Z. Packer - Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

“Yes,” Tia said.

“Well, Marie will deliver.”

Marie whistled, sharp and loud like a man. “Lydia! Lid-dee-ya! Get your ass over here!”

All Tia saw of the woman named Lydia was a metallic slip and red sneakers. Lydia waved her limp hand as if shooing away a fly.

“Ho, you best be moving your fat ass, I’m trying to get this church girl off and back to her peoples!”

Lydia walked with haunchy, bovine steps, taking nearly five minutes to make it down a single block. She looked bored, as though she’d only obeyed Marie out of curiosity.

“This poor child need to get her ass on a bus. She need some benjamins. What you got?”

Lydia made a face as if she’d been asked to hand over her liver. “She got a mouth and a pussy like everyone else on this corner. Make her earn her money.”

“She’s right,” Tia said. “I can’t take other people’s money just because—”

“Give her twenty,” Marie said. She unpried Tia’s hand from her skirt pocket and made her hold it out as if begging for alms.

Lydia said no.

“ I’ll pay you back, ho. Now, hand it over.”

While Lydia undid the Oriental topknot where she apparently kept her money, Marie called over two unsuspecting girls from across the street.

“Marie,” Tia said, “I’ve got thirty-two dollars, I don’t need any more.”

But Marie inhaled grandly, and Tia understood that Marie liked doing this: bossing everyone around, demanding money from people unwilling to give it. For a moment, she felt a deep pity for the woman. She would have made a great executive, manager, fundraiser, but here she was, on Northside Drive, walking the streets.

Then it occurred to her that if Marie and Dezi really were a couple, Marie was doing a good job of getting rid of her, making sure she had enough money to get on the bus home and stay there. Then she felt guilty about both thoughts, the former patronizing and the latter just plain catty.

Marie explained things to the two girls from across the street. One introduced herself as Shatrice, the other was Joan.

“We heard about your plight,” Shatrice said, “and we’ll do whatever we can to expedite your journey home.”

“Thank you,” Tia said.

“ Je vous en prie ,” Shatrice said.

“Uh-oh,” Joan said.

A car screeched, found new direction, and started up again. A tan Celica, barreling down Northside. Finally Dezi careened into the corner and didn’t bother to close the door after him. His cut had been wiped and cleaned, but fresh blood filled the gash, threatening to seep out. He was holding her clarinet case.

The other three girls moved a few paces back, close enough to watch everything, but far enough away to make a run for it.

“C’mon baby,” he said, as if Marie were invisible, “I know you were just freaked out. I just want us to talk.”

Marie stood in front of Tia. “She’s going home.”

“Come on, Tia.”

“What did I tell you?” Marie said, eyes bugging out at him. “I said she’s going H-O-M-E!”

He pointed at her with a bandaged finger. “I’m not talking to you!” He paused, deflating the anger from his voice. “Let’s go,” he said to Tia. “Your bag is back at the place. I got your flute right here.”

“I should apologize to him,” Tia said to Marie. “He didn’t even—”

“Like hell you should!” she said, then yelled, “Cradle-robber!”

Dezi took a step toward them. “Marie, this ain’t none of your business.”

Marie stepped forward, meeting his challenge. “Lay the horn down. Put it on the curb and leave.”

Dezi had to peer around Marie to make eye contact with Tia. “Come on,” he said, beseeching. But when she stepped back, away from him, he bounced like a boxer, impatient and eager to get into the ring. His voice hit an angry clef. “ Come on .”

“Leave, Dezi,” Marie said.

In an instant he lunged for Tia; she felt his hand grazing hers. But she pulled away. Marie swatted at him, then he and Marie actually seemed to be fighting, her limbs askew as he grappled her, her jacket bunching in the middle and her midriff exposed. She was spiking his foot with the heel of her boot and clawing his face. Then the girls were in on the action, their fingernails scratching the nylon of Dezi’s jacket, and once, catching Marie in the eye.

Tia had begun backing away, but she could not stop watching.

“Come on!” Dezi said. Then he fell to the ground, looking as if he were trying to tear out his eyes. Someone had Maced him. Marie sat down on the curb, as though defeated.

The street girls pinned Dezi to the ground with their high heels and platforms, screaming all at once to Tia, “Run! Run! Run! ”

People stuck their heads out of their doorways, straining to see what was happening. In the distance, a siren.

Tia grabbed her clarinet. She hugged Marie, who reached in her thigh-high boots and snatched out a thin fold of money. She pressed it all into Tia’s hand. “Run, honey.” Her voice was tired.

“I need your address. To pay you back.”

“Run! You heard me!” Marie pushed her so hard she fell off the curb. “Run, honey. And don’t let nobody lock you in no closet no more.”

Tia stood up and brushed gravel and broken glass from her skirt. And she ran.

WHEN PEOPLE BACK HOME asked her why she was leaving Baltimore for Tokyo, Dina told them she was going to Japan in the hopes of making a pile of money, socking it away, then living somewhere cheap and tropical for a year. Back home, money was the only excuse for leaving, and it was barely excuse enough to fly thousands of miles to where people spoke no English.

“Ja pan !” Miss Gloria had said. Miss Gloria was her neighbor; a week before Dina left she sat out on the stoop and shared a pack of cigarettes with Miss Gloria. “Japan,” Miss Gloria repeated, looking off into the distance, as though she might be able to see Honshu if she looked hard enough. Across the street sat the boarded-up row houses the city had promised to renovate. Dina tried to look past them, and habored the vague hope that if she came back to the neighborhood they’d get renovated, as the city had promised. “Well, you go ’head on,” Miss Gloria said, trying to sound encouraging. “You go ’head on and learn that language. Find out what they saying about us over at Chong’s.” Chong’s was the local take-out with the best moo goo gai pan around, but if someone attempted to clarify an order, or changed it, or even hesitated, the Chinese family got all huffed, yelling as fast and violent as kung fu itself.

“Chong’s is Chinese, Miss Gloria.”

“Same difference.”

The plan was not well thought-out, she admitted that much. Or rather, it wasn’t really a plan at all, but a feeling, a nebulous fluffy thing that had started in her chest, spread over her heart like a fog. It was sparked by movies in which she’d seen Japanese people bowing ceremoniously, torsos seesawing; her first Japanese meal, when she’d turned twenty, and how she’d marveled at the sashimi resting on its bed of rice, rice that lay on a lacquered dish the color of green tea. She grew enamored of the pen strokes of kanji, their black sabers clashing and warring with one another, occasionally settling peacefully into what looked like the outlines of a Buddhist temple, the cross sections of a cozy house. She did not want to say it, because it made no practical sense, but in the end she went to Japan for the delicate sake cups, resting in her hand like a blossom; she went to Japan for loveliness.