She tried not to show the fear in her eyes. Kicking Sarah’s ass last night had felt good. But she hadn’t hurt the bitch
that
bad. If she had, she thought, she would have heard from Valentino last night. Half the plant knew where she lived.
Noticing that he kept looking back over his shoulder, Luella nervously glanced around the room at the door, listening with every pore in her body for the sound of Eugene coming up the steps.
“You shouldn’t have touched Sarah. Why you mess with my wife! My wife!”
“I told you not to fuck with me, Tino. You should have given it up. We could have settled our differences long ago. Anyway, I didn’t hurt the little thing that bad.”
“You made the worst mistake of your life. The last mistake, bitch!” Tino began moving toward the hat rack to his right. “I told you I’d fuck you up.”
Luella knew he’d be angry, but she hadn’t anticipated that he would go off on her. All kinds of shitty words came to her head, but something told her to keep her mouth shut.
“You fucked up my dad’s life. My mom’s. My
wife’s.
Why you keep messing with the Lamotts? You crazy, girl? You think we some kind of fools? You think we ain’t men?” He pounded his chest with his left fist. “You destroying a family—you deserve to die, bitch.”
Luella’s beeper went off. It was the first time in years she wanted desperately to talk to her husband.
Her mouth gaped open in horror when he removed the .38 special from his back pocket.
“Tino! We can talk about this. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
“Hell no! Fuck no!” Tino yelled. “I’m going to fuck you up. Yep, fuck you up. Crazy ’ho’ like you messing with good folks’ families. Good folks. You come to a man’s house. His own house! Just because I didn’t want none of your wore-out pussy! I wouldn’t let my dog fuck you!” His eyes suddenly looked blank; it appeared as if he were talking to himself as he whispered, “There ain’t nothing else I can do.”
“You crazy, Tino. We can settle this.”
“No. It’s too late, bitch.” He raised the gun and cocked it. “A low-down bitch like you deserves no pity.”
At that point, Luella knew there was no way she was going to get out of this alive. Tears began to fill her eyes. He was right. She had no excuse. Still, she didn’t want to die. Her body began to shake as she watched him aim the gun and pull the trigger.
The first shot hit her in the chest. Luella bounced out of the seat with both hands up. He shot her again, this time in the shoulder. She felt the taste of lead in her mouth, the pain in her chest as hot as molten lava. She fell back against the wall, gasping for air.
She could barely hear his words as he came toward her screaming, “Bitch! Crazy bitch!” He stopped at point-blank range and shot her in the stomach.
She collapsed on the floor with blood pumping from her wounds.
There was no sound.
Her eyes grew as wide as hope. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her eyelids began to feel heavy and she tried to fight against it.
Oh Lord, my sons. And Omar, dear God, Omar. . . . I’m so sorry, baby.
Neither Luella nor Valentino noticed Ron standing in the doorway. The realization of the tragedy swept across his face like a raging storm at sea.
“Not good enough, bitch. You dead, bitch,” Tino said, shooting her one last time in the forehead.
Luella could feel numbness traveling to her arms, as if she had a pinched nerve. She fought once more to speak, trying again to say “Forgive me,” but only bubbling blood erupted from her mouth. A waste of breath, a waste of years, behind, in balance with this life, this death.
“Tino!” Ron shouted, followed by gasps behind him from Eugene.
Her empty eyes stared ahead, her stiff arms sweeping the bills to the floor as she fell back against the wall. A stripe of blood smeared the wall as she slid down to the floor.
Twenty-dollar bills were strewn beside her lifeless body, coated with blood.
__________
“Gunshots!” Thyme shouted into the receiver. Doug Bierce, head of Security, informed Thyme that an employee had just been shot in the committee room. “I’ll be right there.”
He hadn’t said who was shot. Was the person dead or injured? Jesus, why hadn’t she asked him more questions?
It was 5:43 A.M. When the call came in from Bierce, she’d tried to get Ron on the phone, but the line was busy.
What the hell was happening?
Grabbing the walkie-talkie on her way out the door, she called Bierce back.
“This is Thyme Tyler. Have the police been called in yet?” The connection was jagged, fragmented.
“That’s affirmative, Mrs. Tyler. They’re on their way. You better get here quick, though.”
Static on the line.
“Has Ron arrived yet?” She adjusted the Squash buttons back and forth but couldn’t get him back on the radio.
Damn!
Thyme had been warning upper management to increase the budget for Security for over a year now. She’d even asked for metal detectors. “No,” upper management had said, “Troy Trim is on par with other factories. Detectors would choke the flow of workers because of the metal parts and tools that continually flow on and off the factory floor.”
Driving through the truck door, then through the roll goods warehouse, she noticed how eerie the plant looked. Not a soul was there. But she heard the screams and cries ahead. She made a left at the east break area. The committee room was located just past general stores, a hundred yards ahead. When she saw the crowd she realized she’d never get the cart through.
Parking her cart by the bathrooms, she began to push her way through the crowd.
“Let me through!” she called to some of the workers she knew. “Juanita, let me through.” A path opened a few feet. Farther ahead: “Tony, it’s Thyme. Can you help me get through, please?”
Hundreds of employees stood in the aisleways hugging each other and crying. The closer she got to the union office, the more wildly her heart beat.
Doug Bierce and five other security guards had temporarily cordoned off the area in front of the upper union offices. With Doug’s help she was able to get to the steps that led upstairs.
Halfway up the steps she stopped, out of breath. Just then the door opened and Ron was there. The front of his shirt was covered with blood.
“Thyme.” His voice was flat. “Luella’s dead.”
Thyme couldn’t tell if he was angry or upset. She tightened her face and tried not to faint. Then she recognized a man’s low moan a few feet away. He sounded like an animal that longed to be set free.
Her heart began to pound harder. The deadly smell of gunpowder was still in the air. She could feel the hard steel-mesh steps echoing against the clicks of her heels as she climbed the stairs. When she reached the top and went inside Tom’s office, she wasn’t prepared for the horror of the scene. Luella’s bullet-riddled body lay on the floor approximately six feet into the office. The back of her head had been blown off.
Thyme grabbed a trash can and vomited. She sat down in the nearest chair and looked at Ron frantically, wanting an explanation. “Why? What happened here, Ron?”
His tear-stained eyes turned to the man she’d heard sobbing just before she entered the office. Valentino was crouched down in a chair in the far left corner with his face in his hands. His body was shaking violently, and a .38 special lay at his feet.
“They’ve been at it for months. I should have known—”
Thunderous steps pounded on the stairwell. The police entered with force and took control of the situation. Thyme would have to wait, like everyone else, until the interrogation was over to learn the entire truth.
Luella? Valentino? How were they connected? she wondered.
Then it hit her.
Overtime. She’d promised the Employee Involvement team weeks ago that she would monitor the overtime. She had truly planned on following up; how had the entire thing slipped her mind? She was so wrapped up in her discrimination lawsuit and her problems with Cy that she’d forgotten.
Oh my God.
And now. A killing? A death? Was she to blame? Could this tragedy have been avoided?
Somehow Khan got through the crowd. Thyme looked up at her friend’s blotched, red face, her eyes swollen from crying. Thyme started to call out to her, but the hatred she saw on Khan’s face stopped her.
“You! You are the cause of this shit.” Khan sounded hysterical. But her words were cuttingly true.
“Khan, listen.”
“You should be ashamed to call yourself a black woman. I thought you could identify with us. The blue collar workers. Even though you held a white collar position, I still thought you were one of us, ’cause you was black. Because you knew about us.”
“Please, Khan—let me expl—”
“But you all the way white, girlfriend. Just like that white man you married to. I bet you wished your skin was white. As lily white as your sister-in-law Sydney’s.” Khan began to sob in pain. “You gonna wake up one of these days and realize you ain’t no better than the rest of us.”
“I—” Thyme stopped. What could she say? She could only pray that Khan might regret her words one day. Still, she had to try to make her understand.
“Khan. I love you. We’ve been friends since you were a little girl. Please let me . . .” She stopped.
“No. No more. We ain’t friends no more.” Khan stormed out. And each step of her tiny feet down the stairs felt like a nail driven into Thyme’s heart.
Thyme’s feelings of guilt magnified. If she had taken the time to visit Ron when he was in the hospital, maybe he would have impressed upon her the seriousness of the problem. And she had done nothing, as a friend or colleague, to unravel the problems she could help with.
Was she entirely to blame? She wasn’t sure.
She thought about her lunch with Khan three weeks ago. Khan must have known what was going on with Valentino and Luella. But Thyme hadn’t let Khan get a word in edgewise. All Khan did was listen to Thyme go on and on about her marital problems and her lawsuit. Thyme felt her guilt crushing her skull like a two-ton bag of sand.
The self-loathing Thyme felt couldn’t be ejected into a trash can or toilet. It went too deep.
Doug Bierce approached her. “Luella’s family needs to be notified, Mrs. Tyler.”
“Certainly.” Thank God there was something for her to do.
“You need to speak with the employees. We don’t want a riot to break out.”
Thyme turned. She glared at him. Did Doug assume that because most of the employees were black and a black employee was slain they’d riot? Was that it? Was it different when a white conflict occurred? “I’ll handle it, Doug.”
“All four television networks are outside demanding information. They’ll be bringing the body out soon. What should we say?”
The tears that burned her eyes couldn’t compare to the hatred she felt at that moment. She hated herself, and she hated white people because they and their factories had caused this. And yet she was married to one. That hurt even deeper. “I’ll handle that too, Doug.”
All of a sudden, she realized how ridiculous she was for filing a discrimination lawsuit, a suit about money. Upper middle class. Fine homes in the suburbs. Was that all she was about? Had she lost her soul on her way up to the top? Was she turning a lighter shade of black with every step she took? Was that the color she wanted to be? White?
She couldn’t answer. No—she didn’t want to answer.
She heard from Cy just after lunch. She was still in shock.
“Hi, sweetie. What happened today? I received a message on my pager about the shooting.”
She still felt so numb, even toward her husband. “I’ll speak with you about it when you get home.”
Nothing would ever be the same again. Not with her friends. And not with her husband. Everything in her life had changed because of that shooting. It was a wake-up call for all those who tried to play both sides. One couldn’t be new collar and a blue collar. One couldn’t be a Democrat and a Republican. One couldn’t be black and white. It was a time for those pretending to be both either to acknowledge their actions, to choose a side and be willing to change, or to let the bullet of truth shoot them dead.
__________
Bang! Bang! Bang! Tomiko woke with a start.
“R.C.?” she half-whispered. She checked the clock and saw that it was ten minutes to four in the morning. More bangs. No one answered.
Three more bangs. She hurried out of bed and ran to the door.
He shouted, “Tomiko, let me in!”
She was certain he was drunk. “Just a minute.” When she opened the door he stumbled into her. The sour smell of vomit on the front of his shirt and pants made her turn her head away in disgust.
“Why’d you lock the door? I couldn’t get in.”
“Sorry. C’mon,” she said, turning on the lights, then wrapping his arm around her shoulder to help him inside the room. How many nights had he come home in this condition? She helped him sit down on the sofa, then began removing his clothes. “Why do you do this to yourself?”
“I’m not drunk, Tomiko,” he said laconically. “Sure, I’ve been drinking. I had a late dinner at Elias Brothers’ Restaurant around twelve. Left there by one-thirty. Had a double shot of Jack in the car before leaving the parking lot. I was on my way home then. No way could I make it, my stomach was bubbling and churning like a sump pump. I pulled over to the side of the road on Woodward Avenue. Must’ve been food poisoning. I’ve been vomiting for hours. And I’m mad as hell. I’m thinking about suing the place.” He breathed heavily. “Sorry I scared you.”
By then, Tomiko had removed all of his clothing except for his underwear. “I’m glad you’re home.” She kissed him on the forehead. It was still hot. Maybe he really did have food poisoning. “C’mon, you could use a shower.” Taking him by the hand, she led him to the bathroom.
R.C. brushed his teeth and gargled while Tomiko turned on the shower. The tiny beads of water pounding against the metal tub sounded like bacon sizzling on a grill.
Seconds later he removed his boxers and began to step inside the glass stall, then stopped. Tomiko was sitting on the matching bed bench near the whirlpool tub watching him. “How about joining me?”