we were making love. I mean we were all in it. It was incredible. Not fast. Nobody was in a hurry. Was so sad when I woke up. It was the bomb. Was moaning in my sleep. In the second dream, we were talking. About us. Conversation going in a promising direction. You told me that you knew that I loved you.”

Silence.

“I love you, Driver.”

She hung up.

I sat there, leg bouncing, holding that phone, staring at nothing, and thinking. I grabbed the newspaper, found the crossword puzzle. “
Paradise Lost
character.” Four letters. ADAM. “Sleazy speak-easy.” Four letters. DIVE. I focused, did most of it. That helped me calm down.

I grabbed the backpack Panther had left behind, took it with me, its weight telling me that she’d picked up more than I needed. To be honest, I didn’t know what I needed, but I had it.

I passed by a trash can and paused. Thought about tossing the hardware.

I’d been to jail, I’d done shady shit all my life, and I wasn’t trying to do that shit no more.

That black-and-white image of Burt Lancaster flashed in my head. That scene in
The Killers
played in my mind, frame by frame. How he lay in that bed and waited for those men to come gun him down. He didn’t do a damn thing. Just waited.

I gripped the backpack and moved on.

Within twenty minutes I was by my crib, hunting for a parking space. Traffic on La Cienega was brutal, like a drag strip, fools whipping from lane to lane, doing at least seventy in a residential zone. There wasn’t a parking space so I took to the alley, left my car there. Was only gonna be here a hot minute.

I was halfway up the stairs before I knew something wasn’t right. If I had any kind of Spider sense it was sounding like a fire alarm. I made another step before I stopped. My door was partway open. I dug in the backpack. Pulled out the first gun my hand touched, a .357.

It was dark. Cold.

Listened.

Heartbeat thumping. Could barely hear over the drum inside my chest.

Listened.

Heard nothing but my own anger wrestling with fear.

Took a few breaths.

Smelled.

That scent was strong, familiar. From days gone by. I knew what it was but it was hard to place at the same time. Used to smell it all over the house when we were growing up, that odor that let us know the house had been disinfected, sanitized, and deodorized.

Bleach.

I’d never forget that stench. Momma used to steal that industrial bleach from the second-rate motels she cleaned up, bring it home and wash our white clothes in the bathtub from time to time, and when she did the house held the stench of bleach all night. We’d sleep with the windows open to keep our eyes from burning. I smelled bleach and I imagined Momma in the bathroom, on her knees, washing Reverend Daddy’s shirts and scrubbing the sheets in the tub.

It was strong, those fumes thickening and poisoning the night air.

Bleach irritated my eyes the second I used my foot to bump my door wider.

Darker in my place than it was outside. Quiet as death on Sunday morning.

Somebody had broken into my apartment. Didn’t know if they were still here.

I smelled smoke. Thick cigarette smoke lingered like smog over San Bernardino.