The Residue Years (25 page)

No so much politics but school, I say. Do you know the deadline, what I'd need?

He frowns and shakes his head, his frosty natural going back and forth. There's meat under his eyes and a bulge above his belt. Well, Shawn, he says. I'm afraid the deadline has come and gone.

Oh, I say, and fight the suck of the couch cushions onto my feet. Guess my next question is moot.

Not so fast, he says.

But I thought you said I missed it, I say.

You did, he says. He shuts the door, sits at his desk. He pushes his specs up the bridge of his nose, wheels his seat close. Now, this stays between us, he says, and puts a ring finger to his lip. The word is there's one spot left and pressure from the dean to fill it. He explains how to apply—the recc letters, the essay, a speech.

What I tell him is all I need is a shot, as if I've considered the whole process all before. But that's always been my gift: Say it first and believe it second. I tell him, no sweat, that the info goes no further than me. He tells me start quick, recites the drop-dead deadline. You should see me when I bop out all buoyant—a theme song playing in my head. The recc letters: cool. The speech: cool. But the essay—not so much. Though you all know me; by the time I stroll out of Smith Hall, I got the inkling of a half-ass plan.

The campus ain't but yay big. But that ain't stopped me from exploring, from getting my Jacques Cousteau on in buildings
where they seldom hold classes, where the rooms are so cold that even this time of year, sitting alone in them like I do some days, my blood runs cooler. No bullshit, every now and again, on days when my meter's full and there's time to burn, or days when you can bet there's a ticket waiting on my windshield, I search the campus for a quiet space. This is how I found the elevator where I used to steal off with this chick from my black studies class. What can I say about her? She was a superbad, smart, with fierce short hair and heart-attack hips and thighs, the kind of chick who makes me feel inferior. Add to that she had an ass that could turn staunch assologists into teary-eyed swains. Fortunate me and she were assigned to work on a project. We stopped by the campus bar the night we finished the project, tested our threshold for microbrews, and somehow ended up on Marine Drive watching planes take off. I'm not sure when, but sometime that night I said some slick shit (or maybe it wasn't so slick and she was hella-credulous) I've been dying to rehash: We got to make the most of this, I said. This moment right here is history right after right now.

Now, maybe that sounds corny to you, some world-class drag, but say that sitting on Marine Drive, say it with the right song playing and the rain making music on your hood, and beyond-your-limit of alcohol swooshing your brain, say it right then, and it just might sound like the suavest shit you ever said in your life. And I don't know how it is where you from, but I told you all a while ago what that equals around here.

Here's the extended remix of the story: She let me hit in the car that night and, after our next class, was game for a second go-round in the elevator I'd found in the emptiest, coldest building on campus. Even more unbelievable was this: For the rest of
the quarter, she'd let me coax her to that same building for another shot.

Why'd I tell you? Answer A is this: I don't fuck for the sake of fucking or fuck for sport like other fools; I fuck for stories, tales I can trade with my boys after. Shit, if they cared more about chess than chasing skirts, I'd set my sights on becoming a black Bobby Fischer, but since they don't, and since, how I see it, lying on your dick is a transgression worse than treason, what else can I do?

I stop by the phone booth and return a couple pages before I bounce, the last of which is to Todd, who says he wants to up his usual buy. The timing don't surprise me. For as long as we've been doing business, he's been a godsend. He never flakes on a meet time or dickers with short bank; what he does is once a week or so call to meet and pay with big bills arranged faceup and folded over. I swear, clients like him make this life feel infinite.

Hold up,
godsend?
What the fuck? One of you should've checked me for that.

Todd's a great, great customer, but, real speak, he's also a sucker-for-love type too. There was this one time when I stopped by his old crib to handle business and he answered the door in a wife-beater and boxers, with his braids undone, looking like he'd just got his ass whooped, when in truth he was damn near disemboweled over a broad. Most guys, in front a crowd, they'll claim they're tough boss-mack-player types, but away from the public, in those recesses where the lie of us won't live, they're Romeo-drink-the-poison-for-a-pretty-young-Juliet kind of punks, and choice client aside, count Todd in that group. That day I stopped by, he whined and whined about the broad and likely would have kept right on whining if I didn't cut him short: Listen, man, it's all
fun and games till they got you where you like them more than they like you, I said. You need a new plan. You can't keep treating these chicks like crystal statues.

I don't know, man, he says

Damn, thought you was a player, I said. I thought players know some of them is dying to be dogged. Don't you know a gang of broads is mystic flagellants.

Homeboy lit up a blunt and sucked. Like many a cliché dope boy, his whole crib was redolent of some of Oregon's finest, reason why a contact high was wagging its middle finger in my brain.

And I ain't talking physical either, I said. You'd be surprised how many chase heartache, need it to feel whole.

He took another pull and gazed at me, sclera the color of blood, a half-moon of white in the crease of his scorched bottom lip.

I'm tellin you some real shit, bro, I said. Put the cease-and-desist on the search-and-rescues.

You will never guess what homeboy's response was after all that free
G
. (
G
as in game, peoples, stick with me!) It was this: Champ, what the fuck's a flagellant?

Why did I mention the story? Right here, right now? Reason why is what happened at Todd's was on my mind last week when I went to this super-hood hole-in-the-wall in Southeast, a spot where the chicks looked hella-weary, and every other dude wore a just-paroled-long-pinkie-nail, a spot where I ended up rapping to this chick I knew from jump I had no intent on pursuing. Macked her digits out of no more than habit, stuffed them in my pocket, and took my black ass home. But my luck, if it's luck, you've got to love and hate it. Kim sleuthed the shred of paper out of my jeans (since a real player checks his pockets before stepping
foot in his crib, what am I?) while I was in the bathroom and wouldn't hear word one of my sorry-ass excuse. She cursed me into a salt pillar and cried and cried. You would've thought she'd cry till dawn, cry for a day, sob all the way till the new year. She's got a bulging heart, my girl, one that stumbles outside her like a sixth sense, feeling. But the cold part, the part I know deep deep at the source, is that she'll hurt for now and forgive. Can she hurt for now and forget? Tough guess, but against myself most times, I keep giving her chances to try.

Peoples, peoples, ladies especially, you few sentient gents. Tell the truth, you
got
to be tired of my vagina monologues. You've got to be tired of all this wannabe boss-mack-player talk of pussy and conquests and general female malice. Let me apologize in earnest to those who've had it up to here. For you, you, and you who've passed that point. Trust and believe, trust and motherfucking believe, I'm tired, so tired, of
living
this talk. It's hard, maybe impossible to believe, but I'm not a bad guy. Maybe chickenshit beyond recourse but not mendacious. All my skirt-chasing and tough talk is no better and mostly worse than a flimsy shield. From more than you all will ever know. From more than I may ever know. From more for sure than I could ever call up the courage to speak on.

But what I will say is this: Who's your first love? What happens when that first love warns you to save room for hurt and spends half your life applying the most harm? How do you protect what bleeds?

Forget that shit they preach on risk and reward. When it comes to a heart, my heart, being butt-naked and swollen in the world, it's the greater the risk, the deeper the scar.

But weep for me not, though. I don't want no parts of it.

That's not why I said what I said. I said all I said to ask this: Can you do me a huge, huge solid and translate? Cause the times I'm talking pussy and conquest and general female abuse, what I'm really talking is wounds.

Wounds and salves.

Wounds and bows.

Wounds and deeper wounds.

Then here I am.
—Grace

I watch the news till the news goes off. I lie down and sit up. Lay down and sit up. I edge to the edge of the bed and half watch a late-night show. I lie back, force my eyes shut, and pray for a dream. Nothing, so I get up and throw on my robe and slink into the kitchen and fix a hot tea. I leave the mug to cool and take out my pack—it's lasted all week—and light a cig on the stove. It flares orange and shivers in the slice between my fingers. The smoke pirouettes in my breast as I sit crossing and uncrossing my legs.

What about my boys? What about what I've missed of them? The one or two birthdays. The umpteen missed games—T-ball, football, basketball. The nights I blew school plays, recitals, parent-teacher conferences.

Thoughts like this can bring it on, and when you feel it building, you make a list of who to call. Of who will offer a haven. Of who will remind you how far you've come.

My God. I could call Champ, Pat if he's out, my sponsor, but there's a strength to be gained from fighting this urge alone. Get through this and I can escape them all. I smoke another cigarette too close to the brown, stub it out in a bowl, slink into the room, and lie across the bed wishing this time sleep finds me, but instead
end up splashing in and out of sleep with these nerves, with my neighbors keeping up noise above my head. I take out the state letter and read it once more, remind myself to keep faith, that this will all work out in the end. It will all work out for us in the end. I drag out of bed and dress and tramp to Big Charles's corner store. Big Charles is hunkered behind the counter and don't look happy to see me. Don't look surprised either. Let me guess, he says, and slants his mouth. So much for the last time being the last time. Look like you well on your way to puffin again like an old broke stove. He pulls my brand without me asking and tosses me a book of matches that he says are on the house. I pay and skitter out with my eyes cut to the floor. I stop and trash the packaging and light up and feel the first sweet pull knock the shake from my hands. I give the second pull time to do its work and flit down Williams for home. The block is wet and clear but for two bodies up ahead hard to make out. This late I should cross the street, I think, but I don't. Closer, I drop my head and blow a wreath and judge the distance between us by the sound of their voices, the footfalls of a heavy boot. When I'm a step past them, she calls my name and frights me into a dead stop. I turn slow and Dawn and I are face-to-face. Knew I'd see you, she says. Knew it soon as I seen Champ. She steps closer and presses a cold bony cheek against mine and asks why I'm out and what I've been up to.

Working, I say. Just working and going to church. There ain't much time for too much else.

I know that's right, she says. I seen Michael the other night and he said ya'll was out together not too long ago. She steps back and swings an arm over the man's shoulder. This is Jerry, she says. Jerry drives trucks, but he's off two days and wants to party.

She and I so many times out. The nights she coaxed me from bed while the boys were asleep with a promise, never kept, that I'd be home before they woke. The nights we crouched in a black corner and went rock for rock through every red cent of a state check. This woman was in the room when Champ was born, is the godmother of my baby boy.

What do you do with all of this?

We either are or we aren't
.

Where we go, there we are
.

I am new
.

I am strong
.

Faith without works is dead
.

No, thanks, I say. Not for me.

Oh, girl. Did I say? she says. It's all-expense paid.

Makes me no difference, I say.

Come on, girl, she says. Just like old times, you'll be back fore you know you was gone.

There's strength to be earned in facing it alone. But how often can we beat the risk? Here I am—once more. Here we are. It—a tightness in your stomach and taste lying on your tongue—comes on in a flood and you can't fight the tide.

Next thing, we flit almost single-file, Dawn at the head, Jerry bopping behind us—the brim of his trucker cap bent to a V, his long hair flopping underneath—and me fighting my steps, pills of sweat scrawling my side, something inside me a thunder in my ears. Our makeshift envoy stomping from block to block till we reach a street that's not a street but a tunnel under arched trees.
Dawn stops at a house with a spastic porch light and a hard fast dopehead standing inside a waist-high fence. He calls her name and tips up to the fence.

Dawn loops her arm through mine. These my friends, she says. We trying to see who got it.

Not a problem. Not a problem, he says. Long as you straighten me out on the back end.

Jerry shows the man what, in the wrong place, in a place like this, could get us robbed. He brags we came to party.

Well, say no more, the man says. He tours us a few doors down to a narrow house with every other window boarded and an old car raised on bricks in the yard. We wind a concrete path to a side door, where our guy tells us to let him do the talking and knocks a knock that must be a code. Dawn clasps my hand, but there's no comfort in it. The boy that answers wears a folded blue bandanna around his head, a dress-long T-shirt, and pants that could fit him and someone else.