Raymer considered sharing this story with Charice now. Maybe she’d go away and leave him alone.
“So what you’re saying is, it got away?” she wanted to know, still obsessed by the cobra. “Got away where? What if it bites some little kid?”
“The kid dies.”
“That’s cold.”
“We searched until it was pitch dark, okay? What do you want from me?” He intended this to be a rhetorical question, but he could tell she didn’t get it. “Please? Pretty please? Could we continue this conversation after I get dressed?” He pointed at his office chair, over which he’d draped his pants. “If you won’t go away, could you at least hand me those?”
She did, reluctantly, making forceps of her thumb and index finger. Could you blame her? The waistband was still soggy with perspiration. He’d have to drop the whole uniform off at the dry cleaners.
“We should be doing something, is all I’m saying,” Charice told him, backing off a little. “Serve and protect, right?”
“I wish we’d settled on that instead of We’re not happy until you’re not happy.”
“There you go putting in that extra ‘not’ again.”
Rising, he turned his back to her, pulled on his trousers and immediately felt better, as only a man who’d never felt comfortable in his God-given body will. “Volunteers are going door-to-door in the neighborhood,” he assured her, “warning people not to let their children play outside until it’s found.”
“What if they don’t find it?”
“According to Justin, it’ll probably just slither off into the woods and die of starvation. Or cross the road and get run over by a car.”
“Probably, huh?”
“Or freeze to death when the weather gets cold.”
“It’s the beginning of summer. We’re in a heat wave.”
Bending over to tie his shoes, Raymer suddenly felt dizzy, and when he straightened up the room started spinning. He had to grab the corner of the desk to keep from keeling over.
“Chief?” Charice said, her voice sounding very far off.
“I’m okay,” he said, blinking her back into focus, his equilibrium slowly returning. “Just a little woozy.”
“When was the last time you ate?”
Good question. He’d skipped breakfast and had had no appetite after what’d happened at Hilldale. “Yesterday?”
“No wonder,” she said. “Okay, then. You’re coming home with me.”
“Umm…”
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that mean, ‘umm’?”
“I mean, there’s a department rule against fraternizing.”
“Don’t worry, slick. I got my own rules about that. What we’re talkin’ about is food, not funny business. My damn fool brother was supposed to come over, but he’s too upset over his baby got scratched. So I got a whole fridge full of food and nobody to help me eat it.”
“Really?” Though still faint, he was hungry.
“Fried chicken. Collard greens. Black-eyed peas. Grits. Watermelon for dessert.”
“We’ll have to stop by the Arms so I can change.”
“Hold on a minute,” she said. “You believed me just now?”
“Umm.” He felt himself flush darkly. By not picking up on her joke, he’d managed to insult her. “I’m sorry, Charice. I’ve lived right here in Bath my whole life. When it comes to black people, I know you and Jerome. And Mr. Hynes,” he added, remembering the old man.
“And you think Jerome would eat a single collard green?”
“I don’t know. I just wish…”
She waited.
He swallowed hard, aware that whatever he said next would probably be a mistake, yet another opportunity for his favorite cocktaiclass="underline" two parts humiliation, one part bitter regret, blend until smooth. Drink up. After all, it had been that kind of day. About as bad as any he could remember since the one when Becka came downstairs like a Slinky. He felt his eyes fill with tears. “I wish,” he stumbled, thinking as much about his dead wife as the woman he was now speaking to, “that where women are concerned I didn’t feel like a complete fool every minute of my life.”
He half expected Charice to tell him, as Becka surely would have, that the solution to that problem was simple: stop behaving like one. Instead, she just held his gaze for a long moment and said, “Lamb chops. Jerome’s favorite. And salad. You like lamb chops?”
“I do.”
“You know how to light a fire?”
“If you mean charcoal, sure.”
“Chief?” she said. “Could I say something?”
“Have I ever prevented you from speaking your mind?”
“This is kind of personal.”
“It’s all been kind of personal, Charice.”
“You gotta stop worrying so much about being wrong.”
This was true, of course. He’d known that much for a very long time. Back when he was a boy, he’d imagined the remedy was to stop being wrong. Being right would lead to the kind of self-confidence that other people seemed to achieve so effortlessly. The better solution, according to his mother, was to quit caring so much. But how? Neither she nor anybody else had been able to help him with that part.
“I mean, being wrong isn’t such a big deal,” Charice was saying. “We’re all wrong about a hundred times a day.”
“I’m wrong a hundred times before breakfast.”
“For instance, I’ve been wrong about you from the start.” Then, when he didn’t respond, she said, “Aren’t you going to ask how?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Are you even listening to me?”
No, he hadn’t been. Not really. He’d been listening to himself. Trapped, as usual, in the maze of Douglas Raymer’s thoughts, with no exit. He scrolled back.
“How were you wrong about me, Charice?”
“Now I don’t know if I should even tell you.”
“But you’re going to. We both know that. You’ve never not told me something you wanted me to know.”
“That’s true, but I could tell you tomorrow instead of now.” Her hand was on the door and she was smiling again, even more broadly this time.
“Tell me, Charice. I’m sure it’s something I need to know.”
She lowered her gaze to belt level. “Those shorts. Something very wrong there. I never would’ve pegged you for a boxers man.”
—
HER AGED CIVIC wasn’t spacious, but at least the passenger seat had been pushed back as far as it would go. Until now, Raymer hadn’t given much thought to Charice’s private life, though it was suggestive, surely, that the seat’s default mode had apparently been determined by her long-legged brother and not some boyfriend. And Friday nights, when another young woman might have been going out on a date or drinking happy-hour margaritas with girlfriends, she’d been planning on cooking dinner for Jerome. It stood to reason, he supposed. It couldn’t be easy for a young black woman here. Who would she go out with in conservative, lily-white Bath? Her brother — tall, handsome, well dressed and well spoken — wouldn’t lack for social opportunity in Schuyler Springs. A college town, its demographic downstate, liberal, hip, urban. Charice might’ve had an easier time of it over there, though Raymer doubted it. White men, at least in his experience, might be attracted to a good-looking black woman but were much less likely to date her than a black man was to date a white woman. Would Raymer himself have asked Charice out if he hadn’t been married when they met, and if he hadn’t been her boss, and if she wasn’t always busting his balls and threatening to sue him for job-related offenses? Okay, that was too many “ifs” to work through with any confidence. He had been married and he was her boss and she did bust his balls morning, noon and night, and most of the time she seemed at least half serious about suing him.