Say You're Sorry Page 3

  Then back. Then forth again.

  The third time, as he spun me out away from him, his heels came very very close to the lip of the top step. I had been watching carefully for this angle, this moment. Then, I simply let go, and the centrifugal force of our swing propelled Alexander backward as surely as if he had been pulling on a rope which had snapped.

  He tumbled down, step after step, head over foot, and landed with a sharp crack of his head and neck on the old oak flooring below.

  I swooped after him. Leaned over him. Pressed my face close as if for a kiss.

  Help me were his last words.

  No was mine.

  Once he was gone, I brushed my lips across that place at his nape where the dark curls feathered so sweetly, then headed for the door and the nearest phone to call 911. A terrible accident, I cried. Please come.

  Too bad. So sad. Such a handsome man. And poised on the brink of fame. The murmurs came from every quarter.

  But that didn’t bother me at all. No more than did that last image of Alexander, his neck askew, lying at the bottom of my stairs.

  I step over that spot twenty times a day now, with nary a quiver. Like I told you before, my self-control is strong as granite. You could erect a gravestone of it, it would last a millennium.

  Besides, I have so many other things on my mind these days. My new job keeps me hopping. Charlotte says she’s never seen anyone catch onto real estate so quickly. She’s forgotten all those months I spent house-hunting. And Alexander was a very good teacher.

  But, wait, wait, you say. How could I so blithely jump back into the world, bypass the cloister of the academe for the rough-and-tumble world of commerce? Easily as if I were changing my clothes?

  The answer’s simple. The winning, and then the renovation, of The House—my passion, my heart, my soul—required heroic measures, not to mention oodles of cash.

  One does what one has to do, for love.

  Some You Win

  Clementine Jones was leaning out the back screen door of her neat lemon-yellow cottage on New Orleans’s Prytania Street. “I’m going to kill you,” she hollered, her pretty brown face twisted up like one of those fake voudou dolls the tourists bought in the French Quarter.

  Her son, Bonaparte—twelve years old and four feet, six inches, and ninety pounds of creative energy—sat about twenty feet up in a magnolia tree. He was listening to Clementine with only half an ear.

  He was mad at his mama. This bright and beautiful Saturday morning she’d been vacuuming in his room when all of a sudden she’d stomped into the kitchen where he was dunking powdered doughnuts in his café au lait and snapped, “What’s this?” Clementine was holding a stack of twenty-dollar bills in her upturned palm as if it were a rattlesnake.

  He’d looked at it, looked at her, and said, “You have broken the bond of trust which is basic to the parent-child relationship.” Then with one smooth move he’d snatched the cash from her hand, loped out the back door and skinnied up the magnolia that in early April was filled with creamy blossoms that smelled so sweet, one whiff, you were falling-down drunk.

  “Bond of trust, bullshit, Bone!” she said now, leaning out the back door. “What I’m gonna break is your young butt if you don’t tell me where this big old pile of money came from. Are you charging those dumb rich white kids for doing their homework again?”

  “No, Ma, I’m not.”

  “Don’t you No, Ma me in that tone of voice, young man. Like I don’t know you’re your daddy’s son.”

  Bone’s daddy, from whom Clementine had been long divorced, was now a quite respectable barbecue restaurateur, but he’d picked up his basic culinary skills at Angola State Prison where he’d done three years for relieving tourists of their jewels and cash.

  “Then how come I ain’t six-foot-six like him?” Bone asked.

  “A gifted-and-talented young black man on scholarship at a hoity-toity private school ought to know better than to be saying ain’t,” said Clementine, “and quit trying to change the subject. I’m asking you this this one time: Bone, is that you who’s been holding up those bakeries all over town? Is that where you got that cash?”

  “Ma, don’t be silly. The Picayune said that dude’s been knocking off those sweet shops is about five foot ten. Not to mention white.”

  “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with you.” And with that Clementine plopped down on the grass at the foot of the magnolia and began to cry. “I work hard all day at the Whitney Bank.” She spent her days in a teller’s cage taking in and dealing out currency. Smiling. Being polite to white folks who carefully thumbed their money each time like it was some kind of trick that she could even count to three. “Come home, wash, iron, clean, cook, try to keep our little home together. Only to find you’ve been extorting money from rich white kids so busy taking riding lessons, tennis lessons, soccer lessons, dancing lessons to please their crazy mamas, they can’t find time to do their own English compositions.” It was Clementine’s contention that all the society ladies who lived in the big houses in the Garden District suffered from hereditary insanity brought on by too much adultery, too many whiskey sours, and too few belly laughs.

  “Awh, Ma,” Bone said. “I haven’t sold a single page of homework since before Mardi Gras, I swear.”

  “Well, don’t try and tell me you haven’t been hanging out in Commander’s and the Bon Ton,” naming two of Bone’s favorite restaurants. Bone had been addicted to good tailoring and haute cuisine almost since birth, passions he’d definitely inherited from his dad. At eleven, Bone had taken two of his little white friends for Sunday brunch in the palmy court at Brennan’s, all of them dressed to the nines in tiny linen suits. Much to the consternation of the waiter, Bone had ordered grandly from the à la carte menu.

  Clementine said, “I know you’ve been dining out again. That nice letter you got last week from Commander’s Palace, inviting you, as a valued customer, to come in have a drink on the house, that’s why I searched your room in the first place.”

  “Ha! Reading my mail and frisking my room!”

  “Bonaparte, boy, I’m fresh out of patience. You better come down right now!” Then Clementine ducked as something floated by her head. She leaned over and picked it up. A twenty-dollar bill. Then another. It was raining cash behind the little yellow cottage on Prytania that was snuggled up in between two of the largest and once-upon-a-time grandest mansions in the Garden District, bearing witness to New Orleans’s housing patterns as well as Southern white folks’ dictum to blacks: Now, y’all can get as close as you want to; just don’t get too big.

  *

  About four blocks away on First Street, a totally insane piece of white trash named Gordon Armbruster was sitting in a stolen dark green Oldsmobile with his accomplice, a young country woman named Alma Jean who’d felt bad about herself her whole life because she was six feet tall and redheaded and covered head-to-toe with freckles. Alma Jean thought she looked exactly like a giraffe.

  “Now, A.J.,” Gordon was saying, “do you understand that this is a big step up in our operation? This is bigger than your ordinary armed robbery. This is bigger than taking out bakeries. This is no small endeavor, and I expect you to play your role perfectly. Do you understand your role?”

  “Yes, Gordon.”

  Gordon, who was a stringy five-ten with pale blue eyes, bad teeth, and long dirty blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, grabbed Alma Jean’s freckled chin and jerked her head around. “Look me in the eye when you say that, A.J.”

  “I understand, Gordon. I understand that when the Rising Sun/Big Easy tour bus pulls up over there,” Alma pointed to a spot under a gigantic live oak tree that stood before a white three-story mansion famous for its wrought-iron balconies, “that I’m to cross the street and fall down in front of the bus door right before the driver opens it.”

  “And then?”

  “When the driver gets out to help me, I jump up and stick this in his face.” She displayed a silvery
Smith and Wesson .38. “And I say, ‘Tell those little Jap tourists to sit their asses back down or I’ll blow your brains out.’”

  “Good,” said Gordon. “That’s good, A.J. And when this is all over, when we’ve relieved those rich little rice-eaters of their cash and their cameras and their camcorders and their Rolexes and their diamonds—all of which they own simply because of the screwed-up balance of trade—then what are we going to do?”

  “Fly to Switzerland and get all my freckles bleached off.”

  Alma said the words like a supplicant reciting a catechism. For Gordon was her savior. He had rescued her, still in her hairnet, from the Acorn Chickens processing plant in north Georgia, pulled her right out of the line where she was boning chicken breasts that would be chopped into nuggets for a fast-food chain. Gordon had said, “You, c’mere,” to Alma and Alma only, right before he’d blasted the manager of Acorn Chickens six ways to Sunday—which was right after the manager had opened the safe.

  *

  “What on earth was all that noise about?” Cutler Lamb asked when Bone came stomping into the parlor of Cutler’s huge wedding cake of a house next door to the little yellow cottage.

  “Nothing. Just Ma with her knickers in a twist. She found the cash I couldn’t get over to you last night.” Bone offered the stack of twenties forward and Cutler took it in his lace-gloved hand.

  “Well, isn’t that what mothers are for, worrying about their chicks?” said Cutler, who was wearing an old Mardi Gras gown of white peau de soie that had seen better days, but then so had Cutler. The blond hair upon which a rhinestone tiara sat was over-bleached and frizzy. His body had expanded so that the bodice of the gown fit like a sausage casing. “Bless my mother’s poor departed soul, I’m so glad she’s not here to see me in these reduced circumstances.” Cutler picked up a lace-trimmed linen handkerchief and dabbed at an aquiline, but prominent nose, then poured them each a cup of Earl Grey tea.

  “Now, Cutler,” said Bone, sitting himself down in a chair of chartreuse velvet with lion-claw arms which had frightened him when he was a tot. “You know that Zeus is going to get over itself. They’ll parade again. They’ll be back.”

  What Bone was referring to was the Krewe of Zeus, one of the oldest and snottiest of the Carnival organizations. Zeus had refused to hold its annual Mardi Gras parade when a city ordinance was passed denying parade permits to krewes which discriminated against blacks and Jews and white trash. This was catastrophic for Cutler, who had long supplemented a fading inheritance by making thousands of huge fluttering paper palm leaves and other gold and silver baubles that decorated Zeus’s floats.

  Cutler pursed his scarlet lips into a perfect pout. “Zeus will never parade again. You know they won’t. Those old turtles are never going to admit anybody as precious and black and talented as you.” And at that Cutler, whose family had belonged to Zeus for four generations, leaned over and tousled Bone’s soft black curls. “Those asses have no imagination whatsoever.”

  Bone had never wanted to belong to a bunch of boring old rich white people in the first place, but hoped someday to strut his stuff with the all-black Tchoupitoulas Indians who were famous for their beaded and feathered costumes. He said, “Well, Cutler, nobody could ever say you lack imagination, could they? I think your taking all your money out of banks where it’s earning doo-doo for interest and investing it in that catfish co-operative is absolutely wizard.”

  “Well, I do too,” said Cutler. “Though I do hate putting you to the trouble with my banking. But you know how I hate going out in the noonday sun what with my fair complexion, and who would want to go out after dark with all those criminals running amok, mugging and raping and shooting people up?”

  “I don’t mind one bit,” said Bone. And that was the truth. Cutler paid him twenty dollars for every withdrawal he made from an automated teller machine, and since the maximum you could withdraw from a single account in one day was five hundred dollars, and Cutler was investing a lot more than that in catfish, Bone’s fees were mounting up. “Now where do you want me to go today? I did your banks in the Quarter yesterday. So the two here in the neighborhood would be next?”

  “Yes. Take five hundred from the Whitney Bank at Jackson and St. Charles and then another five from the First National on Louisiana. Tomorrow you can take the ferry over to Algiers and do those.”

  “You got it,” said Bone, tucking Cutler’s plastic bank cards into the back pocket of his freshly pressed Ralph Lauren khaki shorts which went nicely with his scarlet knit shirt. In a flash, he was out the door and pedaling away on his ten-speed Japanese bike.

  Cutler waved him off from inside a heavily draped floor-to-ceiling window that opened onto the broad porch. Then Cutler poured himself another cup of tea and settled down to wait. It was a shame, he thought, well, sort of a shame, to have to involve an innocent youth in his nefarious scheme, but then, on the other hand, he was helping keep the child in crème brûlée and designer suits, and besides, Bone was the only person he knew and trusted who was short enough to avoid the security cameras at the automatic cash machines.

  *

  The problem was that the Japanese tourists were in such an all-fired hurry to take pictures of one other standing in front of the mansion on First Street that they swarmed right off the bus when the driver opened the door and all over Alma and her Smith & Wesson .38 without paying her a lick of attention.

  “Wait just a damned minute,” she hollered, jumping to her feet and waving the pistol, but it didn’t do a bit of good.

  Those little people with their neat haircuts and designer suits were smiling and chattering and posing and clicking and clicking and clicking.

  *

  “Well, aren’t you cute?” said the crazy white lady in the bright pink-and-green golf outfit standing behind Bone in the line at the cash machine at the Whitney Bank. She was the mother of his friend Trey Bunting, and actually Bone had been at her house for hot dogs, though he was sure she didn’t remember. Between her golf and her drinking and keeping track of Mr. Bunting’s mistresses, Miz Bunting was so busy she hardly had time to turn around.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Bone. He knew that if you agreed with adults, they’d just leave you alone. Well, usually.

  “Does your mother know that you are using her ATM card?”

  “Yes, ma’am, she does,” Bone lied.

  “Does she know that you are taking that much money out? My goodness! Five hundred dollars!”

  What Bone wanted to say was, Do you know that it is rude to crowd somebody at a cash machine, not to mention looking over their shoulder and counting their money? But he didn’t. He didn’t have breath to waste on Trey’s crazy mom, because what he was doing was wondering how long this business with Cutler was going to last. Was it going to string out long enough for him to finish paying for the new blue-and-white seersucker suit he’d put on lay-away at Togs & Trousers? And, furthermore, what was Cutler really up to here with all these bank transactions? Not buying catfish stock, for sure. You didn’t use cash to buy stock, Bone knew that. Well, whatever it was, Bone didn’t really care, as long as he got his suit. And maybe an oyster lunch or two at Casamento’s.

  Bone was so deep into thinking about tailoring and fine food while he headed for his bike that he didn’t see the man with the short haircut and the tell-tale lump of a shoulder holster under the arm of his navy blue suit come up and tap Trey’s mom on the arm and start talking to her really seriously.

  Bone was pedaling along on Coliseum Street, thinking about maybe staging a dinner for his friends at Gautreaux’s that he understood did this wonderful softshell crab, when, at the corner of First Street, Blam!

  A little Japanese man running hellbent for leather smacked into him and knocked him off his bike. Then a white dude with a blond ponytail yelled at a tall red-headed white lady with lots of freckles, “A.J., girl, you have unfortunately fucked up bad.”

  And, Blam! Ponytail shot her right in the mouth. As she fell, bl
ood and brains splattered all over a whole bunch of Japanese who had hit the ground.

  “Give me all your cash! Your jewelry! Your cameras!” Ponytail screamed. He was wild-eyed, like a spooked horse, and slinging spit. The Japanese froze on the ground.

  “Now!” yelled Ponytail. And when they didn’t move fast enough, Blam!

  A young Japanese man in a brown suit fell back, shot dead through his left eye. Bone thought he was going to faint or throw up, but he was too terrified to do anything but keep lying there on the pavement beside his bike, hoping he was invisible.

  But he wasn’t. “Nigger!” Ponytail screamed. Bone surveyed the scene, moving his eyes without lifting his head. Yep, the white trash killer meant him, all right. There were no other black people around. “Get your little black ass over here before I count to three or…”

  He didn’t need to finish the statement. Bone hustled.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I need some help here. Get yourself over there in the middle of those Japs and relieve them of their valuables.”

  “Yes, sir.” Bone hated to do it, but he didn’t see that he had any option other than dying real young.

  “Japs!” Ponytail screamed. “Do you hear me? Just hand this little black boy your stuff, and there won’t be any problems. Keep anything back, and you’re dead. Do you understand?”

  The tourists seemed to read him loud and clear. As Bone tiptoed among them, they handed him diamonds and pearls and cash and camcorders and gold chains and watches and cameras and one tiny lady even gave him her alligator loafers. For one brief moment Bone was tempted to slip them on, for she was about his size and he’d seen the same pair at Ralph Lauren for $550, but it just wouldn’t be right, and besides, Ponytail was stone crazy.

  “Throw it all in the car!” Ponytail waved his silver pistol at a green Oldsmobile.

  Bone hustled over to it, opened the passenger door, and had started tossing merchandise in when Blam! Ponytail blasted another Japanese tourist as a warning for them all to lie low and let him make his getaway. At the blast, Bone jumped and his body pitched forward into the Olds. He tried to back out, but it was too late. Ponytail had leaped in through the driver’s side, cranked up the engine, and they were flying down Prytania.