Alfonse faintly heard the doorbell ring from the sick room on the second floor but continued to scrub out the bedpan he was working on. A moment later his daughter began to call from the bottom of the stairs.
“Daddy, someone’s here for you,” She yelled in her biggest six-year-old voice. His wife groaned in bed, flashing him a look of derision through the haze of her fever as Alfonse stepped through the bedroom door, drying his hands. Descending the stairs he immediately recognized the dark hulking figure at the door. When he reached the landing, his daughter caught him by the pant leg and whispered, “It’s your secret friend.”
He heard Dre repeat the phrase secret friend under his breath. “Okay honey,” he told the girl. “Let daddy and his friend talk,” he stroked the little girl’s head, marking the contrast of his own scarred and tattooed hand against the girl’s silken hair. The unmarred innocence of her face.
He stepped outside, closing the door behind him but Dre didn’t compensate so Alfonse found himself chest to abdomen with the huge man, forced to look up into his eyes.
“What you trying to do, dog?”
“Da’ fuck? I can’t even come to visit?”
“We talked about this shit bro, I have to do this.”
“I know, but do that mean I can’t come to see you this whole time? You need to keep me secret?”
“Please Dre, how am I gonna keep the 300-pound black man that I live with a secret? You know she know about you, that don’t mean she like you.”
“How long then? For how long I’m going to be without you for?
“I don’t know man?”
“What if she gets better?”
“Bro, she aint getting better. She aint gonna last long and I got to be here for Celi. We talked about this shit. We agreed that little girl need to have a better childhood than we did. She got to have some love in her life, right?”
Dre nodded, fat tears overflowed the lower rims of his eyes, streaking down his cheeks and dropped against the broad expanse of his chest.
Neither moved during the exchange, neither flinched, made a gesture or raised his voice. The conversation from a distance seemed intense, like negotiations between men of reputation who would come to blows rather than give an inch. The embrace at the end could have been nothing but a back slap, no on-looker from a distance observed the long lingering kiss.
Alfonse handed through a driver’s license with the name Danialle Gall and signed the same on the visitors’ list. He took a seat on one of the hard molded plastic seats along with three women and their gaggle of noisome children in the stark room. A television mounted high on the opposite wall showed white women with facelifts and fake tits screeching at one another while drinking wine. He checked the time on his phone. Leaving the house for even an hour was taking a chance.
His AKA came over the speaker, and he stepped through the first of a series of security doors that led to the visitors’ room where Dre was already seated. Alfonse sat on the opposite side of the perspex and picked up the phone. Dre had yet to look up so Alfonse tapped the receiver against the barrier.
Dre snatched the receiver up from its cradle and held it like a toy in the crook of his neck.
“‘sup dog?”
“Dre, what the fuck man? Why are we in here?”
Dre looked up guiltily. Shrugged his massive shoulders and rolled his eyes. “You know, I was hanging out with my homegirl Arshirliale and we was drinking a little and you know just bitching. Then her man come in and he was like bitch this and bitch that and I told him, politely, to wind his neck. You know? I wasn’t lookin to fuck up.”
“Yeah but?”
“But then the stupid motherfucker flashed a piece at me and the next thing I know he just broken on the floor. Reflex dog.”
“Ok, what they wanna get you for.
“They want assault three, with priors and shit. I can stick with the public defender but I’m going to do a little minute.”
“Or we lawyer up and spring you tomorrow, it’s fucking class A.”
“What that going to do our account”
“We can take the hit”
“Nah man, you aint home, so fuck it, I’ll hold here for a little bit. Hit the yard, maybe find me a little bitch to string out, you know they playing D and D up in here?”
Alfonse let the receiver go limp in his hand and cocked his head. Dre was preening, pulling a smirk and staring off at an angle. “Is that what all this shit is about? You want to get a little fresh piece of ass guilt free motherfucker?”
“Shit, you gone back to the wife. What you want me to do? Just wait around for you to call when you feel like?”
“The bitch is dying, right now. And I can’t have you coming round cause she hate you more than anything in this fucking world and I can’t handle any more shit than she given me already. So, I really don’t need to play drama with you.”
“Well shit” Dre said as his teasing expression morphed into one of hurt. “Can’t you just hold a pillow over her face? Or do that thing with her artery, cut off her blood supply or whatever? Or get me sprung and I’ll do it.”
“How that gonna look? You think maybe five O gonna want to know about her felon husband and his felon boyfriend if maybe the coroner don’t like the way things look. What about the insurance investigator? We gonna risk her life insurance policy?
Alfonse looked at Dre disappointedly through the bullet proof glass that separated them,
Dre spoke softly, hopefully into the phone “you got a policy on her?”
“Of course, there a policy baby. Look, in three months you gonna be out. Buff, rough and ready to fluff, she gonna be dead and we can live the suburban life with our little girl and the fucking house with the white fucking picket fence.”
Dre pressed his huge hand against the glass and Alfonse met the gesture from his side fitting his within the enormous outline. “For real?” Dre’s lower lip quivered
“For reals yo, now you go on, keep your head down, maybe find some squeaky clean lil bitch and tear that shit up if you want, I’ll take care the case.”
Alfonse sat holding his daughter’s hand in his lap as she leaned against him in the front seat of his wife’s car, just at the verge of tears. He traced the delicate gold filigree of the claddagh ring on her index finger. Christa like so many American mutts, laid claim to Irish ancestry and had passed this hopeful idea on to their daughter.
“Hija, you know that even though your mama and I don’t always love each other we both love you more than anything in the world, right?”
The girl snuffled “but how can she love me now?”
Alfonse lifted the girl’s chin softly with the tips of his fingers and then touched her on the chest. “Her love is in here baby, just like mine is… forever. Believe that mi querido.”
“I feel sad poppy.”
“Of course you do, and you will. You gonna feel sad for a while, but not forever. That’s natural but when you feel sad try and remember a happy time, can you hija? Maybe you can tell me one now while we wait.”
The girl went silent. Alfonse continued to stare at the entrance of the Chinese take-out across the street. After so long a pause he’d momentarily forgotten the girl at his side even as he stroked her hand and felt her warmth pressing against him. “Like when we would go to the beach and you and mommy teached me to swim?
“Yea baby like that. “
The boyfriend came out of the shop front carrying a bag of food. “See that man? I need to go talk with him for just a minute, ok? I’ll get out and you lock the door and don’t open it again until I come back. I won’t be long and you’ll be able to see me the whole time, OK?
The girl nodded, Alfonse got out and casually jogged across the intersection diagonally. The streets and sidewalks were late afternoon quiet. Autumn foliage turned to its full glory. Leaves fell in patches of corn yellow and orange blaze. It was just the right temperature. Sometimes even the hood was beautiful.
“Yo Bobbilio,” Alfonse called out. The boyfriend slowed and turned awkwardly, constricted by the cervical collar supporting his neck. His face heavily bruised.
“Oh shit homey, what the fuck happened to you?” Alfonse closed the distance between them in a friendly gait with his hand extended and so the boyfriend extended his own automatically, shifting the bag of food, responding without the faintest sign of recognition.
“Had an accident bro.”
Before their hands met Alfonse threw a hammerlock on his shoulder while shifting his hip into the boyfriend’s crotch knocking him off balance against the chain link fence that protected the parking lot and bore down on it. The boyfriend’s mouth fell open in pain and surprise while he shrugged defensively and dropped the grease-soaked bag between his feet.
“That’s the fucking story I want to hear from now on. That you, dumb motherfucker that you are, had an accident. Fell down the stairs or some shit. You understand me fool?”
There was some mumbling which Alfonse answered with a sharp elbow to the bridge of the man’s already battered nose. “That’s the story, you go tell that shit to the prosecutor and no matter what that faggot says you tell that story. Cause if I have to come back here I’m gonna open up you hog belly with my razor.”
He buckled the back of the man’s knee with his own and dumped him into a heap, snatched up the bag of food and jogged just as casually back to the car where his daughter waited open mouthed to unlock the door.
The girl sat back in her seat fastening her own safety belt silently, eyes like question marks stamping her face. Alfonse put the bag on the console and pushed the ignition button to bring the electric motor to life while slipping the transmission into drive.
“Let’s get on home. You wanna eggroll baby?”
