Richard Price - The Whites

“And your daughter?” Billy asked, as he gripped him lightly by a long, fluttering bicep.

“My daughter what,” Jeter said, as Billy began walking him across the floor.

“Her name.”

“Nuance.”

His cell began to tremble again, Billy quick-checking Carmen’s latest:

why not

Well, there was no answering her now.

“Nuance,” he repeated automatically, then, reengaging: “That’s a beautiful name.”

Billy steered Jeter into a small, claustrophobic examination room that most detectives favored when responding to calls here — even the hospital staff referred to it as the Box — then took a seat on a backless rolling chair, the only place to park other than the examination table.

“So how are you holding up?” Billy asked, sliding his chair to the center of the room, effectively cutting it in half.

“Holding up?” Jeter’s eyes moist and wandering. “I’m holding up bad.”

“Of course you are,” Billy said. “You’re her dad.”

“Is she going to be OK?” Staring at the shut door. “I mean, what are they saying?”

Billy had no idea. The CAT scan machine was down, and the radiologist hadn’t gotten around to looking at the X-rays yet.

“All I can tell you is they’re going to do everything they can.”

“Good, that’s good.”

As Jeter tried to figure out where to situate himself, Billy gave him the once-over again, taking in the wrinkled pajama bottoms and T-shirt, the slippers, his uncombed hair sticking up like a frozen splash of tar.

“Look, I know this isn’t the greatest of circumstances,” Billy said easily, “but I just have to tell you, you had to be the best high school forward I have ever seen.”

“That was a long time ago,” Jeter perching tentatively on the edge of the table, then popping right up. “Can we go back outside?” Nearly begging him. “They’re supposed to tell me how she’s doing.”

Billy’s jacket buzzed with another text.

“Hey, listen, do you by any chance remember a kid played for Truman, Gerry Reagan?” Truman, Reagan, Billy’s imagination leaning toward the presidential tonight. “He was my nephew. I mean, he still is.”

“Who?” Jeter spinning like a top. “Can they find me in here? I have to know what’s happening.”

“He hated covering you, said it was the most humiliating experience of his life.”

“Jimmy who?”

“So did you get to play after Clinton?”

“Huh? Yeah, just a year in Belgium.”

“Still, better than most, right?”

“Hey, look…”

“So what are you doing with yourself these days. You working?”

“Working?”

“Are you employed.”

Jeter stared at him like he thought he was nuts. “I’m a warehouse man at Trumbo Storage.” Then: “Why are you asking…”

“Trumbo Storage, the big red brick building with the clock tower, right? Where’s that, Bushwick?”

“Sunset Park. Listen…”

“Sunset Park, I remember when that area was nothing but gangs and strip clubs. But not so much now, right?”

“I don’t…”

“Can I ask you what time you usually punch in?”

“Do I what? I don’t know, seven, look I’m worried about my daughter, could we please…”

“Yeah, no, of course,” Billy easing out his notepad. “So tell me what happened tonight.”

Jeter exhaled. “Like I told already, we were playing, you know, like I was tossing her up a little, just a tiny bit, catch her, toss her. She loves that, makes her laugh every time.”

“And…”

“And my cell rang and so I turned my head for a second, you know, thinking it was my wife… and she just slipped through my hands. I just turned for a second, not even that.”

“And when was this, timewise…”

“I don’t know, about an hour, hour and a half ago? Nobody’s telling me nothing in here, is that bad?”

“They’re just busy. So an hour and a half ago, say about one a.m.?”

“I brought her right in, I mean, look at me,” grabbing the thighs of his pajama bottoms.

“No, you did the right thing, absolutely.”

Again his phone began to tremble with a text, Billy afraid to look at it, afraid to turn it off.

“So I take it you live in the neighborhood?”

“Hundred and Fourteenth and Madison, the Tubman Houses.”

“And you punch in at seven, so, East Harlem to Sunset Park, you need to wake up around, what, five? Five-thirty?”

Jeter hesitated, then quietly said, “I don’t need that much sleep.”

“But still, what were you doing up with her at one in the morning?”

“She’s a little colicky, you know?”

“Yeah, no, I had that with both my kids, it’s like a nightmare, right?”

“It’s not their fault,” he said, the corners of his eyes starting to bead.

“Of course, it’s heartbreaking, those little things suffering like that.”

As Jeter’s tears continued to collect, Billy gave him a moment to live with his thoughts, to go to town on himself.

“You know what my nephew always said about you?” Billy asked softly. “He said you were the best natural ball handler he ever saw. Said it was like you had that rock on a string.”

“Made all-city three years running,” Jeter’s tears coming freely now.

“I can believe it. But then, Aaron,” Billy rising from his chair, putting his hand on Jeter’s shoulder, “I just have to ask… How can an elite athlete like you, a master baller good enough to play pro in Europe, how the fuck can a guy with hands like yours drop his own four-month-old baby…”

“I told you, the phone rang…”

“And she’s colicky, crying all night.”

“She’s colicky.”

“One in the morning, you have to get up, what time did we say? Five? Five-thirty?”

“Is she gonna be OK?”

Billy moved in close. “Aaron, look at me.”

Can’t.

“Aaron, if I were to scroll down the incoming calls on your cell right now, am I going to find your wife or anybody else trying to ring you at one in the morning?”

“I don’t know it was one exactly,” his voice broken and hushed.

“Aaron. Can’t you look at me?”

Jeter dropped his chin to his chest, then covered his eyes.

“Aaron…”

Again, Billy let a silence come down, the room a tomb.

“This is not me,” Jeter finally whispered. “This is definitely not me.”

“I know,” Billy said softly, the next step to somehow get Jeter’s statement on record before he could pull his head out of his ass and start wondering out loud about his rights.

As Jeter turned away and wept into the wall, Billy, unable to help himself, quickly glanced at Carmen’s last three texts:

can i wash it

can i wash it or is it evidence

wtf answer me

Milton rolled off Marilys, sat up, grabbed a washcloth and attended to himself, averting his eyes as she rose from the towel-draped couch and walked to the bathroom in order to do her thing.

Widow and widower, both on the north side of forty with three kids between them, over the last year they had become occasional humps of convenience, a casual pressure-relieving arrangement without the mess of a real relationship. Sometimes she wasn’t in the mood and sometimes he wasn’t, but nobody ever got their noses out of joint about it one way or the other. Besides, he was never much for kissing.

As he heard the shower begin to run behind the bathroom door, he lay back down and thought of Carmen’s boys in the school parking lot today, bright-eyed and wild as chimpanzees, seemingly happy in their world and, as an added bonus, respectful to adults. Nice kids most likely, but when he was sizing up any child he came across for the first time there was only one question on the assessment test and one question only: were they the type who would get off on taunting Sofia?