Nell glances at me one last time, then leads the way out, tossing a bill on the bar. Her vapid friends and ass**le boyfriend follow her, but the Ogre stops in the doorway to stare holes in my head. I stare back until he turns away and leaves.
I get back on the stage and fiddle with the tuning on my guitar.
Kelly comes out from behind the bar and faces me. “What the hell was that, Colt?”
I shrug. “Someone I know.”
“You were ready to throw down.”
“He was hurting her.”
“She was letting him.”
“Doesn’t make it right.” I fish my capo out of the case and fit it on the strings.
Kelly eyes me warily. “No, it doesn’t. But if she lets him, it’s her business. I don’t need trouble in my bar. You don’t need trouble, period.” Kelly’s hand touches my arm, a rare moment of contact between us; part of our post-coital friendship contract is no touching. “Colt…you’re doing really good. Don’t f**k it up. Okay?”
“How would I do that?”
Kelly gives me a what are you, stupid? look, hand on her popped-out hip. “I’ve never seen you look that pissed, Colt. You don’t get pissed. Which means she means something.”
“It’s complicated.” I scrape the pick along one of the strings, not looking at Kelly.
“It’s always complicated. My point is…you’ve got a good thing going. You’ve left all that behind,” she waves at the bar, at the street beyond, meaning our shared past of violence, “and you don’t need to make trouble for yourself over a girl.”
“She’s not just a girl.” Well shit. I did not mean to say that.
Kelly narrows her eyes at me. “I ain’t said that.” Her street accent is coming back, which I know how hard she works to disguise. “I’m jus’ sayin’—I’m just saying. Don’t mess it up. Do what you gotta do, but…you know what, whatever. Do whatever you want.”
I sigh and finally look up at her. “I hear what you’re saying, Special K.” I grin at her old nickname.
Kelly does the neck-roll I don’t think so thing. “You did not just call me that.”
“I sure did, sister.” I flash the panty-dropping grin at her, which always works.
Kelly pretends to swoon, then socks me in the arm, hard. Hard enough to make my arm sting. “Shut up and play a song, ass**le.” She swaggers away, and I don’t mind watching. We may not hook up anymore, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the view.
Immediately after that thought, I feel an odd twinge of guilt. I see Nell’s face in my mind, as if I owe her fidelity. Which I don’t. But I can’t shake the thought. So I play the music and try to forget Nell and her Ogre and Kelly and trouble and memories of old fights.
* * *
I walk the streets a lot. I always have. When I was an angry, homeless seventeen year-old lost on the mean streets of Harlem, it’s all I had to do. I didn’t know shit about living on the streets, so I walked. I walked to stay out of trouble, to stay awake, to stay warm. Then, when I met T-Shawn and Split and the boys, the streets became our livelihood, our life, our turf. So I walked the streets doing business. Now, I walk the streets because it’s familiar, and comforting. When I have to think through shit, I walk. I slip my guitar into the soft case and tie on my Timberlands and walk. I might start at my apartment above the shop in Queens and end up in Harlem or Astoria or Manhattan. I walk for hours, no iPod, no destination, just mile after mile of crowded sidewalks and cracked blacktop and towering skyscrapers and apartment blocks and back alleys where old friends still sling and smoke and fight. Old friends, old enemies, people I don’t associate with anymore. But they leave me alone, friend or enemy, and let me walk.
It’s two a.m., I’m sober, mostly, and I’ve got nowhere to be, and I’m walking. I’m not ready for the cold, quiet apartment, not ready to finish the big block. I’m trying to convince myself that I should forget Nell. It’s what I’ve been doing for the last two years, only now it’s even harder because I have fresh images of her, the scent of her shampoo in my nose, the memory of the tingle of the silk of her bra against my T-shirt. Fresh knowledge of her seductive beauty, the harsh chasm of pain in her heart.
So I’m not entirely surprised when 3 a.m. sees me approaching her building in Tribeca. The door to the building isn’t locked, oddly. For reasons I don’t care to examine, I’m pushing through and up the stairwell. I hear her voice first.
“Dan, I’m going inside. Alone. I’m tired.”
His voice is low, but audible. “Come on, babe. Watch a movie with me.”
She sighs in exasperation. “I’m not stupid, you know. I know what you want. And the answer is no. That hasn’t changed.”
“Yet I keep hoping.” His voice was amused but irritated. “Then why are we even dating?”
“You tell me. I’ve never encouraged you. I never said we were dating. We’re not. You just won’t go away. I’m not going to sleep with you, Dan. Not tonight, not tomorrow night.”
“What can I do to convince you?”
“Be someone else?” Her voice is sharp and biting.
I’m on the landing of the first flight of stairs, hand on the railing, head tilted up, as if I could see them through the stairs.
He snorts in laughter at the barb. “You’re such a f**king tease, Nell.” The amusement is gone.
“I am not.”
“You are too. You’ll kiss me, you’ll let me grope you, you’ll go out with me and all that other shit, but then we get here, and you close down.” His voice is rising, getting angry. “I’ve put up with this shit for three months. I’m tired of it.”
“Then stop putting up with it. Leave me alone. I have never promised you anything. You’re a nice enough guy. You can be funny when you’re not being a douchebag. But this isn’t going anywhere and it never was.” The silence is palpable. He’s pissed, even I can feel it from a flight of stairs away. I hear a key in a lock, a door knob twist. “Goodbye, Dan.”
Then a hiss from her, contained pain.
“I don’t think so, babe. I haven’t put three months of work into you, buying your drinks and your lunches and your coffee just to get dumped now, with nothing to show for it.”
“Sorry, Dan. I never asked you to do that stuff. In fact, I told you not to, and you insisted.”