Rhode Island Red (5 page)

Inge kicked out of her high boots and lit a Newport 100.

“You're going to tell me bad news,” she announced. “You're here to tell me something has happened to Sig.”

The dog watched me carefully, seeming to wait for my reply before he settled his weight down onto the floorboards.

I gave up on the elaborate story I'd been working on. And merely said, “He's dead, Inge.”

She moaned once and then fell silent. She smoked furiously for a minute.

“I knew it,” she said by and by. “I knew it. The minute I heard your voice on the street. What happened?”

“He was murdered. It was—I mean, it looks as if it was a robbery gone wrong.”

I waited for her tears—or something. But no—she went on puffing, biting into her bottom lip every now and then.

In a minute, she held the pack out to me. I took one gratefully, continuing to watch her face.

“What will you do?” I said after a few minutes.

“Nothing. I don't know. I didn't know him that long.”

“Did you love him?”

She laughed abruptly. Then I saw the tears in the corners of her eyes.

“Inge, I feel terrible about what happened. Sig was in my … neighborhood when it happened. I just know he'd want me to come and tell you about it. And to help—help you out in any way I could.”

She sat down then. “What did you say your name was?” she said wearily. “Angela?”

“Ann.”

“Um. So Sig told you about me?”

“That's right. The last time we met, he did.”

“I don't remember Sig talking about you. You a musician too?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I blow tenor. Not too good, though. Sig was helping me.”

“Can I make you a cup of coffee?”

“Why don't you just rest. I'll get it,” I said. “Just tell me where things are.”

“Ann?”

“What?”

“You have a good voice.”

“Thank you.”

“You know what?” she said, sounding like a six year old.

“What?”

“I'm sleepy now.”

Inge slept for a half hour or so. Bruno kept an eye on me as I drank my coffee and toured the poor room.

I didn't know much about blindness or blind people. I thought they all read best sellers in Braille. So I was surprised to find, in the rickety, badly painted little bookcase near the bathroom, a few paperbacks, a couple of public library books and several other texts and magazines—even a couple of flesh rags—all in normal print. I also spotted a couple of well worn steno pads with mindless doodles penciled on the front covers.

I picked up one of the library books.
Days of Luxe: Luxury Liners on the Hudson Piers
read the cover.
The Irish of Hell's Kitchen, 1909–1969
read another.

I looked at a couple of the other titles:
Life and Death on the New York Docks
and
A Complete History of the Stevedores Union
.

How weird. No accounting for what people like to read. I wondered if someone came over and read to Inge regularly. And then it occurred to me that the books had to have belonged to Sig.

Of course. Not that I'd have pegged him for any kind of scholar, either.

When Inge woke she looked utterly lost. I waited while she washed up and then we went out for a pizza, Bruno in tow.

I was drinking alone in a tavern in the middle of the day. Something no properly raised black woman would ever do—it was acting nasty, acting like trash. And not a particularly nice tavern at that.

But I needed a bourbon, bad, and I needed to think.

So I had found little Mrs. Sig. And her fatherless baby—that would be Bruno in the cartoon version of this story.

Now what was I going to do about it?

Inge and Bruno were going to have it tough without Siggy. But it looked like they'd had it just as tough with him. Sig looked like any other down on his luck musician when I met him, yet he had plenty of money. Money as dirty as a tenement toilet, I wagered. But he hadn't used it, and he hadn't shared it with Inge. She didn't seem to have a clue to who he really was, no inkling he was a cop. I wondered if there was a legitimate Mrs. Sig somewhere—a real wife.

What to do? I could mail Inge a couple of hundred bucks anonymously. I could say it was from an old fan. Or I could just forget about her—try to, anyway. I could follow Aubrey's line of reasoning, too: finders, keepers. After all, Conlin left the money in my house, not Inge's. Truth was, I didn't know whether he'd meant to give a dime to Inge or the legitimate Mrs. He may even have been fixing to dump the both of them. Yeah—nice guy.

That was just it, though. I'm under no illusion that I'm the queen of mature judgment, but I don't pick bad guys, heartless bastards. They might be fuck ups, they might be dumb, they might have a little larceny in their hearts, drink too much, think a little too highly of themselves for their own good, but nine times out of ten they
are
nice. And I couldn't imagine one of them sponging off a hapless blind girlfriend and then stiffing her when he hit the jackpot. There had to be a reason Sig hadn't told Inge about that money yet.

Yes, I had compassion for blind Inge. But I had to learn how to have a little compassion for poor little Nanette, too. Who needed a break. Who was about to fall on some pretty tough times herself, now that Walter had split.

Sure, a couple of hundred bucks in a plain brown wrapper would be just fine for Inge. Hell, I wouldn't turn it down if I were in her place.

I heard Ernestine whispering then:
Honey, Some doors are closed for a good reason. Crack this one a little bit more, and your heart's truly gone be ready for Satan
.

I called for another bourbon, no ice, asked the bartender for change and purchased a pack of Winston Lights from the machine. Except for my ongoing bumming of smokes from anybody I happened to be sitting across from, I had been off cigarettes for two years. Goddamn. Why did they make cigarettes taste so goddamn good if you weren't supposed to smoke the goddamn things?

The bourbon was awfully tasty too—with just a little water, no ice, no, no ice—mellow. Like me. like Mellow Nan. No more No No Nanette.
Oui, Oui
. South of fucking France. Little farmhouse. Field of lilac. Hot summer sun. String bikini. Real vegetables.
Vin rouge
to die.

Aubrey would scoff at this dilemma of mine. Fuck compassion, she'd say. Aubrey was mighty wise about life. Maybe I had no business doubting her on this one. Maybe my only dilemma was whether to take Air France or Sabena. American Express Travelers Checks or Cook's. France by rail or rent a car?

Ernestine was going to have my ass for this.

Two drivers took a pass on me before I could catch a cab home. I must have looked drunker than I was. But on the other hand, in the daytime it's always 50–50 whether a taxi will stop for me. I don't look straight enough to be a bougie bank exec, but I don't exactly look like I'm gonna take them to the South Bronx either. Sometimes the black drivers are just as bad as the white. I stand there on the curb wishing I was Sissy Spacek in
Carrie
. Just picturing that fucking yellow car skidding on two wheels into a concrete wall and blowing sky high and me watching the conflagration with a serene little smile on my lips. Witnesses, officer? No, sorry, I didn't see a thing.

Of course, when I'm in my night finery, it's a different story. I've caused more than one pile up in my leather bustier.

The kitchen table was covered with newspapers, all of them turned to the travel section. I'd bought them to compare airline prices.

I'd taken the money and put it all in my knapsack, which I then propped up in the chair across from me. The bag looked for all the world like a puffed up midget sitting there waiting for coffee to be served. When the telephone rang, I looked over at it, as though asking, Now who can that be?

Walter.

He begged me not to hang up on him, as I'd done late last night. He said he
had
to talk to me. He missed me so much he couldn't function. He
had
to see me.

I'm getting ready for a trip, I told him.

Just to see me once before I went off. I said I don't know—that fatal phrase: they always know they've got you when you say I don't know. Women are dumb a lot of the time: it's not a pretty thing to face, but there it is. I said I don't know, but I did know: he was going to come over. And we were going to talk. And we were going to end up in bed. That was how it always shook out. That was where, after one of our break-ups, the talk always led. We'd talk and then we'd fuck and then a few days later he'd move in again, amid a lot of promises and hope. Until the next time.

“Can I come over now? Please, baby.”

I felt that creeping hot patch on my neck. The signal of my desire. It didn't much matter what he promised me now, and I was just about to tell him to hurry over, when I was suddenly knocked off my feet by an enormous wave of sadness and guilt. As much for Siggy as for Inge.

“Walter?”

“What, sweetheart?”

“Walter, what would you say was the greatest thing you ever did to earn me?”

“What?”

“You know, the emblematic gesture that said what you want in this world is me.”

“
What?
”

“I mean, I know that you kind of keep me—in a way. But did you ever do anything to earn me? When was the last time you jumped in front of a bus for me?”

“What the fuck you talking about, Nanette?”

I wasn't listening to Walter anymore. I said I had to hang up. And I did.

I also folded up the newspapers and put them out near the incinerator. I wasn't going to France and I knew it. Not on this sixty grand, anyway.

“Who's there?” Inge called timidly from behind the paint-flecked door to her apartment.

“It's Ann,” I responded.

It was dark inside. She closed the door behind me and switched on a lamp.

Inge stood there, blinking every now and again, waiting for me to speak.

“I have something to give you,” I said finally.

She cocked her head to the left, but remained silent. Bruno ambled over and took his place at her side.

I reached into my overalls and came out with four of the rolls. “Here.”

I pressed them into her hands, swatting away the dog's curious nose.

“What is it?”

“It's money. From Sig. He told me it should go to you if anything ever happened to him. There's …” I faltered there, postponing the absurd sentence I was about to pronounce. “There's twenty thousand dollars there, Inge.”

“Twenty thousand.” She repeated the words as if I were talking about a breakfast cereal.

“That's right. It's not a trick. It's not a joke. Just take it and live your life.”

Bruno growled from way down in his chest.

“I told Sig I didn't know if we'd make the rent next month,” she said distractedly. “But how did you—”

I ran out of there.

In what had to be the boldest act of my life, out of high compassion and no sense, I had just given away twenty thousand dollars that didn't belong to me—just like that—without thinking.

Which left forty.

So, who was going to be Robin Hood's next have-not?

The old woman in Harlem who rescued the babies with AIDS was dead now, but her work continued. Someone else was operating the charity called Hale House. Perhaps I'd give them something.

What about the United Negro College Fund? What about a yearly stipend for some deserving music student at one of the city colleges?

And there was still that large breasted, half bald black girl from Queens who blew tenor on street corners—the one who was so fond of Provence and triple milled soaps. The one who needed to have her head examined at the earliest possible opportunity.

No, none of these, deserving as they might be. It was time for me to come to my senses.

The money—what was left of it—was going where it should have gone five minutes after I'd found it. God help me, I was going to have to turn it over to Leman Sweet.

CHAPTER 5

Little rootie toot

The kitchen in the house where I grew up is as pure with light as a day in St. Paul de Vence. And it is invariably spotless. There is an explanation for this: Mom can't cook.

My mother is a child of convenience foods. No homemade cornbread or peach cobbler ever drew breath in that kitchen. We were strictly Colonel Sanders and Mrs. Paul; spinach pie at the Greeks on Metropolitan Avenue, corned beef at the deli in Sunnyside; Sunday trips in to Manhattan for the biscuits at Sylvia's in Harlem or, on a really special occasion, dinner in the theater district before some musical my father was taking us to.

It had nothing to do with my mother's lousy cooking, but Daddy left her about eight years ago. He is a department head at one of those high schools for gifted assholes, and he fell in love with a colleague—a young white teacher nearly half his age. The feeling, apparently, was mutual and so they were wed. Like something out of the Greeks, my mother has not spoken his name since. Mom is going on fifty-five. She is still pretty. I don't look a thing like her.

I placed a roll of bills in the pocket of her mauve shirtwaist with a simple “Happy birthday, Mom.”

“Nanette, what is this?”

“It's for you, Mom. Your birthday present.”

“Nanette, you already gave me a birthday present—three months ago.”

“Right. That was part one. This is part two.”

She removed the rubber band from the roll and counted the bills. “Nanette, this is five thousand dollars.”

“Yes ma'am, I know.”

“Where did this come from?”

“From NYU. It's a bonus.”

“Bonus for what?”

“Well, not exactly a bonus. It's more like a prize. For some, uh, books that I translated.”