Clay scanned the right-hand story above the fold: Alphonse Hill, D.C.’s deputy mayor, had resigned amidst allegations of receiving kickbacks from an out-of-town contractor. Three months earlier, Ivanhoe Donaldson, the mayor’s longtime right-hand man, pleaded guilty to stealing almost two hundred grand in city funds and to tax evasion. Donaldson drew seven years in a minimum-security Virginia prison.
Clay sighed, folded the newspaper, turned to the man on his right. “How’s it goin’?”
The man looked over, hesitantly said, “Pretty good.”
Clay had broken the Metro rule: no eye contact, no conversation with strangers. Especially not between the races.
Clay said, “Good book?”
“Great.”
“Looks very exciting,” said Clay. “It truly does.”
Clay left the train, got up on the street. He went down to the Superior Court building at 5th and Indiana, had a seat on the edge of a concrete planter, kept an eye on the main doors. Elaine would be coming through one of those doors any minute. He knew she’d be rushing out, like clockwork, to pick up Marcus Jr. at the play-school or the child-development center or whatever fancy name they were calling it this week.
Teenage boys were being hurried along by their mothers or their aunts, who scolded them or looked stone-faced ahead as they walked, the boys trying to maintain the Scowl. Older dudes, waiting for their hearings or to testify, or here to pick up buddies or relatives, stood around smoking cigarettes. Lawyers, rumpled Criminal Justice Act types, stood outside, smoking as well.
Elaine was one of the CJA attorneys, court-appointed lawyers, the ones they called the Fifth Streeters. She never looked rumpled, though, not like the others. And she didn’t have the buttoned-to-the-neck business look that so many women felt they had to adopt these days. Clay saw women all over town, looked like they had doilies hanging off the front of their dresses; Karras called them their clown outfits. None of that bib and bow tie stuff for Elaine. Elaine always looked like a woman. She always looked fine.
Yeah, Elaine would be coming out that door any second. It was different now, not like before the separation, when she used to work those crazy hours, expecting him to drop everything to pick up M.J., expecting him to leave his business while she managed her caseload. That had been one of the problems between them. One of many, and then Clay had done that Big Thing that had severed it between him and Elaine.
Here she was now.
And damn, she did look fine. Elaine wore a two-piece rust-colored suit, the skirt clinging to those long, muscular legs of hers, the jacket over a cream silk blouse. She was some kind of woman, all woman, taller than the man she walked with, some slick dude in pinstripes, powder blue shirt with white Peter Pan collar — Clay hated that elegant-running-to-dandy look — soft leather loafers on his feet.
Clay stood up, got in their path. Elaine saw him, frowned, then smiled cordially. He walked up to the two of them.
“Elaine.”
“Marcus.”
Clay cupped his hand around her arm, kissed her check. She took the kiss, pulled her arm away from his touch.
“This is Marcus,” said Elaine. “Marcus, meet Eric Williamson.”
“Marcus Clay.” He shook Williamson’s hand, released it quickly. Man had a conk, Clay couldn’t believe it, and a weak-ass mustache. He turned to Elaine. “How you doin’?”
“I’m doing well.”
“Thought we might, I don’t know, get a cup of coffee or somethin’.”
“Can’t, Marcus. Got to pick up Marcus Jr.”
“Maybe I can ride uptown with you. I’m on foot, see—”
“I don’t think so, Marcus.”
Clay put his hand back on her arm.
“Marcus, don’t.”
Williamson said to Elaine, “You all right?”
Clay felt the warmth of blood in his face. He balled his fist, then relaxed it as he took a breath.
“I’m fine,” said Elaine. “Really, Eric.”
Clay stepped between Williamson and Elaine. As he did, he put the heel of his shoe on the toe of Williamson’s thin loafer. Clay put all his weight on the heel.
“Ow!” said Williamson.
Clay stepped off and smiled. Clay said, “You all right?”
“Marcus, please,” said Elaine. She bit down on her lip. “Look, Eric... I’ll see you on Monday, okay?”
Williamson gave Clay a short look. He said to Elaine, “Okay. You have a good one.” He walked away.
Elaine got close to Clay’s face, spoke firmly. “Marcus, what the hell do you think—”
“Just wanted to see you is all. Didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of your pretty friend.”
“My friends aren’t pretty, Marcus. We’re all just doing a job down here, tryin’ to defend these people got no one else.”
“Save it, baby.”
“And, oh, because my friend is a professional, because he wears a suit, now he’s pretty.”
“French cuffs... man had a conk and shit. That ain’t pretty? Man walkin’ around lookin’ like the whole DeBarge family put together.”
“Look, Marcus...” Elaine waved a hand in front of her face. “You’re not making any sense. This makes no sense. Listen, I’ve got to go.” She walked off.
Clay said, “Elaine! When am I going to see M.J.?”
“Call me,” she said, and kept right on stepping in that sure way of hers. He watched her disappear into the crowd.
Clay stood there for a few more minutes, just shaking his head, thinking how funny it was: Once you fuck up, seems you can’t stop fuckin’ up to save your life.
Anthony Taylor watched the last few minutes of the Alabama/Xavier game on the old set he had on the dresser up in his room. Above his dresser hung a Day-Glo Globe concert poster advertising a D.C. Scorpio show coming to town; Bobby Bennett had been talkin’ about that show on the radio for a long time. Anthony had ripped the poster off a telephone pole at 14th and Fairmont.
With 3:10 left to play, it looked like Alabama had it in the bag. He watched it through the end, though, just to see the highlights of the Maryland game earlier in the day, Lenny Bias taking it to the hole against Pepperdine. There he was, too, Number 34. Pretty as shit the way he elevated, and stayed elevated, all the way to the dunk.
Anthony shut off the TV. He went over to his dresser, picked up the letter that had come in the mail that day from his moms, read it over again for the third time. The letter started the usual way, talkin’ about how his mother was looking for a job, how the girls were doing good, how it got warmer earlier in the year in Georgia and how it got greener down there than it ever did in D.C. “Maybe when school lets out you can come on down, spend the summer with me and your sisters.” Spend the summer, the letter said, not come down to live for good.
Anthony knew there wasn’t no room for the four of them in his great-uncle’s house, a three-bedroom place on some farmland out in Fulton County. No room and never enough money. That’s how his mother had explained it when she had left town with his two baby sisters a year ago, left him with her mother, a woman he had always called Granmom. Anyway, she said, he was settled here in D.C., it would do him more harm than good to take him out of his school, pull him away from his friends and the teachers he knew. That’s what she told him, and that’s how it played out. He didn’t argue with his mother. His mother had been on welfare and she’d got to using the checks to buy drugs. The drugs had made her skinny and sick. The last time Anthony’d seen her, she looked like forty years old, and she wasn’t no more than twenty-eight, twenty-nine. He understood that she needed to get away from the District, start fresh, get herself well.