When No One Is Watching(44)

I want to ask her if she’s tangled up in something that would bring a guy like that to her door, but I’m pretty sure she’d say it’s none of my business. And she’d be right.

The other thing I know, apart from criminal shit, is that trying to save women from things that they didn’t ask me to is a recipe for disaster. We’re just two neighbors having breakfast and working on a project, and the project isn’t “Saving Sydney.”

“Man, I haven’t been to church in forever,” I say, trying to pull her out of wherever her head went in the half hour she was in her apartment, which is as close as I’ll allow myself to being her white knight.

We didn’t go to church much when I was young; we lived in Greenville for a year and my mom dated a deacon at a Baptist church in some attempt at finding religion. Lou used to say Jesus forgives all. He kicked us out when I asked the Sunday school teacher why Jesus would forgive Lou for hitting my mom instead of just making him stop it if he really was so powerful.

“What about you? Are you religious?” I ask when Sydney glances at her phone again.

“I used to be,” she says. “It’s a lot of suspension of disbelief, though, and the idea of someone watching my every move creeps me out, whether it’s Santa or Jesus. I guess I’m agnostic now.”

“Hedging your bets.”

“It’s mostly because my mo—” She stops that sentence like a bird running into a clean glass window. “Because it seems like the devil is real with everything going on in my life, so there has to be a God, too. Divine physics, or something.”

I smile and wipe my fingers on my napkin, then pick up the camera beside me on the leather booth seat, taking a shot through the window of the church across the street with the first three letters of the café’s name, Godfrey’s, in the frame. I flip the screen toward Sydney, and she smiles a bit.

“Clever.” She sips the dregs of her coffee. My cup has been empty for a while, but she’s one of those people who seems to always forget her coffee is there so it’s cold by the time she finishes it. Her index fingernail taps on the white ceramic mug. “Are you still applying for jobs?”

I put my camera down carefully. “Why do you ask?”

She lifts one shoulder. “Because you stay getting in my business, Mr. Twenty Questions, so now I’m gonna get in yours.”

“Divine physics?” I ask.

“Tit for tat,” she replies. “Also, I’m nosy. What is your deal?”

“My deal is—” I catch the waiter’s eye and he comes over to refill my coffee, glancing back and forth between me and Sydney as if wondering what a schmuck like me is doing with her. I take my time adding the heavy cream and sugar to the strong drip brew. “My deal is that I’m currently unemployable.”

She stares as I sip and I hold her gaze, figuring out my next move.

She places both elbows on the table, leans forward, and props her head on her hands. “Unemployable?”

I’m buffeted between the worry that I’ve said too much and the nihilistic urge to say more, like the compulsion to drive off a cliff when there’s no guardrail.

Right now, absolutely no one knows me. My mom never did. Kim doesn’t. My dad tried to but dragged me out of a disorganized fucked-up life with my mom to jam me into his also-fucked-up-but-more-organized situation.

I lean toward Sydney, deciding to at least sit down on the edge of the proverbial cliff and let my legs dangle.

“I . . . am a liar.”

That’s all I give her for now.

Her expression remains the same except for her eyes. Some of the brightness goes out of them, and even though she’s still leaning forward, she may as well have jumped backward across the restaurant.

“Word? How so?”

I clear my throat. “Kim comes from money. I don’t.”

She tilts her head. “Ohhh, so this is a wrong-side-of-the-tracks romance? Bad boy lusting after the rich chick? I’ve seen that Lifetime movie.”

I know from vegging out with my mom that Lifetime movies don’t usually have happy endings, and I wonder if Sydney knows that, too.

“She pursued me,” I correct. “We met at this local dive bar. I was there because it was all I could afford. She was there because she was slumming.”

“Okay,” she says.

“I fell hard, but then I kept thinking about her having all this money and me having none. And I just wanted to impress her. To feel like I was worthy, you know? She went to an Ivy League school. I have a GED.”

I pick up my water glass to take a sip.

“Theo . . .” Sydney smiles warmly at me. “This is not Black mammy confessional. I’m not gonna ‘oh honey’ you and tell you you’re good enough and smart enough. Get to the point.”

My bark of surprised laughter makes the swallow of water go down the wrong tube and I cough-laugh until my eyes water. “Right. Yeah. I doctored my résumé.”

Her brows rise, and I plow ahead.

“Suddenly, I’d graduated from college—a good school, but not so good that I’d stand out. I doctored my work history, too, paid some guys I used to work with to be my references—for much better jobs—if the company bothered to call.”

“Did they?” she asks, and I feel an actual physical pleasure, like taking a huge shit when I’ve been constipated for days, when I shake my head.