15

I walked over to Jennifer’s house even though I knew the stairs would be empty. I saw the plant I had given her. It was sitting innocently on the porch ledge. On top of a stem, I noticed a lone leaf wavering in the summer breeze. I felt nauseous and I rushed home, fearful that I was about to be sick.

On my way to pick up Jamal from the police station, I made a pit stop at Gold’s Artificial Limbs. I felt compelled to talk with Mr. Gold, even though I knew it wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation. Upon entering his empty store, Mr. Gold immediately gave me a disapproving and strained look.

Mr. Gold wagged his finger at me and with an authoritative tone said, “You took caca and you threw it on something good. You’ve made your bed and now you have to lie in it, caca and all.”

“I know what I did was wrong. I acted like an ape.” “What separates us from the apes is our ability to embrace free will and restrain ourselves when temptation calls, but you son were unable to restrain yourself. So yes, you are an ape.”
“Mr. Gold, I really am crazy about Jennifer.”
“If you ask me, you are not ready for love. True love means that you are willing to give up all your wants and let go of the meshuga. You don’t want to change. You embrace the meshuga.”
“But that’s just it, Mr. Gold,” I said. “I do want to change. That’s why I’m here, living where I am. I’ve been trying to make a change in my life for some time now.”

“Maybe in more time then will you achieve your goal, but you’ve got some work to do and some personal growth that must take place first. You are still an infant in many ways. You are just a boy. Now, you must go. I have much work to attend to.”

I exited the store and stood on the sidewalk, staring at the earlyAmerican burial ground across the street. Although I never directly asked Mr. Gold if there was anything I could do to salvage my onetime blossoming relationship with Jennifer, I had my answer and that was a resounding no.

I was overwhelmed with depression as I drove to pick up Jamal. Mr. Gold’s words about not being ready for love echoed in my ears and I looked up into the rearview mirror, hoping that a profound answer would present itself on my face or in my eyes. Life doesn’t work like the movies however and I was not granted a Get Out Of Jail Free card that I could use to climb out of the hole I had dug for myself.

I arrived at the same police station Hank had picked me up at a few hours before and headed inside. I stopped at the front desk and informed the police officer that I was there to pick up Jamal Wilson. He made a call and then asked me to wait in one of a half-dozen steel chairs positioned against a white wall.

“You don’t by any chance have any magazines to read, do you?” I asked the officer.
He lifted his glasses and gave me a long look. “No, but if you wait another thirty minutes, the dancing girls will be here.”
I chuckled to myself and sat down. No more than thirty seconds passed before the same detective who interrogated me about Jill appeared, spinning his large set of janitor-style keys around his finger.
“You know a lot of lawyers, don’t you?” he asked me, catching me off guard.
“They are good people to know when you’re charged with a crime that you didn’t commit.”
The detective bent down in my face, positioning himself within licking distance. He breathed heavily and I could tell what he had for lunch.
“I’ve seen plenty of characters like you in my time as a cop and do you know where they all are now?” he asked me.
“Let me guess. In jail?”
“Better yet… dead!”
“I think you have the wrong impression of me, Detective. I’m not who you think I am.”
“Yeah, and I hate to break it to you buddy, but you’re not who you think you are either,” he told me as he walked away.
Those words struck a nerve inside me. Had I been fooling myself all along by moving to the ‘hood? What did I hope to accomplish in starting my own personal revolution?
A pair of officers brought Jamal into the waiting area where he was shocked to see my smiling face.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked me.
“Bribing your ass out of jail and giving you a ride home. Now let’s get out of here.”
We exited the station and slid into my car. Jamal was visibly confused, but grateful for the assist I had given him.
“I owe you,” Jamal told me in his usual deep and serious voice. “I’ll square up with you on the money you spent as soon as I get it.”
“And how you going to get the money?” I asked him, mimicking his own tone and mannerisms.
“When I get back in the game, you’ll get it. I’m a man of my word.”
“Are you fucking stupid or just a stubborn prick?” I asked.
I knew I was taking a chance talking to Jamal that way, but he was the kind of guy that respected testosterone-fueled behavior. Violence and rage were all he knew in life, so if verbally berating him was the only way I could get through to him, then I was willing to give it a try, even if it meant him retaliating with his fists. After all, I was still angry with myself over what I had done to Jennifer and I didn’t really care about the consequences. I deserved a beating and maybe I was even looking for one.
“What the fuck did you just say to me?” Jamal said with a threatening look.
“You just dodged a mandatory ten years in prison. You could be on a bus right now with silver shackles locked to your legs headed to a maximum security nightmare.”
“So, I’ve done time before.”
“Not ten years you haven’t. Do you really want to spend ten fucking years in jail?”
“I gotta eat and hustling is all I know.”
“There are other ways to eat, Jamal,” I told him, hoping that I’d say something that would make sense to him. “These detectives are going to be watching you like a hawk. You so much as sell Viagra or an over-the-counter aspirin and they’re going to lock your ass up.”
Jamal pulled down the visor and checked his teeth in the tiny mirror attached to it.
“I made a mistake last time they pinched me. That shit won’t happen again ’cause I plan on being more careful next time.”
“Jesus, Jamal, how can you be that fucking narrow-minded when it comes to your future?”
“’Cause it’s my fucking life and you ain’t living it for me!” he screamed. “Now I know you got me out of there and for that I’m grateful, but you best stop fucking disrespecting me the way you’re doing right now or you’re going to set me the fuck off!”
That’s when I decided to take a different approach with Jamal, both for strategy and self-preservation’s sake.
“Jamal, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to see you end up in prison.” “What the fuck do you care for?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I just do. And to prove it, I can set you up with a job. Even help you start your own business. You could do real estate here. Fix up run-down houses and then rent them out or turn them over. It’s the wave of the future in this part of the country and there’s a lot of money to be had.”
“And who’s got the money to move into renovated crack houses in the ‘hood?”
“It doesn’t have to be in the heart of the ‘hood. We’ll snag places closer to the city. It’s a gold mine waiting to be tapped, Jamal. I’m telling you, it’s a better way to live than fighting for your next dollar from some junkie piece of shit looking to get high. I’ll front the money and let you take the helm.”
Jamal was silent.
“At least tell me you’ll think about it,” I pleaded.
“I don’t know nothing about real estate.”
“You can learn. You didn’t know shit about the drug business until you jumped right in, right?”
“It’s different.”
“No it isn’t. It’s a game just like the one you’re playing and believe me, you’ll figure it out fast. The majority of the wealthy people that inhabit this world of ours did it in real estate. You think they’re any smarter than you? Hell, some of them saw an ad on T.V., took a course and now they’re millionaires.”
“And what about my boys? I can’t just abandon them.”
I admired Jamal’s loyalty to his friends because it was the same loyalty I felt towards the employees at the newspaper. While we both came from different worlds, Jamal and I weren’t that different. We believed in the same principles and shared similar beliefs, but it was how we acted on them that made us opposites.
“They’ll work for you,” I assured him. “You are going to need people to help in every aspect of the rebuilding process, so you’ll pay them as your employees and they’ll benefit from a regular paycheck every week.”
Jamal was flustered and he shifted in his seat, uncomfortable at the thought of taking a handout.
“Man, I don’t want to hear anymore of this shit,” he said. “Just get me back to my corner.”
“Jamal, I want to help you.”
“I told you. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Fine. Have it your way.”
We drove a few miles without either of us saying a word. I purposely left the radio off, hoping the silence would break Jamal, but he was a stubborn bull, refusing to give or take.
“Do you ever laugh, Jamal?” I asked him. “I mean seriously, I’ve never seen you even smile. How can someone go their entire life without laughing or smiling?”
Jamal continued playing the silent game.
“Well, I’m going to make you fucking laugh today if I have to die trying.”
The sidewalks were filled with all types of pedestrians walking to and from places of no interest to me or Jamal. I swerved the car towards the side of curb and the fearless thug clutched at the dash.
“What the fuck are you doing? You’re going to kill someone.”
“Nope, just get them a little wet.”
My tires hit a monster-sized puddle created by a broken fire hydrant and the murky water exploded from underneath my car, drenching at least a dozen unsuspecting victims. Sandy, brown fluid dripped from their clothing and hair as Jamal and I looked back at the now-wet day walkers as they yelled profanities in our fleeing direction. And then it happened. Jamal let out a roaring cackle that the U.S. government could have bottled and sold to the highest bidder as a weapon of mass destruction. Having repressed the energy for so long, the laugh continued and I had to block my ears.
I stopped the car a block away so we could watch the chaotic sidewalk try to make sense of what had happened. We were spotted almost instantly by a soggy butch dike with a decayed leaf stuck to her face. She ran towards us, waving a heavy chain in her hand, her circular nose ring flopping up and down with each Tyrannosaurus Rex-like stomp and I couldn’t help but notice her forearms, which bulged like a juiced-up Popeye after pleasuring himself in the shower.
“Look at that crazy bitch coming at us!” Jamal said with concern in his voice. “We best blow this popsicle stand before she gets any closer. She looks like she’s ready to kill someone.”
I shifted the car into reverse and started to back up in the direction of the charging dick-hating, ball-breaking bull dike.
“Are you going to consider my offer?” I asked Jamal.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Jamal asked me with a confused look on his face.
We were getting close to within striking distance of the beefy clam digger, who upon closer inspection looked a lot like Hulk Hogan minus the mustache.
“I’m waiting for an answer.”
“You crazy-ass white boy!”
“Yes or no?”
“I’LL THINK ABOUT IT!” Jamal blurted out, just in the nick of time.
I shifted the car into first gear and sped off, just as the behemoth swung at us with her chain. The metal links, unable to connect with anything, spun around and hit their owner in the back of the head. We watched as she dropped to the ground, grabbing nothing but a face full of asphalt.
“Man, I’ve been in knife fights and gun battles, but this is the first time I’ve ever known fear,” Jamal said with a reflective look. “That dike bitch was huge!”
“She would have chained your balls off.”
“Man, you are one crazy-ass white boy.”
After deciding that we wanted a bite to eat, I pulled into a Denny’s parking lot and we headed inside. We were seated immediately and both opted to order our food without even looking at the menu. Jamal sipped from a glass of water as I excused myself to go to the bathroom, my bladder still bursting from the hilarity of a man-like woman sprinting towards my car in anger. I chose a urinal because the toilets were all filled with leftover logs from the person before me. As I was washing my hands, my cell phone rang. It was Rooster.
“What’s up, Rooster?” I said. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“Babes, it’s an emergency,” he said in a panic. “I’m at the office on a Saturday trying to make a dent in some paperwork I need to file away and Harry just came in and quit.”
“Is he still in the building?”
“He’s packing up his belongings as we speak.”
“Rooster, I want you to listen to me very carefully.”
A guy walked into the bathroom as I was talking on the phone, entered a nearby stall and began grunting up a storm as if he was giving birth to the largest turd to ever hit a toilet bowl.
“Babes, what’s that noise?” Rooster asked me.
“I’m in the bathroom. Some asshole is literally shitting his brains out. Now listen to me, Rooster. Tell Harry you spoke to me and that we have an offer for him. Tell him that if he stays, he can have my equity in the company. It will start making him think like a businessman instead of a hired-on editor. Make it vest over a fouryear period.”
“Are you sure you want to do that, Babes?”
“It’s the right decision and it’s the only thing that’s going to keep him onboard.”
After a flush, the guy taking the elephant-sized crap sprang out of the stall with an open switchblade in his hand. He was Hispanic and he had daggers in his eyes that matched the one he grasped.
“Rooster, I gotta go. Just do what I said, okay?”
“Okay. I’m on it.”
I hung up the phone and ran for the bathroom door, high-stepping it all the way to my table where Jamal was already eating his grilled cheese and french fries. I sat down, my nerves obviously rattled, and looked back over my shoulder at the knife-wielding Hispanic madman who was now headed towards me. Jamal’s eyes locked onto him like an F16 on a Mig and he stood out of his chair, slapping his chest like a gorilla protecting his jungle territory.
“You got a problem, CHUMP?”
Upon seeing that Jamal was with me, the massive pooper pooped himself once again and slowly backed his way out of the restaurant. Jamal returned to his seat and popped a pickle in his mouth.
“I need your advice on something,” I told him, smearing ketchup on my burger.
“Stop fucking with gang bangers in public bathrooms. That’s the advice you’re getting from me.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not it. I fucked up recently. I really like this girl in my life and she found out I was with another woman. I blew it.”
“What happened to your revolution, white boy?”
“It’s a bullshit theory.”
“You can say that again.”
Jamal polished off his grilled cheese and poured a mound of ketchup in its place so he could freely dip his fries into it.
“So is your bitch from around here?” he asked me.
“Yeah, right down the street from me, and if I’m being honest, she’s the best woman I ever met.”
“You sure your mind’s not playing tricks on you?”
“No, she’s the real deal.”
“Man, you got more dreams than a junkie.”
“I don’t know what to do to make it right.”
“Why did you mess with the other bitch in the first place if you like this other one so much?”
“It was there and she was offering, so I took it.”
“We’ve all been there before. A guy’s not expected to keep his dick in his pants. We’re all animals when you take away the clothing and the goods, homey.”
Jamal finished his fries and slid his empty plate to the end of the table where a busboy quickly scoffed it up. He sipped on his water.
“You talk to her?” he asked me.
“She won’t talk to me. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.”
“I should introduce you to my cousin Julia. She’ll straighten your white ass right out.”
“She as big as you?” I asked, unable to eat because the continuous thought of breaking Jennifer’s trust in me cost me my appetite.
“Bigger.”
I pushed my full plate to the end of the table and before the busboy could scoff it up, Jamal pulled it over in front of him and started to finish my burger.
“The whole mess is my fault. I guess I don’t deserve her.”
Jamal was quiet. I could tell he was thinking something. He probably knew that my cause with Jennifer was lost but he didn’t want to tell me.
The waitress slapped our bill down on the table and I threw enough on the table to cover it. I reached into my opposite pocket and pulled out a wad of hundred dollar bills and handed it to Jamal.
“This is for living expenses,” I told him. “Consider it a down payment on our deal.”
Jamal stared down at the money wide-eyed. He sighed and shook his head.
“I told you I’d think about,” he said in a soft, un-Jamal like voice.
“It’s okay, take your time. I’ll wait.”
We left the restaurant and I dropped Jamal off at the corner he was famous for occupying. Somehow I reached through to him though because he walked past the pole he so often leaned against and headed to wherever it was he called home.