The Boy in the Black Suit (10 page)

On the way back to the neighborhood Mr. Ray and I didn't talk too much. He turned the radio on and hummed to old songs from the seventies, snapping his fingers, and sometimes even singing some of the words. His voice wasn't too bad. Raspy, but not bad.

“Want me to drop you off at school?” he said, turning the radio down a little.

I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to lie to him and tell him yeah, and then cut school, but I also didn't want to tell him the truth, that I didn't want to go. Especially since he always said I was different from how he was, growing up. I could tell Mr. Ray looked at me as a good kid, not a dude who skipped school. And that was true. I never cut school, but today I just needed a break.

“Um,” I grunted.

Mr. Ray tucked his lips into his mouth like a man with no teeth and tried to hold in his laughter. “I'm kidding, son,” he said, now flashing a cocky grin. “I know you ain't going to no damn school. You ain't even got your books with you.”

I looked at him, surprised and relieved.

“It's cool. You're smart enough to make it up,” he said confidently. “But you got your suit on, so I see you're ready for work.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, ain't no work to do today, son, so you all dressed up with
nowhere to go.” Mr. Ray slid open the ashtray under the radio. He wiggled his finger inside of it and pulled out a small key. “But I wanna show you something.”

He turned the radio back up and jerked his head back and forth, singing. Marvin Gaye, my mom's favorite, was playing. “Inner City Blues.”

I had never actually been inside Mr. Ray's house. I mean, I had been in his
funeral
home, but never his
home
home, even though he lived right across the street from me. When we got to the top of his stoop, which felt like it took forever because of his limp, he jammed a key into the wooden door. Then he jooked it around a little until it turned and clicked.

“This bad boy got a trick to it,” he explained. “I was gonna buy a new door when this lock started sticking, but then I thought, nope, I'll keep it how it is.” He pushed against the old wooden door until it popped open.

I didn't really know what to expect from Mr. Ray's house. I mean, I didn't really think much about it as a kid. I never wondered what it was like because he seemed like just a regular guy, sitting outside with his newspaper, coffee, and his cigarettes, watching the neighborhood live, prepared to do his job whenever a piece of it died. Other than that, he handed out cancer pamphlets and minded his own business. So I figured his house probably looked a lot like mine. Why wouldn't it?

But I was wrong. Mr. Ray's house wasn't normal at all. Not to
me. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't creepy or nothing like that. As a matter of fact, it was incredible. Something straight off
MTV
. Leather couches and big flat-screen
TV
s hanging from the walls next to art in fancy frames, which seemed weird because he didn't seem like the
TV
type, or the art type. Everything was leather and wood, and not that regular wood you see in most people's homes—that light wood. Nope, he had dark wood everywhere, wood the color of me. I could just tell it cost a lot. I had no idea funeral homes made so much money. I don't think I ever even thought about Mr. Ray getting paid. But he was living a sweet life and nobody in our neighborhood would ever be able to tell, judging from the outside of the place. I mean, he had to wiggle his key just to open the front door! And then it hit me why he didn't have that janky door replaced. If he kept the old raggedy one he had, no one would ever suspect how dope his house was on the inside. Smart move.

“You want something?” he said, slipping his arm out of his coat. “Some water? Coffee?”

I tried to not stare at all the awesome stuff he had everywhere.

“I'm good, thanks.”

“I'll put on a pot of coffee anyway,” he said, heading around the corner to what I guessed was the kitchen.

“Come on in here,” he called.

The kitchen was all marble and stainless steel. No dishes in the sink. No crumbs. Nothing like my kitchen. Chris's kitchen was like my kitchen. Every kitchen I had ever been in was pretty much like my kitchen. Except this one.

Mr. Ray poured us huge cups of coffee, mine light and sweet, his black. My coffee high from earlier had worn off, finally, and here I was about to bring it right back. I don't get why people drink this crap.

Mr. Ray stood at the counter and took a sip, a slurp. He seemed to be studying me, reading me. Then out of nowhere he just blurted, “You know, I meant what I said earlier.”

“I know.”

Mr. Ray nodded and took another sip of his coffee. It seemed like there was something else he wanted to tell me. I was hoping it wasn't another apology. Didn't need another one of those, especially since I didn't blame him for nothing. But I appreciated it. After a few more awkward sips and swallows he finally said, “Come with me.”

He led me through the kitchen, back into the living room, to a door on the far side of the room. He dug into his pocket and pulled out the small key he took from the ashtray in his car. He slipped it into the doorknob and jiggled it around just like he did the front door. He looked back at me, smiled, and shrugged.

The door opened. Darkness.

“No one has seen what I'm about to show you. Not even my brothers,” he said, running his hand along the wall, trying to find the light switch.

“What is it?” I asked, holding the mug up to my mouth and blowing on the hot coffee.

Mr. Ray slipped the key back into his pocket.

“How come kids today gotta know everything? Nothing can be a
mystery or an adventure anymore. Takes the excitement out of life.”

I slurped the coffee. It burned my tongue.

“I'm just asking,” I said.

Mr. Ray sighed and mumbled as if he wasn't talking to me, even though he was. “Guess it's better than being a sheep and just going wherever people tell you. Lord knows we don't need no more of them.” Then he spoke louder. “You know what a vault is?”

“Like the kind they got in banks?” My voice went from high-school Matt to middle-school Matt.

“Yeah.”

“You got a vault down there? Like, full of money?” Now it was at elementary-school Matt.

Mr. Ray almost spat coffee everywhere.

“Not exactly,” he said. “But my basement is like my vault.” He turned and started heading down the steps. “I can't really explain it, son. Just come on.”

The wooden stairs felt flimsy under my feet. There was no railing, and I wondered how Mr. Ray would be able to keep coming down here, to this secret lair, when he was older, especially since he was already limping. As we got closer to the bottom of the steps, the light, though still dim, got a little brighter, and I could see that the room, this dungeon—the vault—was overloaded with photos taped to the walls like posters in a teenage girl's bedroom. Photos of ball players, newspaper stories, old and dry, some even framed. Smaller pictures, some Polaroids of a woman, her skin dark and smooth, her teeth bright white. She smiled big in all of them, so natural, like she was actually happy to have her picture taken.

There was a table in the middle of the floor, under a lightbulb that hung from a wire. Mr. Ray pulled an extra chair up as I stared at all the oldness. I looked closely at one news article about a high-school ball player who scored eighty-five points in a game.

“You know what that is?” Mr. Ray said, sitting down on one of the fold-up chairs.

I leaned forward, read, then gaped. “Is this about you?” I turned to look at him, then turned back at the brownish gray paper stuck to the wall.

“Do it say my name?” Mr. Ray joked. “If so, then I guess it's about me.”

“This says you scored eighty-five points?” I'm not a big sports dude but I know enough to know eighty-five points is a lot of damn points. “I didn't know you played high-school ball.”

Mr. Ray nodded.

“And college,” he said, pointing to some other cut-outs on the wall. “Syracuse.”

I moved down the wall to see some of the college clippings.

RAY AT THE BUZZER FOR THE
WIN!

RAY OF LIGHT, WHY WILLIAM RAY RULES THE COURT

RAY ALL
THE WAY! SYRACUSE SOPHOMORE'S GOT WHAT IT TAKES

“This is amazing. I mean, you were amazing!” I said, boosted. He'd been
so good
!

Mr. Ray rubbed his head. “Yeah.” He smirked, then pointed. “Read that one over there.”

In the corner there was another clipping, this one from the
New York Times
. It was pinned to the wall by itself. Nothing around it. Front page of the sports section. It read in big black bold letters:

WILLIAM RAY, BROKEN KNEE; SHINING STAR'S SEASON OVER

“What they shoulda wrote was ‘Career Over,'” Mr. Ray said. “Y'know, I was slated to go top ten in the draft.” He leaned back in his chair. “But the knee never healed. They never do.”

I walked back over to the table and set my coffee down.

“Oh man, you must've been pissed! I mean, so close, and then something fluke happens and ruins everything. All that money.” I shook my head.

Mr. Ray laughed. “All that money. And yeah, son, I was pretty damn pissed. Martin Gandrey's big ass fell on me and ruined my ball career.” He took his hands down from his head and tapped on the table like he was playing the piano. “But I was okay, after a while, because I had her.”

He was looking over my shoulder at the wall. The other pictures. The ones of the pretty dark-skinned lady, cheesing for the camera.

“Who's that?”

“Ella,” Mr. Ray said, his eyes still focusing on her pictures. “Ella Dansfield. Man. I used to get lost in that smile.”

I turned to look at the pictures again. She did have an amazing smile. Seemed like all her teeth were showing, but not in a weird way.

“Yeah. Ella.” He sighed.

“Was that your girlfriend?”

“
Girlfriend?
Ha! Son, a man my age don't keep pictures of his
teenage
girlfriend
up on his walls. What that look like?”

I didn't really think about it that way, but I guess that would be strange.

“Ella was my wife. I met her in college, and we were engaged before I even graduated. Before I broke my knee. And after I broke it, I started learning the funeral business under my old man and was able to provide a good life for us. I missed basketball, but as long as I had her, I was fine.”

“I didn't even know you had a wife. Never seen her.”

“That's 'cause she's gone, and I ain't got the heart to wear the ring no more.”

“She left?” I frowned.

“No. See, we had this thing. Once a week we would have date night at one of the restaurants around here. Because I was always working so hard at the funeral home, she usually just met me at work, and then we'd go on to get something to eat. One day, December seventeenth, 1975, a bitter cold night after a day of rain, she left the house to come meet me. I guess there was black ice or something on the stoop. She slipped, hit her head, and was gone before anyone could even get to her. Twenty-nine years old.”

I checked his eyes. No water. But I was feeling crazy inside, like I was going to cry at any moment. I could tell he still felt the burn, but it didn't make him as emotional anymore. I wondered how long it took him to get to that point, and how long it was gonna take me.

“I'm so sorry.” I didn't know what else to say.

“Oh man, please. It's been over thirty years. I was a goddamn
mess then, which is when I started this room, this shrine of all the fucked-up things that happened to me. I used to sleep down here, on that couch, around all my sadness. But I always kept upstairs all clean and new because I didn't want nobody to know about this—to even suspect it—my pain room. My vault. Not even my brothers,” he explained. “But now . . .
you
know.”

I did my best to maintain composure and just take it all in. Here was this man, a man I always saw as the dude who beat cancer twice, the old guy across the street who ran the neighborhood. But I didn't know he used to be a ball player and a husband, and lost both his wife and career for absolutely no reason. A man who used to sleep in his basement surrounded by images of who he used to be, his life suddenly changed forever. I looked at him sitting there across from me, and suddenly imagined him crying his way through his twenties, and probably most of his thirties. I can't even believe he's still here, alive. And not nuts. And cancer too? Clearly, Mr. Ray was a man made of steel, and I had had no idea.

“But why are you showing
me
?” I wasn't sure if I should ask that, but I really wanted to know. Of all the people to show this, he chose me. What for?