“This my first time here,” Buddy Lee said.
“I came here once for the housewarming. Right after it … happened, Mya was talking about us coming over and cleaning the place up. Two months later and all we did was talk,” Ike said.
The housewarming. Another night that ended in yelling and slammed doors. He opened his door and Buddy Lee soon followed. Civilly engineered oak trees dotted the sidewalk at twenty-foot intervals. They chased the streetlamps down the sidewalk. Bike racks popped up every few feet like iron hedges. Ike and Buddy Lee walked side by side as they headed to the town house.
“Things up here done changed a lot,” Ike said.
“Oh yeah?” Buddy Lee said.
“Back in the day there used to be this ol’ boy who ran a lot of product through this part of town. I used to run with a crew back home who bought from him. When we used to ride through here to re-up, every other building was a crack house. Base heads wandering up and down the street like zombies. Offering to have their girl suck your dick for a ten-dollar rock. If times got really tight, they’d offer to do it themselves. I come through one time doing a favor for that ol’ boy. Sprayed this whole street up with an AK, then carried my ass back to Red Hill.”
“Who was you after?” Buddy Lee asked.
“I don’t even remember. I think somebody was trying to push up on him. Or maybe they stepped on his homeboys’ shoes over at the Satellite bar and he had me come through to correct them. I don’t know. I did a lot of dumb shit back then for street cred. When I went inside I learned the hard way street cred don’t mean shit,” Ike said.
“I think I could give you a run for your money in the dumb-shit department. My last time around the mulberry bush I took a fall that wasn’t mine to take,” Buddy Lee said.
“For real?” Ike asked.
“Yeah. My brother, my half brother Deak, and me got picked up with a trunk full of ice. We was moving it for a fella named Chuly Pettigrew. Deak didn’t have a record. Mine was long enough to wrap up a mummy. I wanted Deak to stay clean. He wasn’t built for that kind of life. They would have eaten him alive inside. I did my best to make sure it was his first and last run. So I kept my mouth shut about Chuly, took the blame for Deak, and got three to five years. Did the full five. After I went away Deak went out west and got a job on a natural gas crew. Far as I know he’s still there.”
“Huh,” Ike said.
“What?”
“You had a trunk full of meth and you only got five years? If you had looked like me, they would have put you under the jail for moving that much weight. I got friends who got three to five for holding weed. Weed,” Ike said.
“I don’t know about that,” Buddy Lee mumbled.
“I do. This is the place,” Ike said. He’d stopped in front of a two-story town house with slat-board siding stained a deep burgundy. The front steps were painted a sleepy cream color. A large black ceramic planter sat at the base of the steps. It was decorated with the initials IR & DJ. The letters were fat and wide and painted white. Like they had been drawn on by hand. Ike pulled the key out of his pocket and opened the door.
They stepped into a small foyer that was decorated in understated blues and whites. An umbrella container sat to their left next to a coatrack carved out of a large piece of what appeared to be driftwood. A lack of movement inside the house had allowed a pall to settle over the entire structure. The air had a stale, spoiled scent. A thin layer of dust covered most of the exposed surfaces. Death had laid his cold hand on this place and stilled its heart.
The living room continued the understated motif. A sectional couch dominated the space. A flat-screen TV was mounted on the wall facing the couch. To their right, pictures detailed various moments of Isiah and Derek’s life together. Trips they had taken, parties they had attended. Quiet candid moments. Pictures of the two of them holding Arianna as a newborn. The three of them wearing paper pirate hats at a restaurant. A black-and-white picture of Arianna blowing on a dandelion. A picture of the three of them and Arianna holding a poster with the word “DEED” written on it in cartoonishly large letters. Derek and Isiah were grinning from ear to ear. Arianna appeared nonplussed.
The photos were a mosaic showing the evolution of their journey together.
“They look happy,” Ike said.
“Yeah. They do,” Buddy Lee said. He pointed at the picture of the comical deed.
“They must have paid the house off. Derek told me one day he was gonna have a house, not a trailer. Goddamn if he didn’t do it,” Buddy Lee said.