7
I
n the beginning, they had ridden in the front seat together, but General felt Blue should sit in the back. “How they gonna know you’re a star if you don’t act like one?” was how he explained it to Blue.
After that, Blue sat in back and General drove. The arrangement suited them both. It gave Blue a chance to be alone with his thoughts and General an unobstructed view of what was going on around them at any given moment.
“You need to stop anywhere?” General asked as he headed the big Lincoln back onto the interstate.
“No,” Blue said quietly. “Let’s just go on to the house.”
That was fine with General. He trusted Blue to make all the decisions on nights like this. He never questioned or second-guessed his friend’s judgment. He did what he was asked to do. General was a soldier and they were at war. What he and Blue had done tonight was just part of what it took to win.
The two men had been friends since elementary school, back when everybody still called General by his given name, James. They had grown up on the same block; learned to ride the same bike; lost their virginity (with different girls on different nights) in the backseat of the same used Chevrolet. Blue had started calling him General in the ninth grade because whenever they got to the playground, James always took charge of whatever game they were playing. Everybody laughed at first, but the name stuck.
Although General was two years older, they were as close as brothers, and when Blue had his first hit record at sixteen and needed to go on the road to promote it, of course General offered to drive him around to all the little clubs that were clamoring for him to perform. That trip turned into another and another and pretty soon it was a full-time job. General never looked back. The clubs were paying good money and General could always make the owners give up what they owed. As Blue’s road manager, by then he was legally armed. It was a cash business, and the law acknowledged the need for protection of assets. He spent a lot of time at the firing range until he got good at it, but he’d never had to shoot anybody about their money. The
killin’ shit
came later. But on the road?
Plenty pussy, plenty cash,
and a friend who was more like a brother to share the adventure. Even at the time, General knew this would be the period they’d look back on as “the good old days,” and he enjoyed every bit of it.
So did Blue. He was singing better and better and the women in the audience were acting like he was all five of the Temptations in their prime. Women would rush the stage and toss their panties and fall out and Blue would just smile and keep on singing. He wore sunglasses during most of the show. Blue knew the women wanted to see his famous blue eyes, but he didn’t want people to be so busy staring they didn’t hear the music. He’d take the glasses off for the last number and the women would go crazy.
General knew Blue’s eyes had been a real source of friction between Juanita and her husband. Old Man Hamilton wanted to know how his son showed up with what he always called “those damn cat eyes” when nobody on either side of their families had eyes that looked like that. Juanita, who had always been completely faithful to her husband, more out of fear than love, had no satisfactory explanation. Blue’s father would watch Atlanta’s café au lait political elite on the nightly news and snarl, “Is that him? Is that the li’l nigga’s daddy?” while the light-eyed, light-skinned politico in question prattled on, innocent and oblivious to the crime with which he was being charged.
“You his daddy.” Juanita would sigh. “You know you his daddy.”
“Where he get them eyes from then?”
“Dr. Cox says sometimes it just happens. One of us probably got some white folks back up in our family tree and—”
“That’s bullshit,” he’d growl, and click off the set. The sudden silence enveloped them like a fog and she knew what was coming next.
Left to his own devices, General suspected that Blue had concocted the story of past lives to explain those unexplainable eyes. Growing up around Blue, General had ample opportunity as a child to stare at his friend’s eyes without drawing his ire. At fifteen, you can’t gaze into your boy’s eyes and say: “Damn, brother, you got some amazing eyes, you know it?” But at five, you can say: “Hey, did you know your eyes look like a cat-eye marble?” and your friend can say “yeah” in the same way Halle Berry’s kindergarten classmates must have said: “Wow, Halle, did you know you look like a fairy princess?” And she must have smiled and said: “Thanks. I know.”
“You ever think about what might have happened if you had taken Jasmine up on her offer to move to Florida?” Blue said suddenly from the backseat as if they had been in the midst of a conversation about girlfriends past.
Jasmine was a beautiful woman General had met when her daughter, Zora, was a freshman student at Spelman. They hit it off until one night he had to leave her to
take care of some business
and she figured out his role in Blue’s life. The very next day, she told him she couldn’t love a gangster, even a
righteous
gangster, but if he wanted to go into the motel business, she was looking for a partner for a place she’d owned with her husband before he died.
Blue’s question was so unexpected, General’s eyes flickered to the mirror to see if there might be a clue as to what had prompted it. Blue was looking out the window, although there was nothing much to see other than the darkness.
“Nah, man,” he said, passing a big UPS truck. “I can’t live at no beach. Too much sand all over the place. Last time I went down there, we were out walking and it was romantic as hell, stars out and shit, and we started fooling around right there on the beach instead of acting like we had some sense and going back to the house. By the time we were done, I had sand all up my ass. No, thanks.”
“You’re supposed to put a blanket down.”
Blue had been giving General advice about women all their lives, even though General rarely took it. After he fell in love with Juanita, most of the escapades he shared with Blue were fantasies and tall tales. He couldn’t just stop talking about women all of a sudden. That would have raised Blue’s suspicions immediately. So he made up stories or pretended to have long-term relationships with women he actually saw only once or twice.
“I’ll try to remember that next time,” General said. “What made you ask me about Florida? You offering me early retirement?”
“You ready for it?”
The conversation had taken a strange turn and General wondered if his lack of focus earlier had bothered Blue more than it needed to. Everything had gone smoothly and they were headed home. There was no cause for concern.
“I’m ready for whatever,” General said, exiting at Cascade Road and heading for West End. “Just like always.”
“Good,” Blue said. “I’m going to hold you to it.”
Just like always,
General thought.
They were just a few blocks away from the tree-lined street where Blue and Regina lived. When he pulled the car up out front, General knew she’d be in the window, waiting for her husband. He never understood how she always managed to be there when they pulled up on these nights. Blue never called her on the way and she couldn’t possibly sit there twenty-four hours a day,
just in case.
Or maybe she could.
After a couple of lifetimes, a day or two here and there probably doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference. An ordinary day was twenty-four hours, but eternity time was probably something else all together.
8
J
ust as General had predicted, Regina was sitting in the window when the big car glided around the corner, came to a stop in front of the house and cut its lights. The smoky, tinted windows didn’t let her see who was inside and her heart fluttered a little bit in spite of her best efforts to think only positive thoughts and banish from her mind even the possibility that things had not gone as planned. The driver’s-side door opened and General stepped out with the grace that always reminded her of a tiger: large and dangerous.
“Please, God,” she whispered. “Please.”
General opened the back passenger door and her husband stepped from the car into the darkness. Regina’s eyes filled with tears of relief, but she quickly blinked them back. Blue said a few quiet words to General, who nodded and got back into the car. Only then did Blue look up to where she was sitting in the darkened window. He raised his hand in a small wave of reassurance. She raised her hand, too, and he disappeared into the small apartment that was one of the features that had sold them on this house.
That was the last she would see of Blue until morning. Although she longed to run outside and throw herself into his arms, she knew better. This was the hardest part of the complicated ritual they had concocted, but she had to respect it. She never knew the details of where he went or exactly what happened when he got there. She didn’t want to know. Early on, she had told him she admired what he was doing, but confessed almost apologetically that it frightened her. That’s when he promised to do everything he could to keep those parts of his life separate from his life as her lover, then her husband, and, one day, the father of her children. That’s why she couldn’t see him until morning.
At first, she had argued against the self-imposed separation, but he had gently insisted. As she tried to talk him out of it, something in his eyes flashed, something that let her know there were parts of him not meant for her to see.
Ever.
She had felt a small chill at the back of her neck and agreed to his suggestion, which was this: They were allowed only a wave when he first returned home from these missions. Then he would disappear into another part of the house until morning, when she would literally wake up and smell the coffee. She would then slip on a robe and go downstairs to the kitchen, where Blue would be scrambling eggs or mixing up a batch of waffles from scratch or frying bacon and handing her a mimosa like any other attentive husband who intended to woo his wife with breakfast before taking her back to bed for a more private welcome-home celebration.
Suddenly Regina was exhausted. She yawned wide like a tired toddler, brushed her teeth, and slipped into bed. Outside, she knew General was sitting in the front seat of the Lincoln with the window cracked, only the glowing tip of his cigarette visible in the darkness. On these strange nights, he was always there, just in case trouble had followed Blue home. In the morning, he would be gone.
9
B
lue waited until he heard Regina running a bath at just before six the next morning before slipping on a pair of white silk pajama bottoms and heading for the kitchen. At six feet even, Blue was not a big man, but his slender body was strong and supple and his powerful arms were proof of his improbable prowess as a deep-sea fisherman, a hobby he and Peachy had enjoyed for years. Keenly aware that his enemies were always watching him for any signs of mental or physical weakness, he made sure there were none. Ever.
By the time his wife came downstairs twenty minutes later, preparations for her favorite breakfast were well under way: fresh-squeezed orange juice, almond waffles with real maple syrup, grits (because she loved the way he made them with just enough cheese for the flavor), and a cup of coffee. She was glowing from her bath and smelling like the sweetness he always tasted when he kissed her. It was all he could do not to sweep her up in his arms and ravish her right there in the middle of the kitchen floor.
She grinned at him and walked into his arms, pressing her body into his and kissing him like that ravishing idea had crossed her mind, too.
“Welcome home,” she whispered.
“You okay, baby?” he said softly, leaning back to look at her.
In his dark brown face, his eyes were as peaceful as a mountain lake, clear blue without a touch of turbulence or danger. She searched in vain for anything that frightened or confused her. Standing in the circle of his smoothly muscular arms, fairly bursting with her good news, she knew there was only one answer to his question.
“I’m fine. You?”
He nodded and she tilted her head a little to kiss him again. His closely clipped mustache tickled her nose and his full, soft lips pressed against hers with a mixture of desire and restraint that she found irresistible.
“Are you hungry?” he said, when they came up for air.
She couldn’t hold it any longer. The words came singing out of her mouth. “I’m
pregnant
!”
Blue wanted it to be true so badly, he was afraid at first he might have heard her wrong.
“Pregnant?”
He heard his own voice like that of a stranger.
Regina nodded. “You’re going to be a daddy, Mr. Hamilton. Can you handle it?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, grinning from ear to ear, wondering what he had done right in all those lifetimes to deserve a woman like this.
“Oh yeah!”
He couldn’t stop smiling and neither could she.
“I love you,” she said softly.
“I love you, too,” he said, holding her face in his hands.
“Is it selfish to bring a child into this mean old world?” She was smiling, but he knew she was serious.
“It’s absolutely required,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose. “This calls for a toast. Can you drink champagne?”
She shook her head. “How about orange juice?”
“Coming right up.” He filled her glass and one for himself. “Did they give you a date?”
“March twenty-third,” she said. “Give or take.”
He laughed. “Give or take what?”
“Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”
“Now you sound like Miss Abbie,” he said. “Have you told her?”
“No, my darling, you’re the first,” she said, raising her glass, and he did, too. “To Baby Hamilton.
Welcome to the world!
”
They clinked their glasses and sipped the chilled juice like it was the finest champagne. A thought occurred to him and he smiled gently at Regina.
“Is this what you were trying to tell me last night?” he said.
She nodded and her eyes suddenly filled up with tears.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” he said, setting their glasses down and gathering her up in his arms again. “Please forgive me.”
“Forgive you for what?” she said, sniffling a little against his neck. “I was the one who broke the rules.”
“For being a man who has to have those kinds of rules.”
“But
why
do you have to?” she said, leaning back to look into his face. “Why can’t somebody else do it for a while?”
“Gina,” he said gently, “it’s not something I do. It’s who I am. It’s something I carry with me.
Inside.
”
He took her hand and placed it flat against his bare chest. Smooth as black velvet, his skin was warm beneath her palm. She could feel his heart beat: slow, calm, steady.
“I’m carrying our baby,” she said. “Doesn’t that change things?”
“It changes everything,” he said. “I’ve never had a child before.”
She was surprised. She knew he’d had no children this time around, but she had never imagined that in all those ancient kingdoms and Harlem hideouts that were the settings of Blue’s past lives, no woman had presented him with a child of his own.
“Never?”
He shook his head as he guided her over to the kitchen table and pulled out two chairs. He sat down across from Regina and took her hands in his. The plain gold bands they had chosen gleamed.
“Never. This one is my very first.”
This pleased her so deeply, she thought she might cry again.
If this is what raging hormones feel like,
she thought,
it’s going to be a very damp nine months.
“Mine, too,” she said.
He nodded. “I know.”
They just sat there looking at each other for a few minutes and then she took another deep breath.
“Blue?”
“Yes?”
“What if I asked you to reconsider?”
“Reconsider what, baby?”
She shrugged helplessly, searching for the words that would convince him. “What you do. Who you are
this
time. In
this
place.” She was getting closer to her real feelings and she rushed on before she could censor herself. “I know you were an emperor before, but that was then and this is now,
southwest Atlanta,
not Carthage, and you don’t have to take responsibility for everybody. Can’t you just take responsibility for
us
?”
He looked at her. “Just us?”
She nodded, took his hand, and pressed it against her stomach. “Just us.”
He nodded, too, like he was considering the question. “And by
just us,
you mean you and me and our baby?”
She was practically holding her breath. “Yes.”
“And Miss Abbie?”
That went without saying. Her, Blue, the baby, and Abbie. How much trouble could the four of them get into?
“Of course.”
“And Aretha?”
He had taken Aretha under her wing when she had first arrived in Atlanta from her tiny Michigan hometown, on her own for the first time and green as grass. No way Blue was ever going to abandon his role as her godfather.
“And Aretha.”
He nodded again, slowly. “And Joyce Ann?”
Joyce Ann, at almost three, called him “Daddy Blue,” and brought a smile to his face that was hers alone.
“Yes. Joyce Ann comes with Aretha.”
This conversation was no longer going the way she hoped it would and Regina knew it. Blue was who he was,
kid on the way or no kid on the way.
He wasn’t going to change, not even for her.
She sighed and surrendered. “Sometimes I just wish we could live somewhere where somebody else could make it safe.”
“And who would that somebody be?”
“Anybody but you,” Regina said. “Why can’t General do it?”
“Some things are worth killing over. Some things aren’t. General can’t always tell the difference.”
“Are you going to tell the baby what you do?”
“I’ll tell our baby the truth in all things.”
Regina raised her eyebrows. “Past lives, too?”
“Of course.”
He said it so calmly. She wondered what a child would say if their father told the tales Blue had told her. There was no way to know and no one to ask.
“It’ll be easier if the baby has your eyes.”
“Easier for who?” Blue smiled.
“Easier for the kid to understand who you are,” she said.
“That won’t be hard to understand,” he said. “I’m just Daddy.”
She leaned in for a kiss and suddenly wasn’t as hungry for breakfast as she’d thought. “Let’s eat later.”
“All right.” His eyes were twinkling as he slipped an arm around her waist and led her back to bed.
“I don’t really want you to change,” she said as they started up the stairs.
“I know.”
At the top of the stairs she stopped. “Yes, I do.”
He kissed her again, laughing softly. “I know that, too.”
“Oh, you know everything!”
“Not everything,” he said. “But I know what I know.”
“Do you know me?” Regina untied her robe and let it fall to the bedroom floor in a jumble of pale pink satin.
“I’m working on it.” He ran his hands slowly down her back, lingered over her hips.
She grinned and felt herself already melting under his hands. “Don’t stop, okay?”
“Not a chance,” he said.
“You promise?”
“Oh yeah,” he whispered, his mouth against her belly and moving south.
“I promise.”