“I’m the hood? What about him? He’s the one who knifed somebody. He’s—”
She buried her face in her arms, knocking stuff off the dressing table as she writhed. “I loved him and he loved me,” she wailed. “He would have taken me with him. But you butted in before he could make the arrangements. You ruined everything.”
“He didn’t love you. Look at me, Libby. He had another girlfriend at those apartments the whole time. Look at me, damn it! He wasn’t going to take you with him. What would he do that for? He’s ten years older than you. He was just using you, Libby! You were had, and I do mean had.”
She kept crying. I went to her and put my hands on her shoulders. She whirled around with the hairbrush and nearly raked my eyes out with it. “Stay away from me,” she hissed.
“All I ever wanted was to help,” I shot back.
“I’m quits with you. You ruined my life. I will hate you as long as you live.”
“You’re breaking my heart!” I sneered.
She turned to the mirror. “We’ll see how tough you are when Daddy finds out about the cash kitty.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I lent it to Jimmy,” she said, resuming her brushing. “Two hundred and ten dollars. He was going to pay it back before he left town. But you fixed that, all right. He’ll never pay it back now, and I wouldn’t blame him.”
I remembered the wad of soft currency from which Herndon had bought my tall boys. He must have laughed his ass off. “You expect me to take the rap for that? Get real. I’ll tell Daddy what you did.”
“Go ahead. Try. Who’s Daddy going to believe? You’re nothing but a jailbird. You can’t compete against his baby girl Elizabeth, so don’t even bother to try.”
She stood, gave herself one final inspection in the mirror, and walked out of the room.
And, for all practical purposes, out of my life. Down through the years, we’ve mostly met up at funerals. Daddy in ’63. Mama in ’67. The Bubbas in ’70. Uncle Dan in ’84. All gone.
So is the Riviera and the train station, both boarded up. National Foods is now a hardware store. The Totem Pole is a Burger King. Fourteenth Street is a war zone, and the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers — prime competitors of the Detroit Tigers, who in the interim have been better and worse, then better, and are now worse.
The Wesson is still there. So is Redford High. Annie Wilder got divorced and moved away, I never did learn where. Debbie Miller became an English professor at the University of Michigan. My brother Bill married Marybeth and still works at Ford’s. You know all about Fast Eddie Anger if you’re into pop music at all.
By a very circuitous route, I ended up a private detective. Like Richard Diamond, Sundance, Roger and Smith, Peter Gunn — guys like that, sort of. Fast Eddie was my client once. So, even, was Libby.
But it wasn’t till tonight that I realized my very first client was my mother. Tonight, as I stood in the fairway of the Wayne County Fair, overrun with the memories triggered by the sight of the man running a ball-toss booth.
He stood behind the counter, twenty feet from me. He was too busy to notice as I stared at him, superimposing his image, etched clear in the bright lights of the County Fair midway, against the faded memories of three decades ago. Thirty pounds heavier. Hair grayish and wispy thin. Heavy lines had taken the face, and his bouncy swagger was gone. But it was definitely him.
I pictured myself going up to him. I had a lot of questions. Did he really knife someone? Did he ever get caught? How much jail time had he done in the intervening years? What was it like to be well past fifty and still roaming the country, working the shrinking carnival circuit for nickels and dimes? How many women had there been? How much money? How many promises? Did he ever think about the broken hearts and hurt feelings he left in his wake?
The ball-toss went momentarily vacant and Herndon, as if signaled by radio, turned, looked at me, away, then back: locking his stare with mine. I grinned, remembering the sound of the bat as it hit his head. Now, all these years later, I wished I’d hit him harder—
“Ben! Hey, Ben?”
I turned. Will Somers, a muscular blond eight-year-old, galloped up to me, followed at a distance by my friend Carole Somers, great with child and looking tired. “Found the johns okay?” I asked.
“Finally,” Carole said. “Who’s that man over there?”
“Who?” I parried.
“That barker in the ball-toss booth. You were staring at him. Do you know him from somewhere?”
I glanced over at Herndon, whose eyes were still fixed on me. “Nobody important,” I answered. I took Carole in one arm, Will in the other. “Come on, I’ll buy you something to eat.”
Part Time
by Debbie Hodgkinson
Carol was reaching up into the cabinet for a teacup when a strange man walked in her back door and through the dining room into the living room.
“Hey there,” he said as he passed.
Carol pulled her blue terrycloth robe tighter and retied the belt as she followed him around the corner.
“Who are you?” she demanded. She was more startled than frightened. She had never seen the man before, and there he sat in the morning sunshine on her rent-to-own sofa. “What do you think you’re doing here?”
Carol’s dog Mimi trotted in behind her and began to bark while backing under the dining room table.
The man looked at the noisy mongrel and looked up at Carol standing in the doorway with her bare feet planted wide, knuckles on hips, her mouth wide open in indignation. The man’s face was bland, his eyebrows raised in mild surprise. He stared Carol in the eye for a long moment, then reached out to the coffee table, picked up a news magazine, put the arches of his feet on the edge of the table, leaned back, and opened to the last page. Without speaking he began to read.
“Get out of here!” Carol was getting quite angry. When the man continued to read, she stepped across the room and snatched the slick magazine from his hands. He folded his arms across his stained jacket and looked at her another few seconds. His dirty tennis shoes still rested next to his small gym bag on her coffee table. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt. He could have been twenty-five, maybe thirty.
“Get out of my house right now,” said Carol. “Mimi, shut up.” The curly-haired brown dog paused and looked up, then began barking again.
“Bug off, lady.” With a single motion the man stood, grabbed back the magazine, and reseated himself.
Carol turned and stomped toward the telephone on the wall by the back door, intending to call the police. She stopped with her hand on the receiver, feeling the beginning of panic as she remembered that the phone didn’t work. That was why she was home today. She had traded shifts with another woman at work so she could stay home and wait for the telephone company repairman to come fix the outside line. Well, maybe she could pretend to call anyway, bluff the guy. If he believed the police were coming, maybe he would go away. It worked on TV often enough.
“Phone’s still dead, right? I know, I tried to use it yesterday and I couldn’t get a dial tone.” He was watching her, no longer reading, but still holding the magazine on his lap. “Who you think you’re gonna call, anyway?”
She turned to face him, but stayed as far away as she could. “What do you want? Why are you here?” Mimi moved closer to her, but stayed under the table, whining now.
“I come here every day. What’s it to you?”
“What do you mean, what’s it to me? Every day? This is my house! What do you do here? Go away!” The pitch of her voice was getting high enough to hurt her throat. She consciously lowered it, trying to sound calm and in control. “You have to leave. You have to leave now. Don’t ever come back here again.”