East was going to say Oh, but he hiccupped instead.
“You okay?” said Martha Jefferson.
“Fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” said the lady. She stepped back, and East lacked the strength to argue. There wasn’t anywhere to go. The little girl stared sideways. She closed her eyes and became the Jackson girl.
His stomach flipped, and instinctively he turned toward a trash can. He fought his jaw muscles, but they pried themselves apart, and he vomited into the cups and wrappers with a long, despairing cry.
“Oh, Lord,” the lady was saying. “Look at you now.”
Yellow heat in his mouth. He spat out the rest and felt in his pockets for something to wipe his face. Nothing. Just a granola bar wrapper, a key, a fold of twenties, and a gun. He cleaned himself with the back of his hand.
“I told you,” said the lady. Though she had not told him anything. But he saw that she was not speaking to him; she was speaking to the people in line, now gazing from their cordon at this small misfortune. He saw that she was not going to help him out like a grandmother might. She stood back, marking their distance.
At last, Walter. Bright fat idiot angel, he carried the box of doughnuts with its golden seal before him like a prize. “Here you are,” he sang, flashing Martha Jefferson’s key chain and helping her guide it back into her purse.
He looked around, seeing that something had happened. It was on everyone’s faces. “What’s wrong?”
“Your cousin is sick,” announced Martha Jefferson.
Walter touched East’s forehead, his hand there heavy and soft.
“I’m okay,” East said.
A guard was coming up to see. The line slipped forward. The little sideways girl on her father’s shoulder watched East again.
Walter said, “Well, maybe we should go then, Andre.”
Martha Jefferson agreed silently, stirring toward the line with her eyes. She was eager to be rid of them. Even Walter. She knew how to do it: she did it with such public sweetness. “You have been good to meet. Such lovely young men.”
She and Walter beamed brightly, falsely.
“So happy to have met you,” Walter said.
She fluttered. “And I, you.”
Walter handed the box of doughnuts over and then gasped at it. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “But, Mrs. Jefferson, are they going to let you take this on board?”
Mrs. Jefferson smiled, a final smile, not for them. “Well, it isn’t allowed. But don’t worry. They know me. Everyone in the sky knows me.”
East, bleary though he was, saw different. Nobody knew this lady at all.
—
Walter: “What is it?”
East’s stomach was tumbling to a halt. “Like food poisoning. Something.”
“You’re panicking, man. Your body’s fooling with you.”
East let this go. In the vast men’s bathroom they washed with squirt soap and dried with brown paper. Morning businessmen made hurried passes under the seeing-eye faucets. East stood there a long time. In the mirror he was a different mess than he’d ever seen before: an eye still dark and swollen from Michael Wilson. He’d forgotten about it; he hadn’t had time to hurt. Now, clean, the eye was fat and tender. No wonder Martha Jefferson had looked at him funny. His skin, even after he scrubbed it, was puffy, black, and greasy. The cold water brought his focus back a little.
“I was going to pass out,” he grumbled.
“You did. You slept the whole way.” Walter glanced around at the other men. “Can we go out? We got to talk.”
East nodded. The bouncing daylight outside the bathroom braced East, brought him back into space and time. He and Walter made their way to the exit. Iowa, he mused. Back in Iowa now. Behind them like beads on a string lay the other places: the van, his brother, the wooden house in Wisconsin. And The Boxes, the boarded-up house that was his. Strung out behind, not far, not long, but behind. Links in a chain. Behind, like his black eye, the bruise clouding over.
The noxious air of taxis idling. They found a bench, and Walter dug in his pocket.
“What is it?”
A single key. “Hers.”
“Whose?”
“Miz Jefferson’s. She had two. This is a valet key. It will start the car — I tried it. Just won’t open the trunk.”
East held the key in his fingers, examined it.
“And she won’t be back for two days.” Walter looked down the line of cabs. “Likely won’t notice it’s gone till then.”
East whistled. “Smart,” he said quietly.
Walter laid his legs out straight and crossed one over like an old cigar smoker. “I know,” he said. “I impress myself.”
“Walter,” East said. “We gonna get caught?”
“I been thinking on that,” Walter said. “Looks like police got the van. Question is, why? Because of Wisconsin? Or because of your brother?”
“What does it matter?”
“It does,” Walter reasoned. “Two very different things.”
“You gonna tell me they upset about Wisconsin,” East guessed, “but they don’t give a damn about my brother?”
“Well, there’s that.” Tightly Walter smiled. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe they don’t hunt the one at all. But they gonna hunt them differently. If it’s just Ty they’re looking for here, and they found the van, then we’re just black boys who shot another. Probably didn’t go far. Police are looking in that area. That Denny’s, even. Not an airport. You follow?”
East nodded.
“But if it’s Wisconsin, then they tie in Ty, maybe — there were witnesses, they saw us, man, they got a plate, probably an APB on us all night — then they find the van, that makes a direction. One, two, three. That points west. This way. The way home. Got me?”
“How you gonna know for sure which it is?”
Walter laughed. “Ha. I’m not. East, I’m guessing it was because of you and Ty. Because of the witnesses. I’m guessing it’s your bullet they’re following.”
East sat back. The black string jangling inside.
“But the van isn’t here. That’s lucky — we drove it a few hundred miles last night and ditched it. We made a mystery jump. And we didn’t dump it near an airport. And we didn’t steal a car they can look for. That don’t tell the cops we’re looking to hop on a plane.”
“But we’re not,” East said, “looking to hop on a plane.”
“Well, I was thinking about it,” Walter said.
“You what? You said it was dangerous, man. Even walking in there.”
“Everything’s dangerous now,” Walter said. “Right? But we got cash. They can sell us walkup tickets. They gotta check our IDs, but they’re clear, and we can drop them the minute we get to LA. Kill these names off and never look back.”
Walter sat up out of his crouch and looked around, face wide open, as if they were waiting for a ride, as if he was unconcerned.
“What’s it cost?” said East. “Do we have enough?”
“Don’t know,” said Walter, “but it sounds good to me. See the country from up top. Be home this afternoon.” He traced the idea across his pants and stopped it with a dot. “Nobody knows where I’ve been all week,” he confessed. “Probably worried.”
“Oh, you got people?”
“Yeah,” Walter replied. “Of course. I got people.”
East watched the airport cop down the way, forty yards, directing people with suitcases.
“Quicker we drop these guns, the better, then,” Walter said.
“If we’re done shooting.”
“How we gonna know if we’re done shooting?”
“I’m done shooting,” said East. He got up and strode over to the nearest trash can, poking around until he found a good fast-food bag, stiff white paper, a little greasy. He picked it out, straightened it, then palmed the little gun into the bag. He walked it back to Walter.