“What?”I pushed when she still didn’t speak.
“I kinda talked to Tony about…you know.”
As fate would have it, the guy we met the last time we werehere was named Anthony and went by Tony.
It was cute, Tony and Toni.
It was also good, since Tony might hang out at rough bars,but he was a good guy and way into Toni, so they’d been seeing each other forthe last four months.
Though, it was bad because now Tony knew Toni was onlytwenty, which meant he was not down with her going to this bar for two reasons.One, it was illegal, and two, he was protective and didn’t want her anywherenear the joint.
What was also not good was that I knew what “you know”meant.
This was why my voice was pitched two octaves higher when Iasked, “You talked to Tony about Darius and Liam?”
She shook her head.
“No.Not Liam.I just asked him about Darius.I was realcasual, I promise,” she didn’t quite assure me.“I said I was friends with himback in high school, since, you know,I was, and wondering after whatwent down how he was doing.”
Okay, maybe this wasn’t so bad.
And now I was interested.
“What did he say?”
It appeared she didn’t want to say what she was going to saynext, but she said it.
“He said steer clear.He didn’t know him back then, but now,he’s one serious bad dude.”
I turned my attention back to the front door because Ialready knew that.The “bad dude” leaked all his baddudenessall over my living room four months ago.
I’d also come home to an envelope sitting on my counter likeclockwork the first day of every month.The first two were three grand, thelast two were four.
All cash.
“So, you know,” Toni went on, “he made it clear he was infor child support, which is good, right?”
I didn’t answer, because I’d told her all about Darius’svisit, and the envelopes I kept getting, and it didn’t need to be said thatfourteen thousand dollars in cash was good when you made a salary that wassemi-kinda okay for one but didn’t really stretch to two.
She kept going.
“But he’s out for the rest.So why are we standing hereagain?”
This was a good question because Darius’s feelings on thematter did, indeed, not leave a lot to interpretation, so I didn’t really know.
However, things had definitely been left unsaid, and forsome stupid reason, I had the overwhelming urge to say them.
Before I could answer her, a truck pulled into the parkinglot.
But it didn’t park.
It drove right up to us and stopped.
The window went down, and I saw Eddie Chavez behind thewheel.
Dang.
Darius knew I was here, or Shirleen did, but it was Dariuswho was making the statement that he didn’t want to see me.
