Hard Candy

'I wouldn't do that. He's ours, not just mine. I know that. But that's no life for him. I want him to be something.'

'The Mole's something.'

Her hand on my forearm, lacquered nails shining in the late autumn sun. 'I know, baby.'

I lit a cigarette.

'I won't be any different,' she said.

'I know.'

'But you are.'

I didn't say anything.

'You don't want me to go, say the word.'

'Go.'

'You can get me the papers?'

'A passport?'

'And… later…I want to adopt Terry. Make it legal.'

'Why?'

'Why? You know what I am. Trapped all my life in this body. I can change that. Be myself. The boy…I don't want him to grow up like…'

'Like me?'

'I love you, Burke. You know that. I'd never walk away from you.' She kissed my cheek, walked away.

24

ONCE I COULD always find something on the sweet side of the edge I lived on. It was gone. Even in prison, there were some things you could laugh at. That was then. The Plymouth drifted back to Mama's. I pushed a cassette into the slot. Janis Joplin. Pure estrogen filtered through sandpaper. Begging some man to take her pain, twist it into love. Throwing her soul at a barbed-wire screen until it diced.

I heard Belle's little-girl voice. 'Rescue me.'

She'd asked the wrong man.

25

'SHE CALL AGAIN,' Mama greeted me.

I looked a question at her.

'Woman say her name Candy, remember? Little Candy from Hudson Street. Very important.'

'Nothing's so important.'

Mama's eyes were black, small hard dots in her smooth round face. 'Baby important, okay? Baby safe now.'

'I thought…'

'Yes. You think, you think what is right. Big girl, you love her, she's gone. High price.'

'Too high.'

'No. Babies die first, soon no people, okay?'

I put my fingers on each side of my head, holding it like an eggshell with cracks. I wanted to howl like Pansy, grieve for my woman. For myself. Nothing came.

Mama stayed with me. One of the waiters came over, said something in Cantonese. Mama ignored him. He went away. I felt the trembling inside me, but it wasn't my old pal this time. Not fear. I wasn't afraid. Too sad to cry. Nothing left alive to hate.

I looked over at the only woman I had ever called Mama. 'Max could have beaten him.'

'Maybe.'

'I didn't know the answer, Mama.'

She tapped my hand to make me watch her face. See the truth. 'You don't know the answer, you must be the answer.'

'Who said that? Confucius?'

'I say that,' she said.

When she got up, she left a piece of paper in front of me.

26

I USED A pay phone off Sutton Place. Not my neighborhood, but the best place to call from. The feds wouldn't tap these phones- they might net somebody they knew. I looked at the slip of paper Mama gave me. Seven numbers, a local call. I pushed the buttons, working backward from the last digit. Mama writes all numbers backwards- she says it's Chinese bookkeeping.

She answered on the third ring. In a throaty low purr sweet enough to kill a diabetic.

'Hello, baby.'

'You called me?'

'Burke? Is that really you?'

'It's me.'

'You know who this is?'

'Yeah.'

'Can I see you?'

'Why?'

'I have something for you.'

'Nothing I want.'

'You remember me?'

'Yes.'

'Then you know I've got something you want.'

'Not anymore.'

'Yes, yes I do. I got something you want. Love or money. One way or the other.'

'No.'

'Yes. You wouldn't have called otherwise. I know you. I know you better than anyone.'

'You don't know me.'

'Come over and listen to me. I won't bite you. Unless you want me to. Friday afternoon.'

I didn't say anything.

She gave me an address.

I hung up.

27

I DROVE BACK to my office. My home. Let Pansy out onto her roof. Lit a cigarette and looked out the window, feeling the airborne sewage the yuppies called a river breeze.

I think her real name was Renee. Or Irene. She always called herself Candy. I couldn't bring her face into my mind but I'd never forget her. She was just a kid then. Maybe thirteen years old. But you could run Con Ed for a year