Black Buck(88)

She looked at the bill, then up at the waiter, and said, with a straight face, “We’re not paying this.”

The waiter let out a theatrical gasp like everyone does at the end of a mystery movie when you find out it was the butler who murdered the queen. “Is there an issue?” he asked.

“The food wasn’t good,” Rose said, holding his stare.

“But, madam, you already ate the food. Every last bit of it. Plus, all of the champagne is gone. How can you expect not to pay?”

“It—DICK!” Brian shouted, not even attempting to cover his mouth. “It wasn’t good. It got my friend sick,” he said, pointing at Ellen.

Ellen, who was now full on crying, held a napkin to her mouth, nodding.

“?’N’ your atmosphere’s racist,” Jake added, leaning back in his chair, gesturing toward the portraits of various white men and women on the walls. “Where the Black folk at?”

The waiter, seeing that I was the best dressed of the group, shot a terrified, pleading look of desperation my way. I shrugged.

“I see.” He straightened out his shirt before retrieving the bill. “If you’re not going to pay, then I’ll have to get the host.”

The waiter power walked toward the host, who swung his head at us, baring cigarette-stained teeth. Red-faced, he whispered into an earpiece.

Three oversize goons in suits started toward the table, getting closer with each passing second.

“What do we do, what do we do, what do we do?” Brian asked, sweat pouring from his face.

“The elevators!” Rose shouted.

We each took off in different directions, causing the three bouncers to separate. Jake knocked one over on his ass, and two pale-faced, powdered-donut-looking women shouted as he crashed into their table, sending their trout into the air like it was jumping for joy.

Rose, with her dirty boots, leapt from table to table, as if she were making her way across a rocky river. Ellen blended in with the crowd, acting like she was talking with various similarly skinned patrons, stealthily making her way out of the sliding glass doors untouched.

They were all in the elevator by the time I got there, and Rose slammed the DOOR CLOSE button with her fist. Just like in every action movie, the doors closed right when the three bruisers showed up.

“Tha’s what it is!” Jake screamed, wrapping his large arms around the four of us. But after exiting the elevator, we realized that someone was missing. Brian.

“I thought he was right behind us,” I said, watching subsequent elevators arrive without Brian.

“Dang,” Jake said. “What now?”

I took a deep breath and let it out. This wasn’t supposed to happen. “Everyone go home. I’ll wait here for him and talk to the cops. It’ll be fine.”

I returned all of their wallets and everyone except Rose left. “You should leave,” I said, looking back at the elevators, anxiously waiting. “I can give you some money for a cab or something.”

“I’m okay.”

“Where do you live, anyway?”

“Here and there,” she said, avoiding eye contact.

“Here and there? C’mon, Rose. You force your way into my life, I go along with it, and that’s all you’re going to give me? ‘Here and there’?”

She plopped down on the floor and started to play with her shoelaces. “Why are you so fucking nosy?”

“Because I don’t even know you, and I’m investing my time in you.”

She laughed and looked up at me, her eyes shining like bubbles in sunlight. “Your precious time,” she spat. “I’m fucking homeless. Is that what you want to hear? How I spend some nights in a shelter, others with friends, playing a big game of musical chairs around the city hoping I always land on my feet?”

What the fuck? I thought, unsure if it was a joke, just another way for her to press my buttons. But it’d be some cruel joke. I knelt down beside her. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t. No one knows, and I like keeping it that way. I never want to be the girl people pity. Just another sad Black girl in need of saving.”

It was crazy to see how she looked then, on the floor of the Time Warner Center, hands tangled in dirty shoelaces, eyes heavy with pain. This wasn’t her typical tough self.

“Come on.” I extended a hand to her. “You’ll come home with me.”

“Like I said, I don’t want your pity.”

“It’s not pity; it’s just a place to stay. Once you get a job, you’ll be making a ton of money in no time and can move out.”

“What about Brian?”

“He’ll be fine,” I said, unsure. “He probably left another way. I’ll call him tomorrow, and if things somehow didn’t work out, I’ll fix it. I promise.”

“No. I’m not leaving Brian.”

I kept my hand out. “Rose, he will be fine. Trust me on this. Brian’s a lot tougher than you think.”

She stared at my hand for a few seconds and eventually took it. “Fine. Maybe you’re right.”

We walked outside and grabbed a cab. As she leaned her head against the window, the lights of New York City traveling across her face like faded spotlights, I turned to her, and asked, “What do you want out of life, Rose? Aside from money?”