Carlin Romano: Philadelphia Noir

SCARRED.BYSOLOMONJONES

Strawberry Mansion

Thunder clapped, and the street went black as if God had blown out the candles. A single flash of lighting streaked across the sky. After that, the only sound was the rain.

That kind of quiet was rare at 33rd and Cecil B. Moore, the North Philly corner where a hodgepodge of crumbling housing and new development met the orchestrated greenery of Fairmount Park.

Most autumn evenings, the corner rumbled with the sounds of the 3 and 32 buses, danced with the laughter of children at the water ice stand, and banged with the clatter of tools at the used tire shop. There was music to this corner, and the tunes went far beyond the rhymes of Li’l Wayne or the gospel of Kirk Franklin. The music had a distinctive rhythm, like the jazz of John Coltrane, who’d once lived a block away.

But just like Coltrane’s house, the streets were empty and the rhythm was off, because the storm and the blackout had snatched the life from the streets, forcing everyone and everything indoors.

The occupants of the new lofts who’d arrived with the long-gone real-estate boom were huddled in darkness, just like their impoverished neighbors. As rain poured down and lightning flashed, their differences no longer mattered. They all waited nervously for the lights to come on, because somewhere deep down, they understood the power of the heavens.

But Richard and Corrine weren’t afraid. In their rehabbed three-story home at the end of a ramshackle block, the only power that mattered was love. And heaven? Heaven was between them, in every whisper, every kiss, and every touch.

As the storm raged outside their window, the newlyweds welcomed darkness into a bedroom that overlooked the water ice stand. While neighbors shut their eyes against the blackout, the husband and wife christened their new home, joining themselves like instruments in a symphony of passion.

The driving rain struck the windows as they poured themselves into one another, and as their bodies gave in to the moment, their whispers of love became shouts of joy. The harmony reached perfection. The symphony climaxed and ceased. Then their voices faded into the blackness of the night, with gasps and shudders and moans.

Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms, listening to the rain fall. Corrine reached up and twisted Richard’s blond hair around her fingers. Even without light, she knew every part of his face. His pink lips were thin and sculpted. His jaw was square and strong. His blue eyes were set wide on either side of his sharply pointed nose.

Her features were the opposite: cinnamon-brown complexion, silky black hair, eyes brown and bottomless, skin the texture of a ripened peach.

They were an odd couple-the thirty-year-old white war veteran and the slightly older black nurse. At least it looked odd from the outside. But Richard never found it to be strange. They’d clicked the first time they met, when he saw her working in the physical therapy unit at the Philadelphia V.A. Medical Center.

He’d asked her out for coffee after finishing his appointment and they went to the hospital cafeteria to drink cappuccino and speak of their pasts. He told her that he was a Special Forces soldier whose third tour in Afghanistan had been cut short by a roadside bomb. She told him that her only brother-a twenty-one-year-old grunt who was barely out of boot camp-had been killed by a grenade in Iraq.

As the few minutes they’d intended to spend together stretched to hours, she told him that she hated working at the V.A. because of the misery and apathy she often found there. But she stayed in the hopes of helping other soldiers the way she wished she could’ve helped her brother. While doing a job she despised, she hid her pain from everyone around her; everyone, that is, except Richard.

He instantly recognized her grief because it mirrored his own. It was the same emotional pain he’d hidden when he’d seen his comrades gunned down near Kabul. It was identical to the pain he’d suppressed when he returned home and found himself isolated. It matched the grief he felt whenever he thought of his past. That’s why it was so easy for him to see Corrine’s hurt crouching behind forced smiles. He knew he had to make her pain go away.

For months, Richard and Corinne comforted each other, slowly drawing out bits and pieces of the things war had taken from them. Corrine told him that she’d lost her joy. Richard admitted that he’d lost his compassion. They both said they’d lost opportunities to love, and vowed not to lose one more.

Slowly they began to leave war behind. Richard allowed his military high and tight to grow out until his hair reached his shoulders. Corrine’s sad demeanor gave way to an easy smile. Their whirlwind courtship led to marriage, and when they bought the house on the corner of 33rd and Cecil B. Moore, rehabbing it with their own hands, the imperfect neighborhood was just like their lives. It was somewhere between the horrors of war and the safety of peace. The direction they took from there would be up to them, or so they hoped.

On this night, as they lay in each other’s arms, waiting for the blackout to end, they both realized that some things were beyond their control. These things included the scars they’d suffered in the past. They’d already dealt with the emotional ones, but for Richard, especially, some physical scars remained.

As Corrine lay in his arms, she reached for one such scar. It was ugly and purple, and it knifed down the left side of his powerful chest. When her slender fingers touched it and lingered there, Richard braced himself for the inevitable question.

“Where did this come from?”

“We’ve been over this, Corrine,” he said, gently moving her hand away from the old wound. “It happened in the war.”

“I know that, but-”

“Look,” he said with an edge to his voice. “I told you about every fight we won, every guy we lost, and every civilian who died. The truth is, I don’t remember where this scar came from and I don’t know if I want to. But I do know I love you, and that should be the only thing that matters.”

“You’re right Richard. It’s just that…”

“What? You think I’m hiding something from you?”

She lay back and ran her palm along his face, searching in the darkness until she found his eyes.

“Yes, I do,” she whispered playfully as she wrapped herself around him. “And you’re going to make me use everything I’ve got to get it out of you.”

Richard leaned back and looked at her, trying to see her face beyond the shadows. Then lightning flashed, filling the room with brilliant blue-white light. She smiled and he buried his face in her hair, whispering her name as only he could.

“Corrine.”

She giggled and reached for him as the rain smacked against the windows. But just as their lips were about to touch, the soothing sound of the downpour was interrupted by shattering glass.

Corrine sat up in bed. “What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Richard answered, reaching down to grab his pants from the floor. “Stay here.”

He got up and walked briskly down the hall. Then he descended the steps two at a time, his feet padding silently on the hardwood floor. When he entered the kitchen, he saw that one of the windows over the sink was broken.

“Probably the wind,” he said to himself, and reached up into a cabinet for a candle.

He lit it and searched the cabinet. When he found the roll of duct tape he was searching for, a shadow crept across the wall. The shape of it was unmistakable. It was a man.

Richard didn’t look up. Instead, he reached down into a drawer as his eyes darted back and forth across the room. He released the tape, wrapped his fingers around a kitchen knife, and hoped that he’d imagined what he’d seen. But when he turned around, he knew that it was real.