Underground Airlines(46)

“Yeah. No shit, baby. Everybody come here need help. Everybody in the world need some kinda help, right? Ain’t that right, Just-a-Friend?”

For once Jim Dirkson and I were all synced up, my alias and I equally perplexed. I smiled carefully for both of us. “That’s right.”

“Question being for you, then, okay, what kind of help you need? I’m looking at you, pretty white girl. Pretty white girl don’t come downtown to get something up her nose.” Martha nodded, trembling a little, her hands fussing at the hair at the nape of her neck. “Pretty white girl don’t come downtown to get something in her arm. Sure as f*ck don’t need passing papers. Don’t need *. Or…” She raised her eyebrows, and Martha shook her head quickly. “No. So pretty white girl ain’t here to get f*cked or get high or get free. So what she need?”

I wished I knew Martha well enough to take her hand; to pat her knee reassuringly under the table. I couldn’t do it—I didn’t really know her at all was the thing. I was a passenger.

“It’s gotta be money that baby needs. Right, boys?” The Walker brothers nodded in unison, right on cue. It was all performance; this was part of the performance, every time. “So the question is—how much money does baby need?”

Martha placed her hands flat on the table, to steady herself. Past her, out the window, I caught a glimpse of movement—the cop car was rolling past again, slow lights flashing.

“Twenty-nine thousand, five hundred.”

Mama’s thin-line eyebrows arched higher. “Twenty-nine thousand, five hundred dollars?”

Martha nodded, the tiniest mouse motion of a nod. Mama raised her voice, addressed the boys like they were a studio audience. “Twenty-nine thousand, five hundred. Can you all believe that?”

They could not; they shook their heads in shared astonishment, real slow, back and forth. I couldn’t quite believe it, either. I tilted my head to one side, looking with fresh eyes at this girl—this Martha, or Wanda, or whatever her name might have been. Mama leaned back and pulled out a new long Camel.

“Twenty-nine thousand, five hundred,” she said, lighting her cigarette. “That number is very—what is the word I want, Elton?”

“Specific,” said Elton through a mouthful of smoke. Elton was the one with the knocked teeth.

“That’s a lot of dollars.” Mama looked at me. “Ain’t that a lot of dollars, Just-a-Friend?”

“Yes,” I said. “I guess so.”

“Question being, baby—you white. What about you get a job?”

“Well, I…” Martha looked down, then away, pained. “I’m working on it. I was actually just at this job fair thing, at the convention center, that’s what I was doing all week…” She looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded, although of course I had no idea what she’d been doing all week. Of course I knew nothing about her. “I’m trained as a medical assistant.”

“Medical assistant.” Mama shook her head and smoked and clucked.

“Yeah. And—and a couple other things. I work. I do. I have money. It’s just—not enough. I have my son, you know. I have bills. I can’t hardly save nothing.”

“Times is tough,” said Mama Walker, waving faintly at the abandoned house visible through the kitchen window. “Times is real tough. And we still haven’t heard what you need it for, anyway, this very specific twenty-nine thousand, five hundred dollars.”

Martha answered right away. “I can’t tell you.”

“You can’t tell me?” Mama Walker’s eyes glittered. “She can’t tell me! Marvin, baby, you hear that? It’s a secret!”

“Look—come on, ma’am. I mean, Mrs. Walker.” Martha steeled herself, looked the older woman straight in the eye. “Is it going to be possible to borrow the money or not? It doesn’t have to be the whole twenty-nine five, okay? Whatever you can do, I will take. And I can pay it back. With interest.”

“Goddamn right you will!” said Mama Walker. She stood up, and a long circle of ash fell from her smoke down to the table. “Obviously you would f*cking pay interest. This isn’t f*cking Goodwill. I’m not running some charity shop for desperate white girls.”

“Sorry,” said Martha. “Sorry.” More apologizing. I had known this girl Martha for three days and all I’d seen her do is say she was sorry. Abashed before fussy white men and flinty black women alike.

“All right, well, listen, baby,” said Mama Walker, and Martha smiled hopefully, but it was over. Mama wasn’t sitting down again. The boys had shifted their weight. There was a change in temperature, and I knew what it was—I had sat in rooms like this: I had observed negotiations. Gun runners, bent cops, border bribers, slave traders, snatchers. I could tell a no-go when I was sitting with one at the table.

“Listen to me very carefully: when I give out money, I give it on return. I give it on terms.”

“I know,” said Martha. “I said—”

“I know—you’re going to pay it back with interest. Well, how I guarantee that, baby? You won’t tell me what you want it for; I barely know how I know you. You come in here, a black boyfriend, a black son, like I might get mixed up, start thinking you something you not. Like I’m gonna trust you then.”