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“See, I never bought real jewelry before. I wanna come in with the cash, walk out with the thing in my hand. I never done that.”

“Sure, Red,” says the clerk. “I’ll be seeing you, then.”

I tap two fingers off my forehead, like tipping my hat. Then Shorty and I stroll right on out of there, heavy one fake gold locket.

In the street, down a ways from the jewelry store, Shorty slaps my hand. “You’re real cool, man,” he says. “First time out, how’d you get to be so cool?”

I roll my shoulders. “What makes you think it’s my first time out?” I’m thinking about all the shenanigans Philbert and I used to pull back in Lansing. How we’d celebrate, slapping hands and devouring apples, or whatever we’d scored.

“Whoo,”
Shorty hoots. “I’m gonna have some fun with you. I can see it a mile off.” He sweeps his hand across an imaginary horizon. It’s like he paints a picture in the air. Some kind of magic at his fingertips. I can see it.

I shake off the thoughts of Philbert.

“Look, I gotta go,” I tell Shorty. “Let me find Sophia and see if I can buy me some goodwill.” I pull the locket from my coat and dangle it over my middle fingers. The pendant settles on my wrist. It glints in the sunlight. It’s gonna look real nice on Sophia.

“You ain’t got to
buy
it,” Shorty quips. “It’s yours for the taking.”

I grin, pocketing the necklace again. “Let’s hope.”

“Good as gold,” Shorty says, slapping my hand again.

Walking home, Philbert floats into my mind once more. It’s weird, I guess, that the thing I used to share with him, and only him, I now share with Shorty, too.

Hands in my pockets, I clutch the locket in a tight fist, until the edges of the metal start to hurt my skin. I wonder if, right this minute, all those hundreds of miles away, Philbert’s fingers might be tingling. If he somehow knows. If what I just did might be a way of bringing us close again, like we used to be.

Lansing, 1938

As I slid closer to the barrel of apples outside the door of Doone’s Market, my stomach was growling, hot. I felt the acid in my throat, my body dying to digest something.

Not so much as a nickel in my pocket.

I leaned up against the side of the building, watching the people come in and out. It was busy. Not much time between customers. I waited for the right window.

I crossed my legs, stuck my hands in my pockets. I was all but whistling. Innocent.

Edged closer to the barrel now and then. Eyes on the highest, nearest apples. Red skin glinting in the sunlight.

I knew how they were gonna taste. All slick and sweet and crisp. Like an autumn sunset.

I wiped my hands on my pants, getting ready.

The white woman walking in from the parking lot now was Mrs. Stockton, one of our neighbors down the road. No one behind her.

“Hello, Malcolm,” she said, nodding.

“Good afternoon, ma’am.” I pulled it off nice and polite. Let my shoulder turn, tracking her walk to the door. It was propped open, trying to let in some breeze. Inside, the clerk was at the register, weighing cabbages for a small old woman with a coin purse clutched in her hand. He bent to jot the price on the receipt pad. Mrs. Stockton passed through the doorway, between us.

I swiftly scooped up three apples. Spun. Lobbed them as hard as I could.

Waiting at the corner of the building, Philbert snaked out his arms and caught them. One. Two. Three. He bobbled the third but kept hold of it. He slammed his arms together as it rolled toward the crook of his elbows.

My aim was getting better. I slipped my hands back in my pockets. Leaned. Tipped my head toward the open doorway. Mrs. Stockton was out of sight. The clerk raised his eyes from the receipt pad. Glanced out at me. I gazed back. Calm. Innocent.

The clerk turned away to open a brown paper sack for the cabbage woman. A split second was enough. The parking lot was still empty. I grabbed an apple in each fist and tore off running.

Philbert had a head start. We dashed around the building, into the woods, running until we were sure we wouldn’t be caught.

My teeth sank into the crisp flesh of an apple. It tasted like freedom, like heaven. I stripped it down to the seeds, then started on the next one. Philbert chewed loudly, walking beside me.

“Mmm.” He sighed around a mouthful.

Dinner the night before had been nothing but old bread soaked in small bowls of watered-down gravy. There was never enough food on hand to fill all eight of us.

“Split the last one?” Philbert held it out to me. We couldn’t bring an apple into the house. Mom would demand to know where we got it.

I grabbed it out of his hand. “No way. I did all the hard work to get it.” Philbert always wanted to go in, all brazen, and just take stuff. I knew how to bide my time. Never got caught — until the chickens, and that was just foolish to begin with.

I started gobbling the apple. I wanted to take my time, to actually enjoy it, but I knew what was coming.

“No fair,” Philbert screeched. “I was there.” He slugged me over and over on the arm holding the apple, trying to knock it loose.

I braced myself for a knock-down, drag-out fight. I let my teeth crunch deep into the apple, right down to the core, locking it there. Raised my fists. Philbert launched himself at me. I shoved him off. Hopped around like a fighter, fists up and ready for round two.

But it didn’t come.

“Malcolm,” Philbert said, suddenly still.

I pulled the apple from my mouth. “What is it?”

We’d reached the edge of our property. My brother stared past me, across the half-planted garden to the house. Following his gaze, I saw it, too. The long car parked in front of the house. I knew that car. The welfare man’s car.

I took one more huge bite, then handed the rest of the apple to Philbert. He scraped it to the core, quick and clean. No questions asked. It was fine to fight when it was us against us, but it was about to be us against them. And that changed everything.

Boston, 1941

It’s still us against them
, I think. The government people might have beaten our family, but there were lots more people out there against us. The type of people who would try to hurt Sophia and me for being together — assuming she still wants to be together.

I lie on my bed, stick my foot up in the air, and dangle the locket off one toe. I try to imagine how nice it’s going to look hanging around Sophia’s neck, try to push the way I got it out of my mind.

It’s never bothered me to take. But I’ve only ever taken things I need. Before, I always thought Papa might even be a little bit proud of me for doing what I had to do to help the family. Papa wouldn’t be proud of me today.

The locket dangles over my face. This is something I wanted, not something I needed. Something I could have rightly paid for. But why should I? When it’s us against them, anything goes. Maybe you could say I’m being denied so much as a Negro in America that I deserve some of it back. Gotta take a little. Can’t just let it all be taken from me. Why should I always be the one to go without?

Mrs. Swerlin used to lecture me about all the wrong things I had done. “Mistakes” she called them, as if I’d accidently stolen some chickens while I meant to be doing something else. She was always talking about how I could recover from what I’d done up until then, but that somewhere up ahead of me there was a line. A line there’d be no coming back from once it was crossed.

I liked how she didn’t just talk about some things being right and some being wrong. She could see all the shady lines, the way I could. Like how stealing could actually help someone, could maybe be worth the risk. She knew there was a line between a little bit of trouble and real danger, and many, many lines between getting caught and getting off scot-free. It surprised me that she saw all that shady stuff. She was more than a schoolmarm with a ruler, trying to nudge me to the straight and narrow, which could never work. I’m bigger than that.

“You have to be careful,” she’d say. “You don’t want to cross a line you can’t come back from.” But it’s hard to know which line is the one that counts. Or maybe there’s only one line, but it isn’t a sure thing, solid in its place. Maybe crossing isn’t what I do.

I’m pushing the line. Moving it. There’s always another side. The line moves. It moves and it moves.

Boston, 1941

I ring up Sophia. Hold the necklace in my hand, like a good-luck charm.
Answer
, I plead silently.
Be there for me.

“Hello?”

“Hi, baby. It’s me.”

“Red,” she says, low and sultry. “Take me dancing?”

My heart exults. I try to play it cool. “Sure, baby.”

“Tonight?”

“That’s perfect. We’ll go to the Roseland.” It’s Negro dance night. Coming back around to where it all began. Maybe it will remind her of how we connected, right from the start.

“Wear the sharkskin,” she says. “That’s my favorite.”

“Always.” She coulda said,
Walk across coals.
My feet would be burning. “I got a present for you.”

“For me?” she says, real coy.

“None other.”

A light, breathy laugh. “I’ll see you soon, Red.”

I pace a rut in the living room, near the front window, watching for Sophia’s headlights. I’m thinking about waiting on the porch, despite the chill, but I don’t want to seem too eager. That was Shorty’s advice. Play it cool.

Ella comes down the stairs, bundled in her housecoat and slippers. She shakes her head at the sight of the zoot, as usual. But she’s learned not to comment. I already know what she thinks, and I’m still wearing it. Classic impasse.

“You’re going out?” she says. Seems like a dumb thing to say. I’m always going out.

“Yeah. Someone’s picking me up.”

“This the same ‘someone’ who picked you up last week?”

“Yeah.”

Ella’s nose wrinkles. Maybe she caught a whiff of her own disapproval. It’s ripe and wafting all over the room.

“In a flashy car, as I recall.”

“Yeah,” I say. “She lives on the Hill. You ought to be happy about that.”

Ella’s eyebrows perk up. From the kitchen, the teakettle sings. Must be what she was coming down to attend to in the first place. “Oh, does she?” Ella says. “See, I knew you’d meet nice girls at Townsend’s.”

If only she knew.

I smile. Let her draw her own conclusions that fit the picture frame she wants me to fill. There are times when it is best to say plenty and times to leave well enough alone.

“Your tea’s ready,” I remind her.

She moves into the kitchen as Sophia pulls up in front. Close call. I duck out of the house and rush down the walk to meet her.

It’s much too cold to have the convertible top down, but it’s down anyway. I don’t even open the car door. I rest my hand on the rim and leap over, bending, then quickly straightening my legs into the space beneath the glove box. Not too bad. Fairly dashing, I might even say.

Sophia has her hair wrapped in a kerchief to protect her style from the wind. I sweep her into my arms, going for dramatic, romantic, larger-than-life.

“Has it been just a week?” I tell her. “It feels like a lifetime.”

We kiss.

“I’m glad to see you, too,” she says. Then she drives us off down the street.

Dawn is lightening the sky by the time she drops me home again, a whirlwind of Lindy and reefer and whiskey at our backs.

She slides the gearshift into park and faces me. “You said you had something for me?” She pauses. “Or did you already give it to me?” She squeezes my thigh with a sexy smile that makes me want to give it to her again, right now.

“Yes, I do.” I’ve been saving the necklace for the end of the night. I want to leave her with a memory of me to carry with her, so she won’t forget. So she’ll take more of my calls. I want to see her every day. Be seen with her every day, too. I haven’t found another high that gives me the kind of rush Sophia does.

I withdraw the gift from my jacket pocket and present it to her. I hadn’t wanted to give it to her plain, so I swiped a nice hinged case from the bureau in Ella’s bedroom. I took out the necklace that was in it and just left it in the drawer with the others. I figured she wouldn’t miss the box, or at least if she did, it wouldn’t occur to her to blame me.

Sophia takes the case in her hand. Offers me a surprised glance. “From E. B. Horn?” She sounds impressed. “Well, well.” The logo on the case must be from a fancy sort of place. An unexpected benefit.

“Do you like it?”

She opens the case. Strokes the gold locket with a single manicured finger. Nods. “It’s lovely. Thank you.” She kisses my cheek.

As she pulls away, I whisper, “See you tomorrow?” The question mark just kind of creeps in there. I meant to say it straight up, real confident. Not to give her a choice.

Sophia hesitates. “No, not tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

“I have plans tomorrow.” She looks away, out the windshield. “You’re not the only fellow I see. You know that.”

I didn’t know, but it doesn’t overly surprise me. I look away, too, out the window on my side.

Up in the house, a curtain ruffles. Ella, checking up on me, no doubt. Fortunately, the top is up now, so I doubt she can see us very well.