Fear Itself

12

THE EMERALD LOUNGE WAS AN OASIS of sorts in the Negro community. It was run by a Jamaican named Orrin Nye. He had an American wife and three little kids. Orrin only allowed classical music on the record player. Because of this aesthetic only a certain kind of customer frequented the place. Members of the church, especially the choir, older ladies who were scandalized by boogie-woogie and rhythm and blues, pretentious white-collar professionals, and world-weary lovers, muggers, and thieves were the regulars—them and Fearless Jones when he was in love.

Fearless was a killer of men but that didn’t keep him from being sappy sometimes. Love made him think about church and church for him was somehow represented by the German masters, especially their arias. And so in those rare moments that he fell for some girl, he would bring her to the lounge. I think it was because he wanted the woman he was with to see, or maybe hear, the contents of his heart.

The last woman he fell for was Brenda Hollings. She was an overweight, nearsighted girl who had come from Tennessee with her parents at the tender age of seventeen. Her parents came out to live with an uncle who owned a Laundromat and needed workers he could trust.

Fearless met Brenda when she was nineteen.

“Paris,” he told me, “that there’s the woman I want to bear my sons and daughters.”

I didn’t say anything. She was awkward and not friendly, plain-looking by the best light and sharp-tongued to boot. Add those drawbacks to the fact that Fearless had never lived in the same place for more than three months during his entire adult life and one could see why I didn’t hold out much hope for his dreams of domestic tranquillity.

But he got a steady job at Douglas Aircraft and rented a nice little cottage on Ninety-second Street. Whenever Brenda would snap at him, he’d hop to and do whatever it was she wanted.

Beautiful women were always throwing themselves at him, but he never gave in to temptation for the six months he and Brenda were engaged. Then one night I got a phone call. I was staying in a rooming house then, on Vernon. That was about a year before I opened my first bookstore.

“Hi, Paris.”

“Brenda.”

“Is Fearless with you?”

“No. He’s probably at his place. Is something wrong?”

“I need to talk to you. Can you come over here?”

“Sure. I guess so. You at your mother’s place?”

“No. I got my own apartment now.”

I was wary, but I agreed because I thought that Fearless would want me to help his fiancée if she needed it. Brenda gave me an address on McKinley and I was there in less than fifteen minutes.

It was the bottom floor of a three-story apartment building that looked something like an incinerator, with its gaping front doorway and shadows like soot up the walls.

Brenda answered the door and invited me in. It was a neat little place with thick maroon carpeting and powder blue walls. The furniture was simple but it was homey.

“When did you move out from your parents?” I asked after being seated and served a beer.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometime last month, I guess.”

“But I thought that you and Fearless . . .” My words trailed off then. The walls began to feel like they were leaning in.

“My old boyfriend from Tennessee, his name is Miller, well . . . he came out to see me,” Brenda said.

She was ungainly and lumpy, wore glasses with lenses thicker than Coke-bottle bottoms, but still men swarmed around her like gnats. There are some things about the human animal that I will never understand.

“He wanted me back and I decided to go with him,” Brenda was saying.

“Does Fearless know?” I asked.

She shook her head and looked down at the blood-colored floor. “I’m afraid to tell him.”

“He’s gonna find out sooner or later,” I said.

“I was wondering if you could help.”

“Me?”

“You’re his best friend. He’ll need you to be there for him. You know I’m worried that it will break his heart.”

Or Miller’s spine, I thought.

“I’m sorry, Brenda, but you know how it is. I mean, I don’t think Fearless would want me tellin’ him that it’s over between you two. No ma’am. He wouldn’t like that at all.”

She tried to convince me, but when she saw that I wasn’t going to budge her face hardened and her tone turned surly.

“Well,” she said. “If you don’t wanna help me, at least you can give me a ride over to the Emerald Lounge. I’ll call Fearless and talk to him there.”

She made the call. I overheard her saying baby this and honey that. We drove over to the lounge at about nine-fifteen.

“Paris,” Orrin said. “Brenda. Where’s Fearless?”

“He’s on his way,” I said.

We sat down at a small table near the speakers. Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was just beginning and Brenda ordered a grenadine and vodka, the fanciest drink Orrin served. I made do with beer. When the symphony was almost over, and Brenda was on her fifth drink, I started to get worried—I was shelling out the money for her drinks and Fearless had yet to make his appearance.

“I don’t want to hurt him,” Brenda said sadly.

Tears came to her eyes and she took my hand.

“It’s just that my parents made me leave Tennessee because my father hated Miller’s father. But I always loved Miller. And now that he’s here . . .”

She cried on my shoulder and maintained her grip on my hand.

Fearless never showed up. But that wasn’t unusual. Time often got away from him. He might have come across a stranded motorist. He might have gotten himself arrested.

I took Brenda back to her apartment and went home myself, wondering where I was going to come up with the money for food that month now that Fearless’s ex-fiancée had swallowed down my last twelve dollars.

A week later I was in Marie’s Diner because that was the only restaurant in town that let me run up a tab. Fearless came in and sat down across from me. I had decided to stay away from him while he and Brenda worked out their problems. Fearless was as even-tempered as they come, but a broken heart might let his darker side gain control. And Fearless Jones’s dark side was a terrible thing.

“Hey, Fearless,” I said. “How’s it goin’?”

He was wearing a black T-shirt, black trousers, and black cloth shoes. Looking at him, you might have thought he was a weak sister being so thin. But, as I’ve already said, I had never met a stronger man in my life.

He took out a pink envelope and handed it to me.

I opened the letter already knowing, or at least thinking I knew, what it would say.

Dear Fearless:

I do not want to write these words but there is no other way. I cannot look you in the face and tell you the terrible thing that I have done. You are a good and sweet man and I am no kind of woman for you. I have been with another man while wearing your engagement ring. I have slept with him. Paris came to me. He took me to the Emerald Lounge and bought me drinks, saying that we were celebrating my marriage. But we got so drunk that when he took me home I brought him inside to make some coffee. I did not mean to sleep with him. I do not think he meant it either. And maybe I would not ever have said about it, but now I think I am pregnant and I could not be with you not knowing if it was your child we was raising. I am going back down to Tennessee now.

I am sorry.

I will always love you,

Brenda

Upon finishing the letter I was certain that I wouldn’t live to walk out of Marie’s. Fearless would kill me with his bare hands before I could rise.

I put the letter on the table and looked Fearless in the eye. I wanted to say something but the fear Brenda’s letter instilled made me mute.

“I went to Orrin’s,” Fearless said.

I made a choking sound and held up my left hand.

“What were you doin’ there, Paris?”

“She tricked me, man. She said that she wanted me to take her to meet you over there. I thought you were coming but, but you didn’t.”

“And then you took her home?”

“All I did was wait to see that she got in the door. I swear. I swear.”

Fearless’s face was drawn. He grabbed my left forearm. The pain shot up into my shoulder. I didn’t make a move though. I just stared into his intense eyes.

As the seconds passed my arm went numb. Fearless blinked and then a tear escaped. He let me go and hung his head.

“I know,” he said. “I know you wouldn’t do me like that. And even if you would, you wouldn’t go to my favorite place. No. I figure there’s somethin’ down there in Tennessee she wants. An’ she just point me at you ’cause she worried I’ma mess it up for her.”

“Fearless —”

“You don’t have to say nuthin’, Paris. I know you know sumpin’, but that’s okay. If she wanna end this with a lie then I’ll let her. ’Cause the only thing that matter is that she don’t want me.”

He looked up at me and smiled then. It was a deep, hurting smile. After shedding that tear his life would go on. Before the bruise on my arm was gone he had buried his pain.