“No, man.”
“I bet she’s still got parents somewhere. I hear she comes from some fucking house in the Gables. Fuck, your stupid temper anyway, man. What does she need with a maniac like you?”
“Fuck you, Derek. We’re together now.”
“You’ve gotta get serious. You don’t know who the fuck that guy was — he could have been some kind of Latin gangbanger. Or the mob — you know some of the Gambinos got a nice winter house a few blocks from here. This isn’t like the time with that scuzzball punk at the mall. Nobody would’ve even cared if he’d actually died. You need some serious lying low, for a good long-ass time. Some witness protection shit, for sure. I deal with shitheads like that, and man, they have got some scary friends.”
“Don’t talk to me about that asshole.” Emerson sounds caved in, shrunken.
“Whoa, man — he needed to die. No doubt. That isn’t under discussion. But you need to live, very much so. And you know how it goes, it’s always the same with these chicks — she was cozying up to him at some bar — everyone saw them. Some rich asshole is gonna have associates. People who care about what does and doesn’t become of him.”
“Fuck that loser.” Emerson says with little conviction.
“Your funeral, Sonny. I’m just saying. If you’re sticking with her, then you’re on your own. Count me way the fuck out.”
Felice moves into the penumbra of the kitchen light, puts her hand on Emerson’s shoulder. Derek gazes at something beyond the walls of the room. For a moment, silence fills the space, ticking from the cupboards, pans on the drain board. Now his flat eyes take in the two of them. “Anyone could show up here, anytime. Like my asshole brother, or Steve-o, or anyone. You gotta get as far away the better. I’m gonna call you a cab.”
There’s a fight over whether Emerson will accept a wad of bills from Derek. Finally Derek stuffs the cash down the front of his T-shirt. Emerson removes it, glowering, and pushes it into his pocket. Derek flops back on the couch. “Up to you now. Good fucking luck — I hope it’s all worth it.” But then he walks them out to the cab, hands the driver a black credit card and a small brown paper bag. Derek and Emerson clap each other in a brief embrace. Emerson turns away from him then, automatically reaching for Felice’s hand. As they pull out, Felice turns to see Derek standing in the arc of the circular driveway watching them go, his face hard and motionless.
The cab reeks of a fir-tree car freshener, Felice asks the driver to take them to Homestead. The young black man squints at them in the mirror. “Where you want?” His accent is so thick the words are nearly unintelligible. Felice repeats her request slowly, gesturing south. His eyebrows lift. He turns off the meter saying, “Good he give me the card number then.” She slides down in her seat until the back of her neck touches the low, molded upholstery. The car bounces over ruts in the streets, beads and medallions swinging wildly from the rearview mirror, and a drizzle starts, stippling the windows. Not until they’re approaching downtown does Felice feel some inkling of the night before. She has spent so many years awakening in unpredictable circumstances that she is almost accustomed to the dreamy, stifling sense of things, the acceptance of any terrible possibility. Traffic streams by, shadowy in the half-light, and Felice cranes around, studying the swirl of cars. Twice, she becomes convinced that she sees the green Maserati, but all the convertibles have their tops up in the rain, hooded and anonymous. Each car that quietly passes them seems like another miracle.
Emerson gazes ahead, ignoring the cars, but he holds Felice’s hand so tightly that her fingertips feel numb. Once they exit the causeway and start racing along the 95 drop, she feels another potent, mortal quaking start up. Another person has died because of her.
“You okay?”
“No.” Felice hunches into the low spasms in her gut, elbows digging into the tops of her knees. She stares at the driver’s ID: Henri LaValesque.
Emerson catches her hand again; he holds it in both of his. “Maybe we should try — just — letting it go. All of it. It could be like none of it ever existed at all? Like here, we’re in this car, just talking about interesting stuff, driving to this new place.”
“Like what?” She stares at the driver’s head. “What’re we talking about?”
“I don’t know. Anything.”
She frowns at the streaks on the window glass; pieces of sunlight filter through some of the low-floating clouds, drawing out prisms suspended in light. Felice pulls Emerson’s hand into her lap — it’s ridged with calluses: she’d never noticed before. “Okay, why did they name you Emerson?”
“My dad.” Emerson glances at the bright, streaky glass. “He was into doing for yourself, growing your own vegetables, making your own soap and candles. His favorite guy was this writer Emerson. He wrote about really doing your own thing.”
“That sounds like a good way to be,” she says softly, but the deep molten quaking has entered her chest and she’s humiliated by the way her voice shakes. Emerson puts his arm around her shoulders and folds her into his side. She clings to Emerson’s midsection, comforted by his size. An intermittent rain spatters the cab, sluicing up between cars.
After a while, Emerson murmurs to her, “Dad said that self-reliance was such a big American idea, but so what? I don’t think it’s that great…” His voice tapers off. “It’s just what people do ’cause they don’t want to say thank you.”
Felice watches the bruised sky; another volley of rain sweeps over the cab. It slants in curtains over the city, darkening the platinum high-rises. An olive cast seems to emanate from the deepest part of the sky and she can feel a shivering movement as gusts of wind hit the car. Felice thinks about the fierce summer storms she’s weathered in the Green House, the steamy unlit rooms, tree limbs banging against the roof. “That man’s face.” The words seep out of her, dank heat rising from her back. Her breath feels like it’s squeezed into the tops of her lungs.
“No, no, no.” He gathers her closer. “You don’t need to think about that now.”
“His friends will come after us, won’t they? Derek’s right.”
Emerson seems to also be studying the back of the driver’s head; he says quietly, close to her ear, “We’re going to be fine.”
The cab bounces onto the exit to U.S. 1. “Stanley — my brother — he’ll help us.” Felice takes taut little breaths. “He always knows the right thing.” She knows Emerson is holding himself still and calm for her, that he must have just the same trembling in his core. Or he will have. The cab slows on the exit, rolling into traffic on the narrow highway; Felice is startled by the number of cars, the way they skim within inches of each other. She stares ahead through the windshield, over the backs of the cars lining the road. Gradually, a small comfort settles in her. It’s been years since she’s felt the faint rising sense of the future. But there it is, inside the torn-out cab, the stink of old cigarettes and fake pine, and Emerson’s arm curved to her ribs.
Brian
BRIAN WAKES TO A SHARP RAPPING NEXT DOOR. Josh Masterson is on a ladder tipped against the side of his house, installing clear hurricane panels. There are also sounds of Avis in the kitchen, the preparatory clashing and sliding of pans. He calls the office and listens to a recording saying that “due to Hurricane Katrina,” all PI&B employees are asked to stay home. In chinos and work shirt, he goes to the dining room table and finds a place set: a plate with two poached eggs, buttermilk scone, and blueberry-lavender jam. Avis comes to the door and says, “The hurricane special.” He lifts his knife. “I am strong like bull.”