South by Southeast (30 page)

“You call Bernard, I'll call April.”

Chela didn't smile, but her crying had stopped.

At least for another night.

WITH THE REWIND
button in her head, Chela changed everything.

She never sees Maria standing in the crowd behind the set of
Freaknik,
or hears her calling “Che-LAAA,” because her voice gets lost in the noise. Maria gives up, thinking maybe it wasn't really her. With her daughter in mind, Maria vows again that she'll get her GED like she always said. She calls Mouse Girl and says she'll skip going out to Club Phoenixx that night.

And Gustavo Escobar never sees Maria. And she never goes after him.

And the Captain isn't dead.

And she has her life back.

As she stood in her jacket in the breezeway of the athletic center at Bernard's church, Chela could picture the Miami sunshine, the fat crewman with his belly flopping, Ten's ridiculous prop glasses. It could have happened the way she imagined it a hundred times over. There was no reason for the Captain to be dead.

Chela fiercely held her tears at bay while she stood in front of the wrestlers and their parents who filed out of the gym with oblivious contentment, grinning and laughing. She thought she could feel people glancing at her over their shoulders when they thought she
was out of sight, wondering how she had the nerve to set foot on hallowed church grounds.

Chela had never understood the concept of wrestling at church. She played with a picture of a bearded Jesus pinning Judas down after a wicked throw, so funny it kept her tears away.

Bernard's parents weren't with him, as usual. Since Bernard had gotten his license to drive himself legally, his father had stopped coming to watch him wrestle at church youth-league tournaments. His father's new job required him to fly to New Jersey a week a month, and that had killed wrestling for them. Usually, you could hear Mr. Faison yelling all the way outside.

His dad would have been proud. The first match had been embarrassingly long and ineffective for both wrestlers, but Bernard had looked like the Undertaker in the last match.
Bam, bam, bam.
That other Jesus freak had never known what hit him.

Bernard was one of the last ones out, since he stayed behind to talk to the coach. Bernard was a kiss-ass in every arena. All of his teachers loved him, too. He worked it without trying.

Bernard was suddenly in front of her, standing in the lamplight. He looked as if he'd grown an inch since she went to Miami, but he smelled like sweat and a dirty mat. His mouth hung open with shock. That was why so many other kids thought he was a geek; he'd let his eyes bug out, no matter who was watching.

“You saw the whole thing?” Bernard said. She was glad he didn't start right off asking why she hadn't returned his calls and texts. Apparently, when people close to you died, everyone else gave you a lot of room. Her mother had given her a hell of a lot of room after Nana Bessie died.

“Yeah,” Chela said. “That last match gives new meaning to the phrase ‘What would Jesus do?' ”

Bernard made a sour face. He didn't like jokes with the word
Jesus
in them, even if they were funny. “Is that some kind of atheist humor?”

“Agnostic,” she corrected. Maybe she didn't believe in God the way church people did, but atheism sounded like its own religion. “Here's atheist humor: ‘Life's a bitch, and then you die.' Get it?” Jokes made Chela feel better, even when no one laughed.

“Actually, I don't get it,” Bernard said.

“Of course not,” she said. She felt herself trying to start a fight. Bernard annoyed her, acting as if he floated on balloons all the time, basking in Jesus. It was so childish. So what if his father had been assistant pastor at the church all those years?
Think for yourself,
she thought.

“I'm really sorry about your grandfather,” Bernard said. He stepped closer, but she noticed he didn't hug her in front of witnesses. The coaches were locking up.

“Yeah, I know.” Chela didn't want to talk about the Captain, but the next conversation was almost as bad. “So . . . it's been crazy.”

“I figured. Can I drive you somewhere? Oh, wait—dumb question. Like you could have walked from your house. I didn't know you knew the way here.”

“I didn't,” Chela said. “I drove around like a jerk for a half hour.”

“We could grab some burgers, and I could bring you back.”

Chela shrugged. “I'm not hungry. Besides, I can't leave my car in a church parking lot—you never know what kind of people are hanging out here.”

He looked at her as if he was trying to decide if she was kidding.

He would never bring it up, she realized. He would stand there and pretend he hadn't heard anything, or that the
National Enquirer
wasn't talking shit about her. Anybody who'd ever met her knew that she was the whore in the story.

“You've got nothing to say?” Chela said. “Just ‘Let's get a burger'?”

“I thought it would be better to talk there.”

“Right, I want to bare my soul at Jack in the Box.”

“Why are you mad at me?” Bernard said. His brows furrowed with annoyance.

“It's a stage,” she said. “Anger is the first stage of mourning.”

“Oh.” Bernard nodded, satisfied. “I read that somewhere.”

“It's anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance,” she recited. Researching death was her favorite pastime on the internet. Considering that everyone in human history had died, she had expected to find more information on the subject.

“Denial's next?”

“For me, maybe depression. That one seems to be the real bitch.”

One of the coaches, the younger one, glanced at Chela from the doorway behind them. Bernard stepped in front of Chela as if to try to shield her from his sight. He put his hand gently on her upper arm, the way the Captain's doctors had when they had bad news. “I know where we can talk,” Bernard said. She was glad he had come up with a plan.

They didn't walk much farther than around the corner of the building, but they were out of view of the gym and the parking lot. Suddenly, they were surrounded by squat, perfectly trimmed trees, midget trees that looked as if they'd been grown in an enchanted forest. Everything in the solar lamplight was green. Somewhere, water gurgled.

“This is our meditation garden,” Bernard said. “It's Japanese, since we have a lot of Japanese members in our congregation. Makes you think of the Garden of Gethsemane, right?”

“Sure, whatever that is,” Chela said. Bernard often lapsed into a foreign language. She had her own language, too, and he had never heard a word of it.

“This is my favorite part of the church,” he said.

“Really? I thought it was sweaty mats.”

“My second favorite place, then. It's easier to pray where it . . . looks like this.”

“Pretty,” Chela said.

“Exactly.”

Despite its cement backdrop behind them, the little garden did seem to have a magical hold on her. It wasn't a long stretch of sparkling Miami beach, but it was a safe and quiet place.

“Ten meditates every day,” Chela said.

“I know,” Bernard said. “He told me.”

Chela looked at him sidelong, surprised. Since when did Ten and Bernard hang out?

“Just conversation while I was waiting for you,” Bernard said. “A long time ago. You know how parents are—trying to relate.”

It was strange to hear Bernard call Ten her
parent
. But she didn't correct him. How could she? Even the
National Enquirer
knew he was the guy who had saved her ass.

“It's so crazy now,” Chela said.

“Yeah, I can't imagine. How is Ten dealing with things?”

“Uh . . . like a robot,” Chela said. “Nobody's having a lot of heart-to-hearts right now.”

“That sucks.”

“Actually, I like being left alone. It works well with my anger phase.”

A silence came, made larger in the garden. Chela decided to say the first thing that popped into her head. “I know what people are saying about me. And before you ask me anything, yes, it's true.”

She dared a glance at Bernard, and he looked startled. He'd never believed it was true. He had waited to hear her side. “Oh,” he said.

“I wanted to tell you all along, but it was too gross. So think about all the highlights, and it's probably true. I was a ho. A harlot. A whore. Pick your name for it.”

“I don't have a name for it,” he said. “I guess . . . prostitute? But you were just a kid. I can't believe people would—that a madam would—”

Mother must be miserable these days, with her business out in the streets, Chela thought. The tabloid had even found a photo of her that must have been taken thirty years ago, when she had darker hair and a young woman's face. Mother was older than the Captain by now, she thought. Even tough old ladies got frail. Nana Bessie sure had.

“Bernard,” Chela said, trying to sound patient. “It's an ugly world. She did me a favor.”

“A favor?”

“Yeah, she probably kept me from getting killed like . . .”

She stopped. He knew the rest.

“You're so lucky Ten came along,” Bernard said.

“It wasn't luck—she's the one who called him,” Chela said. Mother wasn't stupid; she had probably known what Ten would do when he found her. He wouldn't have let Chela stay with her. Mother had arranged it for her.

“You sound like you're defending her,” Bernard said.

“Life must be nice in Black-and-White Land, where you live.”

They both knew they were veering into more treacherous terrain. They were silent again. She and Ten had learned to leave the subject of Mother alone, too.

“So . . . are you okay after that?” Bernard said.

“Okay?”

“Yeah—I mean, did you get sick? Do you need a doctor?” Bernard said.

“I don't have any diseases, if that's what you're asking.”

“I didn't mean it like that. I'm just worried about you, Chela. You're my girlfriend. What do you expect?”

Chela hadn't expected the way her heart puffed up when Bernard said she was his girlfriend. They had been going steady for more than a year, and he'd said it first. He said it way more than she did. When her tears came, she didn't wipe them away.

He wasn't holding up a cross to repel her as if he thought she
was a vampire. He was the same Bernard he always was. And although Raphael tried to come to her tongue, Chela realized she would have to leave one secret buried. Just one. She couldn't tell Bernard she'd had sex with another man when they'd been waiting so long. She had done it to find that sicko killer.

“I didn't get any diseases, thank God,” Chela said. “But I'm not okay, really. I'm pretty messed up. I hate my life.”

“Never say that,” Bernard said, his voice hushed. He hugged her, and she enjoyed his warmth. He was still pumped up from the wrestling match, so he felt like a radiator. He definitely seemed taller since she'd been gone. “Never say you hate your life. You can't see it right now, but you're so lucky, Chela.”

If Ten were talking to her much these days, he might have said something like that. Chela tried to laugh, but it came out as a sob.

“You don't hate me?” she whispered. A little girl's voice.

“I'm no one to cast stones, Chela. None of us are.”

While Bernard held her, Chela felt lucky for the first time in years.

AS A CLOSE
protection specialist—what most people call a bodyguard—I knew how to dodge a tail. I wasn't sure paparazzi were following me, but it was worth taking precautions. I didn't want April dragged into the mess of my life.

I waited for her outside her back door, where her Dumpster met her rose bed. The backyard of the house she shared with a roommate was nearly nonexistent, pushed close to its rear neighbor's fence. It was a nice neighborhood but overcrowded, with too many yappy dogs. At least the roses made the garbage smell better.