Pieces of You

COUP DE CRACE (Spring, 2001)

 Richmond Walker felt that his life had been derailed from greatness; he had inadvertently fallen from the ring into a loveless marriage and an unexpectedly large inheritance that landed him here, at the wheel of a Benz, with a nine-year old son in the backseat reading an inconsequential novel about a woman's dinner party.

"That book is garbage," he said.

Jacob Walker looked up from his book, his thick-rimmed glasses hanging precariously against a short noodle of a nose. He was wearing his dull-gray prep-school uniform, as his father had prescribed. The insignia on the breast pocket, a shield with the school's motto—Sine Timore, Aut Favore—was exactly half the span of his chest.

"Hemingway. Now there's a writer," Richmond continued. "And a boxer, like I was. Your teacher doesn't like him, does she?"

Jacob closed the book, placed it neatly on his lap, and turned to face out the window. He hadn't seen the outside world for the entire ride, and now, as the car turned on to Malcolm X Boulevard, Jacob felt the roots of his hair dig like a thousand pins into his scalp.

"Is this where Uncle Frank lives?" he asked, desperately gripping Mrs. Dalloway with frail, straw-like fingers.

The car stopped abruptly at an ill-lit sidewalk, a line of broken-down shops stretching into the darkness ahead of them. Bright, neon Closed signs danced like giant fireflies before Jacob's eyes.

Richmond fixed his silver cufflinks, picked off a dot of lint from his tux, and turned smiling, to face his son, shriveled against the black leather seat.

"Your mother's incessant socializing has forced this upon us," he said, noting the pleasantness of his own authoritative tone. "Damn her for making me attend these silly, inconsequential parties."

Jacob nodded, fear colliding with awe and confusion. He searchingly scanned the world outside, hearing the hollow symphony of the Harlem street—low voices and distant engines—scratching gently against the glass wall that protected him.

"No, father," he mumbled. "Please."

"Look at you," Richmond mocked, almost yelling, "Fearful of a challenge. You, a prizefighter's son?"

"Please."

"I'll be back to pick you up in exactly two hours. You have your blazer on so you won't freeze to death."

An aged Black man, with lavers of fish-scales for a face, knocked at Jacob's window with a soup can. His bloodshot eyes fluttered like searchlights around the elegant interior of the car.

"Father, please," Jacob muttered, desperately, shrinking away from the man at the window.

"You're not scared of being alone, are you? Please don't tell me you're scared of being independent. Answer me, Jacob. Are you scared of being alone on the street for two fuckin' hours?"

"Please let me go with you."

Richmond leaned over and opened the door for his son. Then, with the back of his hand, he slapped Jacob's face with a rapid snap, knocking his glasses onto the curb. His son's cheek turned blood red, like a hot coal.

The old man outside took a few steps back and waited expectantly, tapping his can with a finger.

***

Valerie Walker carried her beauty as a soldier carries a medic kit, concealing a tiny tube of perfume between her thigh and elastic grip of her stockings. Her life had been a relay of obsessions: weight-loss ran through her high-school years, breast enlargements through college, until, recently, the baton was passed to intoxicating scents. She feared odors to the point that, when she would flip through the Times of the New Yorker, she shuddered at words like "odious" or "ode".