But what did any of that have to do with smoked bacon?
I hated Useless, hated him in that way you can only despise a family member. All of a sudden I was worried that the Bobchek murder could be tied to me in some way. If the police could somehow identify the corpse, they might tie him to Useless and then Useless to me. The next thing I knew, somebody who knew more than I did would be confessing to the crime, incriminating me, and getting a reduced sentence as he did so.
I would have liked to pour orange juice and hot butter all over him.
“Paris,” the breeze whispered.
I should have agreed with Fearless the night before. We should have gone to Hector’s house. It was too late to go to the police. They wouldn’t understand us taking Tiny to the straw-140
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berry field. Killer Cleave wouldn’t understand me telling them about it.
“Breakfast,” the gentle wind sighed.
I opened my eyes to see Mum kneeling before me, naked and proffering a silver tray holding bacon and eggs, orange juice, and coffee.
My waking dream had put a pall on the day, but I smiled for Mum and kissed her gently.
“This what you call a Chinese breakfast?” I asked the young woman.
“No. But you’re not what I call a Chinese girl’s boyfriend either,” she replied.
We ate and talked about her family. I asked where they had come from in China and why were so many people killed.
Mum told me that her clan hailed from central China originally. She blamed the Japanese for their demise. She hated that people with a virulence that rivaled the worst white racists I had met in the South. While she spoke I thought of Loretta. I wondered if Mum would have hated my Japanese friend.
Then I wondered about the people I hated because of their skin color or whatever. It seemed rather arbitrary to me —
unnecessary, or maybe not that, maybe it was necessary to hate someone, just capricious who it was that you hated.
After breakfast I put on my clothes. At the door Mum hugged me and we kissed. She peered deeply into my eyes then.
“You cannot be my boyfriend,” she said very seriously.
“You’re very beautiful,” I replied with a smile.
“But —”
“So I’m happy for what I got here,” I said. “It’s like a dream 141
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in here. And now when I come to Good News I know I can talk to you about philosophy over hot and sour.”
Mum’s eyes widened, and maybe there was a gleam of disappointment there. She might have been thinking that I took it so well maybe I could have been a good secret lover. Or maybe she wanted me to be a little brokenhearted after that night of perfect love.
Either way, she kissed me again and, unknowingly, sent me off to war.
S e x w i t h a w o m a n i s a l way s a two-edged sword for me. The last woman I had been with, Jessa, was the source of all kinds of trouble. I was still deep in that morass, my clothes newly perfumed with Mum’s exotic scents, when I decided that it would be okay for me to go to the address on Saturn where Hector LaTiara lived.
There were many forces that brought me to his block.
There was the manhood I felt from the act of love with Mum.
There was the urgency I felt about the murder that had happened in my home. And there was the feeling of invisibility I had at times.
I didn’t expect to confront Hector. I just wanted to get the lay of the land before Fearless and I went up against the
I got in my car and sat there for a while. I thought about the assumptions I had made and the mistakes that attended those assumptions.
Very often I blamed Fearless for my problems. He’d get into trouble trying to do right in a world where everything was wrong. When he felt that he needed to think his way out of a 142
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problem, he always came to me. And if I got involved, trouble came down in a deluge.
Sometimes I wouldn’t answer Fearless’s calls. Sometimes I would refuse him bail money.
But now here I was, in trouble deep, and I didn’t question whether or not Fearless would be there the moment I needed him. I can’t say that I felt guilty about my infidelity, but I did see the truth of it. If Fearless wasn’t in my life, I’d already be in jail over Tiny Bobchek’s murder. And if not for my friend, knowing anything about Hector LaTiara wouldn’t have done me one lick of good.
I t wa s a b o u t e l e v e n when I drove down the 1600
block of Hauser, then left onto Saturn. It was a narrow street there below Pico. The dwellings were single- family houses and two- and three-unit apartment buildings. Most everybody was at work. The yards were empty. The birds were cheeping.
