didn’t want her brother to know.
I’d been on the phone long enough for me to end this parley without being rude. I turned the shower on so she could hear it running, told her I had to get ready for work.
She said, “You’re gonna keep in touch?”
“Yep. I’m glad to hear from you.”
That was a lie. The day I called, every nationality in the five boroughs of New York would be on the Brooklyn Bridge, holding hands and singing “Kumbaya”while Giuliani tap-danced with Hillary Clinton.
I let her go back to her world. I went back to mine.
Part of a dream about New York came and went, bagels and potato chips. I had a sudden craving for both of those, but those desires faded and dissolved into the place wherever old dreams go to get their rest.
As I got ready for work, my eyes went to the mirror over my sink. The bathroom had misted up, and the writing that Vince had left in my mirror a few days ago came to life.
That came from a Saturday morning two weeks back. After I showered at Vince’s, I’d left a message in the glass.
The night before, we had been cuddled, relaxed, sipping wine, laughing and pillow fighting and watching movies I had brought over, fantasy stuff like Notting Hill and Runaway Bride, did the cuddle and talk until the break of dawn thing. Somehow we drifted into a conversation about marriage. I don’t know how, or which one of us brought that issue up, probably neither one of us, maybe both of us, hell maybe it was Julia Roberts in those damn movies, but he told me how I was the best thing to happen to him in years, how he wished he had met me about five years ago, how he hoped he could be with me in a forever kinda way.
Then he asked me the ultimate question, told me we should think about it.
I stopped blinking: “You serious about us getting married?”
“You know I am.”
I was stunned. “Don’t think you have to say that because—I mean, there ain’t no pressure to—”
“We can make this unofficially official. I just want you to know what I want from you. When I get a little money, we can get you a ring and you can wave it at everybody.”
“Wow.” I didn’t know what to say. Then out of my mouth tumbled, “Engagement ring, wedding ring, then suffering.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s what—” I blinked out of my trance, cleared my throat, erasing that bad memory. “Nothing. Just thinking about something I heard some idiot say back in New York.”
I had a hellified day. Had to pick up checks from a buyer in Mid City, then drive to a Crestwood escrow in Inglewood. I was zooming the streets, eyebrow pencil on standby, shades on, bottle of Evian at my side, looking Cali-fied. Most of the morn, my cell phone was glued to my ear, setting up appointments for a physical inspection on a property in Windsor Hills, making sure buyers were looking at property elsewhere, then to Edgehill for another physical inspection at one o’clock, biz that lasted two hours, so I sat there the whole time, going over the report.
Edgehill is in Leimert Park, not too far from Vince’s ponderosa, and when I was done with the inspection, I had to go potty.
Two minutes later, I had parked across the street from Vince’s, barely found a spot because Audubon Middle School was letting out. All the African American, Hispanic, and Asian parents were in their own separate-but-equal racial cliques, waiting for their noisy rug rats in their blue and white school uniforms, clogging up the sidewalk, school police driving back and forth, making sure the kids didn’t get into any after-school fights.
Vince’s mailbox was at the base of the stairs, and I saw that he had put out some letters for the mailman to pick up. Since they looked like they were about to slip out and fall, I tried to tuck them back into the narrow gap between the mailbox and the wall. Phone bill. Electric bill. Car insurance.
One was a plain white envelope. Written in his small handwriting, addressed to Joanne Jackson in San Bernardino.
I sniffed the letter. No cologne on the outside. It was sealed too tight to open and put back without tearing the damn thing. I held it up to the sunlight. The shape of a rectangular piece of paper showed.
“Can you believe they curse so much in public? They saw