“Oh.”
“I’m still working on it, though. I got a lead on a couple more guards who might know the truth about the assault charges.”
“You’re giving me hope, cuz. That’s all I got to live for in here.”
“Tell me, Kwame. What do you think you’d do if you got out?”
“I dunno. Wouldn’t go back to the old neighborhood, that’s for damn sure. If I did, I’d probably get lynched. I guess I’d have to change my name and move out of state. Maybe find a place in Brockton near my moms. Or go down to Alabama so I could be close to my brother.”
“How would you make a living?”
“Been thinking about that for a while. At first, I figured I could learn about computers. So I could fix ’em, maybe, or work someplace that makes ’em. But then I decided what I really want to do is go back to school and get a degree so I can teach black history to kids.”
Was Diggs’s grasp on reality that tenuous? Mason considered explaining why someone convicted of murdering two kids wasn’t ever going to get hired to teach them, but he decided to let Diggs find that out for himself.
“Do you think you’d ever hurt anybody again, Kwame?”
Felicia glanced up at Mason, frustrated that she could hear only his side of the conversation. Diggs rubbed his face and studied the ceiling, where he always looked for the answers to difficult questions.
“Tell me, cuz,” the prisoner finally said. “You ever think about killing somebody?”
“No.”
“What about fucking somebody up. Ever want to do that?”
“A few times, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Because they were giving me a hard time.”
“About what?”
“Let’s see… Last winter, I was in a bar in Newport, and a couple of drunks started making crude remarks to my date. When I asked them to stop, one of them pushed me.”
“I bet you wanted to shove a beer bottle up his ass. Am I right?”
“Not quite, but I did have an urge to punch him in the nose.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was afraid he and his buddy would gang up on me and beat me up. And I didn’t want to get arrested.”
“You controlled your anger and considered the consequences,” Diggs said, sounding like a parent administering a lesson.
“That’s right.”
“When I was a kid, I didn’t know how to do that. Whenever somebody disrespected me, I’d feel this rage boil up inside, and it wouldn’t go away until I hurt them back. But I’m a grown man now, cuz. I still get mad sometimes, but I’ve learned to control it. I understand now that there are better ways than killing to get even with the racists.”
“Like what?”
“Like educating people about black history, and voting for Obama, and giving money to the NAACP. When I was a kid, I thought like a young Malcolm X. Brother Malcolm said, ‘If someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.’ He also said, ‘When you drop violence on me, then you’ve made me go insane; and I’m not responsible for what I do.’ Now I’m down with Dr. King, who said, ‘Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.’ That was in one of them books you got me. When I get angry now, I just listen to those words inside my head.”
“What are you angry about now, Kwame?”
“I’m angry that the state of Rhode Island thinks it’s okay to make up shit to keep a black man locked up. If they was following the law, I’d have got out when I was twenty-one. I coulda had a life. A job. An education. Maybe a wife and kids. But when justice is perverted, tyranny prevails.”
Mason marveled that the same man who called him “cuz” could say things like “tyranny prevails.” He figured it was something else Diggs had read in one of his books.
“What the state is doing to you is illegal,” Mason said, “but if you’d gotten out at twenty-one, you would have done only six years for killing five people. Does that sound like justice to you?”
“Time’s up,” the guard shouted. “Phones down. Form a line at the door.”
Diggs fixed Mason with an angry glare, but it quickly vanished. His mouth curled into a sly smile.
“The bitch wants you, cuz. I been watching the way she keeps eyein’ you. If I was you, I would be so hitting that.”
In the prison parking lot, Felicia touched Mason on the arm and said, “Want to go for coffee?”
The touch, maddeningly brief, was better than the ones he’d imagined.
“Mason? Coffee?” Her hand brushed his arm again.
“I’d love to,” he said, hoping he hadn’t answered with an exclamation point.
“Caffe-Bon-Ami on Park Avenue?”
“Sounds good.”
“Meet me there in ten minutes, and you can fill me in on Diggs’s side of the conversation.”
Mason climbed in behind the wheel of the Prius and watched Felicia walk away in a black skirt that swung and swept her knees. When she disappeared around a corner, he flipped the visor down and checked his hair in the vanity mirror.
Then he opened his notebook and flipped to a page he’d starred in his notes: “I understand now that there are better ways than killing to get even with the racists.”
A slip of the tongue? A confession with an explanation? Next time, Mason thought, he’d have to ask Diggs about it.
At the coffee shop, Mason knew he was supposed to talk to Felicia about Diggs, but he was distracted by her perfume, a blend of wildflowers and spice. Every time she moved, the scent rose from her skin. And it had his name on it.
After they ordered-she liked her coffee sweet and black, the same way he did-Felicia reached across the booth and touched his arm again.
“Mason, what do you do when you’re not working?”
“I think about working.”
Felicia laughed.
“Oh, God, I’m the same way. Lately, I…” She hesitated, sipped from her cup. “You’re going to think this is really weird.”
“What?”
“I’ve caught myself pacing around my condo having full-fledged conversations about work… with myself… out loud.”
Mason chuckled.
“I’m not sure this is funny,” Felicia said. “It can’t be healthy.”
“In that case, I’m really in trouble,” Mason said. “I’ve been having late night conversations with another person… who’s not there.”
They were both laughing now.
“I hope it’s at least someone interesting. Bill Gates? Andrew Sullivan, maybe? Michelle Obama?”
“Actually, it’s you.”
She looked down and ran her fingers around the edge of her coffee cup.
“Mason?”
“Um?”
“That’s what I was hoping you were going to say.”
She raised her eyes and tossed a look that caused a warm glow to wash over him, a glow he hadn’t felt since Darcy Ames, the prettiest girl in the ninth grade, asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance.
“So what now?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve been telling myself that I don’t have time for a woman in my life right now. I’ve tried to stop thinking about you. But I can’t. I love how sensational you look when you dress down and don’t bother with makeup. I obsess about your green eyes and that ski-slope nose and that long neck I’ve been wanting to kiss. I love the way you sneak a look at me when you don’t think I notice. And the way my arm tingles when you touch me. Like you’re doing right now.”
Felicia leaned in, and they locked eyes.
“But we can’t get involved right now,” she said.
“No, we can’t. Not until Kwame’s situation is resolved. It would be a conflict of interest.”
“For both of us,” Felicia said.