“I’m sorry about the way I overreacted,” she replied.
“It’s okay. I’m glad you called.”
“Nate loves you so much. He’s never had anyone like you in his life. His father and I divorced when he was three.”
“Like I said before. He’s the best.”
“That’s why I’m just not sure about us.”
Jack stopped pacing. “That’s what I told you in my car when you suggested we have dinner.”
“I know, and we should have listened to your instincts, not mine.”
“Why the sudden reversal?”
“When you and I were sitting on the porch swing, and I looked back and saw Nate’s little face in the window, my heart sank. He was so happy to see us together. But then another image flashed in my head, one of me a month or three months from now trying to explain to him why Jack doesn’t come around anymore.”
“But you said it yourself at the beginning. You were tired of living your life preparing for the worst-case scenario.”
“Sometimes I do get tired of it.”
“It’s like my friend Theo always says. There’s two kinds of people in this world, risk takers and-” He stopped himself. Risk takers and shit takers sounded okay when belting back beers with Theo, but it seemed a little crude here. “And not risk takers,” he said, grimacing at the lack of poetry in his improvisation. “Anyway, you know what I’m saying.”
“Yes. But I’m Nate’s mother. I have to be careful about the risks I take.”
“I can’t disagree with that.”
“Then you understand?”
“I do. And I don’t. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I wasn’t expecting to have such a great time with you tonight.”
“It’s complicated, I know.”
“Until things went sour on your front porch, I was actually starting to think you had the right idea. I’ve been fixed up with two women since my divorce. Both had middle-schoolers who frankly scared the hell out of me. If I’m going to be dating single moms, why not date the one with the world’s greatest kid?”
“There’s definitely two sides to this, but-”
“But now you think my first instinct was right. Leave it to a couple of advocates,” he said, scoffing. “We’ve persuaded each other to reverse roles.”
“Look, we’re not going to resolve this tonight. Maybe it’s a good thing you’re going to Africa. It gives us time to think.”
“Right. A little time is a good thing.”
“So we’re agreed? We just put things on hold for a while, go back to normal.”
Jack had the frustrating feeling that the right words were floating out there somewhere between them, but damned if he could find them. “Okay. Normal it is.”
“Thank you. Have a safe trip, okay?”
“I will.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.” He flipped the cell phone shut and sat on the step, alone. Already, he didn’t like the feeling of “normal.”
Thirty
The urinal in the men’s room was busted again, and two guys were busily gratifying each other in the only stall, so Theo took the back exit into the alley behind the club. He found a dark, suitable spot between two parked cars, only to find that someone had found the very same spot minutes before he had.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, stepping out of it.
He continued down the dark alley, though he was suddenly thinking more of his talk with Jack than his bursting bladder. He hadn’t exactly told his friend the whole story about why he was going to Africa. Sure, it would be fun, and even more sure, Jack could use a guy like Theo to keep him out of trouble. But Theo’s real agenda was much more personal. The police were zooming in on his brother as a suspect in Sally Fenning’s murder, and Theo alone knew the depth of his debt to Tatum.
The alley was getting darker with each step he took, and Theo finally stopped and looked around. On either side were the unadorned backs of buildings-bars, drugstores, Laundromats. A half block ahead, the lights from Sixteenth Street were a big glowing dot in the darkness, like the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. The walls were cinder blocks painted beige and white. Every door and window was covered with black security bars. If he narrowed his eyes, Theo could almost see one set of hands after another gripping those iron bars, hands without faces, hands he’d linked to anxious voices from within boxes during his years on death row. Those were memories he would have liked to flush. But with his own brother in trouble, and with the barred doors and windows all around him, his mind drifted back to a night on death row that he’d truly thought would be his last hours on earth.
Theo sat on one side of the prison glass; his brother, Tatum, on the other. His brother seemed taken by his baldness.
“What happened to your hair, man?”
“It’s just what they do,” said Theo. The prison barber had already shaved his head and ankles so that there would be a smooth connection between his flesh and the deadly voltage of the electric chair.
“Swyteck is starting to scare me,” said Tatum. “What the hell is taking him so long this time? He ain’t never let it go this far before.”
“He’s doing what he can. Sometimes you just run out of shit to throw against the wall.”
“Then get a new lawyer.”
“They don’t give out new lawyers the night before an execution.”
“But you need more time. I need more time.”
From the day of Theo’s sentencing, Tatum had vowed to track down every last member of the Grove Lords, threaten them, beat them, crack their skulls-whatever it took to find the one who had gone into that convenience store and really killed that cashier.
Theo said, “I appreciate all you done for me, but-”
“But nothin’. Don’t you start with that good-bye shit now.”
“We gotta face facts.”
“The facts is, you didn’t do it.”
“You think I’m the first innocent man ever to sit on death row?”
“Sittin’ here is one thing. They can’t execute you, damn it.”
“They can, Tatum. And they will.”
Tatum checked the clock on the wall. “Where the hell is that lawyer of yours?”
“He’s supposed to call in about a half hour.”
“Good. I want to talk to him.”
“What for?”
“I need to know if this is really it.”
“We’ll know soon enough.”
“Don’t say that. Because if he’s out of ideas, I got one for him.”
“What?”
With a pen, he scribbled onto the notepad in front of him. Then he leaned closer to the glass and turned the notepad so that Theo could see it. It read, “Let’s just say I did it.”
Theo looked his brother in the eye. “Say what?”
“I’m shit compared to you,” he said, his voice shaking. “You got a brain in your head, man. You could be somebody. So let’s just say it was me who done it. We look a little alike. That eyewitness was pretty shaky. Maybe
