As he walked upstream, a glance at his watch told him he had time for the gym. He could make it to Wall Street to hit his back and legs before his first client. His life in four words: medical school, personal trainer. He wondered about that other life, the one where he'd returned to his residency and become a dermatologist, where his folks still respected him.
No point regretting. He knew better: second chances were sucker bait.
A chill wind picked up. Snow tomorrow. New York's weather had gone bananas these past few years: hurricanes and flash floods.
If Olivia hadn't died, he wouldn't have been standing there in front of Walton in the cold. If Olivia hadn't died, he'd have been home washing up the breakfast dishes while she ran to her agent's office. If Olivia hadn't died, his daughter would have laughed and high-fived him before she'd left the house to ace biology and dance the lead, instead of a mouse.
"Jug?" A deep voice called out to him, one he knew better than his own.
Jerome froze.
"Is that you?"
Sure enough, there he stood, seventeen years later and more handsome than ever, Wendell Stuart Farley, Wince to his friends, and Jerome's closest ally for most of the years that mattered. Pinked by the cold air and wearing a faded tee under a brown leather jacket. Same wavy hair that always needed a cut, same crooked grin, and square chin. Rough around the edges and squinting at the madhouse, same as ever. His partner in crime, once upon a while ago.
Jerome made himself smile in reply. A knot in his gut and tension rippled through him like a rock tossed into a pond. Not today, Satan.
Wince uncrossed his arms and took a hesitant step toward him, ignoring the kids surging toward the doors. He wasn't the same lanky boy he'd been. His chest stretched the faded shirt and laugh lines framed his eyes. Gray in the dirty blond now. He'd gotten as muscular as Jerome. We're men now. "Man, you look fucking great."
Jerome nodded, numb. "Thanks. You, umm ... You do too." He could feel himself overreacting like a freak. Right in public, in front of all these parents and kids. Once burned.
"Fifteen goddamn years." Wince didn't act awkward or hesitant.
Jerome nodded again, robotic. Seventeen. A rushing in his head. Time travel sucked, except he hadn't gone anywhere. He was right where Wince had left him. Thank Christ, Keisha was already inside facing her pig.
"Long time." Jerome smiled, but he knew it didn't reach his eyes. They hadn't seen each other since that night in the emergency room.
For one second, he imagined the road not taken. That the past seventeen years had been a weird hallucination. That he'd never given up medicine or fought his folks or gotten married or had a daughter. At the thought of Keisha, he paused; she was worth everything. Plenty of stupidity in his past, but his family was the one good thing. Coming up on three years since Olivia's funeral and he still missed her laugh and sass.
Wince gripped his arm casually, an old gesture. "You look good, man."
"Thanks." Jerome had always been vain about his skin, but some guilty part of him knew that Wince had a thing about his darkness and so, even at fifteen, he'd done everything in his power to amp what the Good Lord gave him. To this day, he baked in the sun whenever he could steal the time. His wife had made him lotion up so he wouldn't get ashy; on lighter skin it wasn't noticeable, but black as he was, it was part of his daily ritual.
Wince rocked forward and back on the balls of his feet, as if he might jump into the sky. "Great to see you, man. Wow. Fuck. I just moved back into the city last summer. I had no idea you still lived here. I had no idea you had kids."
"Just one." Jerome sighed. Of all places, this had to be where Wince snuck back into his life and screwed him up again. "Kid, singular."
"Same. For my sins." He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. "Flip, c'mere. Come back." A nervous glance. "He hates being late." Wince must've gotten married, too. Only natural. It had been a long time.
"Dad, c'mon." Sure enough, a boy turned at the front door of the school and jogged right at them, slamming into Wince's leg. "I gotta go." A mini-Wince stood at his hip: jackass grin, dirty blond hair, even the same damn cowlick. All of nine years old. The boy looked up at Jerome warily, maybe at his size, maybe his blue-black skin, maybe sensing the panic Jerome was suppressing. "Hey."
"Flip, I want you to meet my friend." Wince ruffled the boy's shaggy gold hair. "This is Jerome."
"Hi." Flip gave a quick grin. "Hello." The homeroom bell rang somewhere inside, distant and mechanical. The last stragglers dashed past them for the door.
"You gotta go." Wince crouched in front of the boy. "What are we doing today?" He held up his hand.
High-five from his son. "Kicking ass, taking names." He even sounded like Wince at that age. The resemblance was truly freaky. Flip bolted inside while his dad waved behind him. Parenthood.
Wince had a kid, too. And a wife. And a life that went on beyond the emergency room at seventeen years old. Why not? They'd both grown up and lived their lives.
Of all the times he'd imagined this meeting, all the scenarios he'd cooked up and confrontations he'd scripted, this had to be the worst place and time possible.
Jerome wanted to flee. He already felt like an invader here; the last thing he needed was humiliation in front of his daughter's fancy school and all these nosy, white parents.
How on earth could Wince afford the tuition?
As it was, Olivia's insurance account had dwindled, and he'd started thinking about moving into a smaller place to keep Keisha going to school with her friends. She didn't mind being one of eleven black kids in a class of ninety. She didn't mind that they commuted two miles from Brooklyn or lived in comparative poverty when her friends spent spring break in Bermuda. She was proud and fearless, like her mother. He refused to go to his folks; he'd find a way.
"Here we are, huh? Respectable and everything. Twenty years later."
Jerome shrugged. Seventeen, but who was counting?
"Man." Wince smiled again. "I guess I coulda called. Later on, maybe."
Jerome scowled. No. "Calling would've been weird."
"Yeah. Yeah. It would. I still should've. Or written when it was safe. Your parents made it real clear." Another wary pause between them. "You look great, man. I swear you got blacker. And bigger, I think. You're so jacked." He thumped Jerome's shoulders and squeezed.
"I do. I'm a ..." Awkward. "I train people. At a gym. I'm a personal trainer."
"Oh." Doubly awkward. "I figured you'd be a doctor by now."
"I am. I was." Jerome studied the concrete. "Life got complicated."
Wince blinked at him. "Truth." He wasn't leaving.
He could almost hear Olivia urging him to Talk to the man, Jerome. "My parents had some problems when I was doing my residency, and I came home to help and I dunno ... I never ..."
Shrug, as if Wince wanted to put him at ease. "Well, you look amazing." He crossed his arms. "I need pointers. Hey, you wanna grab some coffee?"
Yes. Jerome shook his head, wondering what Mrs. Wince might be like, and then wishing he hadn't wondered. No reason to mention Olivia's passing. He wasn't hiding behind his wife's memory, was he? Ugh. "I'm gonna be late." He has a kid.
"Train?"
"The R."
"I'll walk you." Wince herded him toward the corner, not actually bumping into him but steering him with his presence the way he had since they were in high school. He even walked with the same loose, dorky shuffle. Time travel again. They could have been headed to the library or to the principal's office.
"Thanks." Uneasy, Jerome tried to get Wince back on track. He just needed to survive another five minutes, and they'd be done and over and nice to know you. "What about you?"
"Eesh." Wince grimaced at the winter clouds and hunched forward as he walked, like the memory was too heavy to carry. "Yeah. Well, after I got expelled ... so, juvie for a stretch. You knew that. After the wreck. Then a little prison for flavor. Got out, ditched my folks, and knocked around. A lotta
drugs, because ... reasons. I dunno. It was there. A couple of shitty tattoos I don't remember getting. Then by accident, I fell into music. Bands, y'know."
"You were in a band?"
"No! Well, I was, but mainly as scenery. Downtown Clowns. Pretty boy pop punk. I pretended to play guitar mostly. They wanted someone to freak the crowd and set fire to their pubes. You know me: professional troublemaker. That I'm good for. Right?"
Jerome chuckled. "And you applied."
"Bullshit. I was recruited." Wince smiled, big and bright, like they were still kids sneaking out to drink on the roof of his apartment building.
Back in school, how many times had he asked Jerome, What the hell am I good for?
Me. You're good for me.
Wince faced him again and sighed. "Oh man. Fun gig. All that tail. Money eventually. Record label kept me out of court."
They reached the corner and started snaking across a wide-open farmer's market sprawled across a church plaza. In three minutes, he'd be safe. "I can't believe you were in a band. White boy rhythm and all."
"Hand to God. And then we found a real guitarist, and I sort of tagged along for kicks until our manager quit and I took over."
Jerome choke-laughed. "Wait, what? You managed something? A band?" No way in hell.
"You could call it that. It just sorta happened." Wince pushed his hand into his thick hair and scratched his scalp. "Made sure we got paid. Set up the venues. Fought with the label once we got signed. Kept the other guys clean-ish. Off hard stuff anyway. They figured I was crazy so they, I dunno, listened."
They snaked past stalls piled with bread and onions and fresh honey until they reached Union Square. "Never in a million years ..."
"I know, right? But after my folks, what did I care? Nothing scared me. Nothing grossed me out. Turns out I'm a perfect stiff for pop bands. Now the label sends me out to break new talent. I'm respectable, Jug."
"Jesus."
"Tell me." Wink. "But it pays great. How the hell else am I paying for private school in Manhattan?"
Right. "That's amazing. You finally figured out what you were good for."
You're good for me.
Wince smiled again, and for ten seconds they were boys sitting on a window ledge, a hundred feet above the city, sorting out their escape plan.
Jerome could see Union Square up ahead and the entrance to the R train. Fright or flight, mofo. He wanted to run away, and he wanted to let Wince kidnap him.
"Here's you." Wince paused at the top of the subway stairs. His dirty gold hair gleaming in the cold sunlight, his joker's grin teasing at the question that neither of them had the stones to ask.
Do you remember the two of us?
Jerome held out a shaky hand to shake.
Wince took it, but then pulled him into a quick hug, pressing their chests together for two impossible seconds. One breath, two breaths. And he still smelled great and felt better. And for two seconds, they were seventeen and anything was possible.
Once burned.
Wince muttered against his chest. "So great to see you, Jug." And then he was gone, walking away before Jerome could respond or wipe his eyes.
Downstairs, he stepped onto his train headed downtown. "Stand clear of the closing doors."
HE DIDN'T SPEAK TO Wince again 'til the hospital a month later.
Jerome was helping teachers chaperone a field trip to Lincoln Center, mainly because his daughter had bullied Walton into visiting the theater. Ten a.m. on a Tuesday onstage at the Koch Theater. Trying to corral thirty kids, ages seven to fourteen, was no joke.
"No pushing."
"Jerome." A little boy voice about twenty feet away.
He looked up, and Wince's son was waving at him from a high wall gilded like marzipan. Flip was among the little ones. Wince hadn't tagged along, which should have been a relief but wasn't.
The older teachers were struggling. "Linda, get down please." A half hour in, the four other chaperons were already exhausted. "Linda? Don't push."
The stage manager led them through the orchestra pit and the dressing rooms, finally bringing them up onto the stage to show off the curtain and lights. He called instructions to the union guys up in the booth.
A few minutes later, Flip's voice again. "Jerome. Hey, J'rome!"
"Boys! Flip, no!"
Before he could turn to look, shocked shouts drowned out the boy. Then he heard screaming, and he made for the noisy knot of kids staring at the floor.
Flip lay at the base of the marzipan wall, stunned silent, his face gray, his arm at a wrong angle.
Jerome crouched. "Breathe, buddy. Take a breath. Flip?" He didn't move him, but he laid a hand on his ulna. Yep, broken. "Keep your eyes on me now. You're okay, buddy. Huh? Just stay there."
Flip hiccupped and coughed but stayed still. "Hurts." He was going into shock.
"I bet it does. You're okay, though. Promise." Jerome ignored the fidgety, terrified third graders crowded around him.
The stage manager (Jerry? Larry?) was already in motion.
"His arm's broken. He needs a doctor. I'm a friend of the family." Sorta. Jerome looked up.
"Dad?" Keisha appeared from the wings in her mouse costume.
"A boy fell." He turned to the chaperones. "Someone needs to run him to an emergency room. Someone needs to call his dad. Wendell Farley." He wasn't a practicing doctor, but he knew what to do. Back to Flip's dilated eyes. "Flip? All good, buddy. We're okay." He took charge without meaning to.
And somehow an hour later, Jerome found himself in the Mount Sinai West emergency room waiting for Wince. Keisha had ditched her first-act mouse head and steered them through the maze backstage, holding the costume's tail in one fist. Wince's office must've made a call to the hospital because no one said diddly about him carrying in some white kid with a busted arm. Flip stayed relatively calm, all things considered. The break looked clean, and the resident on duty had set his arm quickly. Watching doctors work always made Jerome feel lazy and lucky at the same time. He'd hated his ER rotation.
Keisha hovered by the door, needing a task to calm her down. Like her mom. He gave her a twenty and sent her to the cafeteria.
"J'rome." Flip sounded groggy and hoarse on the gurney. "Is my dad here?"
"Not yet, buddy." Jerome flashed a smile he didn't feel and glanced at his daughter's retreat. "You're okay."
Flip tried to smile. His cast looked comically huge: a hard white flipper in a sling.
"It's like a big hard Band-Aid." Saying the word made him grin.
Growing up, Jerome couldn't ever figure out why bandages were beige. Why did all medical stuff come in that same neutral putty color? He didn't put it together until he was older than Flip. He said as much one day studying for a trig midterm: they weren't flesh-colored to him.
Wince had laughed until milk came out of his nose, then put his tan arm over Jerome's dark black. "Band-Aids are mutt-colored." Their skin slid together, feeling a little too good to be safe. "Oughtta call 'em Bland-Aids, f'sure. Bland-ages."
"What's that about?" Jerome had taken his arm away before the nerves got to him, "Brown Band-Aids. Black Band-Aids. Man, we'd make a fortune."
"I'm so in. Fuck the blands." Wince had laughed and shoved into him, unselfconscious and affectionate as a stray dog until Jerome stepped back because his best friend didn't understand.
"Flip?" Without warning Wince pushed through the ER curtain like a hurricane. "Oh buddy. You scared the ... crap out of me." He turned. "Jug, thank you so much."
"I just stayed with him."
"That's not true and you know it." Wince looked about ready to faint. He hugged Flip, kissed his head, and then let go abruptly. "Is that--? Did I hurt you?"
"Nope. I'm cool." The boy glanced at Jerome, exhausted and brave, and shifted the cast. "Big hard Band-Aid."
Jerome nodded at them. "Brave."
Wince sat on the edge of the bed, eyes shining at his son. "Life saver. I mean it. You being there." He wiped his mo
uth shakily. "Thank you."
"Me? Wasn't a big deal."
"Bullshit." Wince frowned and glanced at his son. "Sorry, boss." He kissed Flip's head again and squeezed him.
Jerome held in a smile. "He's had a rocky day."
Flip sighed, quiet against his father's chest.
"Conked out." Wince peered at his son. "And I'm gonna freak the fuck out if I stick around here much longer. Whatsay we jam? Dinner maybe. I'm buying."
"Umm." We? "Keisha's in the cafeteria killing time. I uh ... and I gotta run her over to rehearsal in a bit. Lemme text her."
"Oh." Wince's face slipped, a ripple of disappointment vanishing under a practiced smile. "I didn't mean anything."
"No. Maybe after or something? I didn't know how long it would take you." Jeez. Everything they said to each other meant all this other crazy shit. "Sorry."
Wince shook his head and squeezed his kid, voice raw. "Sorry, nothing. No way I coulda got there fast enough. I owe you, Jug."
"No, man. You know that." Jerome knew he knew.
"I remember."
First week freshman year in the cafeteria, Jerome had been pouring himself fruit punch from a plastic jug when kids behind him shoved him, and he stumbled forward. "Hey!" Punch sloshed onto the floor and his new Nikes.
He straightened just as Thad Plasky said, "Nigger!" hissing the word at him like an ugly prayer. For real? The jug clamped in his wet fingers.
The kids in line froze around them, rubbernecking. But before Jerome could do or say anything, Wince Farley, class criminal, had shouldered through the ring of bodies holding his empty lunch tray. "Wha'd you say to him, Plasky?" Everyone had already heard he was a pitiless psycho with junkie parents; a week in, kids were warning each other about him.
Thad squared his shoulders without turning to look, "I said nig--"
Whap!
Wince swung that tray and knocked Thad clean off his feet, like ... his shoes actually came off the floor a second. Food everywhere and the room shouting. Pandemonium. Jerome froze holding the jug with dripping fingers. Thad collapsed into the counter and slid to the floor, nose crooked and the side of his face salmon pink.
Cafeteria mayhem and everyone pushed closer, hemming them in, egging them on. Whimpering through bloody snot bubbles, Thad scrabbled back from the class lunatic. Wince simply ignored him, turning to face Jerome. He hadn't even turned until that moment.