CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tristan and Iz had avoided corners where
action jumped off. Quietly, Tristan always feared for Iz. It wasn't
too long ago she was out on the streets on her own and the urge to
hustle not long buried. Tristan remembered the days at correction
after Iz had become a kleptomaniac. Tristan learned to make food
last. Once outside again, Iz seemed happy to not have a toilet in
her bedroom and to be away from her warden's manner of discipline
and control, and upright rigidity. The one thing she longed more
than anything else after being released was a bath. The simple
pleasures of soaking in a tub. The desire, the hunger, the
insatiable need fed temporarily by drugs bubbled beneath the
surface. The last couple of days, Iz had been different. Secretive.
Closed off. Evasive even about the little things. Even if she
didn't give them voice, Tristan knew the signs. It reminded her of
the last time she had to confront Iz's need. Tristan stopped at the
corner store to get smokes, gone for only an hour, only to come
home to Iz.
No lament was sung alone. For
every fiend there was a brother or sister, mother or father, friend
or colleague who sang along with them. From money stolen from
purses to stuff missing around the house to lies upon denials upon
disappointments heaped up as a raucous chorus.
Tristan knew the bottom was
about to fall out. She ran the gauntlet of fiends milling about the
place. How they avoided her eyes. How they shuffled off without a
word, cockroaches scattering in her presence only to regroup once
she was gone. They knew.
When Tristan pulled back the
loosely placed piece of plywood and stepped into the alcove, it was
as if the spirit of their place had been violated. Part of her knew
Iz had been using again. The fiend was not the only one to sound
the notes of denial in the junkie's lament. A little weed she could
excuse. Maybe a one-time slipup, because they were only human and
that heroin was the devil.
She noticed the smell first. Her
blades found their way into her hands without a thought. Tristan
booted open the door. Half-dressed, Iz passed the pipe to her john.
The room lit to the shade of burnt honey, Tristan made sure the
light glinted from her blades that he could clearly see the feral
warning in her eyes. The john dropped his pipe and ran past her
without so much as a backwards glance at Iz. Her arms embraced her
raised knees as Iz cowered in the corner of the room. A long
T-shirt barely covered her, leaving her bare buttocks visible from
underneath it. Her skin a frieze of sweat trails and dirt. Sucking
on a Coke can used for a pipe. Feeling more empty than
high.
"Why?" Tristan's voice cracked
with a hollow ache.
"Don't know. Guess I'll never be
whole."
Tristan huddled on the floor
with Iz and kissed her hands. "It will be all right," she promised.
"I'll make sure it will be all right."
Colvin had nothing to prove.
Unarmed, unescorted, and without
a security entourage, he wasn't one of the neighborhood boys out in
the streets getting into fights in order to find out things about
himself or test himself or others to see what they were made of. He
wasn't out to learn what he could carry with him for the rest of
his life. And he wasn't out to gain the respect of the street,
wanting neither its fear nor love. Colvin was of the fey and such
things were beneath him.
Colvin wanted power.
He stood in front of the Phoenix
Apartments. Lookouts between each of the buildings and hidden in
stairwells had already alerted one another to his presence. He
waited until he knew all eyes were on him. They would whisper that
he lost his Goddamned mind. That this high yella, half a cracka, Mr
Spocklooking fool was going to come up into Rellik's home base all
on his own. He half-expected someone to take a shot at him from the
shadows simply to put him out of his misery.
Maybe he was crazy. His plan was simple: he was going to
walk into Rellik's chief stash house and abscond with any product
and cash. It would hurt if not cripple Rellik, the shame alone
might cause the dons to remove him, increase Colvin's own bottom
line, and send all the message he needed to King. If in his pursuit
of power, he earned respect, fear, and love – with his name
whispered among the people – he could live with that.
Colvin closed his fists and
opened them. The street lamps buzzed as if on the verge of shorting
out. At their best, the lights didn't fully illuminate the court
and parking lot but rather created ominous pockets of shadows.
Colvin marched toward the main entrance. The red glow of a
cigarette tip flared and then sailed through the air. Its owner
went out to meet Colvin, grinding out the cigarette in a burst of
sparks as he walked over it.
The Boars didn't tower over
Colvin, but he clearly had a few inches on him and nearly a hundred
pounds.
"You lost?" The Boars knew all
eyes and ears were on him. The thing about being his size was that
he rarely felt the obligatory need to constantly flex. His physical
presence alone squashed most drama.
"I heard you had a surplus of
money and product and needed help moving it."
"You heard that, did
you?"
"Probably conjecture on my part.
Either way, it seemed like a situation I could ill afford to pass
up."
"You need to rise up outta
here."
"I appreciate the courtesy of
the warnings. So much so, I'll give you a moment for you and your
crew to vacate. Or, if it's easier," Colvin shouted up to those
listening from the windows, "you could just drop the money and
product out the window."
"Get this fool out of my sight."
Bodies approached from the
stairwell, some reaching into their waistbands, others toting
bats.
Colvin began a low chant in a
tongue unfamiliar to The Boars. As far as The Boars was concerned,
it was some Satanic shit he wanted no part of, so he stepped to
Colvin. Without breaking the rhythm of his incantations, Colvin
ducked under The Boars' wide punch and kneed him by his kidneys. He
jabbed his elbow into the back of The Boars' neck, sending him
lights out before he hit the ground. Before the approaching boys
could draw their weapons, he arced his arms down, green light
trailing the downward strokes.
Though Colvin wasn't an
accomplished summoner like Mulysa, he did know how to open and
close doors. Other than his glamour, it was his specialty. The blue
trails split the air, giving the men pause. The unzippered fabric
of space parted, revealing a deeper darkness than the midnight
shadows they were in. Twin red dots flicked on a couple dozen
floating in the air. The men trained their weapons on the penumbra
apertures and opened fire.
A hiss echoed from the opening
and a small figure leapt out onto the nearest gunman. Its spiked
boots landed square on his face, the momentum of its jump toppled
them both, while it remained perched on top of him. Their fall
drove his metal spikes deepest into his face. The bone of his jaw
snapped with a loud crack. His eye socket fractured. The spikes
pulled his eye free, attached to one of the nails, the connecting
muscle drawn out like a forkful of spaghetti. The boys' screams
erupted. Still looming over the body like a predatory gargoyle, the
creature turned its attention to the next gunman.
Suddenly the entire court lit up
with gunfire and screams.
More creatures poured from the
openings. Short hairy bodies, stalking keloids of fibrous muscle
with grizzled beards. With the wizened faces of old men
contemplating a meal of oatmeal. The gleam of their red eyes. A
taloned hand raked though the meat of an arm, stripping ribbons of
flesh. Filed teeth coming together like a living bear trap snapped
on a man's neck. Blood throbbed from the wound in time to the
pulse. The creature paused over him. Removing its pink cap, it
daubed the spurting wound until it turned a foul crimson.
A half-dozen more tumbled out of
the hole, taking positions behind bushes. They whirred their
slings, releasing a volley of shots. Men tumbled from the shadows.
Rellik's men kept firing.
Colvin stood among the ensuing
chaos. The screams, the rent flesh, and gunfire combined into a
symphony of violence. A shot grazed him. It would take him hours to
notice. The battle, however, was over in minutes.
"Don't make me come up there,"
Colvin cried up to the windows.
A bag tumbled from the
window.
"And the product?"
Another bag followed.
Colvin carried one in each hand
and walked down the sidewalk without a backwards glance. The Red
Caps jumped back into their home between spaces before the wound in
the air sealed itself.
Esther Baron loved volunteering for night
drop at Outreach Inc. She always had the feeling that she wasn't
doing enough. Standing behind the dining room table, she'd join
hands like everyone else to pray for the food and evening. She
doled out the food to the kids, not to keep them from being hogs –
because there was plenty of food to go around – but to let the kids
be served. It was a subtle message, to let them know they were
home, could relax, and allow someone to do for them. Accompanying
salad and broccoli – she encouraged them to eat their vegetables
and oddly enough, despite them being teens, they usually requested
seconds on the veggie of the day – was a spaghetti casserole
repast.
Rok squirted some hand sanitizer
on his hands then passed her an empty plate. This was when she
appreciated Wayne the most. He warned her that folks typically came
in with the idea of making a huge impact and turning kids' lives
around… on one meeting. It didn't work that way. The only "doing"
was the ability to open oneself up and love another. For one
evening, she arrived with the spirit to serve, to be a blank
tableau for the kids without judgment, to show them grace. Provide
a space of stability that could help them take the next step toward
their goals.
"How you doing, Rok?" she
asked.
"Doing good, Miss Esther. You
looking good with your fine-ass self."
"Rok," Esther chided, but in a
mild tone, enough to let him know she wasn't playing. "You think
that's an appropriate way to talk to a woman? I know I'd appreciate
a compliment without the disrespect."
"You look good tonight, Miss
Esther," he said without his usual bluster, awkward and sheepish.
The way he glanced about to make sure no one noticed was almost
cute. Wayne didn't hold the kids to some preconceived model of how
they should be or act. He did believe in boundaries and letting
them know what was appropriate between men and women.
Already at the table in the
common room, Wayne chatted amiably with the kids as they came in.
He asked about their day, teased them about their fashion choices,
listened to them, and helped them through some of the decisions
they made. The way he explained it, the time was about connecting.
With them, finding out about one another and letting the impact of
being in their lives speak to them. Success, even progress, had to
be measured differently. But there was a look that would light up
their eyes. Sometimes faint, sometimes bright, moments when they
realized someone cared about them; cared without expectation or
demand. He wanted everything for the kids, imagined them, saw
potential in them in ways they couldn't for themselves. The job
required a kind of fearlessness. A willingness to go deep with
people, people who would likely disappoint. People who would likely
make bad decisions. People who often couldn't get out of their own
way. Not only was Wayne passionate for them, his passion was
contagious.
"How're things going out there,
Rok?" Wayne asked.
"Steady."
"No recession worries?" Wayne
joked with him, conscious of not sounding approving of him, but not
wanting to be yet another lecturing voice in his life to be tuned
out.
"What?"
Wayne also didn't want to make
Rok feel stupid or condescended to. He got enough of that at home.
And school, when he bothered to attend. "You thinking about what we
talked about before?"
"That GED thing? Man, you
trippin' with that noise."
"I'm trippin', huh. Pass me a
roll."
"They got more rolls up there,"
Rok said.
"Yeah, but then I'd have to get
up. And you got three on your plate."
"You stupid." Rok handed him a
roll.
"Why I gotta be all that?" Wayne
bit into the roll. Not especially hungry, he simply liked to eat
with the kids. Eat what they ate, not wanting any sense of "we're
just here to feed the poor darkies." And he kept the conversation
light, harassed them like family would at the dinner table, but
still pushed in on their lives. "You got a head on you. You good
with numbers. A little training, you could set up your own
business."
"You think?"
There it was. That light. Rok
entertained a new possibility for himself. That was all Wayne could
ask for. But he'd stay on him, fanning that tiny spark until it
grew into something. Wayne clung to the little hopes of
progress.
The doorbell rang. The door was
kept locked during drop, no one coming in without a staff member
letting them in. Tonight was a closed drop which meant regular
clients only. Frantic fists pounded on the door frame. Wayne bolted
to the door, preferring to open it because he never knew what might
jump off on the other side, and he wanted to be the first line of
defense for the volunteers. Especially Esther.
Tristan held Iz up.
"Help us," Tristan
said.
"What happened?" Wayne asked.
Esther ran over to help catch Iz and ushered her to the couch.
Esther soaked a wash cloth and gave it to Tristan, who daubed her
forehead. She balanced on the edge of the couch, giving Iz as much
room as possible.
Wayne preached boundaries but
didn't always practice them. Unless he was on call, he discouraged
clients from calling him off hours (except for emergencies) and
rarely answered his cellphone (preferring to check his voicemail).
He maintained regular office hours and when drop night was done, he
led the charge to hustle everyone out. But he didn't follow his own
guidelines with strict rigidity. In the language of the best
trained seminarians, "Shit happened."
Iz sprawled out on the couch,
under the tender ministrations of Tristan. Wayne thought about
calling 911 and still debated it, but Iz seemed to be just coming
down from a high. Iz and Tristan took turns crying. Somehow the act
seemed more tender, more anguished, coming from Tristan, the way
anything tender broke from those who were used to being
strong.
Rok lingered around after drop,
under the guise of wanting to talk with Wayne later. He recognized
Tristan from the summit meeting. Thought she was fine then, but
seeing her with Iz, he knew she was not playing the same game he
was.
"What it look like? She got
fucked up."
"What do you want us to do?"
Wayne asked.
Tristan wanted to say "make it
better" or "fix her" but the words sounded too needy. Too
unachievable. "Look after her. She's been clean for over a
year."
"And she got back on
tonight?"
"Someone did this to her,"
Tristan said.
"We all make choices we have to
live with," Wayne began, sympathetic but with honesty.
"I wasn't speaking
metaphorically, nigga. Someone sabotaged her recovery."
"A… friend of yours?" Esther
asked.
"Mulysa doesn't know what a
friend is."
Rok perked up at Mulysa's name.
And noted the hate with which Tristan spat his name.
"Mulysa?" Wayne remembered him
from King's summit meeting. As he recalled, he and Tristan didn't
seem cozy, more like work colleagues who tried to remain civil to
one another. "He did this?"
"Yeah, but I'm gonna straighten
his shit out."
"What does that…?"
Tristan hefted her backpack.
"I'm trusting her with you. Do right by her."
"You can't…"
With that, Tristan slipped out
the front door with two fingers raised. "Deuces."
Wayne punched a number into his
cellphone. His call went directly to voicemail. He cussed to
himself before deciding to send Rok to find him and/or Rellik. He
left a message anyway on the off-chance he would check
it.
"King, we have a
problem…"