"Come on, baby, open those beautiful green eyes."
"They're hazel. Men don't know nothin'," Belle grumbled in her sleep.
The times she didn't respond, he squeezed some water from the towel onto her face and sponged it off, stroking her forehead until the green eyes fluttered open.
"Don't you touch me," she muttered, raising a hand to her hair that was a color hard to pin down. Red-gold, gold-rust. Brown-gold, harvest gold. No, definitely red something. It was good hair and there was a lot of it. Probably drew attention to her, and Belle clearly didn't like that kind of attention.
"Don't look at me," she mumbled.
"I'm not looking at you. Just worried about your health. You have a lot of courage. You got yourself messed up." Because of me, he didn't say. She'd jumped in front of a man with a knife, and the man had tried to stab her. What kind of crazy woman would do that? Some kind of urban guerrilla. Now Rick knew why she wore what had to be a thirty-pound raincoat. The coat was useful in case of fire and wasn't easily penetrated by a stiletto. He wondered if Belle also wore a bulletproof vest under all those sweaters and if she'd been stabbed or shot at before. He had a feeling she had.
"Belle, you got a family, a husband or boyfriend, somebody I can call to come get you?"
No answer. She'd fallen asleep.
The night had an eerie quality to it. Rick had three shallow cuts on his chest that oozed into the only other towel in the place, and burned some. He got up and washed them with soap in the grimy bathroom a few times. He was sore, and like other times he'd been hurt and his body was trying to mend, he was hungry. He thought about his restaurant. The restaurant was a place backed by him and his white partners, run by blacks, where both blacks and whites felt comfortable. Anyplace where blacks and whites both felt comfortable was considered trendy. Rick used to be amused by the term. Now it made him sick, as if all along he'd only been part of a zoo exhibit.
When everything was going wrong in her life, Rick's mama always said, "I am still. I am still so God can show me the way." She told her boy that God lived in stillness and only in stillness would Rick himself be able to find his way through this life.
"If God so still, then why the peoples scream and yell so loud in church?" he'd demanded.
"Is, do. Don't you go leaving out those verbs, boy, and don't question. Don't go questioning the ways of God."
But how could he find out what God's ways were if he wasn't allowed to question? Liberty couldn't question the ways of God now. He didn't believe God had a personal interest in him or anyone else. Merrill was gone for no reason at all. Water flooded his eyes, blurring his vision, but he couldn't be crying. "I don't cry," he said aloud. He swiped at his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, which was ripped and bloody on the front. He glanced at the girl on the sofa, who was so leery about men. He wondered what had happened to make her that way, and realized she was beautiful.
He thought about the man with the gold teeth and the gun. A dozen people must have seen the man fire. Maybe more. Why had he bothered to cross the street and run a block and a half after him and Belle? Had he known they would be there? How did it fit? The street had been teeming with people. There had been people all over the place. It was possible that even some of the police had seen the shooter with the ridge of gold and the scarf on his head. Rick worried about Belle and couldn't fall asleep.
About eight hours later, at eight-fifteen in the morning, she sat up and rubbed her eyes. "I'm hungry," she said.
Rick looked at his watch. "So am I."
She went into the bathroom and stayed there a long time while he made some coffee in an old pot. Maybe it was the aroma of brewing coffee that made his throat close up around his windpipe and finally acknowledge the truth. Merrill was not at home, waiting for him with her sexy voice and all her troubles and demons. She was not going to agonize anymore over not giving him golden babies in his image. There would be no more heated (and painfully naive) discussions of politics, no more arguments with them against the world about race or anything else. No more screaming fits about cocaine. Merrill was gone. Another one of his lives was over. Rick's eyes were wet, but he was not crying. He now had to make the choice Merrill hadn't been given. He could die and not be buried with her in that bleak New England cemetery that had probably never received a black body. Or he had to become someone new. Again. Neither prospect had much appeal.
The water had been running in the bathroom for a long time. He knocked on the door. "You okay?" he asked.
"Don't come in." The reply was a nervous mumble through the door.
Rick expelled the trapped air in his lungs. "I'm just asking if you're okay," he grumbled to himself. He didn't walk in on strange women in their bathrooms.
"Don't come in," she said again.
Jesus, she was exhausting. He poured some coffee and sat at the table drinking it as the sky cleared and slowly lightened. Finally Belle came out of the bathroom. Rick was careful not to look at her as he handed her a cup of coffee with He hoped her screwy brains hadn't been knocked any looser.
"Thanks." She sounded surprised.
"You're welcome."
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Drinking coffee. Then I'm going to take you home, Belle. Where do you live?"
She sat down at the table and held the mug in both hands. "My head hurts."
"So does mine, but I can't stay here any longer, and neither can you."
"Why?"
"You got hurt. That crosses the line for me."
"So what, lot of men hit." Belle touched her head. "Kick, too. They think women belong to them, and hurting them doesn't signify much." She studied Rick thoughtfully. "Maybe not you."
"Not me."
"It's so touching when these guys visit in the hospital, bringing flowers. Everybody's crying, and that's what they always say. 'She wanted it. Yeah, we had some fun, but I wouldn't penetrate a twelve-year-old baby. I didn't hurt her.' Or, 'Yeah, we may have tussled around some, but I didn't put her eye out with a poker. No way, man. I loved her.' "
Rick bent his head and told himself he wasn't going to let tears fall down his face. "You've been hanging around with the wrong people too long, Belle."
She sniffed angrily.
Well, she might not think much of him, but she'd used herself as a shield to save him last night. Why did she have to be so tough on him now?
"What?" she demanded as if he'd said it aloud.
He shook his head. Now he knew the reason he'd avoided Merrill's funeral and left his home. He'd run away because he couldn't stand the world's accusation that he was just another one of those black scum who robbed and stole, took drugs and raped women, murdered them when they got too sassy. He simply could not bear the suspicion. All his life he'd worked hard to be clean, clean, clean to the world, clean to the core. So he wouldn't be his mother's nightmare. So he wouldn't end up just another rotten nigger. He finally knew what he had to do.
Five minutes later Marvin Farrish was quiet on the other end of the phone line as Rick Liberty blasted him.
"Marvin, I always thought you were a smart man. I know you've done a lot of good in this world. You have a great TV station, good radio. You're a faithful husband and a good father. I thought your heart was in the right place. But shit, man, this stunt you pulled with me was the stupidest, the most dangerous, Goddamned dumbest cock-up I've ever seen. I don't know where your brain is. You know what happened up here last night, you fucking idiot?"