Pea and I never speak about New York. I sleep with the door locked. Every night I smell spilled whiskey and meat dumplings and the dying curse of a man I have damned myself in killing. Better mob muscle than a soldier’s gun in my hands. Better Walter’s service than leaving Pea with a box of my effects and bitter memories.
Pea and Tamara come back to us perfumed and city dressed. Pea has wrestled her hair into a bun and bandeau, dark blue to match the beading on a dress I’m sure I remember, but not on her curves.
“It’s Tamara’s,” she says, smiling. She knows I already know. “But for a wonder it fits. What do you think, Dev? Do I clean up?”
She does, and I love her, and she loves me so much that she won’t let me tell her so. In her own way, I could tell Walter, Pea doesn’t trust me either.
We get in the car and drive to town. We’re a little early for dinner at the Riverview Inn, but there’s already a party at the big table: Mayor Bell and the Junior with two other middle-aged white men, sharply dressed. I peg them as the Astor investors whom Mayor Bell was so keen to please when I paid my visit. Their wives share the end of the table, in pearls and jewels that play subtle games with evening light. I watch Tamara guess the worth of these objects and deflate. Marnie, hovering by the table with an open bottle of wine, widens her eyes when we climb the porch steps. She has run the inn since I was a boy, and has never approved of me.
“Perhaps you’d like to sit inside,” she says, though none of the other outside tables are occupied.
“Gracious, Marnie,” Pea says, the drawl thick enough that I nearly laugh. I know what’s coming and I don’t particularly care. “Of course not. We’ll sit right here.”
She pulls out a chair from the table nearest the Bells and sprawls into it, graceful as a cat. I guess that Marnie’s heard the rumors about Pea, which is why she doesn’t tell her to bring her colored self inside. Tamara watches this interplay with a dawning smile.
“They know,” Tamara says, sitting beside Pea. “You let them know.”
“The hair,” Pea says.
Tamara shakes her head, still smiling. “Not just the hair.”
Walter orders wine for the table with his Red Man voice. Marnie shakes a little as she nods and hurries inside. The Bells slide glances at us. Their guests stare openly until the Junior leans forward and whispers something. Their gazes snap away from our table like a broken rubber band. There are benefits to associating with a well-known gangster. Even this far up the river.
Tamara and Walter tell stories over the meal. Old stories we all know, new ones being shaped in the telling. Their natural melancholy somehow twists into humor so sharp it hurts. Tamara is very good at this. She tells of the first time she tried dancing with the snake:
“He started going around my neck, you know, like the gaudiest necklace you ever saw, and poor old Georgie he’s so slow he couldn’t strangle a Thanksgiving turkey without a nap in between, but there’s Victor smiling with that mouth full of silver and this python sliding past my jugular and I just start hollering. You all heard me by the bar, didn’t you?”
“First time I ever heard your voice,” Pea says.
“I didn’t think you were speaking English,” I say.
She throws her head back as she laughs. “Lord, I don’t think I was either. I think it was tongues, like in church. Anyway, it stopped old Georgie. Victor just kept smiling, like he was waiting for something. And then I heard Walter behind me—remember, Walter?—and he said, ‘For God’s sake, girl, you gotta dance. George won’t know any better otherwise.’ And I stopped screaming, and I got my tongue back, and I turned right around and there was Walter, crouched a few feet away with a machete in his hand, and Victor said, well, something impolite—”
Walter twists his lips. “Give a white man a machete and he’s just a man with a knife—”
“And give a black man a machete and he’s got a bullet in him,” says Pea.
“Well,” says Tamara, “you remember how Vic liked to talk. And I said, ‘If you lunatics want me to dance, play me some goddamned music!’”
We laugh, Pea most of all. “I took one look at that snake and told Victor to find another girl. You asked for the band!”
“Some goddamned music,” I repeat, shaking my head. “Did he give you any?”
She shrugs. “Georgie slid off my neck like he’d just had enough of the whole affair and Victor told me I had a job.”
“That’s mostly how I remember it,” says Walter, dryly. “But you, sweet Tammy, aren’t much of a lady when the spirit takes you. Goddamned was the least of it.”
Tamara blushes. The rest of us invent implausible curses while Marnie flinches in the doorway. We all enjoy it—ruining an evening that white people assumed would be reserved for their pleasure. Pea’s hands relax against the table, for once free of the tension that has plagued them since we came here.
The balance of power has swung temporarily in our favor. It tastes very, very sweet.
It snaps.
Two shadows walking down the street. Both slim, one markedly taller than the other. They resolve: Alvin, with Craver. They walk silently in step. Like soldiers. Marnie doesn’t have a chance. They march up the stairs and to the Bells’ table. The balance wobbles once again, slips, careens wholesale off the cliff.
“Mr. Astor,” says Craver to the older of the guests, a man with dye-brown hair, a thin nose, and drooping cheeks, wearing a ruby tie pin to match his wife’s necklace. The Astor’s gaze slides wetly. He’s drunk.
“Ben Craver,” says Bell Senior, smiling that smile that presages explosions. “I don’t recall that I
