“Can we get to it?” I said.

“Sure, man. No problem. I’m just saying did you see that rack?”

“Derek.”

“Calm yourself down. We’re just having a friendly here. Bo, this is my pal Antoine. Antoine, this here is my lawyer, Victor Carl.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said.

Antoine grunted.

“Antoine here is the one with all the answers,” said Derek. “Funny thing, though, bo, he didn’t like them questions you was asking. So he’s got a question of his own.”

Antoine turned his head and stared at me a bit more.

“Antoine wants to know,” said Derek, “why you so interested in who’s selling that Black Cat. And since, bo, you never done told me, I didn’t have an answer for him.”

I glanced at Antoine. He seemed like he would just as soon crush my skull with those arms of his than hear any of my legal tap dancing. In times like these, I’ve found, when your body, if not your soul, is in mortal danger and there seems to be no way out, sometimes all that is left is for you to tell a story. And it better be a good one. And if you to want to tell a good story, among a pack of males, there’s one perfect opening line.

“There was this girl,” I said.

14

There was this girl.

I first spied her when she brought me an espresso in a coffee bar in Old City. She had bronze skin, dark hair, a lovely, suggestive mouth. I was taken breathless at first sight. When you saw her, you envisioned a certain kind of life, a private life ennobled by a singular obsession with a singular woman. Secret passions, teeming emotions, long walks by the river, sex on the rooftop, foreign films, visits to Paris, bad poems, summers at the lake, shared memories, her head on your shoulder as the years twirled around the stillness of your love. You looked at her and you saw it all, uncoiling, and when she turned away to clear another table, it vanished, quick as that, and you felt strangely bereft.

That was Julia.

Of course I was smitten, from the very first. With her looks and her body, she was many steps out of my league, except there was something about her, some sweet passivity, maybe, that made anything seem possible. She had no humor of her own, but she laughed at my jokes. She didn’t talk much about her life, but she seemed interested in mine. I didn’t expect that she would go out with me, but I couldn’t not ask. I figured there was no way she would sleep with me, but I couldn’t not try. It was inconceivable that she would actually marry me, but I couldn’t not propose. And at each step of the process, she acceded to my ever-more-desperate requests, as if she were being swept off on a voyage not of her choosing but one she couldn’t bring herself to halt.

And so we were engaged.

“You a dog,” said Derek.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding.

“And the sex?”

“What about it?”

“Was it rocking?”

“Derek, don’t be a jerk.”

“But he’s smiling, isn’t he? Look at that boy smile, Antoine. Bo, you a down-and-dirty dog.”

“Maybe. But this is what I discovered: In love, as in boxing, it is always dangerous to move up in class.”

“So what happened?”

“What had to happen,” I said. “She left me and broke my heart. Up and married a urologist instead.”

Antoine laughed.

“A urologist,” said Derek. “That is cold.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Still hurts?”

“Like someone ripped out my spleen.”

Just then the old guy with the bloody smock, Barnabas, showed up at our table with a tray. He slammed down a bottle of Red Stripe in front of me, spun a bowl with a light brown stew over rice onto the table, dropped a napkin and fork beside it.

“Goat,” said the old man.

“Freshly killed?” said Derek.

“Listen close, you can still hear the bleat,” said the old man.

“What are those?” I said, pointing my fork at some white chunks. “Potato?”

“Cho-cho,” said the old man, staring at me, waiting for me to taste the concoction. “And them yellow things is Scotch bonnets. That’s the heat.”

I speared a small piece of meat with my fork, stuck it in my mouth, gave it a careful taste.

“My gosh, that’s good,” I said. “That’s just terrific.”

Barnabas beamed.

“‘My gosh, that’s good,’” said Derek in a radio announcer’s voice. “Could you be more white?”

“But it is,” I said, and I wasn’t just blowing smoke, though the curry was hot enough. The stew was surprisingly delicious, the meat tender and tasty, the cho-cho and onions sweet. I pushed the yellow Scotch bonnets to the side, but my tongue still burned. I grabbed the Red Stripe, took a deep pull. The beer tasted like it was made purely to wash down curried goat.

Derek leaned toward the stew. “It does smell good. Get me some of that, old man.”

“Anything for my cousin,” said Barnabas.

Derek winced. “Sorry about that. Hey, Antoine, you want some goat?”

“Nah, mon,” said Antoine, in a thick Jamaican accent. “Just another bokkle Red Stripe, maybe.”

“Goat, the other red meat,” I said. “Who would have figured?”

“Another curry, then, and some more beers when you got the chance,” said Derek. “All this listening about old love, it builds up a thirst.”

“Old love?” said Barnabas.

“Victor here was telling us about the girl that broke his heart,” said Derek. “You still pine for her, bo?”

“Every day,” I said.

The old man looked at me for a moment and then eased himself into the seat beside Derek.

“There is always one,” said Barnabas.

“Don’t we know it,” said Derek with a sad shake of his head.

“I been married, it’s been now more than thirty-five years,” said Barnabas. “My wife, she’s a saint. We got children together, grandchildren, a great-grandson just got born. Named after me. My years with my wife have been the happiest of my life. But there is this one girl.”

“You tell it, Pops,” said Derek.

“Melinda. It’s been thirty-seven years since I seen her. Have no idea what the years they done to her. But if Melinda shows up tomorrow and says ‘Let’s go,’ well, you’d need send out the dogs to find me, brother, because I’ll be gone.”

“I believe it,” said Derek.

“Gone.”

“Your wife know?” I said.

“She’s got her own,” he said, “but he’s fat and lazy and can’t get out the house no more. He not coming north, that’s for sure. But Melinda, one never knows.”

He pushed himself out of the seat, sighed an old-man sigh, full of bone weariness and long-accepted regret.

“I can still smell her skin,” said Barnabas. “Smooth and sweet-scented, like polished rosewood.”

“So who is yours, Derek?” I said after the old man had ambled off. “Who is the old love that still haunts?”

“Who, me?” said Derek. “Nah, not me. I’m cool.”

“You lie,” said Antoine.

“Don’t do me like that, Antoine.”

“Derek still in love,” said Antoine. “For always and ever.”

“Shut up, man. All right. No biggie. There was one. Tamiqua.”

“What happened?” I said.

“We were together. From grade school, even. And then I started playing, and she acted like it was some crime, and that was it. She upped with some other slob and moved to New York.”

“Still hurt?”

“I’m over it.”

Antoine laughed. “Hell he is. Tamiqua, she only wanted for Derek a make something better for himself. All Derek wants a do is hang. So now he hangs alone.”

“Not alone.”

“Not with Tamiqua.”

“What about you, big guy?”

Antoine pointed those dark glasses at Derek. “Sam,” he said.

“Samantha,” said Derek, nodding his head.

Antoine tilted his head and stared until Derek involuntarily pulled back.

“Whoa,” said Derek.

There was a moment of awkward quiet.

“What does all this duppy love have a do with Black Cat?” said Antoine.

“It’s my Julia,” I said. “The guy she left me for was murdered on Sunday night, and she’s the main suspect. I’m looking into it and I discovered this.” I pushed away my now-empty plate, took out my wallet, let a few empty plasticine squares float to the table. “She had these on her the night her husband was shot. They were full, along with the whole needle-in-the-arm kit. I just want to know when she got them and why.”