After Death(16)

OUT OF THE STORM




Such a deluge could ensure that this isn’t a drought year in California. The storm is a good thing, received with gratitude, but Nina Dozier always worries her way through the lightest drizzle, frequently checking the ceiling, room by room, for the first sign of wet plasterboard. The roof is old, and when it begins to fail, a few patches won’t fix it. Even on a little house like hers, a new roof can be expensive. On this occasion, however, she isn’t fretting about leaks and water damage. Being in possession of four hundred thousand dollars with which to start a new life, she can regard the storm the same way people in Beverly Hills see it—as just a change in the weather.

Because she and John visited Disneyland for three days to celebrate his tenth birthday, he has had a suitcase for three years. Not all of his things are going to fit in the one bag, so she has assembled two of the banker boxes that she uses to store business records. After she gets him started packing, she steps out of his bedroom and follows the short hallway into the living room, on her way to the kitchen.

From an armchair, his Common Projects sneakers propped on the footstool, Aleem Sutter says, “Girl, you’re still seriously fresh.”

She halts, rocking slightly on her heels, as if she’s walked into a glass door.

He says, “Time don’t work on you. How is it you look cherry as you ever did?”

Nina says nothing. She’s thinking about the pistol clipped to the bed frame in her room.

“Wasn’t you I come here about, but now I seen you up close, damn if I don’t got that old feelin’.”

“Go away.”

“Nowhere better to go.” He swings his feet off the ottoman but remains in the armchair, relaxed and insolent. “Back when, wasn’t nothin’ you liked better than a ride on the Aleem machine. My taste runs to high-school skirt, but you want to ride again, it don’t cost you even a quarter.”

“You’re a disgusting pig.”

His soft laugh is warm, but his eyes belie the pretense of amusement. “You always had some fire in you.”

“This is my house.”

“A shitty little place to raise a kid.”

“I told you to get out.”

“You said ‘go away.’ Ask a lawyer, he’ll explain ‘imprecise is just advice. To get a conviction, use the right diction.’ I learned me a lot of law since back when you was makin’ my baby.”

“Get the fuck out, Aleem.”

He rises from the chair and stretches extravagantly, arms extended as if he’s nailed to a cross, rolling his head to loosen his neck muscles. After a yawn, he says, “What you just done there is you undermined your status as a victim. Every word you say, you got to think to yourself how sayin’ it might be like pissin’ on your precious status as a victim. A pretty girl talks dirty, a man might think she comin’ on to him, so what he does don’t count as crime.”

“I’m calling the police.”

His voice is laced with mockery. “Why would you do that ’stead of you just break up with me? We got somethin’ beautiful, how you know my needs and I know yours, how we satisfy each other, our old flame burnin’ bright again. But, hey, if you go hormonal on me, you say hit the road, I got so much respect for you, baby, I’ll leave, no argument. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”

The house is warm, but Nina is cold in flesh and bone. Cold but steady. She won’t give him the pleasure of seeing her tremble. “Your crazy talk doesn’t scare me.”

He feigns puzzlement. “Crazy? Nothin’ crazy about love, baby. It makes the world go round.”

When he steps past the footstool, she does not back away. Any sign of weakness will encourage him.

As he retrieves something from a pocket of his jacket—an Our Legacy jacket that costs God knows what—he says, “And nothin’ proves our love more than this.”

A key. It’s how he got in here.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Where I get it? You don’t remember?”

“Don’t say I gave it to you.”

“You know me, sugar. I only say what’s true.”

“Don’t say it’s from me.”

“You want it back?”

“I want it. There’s no ‘back’ involved.”

“You want the other one, too?”

She says nothing.

“Remember? You give me a second, case maybe I lost this one.”

“You can’t have him.”

“Him? A key don’t have no him or her about it.”

“Damn you.”

“And here I thought you was a church lady.”

“Put both keys on the table there.”

“You want the third? The fourth?” He takes a step toward her, then another. They are five feet apart. He returns the key to his jacket pocket. “Got me a homeboy used to work for a locksmith. You want, he can come change out the locks, make you feel safe.”

John steps out of the hallway, into the living room. He has retrieved the pistol from his mother’s bedroom. He holds it in both hands, aimed at the floor.

Aleem says, “You gonna pop a cap, boy?”

John looks to his mother.

She tells him to put the gun down, but he doesn’t.