trembling as she read it: You broke my heart.
He was lucky to get the apartment. It had come back on the market two days ago, after being let for two years. ‘A snip,’ the agent had said, several times. ‘A two-bed, fully furnished duplex on M Street for six thousand bucks a month is a steal.’
Jay had merely nodded silently and handed over three months’ rent in advance. The apartment was comfortable in a white-on-white, young designer hot-out-of-school and eager-to-impress sort of way. ‘Chic’ was the agent’s description. Jay didn’t know chic from crass, good taste from bad. But it was enough that he was within spitting distance of Kelly and, as of today, on line.
With a self-satisfied grin in Jay’s direction, Luther pointed to the equipment he’d set up on a marble-topped console table in the corner of the large living room. Jay was sitting on the arm of the chair, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
‘You wanna hear?’
Jay exhaled, and nodded at the same time.
Luther flicked a switch, and Jay heard a man speak.
‘Hi, Kelly.’
‘You OK, Todd? You sound out of breath.’ Kelly’s voice, throaty and deep, caused Jay to have a physical pain in his gut.
‘I’m fine, and you, what did the doc say?’ There was a long silence then, ‘Kelly, you still there?’
In a very small voice she replied, ‘Yes I’m still here. And no, you’re not going to be a daddy.’
There was another long silence, longer than the last, followed by a deep sigh. Jay wasn’t sure whether it was Kelly or Todd sighing. A second later Todd spoke, the enforced joviality in his tone failing to mask acute disappointment. ‘That’s OK, honey, we can try again.’
‘Todd I –’ Kelly paused. ‘Todd, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault. Like I just said, we’ll try again. It’s fun practising.’
‘Tell me the truth. Are you very disappointed?’
Another long sigh then, ‘I would love to have a baby with you, Kelly, but if it’s not possible it won’t stop me loving you, nor will it change our relationship. We’ve got each other.’
‘I’m so pleased you said that, Todd. Because it’s exactly how I feel.’ Jay detected something in her tone that didn’t quite ring true, but then he rejected it as overreacting. It was, after all, the first time he’d heard her voice for over twenty-five years.
‘You get some rest now, Kel, I’ll call you in the morning.’
‘Night, Todd.’
‘And by the way, Kelly. I love you.’
Jay did not hear Kelly’s reply as the line went dead. Luther flicked a switch and, finger poised, said, ‘You want to hear some more?’
‘What else is there?’
‘A call to her hairdresser, the rest is business. A real cute operator, Mrs Prescott. Did you know that the little lady is about to launch a tabloid called the Georgetown Gazette?’
Jay grinned. ‘No, as a matter of fact I didn’t. But now that this little baby is in place,’ he pointed with his cigarette to the electronic playback, ‘there isn’t much about Mrs Prescott that I won’t know.’
‘I saw her leave the house this morning.’ Luther whistled. ‘Sure is one beautiful dame. He added quickly, ‘Too much for a dumb ass nigger boy like me.’
‘For a dumb ass nigger boy,’ Jay grinned and touched Luther’s arm, ‘you’re one hell of an electronics genius.’
But by now Jay was really thinking about Kelly. The sound of her voice had plucked another chord in his memory.
It was the fall of 72; they had been invited to a friend’s house at the beach for the weekend. Late in the evening Kelly had suggested a walk on the beach. He’d agreed and hand in hand they had crossed a wide sweeping terrace, bordered on three sides by terracotta pots overflowing with white and occasional pink geraniums. He recalled saying to Kelly that it was how the other half lived. She’d grinned and replied, ‘This is how we’re going to live, Jay.’
The sound of surf crashing on to the shore at the foot of the garden had mingled with the giggling of two naked couples in the pool, and that of several entwined bodies on the pool side. They never did get to walk on the beach, because Kelly discovered the privacy of the poolroom. And if anything else had been said that night, he’d forgotten it.
Luther noticed Jay’s distraction, instinctively aware that he was still in love with Kelly Prescott. He, too, knew how it felt to love a woman and lose her, and at that moment he longed to have Shirley’s knack of saying the right thing at the right time. Jay had befriended him on his first week in prison, talking to him like an equal, like he was a fellow college graduate, someone of substance – instead of a punch-drunk ex-boxer, a terminal loser and thrice-convicted felon. He would never forget Jay’s painstaking patience when he’d taught him chess.
He watched Jay stand up, stretch and walk across the sitting room of the small apartment, located on the opposite side of M Street, two hundred metres from the Prescott house.
Luther spoke to his back. ‘You happy with the reproduction?’
Without turning around, Jay said, ‘It’s great, you did a good job.’
‘It was easier than I first thought.’
‘Does that mean I get a discount?’
A guffaw filled the room. ‘Come on, man, gimme a break; you’re already getting a discount, genius don’t come this cheap normally. Anyway it wasn’t that goddamn easy. The senator was away, and the maid was one of those dumb underpaid greaseback broads who don’t give a damn if the rich folks get ripped off, but the security boys took a bit of Luther boy charm to get past. And the telephone company uniform was difficult to get a hold of; you try nicking anything in my size. I had to follow a big black brother around for three days; thank God his security and I.D. card were in the pocket. Discount my ass, I should double the fee!’
Jay turned to face Luther. ‘A deal’s a deal, my friend. You should’ve held out for more; I was willing to pay you three times as much.’
He watched Luther frown, he knew he was trying to work out if he was joking or not. Then Jay took a fat brown envelope from his inside pocket and handed it over. ‘Count it if you like, but it’s all there.’
Luther took the package. ‘I don’t need to count it.’
A look of mutual trust passed between the two men. Jay smiled; he knew Luther would count it later and wished he could be there to see his face when he realized he’d been paid three times what they’d agreed.
