Theodore moved quietly around the bookstore pulling down the dark yellow shades. I turned out the lamp on the desk and then lay down on my cot. The back room had no windows and so became very dark. When I heard the front door close I made a powerful effort to stand. At first I thought I might throw up again, but the urge passed. I staggered to my desk and let myself down on one knee. It was an old maple desk, heavy and cramped. I only used it to store and stack papers. Store and stack and secret away a .38-caliber pistol on a ledge behind the center drawer. It was Fearless’s gun. I held it for him when he was between apartments. It was in my possession in that capacity when he was sent to jail.
For the first time I lamented Fearless’s incarceration.
They had arrested him for felony assault on three crooked mechanics, convicted him on a lesser charge, and given him the choice of paying five hundred dollars or spending nine months as a guest of the county. He opted for the fine but had no money to pay and so asked me for a loan.
“I’m sorry, Fearless,” I said through the visitor’s grille at the county jailhouse. “But, man, I just can’t do it.”
Fearless’s lean, dark face didn’t show the disappointment I know he must have felt. He had put his life on the line saving mine eight years earlier, but over the years since then, I had risked my own skin many times for him — and I was no war hero the way he was.
Fearless was the kind of person who attracted trouble. He didn’t know how to look away or back down. He couldn’t even spell the word
To protect my interests as a businessman, I decided to cut my ties with probably the best friend that I ever had.
“Okay,” he said. “I understand. But you know them men did me wrong, Paris.”
I CHECKED to make sure the pistol was loaded and took off the safety. Then I climbed into the bed with the gun under the covers next to me. I didn’t fall into a deep sleep but instead drifted on the edge of a nervous doze.
WHEN I FELT a feathery touch against my forehead I feared that it was a rat, that I was dead and he came in from the alley to eat my flesh. The thought of food caused me to writhe from nausea, and when I moved I felt her flowery dress.
I knew it was her. That was my kind of luck. The kind of woman I wanted most, the kind of woman I should stay away from at all costs, that’s the woman who I will awaken to from a slumber that might have been death.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I could barely see her in the darkness.
“No.”
“Does it hurt much?”
“Like a toothache set in a broken jaw.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching out to touch my brow again.
“What’s your name?”
“Elana Love. What’s yours?”
“Paris Minton. Paris Minton.” The repetition was my attempt to extricate myself from the trouble in that room. But I wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was she.
“That’s a nice name.”
“How did you get back in here?” I asked.
“I never left,” she said. “When Leon came in I looked for a back door, but I didn’t see one, so I squeezed in behind the file cabinet and waited until he left. I was going to run out, but then that other man came in.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I thought you might be mad that I didn’t help you against Leon.”
“Who is this Leon?”
“Leon Douglas. We used to see each other before they sent him to jail. He was in for armed robbery and attempted murder, but a lawyer got him out.”
“What did you do, cheat on him or something?”
“No,” she said in a flash of anger. “I broke it off with him before he robbed that store. I told him that no love was gonna make me live with a criminal.”
“Maybe he didn’t like that.”
“He thinks I have somethin’, but I don’t have it. I don’t, but he won’t believe me.”
“But Reverend Grove knows where it is?”
