Later, as he told her about the retarded woman, he rested his hand on her bare stomach. He could feel her tensing up with each word. He massaged her stomach, then he took her belly button between two fingers and rubbed it gently.
“Don’t ask me to do any of that,” she said. “Don’t bring me into any of that.” As long as she believed it did not involve another woman, she had never wanted to know what he and Sherman did. But now she felt all of the not-wanting-to-know had come due and she pulled the sheet up to her neck against the cold.
“There’s nothin to it,” Caesar said. “In an out. Before you know it, we’ll be back home, Carol. I promise.”
“Stop. I’m not like you. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
“It’s just the money,” he said, getting up. He began to dress.
“Don’t go just yet,” she said. She was naked and she got out of bed and put her arms around him. The cold came in the window and she shivered.
“I don’t ask a whole fuckin lot of you,” he said, “and when I do, you act like this.” He left the room and she called to him as she put on her robe. He was out of the apartment before she got in the living room. He took the stairs two at a time, and she continued calling him as she leaned over the banister.
That was Monday. He did not go back home all that week. Manny told him on Friday that he was tired of Carol calling the bar. “Talk to her,” Manny said. “Do something to shut that pussy up.”
“Come home,” Carol said when he finally called her Saturday afternoon. “Come home.”
“You forgot what I asked you to do?” he said.
“No, I didn’t forget,” she said. “Come home.”
“Then what do you have ta say bout what I asked?”
She said, “Yes. Yes. C, I can’t hurt anybody. I just can’t.”
“Who said anything about somebody gettin hurt? Nobody’ll get hurt. I already told you.”
“Come home,” she said.
The final days of that October were pleasant, but as the sun set, it grew cooler. There had been rain a few evenings, and when there was no rain, a wind came up that chilled as much as the rain. Caesar wore the tan Burberry Carol had bought for him. And as he sat in Dupont Circle Park watching Carol standing before American Security, there was still enough sunlight left for him to see Anna, a block or so away, make her way with the crowd up Connecticut Avenue.
Carol did not look over at him, and as she paced, she would occasionally pull from her purse the picture of a boy about three years old, study it as if trying to memorize the boy’s features, and then return the picture to her purse. Caesar had taken it from Manny’s wall of Polaroids, but no one at the bar, not even Manny, could remember who the child was. Carol, however, believed that Caesar knew the boy, and when Caesar laughed, she had flung the picture at him. It had taken him most of the rest of Thursday evening to calm her, convince her that, as his father would have said, he didn’t know the boy from Adam.
Still, he could tell from the way she looked at the photograph that everything he had said and done that Thursday was wearing off. Carol finally looked over at him. When Anna was but several yards from her, Caesar pointed at Anna and Carol walked to her. She took Anna by the arm and gently pulled her from the flow of the crowd. “Always say nice, soothin things,” he had told Carol. “Talk to her like you were longtime sisters or somethin.”
The lights in the park and along the streets came on. Anna’s back was to him, but he could see Carol’s face. She appeared calm and this surprised him. “The makins of a pro,” Sherman would have said. The boy in the picture, dressed in green swimming trunks with his back to some ocean, could well be a grown man by now, or he could be in his grave, Caesar thought, but today, on that street, his mother was saying he needed five thousand dollars for an operation or he would die as sure as anything. “Always make it seem like the choice is hers — whether he lives or whether he dies.” Anna took the picture and she looked at it, holding it but a few inches from her face.
Just the way Anna was standing told him that of the million things in the world she could do, she would do the one thing he wanted. And knowing this made up for not being with Sherman. It made up for that old woman who had cut his hand two weeks before when he ran by and tried to grab her money from her coat pocket.
Anna gave back the picture. Satisfied, he took his eyes from the women and watched the passersby heading home. Somewhere, Sherman was about to do the same. He could see Sherman closing a giant museum door so people could not see his roomful of paintings. “No more. No more for the day.” It did not hurt as much to think of him now. He looked back at the women in time to see them enter the bank.
When they came out, they crossed the street, and Caesar thought it a nice touch that Carol took Anna by the arm as they crossed. Anna sat on a bench across from Peoples, and for a minute or so more, Carol talked to her. Anna nodded. Everything now should be the closeout, he thought, and he felt she was taking too long. He waited until Carol walked by him and crossed the street, heading down Massachusetts Avenue. When he caught up with her, he took her by the elbow and she pulled away.
“You did good,” he said, putting his arm around her. “You did real good. How much did you get?”
“Can’t you wait?” she said. “Can’t you even wait!” They crossed 18th Street. “Do we have to go into all this out here like this?”
“It’s all right, Carol,” he said. “She back there. Nothin can happen now.” Midway down the block, he reached for her purse, but again she pulled away from him.
“Stop! Jesus!” She quickened her pace.
He stopped momentarily. “What’s wrong with you?”
At Massachusetts and 17th, he managed to lead her into the tiny park. The place was empty except for a bum who was sleeping on a bench several yards away from them. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” He took the purse.
“Don’t!” she said, taking it back. “For God sakes, don’t!”
He slapped her and grabbed for the bag with the other hand. It opened and everything inside fell out. Seeing the money fall to the ground, he slapped her again, and she began to cry. Her nose bled, and her bottom lip was split in two places, and it bled as well. The bum had awakened, and seeing the woman get slapped, he asked, “What is it there with you two peoples?”
Caesar dropped the purse, and Carol knelt down and began putting things back in it. He pulled her to her feet. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”
She knelt and he pulled her up again. “I said leave me alone.” He slapped her. He could now see the distance between them growing, and seeing that distance and knowing he no longer had the power to close it, he slapped her once more. The blow sent her back a few feet. She said ohh several times, but everything sounded to him like no. She put her hand to her face and trembled.
“Hey there, fella,” the bum said. “We gentlemens don’t—”
“You want me to come over there and kick your ass?”
The bum was silent. He knew these young lions. He eased himself off the bench and rolled under it. Better to face the rats and the filth than face a young lion in his wrath.
“Carol, get the stuff and let’s go home.”
She watched him. Stepping up to her, he took out the Beretta and held it to her cheek. “Did you hear what I said?” There was no surprise in her face, and there was no fear. He realized that if he beat her with the pistol, that, too, would not surprise her. And had he shot her, in the face or through the heart, she would not have been surprised at that either. He pocketed the gun and stepped back.
She walked around him and was crying softly as she gathered up the money and her belongings. It had begun to rain and she shook each thing before putting it in the bag. When she was done, she stood and looked at him. Then, as if there was all the time in the world, she walked slowly out of the park, heading down Massachusetts. He watched her until she disappeared among the lights of Dupont Circle, and then he turned away.