Tourmaline called after me, but I stalked off like Frankenstein’s monster.
“Easy. Easy Rawlins,” she cried.
But I didn’t even recognize my name.
AT ROYAL CREST AND OLYMPIC, I stopped at a phone booth and dialed. The phone rang a dozen times, and finally she answered.
“Hello?”
“Can I come over for a minute?”
“Where are you?”
“Around the corner.”
HER HOUSE was only half a block from the phone booth, but I drove there, right up into her driveway. She was at the door, as beautiful as ever, her dark blue nightgown more like royal robes.
“Where are your shoes, Easy?”
“Lost them on my way here.”
“Have you been drinking,” she asked after pecking my lips with hers.
“Joguye here?”
“No. He’s in Paris. There was a coup. His parents were killed. He’s in exile working to overthrow the junta.”
“Oh.”
“Come in, Easy. Come in.”
The living room was filled with African art of all kinds: paintings, sculptures, textiles, and even furniture. The colors were dark or bright, not synthetic pastel America at all. We sat on a wooden couch that had two long feather-filled pillows for cushions.
“It’s been a long time,” Bonnie said.
“It feels like forever.”
“Why are you here, Easy?” she asked.
I began talking.
I started with Chevette Johnson and how I had almost murdered her porcine pimp. I told her about Mouse and Jackson and Jean-Paul. I told her about making love to Faith and then finding her dead, about the murders I’d committed using the police as my weapon. I told her about Tourmaline.
I didn’t leave anything out. Somewhere along the way she took my hands in hers. She was there with me, feeling me.
“I know I was wrong,” I said. “I know what happened happened and that you didn’t mean to hurt me like I did you. I been a child and a fool and I ask you to forgive me.”
Tears welled in Bonnie’s eyes as she nodded, granting me clemency.
“I love you, Bonnie.”
“I love you too, Easy.”
“When I tell you all this stuff been happening, that’s just the husk, the skin a snake shucks off. But inside, you have been on my mind every minute. When I went up to the house in Bel-Air, I thought about you. When I found that dead man bunged up in a box, I turned away and thought about you. I’m not jealous anymore and I’m not proud. But please, baby, please . . . come back to me.”
Bonnie stared into me, seeing more than anyone, after my mother, ever had. She smiled and looked down and then up again with resolve.
“It’s too late,” she whispered.
It didn’t surprise me. I knew what she would say before I got there. I knew Bonnie. Even if I was the love of her life, she had made a promise to a man who never wavered in his feelings for her. She had pledged to him her love and a family, a future.
When she let my hands go, I rose like a half-filled helium balloon.
“I just needed to hear it,” I said.
“Sit down, Easy.”
“No, baby. We finished here. You know it and now I do too.”
“You shouldn’t drive in your condition.”
“I fought a war in this condition.”
She stood up to me.
“Stay.”
“To some men that might sound like a proposition,” I said.
“You’re not some men,” she said. “You’re Easy Rawlins.”
I smiled and cupped her chin with my left hand.
“You were the woman of my life,” I said. “And I threw you away like a fool.”
