What came after was always the best part of sex with Isaac. Wet clinches in a hot shower. Long, Marine-hard body. Infinitesimal dick. Isaac was a cuddler. The curves of their bodies met in wet suction and held. Tight. In her mouth, his tongue was well-schooled. Between her thighs, his fingers were too. When she was light-headed in the steam, Isaac Sayif’s tenderness could feel like love.
His hand touched her shoulder.
“Did you say you knew a judge?” he repeated.
Nina had been away from Boston for decades. But she’d known a lot of law students when she was going to Berklee. Some built major practices in the city. Some occasionally stayed in touch. Unfortunately, none were criminal attorneys.
“Maybe he could recommend someone.” Isaac put his other hand on her shoulder and leaned into her back.
“Maybe she could,” Nina responded. “But what are you going to do for money?”
He said nothing and let go of her shoulders.
“Hand me that foil, please.” Nina gestured toward the refrigerator top with a paring knife. She wrapped a couple of homemade shortcakes in foil, then put a quart of strawberries she’d bought at the farmer’s market that morning in a plastic bag. Two loin lamb chops left from the night’s dinner went in too. Isaac had told her he liked lamb and she’d bought six on sale months ago. She offered him the bag. “For Devon.”
Isaac ignored it and searched her face.
Nina didn’t want to see a brother, who’d risen by straps attached to the thinnest air, get screwed. Realizing he was dazed, due in court seventy-two hours from now, and relying on the system’s counsel to keep his record clean and career on track, had put her in Rescue Mama mode. But she’d just heard two hours of stupid and took off the cape.
She put her good food back in the refrigerator.
The kitchen space was cramped. Standing-room only. Nina was a few inches shy of Isaac’s five-ten. She crossed her arms and her elbow brushed his shirt front. “This woman’s after your neck. Why?” Fill in the blanks, she told him. “How you better than Triple-A? You don’t even own a car?”
“She knew I had Devon ’s ride.”
“That’s not his car.”
“It’s his car whenever he wants it,” Isaac told her. Every syllable dripped smug, making Nina pause.
Sindi had called him around 3 in the morning back in March.
“She was stranded out in Newton,” Isaac said.
“That time of night? How come?”
He said she’d been coming back from Wellesley.
“The college?”
He nodded. “The transmission gave out.”
“And Marine to the rescue?”
“I get there and she picks a fight.”
“About?”
“Bullshit.”
“Yeah, that’s what I say.”
“I’m telling you. It was about nuth-in,” he insisted. “She’s all up in my face and I push her away. She starts swinging at me. I grab her wrists and push her back. The shit is crazy so I leave her there.”
“That’s it?”
“She tells the cops I assaulted her.”
“You put your hands on her. That’s all it takes.”
He froze for a few seconds, then mumbled, “Am I that kind of man?”
Nina tried to read him. “This chick apparently sets you up and you’re seriously pondering the nature of your soul?”
“She likes that,” Isaac said, the drugged gaze fading.
“Likes what?”
“Being slapped around.”
Nina let that hang a moment.
“She wanted me to smack her around in bed.”
“Did you?”
“That is so against my spirit,” he said, slowly.
Nina considered his words, his tone. Then: “What about the polygamy thing? Girlfriend down with that?” When they first met, Isaac had told Nina that he planned to move to South Africa to teach and live with multiple wives. Nina had laughed it off and said, “You must want some serious voodoo on your ass.”
He shrugged now.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Kind of,” he said.
“As long as she’s Wife Number One and you beat the crap out her daily? Nig-grow, please.” She started putting together another container of strawberries for later. She felt her sweet tooth calling.
Isaac moved toward the front door to put on his shoes.
Nina walked and talked. Fruit in one hand, paring knife in the other. “Is anything I know about you true?”
He bent to tie his shoelace. Nina hovered.
“What are you talking about?” He was holding up the wall with his shoulder and looked exhausted from the effort.
“Maybe you’re that brother from another planet,” cause she didn’t know any brothers from the ’hood who talked to the police without a lawyer.
They had called him, he repeated. They’d asked if he wanted to clear things up. “I felt it could easily be resolved. This woman is my best friend. We’re used to talking a dozen times a day.”
“You broke up and still talked a dozen times a day?”
“Yeah.”
“But she was cool with you not fucking her anymore, and you believed that?”
Nina started remembering threads of their early conversations last fall. Calling himself a free agent. Admitting, only when Nina pressed, that he did see one sister more than anyone else…
…and that Isaac had been in her car when an old boyfriend called to apologize for ancient misdeeds. It was one of those twelve-step-make-amends things. Isaac had said he thought that was nice. She’d agreed. “Especially since I stabbed him.”
“She’s my best friend,” Isaac repeated.
Nina batted the air and a bit of forgotten strawberry flew. She needed to wash the smashed fruit off her hand. “Say goodnight, Gracie,” she muttered, walking back to the kitchen.
“What?”
“Way before your time.”
“Thanks for dinner,” he called out from the doorway.
She ignored the lame farewell and wiped the fruit off the floor. The downstairs door slammed shut.
The night was cool and windy. Nina raised the slats of a shutter and watched Isaac disappear in the dark. It was a ten-minute walk to Dudley Station, past some very sketchy territory. Nina had escaped Boston in the ’80s, the years when crack was king and a Roxbury zip code meant perpetual violence. Before the plague, she’d traveled Interstate 90 from Albany to attend Berklee, and had lived at a series of Roxbury addresses with no problem. She loved the familiar swagger and grace amidst despair. Some of those blocks had crashed and resurrected. Some meant constant crossfire still. Her new address was safe in the daytime, but a game try at night without klieg-light battalions. Nina wouldn’t hazard a night stroll. But a Marine might make it.
It was past 11:00. Too late to take that second pill. The mood elevator needed to drop a few floors. Nina made a three-bag cup of Sleepytime tea and spiked it with thirty drops of valerian root. Better than Xanax and safer. She stuck a straw in the thermos mug she kept in the crib-the other stayed in the car-and popped a white noise CD in the boom box. Waves crashed. Seagulls cried. She logged on and sent an e-mail to Darcelle, the judge. Nina gave her the short of it, then wrote:
Don’t know the “truth” of the situation, but his life story is admirable. Foster kid from the ’hood, East St. Lou
She stopped typing, grabbed a large pink Post-it, and scribbled a note to herself: Legal name? Isaac Elimu Sayif? She circled it, then wrote, AKA? She started typing again.
Works at Popeyes for years, looks in the mirror, decides to wipe off the grease, joins the Marines, goes to community college, St. Louis U, then chemical engineering at M.I.T. He’s all but dissertation. Plans to teach at U of Cape Town this fall. Would hate to see him derailed by B.S.
Look forward to hearing from you and seeing you soon.
Nina
Nina had received a Welcome back message from Darcelle last month. An invitation too: the judge’s annual Fourth of July Louis Armstrong Birthday Bash. Nina had been happy to get it but surprised. She certainly hadn’t announced her return to Boston. She’d worked the East Coast as a jazz singer and the world as a backup singer all through the ’80s. But touring wore her out. Lost too many friends to drugs. And she’d deliberately been under the radar for a decade. Teaching mostly. Private piano lessons. Music theory and history courses at assorted colleges. She’d just finished teaching a jazz history course at Roxbury Community College. But she got the biggest rush teaching music to disabled kids in the public schools. That had brought her back to Berklee. She was studying music therapy.