The Right Mistake (14 page)

They had been talking all night, Luna and Socrates. She was telling him about an apartment she lived in that was also a drug factory, distribution warehouse, and store.

“My daddy worked there and my mothah and brothahs too,” she said. “It was at the back of the first floor apartment of a small buildin’. We had a steel door with sixteen locks. I was thirteen an’ my boyfriend, Darien, was thirty-six.”

Socrates stroked her wild mane and laid his left palm over her still-flat belly.
“I nevah cried,” she said, “not when they shot Darien down in the street, not when my daddy died from poisonin’ hisself wit’ alcohol an’ drugs. One’a my brothers was dead an’ the other was on the run when they arrested my mama an’ I was still only thirteen. I lived on my own after that.”
Luna put both her small hands on Socrates’.
“I wanna tell you everything now we like this together,” she said. “You know I did the things that a woman do when she on the streets alone. I sold myself to old men and women too. I sold drugs an’ I even was with some men when they killed somebody one time.”
They were lying in the bed of his small cottage behind the big house in Watts. She turned to him and he kissed her gently next to her severe mouth.
“What do that mean?” she asked.
“That I love you, Luna.”
“Then why don’t you kiss my lips?”
He did so.
“You don’t have to stay wit’ me if you don’t want,” she said.
“Luna.”
“What?”
“When I first met you you wouldn’t say more’n three words at a time. Even when we got together you didn’t talk much. But now everything I say, even what I don’t say, you got some comment. An’ usually you either think I’m lyin’ or that I said sumpin’ I didn’t.
“What do you want from me, girl?”
She smiled and turned on her side to face him.
“I was in a juvenile detention center when my mama died. They had me in there for prostitution an’ because I was wit’ those men kilt that othah man. I run away and then, a long time later, I saved Marianne an’ she got me a lawyer that cleared it with the court for me.”
“Uh-huh. I figured that,” Socrates said.
“Do you love me, Mr. Fortlow?”
“Yes I do.”
“An’ you don’t care about what I did?”
“Not one bit. Not for one second.”
“Then why you got to be goin’ out in the middle’a the night an’ stayin’ away for days?”
Socrates laughed and Luna slammed her fist against his chest.
“Don’t laugh at me.”
“I’m just surprised, girl. I nevah thought in a million years that a pretty young thing like you be jealous of a old man like me.”
“That ain’t no answer.”
“Billy an’ me goin’ to San Francisco, that’s all. He got these people up there he want me to meet, says they could help out the Nickel. I ain’t nevah had a vacation in my whole life. It’s just me an’ him.”
“An’ all them hos up in Frisco.”
“You the only woman in my life, Luna. I ain’t lookin’ for nobody else.”
She pouted and hit him again. It was just a tap this time.
“What’s goin’ on, L? You know I ain’t no hound. You had to chase me down just to get me to look you in the eye.”
She smiled. “That’s ’cause I was so young an’ you thought they was gonna put you in jail.”
“You not that young,” he said. “Anyway, you know me better’n that.”
“Look at me,” she said.
He did.
“You sayin’ you don’t see trash from the street?” she asked.
“That ain’t the right question.”
“Huh?”
“The question is, do you see yo’self in my eyes an’ see trash? You know what I think an’ you don’t care what nobody else think. You done taken the leap, let yourself be pregnant and be with a man. You know I love you. You know where I’m from. But what you don’t know—”
Socrates didn’t finish because Luna put her hand over his mouth.
She crawled up on top of him. They were both naked in the night.
Luna hugged his big, black, bald head to her chest with all of her considerable strength. He brought his powerful hands to her sides as if holding her in place.
“You meet all kindsa women now that they know about your place,” she said, her voice muffled by the embrace. “They all want to be wit’ you now.”
“If I was another kinda man I might give ’em a tumble too,” Socrates admitted. “You know some men need it day and night. But that ain’t me, L.”
“You gonna be on that TV show and at that breakfast at the mayor’s mansion. What are they gonna think when they find out that yo’ woman’s a ho?”
“I’ont know what they gonna think, Baby. I’on’t know what they gonna say. But . . . if you gonna be my woman then I don’t care. You gonna have my baby. You gonna hold me an’ want me to be wit’ you. That’s heaven for a man like me don’t even deserve to be free, not really.”
Luna raised up and brought both her fists down on his chest.
“Then why you leavin’ me?” she screamed.
“I’m just goin’ away for a few days with my friend,” he said. “You right about the TV an’ the mayor. I need to get away an’ clear my head. I ain’t runnin’ aftah nobody an’ I sure’n hell ain’t runnin’ away from you.”
“You leavin’ in just a little bit,” she said. “You leavin’ me alone wit’ my baby inside me.”
“You got the key to this cottage an’ the key to the Big Nickel. You got most’a my money and all my friends’ numbahs.”
“But I ain’t got you.” There were tears in her eyes. Socrates had not seen Luna cry before.
There came a knock on the door of the small garden house. Socrates got up from his bed and went to the door. He cracked it open and spoke in a deep tone. Then he came back and took his pants from the closet.
“Don’t go,” Luna said.
“I got to, Baby. I already made plans with Billy.”
He put on his T-shirt and then a long sleeved blue work shirt.
He was tying his shoes, shoes that were older than the girl in his bed, when she said, “If you go I won’t be here when you come back.”
It was the old Luna talking, the girl he had met on the first night of the Thursday meetings, the child who could cut a man’s throat and leave him bleeding in the street with no mercy or guilt.
“That’s okay, Luna. You could be somewhere else if you wanna be. But believe this—I will come and get you, wherever you are. You can put money on that.”

“Where you get a bright red 1969 Cadillac look like it just come off the showroom floor?” Socrates asked Billy when they were on their way at 3:00 a.m.

“You,” Billy Psalms said.
“Me? I’m the one got your money, man.”
“Yeah,” Billy replied, a conditional tone in his voice. “Yeah

you do but you still bought me this car. This automobile, these clothes, my new apartment, and even my new job wit’ Sheryl Limon.”

“What?”
“Yeah,” Billy said as if that one word explained everything. They both went silent as Billy drove his big red Caddy toward

the ocean. They would pick up the Pacific Coast Highway and drive all the way north beside the vast Pacific listening to old soul music and breathing the salt air.
Two hours later they were a dozen miles north of Santa Barbara and the sun was only a threat behind the coastal mountains to their right. A James Brown compilation of greatest hits was pounding out rhythm on the CD player and the windows were open wide.

“What you mean me?” Socrates asked as if Billy had only just spoken.
“It’s hard to say, Brother,” Billy replied.
He turned down the volume on the Godfather of Soul. “You changed my life but I cain’t put a finger on it. I cain’t point to this or that an’ say this is it.”
“But this car cost money,” Socrates said. “Hard cash. You could say where that come from.”
“Oh yeah,” Billy said. “That’s for sure. I got the money in Gardena . . . playin’ cards.”
“Now how the fuck am I gonna have anything to do wit’ you winnin’ money out in Gardena?”
“That’s just it, Socco. I don’t know. I mean you the first person evah in my life I trusted. That ain’t no lie. That’s a fact. An’ once I give you that money I made on the trifecta I was free.”
“Free from what?”
“Just free. I wasn’t worried ’bout a mothahfuckin’ thing. I haven’t been to the track more’n two three times since then. And then about a month ago I went down wit’ my girlfriend to Gardena ’cause her mother live out there. I sat around wit’ the old girl for a while but they wanted to be alone so I went and found me a bar. There was a casino next door so I sat down to a poker game. You know I don’t like poker but I can play.
“Shit. I play like a mothahfuckah that day and night and the next day and the next night too. Denise come to take me outta there but when she see that big pile’a chips I had she went back home to her mama to wait and see if I hit it rich or went bust.” “Billy.”
“What, Socco?”
“What do I have to do with you plyin’ your trade?”
“I don’t know but you do. You see I used to get in a sweat when I gambled. I had to win or my heart would sink. But out there in Gardena I didn’t care anymore. I just kept playin’ as long as I was winnin’. When the tide turned I laid them cards down. That’s you right there. You ain’t addicted to money, sex, or alcohol. You don’t even care if you live in a box next to the railroad tracks or a penthouse in the hills. Man shove a gun in your face an’ you shrug. I seen it. An’ if you see sumpin’ then you know sumpin’. That’s God’s honest truth right there.”
The ocean was beginning to appear under the spreading light of dawn. Socrates was smiling and frowning at the same time.
“How much you win?”
“Eighty-six thousand dollars. Paid my taxes, bought this here car, rented me a real apartment, and put the rest in a checking account. Called Sheryl Limon an’ asked if I could be a cook at her caterin’ service. Told her I could work whenevah she want as long as it wasn’t on a Thursday night.”
For the first time that early morning Socrates thought about Luna. He wondered where she was and how she was feeling.
“That ain’t me, Billy,” he said. “It’s you.”
“That’s why I like you, Socco.”
“Why?”
“Because you a lotta different men. You could sit in front’a all them people ev’ry Thursday, real people who done lived a lotta life, done seen everything men an’ women could know. They been in wars an’ schools an’ traveled round the world. But you stand up in front’a them an’ they sit up straight like kids in a classroom. They listen to you an’ learn sumpin’ else ev’ry minute.
“But that’s not what I like most about you.”
“No?” Socrates asked, the smile winning out over the frown.
“Naw, man. What I like is that you the smartest man in the room but you push so hard that you could be wrong too. Like when Ron Zeal was talkin’ ’bout fightin’ for what’s ours an’ you gave the flo’ to Wan Tai. He said he could kick anybody’s ass in that room but he believed in passive defense. You knew Wan could say it better.
“An’ sometimes you get worried an’ sometimes you just wrong.”
“I nevah said I was perfect,” Socrates said.
“Naw. But we all act like you are. But even though we do you nevah take the bait. You still talk from your heart and get suckered by life like all the rest of us.”
“Billy, what are you sayin’, man?” Socrates yawned then. He realized that he had not slept at all.
“I could see how much you wanted to stay away from Luna Barnet but that girl set her sites on you and you just a man.”
Socrates raised his hand. Whether this was a threat or some kind of agreement he did not know.
“Or like when you tell me that this Caddy is because’a me,” Billy continued. “You know better but you haven’t worked it out. You seen me before the Big Nickel an’ you see me now. You put me to work, Socco. An’ the more I worked the more I changed. Me an’ Darryl the only two you pulled outta the domino game an’ brought ovah to the nickel.”
“I don’t have anything against our old friends, Billy.”
“But why you drag me along? I could see wit’ Darryl, he’s like your son but you nevah even liked me all that much.”
“But I knew that you brought sumpin’ to the table,” Socrates said. “You gotta sharp eye.”
“You can say that and you still gonna sit there an’ tell me that you didn’t buy me this Caddy?”
Socrates wanted to reply, to deny Billy’s claim. He wanted to say that the gambler was his own man and that he couldn’t, he shouldn’t claim that someone else was responsible for what happened to him. He wanted to say these things but sleep came up on him like a huge crocodile coming out from under a daydreaming bather.

He was asleep but at the same time he was still aware of the world he passed through. He could feel the great, ancient ocean rocking next to them and the wind coming in from Billy’s open window. Sunlight warmed his right arm and music played softly on the car speakers. Speakers. The word, though unspoken, echoed in his chest and mind. The motor was humming to him, pulling him down from a scaffolding of thoughts and ideas. He tumbled peacefully through an air of unconsciousness. The fall would not hurt him, nothing would.

Luna was crying somewhere, she had to be. She had gone too far and now the pain had gotten to her. She didn’t know how to let go for even a few days. She didn’t know how to trust a man that she also loved.

“Socco. Cops,” he heard Billy say and was immediately awake, his dreams forgotten.
The red Caddy swerved to the side of the highway. Socrates squinted in the bright sunlight.
They were no longer next to the ocean. The landscape around them was comprised of green rolling hills with a cluster of cows here and there, and now and then a solitary oak.
Through his side-mirror Socrates could see the highway patrolman coming toward his door. The ex-con went cold inside. His mind emptied itself of all contents. There never was a Big Nickel, a Thursday night, a Luna Barnet.
“Please step out of the car,” the cop on Billy’s side said. “Here we go,” the gambler muttered under his breath.
Socrates opened his door. When the patrolman saw his size and strength he took a step back and unholstered his gun. His brown eyes opened wide and for a moment he was speechless.
“What are you doing here?” the cop asked once he had regained his composure.
“Passin’ through,” Socrates said. He had already shown his state issued identification.
“Is this your car?”
“No.”
“Who’s is it?”
“My friend’s.”
“It’s an expensive car.”
“That’s how Billy rolls.”
“Are you carrying drugs or guns?”
“No.”
“What would I find if I opened up the trunk?”
“Trunk? I’ont even know what you’d find in the glove compartment, man.”

They opened the trunk and the glove compartment. They looked under the seats and the white carpet that Billy had specially installed. They used a breathalyzer to make sure that the men weren’t drunk and they had Billy touch his nose and walk a straight line. They checked the men’s pockets and had them take off their shoes. And when they found nothing they arrested Billy and Socrates on suspicion of drug trafficking.