Chapter 22 Mekhi #3
“You forgot that mandolin already?” I asked. “I do short ribs. And I make a lemon garlic thing with salmon that make people lick they plates. ‘Cause a nigga classy.”
“Classy,” she echoed, teasing. “You putting it on china too?”
“Yeah, I got real plates. Don’t play with me,” I said, pretending to be offended.
“I know you got plates, moneybags,” she amended. “You got plates and a whole set of forks and—”
“And silver spoons to stick in my kids’ mouths,” I interrupted.
We reached an interactive kiosk that invited you to match profiles to suspects, using tiny tidbits of detail to build a composite. Farrah cracked her knuckles. I leaned my shoulder against the pillar and watched her fingers move fast but careful.
“You be playing games?” I asked.
“Like video games? Not really.”
“Board games?”
“Dominoes,” she said without hesitation. “I’ll slam on yo’ ass.”
I laughed. “You better watch your mouth before you have to eat them words.”
“You from a domino house?” she asked, eyes still on the screen.
“I’m from a house where you learned the math in your head fast. I’on slam, Little Thug. I count precisely.”
“Mm,” she said, thoughtful. “And what about Spades?”
“I played Spades in other people’s houses, ‘til I got tired of getting cussed out behind a cut I ain’t know I wasn’t supposed to do.”
She looked at me like she was practically disgusted. “Ah, hell, nah! We gotta play. You ain’t about to be out here in these streets embarrassing me and the people of the great Emancipation, LA!”
She laughed again, low this time, and I found myself enjoying the sound. When she finished the kiosk puzzle, the screen flashed a little gold badge. Perfect score. She didn’t make a big deal of it. She looked at me instead, waiting for what came next without asking for it.
I led her into the last hall, the one with the memorial to victims. It was quieter there.
People spoke in whispers without being told.
Names filled a wall, engraved in steel. The light hit the lettering and turned it into something that looked almost liquid.
Farrah was quiet, reverent. We stood in front of the wall for I don’t know how long.
She reached out and traced a line of letters with the back of her finger.
I stood a half a step behind her, feeling like I didn’t want to intrude in this moment of respect.
“You believe in redemption?” she asked, voice so soft I almost missed it.
“Yeah,” I said immediately.
“You sure?”
“I have to be,” I said. “If there ain’t redemption, then why am I still going?”
She looked at me, her eyes softened. I wanted redemption, but right now, I wanted to kiss those plush, glossy lips more than anything. I think the only thing that stopped me was the little girl that ran into Farrah.
“Sorry,” she sang as her mother fussed and apologized at the same time the way mamas do. Farrah watched them with a look I’d never seen on her face. It wasn’t anger or irritation. It was attention with longing in it.
“You want kids?” I asked.
She exhaled, smiled a little. “Some days I do. Some days I think about everything I ain’t learned yet, and I don’t want nobody drinking from me when I’m still a cracked cup.”
“You’d be a good mother,” I said, surprising myself again with what I said.
But somehow, I knew it was true. For a minute, I pictured her pretty and round and wobbling. Shit I shouldn’t be picturing.
“Why you say that?” she asked, skeptical but hopeful. “’Cause I can read people?”
“’Cause you stop. You hear and listen. You look and you see, Little Thug.”
She stared at me like I had told her a thing no one had told her before, a thing she clearly liked.
“You want kids?” she asked back. “Oh, yeah. Those silver spoons.”
“Yeah,” I said. “One day. Not ’cause I need an heir. ’Cause… I want to teach a little person how to leave a room better than they found it.”
“Redemption,” she whispered.
I nodded. “Redemption.
We circled toward the exit and passed a gift shop. Farrah gave it a glance, then dismissed it. I doubled back in two steps and grabbed something without letting myself overthink it: a slim notebook with a spine that said NOTES FROM EVIDENCE.
When I rejoined her, she looked at the bag and then at me with suspicion she couldn’t hide. “What you do?”
“Relax,” I said. “I ain’t buy you a T-shirt with blood spatters on it or nothing.”
“Please,” she muttered, but she couldn’t help smiling.
I handed her the bag. She hesitated, then took it. When she pulled the notebook out, her face changed, surprise sliding into something I didn’t have a word for. She touched the spine like it was fragile.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
I shrugged. “You want a lab coat, you need a lab. That’s your lab,” I said. “You got theories. Put them in there until you ready to test them out.”
She looked at me like I was the one seeing, this time. “Mekhi,” she breathed.
“You welcome.”
She tucked the notebook against her chest. We walked toward the doors, passing the last plaque about lessons learned from hard mistakes. By the time we got outside, the sky was dark and soft, the stars bright dots illuminating the gently curving pathway as we walked silently in the sultry heat.
She slid in when I opened the door of the car. I was reaching to reverse when she said, “You know, for somebody who act like he don’t care about people, you did a lot of caring today.”
I glanced at her, my lips twisting. “Don’t start tryna psychoanalyze me, Little Thug.”
She smiled. “Too late.”
I shook my head. She didn’t even know how close she was to the truth.
“Dinner?” I asked suddenly.
I meant to take her home after this. Now, I didn’t want to.
She raised an eyebrow. “Why, Mekhi Venzant, is that an offer instead of an order?”
“It’s both,” I said, and she laughed, almost messing up my focus.
We drove with only the radio for sound. At a red light, she flipped through the first couple of pages of the notebook and then snapped it shut. “We playing Spades at your place. Tonight after dinner.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“You cuss me out, I’m kicking you out,” I warned.
She smirked. “You kicking me out your house? After making me stay?”
I sucked my teeth. “Get out my car.”
She laughed, sweet like before, and held the notebook tighter. The light turned green. I pressed the gas. We drove. I ended up choosing a restaurant that was way nicer than I thought I wanted—white tablecloths, soft jazz, all that for my bougie date.
This ain’t no date, I reminded myself.
Farrah fit right in like she belonged here, even in a t-shirt and jeans.
Over dinner, she talked more about her dream, about working in behavioral analysis for the FBI. I told her a little about my business, the legal parts, anyway.
She listened. Really listened. Like what I was saying mattered to her.
At one point, our hands brushed as we reached for the same glass. She sucked in a sharp breath, but she didn’t move away.
Neither did I.