Any Way the Wind Blows - E. Lynn Harris [101]
“Come on in, Bart. I was hoping you’d have the guts to show up,” Wylie said as he pulled himself from my embrace and headed toward his sofa, where I noticed a half-empty glass of wine. The first thing I thought was that I needed to talk to Wylie about his drinking, but I wasn’t going to pile on with what he was going through.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I repeated.
“Because I don’t like lying and I need to say what I need to say to you face-to-face,” Wylie said. There was a sharpness in his voice I had never heard before. It was like our fight a few weeks ago.
“What are you talking about? Have you been to the doctor?”
“No.”
“Why not, and why do you think you have AIDS?”
“I get a physical every six months. I don’t have AIDS.”
For a moment I didn’t believe I had heard Wylie correctly, and I looked at him with a disbelieving look. I suddenly felt a lightning-flash moment of anger and then I asked Wylie to repeat himself.
“I don’t have AIDS.”
“Then why did you tell me you did?”
“Because you’ve got something you need to take care of here in New York. I had to figure out a way to get you back.”
“What the fuck are you talking about!” I screamed as I leaped for the sofa. “What kind of sick game are you playing? AIDS ain’t no joke.”
“And neither is going to jail,” Wylie said calmly.
“Going to jail? What are you talking about? Have you smoked all the weed in New York City, or do I need to talk to you again about your drinking?” I said.
“You can’t talk to me about shit until you get your own house clean,” Wylie said
I was in a state of semishock. In all the years I had known Wylie, I had never seen him mad or this feisty. Something was up, and I needed to find out.
“Wylie, just tell me why you lied to me.”
“Did you take some money from a lady named Ava Parker Middlebrooks?”
“That’s none of your business,” I snapped quickly.
“Is that why you hightailed it out of the city? Did you know she was going to stop payment on the check?”
“That’s my business,” I said.
“No, it’s our business, and we’re going to take care of it,” Wylie said.
Wylie spent the next ten minutes telling me how the bank had called him about the check Ava had given me and the money I had received from the bank. When I asked him why they would call him, Wylie reminded me that because of my bad credit he had helped me get an account and now they were looking to him to either replace the funds or get in contact with me.
“But you didn’t do anything,” I protested.
“What you did was bank fraud. And they are going to arrest your ass if you don’t come up with the money.”
“But I don’t have it,” I said. “That bitch Ava double-crossed me.”
“That’s just too bad. I told you to leave Basil and that lady alone. But you couldn’t do that. You had to go out and try and hurt somebody, and now look what’s happened. I warned you your ass could land up in jail. What did you do to make her give you a check? And I want the truth!”
I told Wylie how I had called several of Basil’s clients, his sister and his father. Wylie looked at me in disgust and kept shaking his head and muttering, “Bart, how could you do this to someone you barely knew?”
I didn’t answer Wylie, but I suddenly felt tears spring from my eyes. I didn’t know if they were tears of guilt about how I had hurt Wylie or for being so stupid to think that I could get something for nothing.
I remained silent as the tears continued to flow and Wylie didn’t say a word. He went over to his CD player and pushed a button, then came back to the sofa with the remote control and said, “I want you to listen to this song and then I want you to think how you’re going to change your life. Your actions and anger have caused me a great deal of pain. And that’s what happens, Bart, when someone like family lets you down.”
For the next half hour, Wylie remained silent as a gospel song played over and over. Every time the song ended, Wylie would lift the remote in the air, press Repeat, and play the song again. It was a great song and the singer