Somebodys fool, p.23
Somebody's Fool, page 23
“They did?”
Apparently, Jerome considered the answer to this question self-evident, because he went back to staring out the window. Down the counter, Janey’s companion was looking not at them exactly but in their general direction. Definitely a cop, Raymer thought. The ability to both look at something and not look at it was a specialized skill set.
Janey, now wearing a Hattie’s uniform, emerged from the back in time to ferry their breakfasts over from the grill. “You again,” she said, recognizing them from the night before. “Who gets what?”
“He’s the spinach omelet,” Raymer told her. “I’m the meat lover’s.”
“Not the way I had it pegged,” Janey said, crossing the platters as she set them down.
“You remember Jerome?” Raymer said.
Jerome continued to stare out the window. If he registered his name, he gave no indication.
“He’s very shy,” Raymer told her. “Okay if I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“Your friend down there. Any chance he’s a police officer?”
She nodded. “Detective. How’d you know?”
“How he carries himself, mostly. Also?” he said, nodding at the sedan with the county plates, whose windshield was already completely white with snow. “That’s a cop-mobile if there ever was one.”
“I’ll tell him he was made,” she said. “He’ll get a kick out of it.”
When she was gone, Raymer leaned forward and tapped the edge of Jerome’s plate with the tines of his fork. “Our food’s here,” he said, adding, when Jerome turned his attention to the plate in front of him, “Also, we need to work on your people skills. You were rude to our waitress just now.”
“Can’t risk it,” he said, cocking his head, as if the breakfast before him were a puzzle he needed to solve.
“Risk what?”
“Her falling in love with me.”
Picking up both his knife and fork, Jerome began to surgically dissect his omelet, moving each bite-size portion outward from the center of the plate. None of these dissected pieces, Raymer noted, were allowed to touch. Charice had warned him that the farther Jerome went down his OCD rabbit hole the more complicated simple things became. Eating now had a rigid set of rules that must be obeyed. Apparently, he wasn’t allowed to actually start eating until those rules had been followed to the letter.
“Falling in love with you,” Raymer repeated. He was expecting, at the very least, a sheepish grin, but apparently Jerome was serious.
“It happens, Dawg.”
Which made Raymer wonder about his most recent affair, the college professor Charice had told him about. “None of my business, Jerome, but this woman at the college where you worked, the one who was into art therapy? Was she white, too?”
“See that snow?” he said, nodding in the direction of the street. “White as that.”
“And she fell in love with you.”
Jerome nodded.
“She made the first move?”
“They all do, Dawg.”
“Becka, too?” Raymer asked. He was aware that bringing her up might not be a great idea but figured they’d have to talk about her eventually. He’d often wondered how things started between them.
“They all do,” he repeated. “Laugh all you want.”
Raymer hadn’t laughed, but he’d wanted to, and Jerome seemed to have intuited that. “You’re saying white women all fall in love with you, Jerome?”
“Too many, is what I’m saying. I been damn lucky to avoid getting lynched, is what I’m saying.”
Was it possible the man was actually sulking? Had Raymer actually hurt his feelings by suggesting that he might not, in fact, be irresistible to white women? “Okay, so explain your devastating allure,” Raymer suggested. “Why are white women irresistibly drawn to you?”
Jerome shrugged. “Probably not just one thing.”
“So name five or six things. Explain the magnetism of Jerome Bond.”
Jerome nodded agreeably, as if he’d given the matter a lot of thought. “Okay, for one thing? I’m tall. Slender, too. Outstanding fat-to-lean-muscle ratio. Also, you may have noticed that I move through the world with a certain elegance.”
“That’s three things.”
“And like you said. I used to be a spiffy dresser.”
“What else?”
“Also, I’m extremely well spoken. I have an excellent vocabulary.”
“Right. You defecate.”
Jerome nodded in agreement, apparently seeing no humor in this, either.
“I’m also, by nature, gallant. Much more gallant than your average white dude.” Like Raymer himself, he seemed to be saying. “Women appreciate that.”
“Okay, but those are all very superficial qualities.”
Jerome paused the dissection of his omelet to regard Raymer, as if waiting for him to get to his point.
Raymer knew what Dr. Qadry would say if she were here. “You’re saying women are superficial?”
“I’m saying plumage has an evolutionary purpose, Dawg.”
“So…you’re irresistible because of your feathers? That’s all you have to offer women?”
“Might be a bit more to it,” he conceded, reluctantly. “And I’m not saying my feathers magically appeal to all white women.” Here, he glanced over his shoulder, as if he feared Janey might be close by and listening in. “Just the ones drawn to danger.”
“How are you dangerous?”
He shrugged. “Forbidden fruit.”
“Time-out,” Raymer said. “We’re in the Garden of Eden now? Jerome Bond is temptation?”
“Laugh all you want.”
“I’m not laughing, Jerome,” he said, though maybe he was, a little. “I’m just trying to understand your thinking. On the one hand, you seem to believe that certain white women are magnetically attracted to you…”
“Laugh all you want.”
“…but you also believe you can control their attraction by letting your hair grow wild and wearing a cardigan.”
“Seems to be working.”
“You think so? Okay, let’s test your theory. When did you start wearing the sweater?”
“Month ago?”
“Except Charice says you’ve barely left the house since you got here. During that whole time you probably haven’t interacted with a single white woman. Maybe that’s what’s been working.”
Down the counter Janey was refilling her cop friend’s coffee, and Raymer saw her lean in to whisper something—probably that Raymer had guessed his occupation—because the man rotated on his stool to regard him and Jerome. Grinning, he made a gun out of his thumb and forefinger, pointed it at Raymer and pulled the trigger, as if to say, I made you, too, pal.
“I’m also saying,” Raymer continued, “there’s more to love than plumage.” Okay, he was over fifty and he’d only been in love twice, but he still felt like he was on solid ground. “You seem to believe that falling in love is only dangerous for tall, handsome Black men who drive sports cars out of James Bond movies, but it can also mess up overweight white guys who drive cars like Columbo’s.”
Jerome frowned. “Who’s Columbo?”
“Doesn’t matter. My point is, loving Becka was damn near the death of me. You saw it yourself, Jerome. How crazy I was there for a while? When I got struck by lightning, I was convinced she was trying to kill me from beyond the grave. You’re not the only one love screws things up for.”
“See?” Jerome said, shaking his head. “That right there is why Black people can’t talk to white people.”
“Aren’t we talking, Jerome? Isn’t that what we’re doing right now? Am I not allowed to disagree with you?”
“I’m saying you’re drawing a false equivalence,” Jerome explained, this time using his knife as a pointer. “You believing your dead wife is trying to kill you with a lightning bolt isn’t the same as me believing that messing with white women could get me lynched. One is a white dude losing his mind. The other’s a Black dude finally seeing how things really are.”
Having finally completed the dissection of his omelet, Jerome set his utensils down and regarded his handiwork. The home fries that had been off to one side of the platter now occupied its center, the perfect wedges of omelet radiating outward from that center in a snail-shell pattern. Seeing this, Raymer sent him an urgent telepathic message: Eat it.
Only after it became clear that the other man hadn’t received it did he continue. “Okay, so, as a Black dude who’s finally seen how things really are…”
“Laugh all you want.”
“…how would you describe what you just did to your breakfast?”
Jerome thought about it. “I would describe it,” he said, “as necessary.”
“Huh,” Raymer said. “A lot of people would see it as lunatic.”
“Okay, but here’s what you don’t get, Dawg. Lunatic and necessary aren’t mutually exclusive.” And with this he finally took a bite of omelet.
Raymer watched him chew and swallow. “How is it?”
“Could be hotter,” Jerome admitted.
“It was hotter. You—unnecessarily—let it get cold.”
What he was attempting, of course, was precisely what Charice had warned him against—trying to reason with someone whose reason was compromised. She’d also explained that obsessive-compulsives, unlike people who suffered from other mental illnesses, were acutely aware that their ritual behaviors were irrational. That they were acting crazy wasn’t exactly news to them.
“I’ll eat it,” Jerome assured him. “Gonna eat every last bite. I’m eating my omelet, see? Masticating? You ate your eggs and now I’m eating mine. Same end result.”
“Except I enjoyed mine,” Raymer pointed out, “because I didn’t let them get cold. My point is that letting your eggs get cold wasn’t in your own best interest.”
“You always do what’s in your own best interest? Marrying Becka? Was that in your best interest?”
“No,” Raymer admitted. “At the time I thought it was, but no. That was a mistake.” The same could be said—as he’d feared—of introducing her into the conversation.
“There you go.”
“Okay,” Raymer said, “but it wasn’t the end of the world, either. Things have a way of working out. I found your sister.”
Jerome shook his head. “She found you, Dawg. You never would’ve found her. Also? Things have a way of working out for white people.”
Give Jerome this much credit. As promised, he was soldiering through his now-cold omelet. Starting at the outer edge of the snail’s shell, he worked methodically toward the center. Two bites of omelet, then one of potato. Chew, swallow, repeat. Raymer couldn’t tell whether the last bite would be of potato or egg, but he could tell Jerome had it all figured out.
“All I’m trying to say is that things take time—”
“Time,” Jerome scoffed. “That’s another difference between white folks and Black folks. Y’all operate on white time. Charice and me? We’re on Black time.”
“Black time.”
“Completely different.”
Here we go again, Raymer thought. Down another Jerome rabbit hole. Try to keep him talking, Charice had advised, as if that would be difficult. “Okay, I’ll bite. Tell me how.”
No surprise, Jerome was all too happy to explain. “White time goes one, two, three, four,” he explained, using his coffee spoon here to tap the side of his water glass. “Ticktock, ticktock. Like that. Quick and easy because all those ticks and tocks are related by sequence and sequence alone. You following this, Dawg?”
Raymer wasn’t, not really, but he assured Jerome otherwise.
“Black time is more like jazz, see?” Now he used both the spoon and the tines of his fork to tap out a more syncopated beat on the glass. Several people at the counter swiveled on their stools to watch. “It might go—say—one, seven, three, two, twelve. Ticks and tocks all out of sequence. Why? Because they’re related thematically.”
“Thematically,” Raymer repeated.
“Laugh all you want,” Jerome continued. “First tick in Black time is slavery and all the others ticks and tocks return to that.”
Raymer massaged his temples.
“See, for Black folks,” Jerome went on, “it all comes down to the same thing—to what people see when they look at you. White time’s just you doing what you do. A, then B, then C, and so on.”
Right, Raymer thought. First it was numbers, now letters, as if the alphabet would make sense of his cockamamie theory.
“And the best thing about that? You don’t have to think about bein’ white. You just are, Dawg. And do you know what that’s called?”
“Tell me.”
“Freedom.”
Raymer started to object, then thought again.
“When you’re Black, you keep tryin’ to make it work like white time. Make it go in a straight line, but Black time keeps loopin’ back. Remindin’ you you aren’t free. Keepin’ you vigilant. Circlin’ back to what matters. Like stayin’ alive. Like not getting lynched.” Jerome paused here, perhaps waiting for Raymer to tell him he was crazy. When Raymer didn’t, he continued, “Which is why I’m into white people clothes these days. Cardigans. Khakis. Loafers with tassels. This ugly-ass sweater. Makes it that much harder for white women to fall in love with me. To put that target on my back.”
“You’ve thought this through,” Raymer said.
“I have.”
“But what you’re explaining is why white women fall in love with you. Why do you fall in love with them? Becka, for instance. Why did you fall in love with her?”
Jerome didn’t answer right away. Finally, he said, “Long time ago.”
“You’re saying you don’t remember?”
“What I remember?” Jerome said. “What I remember is not wanting to.”
“Because Becka was white.”
“That,” he admitted. “And other things.”
“Like what?”
“You and me. Used to be friends.”
Raymer swallowed hard. Had they been? Yes, their paths used to cross pretty frequently back then. Jerome was not only Charice’s brother, but also a Schuyler cop. But had they ever sought out each other’s company? Gone out for a beer? Did Jerome have any other friends back then? At the time it hadn’t occurred to Raymer to inquire.
Down the counter a cell phone rang and Raymer saw Janey’s cop take his cell phone out of its holster and answer it, straightening up as he listened.
“Okay,” Raymer said. “I get that you didn’t want to. But what I asked was why you did.”
Jerome shrugged, as if the question was of little or no interest. “Same reasons as you, probably. Who knows, Dawg?”
“Can I ask you about your sister?” Raymer said. Because the whole time they’d been talking about Becka, it was really Charice he’d been thinking about, Charice that he was desperate to understand. “Growing up, did she have a lot of boyfriends?”
Jerome pushed his plate away. He’d eaten, as promised, every last bite. “A few.” He shook his head, clearly ashamed. “Mostly, she was too busy tending to my needs to have much time left over for herself and hers.”
“What about your parents?”
“Always working, Dawg.”
“Can I ask if any of her boyfriends were white?”
“In rural North Carolina?”
Raymer nodded. “Then…why me? I mean…I’m not a man with a lot of…plumage.”
“Dawg,” Jerome said sadly. “You got no feathers at all.”
The bell above the front door jingled, and Raymer looked up in time to see Janey’s cop heading out. Which was just as well. Now, suddenly in a hurry, he wouldn’t be coming over to introduce himself, which would’ve meant Raymer having to introduce Jerome. “Anyhow,” he said. “Whatever she used to see in me? I don’t think she sees it anymore.”
“Don’t be too sure,” Jerome replied. “I keep trying to get her to leave here and she won’t.”
“Yeah, but it’s her career keeping her here, not me,” Raymer assured him. “She needs to see this job through. I’m not sure you understand how much it means to her.”
Outside, Janey’s cop was fishing in his pants pocket for his car keys. In the time it had taken them to eat their breakfasts several inches of heavy wet snow had accumulated on the sedan’s windshield. Raymer expected the guy to pop the trunk, grab a scraper and brush the snow off the vehicle’s windows, but instead he just got in behind the wheel and turned on the wipers, which struggled with the snow’s weight before finally pushing it aside. The side windows he dealt with by powering them down and allowing the snow to fall inside. Raymer couldn’t help wondering what the phone call had been about.
“Can I get you two gentlemen anything else?” said Janey, who had materialized with their check.
“I’m good,” Raymer told her.
“How about you, Jerome?” she said, and something about her tone of voice, together with the fact that she’d spoken his name, caused Raymer to pause and reconsider. Earlier, when Jerome had been bragging about his effect on white women, Raymer had written the whole thing off as fantasy. But what if it wasn’t?
Without exactly looking up at her, Jerome edged his platter in her direction. “An elegant sufficiency,” he said.
“Wow!” Janey said, clearing his plate. “Listen to you!”
Out in the white street her cop was backing out of his angled parking space. “Your friend looked familiar,” Raymer ventured. “What’s his name?”
“Conrad,” she told him, “but everybody calls him Del. Conrad Delgado.”
A split second before she said it, Raymer had intuited what the man’s name would be, so he was able to not react.
“He made you, too, by the way,” Janey informed him. “Soon as he walked in. You cops are strange, strange dudes, you know that?”
