Part One:

The Aftermath

“We may never know why things happen, how or when they will, but we can be assured that nothing happens by chance….”

Beautiful Nightmare:

I wonder … what his last words were… if he screamed …if I was on his mind … if he was crying out for me? Flames are now all around him, painless, yet suffocating. But he can see. Ever clear it is … the beautiful calm in Jordan’s face, the shattering glass, the metal bending inward. His body being thrown into …then through the opening where the windshield was, body strewn on the ground near the mangled metal that was his car … but how did he remain so beautiful?

With a deep inhale, Jericho lifted himself from the bed … heart not pounding, not sweating, not flushed, but almost as if he had been pushed up like mist from clouds onto cool, silk sheets, into a sunrise lit room, accompanied by no one, or nothing but shadows and furniture. This was not the first time …, not the first time he woke up feeling as blue as the sky beyond his window, just above the trees. He had his reasons. Loneliness and the blue he had awakened to had become to him his only companions.

Dreams of something better, he made himself conjure on his way home from Jordan’s funeral, a life—just he and his daughter—devoid all the things that had him here with his life in shambles—and men, most definitely since the only one he ever loved was now forever beyond his reach. Even though it secretly shamed him, and it could have been because of all the pain they seemed to share, but a few times, alongside loneliness, when he lounged, staring through walls, the television, the sky on the way to his car in a parking lot, or the ceiling before he closed his eyes and entered sleep, was the guy in the pink shirt with similar pain and smoky-eyes. And well, as far as he was concerned, he was completely done with his wife Tasha. If it hadn’t been for his daughter, he would have nothing else to say to her. After all the drama, after what his life had become with her, after all he had lost in the process, if it hadn’t been for his daughter Rorrye, he would have been done with Tasha altogether. The reality of it all was he didn’t know how to go on, or if he should. And at times, the blue he awakened to, and the loneliness that now seemed to be his only companion, had almost become comfortable. Other times, tomorrow didn’t really seem to matter.

Reality arrived when he learned Tasha had not lied, that he most definitely wouldn’t be getting his daughter. He had no more reason to be in Atlanta. He had no desire to put himself through the pain or temptation to fuck up Tasha’s sister, Nicole, and her punk-ass Husband, Reggie. The last place he wanted to be was sitting on their couch with his daughter under their judgmental ass eyes trying to connect with her during one of his supervised visits which he was convinced were only supervised to keep him from kidnapping her—however the hell that works. He often wondered how society came up with shit that made as little sense as the thought of someone kidnapping their own child. In a world where men were on Maury everyday denying their children, he couldn’t understand, despite all the drama that had recently gone down between him and his wife, Tasha, why the system was giving him such a hard time.

As the social service rep had put it, “his world was too unstable to insert a child. It wouldn’t be fair,” she said. He was going to argue and go back and forth with her, but he had learned from a similar situations a couple of months back that shit is much easier to explain when you ain’t got shit to explain, so he just cut his eyes at her, got his shit and left. For weeks his world had been an ocean of silence in which not fish but ghost swam … ghost … some that would forever haunt him, forever haunt his restless nights, others that apparently didn’t mind the light because they followed him throughout the day, so the decision to move back to Mississippi wasn’t a hard one.

When he got home from not cursing the social service rep out, in silence and quite without thought he began pulling things out of the closet, then the drawer … off the walls, from under the sinks, out the cabinets. It wasn’t until a beam of light shot through a crack in his window blind and glared in his eye, that he realized night had come and gone before he even noticed. He walked over to the window, peered out into the parking lot when a familiar pain engulfed him and he moved quickly to his bed, where exhaustion and pain lay him down.

A few weeks later …

Jackson, MS

He really had no true plan. Life didn’t seem to require one. Whatever is whatever … at least this is what he tells himself as he walks into the clinic.

He still has his hood on and a cap pulled down over his eyes, still tries to be inconspicuous as he scans the waiting room … nothing jolting right away—no one his age, no one he recognizes. He can exhale. He approaches the reception desk, with his head tilted, eyes hidden from the woman at the desk … reading her mind, as she looks him over, his stomach turning at the judgment he knows she is passing on him thinking, she probably thinking, “damn another good one gone … he probably one a dem DL niggaz. That’s what his nasty ass get …,” thinking Fuck her …. She don’t know me. 

            “Yeah, I have an appointment with Dr. Carpenter.” Jericho tells her.

            “Is this your first appointment with her?” The receptionist asks. She doesn’t look up. Jazmine, Jericho, only willing to look from her mouth down, checks her name tag.

            “Yeah”

            “Oh, ok.” It shows we don’t have a file on you … are you coming—”

            Jericho cuts her off. “Yeah I’m coming from out of town. This my first time here.” He is getting a little agitated, knowing now that he is probably becoming the center of attention, given nothing else is going on in the waiting room, aside from him, the young black man, with the hood and cap on, at the reception desk taking longer than normal.

            “Oh, ok well… give me a minute,” she says. Jericho is about to turn to take a seat. “Do you have insurance?” She asks.

            “Yeah” He reaches for his wallet when she hands him a clipboard.

            “Take this and fill it out while I check on your file.” It doesn’t occur to Jericho until later that he hasn’t sent the files. He stands right at the reception desk and fills out the patient information sheet and hands it right back.

            “I’ll call you when I find out about your files or the doctor is ready to see you, whichever happens first.” Jericho, still looking no further up than her mouth sees a half-smile form. His heart spasms. He doesn’t know how to say it.

            “Uh … you got … you … could you not call my name …? Ya’ll don’t do numbers or nothin’?” he is trying to keep his voice low.

            “No … I’m sorry, we call by last name; we don’t do numbers.” Jericho’s heart is becoming a thrashing in his chest. He says nothing though … moving his eyes from her mouth, to her name tag, to the floor. “I’m sorry she continues.”

            “Is there a problem?” Jericho now hears a male’s voice. Not looking up, he hasn’t seen what is going on behind the reception desk. He doesn’t see the other reception desk workers watching his and the receptionist’s quiet conflict, nor does he see the supervisor—the man who is now talking, approach the desk. Turning quickly to see, but still being careful not to show his face, Jericho looks at the man’s mouth …. His eyes stop. His breathing almost involuntarily slows. He moves his eyes higher to his nose; it too looks familiar, and then the eyes … and yes, they are … they are … the same ones, only no longer red … and still smoky. Immediately he checks the name tag, Adrian Frazier, it reads—not that it means anything to him. It only means he has a name to match the face. Shame swallows him, and he forgets the question he has been asked as he all but races from the waiting room, out of the clinic into the summer heat. Heart throbbing in his chest, he is shocked by the tears threatening to escape his eyes.

By the time he is ready to leave the parking lot, not yet considering how else he will see a doctor and more importantly, get his medicine, his phone rings … the number looks familiar, but doesn’t immediately register. When he finally answers, it is a male’s voice, the same voice that had asked “Is there a problem?” Everything within him says, hang up … hang up …hang up … but he can’t.

            “It’s cool man … don’t leave …” the voice says. “I’m not supposed to do this—be calling you—but come back. Don’t leave.” Silence fills the phones. “Hello …hello ….” More silence. “You there?”

            “Yeah”

            “Come back man … It’s cool. Come back,” Adrian says. More silence.

            “Aight,” Jericho says before he hangs up the phone.

Asa

            At the time, it was the saddest day of Adrian’s life. Though he had tried to prepare himself for it, he couldn’t. It happened in June, the summer before they were supposed to enter high school. He had found out three weeks earlier that his best friend, Asa Columbus, was moving to California. He had met Asa—he would never forget—the first day of Kindergarten. Adrian, who had just moved to Little Rock, had started crying as soon as his mother left him at the door and he walked, alone, into the classroom when shortly thereafter, he was approached by and was soon under the shoulder and arm of a little boy with sandy-brown hair almost identical to his skin and eyes—eyes that soon made him smile. To this day, though he couldn’t remember much else, Asa said to him, “Don’t cry buddy; I’ll be your friend.” And he had, for the next nine years. 

That day gave birth to sleepovers, birthday parties, family trips, Christmas presents, and later the discovery of girls, sex, and brotherhood. In middle school, they referred to each other as “my brother.” For instance, Adrian might say to a girl Asa was supposedly “going with,” whom he saw talking to another boy, “So you tryna play my brother now?” Or Asa might say, “Me and my brother goin’ to the UAPB game this weekend”—referring to one of the many weekend trips he and Adrian took with one or the other’s family. Nearly always, people played along even though it seemed highly unlikely that Adrian, a fair brown, with midnight black hair and smoky, tight eyes could even be distantly related to sunny, sandy colored Asa with eyes as big and bright as the sun.

As children often do, Adrian had never considered life any other way. He had assumed that Asa would always be there, that they would get their driver’s licenses together, tryout for the football team together, run track together, discuss the non-existence of their first-loves together, graduate together, go to college together, be each other’s best men, grow old and barbeque together while their wives sat inside gossiping and their children ran and played in the yard, but dreams of all this died on this cloudy day in June, perhaps, giving birth to other things.

They were men, they both told themselves. Men don’t cry is what they say in their minds, and it is working until Asa walks through Adrian’s bedroom door. Adrian had heard a knock at the front door; heard it open; heard his mother greet Asa; heard Asa’s now equally sandy voice before he heard him coming down the hall. He doesn’t look at Asa when he walks through the door, but he can feel him in the room, and he knows why he is there. The television—a commentator of Sports Center—fills the void of conversation for a while. Natural, cloud-muffled light and shadows lay randomly about the room. Finally, Asa speaks.

            “Well dude … I’m … uhh … we about to go.” Again the commentator fills the silence between them. He notices that Adrian’s face is now turned down toward the floor. The wind rustles the trees out behind Adrian’s house. “Adrian …” he calls out gently. Adrian does not look up. Asa studies him for a while, calls out to him again, “A ….”  He leans as if to see Adrian’s face then approaches him. “Aw man, don’t do me like that.” He pauses briefly. “Get up man.” He pulls lightly at Adrian’s arm. Adrian will not look at him, will not move. “Man don’t do that. You know … you know … I’m a come …,” he stops; can’t lie. “Man don’t … don’t cry.” He pulls Adrian up into his arms, holding-hugging his best friend around his shoulder blades. Adrian continues to look off to the side. They both ignore how they must look. Adrian still will not look him in the eyes. Asa feels a drop on his bare shoulder—he has on a wife-beater. Adrian wipes his cheek with his free hand. There are many things he wants to say, none of which he can find words for; his mouth will not move. “Aw … dude … man, cut that out.” Asa tells him softly, wiping the side of his friend’s face, then his own. They stay this way for a while. “Adrian,” Asa says into the side his friend’s face. Silence … the commentator. “Adrian.”

            “Yea—” Adrian finally answers, but he is interrupted by a knock on the door frame.

            “Asa, your parents are outside.” Adrian’s mother announces, turning to leave then doing a double-take at what she has almost missed at first glance, taking in the sight of the two boys in each other’s arms … and crying? She thinks to herself before continuing back down the hall. Adrian and Asa miss this as they slowly release one another. Adrian still will not look him in the eyes.

            “Aye dude … cut that out, though for real … I ain’t dying or nothin’, and you gon’ always be my lil’ brother … you hear me? You hear me?” Asa asks again, almost as if for confirmation that Adrian understands, as he slowly pirouettes to leave the room, finally catching Adrian’s eyes, as he finally looks up, slowing his turn to hold on to them, then gesturing his arm in “X’s”—right arm over left, then left over right, in front of his chest before double pounding, pushing both fists out together toward Adrian. It is a handshake of sorts, a gesture of endearment they came up with  and had been doing since the sixth grade—before he disappears behind the wall. Asa doesn’t say that he will call, offer to leave his new number—he actually doesn’t know it himself—offer to write Adrian or say that he loves him—though it would be true . He does none of these things, and then he is gone.

Adrian found out the next day that the phone number his family had had for as long as he had known it, had suddenly been changed, so there was no sense in waiting on a call from Asa. And soon thereafter, his mother all but forbade him to check the mail. He didn’t allow himself to entertain why. All he would ever know was that Asa was gone, leaving his world lonely, cold, and bottomless. Of Asa’s whereabouts, he only knew that he went to Long Beach, California, and that perhaps is all he would ever know.

It had been thirteen years since he had seen or heard from Asa when a man on The Price is Right announced that he was from Long Beach, California and this memory fell like a dream back on him. When he realized he was crying, he closed his office door to gather himself before he went out to receive the next patient for his pre-counseling session. After he gathered himself, he headed out to the reception desk when he noticed a hooded guy, who also wore a baseball cap talking with the receptionist. Adrian had been working with the receptionist, Jazmine, for two years now and he knew when she lightly jerked her head the way she was now that something was wrong. Approaching her from behind, he checked the appointment list for the guy’s name. Jericho Diggs, it read. He hesitated slightly. Something seemed familiar about the name.

            “Is there a problem?” Adrian asked, now trying to see under Jericho’s cap, trying to recognize the mouth then nose as Jericho raised his head. The mouth and nose did look familiar, and when Jericho turned and walked briskly toward the door. Adrian knew where he recognized him from.

            “What the hell wrong with him?” Jazmine asked, flicking her long, flipped bang out of her eyes with her long, slightly curled, French-tipped nails.

            “I don’t know,” Adrian said as he headed back for his office and his computer to do something he had never done and definitely wasn’t supposed to do.

Relax

Adrian put down the obituary and shook his head, thinking, the world really is small, envisioning not the guy in the hood and cap, but the one he had seen at the funeral broken with sadness thinking I wonder how he knew Jordan, remembering the sexy ass dude that made him break all his rules and then broke his heart; remembering the pain he lay down with at night after he walked away; remembering the anger that welled up in him at the tears Jordan caused him to shed; remembering … Asa. Thinking he sees something move in his peripheral, makes him snatch his eyes from his daydream and search the room. The kitchen rests in a late afternoon glow; the moving thing had been a bird, now on a branch outside his window. Realizing this, he goes over to turn on his iPod sitting on the cabinet beside the refrigerator. Soon, Sade’s “By Your Side” fills the room and he enters the dining room and takes a seat on the stool thinking I should call him… naw, don’t … you may get in trouble for this… you not supposed to do that … damn it feels good in here… I should have some wine … ok, after you call him … naw, while you call him. Again, he walks back into the kitchen, picks up the obituary, studies Jordan’s face, remembers Jericho, pulls his phone from his pocket, approaches the wine cooler, debates with himself over whether he will have Riesling Relax or Polka Dot, pulls out the Polka Dot, scrolls through his phone, finds Jericho Diggs, debates again with himself over whether he should call, puts the phone down briefly, pulls a wine glass from the bar area above the wine cooler, pours a glass, picks the phone back up, and presses call.

Come and Talk to Me

“Aye dude, man you aight?” Adrian asks.

“Yeah, I’m good.” Jericho growls into his phone before checking the time on the clock beside his bed. 6:43AM, he reads before he looks out of his window, through trees at the sunless sky.

“Cool … cool … did I wake you up?”

“Naw, you good, I need to get up anyway. I need to get up and run by some schools,” Jericho replies.

“Well, aight, I was jus’ calling like I said I would … makin’ sure you were good.”

“I am … I really appreciate it.”

“Fasho man … fasho … well, good luck on the job search. I’ll call you a little later,” Adrian says.

“Fasho,” Jericho replies.

They both smile to themselves as they hang up.

Love is what Jericho had on his mind the entire time. To whom it was directed, he wasn’t absolutely sure, but he couldn’t just keep it to himself. Adrian became to him that something … a possibility—perhaps—the confirmation or beginning of a confirmation, that there was indeed a reason to keep going. After the situation at the clinic, Adrian and Jericho began to talk infrequently on the phone—short conversations always disguised as nothing. The phone calls began with the one Jericho received in the parking lot and continued for weeks until one day Adrian asked him for his address—to check on him—and showed up just as the sun began its descent behind the trees and the sky began its before night time artistry, which unbeknownst to them was a prelude to something more beautiful and, perhaps, equally complicated.

The way it came out, shocked them both. Who knows why considering it had been on both of their minds since the funeral. After climbing the stairs and entering Jericho’s dim apartment, after Jericho turned on the television and they both shuffled randomly through channels and conversation, Adrian said it.

“So … Jordan … how did you … how did you know him?” He asked. And it was the shock or perhaps relief that delayed Jericho’s response. Jericho looked up at Adrian, then away, toward the window. He stayed this way for a while before he finally spoke.

“We grew up together,” he replied. Adrian waited awhile for more before responding.

“Oh, I see.”

“You?” Jericho asked.

“We went to college together … ran track together,” he looked toward Jericho as he finished his statement. “That was my dude,” he added after several seconds of silence.

“Yeah,” Jericho added turning again to look at Adrian who sat on the couch on the opposite end before glancing back out the window. “So ya’ll were real close?” Jericho added in little more than a whisper.

“Yeah …,” Adrian gazed at the floor for a while and seemed to shake his head lightly, “and ya’ll?” Adrian added again turning to look at Jericho, almost as if to check his eyes. At first, Jericho didn’t answer. He stared out the window.

“Yeah … we were,” he answered, exhaling as he rose from the couch and headed into the kitchen. Adrian remained behind staring off at a nearby wall. Shortly thereafter, the clanging of glasses on the counter and ice in the glasses told him that Jericho was making something to drink. When he returned several minutes later with two glasses in his hand, Adrian tried—inconspicuously, he hoped—to search Jericho’s clearly avoiding eyes.

“We should probably talk about something else,” Adrian ended the silence.

“You do drink, don’t you?” Jericho answered. The quiet clang of their drinking filled the room for a while before Jericho spoke again. “I really fucked that situation up,” he added. Taken a bit by surprise, Adrian looked at Jericho, searched for his eyes again, but said nothing. “Really fucked it up …,” Jericho continued. Several seconds later Adrian spoke.

“I’m sure we could all say the same.”

Jericho’s tears were the game changer. Adrian glanced over just as one dripped from Jericho’s chin onto the hardwood floor right before he rose to head back for the kitchen.

Jericho had stood staring into the sink for several minutes; tears dripping from his eyes directly into the bottom before Adrian approached him from behind and slowly pulled him into his arms. What their bodies said was far from sexual. It spoke of a pain that needed no words, and for what seemed like hours, their bodies said, between quiet heaves for air, and tears, everything their mouths would never be able to.

And when they woke up the next morning on the couch very similarly, everything had changed. The problem was the change was beyond their understanding, and it would be a long time before they would be able to understand it enough to even acknowledge it.

Nevertheless, Adrian for the first time in his car, on a nearly empty Lakeland Drive, sun in the beginning of its daily flight, wondered and simultaneously understood why—if Jordan had—given Jericho his love, and Jericho awakening as the door closed, rising only after he heard Adrian’s car leave the parking lot, to lock the door wondered, with a hint of exhilaration, when he would see Adrian again.

He wouldn’t have to wait long. It became almost routine that he would see Adrian at least once a week. As for the phone calls, they continued. One day, a few months later, Adrian asked Jericho what he would be doing over the weekend, and Jericho told him he would be going to visit his daughter. This revelation shocked Adrian and was as much of an “ah-hah” moment as it was confusing. It also showed him how little he knew about Jericho, which led them into a long conversation in which Jericho told him about being married, how his wife was crazy, had shot  him, and how he had eventually gotten arrested for the drama with Tasha’s sister. The story ended with Adrian volunteering—if Jericho didn’t mind—to go along, and drive, if necessary.

Both of them were aware of the obvious distance between them, the unknown air that had them drawn to one another. It was this awareness that comforted them and made it easier to dismiss the distance all together.

Jericho had decided that he wouldn’t mind Adrian’s company on the trip, so when Adrian asked, again, on the Wednesday before Jericho was to leave—during one of the regular phone conversations that had now evolved to possess a level of intimacy that now infrequently veered into comments about Jericho’s daughter, and now encompassed a quiet undertone of disappointment at the result of Jericho’s life—if Jericho wanted him to go, and Jericho said that it would be cool.

#

Jericho has decided to drive. Adrian sits on the passenger side, Usher’s “Lifetime” plays. The air conditioner blowing a smooth cool breeze about the car sets the tone for the conversation.

“What’s on your mind?” Adrian asks, head resting on the seat staring out the window at the dusky sky flying above the open fields. Perhaps it is all of this that opens the door, makes Jericho want to talk.

“Man, for real, I don’t really know …,” Jericho stops and Adrian is about to say something when Jericho continues. “I … sometimes, I don’t know what to do … I wonder if I should even be going out here …. I mean, I know my daughter needs me … I just feel like …” he stops. Adrian is now studying the side of his face. Jericho takes a deep breath. “Man, if I told you everything ….”

“You can,” Adrian softly interjects. Road noise and Usher fill the silence between them. “I would like to know …. It might help anyway—getting everything out.” More road noise, more music fills the space between them.

“For real, man I don’t even know where to start.” The truth is he would like to start with the least painful thing, but his whole life seems like one catastrophe strung together by different situations. And he isn’t trying to be crying again. What he doesn’t know is he already is. Adrian’s hand shocks him as it softly wipes a tear from his cheek.

“I think I know how you feel … believe it or not … I think we’ve all been there before.”

“You always known?” Jericho asks, and the question momentarily confuses Adrian.

“You mean that I liked dudes?”

“Yeah”

“You may not believe me, but no. Never really paid it any mind, never really even mattered.” Jericho looks at him, unable to fathom what he has said. Adrian immediately answers the question in Jericho’s eyes.

“I just love, and I love hard. Sex never really mattered, so whether it was a guy or a girl never mattered. The only difference was whether I loved him or her or not … of course, I didn’t understand this until I was older … but outside of my family, I loved two people, and though I dealt with more females than dudes, they both were dudes, and the love I had for them was beyond physical … and both times my heart got broken.

It seems as if the conversation might be over, when Jericho shocks them both.  

“Was one of them Jordan,” he asks. Adrian found his eyes again, seems to think for a second then answers.

“Yeah …” a few seconds pass. Jericho looks down the highway. “Whoo …” Adrian exhales. He appears to be trying to gather himself.

“I guess we have something in common,” Jericho adds, and Adrian is beginning to run what Jericho has said over in his mind when Jericho’s phone rings. Immediately Jericho’s entire mood changes, sadness replaced with a look of disgust.

“Man, why the hell you still calling me?” Jericho almost yells into the phone, marking the end of the comfort that had made their conversation—his and Adrian’s—possible. “Don’t fuckin’ ca—,” Jericho stops, eyes showing that he is listening.

On the other end of the phone Blu is talking fast as not to be cut off by Jericho.

“Look man, don’t hang up … I know you got a wife and all, and this was what it was between us, but dude, man now I got … now I got this shit and … all I’m asking is that you talk to me .... I apologize for threatening to turn you into the health department, but man—,” Blu is saying, but Jericho hangs up, cutting him off, a storm of thoughts racing in his eyes. A tense silence settles among the music and road noise. Adrian stares out the window wondering, intrigued by all he didn’t know about Jericho, imagining all the days, all the invisible catastrophes that created the damaged stranger who is so near to him and yet simultaneously so far away. Shortly thereafter, sun, beneath the horizon, sky, out before them a darkening blue, Adrian closes his eyes and dreams.

Jericho drives the rest of the way in silence, mind reeling, unable to believe Blu has called him again. Every time he is confronted with Blu, he has to look at what has become his life head-on. Every time, images of the hotel room flash through his mind, he sees the gun, the explosion, feels the pain, remembers getting the news that Tasha was going to jail, that his daughter would be taken until a safe environment was found. His mind would race back to the beginning, back when he first met Jordan and he would watch his life decision by decision become the shambles it is now. He had to face all the pain of losing Jordan, of losing everything that surrounded his fling with Blu. And because of it, he’d rather not speak to or see him again at all. However, and he never admitted this, not even to himself, he did often, intermingled with thoughts of tragedy, find himself lusting over what had lured him in in the first place, and secretly, he knew that if he ran into Blu again, saw him again, and not simply got a call from him, he might, despite everything, give his sexy ass another go.

And this is exactly what he is thinking now, as he switches the music to David Hollister’s “One Woman Man,” turns the air up, lays his head back on the head rest and continues the rest of the way to Atlanta in a daze, watching the sky unveil the stars.

Daddy’s Lil’ Girl

As they get closer to Atlanta, Jericho begins to talk again, prepping Adrian for what is sure to happen when they arrive at Tasha’s sister’s house, catching him up on everything he feels he will need to know when they get there. Adrian looks at him as if to make it clear he is listening. Carl Thomas’s “Summer Rain” plays in the background. It is now dark and the awkwardness of their earlier conversation has long since dissipated. They are on the outskirts of Atlanta resting in the flickering glow of head, tail and highway lights imagining all the things about each other they cannot see.

            When Nicole opens the door, Adrian is standing off behind Jericho, who is looking and listening past her, for his daughter.

            “Well, hello to you too,” She says, “Rorrye!” she yells over her shoulder into the house. Jericho moves past her into the house. Nicole looks Adrian over as if to determine who he is—not that she cares to know—when Adrian introduces himself. It’s a warm cloudy day, one of those days when the sky seems ready to break out in tears at any moment, and as if in prelude, a breeze begins when he opens his mouth to speak.

            “Hi, my name’s Adrian,” he nods his head respectfully as he steps forward and offers her his hand. She only moves her eyes toward it then back to his eyes as if to see if he is serious. “O ... kay, well nice to meet you,” Adrian says smiling, withdrawing his hand as she turns to enter the house. It doesn’t take long for the drama that Jericho anticipates to happen. No sooner than Adrian makes it back to the car does he hear the creak of the glass door and the voice that refused to speak to him before.

            “Where you takin’ her,” Nicole asks as if she were talking to a child going outside without permission. Jericho looks back into the house, as if to say “are you serious?”  Or “you couldn’t be talking to me,” then continues toward the porch steps. “Uh-uhn … don’t you just be taking her and don—.” Jericho sits on the steps with his daughter, Rorrye, never turning back, as if this gesture is her answer. “Now, you can’t take her nowhere … you know—,” she begins, but Jericho cuts her off.

            “Look!” Jericho shouts but then lowers his voice, “This is my damn … my daughter. I know what the agreement says, and we not about to do this today …. We not about to do this right now.

            “Well, I was just making sure you know … and you not gon’ be hollerin’ at me. Your daughter right there,” Nicole adds as if to get the last word. “…the hell you talkin’ to,” she continues almost under her breath.  And he lets her have it because he has come too far to ruin it arguing with her ass.  Jericho turns his attention to his daughter, and the awkwardness arrives, the one he has dreaded all the way to Atlanta, not knowing what to say to the daughter he never sees, who is caught up in the middle of all this, who won’t remember anything when she is older but how few memories of him she has. He is thinking of this, and what he and she can talk about, unaware that Nicole has taken the drama inside the house and now her husband, who has been waiting on a reason to check Jericho’s sissy, AIDS spreading ass anyway, comes outside.

            “And I’m not gonna have no nigga disrespectin’ my wife,” he says in passing as he heads to his car with no intentions—to get anything or do anything—other than to say what he has said. Adrian, standing beside Jericho’s car nods perhaps habitually at Reggie, who looks at him as if to ask “and who the hell are you,” as he passes him. Adrian smiles to himself seeing in living color what Jericho has already forewarned him of. And it only gets worse.

            “Can I help you?” the voice catches him off guard, in the middle his of trance. And when Adrian turns to face it, Reggie asks again, “Can I help you?” And Adrian knows this guy knows that he is with Jericho, and simultaneously can’t believe that he is this determined to start a confrontation. So, as if to answer, he calls out to Jericho.

            “J!” he yells and moves back down the sidewalk toward him. “Let me hold the keys—” he begins, but is cut off both by Reggie’s words and his hand on his shoulder.

            “Hold up playboy, Can I help you? Don’t just be rolling up in my yard. I don’t even know you!”

            “Aw, here we go,” Jericho says under his breath, lightly squeezing his daughter’s hand knowing that his quality time that never really began is about to be over. Adrian hears Reggie, notices the hand on his shoulder, but is focused on Jericho and the keys since he has heard all about these people and has learned from experience that the best way to handle people like these is to not give them what they want because he knows that though this dude is pretending he wants him to leave, what he really wants is Adrian to turn around and give him a reason to act a fool.   

“Aye, boy, you hear me!” Reggie is persistent.

            “Yeah man, he hear you,” Jericho interjects, “and I can’t believe you trying to do this in front of my daughter … and they say I’m unfit … crazy,” Jericho says reaching for his keys.

            “Who crazy?” Nicole re-inserts herself into the conversation—and Jericho wasn’t even aware the she was even back outside—and it is all very reminiscent of a Tasha episode, confirming for him, as bad as he hates it, that is time to go. So, almost instinctually he kisses his daughter on her forehead, whispers ‘I love you” in her ear—really wanting to tell her that if it’s the last thing he does, he will come rescue her from this hell … and have her all to himself—sends her inside, waits for her to close the door, all while ignoring everyone around him. Then after she is gone, determined to be the bigger man, he nods Adrian toward the car, and walks past Reggie to it. The wordless conversation he and Adrian’s have with their eyes is a safe haven for him and all is well until ….

            “That’s right … take yo’ ol’ faggot ass on,” Reggie says, and Jericho isn’t even certain it is intended for him to hear. Nevertheless, it sets him ablaze.

            “Muthafucka, what you say?” Jericho turns, face curled with tension, staring at and moving toward Reggie, with a “muthafucka-I’ll-kill-yo’-ass look in his eyes, as Adrian is now rushing around the side of the car to restrain him. And as Adrian has expected, this is all Reggie ever wanted because Reggie only responds with a mere, “you better take yo’ ass on,” in return, never even turning to see that Jericho is approaching as he heads toward his front door.

            “Come on man,” Adrian now has Jericho around his chest from behind and is talking over his shoulder into his ear.

            “Hell naw, man. I drove five hours. This bitch start shit soon as I get out the car. This muthafucka pullin’ this bullshit in front of my daughter, and I don’t even get three minutes with her … some bullshit happens every time I come here!”  Jericho is breathing hard and Adrian, still restraining him, is trying to be soothing.

            “I know man, I know man, but let’s go. Let’s go.” He has learned this too over time. Emotions are contagious and he needs Jericho to calm down. “Cool it down bae—,” and his words stop him momentarily; they stop Jericho, too. He can tell because though his breathing is still heavy, his words have stopped. “Let’s go man, let’s ride. And as the door of the house is now closed, both Reggie and Nicole inside—mission accomplished, perhaps—they leave.

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