Where the Line Bleeds (24 page)

He handed her a flashlight he'd picked up from the floor that Dunny
kept in his car for just this occasion and told her to hold it as he opened
the baggie. The light jiggled and danced in her hand, and for a moment
he forgot Dunny and Christophe in the front seat. It seemed that it was
only the two of them in the dark, together. He swept the thought away
from him with the seeds he brushed from the tray out of the window.
This was a sentiment he had only felt for his brother. Laila switched off
the flashlight.

By the time they pulled into the oyster shell driveway at Javon's
house, Joshua had lit the blunt and passed it to Dunny, who had passed
it back to him. Laila had taken two hitching hits and expelled the smoke
in jagged coughs. Christophe had refused it. The driveway was clogged
with cars, and light from what Joshua supposed was the TV threw bright,
electric shocks of colors through the filmy curtains along the living room's
front windows. The night was sticky and loud. The two houses Joshua
could see from Javon's yard were silent, their windows dark and closed
like lidded eyes. They sat in the car until Joshua and Dunny finished the
blunt. Joshua rubbed his hand along the top of Laila's hair as they exited the car and followed his cousin and his brother into the house, and they
all walked up the steeply sloped driveway lined with oyster shells. As he
picked his way around the cars, the shells crunched and shifted under
his feet and threw him off balance. Laila's hair had been fine and smooth
as running water. He grabbed her hand when they got to the carport,
and lifted her arm and ducked his head so that her hand rested on his
own fuzzy braids. Dunny knocked perfunctorily and entered the door.
Christophe followed him. Joshua and Laila paused on the steps.

"You going to braid me and Chris's hair tonight?" Joshua let her go
and straightened, and her palm trailed down the side of his face to his
shoulder. She pressed into his collarbone briefly.

"Yeah." She smoothed the sheaf of her ponytail behind her head. "If
Javon got some rubber bands and grease." Half of Laila's face was lit by
the room, the other side was shadowed and washed black by the night.
She was smiling tentatively: her lips were pursed as if she were waiting
for a kiss. He closed the door and kissed her lightly and quickly. Joshua
pushed her on the small of her back and made her enter the door before
him just so he could touch her. The room was bright, and it was filled
with people. Felicia was sitting on the sofa, leaning over the armrest and
laughing at the TV set on top of a bigger, broken wooden TV that looked
like it was manufactured during the seventies: a comedian in a leather suit
was limping across the stage.

Dunny had hit a possum once, and when they stopped in the middle
of the road and shined the headlights on it, it had looked like that as it
died. Felicia laughed harder; her smile was so different from Laila's-her
teeth were brighter, sharper, less kind. Big Henry and Remy sat on the
faux-velvet upholstered sofa with her. They had forties in paper bags in
their laps. They drank at the same time, and Joshua watched the beer
bubble and he was thirsty. He pushed the thirst away: he was already
fucked up. Joshua sat on the floor in an open space as Laila disappeared
to the back of the house where the bedrooms were. By the time he
recognized the comedian was Eddie Murphy and began to chuckle, Laila
was straddling his shoulders and taking down his braids with a comb in
her hand. The carpet was grimy; everyone still had their shoes on. Flaps
of plastic hung from the couch like forgotten clothes on a clothesline.
The edges were sharp. Joshua saw movement and heard voices, loud and belligerent, in the kitchen where Christophe and Dunny had gone, and
then he sank back into the sofa, into Laila's legs and her probing, steady
hands, and he let the high usher him away from his steady worry about
the both of them.

In the kitchen, Christophe leaned against the wall just inside the
doorway. Marquise and Skeetah were kneeling on the floor; Skeetah had
his hands to his mouth like he was blowing in a conch shell. He whipped
his hand back and opened his fist. Dice clattered along the cracked and
peeling tile floor and stopped just short of a pile of dirty green money at
Javon and Bone's feet. The boys had pushed the kitchen table and chairs
to a corner to clear the floor for craps. A bare light bulb burned in the
low ceiling. Marquise was giving a running commentary while he slapped
Skeetah on the back.

"Ah, shit, Skeetah. Craps, nigga. You can't roll dice for shit. You sorry.
You should just go ahead and hand your money to me because the way
you playing you just giving it away. Really though."

"Shut up, Marquise."

Christophe realized Franco was standing on the wall next to him,
looking as if he was already wearing his fourth of July outfit: he wore a
velour short set, the baby blue of it was as deep as the summer sky after
a hard rain. His mother worked as a nurse and his father worked at the
power plant, so he was always clean, had always been pretty and welldressed ever since they were kids. He always had the newest shoes, the best
baseball caps, the flyest fits. The line-up of Franco's hair that was so sharp
it looked as if it had been cut with a razor, and Christophe looked away
as Dunny crossed the room to shake Javon's hand. He remembered his
own days of being fresh, of being clean, of smelling good-he sniffed the
goat on his shirt and wanted to laugh at himself, but the urge died in the
glare of the yellow fluorescent lights over the sink. He had ignored Felicia
when he walked in the door; it was his way of imagining she couldn't see
him like this. Bone rolled the dice.

"Seven." Bone called out, and knelt to scoop the dice. He gathered
the pile of money from the floor and shoved it in his pocket. Skeetah
stood. A hole the size of a quarter stretched at the neck of his navy T-shirt,
and Christophe could see smudges of dirt smeared across his chest against
the dark cloth.

"What you picked up the money for?" Skeetah asked.

"I won," Bone said.

"You ain't even going to roll again and give me a chance to win my
money back?"

"Naw." Bone grinned and pulled on the black and mild cigar in his
mouth.

"That's fucked up, Bone." Marquise pointed at Bone. "You know
tomorrow the fourth and you know we just up in here playing for fun
and you going to take the man money, anyway?"

Skeetah held his white palms out toward Bone; Christophe marveled
at the fact that while the rest of Skeetah was so dark, his palms were pale
and chalky. Calluses from his pit bull's leash sprouted across his palms
like a constellation. "Man, c'mon, Bone. At least give me a chance to win
my money back."

Bone stepped towards Skeetah. He had a rag tied low over his head
so that it sheathed his scalp; Christophe knew he was trying to pack his
waves down for the next day. Bone narrowed his eyes: they reminded
Christophe of a snake's.

"Naw, nigga." Bone had a small grin on his face as he said this, but by
the set of his eyes and the way he advanced slowly toward Skeetah until
his tall bulk towered over him, Christophe knew he wasn't playing. "This
what you two little niggas don't understand. I won the game. I take the
money. Game over."

Dunny was shaking his head as he leaned on the counter next to
Javon. He shrugged and whispered into Javon's ear.

"That is sort of fucked up, Bone," Franco said.

"You shut up, Franco. Ain't nobody asked you."

Marquise half-sat against the wall and looked away back toward the
living room. Skeetah stared at Bone's chest with his eyes half-lidded as if
he were sleepy, his arms on his waist. He was dangerously still. Christophe
could tell Skeetah wanted to hit Bone, and suddenly, he hated Bone's
clean-cut goatee, his expensive cologne, the gold loop gleaming in his ear.
Christophe stepped in the middle of the two.

"Why you got to be such a asshole, Bone?" He heard rather than saw
Dunny move from the counter. "That's some bullshit and you know it. You got a whole pocket full of money and you can't let that nigga have a
chance to get his money back?" Christophe stabbed his finger up toward
Bone's eye and saw him flinch as he spit the words out. "You just being a
bitch, that's all. Can't never let no other nigga get ahead."

"You better get your finger out my face," Bone bit out, but Christophe
didn't care if he was the key that had turned in the lock to open the door
to a confrontation. Joshua's face flashed in his brain, and he wanted it,
suddenly.

"I ain't got to do shit. What you going to do if I don't?"

"I'm going to whip your ass."

Bone brought his hands up to shove Christophe and start the fight
when Christophe saw a freckled arm whip out like a striking animal and
push Bone backwards, and suddenly Javon was standing before him.
Christophe had forgotten he was in Javon's house, that he was jabbing his
finger into Javon's best friend's face, and that Javon had broken a white
boy's jaw. He could not understand why he was not afraid. He wondered
if Javon's face would turn another color if he hit him hard in the nose,
if the cartilage and the bone would break under his knuckles, and if the
blood would bloom red like a rose across his face.

"Chris. Chill out, nigga." Javon said, and Christophe saw that the
pores of his face were large and defined and blended in with the freckles.
"Ain't no need for all that." Christophe saw Javon's black eyes moving
back and forth, saw that he was trying to gauge the play of emotions that
confused even Christophe. Javon was looking at him. For some reason,
this made Christophe rock back on his heels. He felt solid, tall. He nodded
at Javon and stepped back and Dunny let him go. Javon turned to Bone.

"Pull the money out. Stop acting like you afraid to play," Javon said.

"I ain't afraid of shit."

Javon stepped so close to Bone his nose almost touched Bone's own.

"Well then play," Javon said.

Javon stood like a statue before Bone. Bone's nostrils flared. Javon let
his head list to the side, and then he stepped past Bone to lean against
the counter and pick up his pencil-thin cigar from where he had left it.
He inhaled and let the smoke trail from his mouth so he could re-inhale
it in through his nose; the yellow smoke ran out of him and into him, and it was the same color as his face. Bone threw the bills from his pocket
to the floor where they scraped along the battered tile like crumbling
brown leaves.

"I'm just going to win it back anyway," he grumbled. Bone dropped
the dice to the floor. "I'm going to ride to the store and get some more
blacks. Anybody want to ride?" No one answered him.

Christophe heard the door open and shut. He leaned around the
corner to check on his brother, to see why his twin hadn't rushed into the
kitchen when he heard them yelling, to find Joshua asleep on the floor
between Laila's legs. She was pulling and threading his hair into an intricate
weave of braids. The others were laughing at the television. A shelf in the
corner twinkled with dust-cloaked porcelain figures: Christophe saw that
they were small porcelain clowns invoking multiple poses of hilarity. A
few lay cracked or tumbled on their sides; they looked as if they had fallen
stricken in a field of ash. Laila looked up from her work to catch him
studying her and murmured, "He fell asleep." Long, snakelike bangs had
pulled free of her ponytail: the hair fell over her eyes. She was small and
light next to Felicia, and as her hair waved before her eyes, he wondered if
her hair would be as thick and slick as Felicia's in his hands. Laila looked
pointedly at Christophe and raised her eyebrows at him, "You next."

Christophe suppressed the urge he had to walk over to his brother,
to wake him, to pull him up and away from Laila and back two months
into their world. His brother trusted her; his eyes were half open in
sleep, and he lay against her as if he were wounded. Christophe returned
to the kitchen to find Javon standing before him with a blunt in his
hand, and Dunny shaking the dice so quickly his fist began to blur like a
hummingbird's wings. Dunny was watching him. The smoke wafted in an
amorous tendril up Christophe's nose: he was so tired of that smell, of the
harsh, biting burn of it. He hesitated in the act of shaking his head no, of
refusing the blunt, and sniffed again. There was something sweet about
the smell, something unfamiliar and dense; something that crystallized
like sugar in his nose. Javon smiled at him and dangled the blunt closer
to Christophe's face.

"California. Some of my cousins brought it down."

Christophe grabbed the blunt. Still smiling, Javon leaned on the
wall next to Christophe. Dunny swept the dice from the floor and yelled out "point," and then threw them back out. They rapped over the floor.
Christophe held the smoke in his lungs and heard the dice like a knocking
hand on a door: he inhaled again and a door opened inside him. He
passed the blunt to Javon. Shaking his hand, Dunny pistoned his arm
back and forth like he was trying to start an errant, rusted-over lawn
mower. Christophe laughed, and Javon passed him the blunt.

Laila startled Christophe: she gripped his arm, and told him that
she had been saying his name for a few moments but he must have not
heard her. He followed her to the sofa; Joshua's hair was done, and he had
scooted over to make room for Christophe and had fallen back asleep.
Laila pulled the elastic band out of Christophe's hair and his head lolled
back and he peered at her. She was as pretty as Felicia; her nose was
smaller, but her lips weren't as big. His eyes felt veiled by cotton. He
was floating. She giggled and said, "You high," and began braiding his
hair. Someone got off the sofa and passed in front of the television like
an eclipse of the moon. Christophe was not surprised when a red-dotted
hand descended in front of his face.