The Book of Lies

79

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

It’s a trap, Cal! It’s always a trap!” Alberto screams.

I nod, tugging Alberto to his feet, wrapping an arm around his waist, and trying to steady him as we leave the alley and walk past the Thai restaurant’s front brick patio. He’s wearing the same ratty clothes he had on last week, though he’s added a REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS bumper sticker that he’s taped around his ankle.

“I clipped my toenails into that soup!” Alberto shouts, pointing to a blond patron’s bowl.

“H-He’s joking,” the restaurant manager swears as he follows behind us. But the way the blonde scowls at her waiter, who then scowls at me, it’s clear no one believes it.

“Alberto . . .”

“Don’t fight with me, Cal! Where you been, anyway? This sonuvabitch thinks he owns the whole block!”

“I hear you. I’ll take care of it. But no more yelling, okay?”

“Cal, he—!”

I cup my hand, pressing it into the small of Alberto’s back. I don’t press hard. I don’t need to. He gets the picture. I’m here for him.

“Alberto, when you talk . . . I’m listening. You understand? I’m listening.”

His bloodshot, hound-dog eyes study me a moment, but not for long. I wait for him to say something—to say anything—but he just clutches his old RC Cola can with the plastic wrap on top, then turns to the curb, where I’ve parked the used maroon van I borrowed from another shelter.

“Where’s Roosevelt?” he blurts.

“In jail.”

He thinks on this a moment. “I heard.” Then, in a reassuring voice, “You don’t need him.”

Without another word, he hops in through the open side door of the van. “You got coffee for me?” he asks, fishing around on the front seats.

“Hey, listen—before you go,” a voice calls out behind me.

I turn back to find the restaurant manager—a sweaty Asian in a shiny hipster suit—making his way toward me.

“Thanks again for your help,” the manager says. “I wouldn’t’ve called, but the customers started complaining.”

He extends a handshake, all set to slip me a fifty. “Just to say thanks for getting here so fast,” he says.

I look down at my old black T-shirt, faded sweats, and Vans sneakers. Nothing’s changed.

Except me.

I step toward the manager and wrap an arm around him with newfound ease.

“Listen, I’m not allowed to take cash like that, but can I ask a favor?” I say, motioning over his shoulder. “Would you mind if I donated this to your wait-staff? You can add it to their tips—especially this guy serving the blonde,” I say, pointing to the table with the angry woman who’s now returning her soup. “He’s gonna need a bit of help tonight.”

The manager smiles, his thin eyebrows rising. “That’s nice. Fair deal,” he says, offering another handshake. This time a real one.

I cross around the back of the van, climb behind the wheel, and manually roll down the window, where I take a deep breath of Florida’s salty beach air. But as I twist the ignition key and turn on the lights, I finally see the man blocking my way, standing in front of the van, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders as slumped as usual.

“Lloyd, what’re you doing here?” I call out.

“I was just— I thought I’d . . .” My father’s voice trails off. “I don’t really know,” he finally admits. “I spoke to Serena.”

“I don’t want to talk about Serena.” I pump the gas and jerk the van forward, hoping he’ll move out of the way. All he does is rush around to my open side window, gripping it like a child holding on to the counter of an ice-cream truck.

“Did you get my messages?” he pleads, refusing to let go.

I hit the brakes but stare straight ahead, through the front windshield. Even without eye contact, I can see his beard’s gone and his grizzly hair’s combed. He got a better lawyer than last time, which explains the deal he got for testifying against Roosevelt. And a better doctor, which explains why he’s out of the hospital. “Yes, Lloyd. I got all fifteen of them.”

“You didn’t call me back.”

It’d be so easy to explode and shout in his face.

“No. I didn’t call you back.”

He watches me, still gripping the ice-cream counter. “You’re not going to, are you?”

“I told you—I need some time.”

“But that’s just what you’re saying, hoping I’ll go away.”

For the first time, I look down at him from the driver’s seat. “What’d you really expect? Tossing a ball back and forth like Field of Dreams? Everything you said—everything we did—it was all poison. You lied and tricked me. On purpose. And, oh yeah, almost got me framed for murder, not to mention almost killed, all for your own selfish reasons.”

“That’s not true. All we wanted was help with the shipment. And once we— In Alligator Alley, when you saved me—”

“Then what? You came to your senses and realized that the love of your long-lost son conquers all? Save it for the TV movie, Lloyd. I don’t care that you cut ties with Roosevelt—you still knew I was on the phone with him every free minute. Even in the car, you never once said, ‘Hey, Cal, your best friend is going all Judas on you.’ Why didn’t you say something then?”

My father looks down, unable to face me.

“Lemme guess,” I add. “You were worried if you told the truth, I’d walk away forever. Well, guess what? You get the same result either way. Karma is kinda a bitch like that.”

He nods to himself, still holding the ice-cream counter, still staring down. “You’ll understand when you—”

“When I what? When I have kids? Is that the parental chestnut you’re reaching for? That I’d understand what you did if I had a son?”

“No, Calvin,” he says, finally looking up at me. “You’d understand if you lost a son.”

I tighten my jaw and try to look away. But the words undo me, tugging on a bow—maybe it’s a knot—that’s buried far deeper inside me than the pain and rage of my current anger.

“I’m sorry for what I did, Calvin. I really am. It’s just . . . in life, you can either be a hammer or a nail. And for far too long . . . I guess I got tired of being a nail.”

“But don’t you see? You made me the nail instead. So no matter how much you want to justify it—”

“I don’t want to justify it,” he interrupts. “I admit: I wanted a better life. It was just . . . to see you . . . to really see you . . .” He looks away, then back, then away, pretending to stare at all the passing cars that whip up and down the beachfront strip. “I just want to be forgiven.”

Outside the window, my father’s grassy green eyes are even more terrified than that night in the park. He swallows hard and his big Adam’s apple tightens like a fist.

“That heart of yours made of rocks?” Alberto calls out from the backseat. “Give your ol’ man a little somethin’!”

I can’t help but laugh.

My dad leaps at the opening. “Just hear me out on this, Calvin: A few weeks back, in the newspaper, there was this columnist who said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could live life backwards?’ You start out dead and get that out of the way—then you wake up in old age and feel better every day. With each passing year, your illnesses disappear, and you get more hair, more handsome, more virile—and best of all, you keep getting younger, finally ending life as a fantastic orgasm,” he says with his zigzag smile. “Okay, the column was just a joke, but imagine it a moment: What if all our mistakes—all the bad choices and painful regrets—would just undo themselves and fade into nothingness? Wouldn’t that make this so much easier?”

I stare straight ahead. “That isn’t how life is, Lloyd.”

Up the block, a police car wails, fighting through the dinnertime traffic along the beach. As it gets closer, my father is bathed in the siren’s glowing blue lights, which smooth away his wrinkles and flatter his sun-beaten skin. For those few seconds, as it passes, my father is young again. Just like on the night he pushed my mom.

“I forgive you, Lloyd.” I take a long, deep breath. “I just don’t want to see you.”

Still gripping the base of the window, my father simply stands there. There are some prisons with no bars.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t dig your way out.

“I’ll always be your father, Cal.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“How ’bout this Friday, then?” he asks. “We can go to dinner.”

The police car is long gone. But I still hear it in the distance.

“Maybe.”

Pumping the gas, I pull out toward the traffic. For the first few steps, my father holds on to the window, trying to limp along with the van. He doesn’t get far.

“You like Indian food? We can grab Indian,” he calls out, excited.

“I hate Indian,” I call back, leaving him behind.

I peer out the window. He looks older again. Too old to run. But even in the darkness, even as he stops, I see his zigzag smile.

It matches my own.

As we zip up the block, I check the rearview to get a final look, but all I see is Alberto, his nose pressed to his RC Cola can with the plastic wrap on top.

“Let me ask you, Alberto—you really think it helps, talking to your dad’s ashes like that?”

Alberto looks up, confused. “Ashes? What you talkin’ about?”

“In the can. Those aren’t your dad’s ashes?”

“Cal, I may be a drunk, but I ain’t wacky.”

“But that night—you said—”

“Damn, boy—we was in a crowded van full of junkies and baseheads. I go tellin’ ’em where I keep my piggy, and it’ll be gone by lockdown.”

His piggy? “Hold on. That’s your bank?”

Flashing a gray-toothed smile, Alberto shakes the RC Cola can, and I hear bits of change cling-cling against the insulation of crumpled dollar bills. “You keep it in yo’ socks, they steal it,” Alberto says, beaming. “It’s like your story, Cal—that coffin you was chasin’: Once people think there’s a body inside . . . ain’t no better hiding spot in the whole damn world.”

He’s right about that. But in our case, with the coffin, there was a body in—

My heart lurches, leaping up to my throat.

Double crap.

I need an airline ticket.