Lookaway, Lookaway (38 page)

“Stop it—that’s totally turning me on.” They indulged this idea for a few minutes more, inventing dialogue and adding a new character: Warden Dorcas J. Jourdain, who managed the nearby women’s correctional facility—with an iron hand.

They clicked on a few regulars they kept track of. There was
pledgemaster,
this hot Italian-American guy named Joey who wrote Josh fairly regularly, bemoaning Josh’s exclusive search for black guys when what he really needs is to meet “Little Joey.” Then there was the now legendary Tyrell, who went by the dignified user name
sucknips69
.

“Yeah,” said Dorrie, “still got that lame-ass picture.”

Tyrell was as cautionary as Marlo. Josh chatted online with Tyrell, whose profile located him in “Charlotte,” only to drive twenty miles into the sticks and find a man ten years older and fifty pounds heavier than the antediluvian Polaroid he had scanned for his profile picture. The bad thing was, Josh would tell Dorrie, was when you’ve thrown a night away like that, your card-carrying gay man will always decide oh-what-the-heck and go through with it. Tyrell, the photo-fraud whose every stated statistic was off by half, led him inside … past his grandmother, who sat on the sofa in her nightgown in the outer room of the shotgun shack.

“Evening, boys,” she said.

Josh entered the bedroom to find several months of laundry piled on one half of the bed, and the unwashed sheets smelling strongly of … Tyrell. Sitting at a small desk was a thirteen-year-old boy who was typing away on the internet gay hookup site that Josh had used to meet Tyrell. Until seeing that, Josh never imagined he could have been chatting with kids some of the time. Tyrell told his cousin to move along; Tyrell’s cousin gamely tried to interest Josh and Tyrell in a threeway (“I know how,” he promised, in an adamant soprano), before being told to go watch TV with grandma.

“Nah, she don’t know,” Tyrell assured Josh. “Grams don’t think that way.”

Whoa, and Josh thought
his
family was steeped in denial. Josh told Tyrell that he could not have sex with every sound being broadcast to Tyrell’s grandmother one thin wall away; Josh could hear her labored breathing even with Tyrell stomping about the room, moving piles of dirty laundry so they could have a small surface for lovemaking. Plus, Josh assumed a
Dateline
camera crew on the hunt for pedophiles would burst into the shotgun shack at any minute. Pudgy, unshowered Tyrell who hadn’t brushed his teeth in an age was truly disappointed—he probably hadn’t gotten anyone as far as the bedroom in years. Figured it’d be terminally hopeful/terminally horny Josh, thought Josh, who achieved this distinction.

Dorrie squealed with amusement every time he relived this encounter. “And you know he uses his little cousin as his fallback. Heh-heh, you took a trip to Jim Trueblood’s cabin, yes you did.”

Josh laughed too. But if Tyrell had been hot, Josh knew he would have gone for it, copulated quietly as possible, gathered himself up as well as he could and walked past grandma with an “Evening, ma’am.”

*   *   *

Calvin Eakins Sr. was an African-American Democratic city councilman representing District Three when Josh’s father was a Republican councilman. Unlike Duke Johnston, Calvin Eakins made a life in politics and moved on to being a state senator, then a powerful committee chairman in Raleigh, then a figure rarely off the front pages for rumors of corruption, graft, kickbacks, illegally obtained campaign contributions—but that was only the last few years. He was indicted early in 2007 and, as the case got harder for prosecutors to make, they started indicting his family members (in whose bank accounts he had laundered his ill-gotten gains) throughout 2008, in hopes of squeezing the truth out of the patriarch: his youngest daughter, his younger lawyer son, and his oldest son, Calvin, fellow alumnus of Mecklenburg Country Day, of no steady profession, unless you count low-level playboy.

Calvin called Josh and left a message on his landline. They hadn’t spoken in nearly eight years.

Driving uptown, Josh looked up to see one of Annie’s smiling, soft-focus billboards. Berma Bigglefield was another woman with a billboard:
BERMA’S BAIL BONDS
. You saw Berma coming off I-277 heading toward the Mecklenburg County Courthouse. Again, the airbrushed shot, the trademark photo haze that all self-employed women on billboards required for their likenesses to meet the public. It was hard to tell with black women how old they were. Berma could have been … late forties? Maybe sixty? He’d have to ask Dorrie, if he ever decided to tell her about what he was doing.

He walked into a small bungalow, with a neon sign in every street-facing window: the one word blinking red
BAIL
and in the next window
OPEN 24 HOURS
, while in the one attic window a glowing blue neon that simply announced
BERMA
. And sitting at the crowded desk in a cheaply paneled room was … Berma herself!

“I came down here ’cause I saw your picture, Ms. Bigglefield,” Joshua said. “You look even prettier in real life.”

“Ain’t you sweet? What can Berma do for you, sugar?”

Joshua had never been to a bail bondsman (or bondswoman) before. Calvin’s bail was $20,000, sort of a slap on the wrist. But neither his daddy nor his family was in any state to come bail him out. Obstruction of justice. Just $2,000 and Calvin could be released. Joshua figured—no, he knew, it was $2,000 down the drain. Joshua had a few IOUs that dated back to their days in high school.

“Now if he fails to appear in court,” Joshua asked, “does that mean I owe all twenty thousand?”

“That’s right, sugar. Berma’s gonna always get her money back.”

“Where do I sign?”

Joshua was then supposed to go to the lockup and present this to the assistant warden’s secretary. Sort of exciting, wardens and jails, all this official court lingo and big stone edifices of columns and judicial severity. Lawyers looking smart and stylish, and all the strapping, thuggish defendants in orange jumpsuits, the occasional media person, a camera crew setting up outside the courthouse steps.

“Only you, Calvin, could come out of a jail looking like a
GQ
cover,” Josh said when his friend emerged.

“Shirt needs pressing,” he said.

They walked in the unseasonal February warmth to the parking deck. No one said anything during the walk but that was from overabundance of topics.

“You still driving this piece of shit,” Calvin hummed, getting into Joshua’s 1996 Taurus.

“I’ve kept it on the road for over ten years.”

For what Joshua put into the deathmobile, Calvin explained, he could have leased. What followed was one of Calvin’s patented how-to-look-rich-for-no-money scams, how to legally welsh on a lease agreement, how to get out of a payment or two while being seen in a BMW. Joshua nodded as he threaded the car through the narrow concrete spiral ramps leading to the pay station. All this lifestyle savvy and inside dope had gotten Calvin nowhere. No job lasted very long, no good first impression was left untarnished.

“Why’d you call me?” Joshua asked, interrupting a speech on how Josh was a fool to rent an apartment when he could own.

“My brother and I aren’t speaking.”

There was a pause, as if that were sufficient. “Well,” Josh prompted, “that’s
one
out of ten thousand people I would have thought you’d call before me. Mother?”

“Total meltdown. When Dad got arrested she took to the bed.”

“Why not someone on your dad’s staff?”

“Shit, they’re all trying to keep out of prison themselves,” Calvin said lightly, showing no signs of worry or concern for his own fate. “Or they’re looking for new jobs.”

“College friends?”

“Too embarrassing. Bound to give my enemies satisfaction.”

“Your little black book? What was her name…”

“No no no. A girl gets you out of jail and then you’re
really
indebted. Almost like a marriage proposal. She sees her pathetic ass sitting by your side at trial, dabbing her eyes with your handkerchief.” Calvin pulled the seat forward, then bent it back to lie down, staring at the roof of the interior. “I’m not seeing anyone anyway.” An odd pause.

“How about you?” Calvin asked.

“Eh, nothing serious. Just a regular-sex thing.” For some reason, Joshua felt his heart race, wondered if his face was coloring. Was this a swoon? He wasn’t sure what a swoon was. “Maybe once a week—”

“I envy that. Just a sex thing. Never could get that arranged with any woman. They wanted to marry me and reform me and generally domesticate me. Sad to say.”

“So why’d you call me?” Joshua tried again.

“I knew you’d come get me.”

“We haven’t talked in about, what, eight years.”

“But we’re still friends.”

“Oh I still like you,” Joshua said, all smiles, “but friends keep up, don’t disappear for years at a time, and then only call to get bailed out of jail. Money I’m fairly sure I won’t see back.”

“You didn’t have to do it. Why did you?”

Just to see, Joshua thought. See what he looked like. Reintroduce a character back into his life, despite the surefire wear and tear and drama that hovered around Calvin. Who was left in Joshua’s life who remembered him from his rich-kid private-school goofy, nerdy, smart-kid, class-outcast, school newspaper, drama club, band-geek days? “I was happy to do it,” Joshua told Calvin, to keep the conversation going. “Where am I taking you, by the way?”

“A motel, I guess.”

“You have money for a motel?”

“Nope.”

Joshua pulled into a service station parking lot. No sense driving aimlessly. Calvin hopped out for cigs and a giant Coke. They dehydrated you in jail. The cell-block water fountain tasted funny—and God knows what you were catching, drinking after the scum of the earth—and then they barely air-conditioned the place. Calvin walked a few yards then circled back around to Joshua’s driver’s-side window. “Uh, can you lend me a five?”

Joshua handed a five over.

I’m being used, Joshua thought as Calvin walked away. Used
again,
to be more precise. Big surprise, there. Take a number. Calvin had previously been the screwup of his family. Now, with State Senator Calvin Eakins Sr. under corruption and racketeering indictments, that distinction was a little harder to obtain. His father’s whole public arrest and downfall must come as a relief to Calvin. So much for living up to his daddy’s impossibly high standards. But still, as dysfunctional as Calvin is, Joshua thought, I must be more so to keep dealing with him. Joshua decided he wouldn’t offer Calvin his sofa. For one thing, Calvin might never leave. Joshua would end up the pathetic-ass friend in court, following the proceedings, dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief. Second, it recalled an old social desperation, dorky Joshua wanting to be friends with cool Calvin more than Calvin wanted to be with him. Oh for God’s sake, Joshua told himself, high school was a quarter of a century ago—offer the guy your couch!

“I was going to quit,” Calvin said, bouncing into the passenger seat, shaking his box of cigarettes. “But what’s a racist show trial without a good smoke?”

“So your dad’s innocent?” Joshua pulled back on the boulevard.

“Hell no. I’m sure he was skimming just like every other crook in Charlotte or Raleigh, but you see how the SBI is only making a case against the powerful black state senator, right?”

“They just convicted the white Speaker of the House, Jim Black. They’re putting a number of powerful Democrats in jail.”

“Believe me, race is in the mix.”

Joshua nodded. Dorrie’s much offered opinion on any celebrated black trial was that blacks had been railroaded and scapegoated through the decades for so much that they didn’t do, that if they could play the race card successfully to get out of a few things they
did
do, well, it’s sort of karmic redress. Still, a crook is a crook.

“So, uh, Josh. Can I use your sofa for the night?”

Joshua smiled a little.

“Poor homeless black boy,” Calvin intoned melodramatically. “Nowhere to go … probably go down with
ma brothas
at the homeless shelter down on Tryon, get a urine-stained cot.”

“Your family is twice as wealthy as mine. You don’t want to be with them?”

“I want to be with my funk soul brother Josh-oo-a. Ain’t you my
wigga
?” Calvin crossed his arms like he was in a rap posse. “JJ is pretty fly for a white guy.” Calvin wove together several hip-hop phrases, all out of date. Joshua was more up on black music than Calvin, if anyone wanted to know. Calvin talking gangsta—that always played nicely with his white coterie in high school, Joshua thought. For a bunch of soft white innocents, Calvin was dangerous and uncharted racial territory, but if he tried to hang with Charlotte’s notorious Hidden Valley Kings? He’d be dead.

“… and I promise not to have any crack ho’s over to your crib, dawg. I’ll turn my bi-atches out somewhere else…”

“Oh Jesus.” Joshua tried not to laugh, or be charmed again.

Calvin returned to his normal smooth baritone: “I’ll flush the toilet. You can keep a stack of separate glasses and plates so you don’t have to eat after me and get any of my black cooties.”

“It’s already a little late for that.”

Calvin went quiet. Joshua pulled to a stop at the light, then looked over to see if that remark was over the line. But Calvin was smiling slyly. He exhaled Winston smoke, keeping his level, inscrutable gaze on his friend. Big brown eyes of great mesmeric power, eyes that once moved the stars around in the sky. “Don’t go there, baby. That was a long time ago.”

By making an allusion to their teenage homosexual experimentation, Joshua detected that he’d gained a little power, the power of the person who might say what was never said. “All right. But no running around in your little thong underwear,” Joshua pursued, extending his run. “No flopping out of your shorts, teasing the gay guy.”

“I can’t help it if I’ve kept myself up, got the body of a twenty-year-old.” That he did. “But that was … you were the only one that kinda shit happened with.”