Judging Time

42

Belle lay on the sofa in her sometime apartment, her eyes closed and a towel full of ice on her head. She had bruises and swelling on her forehead and every half hour Liberty woke her up, concerned that she might have a concussion. He'd had six or seven himself, and didn't want her falling into a deep sleep, not to wake up for a week or two. The man had kicked her hard. The yards of turban she'd been wearing hadn't protected her at all.

"Come on, baby, open those beautiful green eyes."

"They're hazel. Men don't know nothin'," Belle grumbled in her sleep.

The times she didn't respond, he squeezed some water from the towel onto her face and sponged it off, stroking her forehead until the green eyes fluttered open.

"Don't you touch me," she muttered, raising a hand to her hair that was a color hard to pin down. Red-gold, gold-rust. Brown-gold, harvest gold. No, definitely red something. It was good hair and there was a lot of it. Probably drew attention to her, and Belle clearly didn't like that kind of attention.

"Don't look at me," she mumbled.

"I'm not looking at you. Just worried about your health. You have a lot of courage. You got yourself messed up." Because of me, he didn't say. She'd jumped in front of a man with a knife, and the man had tried to stab her. What kind of crazy woman would do that? Some kind of urban guerrilla. Now Rick knew why she wore what had to be a thirty-pound raincoat. The coat was useful in case of fire and wasn't easily penetrated by a stiletto. He wondered if Belle also wore a bulletproof vest under all those sweaters and if she'd been stabbed or shot at before. He had a feeling she had.

"Belle, you got a family, a husband or boyfriend, somebody I can call to come get you?"

No answer. She'd fallen asleep.

The night had an eerie quality to it. Rick had three shallow cuts on his chest that oozed into the only other towel in the place, and burned some. He got up and washed them with soap in the grimy bathroom a few times. He was sore, and like other times he'd been hurt and his body was trying to mend, he was hungry. He thought about his restaurant. The restaurant was a place backed by him and his white partners, run by blacks, where both blacks and whites felt comfortable. Anyplace where blacks and whites both felt comfortable was considered trendy. Rick used to be amused by the term. Now it made him sick, as if all along he'd only been part of a zoo exhibit.

When everything was going wrong in her life, Rick's mama always said, "I am still. I am still so God can show me the way." She told her boy that God lived in stillness and only in stillness would Rick himself be able to find his way through this life.

"If God so still, then why the peoples scream and yell so loud in church?" he'd demanded.

"Is, do. Don't you go leaving out those verbs, boy, and don't question. Don't go questioning the ways of God."

But how could he find out what God's ways were if he wasn't allowed to question? Liberty couldn't question the ways of God now. He didn't believe God had a personal interest in him or anyone else. Merrill was gone for no reason at all. Water flooded his eyes, blurring his vision, but he couldn't be crying. "I don't cry," he said aloud. He swiped at his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, which was ripped and bloody on the front. He glanced at the girl on the sofa, who was so leery about men. He wondered what had happened to make her that way, and realized she was beautiful.

He thought about the man with the gold teeth and the gun. A dozen people must have seen the man fire. Maybe more. Why had he bothered to cross the street and run a block and a half after him and Belle? Had he known they would be there? How did it fit? The street had been teeming with people. There had been people all over the place. It was possible that even some of the police had seen the shooter with the ridge of gold and the scarf on his head. Rick worried about Belle and couldn't fall asleep.

About eight hours later, at eight-fifteen in the morning, she sat up and rubbed her eyes. "I'm hungry," she said.

Rick looked at his watch. "So am I."

She went into the bathroom and stayed there a long time while he made some coffee in an old pot. Maybe it was the aroma of brewing coffee that made his throat close up around his windpipe and finally acknowledge the truth. Merrill was not at home, waiting for him with her sexy voice and all her troubles and demons. She was not going to agonize anymore over not giving him golden babies in his image. There would be no more heated (and painfully naive) discussions of politics, no more arguments with them against the world about race or anything else. No more screaming fits about cocaine. Merrill was gone. Another one of his lives was over. Rick's eyes were wet, but he was not crying. He now had to make the choice Merrill hadn't been given. He could die and not be buried with her in that bleak New England cemetery that had probably never received a black body. Or he had to become someone new. Again. Neither prospect had much appeal.

The water had been running in the bathroom for a long time. He knocked on the door. "You okay?" he asked.

"Don't come in." The reply was a nervous mumble through the door.

Rick expelled the trapped air in his lungs. "I'm just asking if you're okay," he grumbled to himself. He didn't walk in on strange women in their bathrooms.

"Don't come in," she said again.

Jesus, she was exhausting. He poured some coffee and sat at the table drinking it as the sky cleared and slowly lightened. Finally Belle came out of the bathroom. Rick was careful not to look at her as he handed her a cup of coffee with He hoped her screwy brains hadn't been knocked any looser.

"Thanks." She sounded surprised.

"You're welcome."

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Drinking coffee. Then I'm going to take you home, Belle. Where do you live?"

She sat down at the table and held the mug in both hands. "My head hurts."

"So does mine, but I can't stay here any longer, and neither can you."

"Why?"

"You got hurt. That crosses the line for me."

"So what, lot of men hit." Belle touched her head. "Kick, too. They think women belong to them, and hurting them doesn't signify much." She studied Rick thoughtfully. "Maybe not you."

"Not me."

"It's so touching when these guys visit in the hospital, bringing flowers. Everybody's crying, and that's what they always say. 'She wanted it. Yeah, we had some fun, but I wouldn't penetrate a twelve-year-old baby. I didn't hurt her.' Or, 'Yeah, we may have tussled around some, but I didn't put her eye out with a poker. No way, man. I loved her.' "

Rick bent his head and told himself he wasn't going to let tears fall down his face. "You've been hanging around with the wrong people too long, Belle."

She sniffed angrily.

Well, she might not think much of him, but she'd used herself as a shield to save him last night. Why did she have to be so tough on him now?

"What?" she demanded as if he'd said it aloud.

He shook his head. Now he knew the reason he'd avoided Merrill's funeral and left his home. He'd run away because he couldn't stand the world's accusation that he was just another one of those black scum who robbed and stole, took drugs and raped women, murdered them when they got too sassy. He simply could not bear the suspicion. All his life he'd worked hard to be clean, clean, clean to the world, clean to the core. So he wouldn't be his mother's nightmare. So he wouldn't end up just another rotten nigger. He finally knew what he had to do.

Five minutes later Marvin Farrish was quiet on the other end of the phone line as Rick Liberty blasted him.

"Marvin, I always thought you were a smart man. I know you've done a lot of good in this world. You have a great TV station, good radio. You're a faithful husband and a good father. I thought your heart was in the right place. But shit, man, this stunt you pulled with me was the stupidest, the most dangerous, Goddamned dumbest cock-up I've ever seen. I don't know where your brain is. You know what happened up here last night, you fucking idiot?"

"Hey now, brother," Marvin finally joined the conversation, "that's no way to talk to a friend."

"Friend! You know what happened. Answer the fucking question!"

"Is Belle all right?" The impassive voice tensed for the first time.

"I don't know if she's all right. Because of me, she got her head kicked in by an elephant. I don't have people getting hurt because of me. This has got to stop now."

"Let me ask you again. Is Belle all right, is she conscious?" Marvin's voice became more agitated. "This is important!"

"Of course it's important. She won't call anyone to take care of "her. She won't leave me alone."

"She must like you. You sound angry, man. You sound real angry." Marvin heaved a dramatic sigh.

"Oh, I'm more than angry. I'm in a fucking mess here. You understand? You know what's happened to me? I lost the only person in the world I really trusted, and the whole world's come down on me, insisting I killed her."

"That's the way, man," Marvin said softly. "That's the American way. It's show business. Raise a man up high as he can go, make him a hero, let him feel the glory so intensely he thinks he's above it all. Then expose his weakness and cut his drooping flag so bad he can't even pee anymore."

"Is that what you're doing to me, Marvin?"

"No, man. I'm telling you how it is."

"Okay, so that's how it is. And I'm a weak son of a bitch because I couldn't handle the cameras—the questions from the police. You know, man, they pushed all my buttons, kept asking me how often I forgot myself when I had a migraine, how often I did things I wasn't aware of doing. I couldn't take it."

"Uh-huh." The unasked question hung in the air

"Fuck you, Marvin. Your little friend and I walked into a shooting last night."

"Yeah, I heard that chauffeur Jefferson got shot. I'm sorry, man."

"You're sorry! You sent us into it. And you know what? For some strange reason, the asshole who shot Jefferson, instead of taking off, crossed four lanes of traffic, with cops al over the place, and tried to kill Belle and me with a stiletto."

"Praise Jesus, Belle just got a kick in the head. You okay, man?"

"Oh, I got a few stab wounds in the chest."

Another great sigh traveled the phone line. "Where are you now?" Marvin asked.

Rick hesitated, then he said, "I'm on my way home. I'm ready to make a statement, Marvin." "Are you sure about that? What about your frame of mind?"

"I said I'm ready," Rick insisted.

"Okay, I'll set it up. . . . What are you going to say?"

"You'll have to wait to find that out, won't you?"

"You want to do it in the New York studio? We'll have some control over the situation there. And, Rick, I wouldn't advise going home just now. Why don't you take a little rest? Calm down. Write a speech or something. You know, think it through, work it through with Belle. She's done this before. And Rick, I'm going to risk millions of dollars and my whole future to tell you this. Because any lawyer in his right mind would never let you do anything this dangerous. But I'm your friend before I'm a businessman and I have to say it. Maybe you should consult a lawyer before you go ahead with this."

"I don't need a lawyer," Rick insisted. "I haven't done anything wrong,"

"Fine, if that's your decision. At least I asked.

Where are you? We'll pick you up, get you cleaned ___ »

up—

"I don't want to be cleaned up," Rick snapped. "This is a dirty story."

"Okay," Marvin said quickly.

"And I don't want to go to the studio."

Silence.

"Did you hear me, Marv?"

"Don't be an asshole, Rick. Think about what you're doing. You want to look like a fugitive? Come on, what do you think is going to happen after the interview?"

"I know what's going to happen. I'm going to call the cops. Those two cops who've been bugging me. I'm going to call them up and tell them what happened to me, what I saw last night—"

"What about Belle?"

"I won't bring her into it."

"You promise? You gotta promise me."

"Yeah, I promise, but that woman has a mind of her own. She's—"

"That's all right. I'll talk to her."

"Listen, Marv. I'm a witness to a shooting. Now I do have something to talk to the police about."

"This is good. This is good. The police try to finger you for your wife's murder. But instead of sticking around to take the fall, you go out and try to solve the crime yourself. But the one person who could shed light on the picture is rubbed out in front of your very eyes. Then the shooter tries to kill you. You have the stab wounds on your chest to prove it, right?"

"I'm not taking my shirt off on TV."

"Well, we'll talk about the details later. Rick, this is a big story, a very big one. Trust me, we'll do a good job, a tasteful job, and we'll nail them. We'll nail them for what they tried to do to you. . . . Rick, you with me on this?"

"We still don't know who killed Merrill."

"Yeah, but we can get the police for what they did to you. I like it. I'll set it up. Great, we'll set it up for the seven o'clock news. I'll have a car pick you up at five. Now, put Belle on the phone. I want to talk to her."