“Ah, whatever. I don’t think something like that is what’s going to bother her the most.”
“But it would bother me. If I find out one day that I’m not one hundred percent black …” Betty turned her lips downward, shook her head, and Neni laughed.
“You don’t have to ever worry about that,” Neni said. “With your charcoal skin and mountain buttocks, there’s no way there can be anything inside you except African blood.”
“Jealousy is going to kill you,” Betty shot back, laughing as she leaned sideways and tapped her buttocks to emphasize the beauty of their size. “But seriously,” she said, “I don’t know what I would do if my father—”
“I don’t know what I would do, too. I would be afraid that I’m a curse, because it’s a curse, right? You are a bastard, and on top of that, everyone knows your father was some rapist.”
“Kai! No wonder the woman drinks. Did you see her looking like that again?”
“Like that day? No, thank Papa God. But I saw an empty medicine bottle in the guest bathroom garbage. Same one like the one from that day.”
“It was for painkillers, right?”
Neni shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“It had to be for painkillers. I was reading about it in my pharmacology class—”
“Eh, now that you’ve taken one little pharmacology class you think you know everything about drugs. Why don’t you just go ahead and open a pharmacy?”
“Ah, don’t be hating, girl,” Betty said in her fake American accent. “You can take the class when you’re ready. But I swear, it must have been something like that, some kind of painkiller.”
“Because why?”
“What do you mean, ‘Because why?’ Aren’t you the one who told me what she looked like when you found her with the medicine and the wine? I’ve taken painkillers, I know how those things can—”
“No,” Neni said, shaking her head. “I was thinking that, too, that maybe it was bad drugs, but—”
“But what?”
“But what if she was sick?”
“Sick of what? If she was only sick, why was she begging you not to tell anyone?”
“I don’t know; the whole thing about that woman just confuses me.”
“Then why are you arguing with me? I can show you the chapter in my textbook. She’s taking the painkiller, then adding the wine … These women, they start taking the pills for some pain in their body, and then it makes them feel good, so they take more, and then more—”
“But I’ve taken Tylenol,” Neni said with a laugh, “and I didn’t feel anything special.”
“Tylenol is not the same kind of thing, you country woman,” Betty said, laughing, too, and then instantly developing a somber tone. “I’m talking about prescription painkillers for some really bad pain, the kind I had when … They gave me some last year at Roosevelt. Vicodin and—”
“That was the name on the bottle! Vicodin. Wait, I’m not sure if it was—”
“It must have been,” Betty said, standing up to fold the Burberry scarf and Ralph Lauren maxi dress Neni had given her from Cindy’s things. “I felt better every time I took it. Even with everything I was feeling …”
“But you wouldn’t have eaten it like candy, the way it looks like Mrs. Edwards is swallowing them.”
“Is that what you think? Don’t be so sure, oh. The hospital only let me have a ten-day supply, but if I had a way, I would have gotten more. Maybe for another week. That thing made me feel so much better, but this country, doctors are too afraid of addiction. Mrs. Edwards, she must know someone who is giving it to her, maybe a friend who is a doctor, or a pharmacist. Or sometimes they buy it from other people … I just wonder how many she is taking a day.”
Twenty-three
EVERY TIME CLARK WAS IN THE CAR—MORNING, AFTERNOON, EVENING—he was shouting at someone, arguing about something, giving orders on what had to be done as soon as possible. He seemed angry, frustrated, confused, resigned. This place is a mess, Leah told Jende whenever they were on the phone. He’s going crazy, he’s yelling at me and making me crazy, they’re all going crazy, I swear it’s like some kind of crazy shit is eating everyone up. Jende told her he was truly sorry to hear how bad it was for her and assured her repeatedly that he knew nothing more than what she already knew from the memos Tom was sending to Lehman employees, memos in which he told them that the company was going through a bit of a tough stretch but they should be back on top in no time. Leah’s circumstances saddened Jende, the fact that she was clinging to a job that made her miserable because she was still five years away from receiving Social Security. It bothered him that she couldn’t quit her job even though her blood pressure was rising and her hair was falling out and she was getting only three hours of sleep a night, but it wasn’t his place to tell her anything about what Clark was saying. Or doing. He couldn’t tell her that Clark was sometimes sleeping in the office, or going to the Chelsea Hotel some evenings for appointments that often lasted no more than an hour. He couldn’t tell her that after these appointments he usually drove the boss back to the office, where Clark probably continued working for more hours, his stress having been eased. His duty, he always reminded himself, was to protect Clark, not Leah.
“Where are we going to, sir?” Jende asked on the last Thursday of August, holding the car door open in front of the Chelsea Hotel. Clark’s appointment that day had lasted exactly an hour, but he had returned to the car still seeming weary, his face tightly bound by perpetual exhaustion. It was as if his appointment had been only half-effective.
“Hudson River Park,” Clark said.
“Hudson River Park, sir?” Jende asked, surprised the answer wasn’t the office.
“Yes.”
“Anywhere in the park, sir?”
“Go close to Eleventh and Tenth. Or somewhere near the piers.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jende dropped Clark off at the end of Christopher Street and watched as he crossed the West Side Highway to the pier, his already slender shoulders sagging under the weight of the heat and the sun.
“Where are you?” he called to ask Jende ten minutes later.
“Around the same area, sir,” Jende replied. “I backed up into a good spot that opened up behind me.”
“Listen, why don’t you come join me? There’s no need for you to sit in the car.”
“At the pier, sir?”
“Yes, I’m sitting all the way at the front. Come and meet me here.”
Jende locked up the car and dashed across the highway toward the pier, where Clark was sitting on a bench, his jacket off, his face turned toward the sky. When Jende got to the bench, he realized Clark’s eyes were closed. He seemed to be finding respite in the bountiful breeze blowing toward them; for the first time in months, he looked relaxed as the wind tousled his hair and wiped his brow. Jende looked up at the empty sky, which bore no resemblance to the thick air below. In a couple of days, August would be over, and yet the humidity was still dense, though it felt good to him, the sultriness mingled with the wind blowing over the Atlantic-bound river.
On the bench, Clark breathed in. And out. And in, and out. Again, and again. For five minutes. Jende stood next to him and waited, careful not to move and disturb him.
“You’re here,” Clark said when he finally opened his eyes. “Have a seat.”
Jende sat down beside him, took off his jacket, too.
“Beautiful, huh?” Clark said as they watched the Hudson, nowhere as long, but every inch as purposeful and assured, as the Nile and the Niger and the Limpopo and the Zambezi.
Jende nodded, though confused as to why he was there, sitting on a bench at a pier, gazing at a river with his boss. “It is very nice, sir.”
“Thought you might enjoy it, instead of just waiting on the street.”
“Thank you, sir, I am enjoying the fresh breeze. I did not even know there was a place like this in New York.”
“It’s a great park. If I could, I’d come here more often to watch the sunset.”
“You watch sunsets, sir?”