Chapter 2 Maurice
The dim lights created a mellow, twilight vibe in the den.
Just the way Maurice Martin liked it. Incense wrapped him in woodsy and floral scents, warm and calming.
The last note of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” had finally submitted.
Now the record player whirred, its rhythmic crackle and hiss replacing the chaotic melody.
Maurice let out a relieved sigh. The composition had set his teeth on edge. Unpredictability always did. For all the accommodations his best friend, Tommie, made for his comfort, they could never seem to get on the same page about music.
The click-click, crackle-hiss continued, and he sucked in a long breath, focusing again on his task.
Friday, Maurice said to himself, running through his mental checklist as his hands rolled each outfit into a tight cylinder—underwear tucked inside, nothing loose and no space wasted.
Saturday. Sunday… Each bundle packed into his backpack in the order that he’d need them.
Sometime in year three, he’d watched his celly do this—cataloguing what little a man could lay claim to before placing them in a PADOC-issued clear plastic bag.
Back then, Maurice hadn’t had much except his blues and a couple of wrinkled pictures that he’d learned to tuck carefully amongst his belongings each time he’d been transferred.
He turned a piece of stiff, white fabric over in his hands before sliding it into the center of the tight Sunday bundle.
Donning his clerical collar would be a last-minute decision.
“After you assess the vibes,” had been Tommie’s unhelpful directions.
He laughed under his breath. Vibes. He called it survival.
Being with their extended friend group often felt like stepping into a minefield.
And this time, they were traveling together.
Keeping his head on a swivel had become automatic. It took focused practice to not walk around with his fists clenched. His jaw, though, he was still working on.
Tommie… God bless him. But the more Tommie pushed him to expand his circle, the more Maurice felt the unsupported span of it. Every new person was an unknown quantity. And unknown quantities had a way of making everything go sideways. Shoot. He’d be satisfied if they’d just let it—him—stand.
Sucking in another lungful of warm, fragrant air, he bundled his clothes and tucked them deep into his backpack. He checked once again that his jeans had a pair of socks in the pocket. The thought of returning to New Jersey from Puerto Rico on New Year’s Day without socks on triggered a shiver.
Travel was a novel concept. Before he moved to eastern New Jersey about three years ago, the farthest he’d ever been from West Philly was Graterford—and that wasn’t by choice.
This trip wasn’t really a choice either.
Still, he would get on a plane in a few hours and travel to a place he never dreamed of going. Officiating his best friend’s wedding was both an honor and reciprocity. He owed Tommie and his mothers everything. If it took the rest of his life, he’d make sure their investment wouldn’t go to waste.
But still, strangers… even the people he knew… were wild cards.
He ran a hand over his face and beard, taking the hairs into his fist and discreetly tugging, giving his anxiety an exit.
“Show me your hands,” had been shouted at him more times than he could count.
When he was arrested, when he was arraigned, every bunk inspection, every chow time.
And always with weapons trained on him. It only took taking a shotgun butt to the back of the head one time early in his bid to learn to be silent, still, and compliant real quick.
Keeping his hands in view supposedly made him less threatening. But him with his amber-brown skin, light eyes, and dark hair meant he matched the description of whatever racial or ethnic group was being profiled that month. To some, he would always be a trigger.
Maurice heard Tommie’s approach before he saw him.
“Eyy, B, what time you getting in?” Tommie shouted from somewhere down the long hall that led to the den. Details had never been one of his friend’s strengths and time always more of a loose suggestion.
Maurice, still hunched over his bag, took inventory for the… he’d lost count, cocked his head in confusion. He envied Tommie’s freedom to be imprecise and imperfect. He pulled out his phone, pausing at the text notifications, before opening his flight confirmation. Newark to Miami to San Juan.
“For the umpteenth time, I’ll get there a little after four a.m. local time,” Maurice shouted back.
“Flying is supposed to reduce travel time, my brother,” Tommie said, entering the room and handing Maurice a portable PA system. “A good deal shouldn’t feel like punishment. By the time you get there, it’ll be next year, and you’ll have missed all the fun.”
Laughing, Tommie set another record under the needle. “I would have spotted your stubborn ass so you could leave with the rest of us.”
“Whatever. Why do you need me to bring this?” Maurice zipped the PA system into his bag and managed a tight smile. At the first clap from an 808, Maurice clocked that Tommie put on the Krush Groove soundtrack even before L.L. started rhyming.
“For beach day! You know I need my beats.” Tommie popped into a B-Boy stance. His imitation of one of their favorite rappers was still whack.
“You are not and will never be L.L. Wouldn’t a little Bluetooth speaker be enough?”
“But we need the mics for the speeches.” Tommie sat down in the plush armchair beside Maurice.
Maurice rolled his eyes. He made speeches almost every week, but talking in front of people he didn’t know well about Tommie and what their forty-plus years of friendship meant to him felt like a breach of their bond and something in himself that Maurice hadn’t yet named.
“Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet?”
“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?”
Tommie laughed. “You’re right.”
“But”—Maurice let out a long sigh—“who all is coming? There are some numbers in the chat that I don’t have in my phone.”
He pulled his phone out again, scrolling through the latest text thread he’d been watching for hours.
His few contributions to the conversation were intended to diffuse what he perceived as tension.
Everybody on the chat seemed to be pressed about this one number.
Must be somebody special. “Do I need to save that number?”
“Whose number?” Tommie asked.
Maurice pursed his lips. “My brother, if I knew whose number, I wouldn’t be asking if I should save it.
” He showed his phone to Tommie. “This one,” he said, pressing the text bubble.
A menu popped up. Maurice hissed in frustration at the hearts and laughing faces that appeared.
“Dang it!” These smartphones made him feel dumb.
“That’s Monie, my cousin.”
Cousin? They’d been friends since they were shorties. Who was this cousin?
“She’s flying in from Chicago. Moms insisted.”
“Moms? So, you didn’t want her coming to your wedding?”
“Nah, it’s not like that. Monie is good people—the best—it’s just…”
Tommie got quiet.
Silence between them had always been comfortable. Tonight, the quiet screamed with emotions Maurice couldn’t remember Tommie ever showing. Whatever this Monie meant to Tommie was so heavy it left an indentation.
Tommie took a long pull from his drink and shook the moment off, like he always did. “Lemme ask you something?”
Maurice leaned in.
“You been home what, twelve, thirteen years? Why haven’t you ever dated? It’s not like you took a vow of celibacy.”
Not this again?
“I’m just saying, B. Aren’t you lonely?”
There had never been a reason to examine that particular question.
His life was full. There were always people around. Folks who needed something, work that needed to be done.
Maurice shook his head. “Nah, I don’t want for anything.”
Tommie pinned him with a look full of challenge.
“What?”
“You don’t think you need to be taken care of?”
“Between you, Auntie Don, Deb, and Lanie, I’ve got all the taking care of I can handle.”
Tommie sucked his teeth. “If loving you is trippin’, then we just trippin’,” Tommie said. His pecan-brown skin glowed warm, and it wasn’t just from the aged scotch.
“That look on your face means I’m gonna suffer…” Maurice said in warning.
Tommie had the nerve to look indignant. “My brother, you wound me.” He clutched at his heart. “I would never actually make you suffer.”
And Maurice was confident he never would.
In their decades of friendship, Tommie had never left him to suffer alone.
When he’d been a shy kid, hiding beneath his headphones and backpack, Tommie had never once hurt him, not even by mistake.
It took weeks, but he’d broken through Maurice’s protective shields.
And now, here they were, two lifelong friends about to embark on another adventure that would forever change them.
They’d been there before, on this precipice of life-altering decisions. At least Maurice could see this one coming and brace himself.
He was about to stand at the front of a room and officiate the permanent redistribution of the one constant he had in his life. It was right. Lanie was good. But this thing making itself known at the pit of his chest—he’d file under things that didn’t need further examination.
He loved Lanie like a sister, grateful for the calm and order she brought to Tommie’s life. And she wasn’t stingy with it. The low lights, the incense, the records. Lanie built a home that cared. Maurice was just as much a beneficiary. He visited often.
“B, you’re no Paul. Frontin’ like being single is a choice you made.”
But it was. Maurice had taken a life and would spend the rest of his working out his own salvation.
“You don’t have to eat the same thing every day. Wear damn near the same thing every day. Do the same things at the same time every day. I swear, one day that hot plate of yours is gonna short circuit just to spite you. There’s a whole stove in your place.”