“Why else would somebody beg on the street?”
“To save souls and redeem karma.”
They left the building together and walked up Broadway toward Houston Street. Just before crossing Prince, Frankie stopped and turned around, pretending to be looking in the window of a little perfume boutique.
“Stand in front of me, Al,” she whispered forcefully. “Stand in front of me. Not there. On the other side.”
Albert did as she said and looked around.
Coming toward them were two burly white guys in jeans and white T-shirts. They had crew cuts and tattoos. They were the kind of men that Albert had learned to avoid on streets and back alleys.
One of the men looked at Albert as he passed.
Albert smiled, and the white man sneered.
“Are they gone?” Frankie asked.
“Yeah.”
They stopped outside the entrance to the F train near Broadway and Houston.
“Who were those guys?”
“Toad Boy and Westerling,” she said.
“They got a problem with you?”
“When the police asked me where they were, I told ’em — because they killed my friend Bobby. I guess the case fell through.”
“What’ll happen if they see you?”
“You might have to start begging full time.”
Nine days later Albert and Frankie were sitting in her makeshift apartment eating a dish she called Yankee stew. It had potatoes and beef and a good amount of beer in it.
“I like you, Al,” Frankie said as they ate.
“Me too. I mean, I like you too.”
“Is there anything you want from me?”
“You already gimme a job and a place to stay.”
“I’ve played this game with a lotta guys. All of them have tried to get in my pants at least once. I never let ’em. You’re the first one didn’t want it. Are you gay?”
“No.”
“Don’t like white girls?”
“I would like one thing from you, Frankie.”
“What’s that?”
“Could you... would you let me... let me call you Alyce?”
“Alyce?”
“Yeah. I used to know a girl by that name when I was in college...”
“You went to college?”
“I loved her so hard, and when she left my heart broke, and it never got better until I met you.”
“You fell in love with me?”
“You took her place, kind of,” he said. “You don’t look like her, but you have the same spirit. If I could call you Alyce that would mean a whole lot to me.”
“You’d rather that than lay up in my bed?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” she said, bewilderment in her tone. “OK. I guess it could be like our little nickname.”
That night Albert reclined on his futon feeling like he’d passed into a new land, a new place. There was a woman like Alyce who didn’t mind being called by that name.
He was smiling and sober and hopeful for something he could not quite imagine.
Through his window he could see the crescent moon. Then a loud banging from the hall brought him to his feet.
The footsteps passed his door and continued down toward Alyce’s room.
He came out into the hall and saw the backs of two men. They had crew cuts, T-shirts, and tattoos.
“What do you want?” Albert demanded.
The white men turned.
“This ain’t your business,” either Toad Boy or Westerling said. “We just want the bitch.”
Albert surged forward throwing his fists, getting hit twice for every blow he delivered. He pushed and fought and struggled in the narrow passage. The men hit him, and he felt pain, but it was like a far-off experience, like the memory held in an untouched bruise.
He felt something hard strike the side of his head and fell, happy to give in to the pull of gravity. Someone kicked him in the chest, then in the head. They kept up like that for thirty seconds or so.
Albert expected even more punishment, but there was a shot and then another shot.
“Let’s get outta here!” one of the men shouted.
After the third shot the same man squealed in pain.
By then Albert was on his back looking up at the ceiling. Alyce ran by and was gone for a minute, maybe two.
Albert closed his eyes for a moment.
“Are you all right?” Frankie, no, Alyce, asked.
Albert opened his eyes, caught a glimpse of his friend, and then passed out.
He woke up in a hospital bed feeling surprisingly healthy. His jaw hurt, as did his side. He turned his head and saw a middle-aged black woman sitting in a chair. She was heavy but not fat, wearing a gray dress and holding a dark blue purse.
“Al?” she said.
“Lu?”
“Baby, I was worried that you were gonna die lyin’ right here next to me.”
“What happened?”
“Somebody called the police and told them that you was all beat up in this buildin’. They came and found you. You had my name and address in an old alligator wallet. The cops said there was the smell of gunpowder in the air. But you didn’t have no gunshot wound.”
“It was only me?” Albert Roundhouse asked.
Nodding, Luellen said, “The police wanna question you.”
The interrogation lasted an hour or so. The men who broke into Albert’s illegal squat were named Toad Boy and Westerling. They kicked the shit out of him, and then there were shots. He didn’t know if anyone else lived on that floor. He’d only happened upon the place that day.
The hospital discharged Albert when he told them that he didn’t have insurance.
His sister offered to fly him back to Los Angeles.
“I’d like to go back to school, Lu,” he said. “I’d like to study history and find out what really happened with Great-Uncle Big Jim and the town of Hickton, Mississippi.
“You can come live with me,” she said. “Daddy got sick after Betty Pann died. He bought a house in LA, and I took care of him till he passed.”
“I have eighty-three thousand two hundred ninety-seven dollars and forty-two cents,” Albert said.
“You do? Where you get that?”
“The money I collected while saving souls. I can give it to you, and then I won’t be a charity case.”
Starting Over
As I do almost every day, I’m starting over again, again. Now that I’ve passed the sixty-year mark, it seems as if each day is a new passage, a more deeply felt loss, or some unexpected plateau achieved.
When I was younger, life was a self-contained ebb and flow, as predictable as the tides under Luna. Breakfast and a drive, work from nine to five, the children as they became enthralled with one activity and then moved on without warning to new interests. Back then their lives changed daily, while Marguerite and I remained the same for them, even when we were lying, even when we feigned feelings and interest. She loved the children, and they her and me, and I loved the kids and her too. My feelings in the early days did not waver, not even when Marguerite and Gary Knowles ran away together and she was gone for twenty-three days while I was left alone to care for Juan, Alexander, and Trish.
I told the kids that Marguerite had gone back east because her mother was sick. The sanatorium, I said, was in a place where telephones didn’t work. I didn’t know that Gary had left Marguerite a week into their flight. He just needed somebody to help him out of the jam of his life: his alcoholic wife, their angry children, and the mounds of debt. He didn’t know that he was using my wife, and she couldn’t see past the euphoria of a world without whining children and a commonplace husband plucked off the rack.
“Jared?” she said, on that first call after she’d left me and he’d left her.