Authors: LH Thomson
“He doesn’t seem so confident. And two grand is a lot of cash for a guy who just told me he isn’t a weed dealer.”
“Uh huh, yeah. Look, you got to do me another favor, Mr. Tate. Please. I promise I’m a good guy. I just had trouble making ends meet, is all, and Buddy Gaines said he could help me out.” He looked frightened. “Please, Mr. Tate, I don’t deserve this. My girl Chantelle, she’s real good. She don’t deserve this.”
“I ain’t going to beat on you,” Cobi said. “Shit man, straighten up and quit crying for a second!” The kid was practically sniveling, and Cobi suppressed an urge to cuff him, like the old man would’ve done back in the day, the wrong thing for the right reason.
Tommy nodded his head vigorously.
“Well look, man, my old man was a cop back in Detroit. So I know all about how people get themselves into the shit. I got a fair number of friends who went that route, so I know it probably started as no big thing. But you’ve got to get Mr. Gaines that green, ‘cause you made an arrangement. And if you can’t do it pretty soon, you best figure a way out of town, because he’s going to want someone to beat up on you. Maybe even me. And I don’t want that any more than you do, you feel me?”
Tommy’s head nodded vigorously, an electric jolt. “I’ll pay him by Monday, I swear man.”
“Okay then. You know the deal. You don’t pay, I’ll find you.”
The younger man nodded again and scrambled to his feet, then down the sidewalk, backing away at first to thank his would-be tormenter as he crossed to the other side. “Thank you, man, for reals. I swear I’m good for it. I swear.”
A car almost hit him in the near lane and honked angrily as Tommy made his way over, the courthouse looming behind him.
“Look both ways! Cobi yelled. Then he added more quietly, “Can’t repay the man if you’re roadkill.”
Tommy was far out of earshot within moments, past the courthouse and heading towards Chinatown. A few seconds later he moved out of sight. Cobi sat for a few seconds more, hands in his jacket pockets to keep them warm. He was glad he’d managed to handle the kid gently, though. No one that young deserved that kind of trouble.
He wondered how Buddy was going to take the news.
The limo reached Cobi before he could get all the way back to Jasper Avenue, pulling over to the curb so he could climb inside.
He slammed the door. Buddy waited for him to say something but got impatient.
“So you get my money, or what?”
“Or what, I guess.”
He looked peeved. “So what the fuck happened?”
“He didn’t have any.”
“So you’re supposed to lay a beating on him.”
“Why?”
“Why? What the fuck you mean, ‘why?’ Because, that’s why! Because if a man can’t pay his obligation, you have to send a message! And because I fucking say so, that’s why!”
Man, fuck you
, Cobi thought. “I ain’t a thug, Mr. Gaines. You didn’t hire me for that. He’s just some terrified kid; he’s no threat to you. And he promised he’d come up with it, next week latest.”
The loan shark squinted. “Tommy Orton? A ‘terrified kid’? Are you fucking kidding me with this shit? He’s been slinging weed since you were somebody. He’s just another fucking foster kid working the street.”
“You should have seen how scared he was. Boy’s terrified of you, for true.”
Buddy reflected on that for a moment. “Okay, Mr. Bleeding Heart, since you ain’t worked for me long, you get a break. He’d better pay, though. Or I’m going to get Gordon to claw it back out of yours. You got me?”
“Yes, Mr. Gaines.” Cobi thought of his son; thinking of Michael always helped him keep his cool. Michael gave him confidence and purpose.
Buddy grumbled, “Okay, we’ll let it go this time, because I like you, kid. You remember that game back in … what was that, like, nine, ten years ago now? You were a sophomore…”
“The LSU game. Yeah.” Everyone remembered the LSU game. Cobi had set a single season conference passing record with seven touchdowns. That was when the hype had started.
“Whatever the fuck happened, kid? I mean, I know it’s tough making it down there...”
What had happened? The truth was, Cobi still didn’t know, years later. The bowl loss had been the beginning of the end, really, his confidence stripped, everything becoming harder overnight. The magic just… gone. It took him years before he’d realized that the love had gone first. That was always the way it worked when you’re no longer in it for the game, just the fame. Was that it? Had he just frittered away his talent?
“It just didn’t work out for me, is all.” He’d said it a thousand times since then. Why did people always have to ask? Why’d they have to make such a point of it? He’d become a “Where are they now?” article, a trivia question. He wasn’t sure which was worse anymore: being looked down upon, or being down on himself. He was dead to football and football was dead to him; but there was nothing to move forward to, nothing to strive to achieve. Just… surviving. For Michael and for himself.
“Cryin’ fuckin’ shame, kid, cryin’ fuckin’ shame. Here…” Buddy pulled out his clip. “Here’s your pay for the week.” He pulled off a thousand dollars in hundreds. “Don’t spend it too quick.”
“Sure, Mr. Gaines.”
“It’s Buddy, I keep telling you. You got anything else on tonight? You want to hang out with us at the club?” Buddy was part-owner of a strip club on the north side.
“I’m good, Buddy. I have to go see my ex.”
“Huh. Yeah, well I know all about that. Good luck to you, you poor bastard. John, pull over here, okay?”
The limo pulled over to the curb. “Goodnight, kid,” Buddy said. “Don’t do nothing I wouldn’t.”
Cobi got out. The door clunked shut behind him. He was at least twenty blocks from his car. Before he could say anything, the limo pulled back into the street and sped away. It had begun to snow again, broad, wet flakes drifting gently down, the night-bound street a grey impression of itself.
He pulled the collar up on his coat and started walking.
The front doorbell rang just after midnight, probably her ex. Still, Sarah woke and sat upright, glad she’d double-bolted the lock, just in case.
She flicked on the stairway light and came downstairs quickly in her white bath robe. She checked the peephole before opening the door.
“What the hell, Cee? Michael’s been asleep for three hours and you ring the bell…?” She pulled the door partly closed, blocking the view in with her body.
“Mom…?” Michael had woken and stood at the top of the stairs, rubbing his eyes, a tiny, tired figure in Spider-Man pajamas.
“Go back to sleep honey. I’ll be up soon.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s no one, sweetie. Back to bed, mister, now!”
He turned groggily towards the hallway, then stumbled his way back to his room.
Sarah opened the door fully again. Cobi looked unimpressed.
“What was that? It’s ‘no one’? You couldn’t have said ‘It’s just your daddy,’ or something?” He’d always worried she undermined him when he wasn’t around.
“I was dealing with it. That’s what I have to do full-time, remember? I’m the one who has to deal with everything. It’s way past his bedtime, and you shouldn’t be throwing his sleep patterns off by waking up half the neighborhood. If I told him you were here, he’d have run downstairs.”
It still stung, but he knew she was right. He hung his head slightly. “I know… I apologize, okay? Look, I knew it was getting tight to the end of the month, so I wanted to drop by as soon as I got paid.” He handed her the roll of money.
Sarah’s eyes widened for a moment, then her brow wrinkled. “Is this the whole thousand? How’d you make that up so quickly?”
“I told you, pay’s okay with the new job.”
Her frown remained. “What did you land that pays that much that quickly? The bank was a safe environment, with a good future…”
Cobi hated the bank, the stifling, buttoned-down atmosphere, some kid right out of school telling him what to do all day. “I was making forty-two thousand, top end. We can’t both live on that in this city. Besides, you shouldn’t worry. This ain’t exactly gangster business.”
“Cee…”
“I took a job with Chris’ friend, Buddy Gaines.”
“Oh! Cee…”
“Buddy’s just…”
“Buddy Gaines is a loan shark. You know that, I know that, everyone who knows Buddy knows that. Including Chris. Including the police – another place you could’ve gone for work instead of this…” Sarah had been involved with some of the same types when she was younger and a cheerleader, hanging out after hours with players when she wasn’t supposed to, going to the clubs. Times had changed, a lot.
And sometimes she could be so frustrating. “Man, I told you what it was like, Sarah. My family never knew if my father was coming home at night. You want that for Michael?”
The last thing that Cobi wanted was to echo his father’s mixed-up priorities. The last thing he needed was to try to live up to him.
“Better that than using your God-given athletic talent to protect some greasy criminal. This is a big city, Cee, but it’s not that big. You hang out with bad guys, you end up a bad guy. And then it’ll start feeling real small. Besides, what am I supposed to tell Michael as he gets older? ‘Your father is muscle for a loan shark’?”
He wanted her to understand his view, how he felt. “You know, if we could work things out, give us another chance to get it right, I’d have an easier time…”
She shook her head, cutting him off. “That’s not going to happen. You know why, Cee. It didn’t work. For three years, I tried. But it shouldn’t take so much effort, so much fighting all the damn time. Being in love with each other shouldn’t feel like an obligation, or a contest, or whatever we were. It just shouldn’t. And I’m done with debating that.”
Sarah saw it, right then, as she said the words, his left eye twitching for just a moment, a brief look of pain on his face that showed the statement cut right to his core. It was what she’d wanted, to be cold enough that he’d feel cut loose, accept it was over; but she didn’t feel better for it, and he never seemed quite able to go.
“Okay,” he accepted, deflated for not the first time in recent memory, hurt but not wanting to show it. Not wanting her to wear it. “Okay I guess. Look, I’m going to go…”
She smiled and nodded, but added nothing, her hand high on the door frame, just waiting for him to turn around, so obvious in her anxiety.
Cobi looked at his car by the street curb, parked in the half-darkness. Then he turned again briefly, wondering if maybe there was something else that he could say, something that would bridge the space between them, rediscover a part of her that still felt the way he did.
But the door swung slowly to a close under the bright porch light, a glimpse of Sarah’s concern the last thing he saw before the latch clicked into place.
The apartment just off Whyte Avenue and Ninety-sixth Street wasn’t much, but it was cheap: seven-hundred-and-fifty dollars a month for five hundred ten square feet of relative privacy, in the basement of a three-deck walkup, with thick old concrete walls from when they were built to last.
Cobi parked the car in the lot behind his building, under someone’s living room window, in the second of four narrow, uncovered slots. He was glad the small parking area had been plowed for a change. He got out and slammed the door to his eight-year-old BMW, then checked around him habitually. The alley sometimes housed colorful characters, some more desperate than others depending upon the day and circumstance.
The complex’s walls were stained dirt grey, ideal for a three-story cube that paled next to the new condominiums next door. Snow covered the line of block heater plug-ins that fronted each parking space, attached to a five-car-length guard rail.
Rather than enter through the back door, his feet crunched through the snow past the row of young pine trees down the left side of the building. He was careful not to shake the branches, so that he could check around his basement unit’s windows, looking for signs of sneak thieves. Finding nothing, he went around to the front of the building, with nearby Whyte Avenue busy with traffic, as always.
He used his key on the front door. Inside, a small atrium served as a landing between the basement and first floor; a half-flight of steps led in each direction. He took the stairs down. The hallway was humid and musty, the original lime green of the plaster walls badly faded. At Apartment No. 2, he opened the old wooden front door with its deadbolt key then shut it behind him. He threw both locks and tossed his keys onto the small telephone table next to the kitchen door.
The place dated to the fifties, four small rooms of beat-up hardwood floors, decades of wear on the plaster-and-rebar walls. The rooms boasted nine-foot ceilings and real crown moldings, from back in the day when the tenant of a one-bedroom cold-water flat was treated with dignity. The rooms were closed off from one another, connected by a small hallway running from the front door past the back of the living room, to the kitchen door, to the bathroom door, to the rear bedroom. In summer, being in the basement helped alleviate the sometimes stifling Edmonton heat, which could get into the thirties – or ninety Fahrenheit to Cobi, who was still having trouble with that part of metric.
The avenue had its upsides, too. It was popular, buoyed by summer festivals, old brick buildings, and a string of restaurants and boutiques. It was made for patios and people watching, and was undoubtedly the city’s busiest shopping street, a home of architectural nostalgia in a town where almost everything was new.
That was also why the walkups slowly disappeared: the land was so close to the trendy part of town that they could be worth much more as condo developments. Those buildings that remained were often neglected, with tenants certain it was their landlords’ intent to get them out as quickly as possible without breaking the law too badly. That made for poor conditions, which in turn meant cheap rent. That brought other problems, people living on the margins. The walkups were targets for sneak thieves; and twice, Cobi had awoken to see someone casing his transom windows, which sat at the ground level outside, shadows quickly scurrying away when he turned on a lamp and expelled the darkness.
He hung up his jacket in the small built-in closet by the front door, retrieving his phone in the process. He checked his email, finding nothing. When it came to explaining the support payment, he’d been too proud to tell Sarah that he’d already grown tired of Buddy, already started looking for the next job. It would have satisfied her but she would have condescended to him about it, Cobi knew. That was always the way when you were the former star; when you’d been famous, no one was quite as happy to see you climb the mountain as they were to see you tumble back down to the base, bruised or broken.
Or that was how it felt, anyway. He tried to shake the sensation off; his father had told him to never feel sorry for himself, to bottle that nonsense inwardly, turn it into productive stress, deal with obstacles and don’t get personal.
His phone rang.
“Yo.”
“Yo, dawg…” It was Chris White, the only former teammate who still talked to him, and the man who’d set him up with Buddy. Chris came from Detroit, too, around Eight Mile. “I hear you made some bank this week. You must be feeling good about that.”
“Yeah… hey, thank you, man, for putting in the good word, you know? I couldn’t do that desk job for, like, five more minutes…”
“Yeah, we good, we good. You coming out to the clubs this weekend? Do a little dancing, a little romancing the ladies?”
“Nah. Had to give Sarah all my money save what little I got for groceries.”
“Shit, man. You ever think back in college we’d be worrying about groceries and rent and shit?” Chris sold cars for an outfit in West Edmonton, but business had been slow. At one time, he’d been a promising cornerback.
“I’m learning to accept it, you know? Life is just tougher than we figured it would be, what with football and all. But you know what it’s like back home; still better than that.”
“Maybe,” Chris said. “Maybe not. I ain’t got much choice in the matter, as you know.”
Chris had a robbery conviction from a year after he was cut from the team, a minor shoplifting beef that escalated when he hit the store owner, resulting in community service. He’d told everyone it was an accident and he wouldn’t have hit the guy if he hadn’t been accused of being a thief, but Cobi wasn’t so sure. His friend was the kind of mixed-up guy that Cobi knew his old man would’ve hated. Even getting the car sales job had been tough, and Chris spent some time under Buddy’s wing.
But he also had dual citizenship from his wife, Alexa, and that meant he could get hung up at the border over the conviction, at least as he figured it.
“Man, they won’t stop an American citizen from going back home.”
Chris scoffed at that. “They bust my ass back in Motown for crossing the street to the wrong sidewalk. You think they let me back in if they get a chance not to?”
It didn’t pay much to argue with him; he was set in his opinions. “Yeah, maybe. Anyhow, thank you, man, again… I don’t know how long I’m going to stay with him, though.”
“Why’s that?”
“Too unstable,” Cobi explained. “You know? He ain’t bad like the ballers back home, but Buddy is still straight-up trouble.”
“So?” Chris sounded defensive. “Man, at least he accepts you for you. When you going to accept people can always tell where you come from? You either fit with them or you don’t.”
“I can’t do like that.” Cobi shook his head. “You know how my old man was after Allan…”
Chris scoffed. “That shit was on him more than anyone and you know it, way he pushed. And if it were up to his black ass you’d be patrolling south of Six Mile right now. Never you mind your father. Not listening to him was the smartest thing you ever did.”
Cobi felt tension rise; the call wasn’t helping. And he knew his father had worked hard to keep him away from his friends in Detroit, away from trouble.
“It ain’t about rejecting where I’m from, Chris. I got to do what I can to try and play things straight for my boy. You get that, right? I got to man up, do the right thing.”
“Yeah… I mean… Yeah, I guess,” Chris said, maybe a little dejected. Cobi wasn’t sure.
“Don’t fret though, you did right by me,” Cobi reassured.
“Yeah, dawg. Maybe we catch up next week.”
“All right, peace.”
Cobi hung up and took a deep breath, trying to figure out where things were headed.
The next job
. That was it, wasn’t it? That was the real problem. Whatever it was, it would be just a job. If he’d finished college instead of declaring for the draft, or maybe gone back instead of taking the offer to go north and play, he’d have a degree; and that degree would open doors. As it was, he’d relied on fading fame and the help of ex-teammates to stay working, and that meant owing people. Occasionally, something with more of a career track would pop up, and within a few months, it would become clear to Cobi that he wasn’t an office guy. It would be clear to the people he worked with, too, and as with any community, the one who stands out becomes a source of fascination, to be studied, not engaged. He’d thought about going back to school, but the sensation was the same, the knowledge that a black man from the wrong part of Detroit would stick out, draw attention, maybe even derision. That’s what it had been like in school before his growth spurt, before football.
He went to the kitchen for a glass of ice water before slumping on the cheap grey cloth couch, reaching for the remote and turning on the television. It was almost one o’clock in the morning, and he felt bone-tired from a long day; but Cobi’s mind was still active, stewing over his ex, and Michael, and Allan, and Buddy, and the future. He was still trying to make some sense of it all when he drifted off to sleep, the television audience laughing in tele-prompted unison.
The alley behind the bar off of One Hundred Eighteenth Avenue appeared pitch black in places, long stretches of darkness followed by areas where light poked through back windows, giving shape to dumpsters, boxes and cans in patches of deceptive, luminous security.
Tommy furtively checked over his shoulder and turned in slow circles as he walked. He’d owed Ritchie the money for months and Ritchie wasn’t known to take debts lightly. A second-generation Trinidadian, Ritchie’s father was a noted gangster serving life in prison back home in Port of Spain for multiple homicides.
The apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.
“You got my money, motherfucker?”
Ritchie’s voice always gave Tommy a little chill, raw aggression without effort, the perfect accompaniment to a hundred and ninety pounds of muscle and tattoos. His black ski jacket blended into the darkness until he stepped forward, and he seemed to emerge directly from a shadow, like a demon.
If you wanted to sell in Ritchie’s neighborhood, you sold for Ritchie. He was like any boss; he’d have no trouble finding you product — but he might kill you if you weren’t productive enough.
“Ritchie! Hi! Just like I said, two Gs.” Tommy fished inside the inside pocket of his jacket, and Ritchie’s hand instinctively went to the gun in his own waistband, a chrome nine-millimeter Colt with white-pearl grips. Tommy took the wrapped package of bills out slowly. “It’s cool, it’s cool.”
He handed it over nervously, reaching slightly farther than normal, keeping his distance, as if an extra half-foot of space might make a difference. Grant thumbed through it, counting each of the hundred-dollar notes cautiously. “How you come by this?”
“I got a loan. I got it last week; I just couldn’t find you, is all. I got a couple warrants on me, so I’m keeping my head down.”
Ritchie’s peered contemptuously at him “Yeah, you would do something stupid like that, wouldn’t you? Get in trouble with one person, you go out and borrow from someone else. You probably owe half the fools in town money. You know what your problem is, Tommy? You don’t think ahead.”
He took the gun out of his belt and pointed it at the smaller man. “Now, tell me why I shouldn’t smoke your ass just to make the point? Eh, you ungrateful little motherfucker?”
Tommy raised both his hands halfway above his head. “Ritchie, please, man… I swear I’ll never…”
“Shit, put your hands down, fool! You’re embarrassing yourself. Act like a man!”
Tommy lowered his hands. “I know it took a long time…”
“Long time! Bitch, it’s been three months. I knew you’d be stupid enough to show your face here eventually.”
“I came around to see you. That’s why I have the money on me, Ritchie, for real! I tried to make it up, that’s why it took so long. When I couldn’t, I got the loan.”
“Shit, who’d be dumb enough to trust you?”
Tommy muttered the answer. “Buddy.”
“Who?”
“Buddy! Buddy Gaines.”
Ritchie looked almost disappointed. “That greasy motherfucker? Sheee-it… you didn’t bring him down here, did you? I don’t want him or none of his eastern European friends coming around my territory. Shit bound to blow up, you do something stupid like that.”
“No way, Ritchie, I swear! I would never…!”
“Shut the fuck up. I swear, Tommy, long as I’ve known you, you’re always fucking something up…”
“Please, Ritchie, I promise….”
The gangster scoffed. “Don’t try to shit a shitter. ‘I promise…’ Shit, as if anything you ever said ever meant shit to anyone…”
He studied the younger man for a few moments, and Tommy’s instinct kicked in, his mouth remaining shut while the dealer weighed his fate.
“If I decide not to kill your ass, you get back to work slinging for me. I take an extra ten points on every package, so that’s ninety-ten. You tell everyone you begged me to come back.”
Tommy nodded vigorously. Selling weed kept him fed and alive since leaving foster care three years earlier; it was the only reason Chantelle could afford the condo in Mill Woods, and it was the only way he could afford Chantelle. He saw a future with her, the first time he’d ever really been able to say that. He saw a chance at a normal person’s life. If getting back to work would square him with Ritchie, he wasn’t going to argue.