'You okay?'
'Yes,' I lied. 'No. No, I'm not. Camilla in the middle of all this is… '
'Too much?'
'No,' I said truthfully. 'But damned close.'
She put her head on my shoulder I folded her in my arms and basked in her comfort for a time that stretched comfortably beyond the moment. So much death, so much loss. I wanted the moment to last.
Then, as if a switch had been thrown somewhere far beyond thought and decisions, we held each other tighter, somewhere between desperation and love. The sensuous press of her breasts instantly aroused me. When Jasmine thrust her hips against me, a seismic passion sucker-punched me with feelings forgotten in the past six years.
Then everything fast-forwarded. Suddenly we were naked from the waist up and hastening with the rest. Jasmine's elegant abundance of curves beneath the soft, burnished luminosity of her skin stunned me and banished every thought beyond this remarkable moment to a distant and irrelevant horizon.
Then alarms sounded in my head.
Pure, undiluted passion-whether from lust, hate, anger, or fear-terrified me. I'd seen it leave battlefields littered with the bodies of innocent people and derail young lives with unwanted children. Prison cells held legions of basically decent people who'd let passion dump their lives into an endless pit of regret.
As a teenager I ran with a rough crowd, always ready with fists, a phallus, and fast cars. But over the course of less than a year, they all fell by the wayside, snared by police, parents, and unplanned parenthood.
Through their mistakes, I realized that unbridled passion could generate an irresistible black hole of unsatisfied regret from which there was no escape. I feared the way it blinded us to consequences and erased everything but the singular urge for release. It was the devil's deal where we traded the future for a blinding spasm of release that always left us hungrier than ever
Urgent warnings gripped my heart as Jasmine's hands made their way across my chest and down my belly. As I bent low to kiss her, she slipped her right hand down the front of my partly unzipped shorts. With an effort much like that needed to awaken from particularly horrific nightmares, I struggled back.
Jasmine was startled, astounded. I stood back from her, burning with regret like a death in the family. Perplexity sifted across her face.
'What's wrong?' she said finally. Her voice was husky and tempting.
I wanted to say I needed her more than I had words to express.
'Is it me?' Her face gave me a look of dismay. Then she crossed her arms to hide her breasts.
My heart fell. 'No. It's definitely not you.'
I wanted to say it was all too common for two people in danger to misinterpret the hormones of fear circulating in their veins for those of love. There was also the issue of Camilla's body, not yet cold.
'So what's the problem?'
I wanted to say the looks and comments from her uncle and the black LAPD detective made me second- guess my own motivations. I also wanted to express unspeakable things like AIDS, condoms, and whether we really wanted to do this without a commitment, marriage whether in the eyes of God or the law. But for reasons I don't understand, I didn't say any of it.
'Oh, yes,' I said. 'I do so much like you.' My voice broke. I cleared my throat. 'Jasmine, I… I more than like you.' I looked at her eyes, her face, and I connected with the most valuable words I knew. 'I love you.'
The confusion swirled in her eyes.
'Oh, Brad. I love you too.' She gave her head a little shake. 'But why-'
There were all those things I wanted to say. In the end, I lacked the courage and she began to cry. I stepped forward to give her a hug. When she turned away, it broke my heart.
As she dressed with her back turned toward me, I pulled on my shirt and zipped up my shorts. I prayed for her hurt to go away and hoped this hadn't jinxed our relationship. My brain told me any relationship unable to survive the intelligent exercise of good judgment would not last, but my heart disagreed.
After what seemed like the passing of geological time, Jasmine turned and wiped the remains of a tear from her right cheek. When her face offered me her trademark enigmatic smile, I knew it was going to be all right. She accepted my hug this time and gave me one in return.
'That was a smart move,' she said. 'Damn you. One of these days, you'll tell me about it.' It wasn't a question.
'Uh-huh,' Jasmine said. 'Yes, you will. And you know what? I believe you love me. Otherwise you wouldn't have done that. And I love you too.'
Fatigue rushed into the calm moment, filling the vacuum left by passion and leaving us desperate for rest. We extended the sofa bed in Tyrone Freedman's makeshift living room. I set the alarm on my watch and we fell asleep in each other's arms.
CHAPTER 66
Without the blare of 5 °Cent flooding out the open windows of a slammed Honda with seventeen-inch rims and a rear-window decal declaring the driver a 'Bad Ass,' shoppers coming out of the grocery store at the west end of the square in Itta Bena might have caught the strains of an acoustic guitar drifting out the open door of the old dry goods store across the street.
They might have heard the nearly on-key voice of a wrinkled, leathery old man who had once gotten drunk with Mississippi John Hurt, singing about pain and betrayal. But the shoppers didn't hear, and had they been able, they wouldn't probably have cared, such is the nadir to which the blues have sunk in the belly of its creation.
The old dry goods store turned juke joint had no signs, no name, no atmospheric old metal chewing-tobacco signs, or any of the other cultural tattoos sought by affluent white tourists. This place was simply known as Lena's, and as soon as some damned tourist stumbled in by accident, she'd shut it down, find some other place for it, and pass the word among the regulars. Vacant buildings were easy to come by.
But for now, Lena's lay in the shadow of the big water tower, kitty-corner from the police station and fire department, and steps west of a bar where patrons rarely let musical appreciation get in the way of serious drinking.
Tonight, Lena's was hopping. Early arrivals sat in folding chairs jammed around card tables, while the rest crowded around the walls, squatted on the worn wooden floor, and leaned against the big folding banquet tables Lena used as a movable bar. Cigarette smog hung in layers and almost chased away the naphthalene pungency of mothballs, which had once protected the dry goods store's wool fabrics. Oh, Bob shot once and Louis shot too, shot poor Collins, shot him through and through
The old man sang close enough to the right notes to be enjoyable and far enough off-key to be authentic, none of the perfect-pitch and over-orchestrated stuff usually found on CDs that leached out the pain and emotion.
In the far back corner of Lena's, almost to a door marked 'Restrooms', which actually led outside, John Myers sat at the end of a small rectangular table with Jasmine's uncle, Quincy Thompson, and Pete Mandeville, a high-yellow deputy who had been present at the murder scene when the Feds had arrived. The very end of the folding table groaned under the meaty elbows of the Itta Bena police chief, a giant man with an oversize, black cowboy hat and skin so tight, shiny, and impenetrably dark it reflected like a mirror.
Wedged into the most uncomfortable spot in the room, shoehorned right into the display window behind where the front door opened, sat two thirtysomething white men with tailored suits, $50 haircuts, and perfectly straight, overly bright teeth. They squirmed uncomfortably and nursed the cheap rye Lena had poured for them. Occasionally, one of them would sip at his glass, then grimace. Lena was not about to pour them the good stuff.
The singer everybody called Pap finished with the angels laying Ol' Collins away, then amid a respectful silence, he made his way masterfully through the final bars, and when he finished, the applause would have drowned the loudest of 5 °Cent's best. When the applause trailed off, Quincy Thompson picked up where he had left off. 'I tell you it's all because of that white boy. All his fault for coming here to get in
