I take a swig of the whiskey, swishing it around and letting it wash over the open cut I got from Primo yesterday. It seeps into my bloodstream with the rest of the liquor I threw back last night while I ran from Slim… and her calls…her texts…her voice messages…and voicemails.
I take another gulp, but it doesn’t wash away her sweet voice.
“Baby, I’m not mad anymore. I’m…I’m sorry. Answer my FaceTime so I can look at you and tell you to your face that I’m still yours or better yet just come get me so we can talk. Please.”
I can’t make her voice disappear. Every word she said lives inside of me and clings to my insides like some kind of parasite.
“Rich, listen to me. We can just leave. Just me and you. We can start over. I’ve…I’ve done it before and I can do it again. We don’t even have to tell anybody. Pick up the phone.”
A tiny trickle of liquor falls down the wrong side of my throat.
I choke, gasping for air.
“Smit, finish hammering them nails in for this boy,” Senior mutters. “Come up here and dry out, Pup.”
He feels good today.
His voice ain’t as light, and his hand is steady enough to keep his cigarette between his fingers, but every look he throws my way makes me feel like I’m a boy again.
I drag myself to the porch, holding the banister as I climb the steps.
He nods toward the empty chair Beatrice had left beside him. “Sit down.”
I try to, but I collapse instead, stretching my legs out and letting my arms fall to my sides.
“What I always tell you about them fight hangovers?” he asks.
“Not to run from ‘em.”
“So what you killing yourself on a Monday for?”
Slim’s cries crawl into my head.
“If this is how it’ll be, then block me!” she sobbed. “Please, just block me!”
“Couldn’t get no rest,” I murmur, cupping my hand over my throbbing forehead to shield it from the beaming sun.
It’s hot and muggy and doesn’t even feel like the first day of November. The sun is duller than it was yesterday. Everything I eat tastes like shit. Even the lavender in Slim’s skirt wasn’t as strong when I inhaled it this morning. Everything is different.
“Kathy been calling me. She said you left yesterday without paying,” he says. “You know, eventually they’ll send somebody by to collect if you don’t settle that.”
“She tell you how many times I took a piss yesterday too?”
He brings the cigarette to his mouth, taking another drag. “Nah. I heard you was too busy chasing Faye’s niece out in the parking lot to even do that.”
His words conjure up those last memories of Slim that I keep trying to force into that dark part of my brain, but she’s a fighter, so she claws her way to the front of my mind every damn chance she gets. Now our last moments play in a loop in my head.
My mouth grows dry, and I take another swig of whiskey to wet it.
“You must’ve talked to Arnez,” I murmur, glancing at him out of the corner of my eye.
“Well, sheismy child. Just because y’all ain’t seeing eye to eye don’t mean me and her ain’t.”
“She should mind her business,” I grunt, taking another sip.
“She’ll never do that.” He ashes his cigarette on the arm of his wheelchair, staring at Smitty yanking out all the nails I had hammered into the wood and flinging them off into the grass.
He turns from Smitty and glances at the whiskey in my hand. “Faye’s niece ain’t at the bottom of that cup and that nigga you hate ain’t that piece of wood you was banging on, so you might wanna slow down a bit.”
