There was a wide round white table cast from some kind of synthetic concrete on the lawn of the backyard. Jackson found an outside switch and flipped on the floodlight I hadn’t known was there. Three curved white benches made from the same artificial material surrounded the table. I took the bench facing the house but Jackson sat on the tabletop. He lit our cigarettes with a single match and for a moment we both experienced the elation of that first drag after a few hours.
“Congratulations,” I said to my brilliant, cowardly, endlessly funny friend.
“Yeah,” he replied, as if I had asked if his condition was terminal.
“You don’t sound too happy.”
Jackson sighed again and swiveled around to look down at me.
He had never been a handsome man. Skinny and scared for most of his life, Jackson had had the look of some kind of abused animal whose survival was dependent on the creatures that tortured him. But as the years rolled by a certain something, a kind of character, had formed where before there was only abject fear.
I knew a man in Houston who used to tell me, It’s true when they tell ya a man don’t change. But he do get older and sometimes he grow into who he is and becomes a man don’t look nuthin’ like he used to.
“What’s wrong, Jackson?”
He sighed and took a drag off his cigarette, exhaled the smoke like some minor demon, and groaned again.
“ ’Bout three months ago Jean-Paul aksed me to come out to the marina to talk business on his boat. He do that pretty often. We was out there drinkin’ good wine and talkin’ ’bout how satellites one day might be able to transfer computer data at high speeds an’ he wanna get into that. Because you see, Easy, all computer information is in what they call a binary format and you could translate anything into that simple language. And so we was—”
“What about why you so sour, man?” I asked to cut him off. When Jackson started talking about the technical side of his job he could go on for hours.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said. “You right. You right. Jewelle always say that she can tell when I’m bothered by somethin’ ’cause I start talkin’ physics and math.”
“And so?”
“Pretty Smart and her girlfriend Tanya Anika come out to the boat in the afternoon. JP had give Pretty a free pass to get on his boat anytime she wanted and I guess she come out with her girlfriend to get a tan.
“JP likes good-lookin’ women. You know what Pretty look like and Tanya even finer than her—figure like a maple brown Playboy model and face that old boy Adonis might get distracted by.”
“And?” I said to keep the story going.
“We was up near the wheelhouse talkin’ and drinkin’ and the girls went down on the lower deck right below us. Nobody could see in, so they took off all they clothes to lie in the sun. You know I was sweatin’ but I had made up my mind to be good. Then Pretty called up for JP to bring ’em some wine. He brought me down to the wine cellar he got on the boat—”
“There’s a wine cellar on his boat?”
“It’s a big boat, man, almost a ship. Anyway he had four choices and so aksed me to help him bring ’em to the girls. Shit. Before you know it JP and Pretty was down in his cabin and Tanya sidled up next to me.…”
“Nobody could hardly blame a man for that, Jackson,” I said. “I mean, damn. On a yacht drinkin’ wine and a beautiful naked girl come up on ya?”
“My uncle Reynard used to tell me,” Jackson said, “that there wasn’t nuthin’ in life for free. He was right about that. I got together with Tanya a couple’a times but when it started to get serious I explained about Jewelle. I told her that I would not leave my woman. But you know, Easy, when a black woman meet a brothah on a yacht and finds out that he brings down a hunnert and fi’ty thousand dollars a year—”
“That’s how much you told her you made or that’s really how much you make?”
“That’s the base. I didn’t even tell her about my bonuses.”
Damn.
“And so she was mad about Jewelle?” I asked.
“She knows a woman who knows another girl that works for Jewelle. Somehow through that pipeline they let JJ know what I been up to. I tried to explain. I was halfway successful ’cause she didn’t th’ow me all the way out the house. It took me a week to move back in our bed, though.
“But in the meantime she was so mad that she had a thing with that Percy Bidwell. She don’t know I know but when she got together with him it was at a Hollywood hotel I know pretty good ’cause JP go there sometimes. JP’s driver was in there with a business client and he saw ’em.”
“What you gonna do?” I asked.
“It ain’t that, Easy. I get why she did it but now she’s all upset and Percy pushin’ on her to get you to help him. I’m pretty sure he’s threatenin’ to tell me about them bein’ together.”
“But you already know.”
“But she don’t know that and I’m afraid that if I tell her she’ll get all crazy again just thinkin’ ’bout what happened. An’ this time she might just leave my stupid ass.”
I would have laughed but I could see how torn up my friend was.
“Jackson?” Jewelle called from the back door.
“Yeah, baby?”
“Easy out there with you?”
“Uh-huh.”
Jewelle, when she was younger, was a plain Jane kind of girl: basic brown and round-featured, she had a slight figure and no outstanding attributes. But as she aged there got to be something alluring about her.
“Feather tells me that she’s been workin’ part-time for the Japanese people across the street,” she said to me.
“Yes.”
“I told her that maybe she’d like to see what it was like workin’ in an office. I invited her to spend the night and come to work with me in the morning. Is that okay?”
“Sure it is. And you could get some mothering practice in.”
Jewelle kissed me on the cheek. There was a tender spot in our hearts for each other.
“Thanks, Easy,” she said. “Jackson, we should go. I want to make sure that Feather gets to bed on time.”
“I’ll be right in, honey.”
After Jewelle was back in the house I asked, “The baby?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t care. Anything that comes from Jewelle is fine by me.”
“You want me to do what Percy wants?”
“I cain’t tell you what to do, Ease. I just want him off’a Jewelle and things to be back like they was.”