Trip Wire_ A Cook County Mystery - Charlotte Carter [57]
He searched my face. “Is that what you want? You mean you’d live with me if I stayed in Chicago?”
“I’d think about it. Yeah, I’d think about it seriously. And you wouldn’t have to leave Jordan, right?”
He smiled then. “No, I wouldn’t have to leave Jordan.”
“At least nobody’s got to be afraid anymore,” I said. “You know what I mean?”
“Yes. Nothing else can happen now. Everything’s already happened.”
We sat in the dark for a long time. “Cliff?” I said. “Put the radio back on. Low.”
“Okay. But I want to know something first.”
“What?”
“That guy Sim is gone. And Taylor’s working all night.”
“Yeah?”
“Will you sleep with me tonight? I mean the whole night.”
“Yes.”
“Good, that’s what I want,” he said. “And call your aunt Ivy.”
“What?”
“She called you before. But you wouldn’t open up.”
I shook my head. “That can wait. I know what she wants: When will I be coming home?”
Cliff was so sweet, and apparently knew exactly what he was doing. We made love all night. He didn’t rock me to my foundation the way Sim had, but we made a good fit. Instead of hollering and sexy talk, we soothed each other.
While we rested in each other’s arms, he made a lot of promises and asked a lot of questions. I felt like there was almost nothing I couldn’t tell him. He got the Book of Cassandra in installments; I’d talk, we’d make love again; talk, do it again.
“I used to be so jealous of you and Wilt,” he confessed.
“Really?”
“Yes. I know it went against everything we were all supposed to be like. But I couldn’t help it.”
“But Wilton was never in love with me. You knew that.”
“Yeah. Maybe. But you had something with each other that you didn’t have with anybody else in the commune.”
“Because we’re both—were both—black, Cliff. That’s not hard to understand, is it?”
“I guess not. But I still hated it. I hate everything about being black or white that keeps us in these boxes, separate and ignorant. It’s poison, the race thing. If we don’t find a way to get over it, it’s gonna kill everybody.”
“Amen to that,” I said.
“We’re going to take one step toward solving the whole thing,” he said.
“What step?”
“Kids. You know. Children. Medium brown.”
“Cliff,” I said in wonderment, “it takes you a while to make a move, but when you do, you don’t play.”
“Who was the Bible guy you and Wilt used to talk about?”
“Bible guy?”
“Yeah. All you had to do was mention it, and the two of you would go apeshit laughing.”
“Oh, him. The Read Your Bible guy. He was a nut who used to preach at the el stop at 63rd and South Park. ‘Read your Bible. Ask the Lord for the understanding. And he will give it to you.’ It was all he ever said. He was around when I was ten, and he’s there to this day. Wilt used to see him, too. The guy must be a hundred years old by now, and the last time I got off the el at that stop, he was still there.”
“I want some secrets with you, too,” he said. “I want to have some things we can laugh about someday.”
“Maybe we will, someday. We sure have enough to cry about, don’t we?”
When I awoke at five in the morning, I was so foggy I could barely find the floor with my feet. I had smoked an awful lot of grass. And now I was ravenous.
The linoleum floor icy cold under my bare feet, I dug around in the fridge until I found a yogurt, carried it into the front room. Sunrise. I remembered the morning I’d watched the sun come up at the Wisconsin farmhouse. We were having such a great weekend. Why had I felt so funny as I stood alone in the attic? Then I remembered. It had something to do with Wilton. But then, everything did. Let go, Cliff had said. Jesus God, when would I be ready to let go of Wilt?
That weekend, he had been morose one minute and then hyper the next; angry, then calm, then jubilant. Somehow, I didn’t think it was the drugs.
I’d never seen him dance so much. He and Clea were putting on a real show, teaching the others how to do the old dance step called the roach.
“What’s got into you?” I said. “I thought you said all you wanted to do up here was sleep and eat gingerbread.