Boston Noir

The kitchen space was cramped. Standing-room only. Nina was a few inches shy of Isaac’s five-ten. She crossed her arms and her elbow brushed his shirt front. “This woman’s after your neck. Why?” Fill in the blanks, she told him. “How you better than Triple-A? You don’t even own a car?”

“She knew I had Devon ’s ride.”

“That’s not his car.”

“It’s his car whenever he wants it,” Isaac told her. Every syllable dripped smug, making Nina pause.

Sindi had called him around 3 in the morning back in March.

“She was stranded out in Newton,” Isaac said.

“That time of night? How come?”

He said she’d been coming back from Wellesley.

“The college?”

He nodded. “The transmission gave out.”

“And Marine to the rescue?”

“I get there and she picks a fight.”

“About?”

“Bullshit.”

“Yeah, that’s what I say.”

“I’m telling you. It was about nuth-in,” he insisted. “She’s all up in my face and I push her away. She starts swinging at me. I grab her wrists and push her back. The shit is crazy so I leave her there.”

“That’s it?”

“She tells the cops I assaulted her.”

“You put your hands on her. That’s all it takes.”

He froze for a few seconds, then mumbled, “Am I that kind of man?”

Nina tried to read him. “This chick apparently sets you up and you’re seriously pondering the nature of your soul?”

“She likes that,” Isaac said, the drugged gaze fading.

“Likes what?”

“Being slapped around.”

Nina let that hang a moment.

“She wanted me to smack her around in bed.”

“Did you?”

“That is so against my spirit,” he said, slowly.

Nina considered his words, his tone. Then: “What about the polygamy thing? Girlfriend down with that?” When they first met, Isaac had told Nina that he planned to move to South Africa to teach and live with multiple wives. Nina had laughed it off and said, “You must want some serious voodoo on your ass.”

He shrugged now.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Kind of,” he said.

“As long as she’s Wife Number One and you beat the crap out her daily? Nig-grow, please.” She started putting together another container of strawberries for later. She felt her sweet tooth calling.

Isaac moved toward the front door to put on his shoes.

Nina walked and talked. Fruit in one hand, paring knife in the other. “Is anything I know about you true?”

He bent to tie his shoelace. Nina hovered.

“What are you talking about?” He was holding up the wall with his shoulder and looked exhausted from the effort.

“Maybe you’re that brother from another planet,” cause she didn’t know any brothers from the ’hood who talked to the police without a lawyer.

They had called him, he repeated. They’d asked if he wanted to clear things up. “I felt it could easily be resolved. This woman is my best friend. We’re used to talking a dozen times a day.”

“You broke up and still talked a dozen times a day?”

“Yeah.”

“But she was cool with you not fucking her anymore, and you believed that?”

Nina started remembering threads of their early conversations last fall. Calling himself a free agent. Admitting, only when Nina pressed, that he did see one sister more than anyone else…

…and that Isaac had been in her car when an old boyfriend called to apologize for ancient misdeeds. It was one of those twelve-step-make-amends things. Isaac had said he thought that was nice. She’d agreed. “Especially since I stabbed him.”

“She’s my best friend,” Isaac repeated.

Nina batted the air and a bit of forgotten strawberry flew. She needed to wash the smashed fruit off her hand. “Say goodnight, Gracie,” she muttered, walking back to the kitchen.

“What?”

“Way before your time.”

“Thanks for dinner,” he called out from the doorway.

She ignored the lame farewell and wiped the fruit off the floor. The downstairs door slammed shut.

The night was cool and windy. Nina raised the slats of a shutter and watched Isaac disappear in the dark. It was a ten-minute walk to Dudley Station, past some very sketchy territory. Nina had escaped Boston in the ’80s, the years when crack was king and a Roxbury zip code meant perpetual violence. Before the plague, she’d traveled Interstate 90 from Albany to attend Berklee, and had lived at a series of Roxbury addresses with no problem. She loved the familiar swagger and grace amidst despair. Some of those blocks had crashed and resurrected. Some meant constant crossfire still. Her new address was safe in the daytime, but a game try at night without klieg-light battalions. Nina wouldn’t hazard a night stroll. But a Marine might make it.

It was past 11:00. Too late to take that second pill. The mood elevator needed to drop a few floors. Nina made a three-bag cup of Sleepytime tea and spiked it with thirty drops of valerian root. Better than Xanax and safer. She stuck a straw in the thermos mug she kept in the crib-the other stayed in the car-and popped a white noise CD in the boom box. Waves crashed. Seagulls cried. She logged on and sent an e-mail to Darcelle, the judge. Nina gave her the short of it, then wrote:

Don’t know the “truth” of the situation, but his life story is admirable. Foster kid from the ’hood, East St. Lou