“His condition that critical?”
“Internal bleeding. The doctors had trouble stopping it. It could start again at any time…”
It seemed for a few seconds that Joshua might break down. Runyon felt an impulse to sit beside him, give him a shoulder to lean on. Didn’t do it because he knew the gesture would be rejected. What his son wanted from him had nothing to do with fatherly solace.
Joshua made a visible effort to pull himself together. At length he said, “I hate this,” in a shaky voice. “Kenneth is the strong one. I’m no damn good in a crisis.”
Runyon said, “I am.”
“I just… I don’t know what to do.”
“You’ve already done all you can. Calling me was the right thing.”
For the first time Joshua looked at him squarely. “Could you find them, stop them before they kill somebody?”
“Maybe. No guarantees.”
“Would you? If I hired you, paid you…”
“No.”
“But you just said-”
“I’ll do what I can, but not for pay.”
Silent stare.
“You’re my son,” Runyon said. “That’s all the reason I need.”
3
TAMARA
Vonda said, “Well, I met this guy.”
“Uh-huh.” So what else is new? Tamara thought.
“A couple of weeks ago at a club in SoMa. We danced and had some drinks and he asked me for my phone number and I gave it to him. I was a little ripped or I probably wouldn’t have.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He kept calling me up and I gave in and I’ve been out with him a couple of times. A really nice guy, and gorgeous… I mean a real hunk. His name is Ben, Ben Sherman; he played football when he was at UC Berkeley. He has a good job, he works for a brokerage company in the financial district.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Saturday night we went out again, dinner and dancing, and afterward… well, he invited me to his place on Tel Hill, he’s got a great apartment up there, terrific view and everything…”
“Let me guess. You ended up in bed.”
“I wasn’t going to, it just happened. I mean, you know me, I don’t usually sleep with a guy until I get to know him first.”
Oh, yeah, right. She’d been friends with Vonda since they were sophomores at Redwood City High. Shared some wild times, their gangsta period when they’d chased with some rough homies, smoked weed, done all kinds of stuff that came close to crossing the line. Vonda looked a little like a young Robin Givens, slim and sleek but with a J-Lo booty; guys had been all over her since her boobs started to show. She’d lost her cherry when she was fifteen, must’ve slept with fifty different guys before and after she cleaned up her act.
“How was it?” The usual girl-talk question.
“Oh, great. Wow. The best ever. I mean, Ben really knows how to treat a woman in bed. But it wasn’t just sex.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No lie. There’s a difference, you know there is. Sex is one thing, making love’s another. I thought I’d made love a time or two, but with Ben… Lord, I think I’m in love with that man.”
“Uh-huh.” She’d heard that one before, too.
“Seriously, Tam. And it’s mutual. He came right out and said he loves me.”
Tamara covered a sigh with a sip from her glass. Mineral water. And a white wine spritzer for Vonda. Tamara Corbin and Vonda McGee, the two badass young ‘ho’s all cornrowed and grunge-dressed and party-ready. If those high school homies could see the two of them now, nine years later, one a partner in a private investigation agency, the other an up-and-coming sales rep at the S.F. Design Center, wearing conservative business outfits and sipping mineral water and white wine spritzers in a crowd of mostly white establishment types in the South Park Cafe. Whoo! Sometimes she could hardly believe it herself, all the big jumps and sharp-angle turns in her life…
“And I wish neither of us was,” Vonda said.
“Was what?”
“In love. Ben Sherman, my God, of all the guys in the world.”
“Why? What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s white,” Vonda said.
Tamara stopped being bored. “Uh-oh.”
“That’s not all. He’s more than just white.”
“How can he be more than just white?”
“He’s Jewish, too,” Vonda said.
“… Damn, girl!”
“I know, I know. That’s why I wanted to get together tonight, I had to talk to somebody about this and you’re the only one I can tell. I’ve never been with a white guy before, you know that, it’s never been my thing. And you know how my people feel about the interracial thing. Alton’ll go ballistic when he finds out.”
“He doesn’t have to find out.” Alton was her brother, a head case who’d never outgrown his hatred of Whitey. “If you don’t see this Ben Sherman again.”
“I don’t think I can do that, just blow him off. I really do love him, Tam.”
“Great sex isn’t love. You’ve only known the guy two weeks.”
“It’s not just physical and it doesn’t matter how long I’ve known him. You’ve been there, you understand what I’m saying. Same feelings you had for Horace right from the first.”
Horace. Let’s not get started on Horace.
“What am I gonna do?” Vonda said.
“Got to be your decision, nobody else’s. Yours and Ben’s. What’s he say about it?”
“He says it doesn’t matter how other people feel, it only matters how we feel about each other.”
“Yeah, well, he’s right. But not a hundred percent right.”
“I know it.”
“Still got to do what your heart and your gut tell you to.”
“What would you do? I mean, suppose Horace was white. And Jewish.”
Horace again. “Well, he’s not.”
“Come on, Tam. Suppose he was. What would you do?”
“I don’t know,” Tamara said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Eastbound traffic on the Bay Bridge was still moderately heavy, even though it was nearly seven o’clock when Tamara drove up the ramp and joined the stream. The westbound upper deck and the bridge railings and girders created a tunnel effect that magnified car and tire sounds into a steady shushing hum. After a while it seemed almost like a whispering voice.
Saying Horace, Horace, Horace.
Get a grip, she thought. She would have turned on the radio and slipped in a CD, but there was something wrong with the volume control-you couldn’t turn it up past a low hum not much different from the one outside. Damn thing had worked fine before he left. Figured. His car. Ten-year-old Ford hatchback that he’d left with her because he hadn’t wanted to chance driving it all the way to Philadelphia in the middle of winter. Maybe it missed him too. Yeah, or it was just a sign of things going wrong, screwing up.
Vonda wasn’t the only one with a screwed-up love life. All God’s chillun got troubles and love troubles were high on the list. You could empathize with other people’s, but you couldn’t get too caught up in them when you had your own to deal with. Couldn’t give somebody else advice when you couldn’t advise yourself.
Three and a half months now since Horace had left for Philly. Got his gig with the philharmonic back there, second seat cello, doing fine. Living with one of the other black men on the orchestra, a violinist named Cedric. Settled in. Just as she was settled in: agency partnership, new offices, expanding caseload and all the details and decisions that were part of the package. She wasn’t going anywhere for a long time, if ever. And neither was Horace.
They talked on the phone once a week, exchanged e-mails, said all the right things about how much they missed each other and loved each other, made tentative plans to get together here or back east. But they still hadn’t done it. Something got in the way every time. And the phone calls were getting shorter because they didn’t seem to have as much to say to each other, couldn’t relate long distance to all the changes that made up their new, separate lives.
She’d known it would be this way. Three-thousand-mile relationships might work for a while, but without personal contact, days and nights together to pump some fresh blood into the relationship, it’s bound to start withering. Sooner or later it would wither past the point of saving. Just dry up and croak, like a plant without water.