25

RODNEY

“You should’ve listened to me, Poe. I told you this was a mistake,” Larry says. Rodney’s sprawled on his back in the small apartment. Larry’s cleaning the wound on his leg, while Jawahir works on the multiple cuts on his face and neck. “No offense, Jawahir, but I got to look out for my own.”

“That’s the problem,” Jawahir says. “We’re all God’s own. We’re all riders on the same train.”

“Maybe,” Larry grunts. “What the hell happened in there?”

Rodney answers part of the question, what happened to him, but he won’t answer all of it. He won’t tell Larry or Jawahir what he did, which was simple: whatever it took to protect Jawahir.

“So what are you going to do?” Larry asks. Rodney wishes his uncle would stop asking questions that he has no idea how to answer. Jawahir starts to answer for Rodney, but Larry cuts her off. “Again, no offense, but you’re fourteen, maybe fifteen, so how can you know anything?”

Jawahir nods and goes back to cleaning the nasty cut across Rodney’s nose.

“I’m almost forty and I can tell you how the world works, and it’s not like that. I know when you’re young, you gotta believe the world is a place where everything works out, but it doesn’t. It’s the opposite. I’m a grown man with a college degree, but the only history I get to know is that of the same streets I travel over and over again, driving that stupid van for no money while wearing a uniform uglier than the one in Stillwater.”

“Larry, cool it,” Rodney says.

“No, listen. You two had better cool it, because this time people got hurt, next time people might die. Do you hear what I’m saying? Is this love you think you have worth people dying for?”

Rodney sits up and smiles through his busted-up lips at Jawahir. “Yes, Uncle Larry, yes it is.”

Larry shakes his head first like he’s disgusted but then a grin breaks out on his face. “Good one, Poe. That’s like you, an endless romantic willing to do anything in the name of truth, love, and beauty.”

Rodney wipes the blood, someone else’s probably, from his hands and then as gentle as the night was violent, places them softly on Jawahir’s shoulders. “She is truth, love, and beauty.”

Jawahir lays her head against Rodney’s bruised right hand. “He is truth, love, and beauty.”

“I’d tell you to get a room, but you already got one,” Larry cracks. “Mine.”

“Last night here, I promise,” Rodney says.

Larry finishes applying the bandage to Rodney’s leg. “I’ll find someplace else—”

“No, I think we’re going to be up all night talking,” Rodney says. “This is too hard. We have to figure out what to do. I got to use those CBT skills I learned at CHS. Get away from the negative and—”

“Rodney, I don’t see a win here.” Larry stands and starts to walk toward his bedroom.

“What do you mean, Larry?” Rodney asks.

“Do you think suddenly everything’s going to be okay?” Larry reaches into his shirt pocket, pulls out a smoke, and lights it. As the embers burn, Rodney remembers Larry comparing love to fire, that as long as there is fuel there is fire. He can’t imagine ever running out of fuel for Jawahir.

Rodney doesn’t answer.

Larry reaches for the light switch. “I’m sorry, but it seems to me that your love is hopeless.”

“No!” Jawahir cries. “Our love is endless!”

Rodney motions for Jawahir to lie next to him. “You’re both right and wrong. Larry, I know you think we’re just stupid kids in love, but we’re smart. We know our love is hopeless. But you know what? If you could feel what I feel, you’d know she’s right: our hearts tell us our love is endless.”

Larry flicks off the light and heads toward his room. “So I guess that’s the real question. All this other stuff is just smoke. You got to get to the source, Poe. What’s stronger: the heart or the mind?”