Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
The shrill sound of the phone snatched me from my sleep, and I grabbed it up in the middle of the third ring. “Hello?” I managed to gurgle as my heart beat wildly in my chest.
Kendrick was beside me and promptly turned over, grabbing the pillow and throwing it over his face.
“Hello?” I whispered again when only clicking sounds came out of the receiver.
Someone was on the other end, babbling frantically. “Who is this?”
“It’s Chevy!” Chevy screamed.
“Chevy?” I said stupidly as I looked at the fluorescent green numbers on the clock on my nightstand. It was 3:15 a.m.
“Where are you?” I said, shocked to finally hear from her and even more surprised to hear from her at this hour of the morning.
“Jail!” Chevy screamed back.
—
Kendrick and I walked into the lobby of the 100th Precinct at three fifty a.m. I was amazed at the amount of activity that was going on in the precinct at that hour.
Kendrick sat down heavily on a bench situated directly across from the main desk, yawned loudly, and then leaned his back against the wall.
“Excuse me, I’m here for Chevy—I mean, Chevanese Cambridge,” I said to the aging Hispanic officer behind the desk.
“What’s the name again?” the officer said without looking up. I inhaled deeply and stared at the shiny bald spot on the top of his head.
“Chevanese. C-H-E-”
“Last name,” the man curtly cut me off.
“Cambridge,” I replied and then looked over my shoulder to see Kendrick walking through a door marked MEN.
“When was the perp brought in?”
“Um, a few hours ago, I guess.”
The police officer, head still bent, turned his body toward the monitor of his computer terminal and typed in Chevy’s last name.
“Cambridge, Henry,” the cop said, still not looking up.
“No, Chevanese. C-H—” I started again.
The cop cut me off again. “Cambridge, Pauline.”
“No, no, I said her name is—”
“Cambridge, Martin.”
I could feel my anger building. I dragged my hands down my face, trying hard to keep myself together. “Her name is—”
“Cambridge, Chevanese,” the cop said and finally looked up at me, offering me a wry smile revealing the black space that sat where a front tooth should have been.
I always assumed that the city had a good dental plan, I thought. “Yes, yes, that’s her,” I said with a heavy sigh of relief.
“You here to bail her out?” he asked, one gray eyebrow climbing his forehead.
“Yes.”
“Three hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
I blinked a few times and then dug into my purse and pulled out my checkbook. “Who do I make it out to?” I said through clenched teeth.
“The Department of Corrections,” he said and grinned. “You her sister?”
“No,” I said as I quickly scribbled the amount across the check.
“Friend?”
“Not for much longer.” I shoved the check at him.
The cop hit a button on his keyboard, and a printer I couldn’t see started somewhere beneath his desk.
He reached down, produced two printed copies, signed and stamped both, handed me one, and then swiveled around in his chair and called to a young black cop who was seated at a desk, bent over and engrossed in a conversation on his cell phone.
“Franklin!” he yelled, holding the paper out to him. “Go on down and bring this one up.”
Franklin gave him a blank look and then said something into the phone before flipping the cover closed, standing up and retrieving the paper, and walking off.
A few minutes later he was back, with Chevy following close behind.
Chevy’s face looked drawn. In the three weeks since I’d last seen her, it seemed to me that she’d lost a few pounds.
The one good thing was that she looked almost normal in some respects.
Her weave was perfect as usual, and a respectable color.
And her eyes were the pretty brown God had blessed her with.
“Whew—let’s go, girl,” she said after she collected her belongings and brushed past me, heading out the door into the early-morning darkness.
I was dumbfounded. Chevy had the balls of a bull.
She wakes me out of my sleep in the middle of the night, has me pay close to four hundred dollars of my hard-earned money to get her sorry ass out of jail, and then just saunters past me with a “Whew—let’s go, girl”?
Like all of this was nothing but a chicken wing—without even a “Thank you, dog”?
I flew behind her, catching her on the last step.
“What the fuck was that?” I screamed at her back, with my hands on my hips.
“What?” Chevy asked, stepping down onto the sidewalk and turning to me.
“What?” I repeated, astonished. “What the fuck, you can’t say ‘thank you’? You just walked by me like it was my duty to leave my bed and come out in the wee hours of the morning to bail your ass out!”
Chevy gave me the “Well, ain’t it?” look, and I swear my hand twitched at my side. I wanted to slap her into next year!
“Look, Chevy, I ain’t your babysitter. We are all grown-ups here, and you have got to learn to take care of yourself and stop leaning on me and the rest of us. Romper Room is closed!” I screamed. I was so angry and riled up that my whole body shook.
Chevy just smirked at me.
“Why the fuck did they arrest you, anyway?”
Chevy looked around for a minute before folding her arms across her chest. When she did speak, her voice came out low. “I jumped the turnstile,” she said quietly, and her face went crimson with embarrassment.
“You did what?” I was stunned. Had she fallen that far? She didn’t even have a dollar fifty to ride the train?
“I’m sure you know by now that I no longer have a job.” She spoke to the night air around us, her eyes fastening onto the streetlamp to our left.
“Yes, yes, but c’mon, Chevy, you know you could have called me.” I felt like shit. Now here I was ranting and raving, and this woman didn’t have a dime to her name. It was true: most of us were just one paycheck away from being homeless, and Chevy was proof of that.
“God, Chevy, I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling all of my insides turn to mush. I stepped forward and hugged my crazy, dysfunctional friend.
“Yeah, thanks,” she said, her arms stiff at her sides.
Kendrick pulled the car up to the curb and honked the horn once. “She need a ride home?” he yelled from the open window.
I looked at Chevy. “C’mon, let us take you home,” I said, grabbing her hand and leading her toward the car.
“No, no. I can’t let you take me all the way to Brooklyn. You’ve done too much for me already,” she said and pulled her hand from mine.
“It’s no problem at all. At this hour we’ll be there and back in no time,” I urged.
“No. And anyway, I really need some time alone to think.”
I could certainly understand that. So I dug into my purse, pulled out my wallet, and gave her all of the money I had. “Here, take this. It should be about a hundred or so dollars there,” I said, holding the money out to her.
Chevy eyed it and then sighed and shook her head no.
“Please, take it,” I said, pushing the money closer to her. “Take it and I’ll call you tomorrow and we can talk about what’s going on with you.”
Chevy’s hand finally came up and took the money from me. “Okay,” she whispered sadly.
She was breaking my heart. I’d never seen Chevy look so dejected. “Call me tomorrow, okay?” I pressed.
“Yeah, okay, and thanks,” she said before turning and walking away.
I watched her move down the sidewalk and take the first corner.
Something was missing. A friendly hug between sister-friends…something.