'That GED thing? Man, you trippin' with that noise.'
'I'm trippin', huh. Pass me a roll.'
'They got more rolls up there,' Rok said.
'Yeah, but then I'd have to get up. And you got three on your plate.'
'You stupid.' Rok handed him a roll.
'Why I gotta be all that?' Wayne bit into the roll. Not especially hungry, he simply liked to eat with the kids. Eat what they ate, not wanting any sense of 'we're just here to feed the poor darkies.' And he kept the conversation light, harassed them like family would at the dinner table, but still pushed in on their lives. 'You got a head on you. You good with numbers. A little training, you could set up your own business.'
'You think?'
There it was. That light. Rok entertained a new possibility for himself. That was all Wayne could ask for. But he'd stay on him, fanning that tiny spark until it grew into something. Wayne clung to the little hopes of progress.
The doorbell rang. The door was kept locked during drop, no one coming in without a staff member letting them in. Tonight was a closed drop which meant regular clients only. Frantic fists pounded on the door frame. Wayne bolted to the door, preferring to open it because he never knew what might jump off on the other side, and he wanted to be the first line of defense for the volunteers. Especially Esther.
Tristan held Iz up.
'Help us,' Tristan said.
'What happened?' Wayne asked. Esther ran over to help catch Iz and ushered her to the couch. Esther soaked a wash cloth and gave it to Tristan, who daubed her forehead. She balanced on the edge of the couch, giving Iz as much room as possible.
Wayne preached boundaries but didn't always practice them. Unless he was on call, he discouraged clients from calling him off hours (except for emergencies) and rarely answered his cellphone (preferring to check his voicemail). He maintained regular office hours and when drop night was done, he led the charge to hustle everyone out. But he didn't follow his own guidelines with strict rigidity. In the language of the best trained seminarians, 'Shit happened.'
Iz sprawled out on the couch, under the tender ministrations of Tristan. Wayne thought about calling 911 and still debated it, but Iz seemed to be just coming down from a high. Iz and Tristan took turns crying. Somehow the act seemed more tender, more anguished, coming from Tristan, the way anything tender broke from those who were used to being strong.
Rok lingered around after drop, under the guise of wanting to talk with Wayne later. He recognized Tristan from the summit meeting. Thought she was fine then, but seeing her with Iz, he knew she was not playing the same game he was.
'What it look like? She got fucked up.'
'What do you want us to do?' Wayne asked.
Tristan wanted to say 'make it better' or 'fix her' but the words sounded too needy. Too unachievable. 'Look after her. She's been clean for over a year.'
'And she got back on tonight?'
'Someone did this to her,' Tristan said.
'We all make choices we have to live with,' Wayne began, sympathetic but with honesty.
'I wasn't speaking metaphorically, nigga. Someone sabotaged her recovery.'
'A… friend of yours?' Esther asked.
'Mulysa doesn't know what a friend is.'
Rok perked up at Mulysa's name. And noted the hate with which Tristan spat his name.
'Mulysa?' Wayne remembered him from King's summit meeting. As he recalled, he and Tristan didn't seem cozy, more like work colleagues who tried to remain civil to one another. 'He did this?'
'Yeah, but I'm gonna straighten his shit out.'
'What does that…?'
Tristan hefted her backpack. 'I'm trusting her with you. Do right by her.'
'You can't…'
With that, Tristan slipped out the front door with two fingers raised. 'Deuces.'
Wayne punched a number into his cellphone. His call went directly to voicemail. He cussed to himself before deciding to send Rok to find him and/or Rellik. He left a message anyway on the off-chance he would check it.
'King, we have a problem…'
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The eastside of Indianapolis suffered a slow, debilitating death. An early casualty, some say a reason, was the Camlann Housing Project. The project hadn't changed much: poverty reservations in practice. The police called it three-story run-ups, since no one was fool enough to walk if they could help it. Project was the right word for it: it was always a project in progress. There was always talk about the city giving it a face lift, much like they did the now-trendier art district of the downtown streets. Talk, anyway. Everyone also knew that the talk would never amount to much. At best, the complex would get a new coat of paint, something far short of a true refurbishing, but enough for people to forget and move along, abandoning its residents.
Mulysa rolled a tight one and sparked it up, a party of one. Breaking Iz off capped his night. Her over-muscled dyke friend would need handling, but if he were any judge of people, for the right price, she'd come around. Enough Benjamins brought the light of reason. Not that it mattered. When he got his head up like this, his thoughts drifted to dark places. Maybe it was time to put that bitch in her place. Use one bitch to check another. He brushed the hilt of his dagger. The image of him stabbing her in her breast and drinking blood from her nipple hardened him. Some real gangsta shit that would have people whispering his name in sheer terror. Yeah, he liked how that played.
He could smash a box of cookies about then.
Break-ins were the equivalent of nightly sport, robberies an experiment in ghetto math — taking nothing from nothing. Fights broke out regularly over the most trivial matters, mostly just to remind each other that they were still alive, usually an affront to one's pride since reputation was all that one truly owned here. Rowdy teens tried to be heard over the familiar hip hop drone of beats and attitude that passed for music; their cars and motorcycles peeling through the parking lots as they showed out for their friends. Many a night Mulysa fantasized about running piano wire across the street… about neck high. It wasn't the cracked dry wall or the fallen-off fixtures that he remembered most. It was having to shake out his sheets before he went to bed to clear them of cockroaches. He hated their midnight scurrying.
They scurried like over-muscled dykes sneaking up on him in the night. Tristan slipped in soundlessly, a wraith fully intent to flense Mulysa where he reclined. But to attack from behind without him knowing or prepared, that wasn't enough. That wasn't honorable. It was something he would do.
'I know you there.' Mulysa didn't turn around. 'It took you long enough to get here.'
'We got some business to discuss.'
Tristan's blades curved around each fist. Her grip tightened and loosened in steady rhythm, almost matching her heartbeat. She slackened her grip as if resolved to a new course of action, twirled them about her fingers in a gunslinger's flourish, and sheathed them.
Mulysa, for his part, didn't lower his bottom bitch. The time to discuss business was passed. Maybe it was time to test this overly muscled bitch after all. Put her in her place to make her see reason. Save him the Benjamins.
'This about your girlfriend?'
Goaded by the memory of Iz curled up on the floor, eyes slung back, with barely a trace of recognition in her eyes, the woman she loved buried underneath skeins of her high, her fallenness, her desires, and her crushed hope, Tristan charged after him. Mulysa leapt from the couch and lunged at her. She deflected the blow and snuck him in the kidneys. The two of them toppled over the couch.
Mulysa couldn't get leverage, kept off-balance by Tristan's shifting attack. He attempted a broad slash which
