Our Brothers at the Bottom of the Bottom of the Sea (12 page)

The lights snapped shut one by one, and Rachel had to let her eyes adjust to the dark so that she wouldn't lose track of Leonard. Fortunately, he cut a distinctive silhouette: shaggy hair and long, wiry frame
—
the outline of a palm tree.

“Ms. Leary,” he said very formally when Rachel approached.

“Mr. Washington Washington.”

“You remembered?”

“Of course.”

“Mr. Washington Washington doesn't like to disappoint a lady,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “But I'm going to disappoint you.”

“You think?”

“I know. I've had to talk to the police, and I've had to answer to Bobby Stone. I'm done. I'm not talking about the accident anymore.” He spread his hands low like an umpire calling safe. “It's over.”

“That's not what I'm here for,” Rachel said, unzipping her backpack. “I brought you something.”

“Me? What could you possibly have for me?” He laughed, but Rachel noticed that his eyes didn't move from the pack.

She lifted out a small, iridescent, green gift bag and gave it to Leonard by the handles. He picked it up by the tips of his fingers as if it were too delicate to hold.

“Open it,” Rachel said.

Like a mummy, the gift was wrapped in swaths of white tissue paper. Leonard unwound it carefully, releasing a doll about the size of a cupcake. It had black slippers that curled at the toes and a pointy blue cap. In its hands was a book with
Dentistry
stitched on the cover.

“The misfit elf,” Leonard said. “I'll be damned.”

“I happened to be near the Island of Misfit Toys, so, you know, I swung by, picked this up.…”

“Thank you.” He held it up to his eyes. “I'll give him a place of honor on the TV. That way I can see him from the couch.” Leonard ground out his cigarette, looking absently over the go-cart track as if he were already at home, admiring his gift. “So,” he said after a long pause. “What's next?”

Rachel really didn't know. She had planned just far enough to visit the least likely store on the boardwalk
—
a shop that sold Christmas ornaments and holiday knickknacks, of all things
—
and had the presence of mind to get him that elf. She felt no need to tell him
how
—
a deft swipe of the hand while the saleswoman answered her cell phone. The emerald bag and white tissue paper she had pulled from an alley Dumpster. The value of the gift was in the thing itself, not the way she got it.

“Should we look for the abominable snowman?” Rachel asked lightly.

“I think it wiser to avoid him,” Leonard said. “I know my limits. How about a cup of coffee? There's this place I like on the bay.”

“I drink tea,” Rachel said, regretting it immediately. Tea, coffee, what difference did it make?

“They might have that,” Leonard said, unfazed. “No guarantees, though.”

A few days ago, it had felt dangerous to sit with Leonard on the same bench; now, Rachel noticed, she was following him to his car, a weed-green Plymouth Duster with a primer-red passenger door. He opened it for her, and she resisted any hesitancy, slipping bravely inside.

“Safety first,” Leonard said, indicating the seat belt over her shoulder as he got behind the wheel. He buckled himself in. “I don't really need this car. But I like having it. Sometimes I think that one day, I'll just get in it and go.”

Rachel admired the hula dancer on the dashboard, poking at her straw skirt to make her hips swing side to side. “Go where?” she asked.

“Details,” Leonard said with a dismissive wave of his hand. He dropped the car into gear and slung his arm over the shoulder of Rachel's seat, his head turned to back up. “It's just about the going,” he continued, facing forward again. “I've thought more about the getting away than the going to. That's where I draw a blank. But I imagine freedom fills in the blank.”

“I just finished high school,” Rachel said. “And now all I can think about is running away.”

“Running away?” Leonard laughed. “At our age, it's not running away. It's growing up. Aren't we supposed to pick up our little feet and scamper off? Somewhere?”

They had turned onto a broad avenue spiked with lagoons and their little fleets of pleasure craft. As freshly built condos gave way to older, less impressive, and far more weatherworn dwellings, Leonard slowed down, then eased the car to the curb. If Rachel hadn't been directed to the coffee shop, she would never have known it was there. There was no sign on the door, which was squeezed between a bait shop and the harbormaster's office in a cramped row of shingled buildings on creosote piers jutting out, like teeth, into the bay. A small bell jingled as they entered. Inside, a ceiling rail of stuttering fluorescent tubes cast a pallid light on a counter studded with salt and pepper shakers and ketchup bottles. At the far end of the place, just past a row of red vinyl stools, a pair of sliding glass doors opened onto a few feet of dock and the iron-black waters of the bay. Now and then a boat would rumble by, sweeping a ray of light ahead of its bow.

“We'll sit at the counter,” Leonard said. “I like to have my space.”

He wouldn't have to fight for it. At the end of the counter, an elderly man dressed improbably in a dark suit and tie huddled over his coffee mug. Two florid middle-aged men in sun-faded cotton work shirts sat at a small table that seemed to rest on their ample bellies. They shared a newspaper between them and said little, exchanging the kind of shorthand that couples understand after years of marriage. The last remaining person was the cook behind the counter, a square-shouldered black man of about forty with a red bandanna tied over his head. Without prompting, he brought Leonard a mug of coffee and a cinnamon bun on a sheet of wax paper. “Miss?” he asked Rachel.

“Tea, please,” she said. “With milk.”

“Do we have that?” the cook asked himself. He poked among a few boxes on a shelf over the grill. “I got Lipton. You drink Lipton?”

Rachel would have preferred Red Rose, with freshly boiled water poured directly over the bag and steeped for exactly three minutes, then served with a touch of whole milk and just one teaspoon of sugar. The cook brought her a cup of hot water with a tea bag slouching on the saucer. The label looked faded, like an old lace doily, as if it had been exposed to years of morning sunlight. Rachel drowned the bag in the hot water, submerging it with her spoon until it stopped struggling to come to the surface again. “Thank you,” she said.

On a ledge above the coffee urn, a radio played big band music that was hardly louder than the hissing gas jets under the grill. “Come here a lot?” Rachel asked Leonard.

“Yup,” Leonard said. “Just about every night.”

“For a guy who just wants to hit the road and go,” Rachel said, surveying the counter, “this seems like a pretty got-up-and-went kind of place.”

“I think of it as welcoming. Don't know if you noticed, but there aren't that many black folk on this island.”

The cook had his back turned to them, scraping the grill, but he chuckled as Leonard spoke.

“How'd you find it?” Rachel asked.

“I don't know. I was walking around one night and saw a light on and people going in, and I wondered, what is this? And being curious and all, I went in. The rest is history.”

The radio welcomed listeners to
Make-Believe Ballroom Time,
encouraging them to find partners and dance. “If you can't find a partner, close your eyes and invent one. After all, it's
Make-Believe Ballroom Time.
”

“It's like a speakeasy,” Leonard said. “Except”
—
he lowered his voice
—
“most of the people who come here at night have stopped drinking.” He looked around. “It's a bar for ex-drunks. A bar without the booze.”

“For fishermen too,” said the cook, refilling Leonard's mug. “For fishermen without the fish.” He turned to Rachel. “Another Lipton?”

“You mind, Stan?” Leonard said. “I know there's no real privacy here, but do you have to break the spell?”

Stan held up his hands in protest. “Forgive me, brother. Just refilling your coffee.”

“I'll let you know if I need more coffee.”

Stan gave Leonard a half-cocked smile, then retreated to the far end of the counter, where he exchanged a few softly spoken words with the suited man. Rachel nursed her tea, turning down a bite of Leonard's cinnamon bun. Everything was hushed until the twilight mood was broken by a passing boat that swung its bow light through the doors, illuminating the coffee shop in a sudden glare like a policeman's searchlight. At once, every head turned toward the light, expectant. Then the boat, and the moment, passed.

“Tell me about the accident,” Rachel said.

“We were having a nice night.”

“You didn't bring me here not to talk,” Rachel said. “They say he tried to stand up. Tried to get out. What do you say?”

“It shouldn't have mattered,” Leonard said.

“What do you mean?”

“The restraining bar in his lap. You ever go on the coaster? There's a bar right on top of your
—
well, right on you. You just try to stand up. Try to wiggle, even.” He lit a cigarette. “Just try.”

“No smoking,” Stan said without looking up.

“What, you got eyes at the back of your head?”

“No smoking. It's the law.”

Leonard rolled his eyes. “You mind?” he asked, reaching for the saucer under Rachel's cup. She pushed it toward him, and he stubbed out his cigarette. “What a waste,” he said.

“So you're saying he couldn't stand up?” Rachel asked.

“I'm saying the bar should've stopped him. And I'll say to you what I've said to everyone else. To the police. To Stone. I checked those bars.” His voice grew softer but more insistent. “They were down. Before that ride began, I checked every car. Up and down. Like we're supposed to.”

“And?”

“And they were down. Tight. There's a fail-safe too, on the controls. If all the bars aren't locked, you get a red light. And the coaster won't start. I had a green light.” He looked out toward the bay. “Like starboard, right? Out there, on the water, green is starboard? Red is port, I think. You sail?”

“No. So what happened?”

“You know what happened.”

“I mean, how did it happen?”

“Don't know,” Leonard said. He held up his mug. “Stan.”

“You know the magic words,” Stan said.

“Please? May I have more coffee?”

“Certainly,” Stan said, pushing himself away from the counter.

“All I know,” Leonard said, “is that they say it's my fault.” After the accident, he was brought into a little room at the police station and asked a lot of questions. “Actually, the same questions, lots of times,” said Leonard. They took his blood for a drug test, and they took down his words. “It would be crazy to say that the police work for Stone. Nuts. Paranoid.” Leonard waved his fingers in the air. “But let's just say that their interests are
—
what's the word?
—
aligned
. They gave me an option. I could walk away from the job, or they could press charges.”

“What charges?”

Leonard looked into his mug. “Reckless en-something-ment.”

“Endangerment.”

“Something like that.”

“You should have waited for a lawyer.”

Leonard laughed. “You hear that, Stan? I should've waited for a lawyer.”

Stan crossed his arms over his chest, grinning like a Buddha. “He would've waited a long time, miss,” he said. “A real long time. He did the right thing.”

“You don't know what it's like. In that room alone. No family. No friends. Just the police pushing you with questions. Just you and them in that little room. You don't know what it's like.”

“Actually,” Rachel said, finishing her tea, “I do. I've been there.”

“Been where?”

“That little room. In the police station.”

“Damn,” Leonard said, rocking backward on his stool. “Aren't you full of surprises? And I thought you were a nice girl. What they want you for?”

“Same as you. Questions. Blame.”

Leonard shook his head mournfully over his mug. “Babylon,” he said.

“What?”

“That's what the Rastas say.” He pantomimed taking a deep drag from an invisible joint and in a stage Jamaican accent said, “It's Babylon, mon. Babylon.”

Stan glowered from his end of the counter. “Don't mock what you don't understand,” he said.

“I ain't mocking,” Leonard said. “And I understand it perfectly well. This?” He raised his arms, palms to the sky. “We're in exile here. This place of darkness. Not
this
particular place, of course,” he said to Stan, “but in general, all over. Babylon.” He turned again to Rachel. “You know what I don't get about cops? Okay, sure, they have a tough job. But what kind of a person drags in a sister who's just seen … I mean, that's cold. Body's not even in the ground.”

“No,” Rachel said. “This wasn't last year. Last week.”

“Last week?”

“An officer came to my booth, asked me to come to the station.”

“You should've waited for a lawyer,” he said, smirking over the lip of his mug. He took a sip and made a face. “How is it that it's so good when it's hot but disgusting when it's cold?” He put his mug down. “The timing's strange. Why now?”

“I don't know,” Rachel said, both hands on her tea. “I thought they wanted to ask me about the graffiti, but that's crazy.” She told the
Don't fall
story to Leonard.

“It's the motto of the year,” Leonard said, “don't fall. Remember the kid who fell off the jetty last winter?”