Hold Me in Contempt (15 page)

There was an eerie silence everywhere. The clouds were thickening, and I knew instinctively that in minutes a mother would be crying, kneeling down over her son's body on the sidewalk or street corner, begging anyone to explain what happened.

“Miles!” The bottom of my foot was stinging from what I would later realize was a needle-sized shard of glass I hadn't seen during my quick inspection at the apartment, but I kept running. The cabbie was on foot behind me, but I kept running and screaming like I knew that bullet had Miles's name on it.

“Miles!” I ran to the steps of the community center where he always waited after his practices, and it was empty. No one was there. Not a soul. Just a balled-up Bon Ton potato chip bag.

The shaking got worse. My back was fresh beef being pounded by a mallet.

I looked at each step twice. Maybe I was missing something. He had to be there.

Then I heard the sirens and the screaming. I turned to see a crowd huddled in the middle of the basketball court in the park across the street.

“Miles!” I was about to run over to the park when the cabbie jumped in front of me.

“You pay!” he screamed, holding an empty hand out to me. “You pay now or I call the police!”

“I can't! Miles! He's across the street in the park!” I pointed and tried to get around him, but even though he was shorter and slimmer than me, he stopped me.

“You pay now!” he demanded. “You drunk! You drunk! I smell!”

“You don't understand! He's over there!” I pointed, trying to break loose.

“Hurry and pay. I leave cab!”

Realizing there was no way he was letting me go, I opened my purse to hand him my entire wallet so I could run across the street, and that's when I saw Tamika's name on the screen of my phone.

“Mika!” I screamed, answering the call. “Mika!”

“Kim?” Tamika said too calmly.

“It's Miles! He's—” As if she could see me through the phone, I pointed to the scene in the park, where it looked like the crowd was dispersing.

“What is it?” Tamika asked.

“I was late,” I said. “Late and—”

“I know you're late. I just spoke to Miles.”

“What?” I looked over the cabbie at the crowd.

“He went home with crazy Yolanda and her sons. She was kind enough to take him when you were late,” Tamika said, her voice as cold as the cabbie's accusing eyes.

“But I was . . .  ​I didn't know I was supposed to get him,” I tried to explain.

Tamika laughed but not happily. “You know, Kim, I am getting tired of this. I ask you to do one thing, and you can't even do it.”

“I had a bad day. There is so much going on,” I said.

“Well, I'm having a bad day, too,” Tamika replied. “You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because someone left my son waiting outside on a street where I specifically told her I didn't want him hanging out.”

“But Dr. Davis and then Paul—there's been so much today,” I said. “I just forgot, I guess.”

“You forgot about my son?” There was that angry laugh again. “Look, Kim, I don't know what the fuck is up with you, but you need to get right because you're fucking up. And I don't want to be a part of it.”

Tamika hung up and I was left listening to a dial tone.

“Hurry and pay. I leave cab!” the cabbie demanded again.

I pulled two twenties from my purse and handed them to him. “Take it,” I said.

When he walked away, looking back a few times to give me dirty looks, I saw two women who had been in the crowd in the park walking out.

“What was going on there?” I asked them.

“Some dumb motherfucker playing with a gun. Nearly shot himself,” one said.

“Fucking shame. Can't a day go by in the hood without this shit,” the other added. “At least ain't nobody get hurt.”

My whole spirit was about dead. I was unprotected. Like a storm had come and gone and left me wet in the rain. Something in me sank down really low and hurt me so bad I actually felt the pain in my heart. Thank God nothing had happened to Miles. But standing there outside the fencing club, I was forced to really stare at what was happening to me. How could I forget that I was supposed to pick him up? Why was Tamika angry at me? Why was everyone so against anything that I wanted to do?

I was done with riding in cabs and talking to cabbies and talking to just about anyone at that moment, and so I just started walking. I put my one sad foot out in front of my other, aching foot and took little steps, like a baby who was just learning to walk and trying to figure out how not to fall down. I was so numb, I couldn't even feel my back. To press my toes hard and deliberately into the ground was about the only way I could know I was still standing and maybe headed somewhere. But where?

One foot. One aching foot. Three steps and then four. Soon I was on the corner looking up at the sky witnessing the twilight. Even in my sadness there was something beautiful and familiar about it. Everything in the world above me was in its place. Controlled by some silent organization that hadn't ever failed. Hadn't ever gotten sidetracked or derailed. Focused. Resilient. Even in Brooklyn the sun, moon, and stars were at work.

“Get your shit together,” I said to myself, turning the corner and looking out at the world before me. The sidewalk went straight forward in a path that was cracked and crumbling in places.

A sound, something that echoed like bass booming from speakers, caught my ears, and I looked up from my path on the sidewalk. There, hanging right in front of me, was a black sign with honey-colored neon letters flashing
damaged
goods
. The name flashed slowly like the signs on those old-timers' jazz lounges on Lenox Avenue where Kent and I used to find our father passed out.

“Jameson. Double,” I requested, finding myself on a bar stool with my wallet in my hand.

The same bartender who'd been on duty the night before was behind the bar. She smiled at me with some familiarity and went to pour the drink but then turned back, confused.

“What you want with it, Queen?” she asked in a cliché Brooklyn Puerto Rican accent that was more Rosie Perez than . . .  ​Rosie Perez.

I heard that she'd called me Queen, but didn't think anything of it until after I said I wanted it straight up and she responded, “Any ice, Queen?” She said it more like a name than the common way brothers in New York addressed women they respected.

“Yes. Sure,” I answered. As she poured my Jameson, I looked around the grungy bar for signs of life. The music was bumping, and it was dark and ready for the coming night crowd, but save three or four old men who were obviously locals playing pool toward the back, it was empty.

“Here you go,” the bartender said, setting my drink down.

“Thank you.” I placed my credit card on the bar.

“Tab?” She picked up the card.

“No,” I answered, then changed my mind: “I mean, yes. Yes. Bad day. Horrible day for me.”

“Right place then, Queen.” She nodded and turned to the register right behind her.

“Hey, Iesha, right? Why do you keep calling me Queen?” I asked her back as two long-haired Puerto Rican women in tight black pants and pastel thick-bottomed stripper-style stilettos walked past me from the back of the club and waved at her.

“I'm sorry. I thought that was your name,” she said, turning back to me. “Wasn't that what King called you last night?”

“King?” I repeated, trying to sound like I hardly knew who she was talking about, but when it was apparent she was on to my attempt at minimizing, I said, “Oh, yeah. That white guy I spoke to last night.”

“Yeah, him,” she said, and giggled with a little
you know damn well you remember him
in her voice.

Trying to seem nonchalant, I added, “Oh, I think he just meant it like the way all the brothers call women queen. You know?”

“No. I've never heard him say that to anyone before,” she said confidently.

“Really?” I tried not to sound interested in the information, but the Jameson in my hand had me feeling unfastened or excited and I'd hardly had a sip.

A beautiful woman walked from the back of the club, and I saw that she had come from the kitchen.

“So, have you seen him? King?” I kicked the nonchalance up to ten, for my own benefit as well as Iesha's; I could rationalize that I was trying to shake off my blues by focusing on something other than my bad day. “Not that I care—just asking.”

“Sure. I've seen him,” she said curtly, and turned to walk from behind the bar without another word. She went to the back where the woman had walked out of the kitchen.

“Okay. Guess I shouldn't have asked,” I said to myself before looking for solace in my glass of liquor and melting ice cubes. I hadn't started drinking or even smoking until I went to college, and for years the closest I got to hard liquor was Alizé and Hypnotiq. I liked the sweet stuff that went down easy. It made drinking seem fun. Feminine and silly. Not dark and piss-infested like the drunks I'd known growing up. I'd sip a little something and laugh with my girls or Ronald. Get a little nasty. Maybe even pass out, but still it felt innocent. When I got to law school, though, that soft, feminine liquor didn't do anything for me. There were too many headaches in the morning. Too many vomit fests over the toilet. I had to stop it, but I still wanted to drink something. Have a little sip to take the edge off after a late night studying. Or after dealing with my mother being found somewhere down and out and there was nothing I could do about it. That's when the liquor with men's names came into my life and I learned to love the purity of straight alcohol with no sweet lies. Jameson became my best friend. It had bite and nerve. Let you lose control but made you feel like you were in control.

“Hey, young blood,” I heard one of the men near the pool tables say, and I looked over at the men crowding around.

In the middle of their circle of wrinkly brown skin, thick glasses, and old-school Kangols was one white face with a thin beard. It was King. It was like he appeared out of nowhere. I couldn't tell if he'd walked in when I wasn't looking or come out of the kitchen.

As the men chatted, laughing and slapping five, Iesha walked out of the kitchen and returned to the bar, where she went on working like we hadn't spoken.

I watched the scene at the pool table for a second and then started coaching myself about not appearing thirsty or too excited to see King, or like I'd come to the bar to see him, so I turned around. I told myself I wasn't interested in him. It was purely a product of circumstance. Desperation. I was in Brooklyn to pick up Miles, and after that went awry I needed a drink and I didn't want to wait until I got back to my place, so I stopped at the bar. Right? Then I wondered why I was explaining myself to myself. I took the last swig of my Jameson and sat the glass down hard on the bar to signal for another.

“Somebody said you were looking for a King.” This was heard over my shoulders. The smooth baritone voice fell on the rear of my left ear with a tickle that swam down my back and made me squirm and jump a little.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” he said, sliding onto the stool beside me. “I didn't mean to scare you.”

“I'm not scared,” I said with more determination than needed.

He noted it, too. “Well, I ain't never scared either,” he responded in equal register.

After a few chuckles we let an expectant silence sit between us.

“I—” I started, but he opened with the same word and we laughed again at the butting of heads. That time it was more familiar. Not like we'd known each other for years, but like we'd been checking each other out. I knew my embarrassment showed in my eyes, so I looked away. But I could still feel him beside me, and that made me more excited. His presence felt overwhelming. Like a man in charge. I blamed it on the new double, which I'd nearly finished.

“You go first,” he said.

I was about to tell him about seeing him in the Bentley in Manhattan, but I opted against it. I didn't want to seem too pressed, like I was looking for him, and lead him into anything.

“I was going to say that I didn't know you worked here,” I said, looking back at him smoothing his beard slowly.

“I don't work here,” he said.

“But you were in the kitchen, right?”

“Oh. That.” He looked away. “I just help out sometimes.”

“Oh. Well, what do you do?” I asked, and felt a foot in my mouth. While asking those kinds of questions was acceptable in most circles I moved in, I knew there, in Damaged Goods, it probably seemed more like sizing someone up or being nosy. And what did it matter anyway?

“I do many different things,” he said so coolly that if my eyes were closed I might've thought he was a brother. He wrapped his arm around the back of his head to tend to an itch, and there, on the inside of his biceps, was the Black Power fist tattooed in red ink.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be all up in your business. I was just making small talk, I guess.”

“No hesitation,” he responded. “I get it.” He grinned.

“What? You get what?” I smiled back and felt my eyes flirting, and I didn't look away this time.

“You're sizing me up,” he said, and we laughed again.

“No! I'm not!”

“It's cool. That's how women like you do.” His eyes were flirting then.

“Women like me?”

“Sisters. Black women.”

“Ohhh! Now I see. You're claiming you know something about black women? About sisters?” I took a full sip of my drink, leaving the ice cubes lonely in the glass again. Without even asking, Iesha came over quickly to pour another glass.

“I know a lot about black women. Probably more than you.” He nodded at Iesha, and she winked back.

“Humm,” I let out. “How is that?”