Three-Fifths: A Novel

by John Vercher

Genres: Noir; Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

Pittsburgh, 1995. The son of a Black father he’s never known, and a white mother he sometimes wishes he didn’t, twenty-two year-old Bobby Saraceno has passed for white his entire life. Raised by his bigoted maternal grandfather, Bobby has hidden the truth about his identity from everyone, even his best friend and fellow comic-book geek, Aaron, who has just returned home from prison a newly radicalized white supremacist. Bobby’s disparate worlds crash when, during the night of their reunion, Bobby witnesses Aaron mercilessly assault a young Black man. Fearing for his safety and his freedom, Bobby must keep the secret of his mixed race from Aaron and conceal his unwitting involvement in the crime from the police. But Bobby’s delicate house of cards crumbles when his father enters his life after more than twenty years, forcing his past to collide with his present.

Three-Fifths is a story of secrets, identity, violence, and obsession, with a tragic conclusion that leaves all involved questioning the measure of a man. The book was inspired by the author’s own experiences with identity as a biracial man during his time as a student in the nineties, amidst the simmering racial tension of the L.A. Riots and the O.J. Simpson trial.

Release date: November 4, 2025

Publisher: Celadon Books

Print pages: 222

Sample

CHAPTER
ONE

March 1995

T he dumpsters stunk of half-eaten food and the sweet sour of stale beer. Streetlamps lit snowflakes that hovered in the stillness like trapped fireflies. The cold air stiffened Bobby’s lungs and he fought back a wheeze. He tucked his cigarette behind his ear, took a hit from his inhaler, then lit up. The sulfur from the match pierced his nose and made his eyes water. He wiped the blurriness away and saw through the fence surrounding the dock that someone was on the other side.

“Who the hell is that?” Bobby asked Luis.

Luis shrugged. Bobby moved closer, fingers through the chain link. A large white man sat on the edge of a red pickup bed in the shadows between the streetlights. Thick arms wrapped around his knees, which he pulled into his chest.

Bobby and Luis traded nervous glances. He felt at the knot of cash in his pocket and gave Luis the once-over. The scrawny fry cook stood a head shorter than Bobby and a good twenty pounds lighter. No help there if whoever this guy was decided to make a move.

“You want to go back in through the front?” Bobby asked Luis.

“Nah, my car is parked back here. Whatever, man, don’t be a pussy.”

Bobby flashed his middle finger. Fuck it, if he isn’t scared … He pushed and the gate creaked open. The man’s head popped up. He jumped down from the bed of the truck.

Bobby and Luis paused, then continued on, keeping their distance while trying to appear that they weren’t. Show no fear, but don’t look at him, either. He gave the guy a quick nod and watched from the corner of his eye as the stranger held his hands out, confused.

Luis and Bobby walked faster.

“Yo, Bobby,” someone called out from behind. “Where you going?”

Bobby slid to a stop. When he turned, his mouth fell open and his cigarette stuck to the inside of his lip. Aaron had shaved his head completely. His pale arms were covered in tattoos, their designs obscured in the darkness. He sparked his lighter and the flame illuminated his face, revealing a topography of violence past. A raised scar ran across the bottom of his eye, another on his lip curved up toward his nose. Bobby wanted to look away, but instead squinted for a better look. Aaron snapped the lighter shut, throwing his face back into the shadows.

“Holy shit,” Bobby said. “Look at this Hulked-out motherfucker.”

Aaron smiled a mouthful of large, bright-white teeth. Bobby jerked his chin back in surprise. Aaron tightened his smile, covering his teeth with his lips.

“Get your narrow ass over here,” Aaron said. He held his arms out and Bobby walked into Aaron’s tight embrace. Bobby gave him a couple of hard slaps to the back to get him to let go but Aaron squeezed harder. He stunk of beer and body odor. Aaron kissed the top of his head. Bobby pulled away and Aaron looked him in the eyes.

“I missed you, man,” he said.

“All right, all right,” Bobby said. He pushed Aaron off and laughed. “Let go of me, you queer.”

“Hey, fuck off with that shit,” Aaron said. He gave Bobby a playful shove. Bobby caught a look behind Aaron’s half-hearted smile and remembered that first day in the visitor’s center. Stupid. He opened his mouth to apologize when Luis called to him from the open driver’s side door of his car. 

“Bobby! 

you tomorrow?”

Bobby gave a dismissive wave. Luis hissed through his teeth and got in. Aaron took unsteady steps back to his truck where an empty six-pack container sat next to another half-empty one in the bed. Aaron sat on the edge and traced the toe of his boot in the snow. Bobby sat next to him as Luis drove off.

“Hanging with the beaners, now?” Aaron said.

“Luis? He’s okay,” Bobby said. He elbowed Aaron in the arm. “One of the good ones, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

Bobby stopped smiling. Aaron winked at him and elbowed him back.

“Three years!” Bobby shouted, and smacked him on the shoulder. “Jesus, kid, it’s good to see you.”

Aaron laughed and reached back to hand Bobby a beer. He pushed it back toward him. “Still, huh?” he asked. Bobby nodded. “You’re finally old enough, man. We didn’t even get to celebrate.”

“I’m good, man. You know that.”

“Come on, one won’t kill you. Three years, you said it yourself. How many times do I get out of prison?”

“Hopefully just this once.”

“Exactly. So throw one back with me, huh? Besides, alcoholism isn’t genetic, man.”

“Are you retarded? Yes, it is.”

“Really? How about that.”

Aaron chugged his beer and sent the empty sailing into the lower parking lot where it shattered into musical shards. Now under the streetlight, Bobby studied Aaron’s face. His nose appeared to have been broken more than once and the scar under his eye was raised and swollen, as if someone had stitched it together with barbed wire. There was something more than the physical damage to his face. A veneer of sadness, of pained and disingenuous smiles. He picked at the label on a fresh bottle. Bobby squeezed his shoulder and gave him a shake.

“You all right, kid?” Bobby asked.

“Don’t I look it?” Another tight smile.

Bobby shrugged. “Eh. Kind of.” He patted the

 truck. “This is a beauty, by the way.”

“The old man had it waiting for me. A welcome home present.”

“That’s a hell of a present.”

“Said I earned it.”

They laughed. Aaron hadn’t earned much of anything as long as they’d known each other. His father was an investment banker and a major donor to the campaigns of local government officials. Father and son took great advantage of the resulting perks. Speeding tickets disappeared. Arrests for shoplifting comic books erased from permanent records.

Then possession with intent to distribute. A third strike. And he had mouthed off to the judge. Long, hard time awaited.

And yet, only three years. Membership had its benefits.

“Look, I’m happy to see you and all, but it’s fucking freezing out here. Let’s go somewhere, and give me them keys because you’re already wrecked.”

“Just a couple more minutes, all right?” Aaron closed his eyes and took a deep inhale. “I’ve been indoors for over a thousand days. This air feels so good, man. Even when they let us in the yard, the air there felt different. Like when it passed through the fence, it got dirty.” He brushed snow off the side rail of the truck bed. “This thing felt like a coffin on the way over here. Hell, you want it? You can have it.”

A few of the guys in the kitchen were on work release or parole. Russell, the general manager, had done time when he was younger. He often told the story of how he made it, how he got out, and how he wouldn’t let them make the same mistakes twice. “You have to understand that this system is designed to keep you young bucks in it. Once you got that label, that prison stink on you? You never really have a shot after that. Especially not when you look like us. They’ll look for any reason to put you back inside. Can’t pay your court fees because that job keeping the walk-in clean only pays minimum wage? Back in. Get caught hanging with one of your homies who caught a charge, too? Back in. You young brothers have less than half a chance. People will talk to you about accountability, tell you that you have none. That you have a commitment to that life. If you keep going back in, that might end up being the case. If you’re in long enough, if the things that happen to you are bad enough, you don’t know what to do with yourself on the outside, that even though you tell yourself differently, that there’s no way you ever want to go back, it becomes the only home you know."

tations. Invariably, the cops would show up and haul one of Russell’s pet projects out the front door, leaving Russell standing in the doorway, shaking his head. But as Bobby sat on the edge of that truck and watched Aaron chew at his nails, some of what Russell said resonated. Aaron was no long-timer, but the life he’d led before prison had been easy. Problems of his own making disappeared with a phone call from his father to the right people. Maybe now, back in the world, Aaron realized he had gotten used to the dirty air of incarceration. Maybe that world, in some way, held more comfort for him than this one. It seemed so irrational and yet there it was.

Bobby shrugged off the thought and held his hand out for the keys. They climbed into the truck. When Bobby reached down to adjust his seat, his hand brushed against something rough. He pulled out a brick, broken at the edges.

“They teach you masonry in the joint?” Bobby forced a laugh, but Aaron didn’t reciprocate. He took the brick from Bobby and set it on the floor next to his beers. “Seriously. What’s that for?”

“You remember that little mini-bat I used to keep under my seat in case shit went sideways?” Bobby nodded. “There was a pile of these broken bricks by a dumpster outside the prison so I grabbed one. Not everyone out here is going to be as happy as you are to see me.”

“Yeah, all right, I get it, I guess. But a brick?”

“Until I get a gun, yeah.”

“O-kay, tough guy.”

Aaron stayed silent. They shut the doors and Bobby started the truck. Again, Aaron pulled his knees into his chest. The tight space in the truck made him turtle in on himself. For all of his new bulk, inked skin, and scars, he was an anxious mess. He was scared.

“Man, you weren’t kidding, huh? You sure you’re all right?”

Aaron reached for the radio. The insides of Bobby’s ears tensed, steeling for the bass-heavy hip-hop Aaron loved to torture him with whenever he drove him to school.

Instead, classical music filtered through the speakers. Aaron let his knees go. He stopped gnawing at his nails and relaxed into his seat. Bobby flashed him a side-eye. Aaron laughed.

“Okay, okay,” he said.

“Look, if there’s something you need to tell me…” Bobby said.

“Take it easy. There’s a reason, I swear.”

“I can’t wait to hear this.”

Bobby shook his head and pulled the truck out onto McKnight Road. The light dusting of snow slithered back and forth on the street behind the cars in front of them like phantom snakes, and the heat of the defroster made the wipers drag and groan across the warmed windshield. They stopped at a traffic light and the piece ended. The public radio station delivered a newsbreak.

“I’m so sick of this trial,” Bobby said. “I don’t even have a television and I still can’t get away from it.” Aaron gave a little laugh but kept staring out his window. “I mean, you should hear the guys in the kitchen, just swearing he’s not guilty. Like they win something if he walks. It’s fucking crazy.” Bobby watched Aaron for a response, but nothing. “Oh, now you go quiet? You better say something, because right now I feel like you’re going to like flip out and murder me, like Colonel Mustard, with a brick, in the red pickup.”

Aaron faced him and squinted. “You think I’d hurt you?”

“No, no, I’m kidding. Kind of. You’re just kind of hammered already, which is cool, you should be, totally, but we’re listening to this sad old-people music and now you got arms as big as my legs and you don’t even talk like you used to and, fuck, man, I don’t know what to think.”

“How did I talk before?”

“Come off it, man. That yo-yo wannabe Black shit. You know.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. He puffed his cheeks and breathed out through pursed lips. “Okay, so the music. I got a library detail when I first went in. You remember how skinny I was. After—”

He stopped. Bobby glanced away from the road and toward Aaron. Headlights from a car in the opposite lane illuminated his face. His wet eyes glistened.

“After it happened, they thought I’d be safer working there. There was this section where you could actually listen to CDs. Nothing but classical, though. Nothing aggressive. No metal. Definitely no rap. But then I read in one of the books there—”

“They got you to read? Maybe this wasn’t so bad for you after all,” Bobby said, smacking him on the shoulder. Aaron glared and Bobby cleared his throat.

“I found out that a bunch of this shit actually caused riots the first time they played them. That’s a trip, right?” 

re this story was headed. He nodded an answer to Aaron’s question and longed for the quiet about which he had just complained.

“What was I going to do?” Aaron said. “I was just this kid, scared shitless. I never slept, and even when I’d pass out from exhaustion, the slightest sound made me jump. So I’d find a corner in the library stacks and just listen over and over again until I had to go back to my cell. And I waited for the end of the week when I’d see you.” He fidgeted again and cracked open another beer. He finished in five fast swallows.

“It didn’t take me long to memorize the movements of the pieces. I hummed the songs to myself to fall asleep. The first night it worked, the night I got my first hour of real sleep, it was the night before you visited.”

He stopped. He twisted his hands around his beer bottle like a wet rag. “It was just a beating the first time. That’s what got me the library duty. The night before you visited … Bobby, I tried to fight him, I swear I did, but he was so strong. He bashed my head against the wall of the cell and my body wouldn’t listen anymore. At least not to me. All I could do was try to make the music loud enough in my head to drown out the sounds. It didn’t work.

“Later in the infirmary, it did, though. While they stitched me up, my brain kept trying to make me relive what he did to me, kept repeating how he told me that this was just the start, that the others would have their turn after he ‘broke me in.’ So I hummed while the doc went to work on me. I remember how she looked at me, like, how could I be humming after all of that. It was the only thing that kept me from opening my wrists up with the teeth I had left.”

Bobby curled his hands around the steering wheel until the leather creaked and blinked away the burning in his eyes. He couldn’t shake the vivid image of Aaron’s violation. He remembered Aaron on the other side of the visitor’s window, just hours separated from the incident, and now he understood why Aaron had never wanted him to return. They had broken far more than his face.

“Aaron … I’m so sorry.”

“Did you put me in that cell?” Bobby shook his head. “Then don’t be sorry.” Aaron looked out his window again and Bobby reached for his shoulder, but pulled back, not sure why he had done either.

Aaron shook off his reverie and slapped his cheeks. “Sucked they didn’t have any comics in the library,” he said with a belch. “You got a lot to catch me up on. But they kept me on library detail and I did read. Just fiction and stuff at first. Anything to get out of my head, you know? But then I got some assignments. I had to start reading language, world history, all kinds of stuff.”

“Assignments? What do you mean?”

“Your last name means ‘of a swarthy complexion’ in Sicilian,” Aaron said. “Did you know that?”

What the hell was he talking about? Who gave him an assignment?

Aaron cracked his last beer. Bobby accelerated.

The truck hurtled past Duquesne and Bobby glanced across the river to the Incline, the tracks lit by a row of white bulbs on each side. None of this fit. Bobby envisioned the day Aaron would get out countless times, but when he did, he’d had in his head a different scene altogether. They’d fall right back into their old rhythm. Bobby would make fun of DC comics. Aaron would make fun of Marvel. They’d revel in their mutual hatred of Image. Bobby would bitch at Aaron for his shitty taste in music. Aaron would make fun of Bobby’s shitty clothes. They’d compare shitty family lives. They’d have three years back. Instant happiness, just add water.

They joked, they laughed, but it was hollow, wrong. Aaron was different and it went beyond physical change, the bulking up. That much made sense. Even beyond the music, the tattoos, and the way he talked, something else hovered, dimming the light that once radiated from him. His smiles tight, as though they weren’t allowed.

Bobby had to change that. No matter what had happened to him, his best friend was home. Aaron still needed his help, but not like when they were kids. This was different. Bobby didn’t know if he could fix this. They hit Forbes Avenue. The Cathedral of Learning stood, a beacon in the distance.

“Where are we going, anyway?” Bobby asked.

“Oh shit, yeah, North Oakland,” he said. “Got someone I need to meet up with tonight.”

“Just got out and you’re back at it already?”

“No, it’s not like that. I promised somebody I’d check in on someone. Stay with him for a bit.”

 to you, a cell would be like a resort in comparison.” Aaron laughed. “So what do you want to do, man? We don’t have to go there just yet, right? You’re out!”

“I’m fucking starving,” he said. “Oh, shit. Let’s hit the dirty ‘O’.”

Bobby groaned. Aaron knew he hated the Original Hot Dog Shop. It was the only place open after the bars let out. Drunken college kids and gangbangers from the nearby neighborhoods swarmed for forties, five-dollar pizzas, and bags of greasy fries as big as a grown man’s head. But the streets of Oakland were near empty. The college kids had gone home for spring break. It was the last place he wanted to go, but Aaron seemed so excited. He had always lived for their food, especially drunk, which he was, and Bobby imagined how good it might taste for him tonight of all nights.

“Fuck. Okay.”

“Really?”

“I know I’m going to regret it, but yeah, let’s do it. You said it yourself. How many times is my best friend going to get out of prison? Those fries are going to mess up your new girlish figure, though.”

“Fucking A,” he said. The smile now big, his eyes tight and bright.

Bobby parked on Bouquet less than a half block back from the corner where the “O” sat. Light from the neon sign filled the truck and bathed them both in red. Aaron opened his door, but Bobby stayed put.

“What are you doing?” Aaron said.

“It’s freezing,” Bobby said. “Get what you want, I’ll keep the truck running.”

“Okay. While I’m in there, I’ll see if they have pads in the bathroom for your vagina.”

“Oh, fuck you, man.” Bobby turned off the engine.

“Atta boy.”

The air inside tasted like the bathrooms looked to Bobby. As much as he wanted to do this for Aaron, his Spider-sense tingled and he wanted to go back to the truck even more. Then he saw why.

Two young Black men sat at a table near the counter. One had his head down, an almost empty forty at his elbow. He wore a blue stocking cap and a thick blue flannel coat, a uniform Bobby knew far too well in Homewood. The other heaped fries into his mouth and sucked down pop from a plastic thirty-two-ounce cup. No colors on him. Only a tan sweatshirt with a lined hood and dark blue jeans. He appeared younger than both Bobby and Aaron, but he eyed the two of them hard as soon as they walked in. Under the fluorescent lights Bobby saw clearly for the first time that night what doubtless the kid did, too.

Aaron’s tattoos.

Double lightning bolts on his shoulders. An Iron Eagle where his collar bones met.

Spiderwebs on both elbows.

“Jesus,” Bobby whispered to himself.

Bobby stood behind Aaron as he ordered at the register. He heard the kid at the table suck his teeth in disgust.

“Some mark-ass busters up in this piece tonight,” he said. Bobby pretended not to hear and stole what he thought was a surreptitious look over his shoulder. The kid met his eyes before Bobby spun his head forward again. “Yeah, you hear me talking.”

Bobby stared at Aaron’s wide back. Aaron either didn’t hear or didn’t care and continued placing their order.

“Where you get them spiderwebs, huh?” the kid asked Aaron. “In the joint, right? Guess you a hard rock.”

Aaron turned and grinned.

Don’t smile, please don’t smile. Why the fuck are you smiling?

He backhand slapped Bobby on the stomach.

“Got to piss” he said. “Be right back.”

“What? No. Don’t leave, don’t leave, don’t leave—” but Aaron walked off. The old man behind the counter scooped floppy fries into a white bag until it wouldn’t close, dotting it with translucent grease spots. Bobby darted quick glances over his shoulder to see if the kid was still watching.

He was. His boy next to him remained half-conscious, but stirred. Aaron came back from the bathroom as the old man slid the pizza and fries across the counter.

“We good? Can we go now?” Bobby said.

“What, we’re not gonna eat here?” 

“Relax. Pay and let’s go.”

“Very funny,” Bobby said as he slid his money across the counter.

“Bitch-ass motherfucker,” the kid said to Aaron.

Aaron laughed. A chair scraped against the floor. The kid was right behind them. He was taller than Aaron, but slender. His face was lean, the skin pulled tight on the bone beneath.

Bobby’s heart pounded and the familiar pressure of an approaching asthma attack filled the space in his chest.

“I say something funny?” the kid said to the back of Aaron’s head. Aaron turned, food in hand, and looked up at the kid. “What?” the kid said. “Yeah, I know what those tattoos mean, and no, I’m not scared of you. Y’all lucky my boy sleeping.” He popped his shoulders at Aaron.

Aaron didn’t flinch and maintained his goofy grin.

“Excuse us, please,” Aaron said. He sidestepped the kid and Bobby followed close. Thank Christ. They headed for the door.

“That’s what I thought,” the kid said. “Get the hell up out of here.”

So close. They were almost out.

Aaron’s hand was on the handle. He let go and turned back to the dining room. He put his tongue inside his upper lip and made monkey noises while he gave the kid the finger. Bobby pushed him out, but he already heard the footsteps behind them.

Aaron walked and Bobby shoved him again to rush him toward the truck. He took a few running steps then slowed again while he pushed a handful of fries into his mouth. The door of the “O” flung open and slammed off the wall.

“You got jokes, huh?” the kid shouted. He ran at them. Bobby tried to take off but the sidewalk was slippery and he nearly fell. The kid caught up to Bobby and grabbed the collar of his jacket. Bobby yelled for Aaron, who now was running for the truck. Bobby panicked at Aaron’s sudden cowardice, frightened he’d leave him to get pummeled or worse. Bobby pulled free of the kid’s grasp and bolted for the driver’s side of the truck. He jumped in and swung the door shut. The kid pounded on his window. Bobby started the truck, ready to floor it when he turned and saw Aaron wasn’t there, just the pizza box and fries spilled out across the seat. He looked up and saw Aaron cross in front of the headlights, heading for the kid. The kid backed away from Bobby’s window and motioned for Aaron to bring it. Bobby yelled for Aaron to stop, to get back in the truck. Then he saw the brick in his hand.

Brick cracked bone and the kid collapsed, a marionette with cut strings. Bobby heard his head smack against the sidewalk. He pressed his palms to the window, breath fogging the glass. He pulled back to wipe away the haze.

Deep lines cleaved the flesh of the boy’s face, bloodless, until his mouth opened, gaping and silent. Then blood poured out of every cut. His boots churned the snow to dirty slush as he writhed. He moaned, quietly at first, then louder, like an approaching siren. His arms trembled as he tried desperately to push himself up from the pavement. Bobby went to open his door, but he had locked it in his panic. As he found the switch and pulled on the handle, Aaron threw open the passenger door. Bobby jumped. Aaron dropped his brick on the floor in front of him.

“Go, go, go,” he said.

Aaron panted, but his voice was calm. His breath stunk of beer. Bobby forgot he’d already started the truck and the engine’s insides scraped when he turned the key again.

The tires screeched as he took the corner onto Forbes Avenue. Aaron squeezed Bobby’s knee. “Slow down.”

Aaron craned to look out the rear window while Bobby watched the rearview. The police station across the street often kept an empty patrol car parked outside as a deterrent. As they passed, the car didn’t move. No lights. No sirens. Bobby took a last look back and saw the door of the Original open before the neon lights disappeared from view.

“Jesus, Aaron, what the fuck did you do?” Bobby said. His breaths got shorter and his chest tingled, his asthma forming an iron maiden around his airways, the spikes poking at his lungs. The deeper he inhaled, the harder it got to take another breath. He wheezed, reached inside his front jacket pocket and grabbed his inhaler, but dropped it on the floor. Aaron picked it up and held it out to him. The blood on his fingers smeared on the plastic case and Bobby wondered if it was Aaron’s or the kid’s. He stared at the inhaler in Aaron’s outstretched hand. Aaron saw the blood and wiped it off with the hem of his white ribbed tank top.

“Shit,” he said. “Sorry. Fuck, I got it on your pants, too.”

When he handed it back, the periphery of Bobby’s vision had already begun to blacken. He snatched it and took a deep puff. Aaron popped open the 

 glove compartment and grabbed a pack of smokes. He held one out for Bobby while he pushed the lighter in on the console. Bobby reached for it and pinched it between his dried lips.

“Fuck, man,” Bobby said. “What did you do? What did you do?”

“You’re going to miss the turn. Up here.”

The lighter popped. Aaron and Bobby reached for it at the same time but Aaron let him take it. Maybe if he jammed it into Aaron’s cheek, or better yet his eye, something soft and painful, whatever would give him enough time to get away, he’d jump out of the truck and let it swerve into a pole while he ran off into the night. He could hide out in St. Paul’s Cathedral and call the police.

And tell them what?

Tell them he took off and left some kid for dead, and by the way, the maniac that did it, he was too drunk to drive himself away from the scene of the crime, so guess who took care of that for him? They’d lock him up, too, and he’d end up looking like Aaron did the day he went to visit him or worse yet, he’d get his skull smashed to shit like that kid he just left back there squirming on the sidewalk.

That kid. Jesus, that was someone’s kid. Eighteen. Nineteen, maybe? Wouldn’t see his next birthday. Probably wouldn’t see tomorrow.

Bobby imagined the boy’s mother. The police knocking on her door to tell her someone had caved her son’s head in with a brick and left him to die on the street. He thought of his own mother, Isabel, imagined her wails of grief, but all he could hear were the boy’s moans, and her imagined cries and his real ones sounded like “why.”

“You missed it,” Aaron said. Bobby blinked back a tear. “Take the next left.”

The lighter wobbled as Bobby brought it to the tip of his cigarette. Aaron wrapped his fingers around Bobby’s hand to hold it still. Bobby felt the heat of the orange coil on his lips, breathed in the toasted tobacco as the end sizzled. His lungs stiff from the asthma attack, he hacked until he nearly gagged. He was grateful. It provided an excuse for the tears rolling down his cheeks. Aaron wiped one away with a callused thumb. Bobby smacked his hand.

“Get the fuck off me,” he said.

Aaron held his hands up in surrender, then gently took the lighter from Bobby’s hand. He lit up and cracked his window. Cold air leaked in as the smoke

 sucked out. He slid down in the seat and thumped a boot up on the dash. Aaron might have killed the kid, yet he reclined in his seat in a near post-coital glow. The Aaron Bobby knew, or rather the one he thought he knew, couldn’t have gotten laid if he paid for it. Buzzard-necked Aaron, a buck-thirty if he was a pound. Aaron, Bobby’s fellow comic-book nerd. His best friend, Aaron the wannabe. Aaron the wigger.

Something had taken his place. His name. A pale imitation of his personality. Not him. A shaved head and combat boots with red laces replaced the baggy jeans and shell-top Adidas tennis shoes. The once-scrawny neck disappeared into his mountainous shoulders. Each time Bobby glanced at Aaron he tried to picture the boy he knew before he got locked up, hoped every blink would bring him out of some fever dream, sweating under the comforter, huddled up on his couch, but all he saw was that Black kid’s face smashed to hell and his stomach turned.

“Hang a right,” Aaron said.

“Why?” Bobby asked.

Aaron looked at Bobby with genuine confusion. “Because it’s the way to get to the apartment?”

“You’re joking right now? You know what I mean! Why the fuck did you do that to that kid?”

“Why? That kid grabbed you, and you’re asking me why? How many times, Bobby?” he asked. His upper lip pulled back from his perfect teeth. “How many times did you have to save my ass from those fucking monkeys in high school? In the bathroom? In the parking lot? You remember that? Did you think I’d let that happen to you? Because it was about to.”

“I know, but—”

“But nothing. Jesus, dude, you told me yourself, over and over again. You remember that? I didn’t listen then, but I learned my lesson.” He blew out a cloud of smoke and leaned on the console next to Bobby, almost daring him to make eye contact. He cocked his head back toward the rear of the truck, gesturing to where they’d left the kid. “They’re animals, Bobby. And some animals need to be put down.”

Bobby felt his face flush. As he pulled on the wheel to make the turn, he remembered a different street.

An alleyway, the one behind his Grandpap’s. 

 face recalled the sting in his cheek, the way his own blood tasted in his mouth.

He had been eleven years old.

It was the first time he’d ever said the word “nigger.”

The same day his mother had told him he was one. 

CHAPTER
TWO

A aron directed them to a dilapidated apartment building in North Oakland. He opened his door to get out, but Bobby stayed. He gripped the steering wheel and bounced his forehead against it. The smell of greasy fries and pizza filled the cab and made him more nauseated. When Aaron got out, he’d floor it, drive to the police station and turn himself and Aaron in.

But it was Aaron’s truck, and he had driven away from the scene of a crime.

I left that kid there to die.

A tear spattered on his leg where Aaron’s hand had left a bloody fingerprint when he’d squeezed his knee. Aaron stayed in the truck and closed his door.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Aaron said. “I didn’t plan for that to happen.”

“You killed him, Aaron. You fucking killed him.”

“What did you want me to do? He was coming after you.”

“Because of you.”

“Oh, come on, man. That was nothing. He didn’t have to step to us like that.”

Bobby turned, his forehead still pressed to the steering wheel, and squinted at Aaron through bleary eyes. “What is wrong with you?” he asked.

“What if he’d had a gun, Bobby? You think of that?”

“He was a kid, Aaron. Just a punk kid.”

“And nobody’s going to give a shit. You know what, man. This is the same bullshit from high school. You don’t appreciate shit, and you’re starting to piss me off. Let’s go. Grab the food. I’m fucking starving.”

Aaron jumped out of the truck and slammed the door shut behind him. Bobby flinched, and peeled his forehead away from the steering wheel. He took measured breaths and rationalized. How would he explain his part in this? It wasn’t his truck, but Aaron was drunk. Aaron forced him into this. But he didn’t even have a gun, a knife, anything that would make the cops believe he’d threatened Bobby into cooperating. Aaron tapped on the glass and shouted a muffled “let’s go.” Bobby knew there had to be a way out of this, but not now. He’d provoked Aaron without even meaning to, and if he even began to suspect that Bobby might turn them in, who was to say he wouldn’t end up like the kid?

Wait a minute. This is the same kid who barely broke one-hundred and thirty pounds with his clothes soaking wet. I’m afraid of him?

But he was. He was terrified. He grabbed the pizza and fries and followed.

The third floor hallway of the building reeked of weed. A bass-heavy rap track bounced off the cracked plaster walls. The source of smells and sounds was a door at the end of the hall. Bobby tilted his head at Aaron, curious as to their destination. Aaron slapped at the door with his open palm. Nothing. He cursed under his breath and pounded. The music quieted. The pinhole of light in the fisheye went black. A chain slid. The dead bolt clicked.

A baby-faced white kid with close-cropped blond hair, no older than the one they’d left in the street, opened the door. He slapped hands with Aaron, then pulled him in for a half-hug. He had to go up on his toes to reach Aaron’s broad shoulders. He wore a long basketball jersey over camouflage pants tucked into a pair of Docs with red laces, just like Aaron’s. When he thumped Aaron on the back, Bobby saw a swastika on the back of his hand, and what was becoming an all-too familiar lump in his throat returned. The young skinhead eyed Bobby standing in the doorway holding the pizza and fries like some kind of lost delivery 

boy.

“Who’s the guinea?” he asked Aaron.

“Easy, Cort,” Aaron replied. “It’s Cort, right?” The kid nodded. “He’s cool.”

Cort nodded toward the living room and signaled for Bobby to enter. He grabbed the pizza from Bobby and helped himself to a limp slice, dangling it over his open mouth as he dropped down on the puke green couch. A .45 sat next to a four-footer on the glass coffee table in front of him. Aaron pointed at the gun.

“That me?” he asked.

Cort nodded and took a deep hit from the bong. Aaron picked up the gun and inspected it before he tucked it in the back of his waistband as if it was something he’d always done. He pulled back the blinds from a window and peered down into the street. Cort exhaled a cloud of smoke and coughed fitfully as he turned the volume back up on the episode of Yo! MTV Raps. Aaron turned and glared at him.

“The fuck you looking at, yo?” Cort asked.

“Yo?” Aaron said, then laughed, disgusted. “What do you think your uncle Hank would say if he heard you talking that nonsense? Caught you watching this garbage?”

“Yeah, well, his dumb-ass is still locked up, isn’t he? So he ain’t saying shit.”

Aaron walked to the couch and stood over Cort.

“Say something smart about him again.” Aaron reached behind his back and gripped the gun. “Go on.”

“Aaron, Jesus,” Bobby said, the words a whisper, strangled by the desert in his throat.

Cort looked up at Aaron, then over to Bobby, who shook his head at him. His tough façade folded in on itself. “Yeah, all right, man,” Cort said. “My bad … I mean, it’s cool.”

“Good,” Aaron said. “Turn this shit off and point me to the head.” Cort gestured. Bobby watched as Aaron’s heavy boots thumped down a short hallway and disappeared into a room off to the right.

“Whatever, man,” Cort mumbled to himself when Aaron was out of earshot.

The gun-like sound effects of an MTV news brief exploded from the television behind Bobby and startled him. Tabitha Soren recounted the day’s proceedings in the O.J. trial. Detective Fuhrman had been questioned about using racial slurs on the

job as the attorneys for the defense built a case for a conspiracy. The skinhead shook his head and sneered. He punched Bobby in the thigh.

“You believe this shit?” he asked. “No way he didn’t do it. Look at his eyes. They got no whites in them, just blackness. Like a … like…” He stared at the screen, heavy-lidded. Bobby leaned forward to see if he’d nodded off, then offered an end to his sentence.

“A shark?” Bobby asked.

Cort’s eyes widened and he snapped his fingers at Bobby. “Oh, shit, yeah, that’s good. I was thinking chimp, but a shark. Shit, yeah. Anyway, I hope they still do hangings in Cali. Am I right?”

Bobby’s feet felt like they didn’t belong to him, then his hands, his arms, his legs. He couldn’t feel his face. For a minute, it seemed as if he wasn’t really there. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he’d skidded out in the snow and crashed and none of this was happening. In fact, right now, he could be in a hospital bed while his comatose brain constructed the entire thing. No attempted murder. No accessory to attempted murder. Just brain-dead. The heavy bass thumped from the television again. Cort bobbed his head and mouthed the lyrics to Biggie Smalls’s “Warning,” then looked over his shoulder down the hall where Aaron had gone and turned the volume down low again. Sensation flooded Bobby’s limbs in a rush and he walked down the hall after Aaron as bong water bubbled behind him.

Aaron rinsed lather from his hands. The drain was slow and the water turned into a red and white soup before getting sucked down. Aaron inspected his fingernails. Bobby hadn’t noticed before how long they were. He remembered seeing some show where inmates grew them long and filed them to points and he caught a chill.

“You all right?” Aaron asked.

“Where are we? Who is that guy?”

Aaron growled. “That punk. No dignity. It’s for his uncle I don’t beat his fucking ass. I owe him that. That’s why I’m staying with him for a bit.”

“What do you owe his uncle?” Though he wanted to know, he dreaded the answer.

“Nothing. Everything. All depends on who asks. He brought me into the brotherhood. Kept me safe.” 

ho am I even talking to? I have to get the fuck out of here.”

“And go where, Bobby?”

Aaron splashed water on his face and searched for a towel but none hung on the bar. When he grabbed the hem of his shirt to pull it to his face, he noticed the smeared blood that he’d wiped from Bobby’s inhaler. He took off his shirt, and dried his face with a clean spot. His chest and back were covered in acne and Bobby guessed someone inside found a way to get him steroids. He turned around to piss. “88” was tattooed on both shoulder blades. In between the zits on his back were round scars, the raised flesh the circumference of the business end of a cigarette. Someone had used him for an ashtray.

When he turned around, Bobby’s eyes went to the large swastika on his sternum, the arms of the broken cross bending across his chest. Bobby backed up as Aaron walked toward him until he bumped against the wall in the tight hallway. Aaron leaned against the doorframe. His face softened.

“Look, I’m sorry I flipped out downstairs. I know you’re scared, but you’re safe here,” he said. “You’re always safe when I’m around. I owe you at least that much. We’ll get some sleep and figure things out in the morning. I promise you, everything will be fine. Now go grab the pizza before that little shit eats it all.” Bobby opened his mouth to protest but Aaron patted him on the cheek, squeezed past him and walked to another door at the end of the hallway.

For an instant, Bobby was furious, far more angry than scared. When Aaron touched his cheek, Bobby wanted to reach out and grab him by his neck and scream in his face. He wanted to squeeze until he found the huge Adam’s apple that used to bob up and down in the neck of the kid Bobby always had to talk down from his perpetual state of weed-fueled paranoia. It had never been the other way around. Sure Aaron was drunk, but below all that freaky calm had to be that same kid in a panic.

But he wasn’t there. His eyes were as cold as their ice-blue hue. He’d been out less than twenty-four hours and he damn near killed someone. Now he wanted pizza. Prison had created Prison Aaron and Prison Aaron did what he thought he had to do, supposedly to protect them both. Either he enjoyed it, didn’t care that he’d go back if they were caught, or some twisted version of the two. The thought made Bobby go right back to being scared shitless.

Bobby walked back down the hall. Was there a phone in this dump? He should call Isabel. He spied one on the wall in the kitchen off the living room and stepped toward it, then stopped.

Aaron was right. Where would he go? What would he say? What could Isabel do?

He imagined the kid’s mother again and pizza was the last thing he wanted. He went back to tell Aaron to get the fucking pizza himself, but Aaron had sprawled out on a single bed in the room at the end of the hall, out cold. Maybe he actually was scared, and putting on a front had exhausted him. Or maybe he was drunker than Bobby first thought and he just passed out. Bobby stood at the foot of the bed and stared, then let his eyes relax, like he did with the three-dimensional pictures he’d seen in the mall that were supposed to turn into dolphins. He wasn’t sure why he looked at Aaron that way just then, nor did he know what he expected to see. He never saw the images they told him he was supposed to see in the pictures, either. They just gave him a headache.

Three years ago, Bobby had waited for more than thirty minutes to see Aaron. It had been his first week in prison. The line for visitors was long, and reeked of a mix of different perfumes and body sprays that smelled like the shit Isabel wore when she went out for the night. When Bobby saw no other guys there, he had worried that they might think he and Aaron were a couple, and he felt guilty about what that meant people thought about him, not what it might mean for Aaron. Guilty or not, selfish or not, the feeling compelled him to leave, but just as he had turned, an officer filed them all through the metal detectors and led them to the visitors’ booths.

A moderately attractive woman sat next to Bobby. His knees bounced on the bottom of the counter. She stared, and he knew, just knew that she wondered, too, what a guy was doing visiting another guy at a men’s prison. Bobby wrapped the phone cord around his thumb until the tip went red. The thick safety glass had handprints. Fingerprints. Gray lipstick smudges. He wondered if the woman next to him would kiss the glass, or try to touch hands through it, maybe whip out a tit and smush it against the Plexiglas while her man pressed his palm to it. Bobby noticed his own palms were wet. He didn’t know why he was so nervous. Aaron had only been in a week. He’d be fine. Then the steel door squealed open and a guard led Aaron in by his bony elbow, swimming in his orange jumpsuit, head bowed, limping.

One eye was purple and swollen shut. A chain of

small bruises ran around his neck and a zipper of stitches went down the side of his head where they had pulled out some of his hair. He shuffled to the window and went to sit but couldn’t. His ass hovered until his legs shook. He pressed his bloated lips together and beads of sweat bloomed on his forehead with the effort. He gave up and leaned one knee on the stool as they both reached for the phones.

“Hey, man,” Bobby said.

A tear ran out of Aaron’s good eye.

“Don’t ever come back here,” he said.

The words came out soft and wet. His front teeth were gone. He hung up and shuffled back to the guard. Bobby called out after him and before he realized what he was doing, he pressed his palm against the glass. He noticed the woman next to him, staring. Bobby looked past her to see her man, who glanced over his shoulder at Aaron. He snatched his hand away with the realization he might have just earned Aaron another round of what he’d gotten before. The door slammed shut. Bobby stared at it until his eyes relaxed and his focus fell on his own greasy handprint, indiscriminate from the other remnants of futile attempts to connect, save its newness. He wiped the print away with his sleeve and left.

Bobby tried to go back once, but he wasn’t on the list after that day. Or any of the days that followed.

Letters went unanswered. Days turned into months. Three years. A chunk of time that seemed like forever and not that long. Enough time for the edges of what someone looked like to blur, even if only a little. Enough time that Bobby thought he remembered exactly what Aaron’s voice sounded like but, after a while, didn’t quite trust the memory. Just enough time that when he saw Aaron in the parking lot for the first time after all those years, he had walked right past him.

---

Aaron snored. Bobby snuck across the room and pulled back the blinds on the window, looking out into the street as Aaron had, presumably looking for the same thing. But no cop cars patrolled the streets. No cars at all. The snow had piled up quickly and Bobby couldn’t make out the street from the sidewalk. He walked to the front of the bed and curled up on the floor.

When Bobby was seven or eight, the teacher had told them a week or so ahead of time that the book fair was coming to school. His mother would

 only give him enough money to buy school lunch, but when the book fair came around, Bobby would eat as little as he could stand that week and would look for spare change all over the apartment. He would get so excited when the truck pulled up and unloaded their rolling folding metal shelves.

He always went straight for the Choose Your Own Adventure books. He only ever had enough money for one, maybe two books, but those were like having four or five books in one, if he made the right choices. They were fantasy books full of rainbow dragons and dark knights.

Do you go into a dark cave with only a torch or do you go around it and climb the mountain path with all assortments of evil monsters? Bobby picked the cave. They never said anything about monsters being in there so he thought he was safe.

The cave ended up killing him. It sucked, but then he got to start all over again.

The adrenaline finally ran out and exhaustion set in. Bobby’s eyelids felt weighted. As he fell asleep, he envisioned a page to which he’d turned where he had to make a decision.

Choose your own adventure. If you want your skinhead best friend to confront a gang member, turn the page to see what happens next. If you want to drive on to the next destination and not watch him kill someone, turn to page ninety-three. 

 

CHAPTER
THREE

Robert caught the sideways glance the ER nurse shot him. He took one last drag before he flicked his cigarette toward the street. It landed in the snow with a hiss. He certainly wasn’t the only doctor there who smoked, but he was one of the very few who did. He knew it wasn’t a good look, but he’d only just picked up the habit again. He checked his watch. The nurse was part of the shift change. He could leave now if he wanted to, but he was in no hurry to return home. Solitude made everything seem larger. Bare footsteps echoing off the hardwood floor of their dining room that, though it only sat eight, loomed like the feasting hall of some great castle. The endless California king with no edges, always waking in the middle no matter how many times he rolled. The kitchen table stretching on to infinity, nothing interrupting its polished oak surface, save the divorce papers that arrived just days ago.

Papers she had already signed.

The snow that sat atop his tight gray-flecked curls melted and ran in rivulets, cooling his scalp in dots. He cracked the knuckle of his ring finger. Slid the wedding band on and off, the light brown of his skin almost white underneath. An old habit, never used to the jewelry—any jewelry—but especially on his hands.

He was heading inside to get his keys when he heard the keening of a siren in the distance. He waited. The Doppler effect faded as the ambulance neared. It slid slightly before coming to a full stop under the archway. The siren shut off, but a muffled wail from inside the vehicle replaced it. The back doors swung open and a paramedic jumped down and helped his partner guide the gurney. A lanky young brother lay strapped down, tan hoodie soaked with blood. The sheet was crumpled at his feet from the writhing of his legs, and covered in urine and feces. His oxygen mask fogged with every moan.

Robert followed the paramedics inside and they briefed him on the way to the trauma unit. The bones of the left side of the kid’s face had been crushed, and the right side was lined with fractures, likely from a secondary impact. Few teeth remained intact, and the bite from the impact had lacerated his tongue almost to the middle. Some of the shards from his orbital bone damaged the eye. He’d likely lose sight, if not the eye altogether. What neurological testing they had been able to complete when he wasn’t seizing suggested he had a bleed in his brain.

The pieces of red mortar Robert plucked from his skin suggested someone had struck him with a brick. Had they thrown it? Dropped it on him? The force of the impact seemed impossible for one person to inflict on another.

The team of residents moved quickly to stabilize him. After paging the neurosurgeon on call, the team had the kid transferred to the ICU. Robert removed his mask and gown, crumpled them and tossed them toward the trash. They fell short of the mark. One of the EMTs stood with his back to the nurses’ station, elbows propped on the counter, running game on a young aide. He saw the missed shot and tilted his chin at Robert.

“What’s that they say about day jobs?”

Robert gave a half-hearted smile and joined them at the station to review the boy’s chart. “Homewood,” he said to himself. Robert hadn’t been back in years. Not since before Mama got sick. Then Pops died. Then Mama followed him home. A wash of loneliness surged, then, with a sharp breath out, ebbed. He pushed the chart away.

“Probably some kind of retaliation,” the EMT said.

Robert looked up. “I’m sorry?” 

jacket partially obscured his identification badge, but Robert made out the first name “Scott.”

“The kid,” he said. “Probably got attacked as a retaliation. His gangbanger buddy was there when we showed up.”

“That boy wasn’t wearing colors,” Robert said. “But his friend was, so that says it all, I guess.”

Scott shifted on his elbows. “You said it yourself, the kid’s from Homewood. Do the math.”

“I’m from Homewood,” Robert said. “So what you’re saying is Black plus Homewood equals gang member. Is my math right?”

Scott stood up from the counter and ran his fingers through his hair, his pale cheeks flushed. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Right,” Robert said. He stood and went to walk away, then stopped. “Let me ask you something. How long did it take you to get there?”

“Excuse me?” Scott said.

“When the call came in, and you heard a young Black man had been assaulted, did you hurry? Or did you finish getting the number of some aide at another hospital?”

“Are you calling me a racist?”

“And when you picked that young man up, did you do everything within your power on that ride here to save him, or did you think, well, it’s just another banger off the street?”

Robert saw in his periphery the aide Scott had been talking to trading uncomfortable glances with the nurse next to Robert. Scott leaned his hands on the counter, his face tight, save a slight curl at his lip.

“You can go fuck yourself, Doc. You don’t know a thing about me.”

“Yeah,” Robert said. “Yeah, I think I do.”

Scott pushed away, hands up, signaling he’d had enough, and headed for the sliding doors to the parking lot. He grabbed his partner along the way and they left without a look back. Robert dropped back into his chair. He felt eyes on him. Lorraine, the charge nurse, watched him with wide eyes. She smirked.

“Okay, Dr. Winston,” she said. “I see you.”

Robert winced. “Too much?”

“Please. Not enough.”

Robert returned as genuine a smile as he could fabricate. He held no regret for what he’d said, but regretted the necessity. He reached for the chart again and read his name.

“Marcus Anderson,” he said.

Had the boy been someone his mama might have known? Had his grandfather watched the Steelers on Sundays with Robert’s father?

“Lorraine, page me with updates on him, will you?”

She nodded and walked off to join others on the staff gathered around the station and listened to the weather report on the radio. The nor’easter approached. Those with long commutes prepped empty treatment rooms for an overnight stay. They joked and laughed. They didn’t exclude Robert, but they didn’t include him, either. Not that he blamed them. He enjoyed these rotations with the teaching hospital. He often, but not always, arrived to a certain level of celebrated respect. One thing remained constant, however, no matter where he went, especially with the trauma teams—he hadn’t earned the camaraderie they’d formed in the trenches, and so, he found himself alone, tonight more so than most.

He finished his notes, grabbed his coat from the hook behind the nurses’ station, and headed back outside. A gust sent icy air slicing through his scrubs and the long johns beneath. Leaning against his spot against the outside wall, he fished another cigarette from the bent soft pack in his front coat pocket. Savoring the cold fresh air, he took a deep inhale, closed his eyes, and saw the dining room table again.

She hadn’t waited for his response. There it was, signed on every page next to the multicolored plastic arrow labels, directing his pen to the empty space where his name should go. Tamara Winston.

The day the papers arrived, he’d almost called her, but the last time he’d done that had been a mistake. Things were said, things worse than the time before, the time she decided more time apart was what they needed. She just had to go to her sister’s, her Goddamned sister, who never liked Robert to begin with, who he knew, just knew relished the chance to drive home the wedge that threatened to cleave them completely in two. Disgusted at the notion of her whispering in Tamara’s ear as though delivering an incantation, he stubbed the cigarette out into the tread of his sneakers and went back inside. He walked up to

Lorraine seated at her desk.

“Any place close by to get a drink?” Robert asked her.

“You don’t listen to the weather, huh?”

“It’s not that bad out yet,” Robert said. “Just one for the road.”

“I’d head home if I were you. Those roads are going to get bad fast.”

“Driving in the snow is in my blood. You want to join me?”

Lorraine raised her left hand, palm facing her, and wiggled her fingers. A diamond caught the overhead lights and glinted.

Robert brought his hands to his chest in a mea culpa. “No disrespect.”

“None taken,” she said, smiling. “Lou’s is a couple of blocks that way.” She pointed west. “It’s the closest if you want a quick drink. Not sure if it’s the most hospitable, but you can take your chances.” Robert tilted his head, not understanding her meaning. Lorraine scrunched her mouth and looked up at him from under her brow and Robert understood. Wrong bar for their complexion.

“Good looking out,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

Outside, the flakes fell heavier. Cars rolled by, their tires muffled by the snow-quilted street. Robert popped the collar of his coat and pulled a knit cap from the pocket. He walked in the direction of Lou’s. A salt truck rumbled past and peppered the windshields and doors with crystallized chunks that left pockmarks in the pristine white.

Robert and Tamara had said things they didn’t mean, or at least said things they meant, but that should have been kept to themselves. In the weeks following the miscarriage, Tamara systematically withdrew from Robert. She had this infectious wide-mouthed laugh, complete with head toss, but devoid of pretension, punctuated by snorts if she really found something funny. She’d laughed like that on the exam table when they’d had their first ultrasound. The sanitary paper underneath her sounded like applause as she wriggled with excitement when they heard the rapid-fire heartbeat.

But there were no laughs at the final ultrasound. Just the sound of their own breath, held first in anticipation, then in fear, finally let out in a simultaneous slow sigh. A physician’s assistant delivered the news. Robert guessed the doctor could only be bothered with the happy occasions, and in a way, he understood why. As a medical student, he’d been forced by his instructors to deliver bad news to terminal patients, or to family member

when they’d lost someone dear. He’d felt a sense of physical pain when he had done it, as he imagined his teachers and professors had before him. It seemed less a hazing and more a rite of passage. Strange how clear it had seemed at that moment, as the assistant wiped the gel from Tamara’s belly and replaced the ultrasound wand, a weapon being holstered.

“Your body has completed the miscarriage,” she’d said.

“Take as long as you need,” she’d said.

After they’d been left alone, Tamara and Robert had heard muffled sounds of excitement through the wall. Tamara took Robert’s hand as he helped her from the table and dressed in a quiet daze. No tears. No words. Robert had guided her through the filled waiting room, his hands on her shoulders as if to protect her from paparazzi. The way they all looked at her, trying to look like they weren’t looking at her, glancing up from their pregnancy magazines, bridal magazines, and gossip rags, he knew they knew what had happened and she didn’t deserve their eyes on her. Down the hall to the elevator she looked up at Robert, her eyes brimming.

“I’m hungry,” she said. She skewed her mouth in a half smile. He smiled back.

“I could eat.”

They ate a late breakfast at a restaurant near the OB’s office. They hadn’t yet warmed from the winter chill and Tamara swam in Robert’s oversized hooded sweatshirt. She stirred at her dippy eggs with her fork, mixing the yolks with the mountain of ketchup she piled on top of them.

“Are you trying to find them?” Robert asked.

“What?”

“The eggs that came with your ketchup. Because I don’t see them.” She tried to hold back a smile. “Don’t smile,” he said. “It’s not funny. I’m not kidding, I think we got ripped off.” Her lips got tighter as she fought harder. Their waitress refilled their coffees and Tamara sipped. Robert leaned on the table. “You see? See how she looked at us?” he asked. “I bet you the white folks in here get eggs with their ketchup.” Tamara spit back into her cup and wiped her mouth. She gave a slight snort. Robert smiled.

“You’re so crazy,” she said.

Robert knew then—they’d get through this. They were tough. They knew how to laugh. He reached for Tamara’s hand and she reached back, but then 

her brow knit and her eyes narrowed. She clutched at her stomach. Her smile disappeared. She shifted in her seat and her eyes went wet.

“Robert,” she whispered.

She looked down and shook her head. When she looked up, tears spilled down her cheeks. Robert slid into her side of the booth. Red stained the crotch of her gray sweatpants like a broken ink pen. Robert took off his sweater and wrapped it around her waist, dropped money on the table and hurried her out of the restaurant. Even at fifteen weeks, she’d been told to expect cramping, spotting, perhaps even some bleeding. She hadn’t been told how to expect to feel. She curled in the fetal position in the backseat and quietly wept the whole way home.

That night and every night that followed, Tamara had edged farther away from the center of their bed and shied from Robert’s touch when he’d reach across the gap. She went to bed fully dressed and showered with the primary bathroom door closed.

Despite Robert’s protests, she’d returned to work in a week. Her meetings ran later. They ate microwave dinners or takeout in front of the television. She hardly spoke, at least not to Robert. She spent hours on the phone with her sister in San Diego while he called up medical journal articles on the web, pretended not to listen, and fought to figure out what he’d done wrong.

The fight started after his third consecutive eight-to-eight shift going into the weekend. She’d finally decided she needed more time away from work and stayed home. Robert slept at the hospital to give her the space he thought she wanted. When he returned home, the trash had three days’ worth of frozen breakfast, lunch, and dinner packaging and smelled like overripe bananas. The sink was full of stemless wineglasses with dried rings on the bottom. In the bedroom, her clothes hung from the treadmill, shirts plastered to the floor, panties draped over the edge of the wicker hamper.

The toilet flushed and she appeared in the doorway, silhouetted by the overhead light behind her. She wore what had become her new uniform: a durag, white long-sleeved thermal, heather gray sweatpants, and suede slippers. She gave a slight jump at the sight of him, then walked past and climbed under the comforter and turned her back to him. He sat on the edge of the bed.

“Have you been outside today? Or yesterday?”

“Where have you been?”

“I didn’t want to smother you.” 

e this about you? Please?”

“I’m sorry. Honestly, that’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“I lost it, too, Tam.”

“It? Do you always have to be so clinical?”

“No.” Robert considered his hands. The cold weather had dried them, made them ashy. The repeated handwashing after patient care cracked his flesh, left red slivers in between his knuckles. “I couldn’t think in terms of ‘him’ or ‘her,’” he said. “That was just too hard.”

“It was a girl,” Tamara said. “I … think she was a girl.”

“A girl. Did she have a name?” Tamara shook her head. “I wonder who she would have looked like.”

She managed a weak smile.

“I know at our age this was a risk. That this might have been it. But we can try again.” He winked at her, hoping for a real smile. “Isn’t that the fun part anyway?” Robert reached for her but again she shied away. Robert’s hand recoiled. “What, Tam? What did I do? What am I doing wrong that you won’t even let me touch you? Tell me and I’ll stop.”

“I’m sorry that I’m not dealing with this the way you’d like me to. I can’t just say she was an ‘it.’ I don’t have your gift for detachment. But let’s pretend that I’m already feeling bad enough without you making me feel guilty about not wanting to fuck you.”

“Whoa, wait a minute, what? Tam, that is not what I’m trying to do.”

Tamara wiped away a tear from her cheek with the heel of her hand. “I didn’t want this baby and you made me want her and now she’s gone.”

“I made you?”

“I told you I didn’t want one, but you pushed and you pushed and you pushed. Your mama just had to have a grandbaby and you couldn’t say no, could you? You couldn’t let me say no.”

“Okay. You’re angry. We’re going to say something stupid. You need some space.”

“Stop telling me what I need, Robert. We didn’t need this baby. We were doing fine, just you and me.”

Weary of defending himself for days, he snapped.

“Well, I guess you showed me, didn’t you?” he said.

He sighed the instant the words left his mouth, disgusted with himself, but it was too late. Tamara gave him an incredulous look and hugged herself. He knew he should have crossed to the other side and pulled her close, but her accusation cut deep and scraped bone. They were both proud, sometimes to the point of absurdity, and in that moment the distance between them felt immeasurable.

Tamara wiped at her eyes and curled into herself under the comforter, her back to Robert. He kneeled on the mattress and reached for her. He was going to pull her in close, even if she fought. Let her yell at him, hit him, if that’s what it took. Let loose that pain so they could get back to where they had been. The box springs creaked under his weight and Tamara spoke, almost too quiet to hear.

“I’d like to go to sleep now,” she’d said.

The determination in her voice withered Robert’s resolve. He stepped away from the bed and gently closed the bedroom door behind him.

He paused. The wood floor squeaked as Tamara got out of bed. Then he heard the gentle whir of the oscillating fan she kept on her side of the bed. She couldn’t sleep without the white noise to lull her to sleep, the same way Robert always stuck his leg out from under the comforter. Neither of them understood the other’s quirky sleep behavior, and they had laughed about how restless they were when they tried one night to go without indulging their strange habits.

She never could sleep without the fan.

He wondered if she could sleep without him.

The next morning, neither of them had talked about the fight. They didn’t talk about anything. The argument hung in the air like radioactive fallout, made all the more potent by their refusal to acknowledge it. Before Robert had worked up the courage to offer to stay home from work, Tamara had already headed up the stairs and back to their bedroom.

When he returned home, Tamara sat at the kitchen table, her eyes red-rimmed. Her hair was done, and she’d changed out of her sweats into a blouse and jeans. Robert sat across from her. She looked into his eyes.

“I’m leaving for a while,” she said.

“No, you’re not.”

“Tamara, I’m so sorry.”

“I know you are,” she said. “I am, too. But the fact that we said those things … Robert, something’s wrong. With us.”

“We lost a child, Tam.”

“I think maybe we lost a little of ourselves, too, Robert, and I need some time to figure out if that’s the case. I can’t do that here.”

Robert clasped his hands and brought them to his mouth. He wanted to argue and make her stay, but he’d felt it, too, this river across which the two of them stood on opposite sides, neither of them with the means to ford it.

“What if I say no?”

“This isn’t your decision,” she said.

“Where will you go?”

“My sister’s.”

“California?” He blew out. “Well, can I drive you to the airport?”

“The shuttle is already on its way.”

Minutes later, Robert loaded Tamara’s suitcases into the back of the idling van.

“You packed a lot,” he said.

She put her hand on his cheek and he inhaled. The cocoa butter that softened her skin made her smell like home and he swallowed hard against the knot tying tight in his throat. He kissed her palm and promised to call. She didn’t return the promise. The shuttle drove away, the taillights lighting the flakes that had just begun to fall.

A little more than a year had done nothing to dull the edges. Robert reached Lou’s. The red neon sign buzzed above the entrance to the bar. Robert stomped the snow from his shoes and went inside. Just one drink. A warm-up, for perhaps the beginning of a new tradition. To remember, by forgetting. 

 

CHAPTER
FOUR

Nico smiled at Isabel when she walked in to Lou’s. She hoped he was feeling generous.

Only hours ago, eight white drunken college kids in burlap pullovers and Birkenstocks with thick wool socks had strolled into the diner. Rich kids dressing like they were poor. Refill after refill, food added on when one friend, then another, showed up late, milkshakes all around, and western omelets sent back already half-eaten because they were too cold. But with every belligerent order, every juvenile command, she smiled, always smiled, and each time she walked away they laughed at her. At the stains on her uniform, too tight around her stomach. Her too-high hair, her too-bright lipstick. They pretended to whisper, but she could tell they wanted her to hear. She did. But halfway through the month, she and Bobby were still short on rent, and their need for shelter took priority over pride. Sometimes all too often.

She almost never added on the tip for large parties. She preferred to earn it, and she had from this bunch. An unforgiving landlord, however, dictated a little insurance. She added up the large bill, dancing from foot to foot. She had needed to pee for the last hour. She dropped the check and headed to the bathroom. Elbows on her knees, she let out a whoosh of relief. Maybe they wouldn’t notice the added gratuity and tip on top of that. The snow had started late enough not to affect her shift and it had been a good night. Thirty percent or more on that table would be a nice little take-home. Maybe even enough to take a day off, maybe convince Bobby to go catch a late-run flick at the cheap seats, like she used to do with him when he was little. She’d been cutting back on the booze for almost two weeks and as a result, they’d been talking more, in the rare moments when neither of them was working. Last week, he’d lifted his nose from his comics to ask her how her day was.

He’d even smiled.

When she returned from the bathroom, the kids were gone. The table was carnage. Full sugar packets stuffed into half-full coffee cups, soaked brown and swollen. A glass knocked over, water on the floor collecting from a thin stream above. In the puddle on the table sat the check, unpaid, the ink blurred, but just readable enough to see the words “Fuck You” scrawled across it. Isabel stared at it, then pulled it from the table, letting it drip before she squashed it in her fist and threw it with a wet slap against the floor. Patrons at a few lingering tables cast sideways glances at her.

“Fuck you, too,” Isabel whispered to herself. She cleaned up her station and walked to the front to close out for the night.

Pockets, the manager, cashed out another waitress while Isabel waited her turn. She knew the policy on dine-and-dashers, but she hoped Pockets could see past to let her slide on this one. He had been in recovery, though for a lot longer and more consistently than she. On slower nights, he’d talked to her, swapped horror stories of ruined relationships, both familial and otherwise. He often tried to convince her to come to a meeting, even offered to be her sponsor. Isabel never saw herself sitting amongst strangers and giving confession. Still, she’d considered, but didn’t entirely trust his motivation. He was many years her senior, but kindly, more fatherly, with gin blossoms spread across his nose and the puffy cheeks that gave him his nickname. Though he never said anything inappropriate, she’d catch his stares from time to time. Watched his face bloom red when she covered her chest after seeing him look down her cleavage while counting out her tip shares at the end of a shift. With every invitation to join him at a meeting, she’d politely decline, but felt guilt for the disappointed smile he’d give her.

When it was her turn, she slid over her cash and checks, and pulled the scrunchie from her ponytail. Her curly black hair fell to the middle of her

 back and she swept the length over her shoulder. Pockets plunked at the adding machine keys and frowned.

“You’re short,” he said.

“And you’re chubby.” She gave him two finger pistols and winked.

“Very funny. But seriously. You’re way off.”

“That last table ditched, Pockets.”

“What? How?”

“I had to pee. I came right back. You didn’t see them leave?”

“Jesus, Izzy. That’s an eighty-dollar check.”

“I know, I know. Can’t you just write it off or something?”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“It’s over half my tips, Pockets.”

“I hear you, Izzy. But your station is your responsibility, and if I let you slide…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to do it for everyone. I’m not a fucking child, Pockets. Don’t lecture me like one.” Easing up on drinking made her more emotional, not less, the headaches more frequent and persistent. She knew Pockets had to answer to the owners, had his own job to worry about. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s fine. Whatever.” She counted out the amount in fives and ones and laughed at the pathetic amount in her hand, just a little more than the bank she’d brought to make change for the night.

Pockets recounted, facing the bills all in the same direction. “I could probably give you a double tomorrow, if the snow doesn’t shut us down. Interested?”

Isabel nodded yes, but to what, she didn’t know. She wasn’t listening. She remembered which nights Nico was on the bar at Lou’s.

Her face numb from the chill outside, the familiar humid air smelled of beer and old fryer grease and warmed her cheeks when she opened the door. She winked at Nico and he returned the gesture.

Thank God, he seemed to be in a good mood.

The bar was mostly empty. All but the regulars had cleared out. Even on a weeknight, Lou’s had a decent crowd. It was just enough of a dive to be cool for the college kids, but tonight, the electronic dartboard was quiet. No pool balls clacked, no frat boys hovered around the Megatouch to play the match game with the

soft-core porno pictures. Just the few sad sacks who’d been there since the place opened, hunched over their beers in the unsteady glow of the television above the bar. Nico went on about something, pointing at the screen showing highlights of the O.J. trial on SportsCenter. Isabel pulled up a stool to join her people and they gave her a head nod and a friendly grumble.

“It’s bullshit is all I’m saying,” Nico said. “That cop’s a witness, he ain’t on trial.”

“That’s right,” said an old-timer with a loose neck. “On the force twenty-five years, didn’t none of these jagoff lawyers ever question me like they’re doing this Fuhrman fella.” More grumbles of support from the other regulars. Their heads bobbed like pigeons in agreement.

“Damn straight,” Nico said. “Who gives a shit if he said nigger or not?”

“Easy, Nico,” Isabel said. “Simmer.”

“Hey, I’m saying it’s a bad look, making the cop seem like the bad guy. They got it rough enough after that Rodney King nonsense. Suddenly all police are boogeymen because they beat down a junkie? Come off it.”

“Exactly,” the old-timer said. “My boy is on the force now, and he’s wearing a vest on his beat. These gang punks are shooting at cops.”

“It’s shameful,” Nico said. “The only reason they can even get away with it is because O.J.’s got enough dough for his Super Jew lawyer. Everyone knows he fucking did it.”

“You know, fellas,” Isabel said, “the only way Nico can see over that bar is when he’s standing on his soapbox like that.” The barflies chuckled and Nico mugged at her.

“See, boys,” he said. “This type of common sense discussion is lost on Miss ACLU here.” Isabel smirked and gave him the finger. “How’d you make out tonight, beautiful?” he said, laughing.

Isabel’s smiled faded. Her eyes stung and her cheeks went hot as she shook her head. Nico’s shoulders dropped.

“What happened?”

“Buy a girl a drink?”

“My soapbox isn’t tall enough to reach the vodka. Besides, ain’t you supposed to be on the wagon? What’s it been? A day?”

Isabel knew he was only trying to make her laugh, but her head throbbed, worse than before. She shouldn’t be here. She’d promised Bobby. I can do

 anything for a month, she’d said. Yet here she was. Just one, she thought. She knew that one drink would lead to another, that she’d spend money they didn’t have, and where would that get her? Get them? Yes, she could pick up more shifts, and so could Bobby. They’d come close to missing rent before and they’d always made it, though more often than not, Bobby did the heavy lifting. Good-looking kid, better restaurant, better tips. But each time he picked up another shift, each time he gave up a precious day off, he got that look. That well-rehearsed, resigned disappointment that broke Isabel’s heart more and more each time, that made her make the same empty promises to herself that this was the last time she’d ask him to do that. The idea of seeing that look again tonight made her anxious. Being anxious made her want to drink again, and wanting to drink again made her angry. She pushed away from the bar and stood to leave.

“Hey, where you going?” Nico asked. “Come on, I’m messing. Sit down.”

She paused.

Just one.

She sat.

“It wasn’t even my fault this time, Nico. I swear.”

“Fucking Pockets,” he said. “Probably would have let you off the hook if you’d a thrown him a mercy bang.”

“Don’t be gross.” Nico reached to the shelf behind him and grabbed a bottle of Absolut. “You know I can’t afford that,” Isabel said. “Especially not now.”

“Shut up.” He smiled and topped the filled Collins glass with a splash of tonic. She took a long sip from the straw and felt the panic fade. How she missed that taste, the effervescence of the carbonation on her tongue, the tingle on the inside of her cheeks. No kerosene in this glass, not like the cheap shit that used to sit in a plastic bottle in the freezer at home. A nice, smooth burn with just enough sweet from the tonic. “So what, he suspended you again?”

She closed her eyes and took another long pull on the straw and emptied the glass. The stuttered sucking sound surprised her and she opened her eyes to see Nico, his arms folded and smirking.

“Jesus, you got canned?”

Her face went flush again. She hadn’t eaten much and the vodka settled home quickly. “No,” she said, pouty. “But I might as well have. Got dine-and-dashed."

She nodded. “He did offer me a split shift tomorrow, so I might make some of it back. Except for this freaking snow.”

Nico refilled her drink but she waved her hands in protest. “Stop,” he said. “On the house tonight.”

Isabel raised her glass to him and took a smaller sip.

Finish this one slow and go home. Back on the wagon tomorrow.

It was difficult, though, slowing down. Nico made a damn fine drink and it took all she had not to suck this one down, ...