"How're your poems going?" he asked.
"Asi asi."
"What?"
"So-so," she said. "Find a job yet?"
"Not yet."
"I imagine it'd be easy for you to do something in security. What about private investigator work?"
Was she being coy? "I'll look into it."
"I have a question for you," Caroline said. She wiped guacamole from the corner of her mouth. "What is it that you fear the most?"
"Like phobias?"
"No, about yourself. About your life. How you'll end up."
It was an awful question, one that immediately dropped him into a funk. And although he didn't realize he had been ruminating on it, he knew the answer right away. "Dead man walking," he said.
"What? As in being led down death row?" She laughed nervously. "Feeling homicidal these days?"
He shook his head. He told her about the look he'd seen in some perps, the MOD gangbangers in particular, the vacancy in their eyes, a complete lacuna, devoid of any hope or humanity. "I'm afraid I might become like that. Dead. Soulless."
"The fact that it worries you insures you won't."
"I don't know."
Caroline took a big bite of the quesadilla, chewed, swallowed. "I fear that all the sacrifices I've made for my poetry will have been for nothing, that really I have no talent, that someday I'll realize this but won't be able to admit it, because to do so would invalidate my life, so instead I'll become resentful of anyone who's had the slightest bit of success, lash out at them with stupid, spiteful acts of malice, rail against an unfair system and world and fate that's denied me my rightful place of honor and glory. I'll become a cold, bitter person. I'll never find peace, or love, or purpose. I'll die alone."
He nodded. "I'm glad you brought this up. I'm feeling really good now. Very cheerful."
Caroline giggled. "Let's go listen to some music."
The Cantab was in full swing now, and Toua and Caroline squeezed through the crowd to the bar. "Yo, Toua-Boua, long time no see," boomed Large Marge, one of the bartenders. "What's your pleasure?"
He got a rum and Coke for Caroline, a plain Coke for himself. Miraculously, they found a couple of chairs against the far wall, and they listened to the R&B band on the stage. The place hadn't changed a bit, the green walls, the faux-Tiffany lamps with the Michelob Light logos, the net of Christmas lights on the ceiling, the usual barflies and post-hippy gray-beards in the audience.
Sitting there, it did occur to Toua that Caroline had implicated herself, expressing exactly the vindictive mindset that Marcella Ahn had described. What did it matter, though? What did it matter? It was all so trivial.
When he went to the bar for another round, he ordered two rum and Cokes. It tasted like crap--Jameson, neat, with a chaser of Guinness had been his poison of choice--but since Caroline was drinking it, she wouldn't be able to smell the alcohol on his breath.
After several more rum and Cokes, Caroline hauled him onto the dance floor, and they swayed and bumped against each other, jostled by the sweating couples around them.
Caroline hooked her arms around his neck. "I like you," she shouted.
"I like you too," he said, and they kissed.
It was so good to feel something, he thought. To feel anything.
They woke up together the next morning on Caroline's futon. "Was this a mistake?" she asked.
"Probably."
"You weren't supposed to say that."
She made him breakfast--cereal, scrambled eggs, coffee, toast with peanut butter. "Do you ever think of leaving Cambridge?"
"To go where?" he asked.
"California. I went through a little town south of San Francisco once, Rosarita Bay. It's a sleepy little place, very quiet. It's not very pretty or anything, but for some reason it draws me. I love the idea of making a fresh start there, no one knowing who I am."
"Sounds nice." His head was pounding; he could have used a drink.
"Not tempted to join me someday?" she said hesitantly. He must have appeared alarmed, because she laughed and got a little defensive. "That was impulsive. Stupid. Never mind."
"Not stupid. Just sudden."
"Too sudden?"
He looked at Caroline. He did not know this woman. He was not in love with her, and she was not in love with him. But they might grow to love each other. It was possible. It seemed like the first opening of possibility in his life in a very long time, a fissure. "Maybe not."
She had to go to Chez Henri soon. She was pulling a double shift, covering for another waitress. "We'll talk more tomorrow?"
"We'll talk more tomorrow," he told her.
He was awoken before dawn. He had gone to bed early and fell dead asleep--the first good night's sleep he'd had in months, hangover-induced, no doubt. On the other end of the phone was Pritchett. "Want to come down here?"
"Here" was Marcella Ahn's house. When Toua drove up to it, a fire truck, an ambulance, two black-and-whites, and an unmarked police car were parked out front.
"What's going on?" he asked Pritchett, his former partner.
The inside of the house had been trashed, furniture overturned and broken, upholstery shredded, wine bottles smashed onto the floors and splattered on the rugs, paintings tattered, clothes scissored into strips, mirrors shattered. Can't Stop. Won't Stop was spray-painted on one wall, Cunt on the front door.
"Anything taken?" Toua asked.
"Strange, not much," Pritchett said, "just a laptop and some notebooks and fountain pens. We found them down the street in a dumpster. Notice anything else out of whack?"
"Yeah."
Marcella Ahn was in the ambulance, a blanket over her shoulders, shaking and crying. She had been out of town for a reading, returning to find her house in ruins. "Do you believe me now?" she said to Toua. "Do you believe me now? It's her. I'm sure of it."
"What's this all about?" Pritchett asked him.
He had been a fool. He had trusted her, had let himself get lulled into careless affection for her.
Based on Toua's statement and case reports, they arrested Caroline Yip, and, knowing that with no record she'd make bail, they issued a restraining order against her.
It had been a decent ruse, and it might have worked, everyone believing the MOD were on another search-and-rampage mission but had been spooked by something--a noise, a neighbor--into leaving before they could gut the house of its possessions, except for one small but critical error. Can't Stop. Won't Stop, besides being unusually well-punctuated with apostrophes and a period, had been sprayed with blue paint. The MOD were Bloods--red bandanna. Blue was the color of the Crips, their rivals.
In the end, the charges against Caroline were dropped. She had no alibi for the hours after the restaurant closed at 10:30, but there was little evidence to prosecute her, no prints, no eyewitnesses of a woman with long hair on a bicycle, nothing incriminating found in her house like a spray-paint can or soiled clothes.
Nonetheless, Caroline Yip chose to leave town. Toua saw her as she was packing up a U-Haul van to drive to California.
"She used you, you know."
"I think if anyone did, you used me," Toua said.
"You have a funny way of interpreting things. Don't you get it? She faked it. She set me up. Set you up. Hasn't that occurred to you? Marcella invented this insidious plot to frame me and run me out of town."
"Why would she do that?"
"Who knows. What makes one person want to destroy another? Huh? She has everything, yet it's not enough."
"There's no point in pretending anymore."
"She's a vulture. She has some sick bond to me. She needs to humiliate me. She needs my misery. She can't function without it."
"You need help."
She slammed the doors to the van shut. "I feel sorry for you," Caroline said. "You missed it. It could have been something real, and you missed it."
He watched her maneuver the van down the driveway and onto the street, then headed inside the studi
o to pack his own possessions. He had things to do. First on the list, he needed a bed for his new apartment.
Could Marcella Ahn have been that smart and calculating? He hadn't looked at the water bill very closely. She could have doctored it. She could have known all along that he'd been on the MOD task force. She could have wrecked her own home, orchestrating everything to this outcome.
He picked up his duffel bag. He didn't want to believe it. Believing it would mean that Caroline was right, he'd missed his chance to emerge from the deadness he felt. It was easier to believe, all things considered, that he'd been betrayed by her. She was a devious person, a liar, conniving and malicious, rent with envy, hopelessly bitter. It was comforting to think so. He could live with that kind of evil. It had a passion and direction he could understand, even a touch of poetry.
THE COLLAR
BY ITABARI NJERI
Roxbury
Hey. You better snap the fuck out if it," Nina told him, popping her fingers in a circle around his head. "She's not your friend. She's the en-na-mee," Nina half sang. Didn't think she had to emphasize the obvious to a thirty-two-year-old ex-Marine on his way to a doctorate from M.I.T. But the more she heard, the more she wondered about the terms of discharge and criteria for admission.
Isaac faced an assault charge that was aggravated, Nina discovered, by stupidity: violation of a restraining order.
"You don't know to cross the street if you see her?"
"She was boarding the same bus."
"What's your point?" That's all they had at Dudley Station, transfer point to anywhere in Boston--buses. "Take another one."
And his stab at "resolving things"--on the crowded #1 to Cambridge--happened after the arraignment.
At the arraignment, his best friend showed up with both sets of grandparents, a trio of uncles, and a chorus of cousins.
"I didn't know she had that many relatives in America," the ex-corporal droned, still shocked and awed.
Nina tilted her close-cropped curls and smiled, picturing it. "You think she flew some in from Johannesburg?"
"And she was wearing her collar." Isaac said it in a slow monotone matching the zombie gaze that was pissing Nina off. "I've known that girl three years and I ain't never seen her wear her collar."
The divinity school grad had a tongue-twisting South African name. Isaac called her Sindi for short. Nina Sojo liked Collar, and couldn't help smiling a little when she thought of her. Collar wanted blood.
They were sitting at Nina's dining table. A used Queen Anne repro someone had painted high-gloss white. The chairs too. Isaac drew his finger down the side of an ice-filled glass of lemonade. He examined the trail.
"Do you want me to help you find a lawyer or not?"
He winced, but kept looking at the glass.
Nina pulled back, slow and haughty. Frowning deepened the groove between her brows. It was the only line in her bare moon face. She never wore makeup offstage.
The Boston Yellow Pages was sitting there on the table. She'd been looking up lawyers. Now she stared through him, picked up the directory, and gave him her half-bare back. The crisp white top was sleeveless and gathered in a tie under her holstered breasts. The naked skin from there to her hips was the color of dark honey. The jeans gripped just below her waist. Everything looked tight. But unhike those tits, lay Nina flat, and the twins danced the slide. Shock at her body's betrayal lent Nina Isaac's zombie stare. She'd had to smack herself one morning while looking in the mirror. It is what it is, she finally told herself. The change had happened between cities and lovers. Vancouver and Boston. The economist and the chemical engineer. The engineer hadn't minded: Isaac made clear the pussy was good. "Hot and wet. Just the way I like it." But post-forty pussy stayed in the house. You didn't date it. You could take it to Starbucks, but not to see Monster's Ball. "You kidding?" Isaac had shook his head at the accusation. "Oh. Okay. I tell you what: let's flip the script and do the movie. Cause it's not like you really hittin' that other thang too good. Know what I'm sayin'?" She had counted on the lockdown to make him want it. When he did: "Uh-uh. You don't know how to treat me." That was February. It was June now. Pussy was still on strike.
She pushed the phone book onto a loaded shelf, then rummaged the refrigerator to make a doggie bag for Isaac's cousin Devon.
Two sets of tall bookcases standing back-to-back divided the kitchen area from the rest of the bright, loftlike unit. She'd moved in two days after 9/11. The space was a quality reno off Moreland in one of Roxbury's historic districts. Unpacked boxes draped with white sheets were still ghostly roommates after nine months. The stacked cartons formed an undulating cityscape and dividing line. On one side: her Yamaha Clavinova and shelved music collection. On the other: a computer workstation near the dining table that doubled as a desk, two halogen torch lamps, and Isaac on her futon. Staring at the ceiling lights and fake-wood trusses. Or just in that direction.
Isaac asked her something she pretended not to hear.
About now, she was feeling the Newark brother who'd put those bookshelves together. Always helpful, fun over a beer, and a professional cook who had dinner waiting when she came home. And the dick was good. Just too much insecurity attached. He never finished high school. Dropped out to raise two younger brothers who did. She thought all that admirable and said so. But Chef was always comparing himself to someone like Isaac. Dr. M.I.T., the chef called him.
What came after was always the best part of sex with Isaac. Wet clinches in a hot shower. Long, Marine-hard body. Infinitesimal dick. Isaac was a cuddler. The curves of their bodies met in wet suction and held. Tight. In her mouth, his tongue was well-schooled. Between her thighs, his fingers were too. When she was light-headed in the steam, Isaac Sayif's tenderness could feel like love.
His hand touched her shoulder.
"Did you say you knew a judge?" he repeated.
Nina had been away from Boston for decades. But she'd known a lot of law students when she was going to Berklee. Some built major practices in the city. Some occasionally stayed in touch. Unfortunately, none were criminal attorneys.
"Maybe he could recommend someone." Isaac put his other hand on her shoulder and leaned into her back.
"Maybe she could," Nina responded. "But what are you going to do for money?"
He said nothing and let go of her shoulders.
"Hand me that foil, please." Nina gestured toward the refrigerator top with a paring knife. She wrapped a couple of homemade shortcakes in foil, then put a quart of strawberries she'd bought at the farmer's market that morning in a plastic bag. Two loin lamb chops left from the night's dinner went in too. Isaac had told her he liked lamb and she'd bought six on sale months ago. She offered him the bag. "For Devon."
Isaac ignored it and searched her face.
Nina didn't want to see a brother, who'd risen by straps attached to the thinnest air, get screwed. Realizing he was dazed, due in court seventy-two hours from now, and relying on the system's counsel to keep his record clean and career on track, had put her in Rescue Mama mode. But she'd just heard two hours of stupid and took off the cape.
She put her good food back in the refrigerator.
The kitchen space was cramped. Standing-room only. Nina was a few inches shy of Isaac's five-ten. She crossed her arms and her elbow brushed his shirt front. "This woman's after your neck. Why?" Fill in the blanks, she told him. "How you better than Triple-A? You don't even own a car?"
"She knew I had Devon's ride."
"That's not his car."
"It's his car whenever he wants it," Isaac told her. Every syllable dripped smug, making Nina pause.
Sindi had called him around 3 in the morning back in March.
"She was stranded out in Newton," Isaac said.
"That time of night? How come?"
He said she'd been coming back from Wellesley.
"The college?"
He nodded. "The transmission gave out."
"And Marine to the rescue?"
/> "I get there and she picks a fight."
"About?"
"Bullshit."
"Yeah, that's what I say."
"I'm telling you. It was about nuth-in," he insisted. "She's all up in my face and I push her away. She starts swinging at me. I grab her wrists and push her back. The shit is crazy so I leave her there."
"That's it?"
"She tells the cops I assaulted her."
"You put your hands on her. That's all it takes."
He froze for a few seconds, then mumbled, "Am I that kind of man?"
Nina tried to read him. "This chick apparently sets you up and you're seriously pondering the nature of your soul?"
"She likes that," Isaac said, the drugged gaze fading.
"Likes what?"
"Being slapped around."
Nina let that hang a moment.
"She wanted me to smack her around in bed."
"Did you?"
"That is so against my spirit," he said, slowly.
Nina considered his words, his tone. Then: "What about the polygamy thing? Girlfriend down with that?" When they first met, Isaac had told Nina that he planned to move to South Africa to teach and live with multiple wives. Nina had laughed it off and said, "You must want some serious voodoo on your ass."
He shrugged now.
"That's not an answer."
"Kind of," he said.
"As long as she's Wife Number One and you beat the crap out her daily? Nig-grow, please." She started putting together another container of strawberries for later. She felt her sweet tooth calling.
Isaac moved toward the front door to put on his shoes.
Nina walked and talked. Fruit in one hand, paring knife in the other. "Is anything I know about you true?"
He bent to tie his shoelace. Nina hovered.
"What are you talking about?" He was holding up the wall with his shoulder and looked exhausted from the effort.