Chapter Fifty-Five
Fifty-Five
I felt uncomfortable. My feet were wet, and since I hadn’t had a chance to change out of my jogging gear, the sweat I’d worked up during my run had dried sticky around my neck and deep inside my armpits.
I kept my upper arms pressed tightly to my body as I prayed that my deodorant would hold out for at least another half hour until we got to Brooklyn.
There I could take a shower and throw on something of Noah’s.
My eyes flitted over the faces that either looked back at me or studied the advertisements overhead. Some people were engrossed in paperback best sellers, while others bopped their heads to the music streaming from their Disc-mans.
I leaned back a little further into the seat, and that’s when I saw Chevy. Or at least it looked like Chevy. Standing at the far end of the car, back pressed up against the door, she wore an expression on her face that seemed strained. I squinted and then nudged Geneva.
Geneva nearly jumped out of her seat, and when she turned to look at me her eyes were as wide as saucers. “What?” she said breathlessly as she grabbed at her chest.
“What is wrong with you?”
“You just startled me,” she said, wiping the perspiration from her forehead.
“Doesn’t that look like Chevy standing over there?” I said, nodding my head in her direction. Geneva strained her neck this way and that and then shouted, “Chevy!” And a dozen eyes fell on us.
Geneva could be so uncouth at times.
“Shh,” I pleaded and nudged her again. “Do you have to be so loud?”
Chevy looked around quickly and I noticed that she had the same haunted look on her face that Geneva was sporting.
“Over here, Chevy!” Geneva shouted out again and shot her hand up into the air and began waving.
More eyes turned in our direction.
Chevy finally spotted us and started making her way over.
When she broke through the crowd and was standing in front of us, all Geneva and I could do was sit there with our mouths hanging open.
“Where y’all headed?” Chevy asked, offering us a nervous smile.
We couldn’t say a thing; our eyes were locked on Chevy’s belly, which was bulging out of her size-six pants like she was five months pregnant.
Chevy’s eyes followed ours, and then she quickly brought one hand up to rest on the protuberance. “I’m just bloated,” she said before we could compose ourselves to ask.
“Bloated?” Geneva said, reaching out and slowly pushing Chevy’s hand aside. “That looks more like a baby to me.”
Chevy slapped her hand away. “I ain’t pregnant. You crazy?” She laughed nervously. “Just retaining water.” She tried in vain to tug her waist-long shirt down over the swell of her belly.
“Really?” I asked. I wasn’t sure about that. Maybe this was why she had been AWOL.
“Yes, really,” she snapped back. Then she gave me a strange look.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said quickly and shifted her eyes to Geneva. “So where are you all going?”
“Brooklyn.” Geneva’s answer was curt as she continued to stare at Chevy’s belly.
“Brooklyn? For what?” Chevy was taken aback. “Y’all don’t ever go to Brooklyn.”
“Well, my apartment got flooded and—”
In the middle of my explanation we pulled into the Spring Street station and I looked up to see Chevy’s attention snatched away by boarding passengers. I looked over and saw that Geneva was distracted as well.
“What is going on with you two?” I bellowed. “What y’all got, the mob after you or something?”
Chevy’s eyes popped in their sockets. “Shh, don’t be saying shit like that.”
“Yeah, you don’t know who’s around,” Geneva said in a conspiratorial tone.
Utica Avenue couldn’t come soon enough.
—
Noah swung the door open and we were greeted by the scent of simmering oil and the mellow sounds of Luther Vandross.
“Hey!” he squealed when he saw all of us. “What a surprise!” He pressed quick kisses onto our cheeks. “What did I do to deserve this honor?” He beamed.
Chevy stepped quickly around me and came face-to-face with Noah. Her eyes swung angrily between the glass of wine he held and his face. “What’s wrong with you, Ms.Drama?” he asked.
“Have you forgotten what I called and told you on the phone?” she said from between clenched teeth.
The brightness in Noah’s face went dark. “Oh—oh my God, yes,” he said and hurriedly stepped around Chevy and came to me. “Oh, Ms.Crystal, you must be beside yourself.” He wrapped one arm around me and guided me to the living room.
“Well, yes, I mean, all of my stuff is ruined—” I began but then remembered that I hadn’t been able to reach Noah on my cell phone before I went down into the subway station, so how could he know about my apartment catastrophe?
“Stuff?” Noah said, his head jerking back.
Noah’s head swiveled to Chevy, whose mouth opened and closed like that of a fish out of water. “Ms.Drama said that Kendrick—” Noah began and then stopped and turned back to me. “Do you know about what Kendrick did?”
Yeah, I knew what he did. He flooded my apartment, and I was just about to voice that outwardly when Geneva, who was peering out the front window, spouted, “He flooded her damn apartment, that’s what he did.”
“Flooded your apartment!” Noah and Chevy cried out together, and then exchanged strange looks.
“Yeah,” I said slowly, feeling more and more like I had landed in the Twilight Zone.
Noah grimaced and threw Chevy a long, wicked look. “You see, Ms.Drama, you always starting some shit. Now, why you wanna lie—”
“I didn’t lie!” Chevy screamed. “I was there when he did it!”
“You were in my apartment?” I said stupidly.
“Not in your apartment. Down on Seventeenth Street at the loft—”
“What loft?”
“Ms.Drama called me up a wreck, saying she had just witnessed a murder—”
“What!” Geneva and I shouted together, and Geneva came running over and flopped down on the couch beside me.
“Who’d you see get murdered?” Geneva probed, her eyes wide.
Chevy took a breath. “This girl named Cassius,” she said slowly, all the while looking at me.
“What does that have to do with Kendrick?” I asked, confused.
“He’s the one that did it,” Chevy said.