RECKLESS — Bad Boy Criminal Romance (9 page)

              “Give that lady my best,” I tell him.

              “Will do.”  He smiles, pleased with the profit he thinks he has made.

              Around the side of the building Angela is back sitting patiently in the passenger seat of my car.  “Was that good?” she asks me.

              “That was perfect.  And I have bunch more of those fake necklaces.  Let’s try this some more as we pass through some cities.”  I hand her fifty bucks.

              “God, that was exciting,” she says, looking at the cash, thrilled with herself.

HATTIESBURG, Miss. – In the lobby of the Plantation Motel, Angela and I stand before the motel attendant.  He’s an older, heavy-set balding man with a grey moustache, wearing camouflage pants and orange plaid western shirt.  The lobby smells of mothballs and he stands behind a faux-wooden desk.  “Can I help you?” he asks.

“One room,” I say.

              Angela grips me by the arm.  “You’re only getting one room?”

              The motel attendant stops, glances up at us.

              I smile, look at Angela.  “Uh huh.”

              “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

              “Why not?”

              “I’m not going to fuck you.”

              I exhale a chuckle.  “Fair enough.”

              She stares at me.

“I’ll sleep on the floor.  Relax.”

In our room the next morning Angela sits on the bed and picks at a blueberry oat-bran muffin and sips an orange juice box.

I open my wallet and take out some cash.  “Here’s a couple hundred dollars.  Go buy yourself some clothes.”

She takes the money from me and says, “That’s all?  I can hardly buy anything with this.”

“Go to Wal-Mart,” I tell her.

“What are you going to do?” she asks.

“I’m going to wander, see what’s around, maybe find something for us to do later.”

Late that afternoon I return to the room.  Angela is reclined on the bed watching television.  Plastic shopping bags filled with clothes lie beside her.  I turn off the television.  “Hey, I got you something,” I say.

“What?” she asks, sitting up.

“I stole it for you actually.”  I reach in my pocket, take out a driver’s license and throw it to her.  “An I.D. you can use.”

She picks it off the bed and inspects it.  “This doesn’t look like me.”

“Yeah it does.”

“I’m prettier than this.”

“It’s fine,” I insist.  “Besides, if you use a fake I.D. it should be of someone uglier than you because everyone looks worse on their I.D.  If you use a fake of someone hotter than you, you’re more likely to get caught.”

“What girl did you see that was hotter than me?”

“What?”

“You said you didn’t want to steal the I.D. of the girl who was hotter than me.”

I turn toward her.  “I was just saying hypothetically,
okay
?”  I sit beside her on the bed.  “You never told me.  Exactly how old are you anyway?”

“Nineteen,” she says immediately.

I look at her, disbelieving, and say, “Memorize the name and birth date on the I.D.  Make sure you keep it on you so we can get into bars or wherever.”

“I’m eighteen,” she says.

I shrug and say, “I figured you were at least somewhat under age.”

“Actually I’m seventeen,” she admits.  “But I am turning eighteen this year.”

“Get dressed and let’s go out, alright?”

In downtown Hattiesburg we visit The Thirsty Manatee, a hole-in-the-wall beer-only bar.  The venue is cozy, the inside all wood-paneling, with no drink on the menu over four dollars.  A two-person band from Osaka tunes their instruments on a small stage in the corner.  The singer and guitarist is a Japanese girl with tall bleached blond hair, wearing heavy dark mascara and a ballerina dress.  The keyboardist is a young Japanese man with bushy hair and a thick beard, wearing a tartan lumberjack-style vest.

Along the wall, beside a pay phone, is a photo booth.  “Hey look,” Angela says.  “Let’s take a picture.”  We enter the booth and I insert the money.  A strip of four photos of us is dispensed.  Angela places the photo strip in her pocket.

              At the bar we order a couple Heinekens.  Angela downs hers, orders another, downs that, and orders a third.

              “What are doing?” I ask.

              She blinks, shrugs and says, “I drink to get drunk.”

              “I don’t know what happens with your friends or boyfriends back home.  But I’m not carrying you back to the motel.  So if you get blasted out of your mind I’m not going to have any remorse leaving you unconscious and alone on the sidewalk to let whatever happens happen.”

Angela looks at me guiltily and says, “Sorry.  I’ll slow down.”

              A group of five college students sits at a table near us, two males and three females. They are loud, teasing each other and others in the bar.  Angela notices me continually looking over at them.

              One of the females, a thin blond sorority girl wearing a denim miniskirt and a black T-shirt with “Golden Eagles” in yellow print, stands and stumbles to the bar.  She cuts between Angela and me and orders a Natural Light.  She turns to me.  “Hey, I know you from somewhere.  You go to Southern Mississippi, right?”

              “Yeah.  I think we might’ve had a class together,” I make up.

              “Yeah, I thought so.  Hey, one of my friends over there saw you and wanted to meet you,” she says nodding to a cute brunette sitting at her table.  “You were looking at her a minute ago, weren't you?”

              “No,” Angela interjects.  “He’s with me.”

              I look at Angela, surprised and annoyed at her.

The sorority girl only now realizes Angela exists.  “Oh … right.”  She looks back at me.  “Well, you can still come over and meet her if you want.”  The sorority girl takes her beer and walks away.

              Angela stands up, starting after her.  I grab her by the arm and take her out front for a cigarette.  We stand by the front door.

              “Why did you tell her we were together?” I ask, irritated.

              “I don’t know.  I didn’t mean to,” Angela says contritely.  “It was just instinct … Plus, she was such a bitch.”

              “That doesn’t matter.  Your instincts could be costing me money.”

“I told you I’m sorry.”

Several minutes later the sorority girl who talked to us at the bar comes out holding the arm of her boyfriend.  “I don’t think I can make it,” she says.  “Can you go get the car and I’ll wait for you?”  She sits on the edge of the sidewalk, and her boyfriend walks down the street.  The sorority girl sets her purse on the ground beside her.  She momentarily closes her eyes and rubs the side of her head.

Angela tosses her cigarette, swipes the sorority girl’s purse, and starts down the street in the opposite direction of the boyfriend.  Stunned, I toss my cigarette and follow.  The boyfriend pulls up and parks his car.  The sorority girl notices her purse missing.  She looks down the sidewalk, sees Angela with it, and screams.

The boyfriend jumps from his car and sprints after us.  I take Angela by the wrist and we dart down an alley.  We run a ways and duck behind a building.  I pick up an empty beer bottle and bust the end off.  With Angela beside me, I lean backward against the edge of the building wall and wait.

Down the same alley the boyfriend follows.  He peers behind the buildings looking for us.  His shadow, cast from the street lights behind him, nears me.  The boyfriend gets within ten feet, but then gives up and walks back to his car.

I drop the broken bottle and take out a cigarette.  My heart racing, I accidentally place it on my lip upside-down and reach for my lighter.  Angela notices, takes the cigarette off my lip and puts it back right-side up.

Chapter Six

Living in a black neighborhood, going to a black school, my sister Ariel and I only had trouble for looking white one time as far as I can remember.

Starting in first grade, I had participated in all the youth sports – basketball, baseball, and football.  I was fortunate to be well-developed at a young age, fast and strong, and I excelled athletically.  As a result, despite being naturally unsociable, I won over friends by shooting baskets, hitting home runs, and running for touchdowns.  Any reference to me being a “white boy” was done affectionately by my peers who were happy I was on their team.  Having earned that popularity, my skin color became a nonissue.

My sister Ariel used sports to break the racial barrier in a different way.

In middle school a stout, dark-skinned girl named Jasmine began picking on Ariel for her light-skinned complexion.  Female bullies, though, were unlike male bullies, Ariel explained to me.  Jasmine and her friends didn’t beat her up.  They usually didn’t even taunt her to her face.  Instead, they would huddle together during recess and shoot Ariel mean looks and whisper about her.  Or, in the hallway, one of them would “by accident” bump into her and knock her books out of her hands and say, “Oops, I didn’t see you there.”

But mostly, Jasmine’s assault of Ariel was not physical.  It was psychological.  Jasmine tried to convince all the girls that something was wrong with Ariel and to take sides against her.  Jasmine’s ultimate victory would be to leave Ariel friendless, isolated, and thus believing there really was something wrong with her.

Yielding to peer pressure, some of Ariel’s friends began to abandon her.  She realized she needed to act fast before she became a social outcast.

Unlike me, Ariel didn’t play sports.  She didn’t even like watching them unless I was playing.  Ariel took P.E. class and was forced to participate in basketball, softball, and soccer among other sports.  She dawdled through them all, doing enough to get credit for the class while exerting minimal effort.

However, the day the class went outside to play field hockey, something was different.  For weeks Ariel had been an emotional wreck.  She loathed going to school.  Every day she faced new rumors being spread.  Every day she faced former friends now hating her.  I suggested that she fight Jasmine.  I thought if she stood up to her, maybe it would all end.  But Ariel told me it wasn’t like that with girls.  To stop the harassment, she needed to win the public opinion of the other girls over Jasmine, not to beat her up.

For field hockey, Ariel and Jasmine were pitted against each other.  Jasmine was the opposing team’s goalie.  After all the torment, Ariel only wanted one thing: to score a goal on Jasmine.  So for the first time, Ariel actually played and played hard.  Nearing the end of the class period, drenched in sweat, Ariel finally broke away toward the goal.  She shot the ball which soared past Jasmine and into the net.

But it didn’t matter.  Jasmine looked at one of her friends and made a face mockingly.  Jasmine didn’t care, nor did anyone else.  Regardless of the goal, Ariel was still a social pariah.  Disheartened, Ariel felt like she’d never be able to win over the public opinion.  So instead, she took my advice and swung her hockey stick hard and swept out Jasmine’s feet from underneath her.  She clubbed Jasmine a couple times before the P.E. teacher pulled her off.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the teacher asked.

“She called my mom a bitch,” Ariel said innocently.

Ariel was let off with a warning while Jasmine was taken to the principal’s office and scolded.

The next day as Ariel and I walked into school, a girl approached Ariel about the field hockey incident and said, “I didn’t know you were down like that!”

Ariel glanced at me and then smiled.  She shrugged and said, “I guess I am.”

NEW ORLEANS, La. – In the late afternoon we check into Hotel LaSalle on Canal Street, a half block from the French Quarter.  Angela and I, exhausted, lie on the bed and fall asleep on top of the bedspread with our clothes on.  I don’t wake up until nine-thirty that evening, Angela nudging me.

              “Hey, what are we doing tonight?” she asks.

              I sit up and say, “Let me see what clothes you have.” 

She hands me a small duffel bag, which I’ve loaned her, containing her belongings.  Angela showers while I pick through her garments and assemble an outfit for her.  Out of the shower she puts on her underwear which she brought into the bathroom with her.  She peeks from the cracked bathroom door and says, “I need the rest of my clothes now.”

“Come here real quick and tell what you think of this,” I say.

“I can’t” she exclaims.  “I’m hardly wearing anything.”

“You have your underwear on.  Just come look at this outfit.”

Reluctantly she disappears momentarily into the bathroom and then comes out with a white terrycloth towel draped over her shoulders.  Underneath the towel she tries to cover her black panties with pink trim and a black bra with pink pinstripes.  I have her pull back her blond hair into a ponytail.  I dress her in a black headband, a nondescript black T-shirt, a denim skirt, black leggings, and her sneakers.