Pipe Dream (19 page)

Leroy lit another cap and released the smoke through his nose. As it wafted past Clarisse, it gave her face an almost surreal glow, lending a ghostly backdrop to her words.

“I didn’t have a lot of friends even then,” she said, squinting against the smoke. “I guess it was because I was shy or whatever. But the one friend I did have was like everything to me. As a matter of fact, I think she came to Franklin right after you transferred to Dobbins, Everett. That was around tenth grade, right?”

Black nodded.

“Well, by the time me and my one little friend, Nicole, grew up and got jobs and everything,” she said, “we were more like sisters than friends. We laughed together, we cried together, we talked about everything under the sun together, from periods to pregnancy.

“When my parents died, she was the one who helped me get through it. She was over at my house every day when all I could do was cry and wish I was dead, too. She made me eat when I didn’t want to. She made me bathe when I didn’t want to. She was with me when I finally got to the point where I could come outside again, and she walked me through getting back into everyday life when I couldn’t make it through by myself.

“When she got married, I was the maid of honor. When she and her husband had a baby, I was the godmother. We had keys to each other’s houses and keys to each other’s cars. She was like everything I needed in a friend.

“She knew the Scotts, I knew her parents. I knew her husband. And she knew all my boyfriends—all two of them—the one I had in high school and Carl.

“When Carl and I started getting serious, we started hanging out with Nicole and her husband. We would meet each other for plays or dinner or football games or whatever. You know, I wanted Carl to know Nicole and I wanted Nicole to know him because they were both important to me.

“So anyway, about a year after we met, Carl had a shift change, so I was working twelve to eight and he was working eight to four. We didn’t get to see each other as much as we used to, but we still made time for each other whenever we could. It was good for our relationship, in a way, because we weren’t together enough to get on each other’s nerves. At least that’s what I thought.”

Clarisse sighed deeply before continuing.

“Everything was working out,” she said, the pain evident in her voice. “We were starting to get kind of serious, and I was really happy about it. I used to call Nicole every night and tell her how I thought it was only a matter of time before he popped the question, and she seemed to be just as excited about it as I was. She used to tell me that I really deserved to be happy because I’d been through so much. And she was right. Nobody deserved happiness more than me. I mean, you couldn’t have told me that what Carl and I had wasn’t the best thing to ever happen to me. Well, I guess it wouldn’t have mattered what you told me, because I was just head over heels, nose wide open, whatever you want to call it. I loved that man.

“So everything’s just flowing and I’m up on cloud nine until one day, when he was getting off and I was coming in, Carl told me he had something to ask me. So I’m all excited and I get on the phone and I call Nicole and I’m like: ‘Girrrl, Carl is getting ready to pop the question!’

“You should’ve seen me in that nurses’ lounge. I’m jumping up and down screaming and she’s on the other end screaming and I’m just acting like a pure fool. Everybody was looking at me like I was crazy, but I didn’t care. Because it was like, I felt like I was finally going to get something I wanted out of life instead of the leftovers life kept giving me.

“So when I got off the phone with Nicole, I started calling around trying to see if I could get somebody to come in and pick up the rest of my shift. Because there was no way I could stay there and give people needles and check I.V.’s and whatnot. As hyped up and nervous as I was, I probably would’ve messed around and killed somebody doing that mess.”

Black imagined Clarisse repeatedly trying to jab a needle into someone’s arm—accidentally at first, and then in a deliberate stabbing motion. He grinned, thinking of how silly the whole thing would look, and then she was talking again, the story pouring out of her like so much water.

“I wanted to go home,” she said. “I wanted to take a shower and put on something sexy. You can’t just be looking any kind of way when people are trying to propose to you, right?”

Black shrugged.

“Well, that’s what I was thinking,” she said. “So anyway, I kept calling people, going down the list of the nurses who were on call, telling them that I had an emergency at home and I needed someone to relieve me so I could go. All of them saw right through that, though, and I didn’t get anyone to come in until I broke down and told this girl Lynn the truth about why I wanted to go home. That was around three o’clock in the morning.

“So I get myself together to go home, and when I get there the first thing I notice is that my bedroom light is on. Now, I knew I always kept my living room light on, because I didn’t want anybody to think the house was empty. But I never kept my bedroom light on, because I didn’t want to waste electricity like that. So when I saw the light like that, the first thing I’m thinking is somebody’s in my house robbing me blind. But then I was thinking that Carl might’ve been waiting for me there, because he had a key to my house, too. That didn’t make sense, though, because if he wanted me to meet him at his house in the morning, why would he be waiting for me at my house?

“Now, all this is going through my mind, and I’m like reaching into my glove compartment to get my gun.”

Black looked at her with what must have been total surprise because he just couldn’t imagine Clarisse with a gun. She noticed the look on his face and stopped to explain herself.

“Honey,” she said. “Being a woman and working at night when you live in North Philly, you’d better have a gun or something, because you never know who’s waiting for you to leave your house at eleven-thirty. So what was I saying? Oh, I crept in the house and pulled my gun out of my pocketbook, and I heard music and voices coming from upstairs. It sounded like somebody was arguing or fighting at first, but by the time I got to the bottom of the steps, it sounded like . . . it sounded like . . .”

She put her face in her hands and shook her head violently from side to side, as if she were trying to make the image disappear. Then she looked up and stared into the past, and the rest of the story almost seemed to come alive.

“I got to the top of the steps and stood outside my bedroom door with the gun in my hand,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. “I stood there and imagined what it would feel like to kill somebody. I stood there and ran my hand along the door, rubbed against the door, edged closer to the door. And then I just pushed it open.”

Black looked away, feeling like an intruder in Clarisse’s private hell. He was ashamed to listen to her, embarrassed for her. Yet he wanted her to continue. He wanted her to finish it.

“They didn’t even notice me at first,” she said, the bitterness in her voice strangling the words. “They just kept fucking, like two dogs.”

Clarisse laughed, a humorless, dry sound that died as soon as it left her lips.

“So I blew a hole in the stereo,” she said, a sort of madness playing in her eyes. “And a hole in the television, and a hole in the mirror, and a hole in the nightstand, and a hole in the dresser. And I kept shooting until I shot every bullet in that gun.”

Clarisse’s chest heaved up and down as if she might hyperventilate. But in a few seconds she calmed herself enough to continue.

“By the time I finished,” she said, her nostrils flaring, “Carl and Nicole, my man and my best friend, the people I had trusted with my life, both of them were balled up on my bed like babies, crying and shaking and probably wondering if they were still alive.”

Clarisse sighed and looked across the room at Black. “I didn’t have to wonder whether I was still alive. I knew the answer to that as soon as I walked in that room. I knew I had died more times than anybody deserves to. I just hadn’t stopped breathing yet.

“I guess that’s when I stopped caring. I started drinking at first. Then I started stealing painkillers from the job. When they stopped working, I started stealing morphine. That lasted for about a year, until they found out I was stealing medication and told me to either leave voluntarily or go to jail. Well you know what my choice was, right?

“For a while, I didn’t even want to work anymore. I just stayed in the house listening to old Billie Holiday records and drinking. I did a little private-duty nursing now and then, but I mostly just stayed in the house and waited for . . . well, I don’t know what I was waiting for. But by the time I ran into you last month, it was like: Okay, so Everett’s smoking crack and he’s not dead yet, so I might as well try it, too.

“So here I am,” she said, looking around her as if she were just accepting what was happening to her. “Stuck between wanting to live and wanting to die.”

Black looked down at the traffic that passed by on I-95. Since it was after rush hour, everything was running smoothly. The only unusual thing he saw was a helicopter hovering over the highway. If they were looking for them that way, he thought as he turned to face Clarisse, they would have an awfully long search. Because they weren’t going to see Clarisse’s car for a while.

“Everett?” Clarisse said, sounding like a frightened little girl.

“What?”

“We’re not going to make it out of this alive, are we?”

The question took him by surprise. He opened his mouth to say something, then remembered the images of police bursting into the room that had crowded his thoughts earlier.

“Yeah. We’ll make it.”

“Even if I leave?” she said.

Black walked over to the corner of the room where she and Leroy sat and looked down at her.

“Where you goin’ if I let you leave?” he asked harshly. “Where would you go? What would you do? You don’t have no friends. You don’t have no family. Far as I know, don’t nobody care if you live or die. Not even you.”

She stood up slowly—her body flowing up from the floor like steam—and looked him in the eye.

“Including you, too?” she asked, her voice a sultry whisper. “Do you care if I live or die?”

“I care about me,” he said. “I care if Black live or die. I don’t have time to be worried about nothin’ else, or nobody else.”

She began to lick behind his ear.

“A-and I . . . if you wanna make it out th-this . . .”

She walked around him and began to kiss the back of his neck.

“I’m s-s-sayin’ . . .”

“Damn, Black,” Leroy said as he pulled out another cap to dump into his straight shooter. “You startin’ to sound like me.”

Black grinned. “She keep lickin’ my neck.”

“Don’t act like you don’t like it,” Leroy said, pulling two matches from the matchbook and taking a blast.

“Look,” Black said, hunching his shoulders and turning around as she began to make circles on his neck with her tongue. “I care about you. That’s what you wanna hear?”

“Yeah, that’s what she wanna hear,” Leroy said, his jaw moving rhythmically from side to side as he went through his ritual of searching for rocks in the carpet.

“It look like I’m talkin’ to you, rug man?” Black said.

“Least I ain’t all in love,” Leroy said, relighting his straight and pulling out the remainder of the smoke.

Black didn’t respond because he recognized the truth in Leroy’s words. Clarisse had become real to him. He couldn’t lump her in with other women, because now she had thoughts, and wants, and a past, and a life. And although she didn’t realize it, she’d chipped his shell just enough to allow a shaft of light to creep inside. She’d chipped it just enough to allow him to feel.

“You need to be tryin’ to figure out how we gon’ get outta here,” Leroy said, speaking so quickly that Black had to take a moment to replay the words in his head.

Black turned around and looked at Clarisse, then traced a vein in her neck with his forefinger. She shuddered slightly, and he pretended not to notice.

“I already know how we gettin’ outta here,” he said.

“How?” Clarisse said, looking at him with an expression of amused puzzlement.

“You havin’ a baby.”

Pookie looked up from the bed and Leroy stopped digging in the carpet. And for the first time since they’d left Clarisse’s house the night before, Black felt like he was in control.

“You ready?” Leroy said, puffing impatiently as Clarisse slipped a trench coat over a stomach that was artificially swelled by a rolled-up blanket.

“Why is he rushing me?” she said to Pookie.

“ ’Cause that’s what ignorant asses like him do.”

“Why I gotta be all that?” Leroy said.

“I don’t know,” Pookie said. “I was hopin’ you could tell me.”

“Look,” Black said, trying to stop another petty argument before it began. “A cab is on the way and we ain’t got a whole lotta time for all this. So could y’all just stop arguin’ for once so we can get outta this damn hotel?”

Everyone looked at one another like little kids who’d been caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

“I still don’t know what it is I’m supposed to be doing,” Clarisse said, breaking the silence.

“You supposed to be pregnant,” Black said. “What’s so hard about that?”

“I mean, if I’m going to act, don’t I need some motivation for the role or something?”

“Your motivation is keepin’ my foot out yo’ ass.”

“That’s excellent,” Clarisse said. “You’re obviously directing this in the John Singleton,
Boyz N the Hood
tradition.”

“Why you messin’ with me?”

“Because you’re there.”

“You’re forgettin’ your motivation,” Black said.

“Oh yes, keeping your foot out of my ass.”

“Right.”

“Man, y’all trippin’,” Leroy said. “Can we just get outta here?”

He was right, of course. They had been in the same spot for too long. And if they hoped to ever make it out of that place alive, the time to move was then.

The plan was solid enough. Clarisse would get off the elevator with the rest of them, acting really loud and crazy, and they would all pile into the cab like she was going to have the baby any minute. Then they would do whatever they had to do to get the cabbie to drive them to 30th Street Station, where they would split up and catch trains to wherever. Black figured it was safer than trying to go to the airport, and faster than trying to go to the bus station. Of course there was the matter of the Amtrak police. But the Amtrak police probably wouldn’t be able to recognize them from the previous night’s descriptions. Leroy and Black weren’t wearing church hats and sunglasses anymore. They were going to go out there in suits and ties. And Clarisse would be the only one wearing a trench coat, since she was playing the role of the pregnant woman.