Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

The place was cold and empty. The linoleum floor had been picked up in places and was soiled in huge spots, which had lain under built-in units, now removed. Bug piled through the cabinets in the kitchen till she found the balloon. Someone had left it there, hours before. Probably Hardcore. They both stood looking at it in her hand. About half a pound of straight coke in the condom, Nile figured. Ten years, minimum mandatory.

'Where do I carry it?'

'Didn't he tell you nothin? You got to put it where they ain gone feel. Them suckers shake you down.' 'Barely.'

'Yeah, man, you cain't be gettin cracked with this shit.' ‘I know that.' He actually laughed at that point 'Got to put it where they ain gone feel.' 'Which is where, man?'

Lovinia got shy. Her eyes shot away like fish in water.

'Oh man,' she said, 'how come I got do everything?' She had the tape and some extra condoms in her pocket. She laid them down on a small wooden table in the kitchen, beside the package. 'This got to go in you little booty. Okay?'

‘No.'

'Uh-huh. Don't you be sayin no. Here.' 'I'll do it. That's okay.'

'Come on, man. I gone do it. Just that damn Hardcore get me sometime. Okay, boy. Come on.' 'Come on, what?'

'Leave down you damn pants, man.' 'Jesus.'

She took the balloon and massaged it. She took it in her two thin hands, working on it with her long fingers, squeezing it out. Just that was enough to get him started.

'Come on, dude. Get wit' it.'

He loosened his belt. He worked the pants down his thighs. She got behind him and pulled the elastic on his briefs down herself.

Wait a minute, he thought. Wait a minute. He remembered then he had told Hardcore he just wanted to see. But there was nothing to say now. Bug had told him that on the way over. Core 'd be ripping her if Nile didn't go ahead.

'Okay now, bend you over. Thass right. Come on. Put you hands on you cheeks. Okay.' Her fingers were chill and startling, but she started laughing. 'You know, I don't think I ever seed a white one. Like for-real and all.'

'Really?'

'Nn-uh. Weird, you know. Man, you pale, man. Be kind of frightnz'n.'

'Yeah, well, that's nice,' he said.

'Oh, you know, you okay.' She touched him soothingly. 'Only I ain used to it is all. You seed a black girl?'

'Yeah.' He wasn't lying. In high school, there was one girl.

'What her name? Now hold 'em apart. Go right there.' She ran her fingernail along. 'Now it go like that. Now you cain 't put no tape over it, or it tear and burstes itself apart. You get that powder over that interview room, man, that's big-time shit. So you put some threads and we tape over them threads. Okay?' She told him what he would have to do, who he'd be going to see. Core had planned it all. 'So you been gettin busy wit some black chick, huh? You think that's right, huh? Black is best, huh?'

It hadn't come to that, but he didn't say so now. She had her cool, thin fingers all over. She was playing, he knew it, she did too, and he started getting hard. Shit, he thought, shit. But something told him. He really had no will to stop it. His briefs were still up in front, but he was sure she'd notice.

'So you was likin that chick, huh?' She rubbed his ass with both hands. He had no idea what she thought she was doing.

'It was a long time ago.'

'Cain't barely 'member, huh?'

'Man, you 're playin me.'

'You don't seem to mind none.' She said it and he didn't say anything. 'Yeah, you don't seem to mind.' She came around the side, looked down, and then, shy as she was, dared his eyes. 'What you got there? What you hidin?' She poked it, and he flinched. She laughed, laughed. ‘I knowed you be likin me.'

He didn't move. He didn't say anything either.

'You think I ain never seen that? You don't wanna know what I seen. I seen that.' She skirted her hand inside his briefs. 'You gettin scared now?' She laughed. She touched him. Just touched and drew her hand back, and laughed some more. 'Ain you got nothin to say?'

He was up now, stiff as steel.

'Don't that feel good?' she asked.

'Yes.'

They both looked, her hand wrapped all around him.

She sucked. That had never happened to Nile. That had never happened. She went around him in that cold apartment and took him in her mouth and dug her hands into his backside and pushed him back and forth the first few times. It didn't take long for him to be done. She went to one of the back rooms and spat.

'Some girls say it make you sick. You think?'

There was the virus, but he was clean. All county employees got screened each year.

'I don't think so. I learned something about it. Health class or something. I don't think it makes you sick.'

Health class. She loved that.

'Don't say nothin to none of them,' she said when she reached the door. 'God, no.'

Then she smiled. ‘I knowed you be likin me.'

After that, it happened each week. He brought the dope in; the second or third time, he started bringing money out. Core handed him half back and Nile returned it. 'Oh, man,' said Core with disgust. He stuffed it into the pockets of Nile's trousers. 'Damn, man. You too much,' he said. Nile kept the money in a carton in his closet. He figured he'd send it to Michael sometime. Or buy something for Bug.

Sometimes Lovinia and he fucked. There was a mattress there and Bug rode him. She had tiny little pouchy breasts and her ribs showed. She was so thin it was frightening. There never seemed to be much in it for her. She was working. He was a man and this was what men wanted. One thing Bug knew about was the world. She liked it when he said it felt good. She liked it when he said stuff afterwards. There were a hundred things Nile wanted to ask her. Did Hardcore know? But Nile was pretty sure he didn't. Was it because he was white? But that was crude. Was it because he was nice? Which is what she was always saying. Had she ever done it for money? Had she done this for Hardcore?

'Ain you gone touch me?' she asked him the next time, once they were in the apartment.

He wanted to ask her a hundred things. But nothing so much as this: What does it mean to you? Do you think about me all the time, the way I think of you? Do you feel your skin surge, do your hips and heart ache? What does it mean to you?

He never really knew.

'Dang,' Eddgar said. He stood by the refrigerator, a hand planted on his forehead. This was how Eddgar spoke in the privacy of his home, when Nile was around, as if Nile were still three years old. Imagine a person, a human being, ripping out a 'Dang' like he was Gomer Pyle or something. At moments, his father could do things – sniffle, pick his teeth, scratch – display a sign he was just as fucking dumb as everybody else, and Nile would hate him worse than any other person in his life. Because he couldn't get past him, couldn't get away. Sometimes, Nile felt like some poor yapping mutt, a dog in the yard running this way and that, barking at you, charging in your direction, and never remembering till he was jerked back so powerfully his forepaws left the lawn, never recalling, Hey, I'm tied to this goddamn stake in the ground. That was Nile. That was Eddgar. ‘I keep forgetting about this,' Eddgar said. He was holding the wad of notes he carried in his shirt pocket. It was strange to Nile how his father had turned into an old man. He was one of those strange old birds now with everything he had to remember written on a paper in his pocket.

'What?'

'The money. Make sure you tell Ordell I'm going to get to it. I just don't know where it's supposed to come from.' 'He's okay about it.' 'You didn't tell him?'

'No. You mean where it went? No. I just said, you know, it'd be a little longer than we expected. He's cool, though. You know, I've been giving him some help.'

'Help?'