The next few moments go by in a flash of strobe lights and screams, bodies pressing against me. The only constant – the only thing that feels real – is Jimmy’s hand in mine.
Jimmy leads me out of the warehouse and I want to keep running. I think I could run home I’m so keyed up. I’m so scared. But Jimmy pulls me to the side of the door and presses me back against the cold brick wall. “Stay here.”
I shake my head and reach for him with my other hand, holding him as tight as I can. I can’t speak, though.
“Where’s Tia?” he asks and my eyes go wide.
“Yeah, thought so. Gimme a second. Just stay here.”
I let him go reluctantly, but I keep my eyes trained on him as he walks back toward the door where I notice that the scene isn’t what I expected. There are still people running out of the main door, but Jimmy stops for a tall woman in a red, sleeveless dress, high-heeled gold sandals, and a cigarette dangling from her lips, strolling out into the alleyway. She looks at Jimmy and nods before continuing down the alley. My eyebrows raise at that and then more so when Jimmy taps the shoulder of the bounce who’d just let me and Tia inside barely an hour ago. He and Jimmy slap palms before Jimmy inclines his head forward and starts to speak to him.
“What the fuck?” I breathe to myself.
“That’s what I’m sayin’,” a strange man responds in passing. “Every time Negroes get together somebody got a gun or a knife. I just came to get fucked up.”
I frown in his direction and he’s clearly unhappy at my lack of response because he swipes the air in front of me and shakes his head as he turns away, still muttering about the price of the drink he never got to finish.
I tip my head back and look up at the night sky, feeling lost and disoriented.
“You cold?”
I jump at the sound of Jimmy’s voice. He’s back and already pulling off his jacket.
“I’m fine,” I whisper.
“You’re shivering,” he says, before throwing his coat over my shoulders. It smells like a spicy cologne and the faint hint of cigarette smoke.
I pull the coat closer, the warmth soothing in its own way. “Tia?”
Jimmy nods. “I asked Black to go inside and find her. He said she came out earlier for some air and he thinks he knows where she is?”
“Where?”
Jimmy shrugged. “I don’t know the club like that, but he said he’ll be back in a minute.”
I nod. “Thank you.”
“You straight. How you know Malcolm?”
I shake my head. “I don’t. I see him sometimes at the record store but I…” I shake my head again. “He’s barely said anything to me until tonight.”
Jimmy looks away and I thought I saw his jaw tick. “Yeah, that sounds like that shifty motherfucker.” He turns back to me. “You see him again, turn the other way.”
“Again? The g-gunshot?” It might be the cold or the fear still running through my veins, but I start to shiver again. I hug Jimmy’s coat closer.
Jimmy chuckles and rolls his eyes. “That’s just Charlie. That nigga love guns, but if he gone do something for real, he’ll use his fists.”
“C-Charlie?”
“Friend from around the block. He owns this place.”
“What?”
“What?” Jimmy shoots back.
“You know the owner?”
Jimmy rolls his eyes. “I know the owner, the bouncers, the bartender, some of the deejays. I know a lotta people, Damita. Just ‘cause you ain’t ever noticed me don’t mean I’m nobody.”
“I- I don’t think you’re nobody.”
He shakes his head and reaches into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. “People think everybody who come where we from is nobody. Ain’t that why you in such a rush to get to LA? ‘Cause you don’t wanna be nobody?”
“I-” I’m speechless, not ‘cause he’s wrong, but because Jimmy ain’t ever noticed me.
I thought.
“Oh my God, Damita.” I turn at the sound of Tia’s voice and Damita rushes into my arms.
I’m too shocked by the last few moments of my life to say anything, but I do hug her as tight as I can. And maybe it’s because of the shock that I notice things I might not have before, like the woman hanging back by the door in a pair of slacks, hair short like a man, a drink in one hand, and Tia’s purse in the other. She hands the purse over to Jimmy before they slap hands and she slips back inside.
When Jimmy turns back to me and Tia, we make eye contact, but only for a second. I shut my eyes and hug Tia tighter.
“I wanna go home,” I whisper into Tia’s shoulder.
“I’ll take y’all,” Jimmy says. “Let’s go.”