I remember that bright-purple door on the short and wide gray building that takes up the whole section of this street. This is the block, I realize. And there is the letter Q, drawn in shiny, silver paint. Street, block, house, door echo in my mind again.
I pull on the door handle and a dog starts to bark. I jump and step away from the door. Another dog joins in. Two dogs barking. I want to run back, but I stand still. I’ve come this far.
“Ay yo, Fabulous!” someone calls out.
My whole body tingles and I freeze. I close my eyes to utter Papa Legba’s name for help because I recognize that voice. I see Dray holding two dogs on short leashes. Angry dogs. Dogs that look as if they want to tear me apart.
“What you doing here, Fabulous?” he says, still with that eye patch, like Baron Samedi. He’s standing by the door near the side of the building, a secret passageway, maybe. The tomb.
At the same moment, the purple door opens, and a fat guy I recognize stands at the entrance. He was there at that party patting down the people coming in and keeping others out.
There is no Papa Legba here to guide my steps. I’m here on the street, on the block, at the house, by the door. . . .
“I asked you a question, Fabulous. What? You looking for Kasim or something?” His words don’t glide out of his mouth—they pulse.
“Q” is all I say. Then I want to take it back.
The fat man by the door shifts his weight. He steps out of the entrance and lets the door shut behind him. My stomach drops. The dogs are still barking.
“What about Q?” Dray asks, cocking his head to one side.
“This is the name of the club, right? I remember coming here for a party.” My hands are sweating; my body itches.
“Get the fuck in here,” Dray says, motioning with his head for me to follow him in as the fat man comes to take the dogs away. He pulls their leashes and they whimper.
The house. The door. The soul. Then it settles on me like falling concrete. This is also Papa Legba’s doing. The door is open. So I must take it from here. I walk past the barking dogs and the fat man, past Dray, and into this building.
It’s dark in the back of the club. A single long table is in the middle of the room with about six metal folding chairs around it. One lightbulb hangs from a long cord and swings a little after Dray pulls the door closed. It slams and I breathe in and out slowly, licking my lips and looking every which way, searching for words, ideas, anything. How can I get the information I need? I say, “My mother is coming soon. She was in jail.”
“Oh, yeah?” He crosses his arms over his chest and spreads his legs. “Your moms? In jail? Where, Haiti?”
I relax a bit because I’m telling the truth. “No, here. In New Jersey. A detention center. But she’s coming soon. I want to throw her a party. Here. This is a nice place.”
He laughs. “Oh, that’s real cute. Your cousins threw Jo a party here when she turned forty, I think. Matter of fact, it was my uncle Q who organized the whole thing.”
“Uncle Q?”
“Yeah. Maybe I should introduce you. . . . Better yet, you’ll meet him soon enough if you and Kasim are serious like that.”
I nod.
“Y’all serious like that? ’Cause you and him could have what me and Donna have.”
“But you hurt her,” I say without thinking.
He laughs again. “She hurts me, too. She breaks my fucking heart every day. Now, I don’t want you doing that shit to my boy Kasim. Feel me?”
I don’t say anything. I don’t move.
“Feel me, Fabulous?”
I nod slowly.
“Now, let your cousins handle that party shit. Don’t let me catch you snooping around here. Kasim wouldn’t want anything to happen to you,” he says with a half smile.
“Ay yo, Dray!” someone calls out from the front.
The dogs start barking again. Dray goes over to the far end of the room and pulls something out of the drawer of a filing cabinet. My eyes are glued to it, to how he’s holding it. And it’s not until he’s just a few inches from me that I see it’s a gun. I can’t take my eyes off it.
“Come here,” he says.
He has a gun. I don’t move one inch.
“I said come here!” His words are like ice—cold and stinging.
I do move. But not my feet. I sway forward a little bit. My mind wants to obey his command, but my body is afraid of what will happen if I go over to him.
“Dray, man!” someone calls out again.
He holds the gun up toward the ceiling, his elbow bent. The dogs bark louder. Voices filter in from outside the club. “Don’t leave,” he says, and walks out of the back room.
The door doesn’t click all the way shut and a sliver of sunlight seeps in. Again, a door has opened for me. But this time, I’m sure it’s to get out.
As I run back home, my heart leaps out of my chest, my head pounds, and I almost collapse on the front steps. I take a minute to catch my breath, then pull out my phone and look at Detective Stevens’s number. I don’t wait for her to call. This time I call.
“Hello. This is Fabiola.”