Джордж Пелеканос: The Sweet Forever

“Eddie, shit, can’t we listen to something a little more, you know, hip?”

Donna reached over, flipped the radio off DC-101, where they were playing the new one by the Outfield.

“Sure, babe, anything you want.”

Donna went right past the broadcasting of a basketball game that neither of them cared anything about, got the dial over to HFS, caught the Weasel doing his Frantic Friday thing, Lene Lovich singing about her new toy and then right into the Slickee Boys doing “When I Go to the Beach.”

“All right?”

“Sure, Donna, this ain’t bad.”

The truth was, Eddie hated that new-wave shit they played on WHFS, but Donna dug it, and if it made Donna happy, he could stand it for a little while. Eddie liked the newer groups that rocked, Mike and the Mechanics, Mr. Mister, INXS, like that. Donna seemed to be into any group that had fucked up — looking hair.

“Where we goin’?” said Eddie.

“Take this all the way down to U Street, hang a left. My friend works in a record store down around Eleventh.”

“This guy white?”

“Greek guy. Works for his best friend. A black guy, Eddie. He owns the place. Four places now. Real Right Records.”

“Greek, huh? How well you know him?”

“I know him, Eddie. He’s a friend, he’s doing us a favor, and he’s cool.”

And we used to have a thing. But you can’t handle hearing it, Eddie, so—

“He’s gonna hook us up?”

“Got a nice, fat gram put aside for us.”

“Sounds good to me. What’s this dude’s name?”

“Dimitri Karras.”

“Careless?” Eddie laughed, dragged on his cigarette.

Careless. Eddie, if you only knew.

They were at the top of a steep hill, looking at the downtown skyline and the monuments below, and then over the crest, and the Reliant went down 13th between Cardoza High on the left and the ruin of the subsidized Clifton Terrace apartment complex on the right. Some black kids walked slowly across the street, made Eddie brake, gave him hard looks through the windshield as they passed. Eddie met their eyes for only a second, then looked away.

Donna looked across the bench at Nervous Eddie as he made the turn and took them east on U. Despite the cold March wind, Eddie had his Sonny Crockett thing going on today: a pastel sleeveless T-shirt under a light rayon sport coat — sleeves pushed back on the forearms — and a two-day growth of beard on his hollow cheeks. The look was cool out in the suburbs, but down here he looked like just another guy who picked his attitude up off TV.

Donna had affection for Eddie. On the downside, he was a follower and without ambition, and the guys he partied with were stupid and cruel, but Eddie himself was kind, and he had yet to screw her over in that thoughtless way she had come to expect from men. He was younger than she was by a few years, too, and still eager to please in bed.

Yeah, she had affection for Eddie. Affection, not love. The difference was significant. She never stared at Eddie and imagined what he’d look like with gray hair. Never pictured him at the head of anyone’s dinner table. Course, they did have a couple of things in common. Both of them liked to party, for one. And they shared a cockeyed dream of moving to Florida someday, having a modest house with their own swimming pool in the backyard. But this wasn’t much to base a future on, Donna knew.

If you asked her what she was looking for, she’d give you the simple response: Love was what she was looking for, to love and to be loved back. And if she was being honest that day, she might have added something else: A guy with money in the bank and the looks to make her wet.

At Donna’s instruction, Eddie pulled over near the corner of 11th. You’d barely notice the record store if you weren’t looking for it, what with all the construction equipment, bulldozers and such, parked in the middle of the street. Eddie guessed that was why the owner had strung up plastic flags and that big “Open” sign, on account of the store was so hard to see. Dividing the east- and westbound lanes, a platform truck up on leg cranks held a small load of steel I beams on its flat, open bed.

“You want me to walk you in?” said Eddie.

Donna smiled, patted Eddie’s cheek like he was some kind of kid or something. What, didn’t she think he could protect her if anything went down?

“I’ll be okay,” said Donna. “Be out in about ten.”

“Okay, babe. I’m watchin’ you.”

That’s what he did. Watched her cross the street with that bouncy walk of hers, her ass doing the alternating piston thing inside her skirt, Eddie thinking, God, she’s some kind of woman. Man would be a fool to let that shit get away.

Donna was only inside the record store for a minute or so when Eddie noticed the kid in the Oakland Raiders coat walking by his car. The kid had his hands deep in the pockets of the oversized coat and he was smiling at Eddie, checking out the car, smiling back at Eddie in a way that was neither friendly nor threatening but somehow knowing. Eddie figured, smile back, and he did it with a nod, but now the kid had passed. Eddie checked the kid out in the passenger sideview, watched him go and stand on the corner in front of the liquor store, where a couple of older black guys were laughing over something a third one had said.

Eddie looked ahead to the next corner. A young black guy had gotten out of a late model black 300Z and was leaning against the door, his arms folded, just looking around. He caught Eddie’s eye for a moment — maybe Eddie imagined it; he couldn’t be sure — and glanced away.

Eddie fumbled in the visor for another smoke.

Black guys. Why’d they always look at Eddie Golden like they wanted to fuck him up?

Eddie had nothing against black people; it was just that, growing up where he did, out Layhill Road near Bel Pre, he never had the opportunity to get to know any. The guys Eddie drank with, at Gentleman Jim’s in Twinbrook, the Stained Glass in Glenmont, and Hunter’s in Wheaton, those guys didn’t care much for the brothers. Because they were his friends, he listened to their nigger jokes and, sure, he laughed along, but it wasn’t like he had a racist bone in his body himself. The thing was, why rock the boat with his buddies for a bunch of black guys he didn’t know and who always seemed like they’d just as soon cut his throat as look at him anyway? What would be the point of that?

Through the windshield, Eddie watched the black guy get in his Z and drive off.

Eddie looked in the rearview mirror at the unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. He dug the way that looked. He turned his head a little, ran his fingers through his straight, thin hair where it had receded back off the top of his forehead. In the rearview he saw a car approaching from two blocks back, coming on at a high rate of speed.

Eddie checked himself out. He knew he wasn’t a bad-looking guy. Miss Donna M. could be doing a whole lot worse. The comments she made, about his car and his dishwasher installer’s job and his low-rent friends, they bothered him a little, like someone was always pinching his shoulder from behind. It was true that careerwise, Eddie hadn’t lit up the town as of yet, but he was a young man, just a hair off of twenty-seven, and he had time. He could score somehow — no immediate prospects, but you never knew — and then Donna would quit cracking on him so much and look at him in a different way. Not that she wasn’t a slave to the bone to begin with. But with a little money and success added to the bargain, she’d come all the way over to his side.

Eddie heard a sound like a plane was coming down. He turned his head suddenly, saw that the car that had been coming so fast before was almost on top of him now, up on two wheels, narrowly missing a frantic woman running across the street with her child. The car was right behind him. It was a boxy GM, a Monte Carlo or the hopped-up version of the Cutlass, Eddie could no longer tell any of them apart. All four wheels were off the ground, and the car was in the air.