either to them or to herself. She had been leaning toward the window. Her face was close enough to the glass that her breath clouded the surface. Suddenly a cement-like certainty seized her. There was no way she could get through that door. At least it seemed like they hadn’t seen her, she thought. But she knew that she didn’t care what they’d seen. She didn’t know what to do.
A new note sounded a new phrase from above the alley. Ndiya saw herself turn away from Maurice’s birthday party and enter the bar next door. She’d leave the bar after half of an Elton John song and two drinks. “Two Blue Labels, please, neat,” she heard herself say.
She’d said it immediately upon reaching the bar, without knowing why or waiting for the barman to approach. She didn’t realize that she’d repeated verbatim what Shame said seconds after the thing with Malik’s house-arrest bracelet. So, we could say she called him up. In the space of about thirty seconds, she downed the brown contents of both tiny glasses, thinking the liquor was too soft to be considered liquid. Then she looked in disbelief at the bill, eighty dollars? Without a pause she placed five new twenty-dollar bills in the black leather folder and left. The price of “whatever the hell Blue Label was” echoed around. It contended with what little she’d assumed she’d known about Shame. International laborer in some local 269 or something? Joycelan Steel-something-something? What was that?
Then she thought, “And here I am soaking wet, sitting on this bench with a little boy in my lap and Shame’s whole block’s high? My whole life’s high?”
Before she could turn toward the southbound bus stop in her memory, the music faded away and a new note punched through the air over the alley. The note brought the scene from date number two to her eyes like the whole thing was a movie on a screen in the alley playing for everyone to see. It wasn’t really in her eyes, of course. It was worse—the physical scene was on the loose in her body:
Shame on his cycle pulling up to the opposite curb. He waves and takes off his helmet, staring at her. She sees herself nod. His U-turn through traffic. The ride. Helmet smell. Sun on scalp. The drinks in her arms and pools of heat in both heels. Song by a long-lost, one-hit group, Surface, in her head. “Happy.” Shame’s toe popping the bike into higher pitches around corners and the pop into a low growl when the road was straight. Oh, you coming right over? Beautiful, baby. Diagonal park. Worn boot heel. Kickstand down exactly onto a small square of wood nailed into the gutter.
Then stoop.
Inside, steps.
The sound of twilight joins the memory wave to the present. Shame’s back on the piano stool. Drowning.
This music. The same music she’s hearing now.
Phrases, broken circles. Splices. Zoom lens. Her fingers strum Shame’s ribs beneath his extended arms while he plays. Four up, four down. A scar-notch in his skin, two fingers wide on left rib number three. Shame plays. The Surface song in her head, Only you can make me.… The voice in her head, just then, going under, Ndiya has left the building … far below the surface. The stool spins. He turns around but the music continues. Shame’s hand Shame’s hand on Shame’s hand on her back. Up under her shirt. Her sudden panic that he’ll touch the scars. That he’ll stop. That he won’t. That he’ll ask. That he won’t. How he both does and doesn’t. The music doesn’t pause, moves from the past to the present and back. Notes fall and stick to her like an April blizzard blown through a fire escape. Her head turns toward the ceiling. The open Y of his thighs narrows against her legs. Her body overhead. The room in her mouth with a voice of its own.
She woke up on the floor. Midway to the bathroom, she paused on tiptoes and turned back to look. Shame laid out immobile on the rug like a crime scene. After she nearly stepped on it barefoot and a stack of books tumbled over, she slammed a thick hardback volume down on a huge, glossy, black spider. The spider hadn’t tried to run. Ndiya had a moment’s sense that it may have turned toward her just before the book smashed to the floor. She stood up and read the title of the weapon from above: Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis. She left the thick tome there on the floor, covering the murder.
■
Ndiya forced her eyes open as the shot hit the net and bright rain sparkled out from the tinsel and sequins. Melvin raised both hands and said,
–Boo-ya!
Lucious Christopher:
–Lee Williams, the ever-if-only-from-time-to-time-sermon-iferous, I say that’ll be legal tender the equivalent of one American quarter, or do I put it on your tab?
And Lee Williams stood up and stretched his back:
–Let it ride.
The players chanted “On and on and on and on.” The ones against the wall raised up their hands and called out, “Like a—say what?!” And the chant repeated. They all began to move toward the other end of the alley. The three against the wall got up and joined them as they walked south toward Sixty-Fourth Street. Ndiya saw that it was the young woman’s arm they had been staring at on the side of the court. As they walked away, the woman held it out in front of her and each player bowed and kissed the underside of her forearm. Ndiya noticed that the extended arm was multiple shades lighter than the woman’s other arm.
At least that’s what it looked like to her and, “At this point, why not?” she thought. Melvin looked up at Ndiya:
–Could you take me back to Nana, now?
Tingling in the music, Ndiya realized that most of her was still back on date number two. She shook her head to get Shame’s fingers off her spine and replied,
–Ah, yes, let’s go.
Though she had no idea where to go. She stood up to go somewhere. Lucious Christopher said,
–If you can’t find Mrs. Clara, just take Melvin up to Shame’s with you, Ndiya Grayson. We’ll tell the old bird to come get him when we see her but she’ll probably check there first herself.
Ndiya, minding, nodded in silent disbelief.
As she stood up with Melvin’s hand in hers, she felt like she’d been off the bus and on that bench for hours if not days, maybe years. But she knew it hadn’t been long because her shoes and skirt were still soaked. And it was still twilight. She knew very well that all of this was crazy: “Dripping wet, the whole damned neighborhood’s high, Melvin, Mrs. Clara, Lucious Christopher, and Lee Williams who seemed to know where I am going, to say nothing of where I’ve been, better than I do?” She knew it was crazy somewhere, but it didn’t feel crazy here which, she knew, too, made it all the crazier. Melvin looked up to her and said,
–I’ll take you to Shame’s house.
With a security wall of hard-won tricks and tactical anger beginning to fail and leaving a person she barely knew exposed, Ndiya walked with Melvin toward 6329. If nothing else, she knew it was within easy earshot, whatever that meant. At the very least, she thought, it meant Shame lived nearby.
■
When she turned toward whatever was nearby, Ndiya encountered a memory that had been following her around for days. On the morning one week after the house-arrest night, she sat alone at her sublet’s drop-leaf kitchen table with a bowl of oatmeal. She replayed the triangle of Shame’s reaction to Malik’s busted bracelet. And before that, there they were in the street outside the party on the Fourth:
–Where do you want to meet?
–I don’t know, neutral corners? OK?
–Fair enough; I know just the place.
She sat at the kitchen table, crossed her legs, and felt herself slip as she corralled the last pool of melted butter and brown sugar into her final lump of oatmeal.
She couldn’t decide. So she paused with the bowl in her left hand, elbow on the table, the spoon held in her right. She uncrossed and reverse-crossed her legs and felt herself, again, as her legs moved over each other into the