Gargantuan_ A Ruby Murphy Mystery - Maggie Estep [77]
I start walking to the water. I park myself on a boardwalk bench and fish a cigarette from my pocket. A man suddenly appears to my right and says hello. He’s not carrying his boom box and it takes me a few moments to realize it’s Rite of Spring Man.
“Hello,” I say, smiling at him.
“Mind if I join you?” he asks.
“Not at all,” I say, though in truth I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. I’ve never exchanged more than a few words with the man and I’ve liked it that way. He’s a romantic figure to me and I don’t want to ruin that. But I don’t want to be rude either.
“Your man friend is okay?” he asks me. “No more people tryin’ to drown him?”
“No, no one else has tried to drown him,” I say. “But I’m not sure he’s okay.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“A lot,” I sigh.
“Tell me about it,” he says. He sees my hesitation. “I’m not gonna go repeating your troubles to anyone. I barely ever talk to people. You know me, I got my music. Most of the time, that’s enough.”
I look him in the eye. It’s hard to tell how old he is. Maybe forty-five. He’s got an in-between black man’s complexion. Neither dark nor light. Though he’s over six feet and has some meat on him, his face is small, the features delicate and almost pretty. He has enormous eyes and a mouth that curls up at the edges. His hair is cropped short and he’s wearing a nice dark wool overcoat.
I don’t know if it’s his good taste in overcoats or the fact that it’s unlikely he’ll repeat what I say to anyone, but I find myself spilling the whole story to him.
“I knew your man friend had to be a jockey,” Rite of Spring Man says when I reach the end of the tale.
I feel deflated. I’ve told him the whole story, from meeting Attila to finding out he probably has a price tag on his head, to the debacle last night. And all he has to say is that he knew Attila was a jockey?
“My name is Lionel, by the way,” he adds.
“Ruby,” I say, still feeling a bit upset with him.
“That’s quite a story, Ruby. But I knew you were a girl with a story. Never mind this jockey business. That’s bad enough. But you’re carrying a lot of other things around too.”
“I am?”
“We all are. Some more than others. You, you’ve got sad eyes. You got joy in you too. I’m not saying you walk around moping and spreading misery all over but you got some serious sad. And I don’t think you and that jockey gonna make it fly.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The way you talk about him. You admire him. But you know it ain’t long for this world.”
“I do?”
“Maybe not,” Lionel backtracks. “Listen, I know next to nothing about what makes people stick together. I’m just telling you my hunch.”
“Oh,” I say. “And what should I do? Call the cops just to try and protect him from himself? The only thing he really loves is horses. I don’t want to put his riding career in jeopardy.”
“No, I don’t guess anyone would want to do that.” Lionel shakes his head. “I don’t know what you should do, girl. That’s why I got out of the world.”
“What?”
“That’s why I live like I do. In that shitty SRO over there on Seventeenth Street,” he says, motioning in the distance. “I couldn’t take it anymore. The decisions and the maintenance and the difficulty. I never found my way in the world but I love music. I work a little here and there, but mostly, I just listen to music.”
“Where’s your boom box?” I ask since it’s the first time I’ve seen him without it.
“Somebody stole it.”
“That’s awful.”
“Don’t go offering to buy me a new one.”
“Oh,” I say, “I don’t think I was going to.”
“That’s good. I don’t want it to be like that with you and me. Chances are, we ain’t gonna talk again much. I’ll wave at you when I see you and maybe you’ll give me that pretty smile of yours but we ain’t gonna hang out much ’cause I don’t do much hanging. I wouldn’t want that nice distant acquaintanceship ruined by your having