11. Van
Van
Ipulled into Little Tokyo and parked, then looked in my rearview mirror to make sure Leona was still behind me. She pulled her Mercedes into a spot a few spaces down, and I laughed to myself when she got out.
She really had followed me in her own car.
I hadn’t argued with her about it because I already knew what she was doing.
Leona had told me at least twice that she had a man and made damn sure I understood lunch wasn’t a date.
If driving herself made her feel better about coming, that was fine with me.
Didn’t change the fact that I wanted to spend some time with her.
I got out and waited for her near the entrance. When she caught up to me, I reached for the door and held it open.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She walked past me, and I followed her inside. We got a booth near the back, and as soon as the waitress handed us the menus, Leona opened hers and stared at it long enough for me to know she didn’t recognize half the shit she was looking at.
“You lost?”
Her eyes came up. “Very.”
I laughed. “What do you normally eat?”
“Why you asking me like I’m five?”
“Because you just told me you’ve never had Japanese food.”
“I haven’t.”
“So I’m trying to help you.”
Leona gave me a look before turning her attention back to the menu. “I see chicken, steak, and rice. I’ll figure it out.”
“You eat sushi?”
Leona’s face answered before she did. “No.”
“You ever tried it?”
“No.”
“Then how you know you don’t like it?”
“Because I don’t want no raw fish.”
I laughed. “It ain’t all raw.”
“I still don’t want it.”
I shook my head. “Alright. Get the hibachi.”
She looked over the menu again. “That come with fried rice?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Now we talking.”
By the time we ordered, Leona had loosened up some.
We talked about nothing important while we waited on our food, and I liked that I didn’t have to work hard to keep a conversation going with her.
One minute she was telling me how somebody needed to do something about the potholes in our neighborhood, and the next she was complaining about how Mobile still felt like summer even though fall had already started.
She was funny too. Not in a way that felt like she was trying to be. Half the shit that came out of her mouth just caught me off guard.
When our food came, I picked up my chopsticks and looked across the table at her.
Leona immediately reached for her fork.
“You ain’t even gonna try?”
“Try what?”
I held up the chopsticks.
She looked at them and then at me. “I’m trying to eat, not pass a coordination test.”
“Come on. I’ll show you.”
“I’m good.” She picked up her fork and started eating. “You use them since it’s so easy.”
“I am.”
“Congratulations.”
I laughed and left her alone.
I liked Leona. That much was obvious. But she had a man, and she’d made sure I knew it. I wasn’t about to disrespect that just because I wanted to spend some time with her. As far as I was concerned, we were having lunch and getting to know each other.
Once we’d been eating for a little while, I realized there was still a lot I didn’t know about her. I knew she’d recently moved into the neighborhood, her mama could negotiate the price of damn near anything, and apparently her boyfriend drove trucks. That was about it.
“So what do you do?” I asked.
Leona stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth.
The change in her was immediate enough that I knew I’d stepped into something before she even answered.
“I used to do nails.”
“Used to?”
She lowered her fork to the plate.
For a few seconds, she didn’t say anything. I was about to tell her she didn’t have to answer when she looked across the table at me.
“I just got out of prison.”
I wasn’t expecting that, and I sat back a little. “How long?”
“Five years.”
Five fucking years.
Looking at her, I would’ve never guessed she’d just spent five years in prison. Then some things started making a little more sense. The nearly empty house her mama had joked about. All the boxes. The way she’d talked about still getting settled.
I didn’t know what she’d done, and I wasn’t about to assume. “You wanna tell me what happened,” I asked, “or is that too much too soon?”
Leona looked down at her plate before answering. “Somebody tipped the feds off that there was drugs in my building. They found them, and that was all they needed to make it look like the shit belonged to me.”
“Did you know they were there?”
“Hell no. My lawyer argued them compartments could’ve already been there when I bought the building. The government said there was no way I owned that shop and didn’t know what was happening inside my own walls.”
“So whose drugs were they?”
She hesitated before answering. “They thought they belonged to somebody close to me.”
“Did they?”
Her eyes dropped back to her plate. “They couldn’t prove it.”
That wasn’t what I’d asked, and we both knew it. I gave her a second before asking anything else.
“Did they try to get you to give them somebody else?”
“Yeah.”
I watched her for a second. “And you wouldn’t?”
“I wasn’t putting nobody’s name on no federal paperwork.” She gave a small shrug, but there wasn’t anything casual about the way she said it. “I knew what saying his name would’ve done.”
I looked at her. “His?”
Leona went quiet again.
Then she said, “My man.”
That caught me harder than the prison part had.
“The one you’re with now?”
“Yeah.”
I stared at her for a second, putting together what she wasn’t saying. She’d spent five years in federal prison over drugs the government thought belonged to the same man she was still calling her boyfriend.
“And you’re still with him?”
Her mouth tightened. “Yes. I’m still with him.”
I sat back and looked at her.
“That’s the part I don’t understand.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t ask you to understand it.”
“I know.” I held her eyes. “But you just told me you did five years over some drugs that weren’t yours, and when I asked whose they were, you started talking about your man.”
She put her fork down. “Because it wasn’t that damn simple.”
“Then what am I missing?”
Leona looked down at her plate for a second. “They offered me a deal.”
I waited for her to keep going.
“They wanted JB. They knew them drugs wasn’t mine, or at least they believed they wasn’t.
They wanted me to tell them they belonged to him and give them enough to build a case against him.
” She picked up her fork, then put it right back down without touching her food.
“If I cooperated, they were willing to cut my time.”
“And you told them no?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I waited a second. “Why?”
Leona looked at me like the answer should’ve been obvious.
“Because I knew what they was trying to do. They already had me. The shit was found in my building, and my name was on everything. Giving them JB wasn’t gonna change the fact that I was caught up in it.
It was just gonna make sure both of us ended up in prison. ”
“So you could’ve gotten less time?”
“Probably. They never promised me I was walking out of there.” Her voice got quieter. “And JB would’ve been looking at way more than five years if I gave them what they wanted.”
I sat there looking at her. “So you took the five.”
“I took the five.”
She said it like she’d made peace with it a long time ago, but I still couldn’t understand it.
“You don’t regret it?”
Leona took a second before answering. “I regret going to prison. I regret losing five years of my life. I regret a whole lot of shit about what happened.” She looked me straight in my face.
“But if you asking me if I wish I would’ve sat in front of them people and told everything I knew about JB so I could come home sooner? No.”
That answer bothered me more than I expected it to. “You don’t seem like the type of woman dumb enough to do five years for a man.”
Her fork hit the plate harder than it needed to.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
I knew then I’d pushed too far. “I ain’t calling you dumb.”
“You just fucking did.”
“Leona-”
“No, because you don’t know me and you damn sure don’t know JB.” She crossed her arms and sat back against the booth. “You sitting here judging a decision I made off one damn conversation.”
“You right.”
“He stood by me the whole time I was inside. He made sure I had money. He came to see me. He answered every call. He didn’t just forget about me because I got locked up.”
I listened without interrupting her.
“And he changed,” she continued. “He left all that street shit alone. He owns a trucking company now. When I came home, he already had my place ready for me. He bought me a car, gave me money, made sure I had everything I needed. He’s good to me.”
The more she talked, the more I realized I didn’t know enough about them to be telling her how she should feel.
“I’ve been with him since I was fourteen years old, Van,” she said. “He’s the only man I’ve ever truly known. I’ve never even been with another man. So don’t sit across this table acting like you understand what we built.”
That shut me up. I hadn’t realized they went back that far. I knew she had a man, and now I knew she’d done five years protecting him, but being with somebody since fourteen was different. They had damn near grown up together. There was a whole history between them I knew nothing about.
“You right,” I said after a second. “I don’t understand it.”
She looked away from me.
“And I shouldn’t have acted like I did,” I added. “I’m sorry.”
Leona didn’t answer, but some of the tension left her shoulders.
I picked up my glass and took a drink, mostly to give her a minute. Lunch had gone from us laughing over her refusing to use chopsticks to me getting all in her business when I hadn’t known the woman two weeks. Not exactly my best work.
Neither one of us said much after that. Leona moved some rice around her plate without eating it, and I knew better than to try forcing the conversation back to where it had been. When the waitress passed our table again, I asked for the check and two boxes.
As soon as she brought the check, Leona reached for her purse.
“I got it,” I told her.
She looked at me. “I was supposed to be buying your lunch.”
“I know.”
“Then give me the check.”
I slid my card onto the tray before she could get hers out. “I never planned on letting you pay.”
Her eyebrows pulled together. “Then why you asked me to lunch?”
“Because I needed an excuse.”
She stopped digging through her purse and looked at me. “An excuse for what?”
“To get to know you.”
Leona let out a dry little laugh and shook her head. “I bet you regretting that shit now.”
“Nah,” I said.
She looked up at me.
“I hate that happened to you,” I told her. “And I probably should’ve kept some of my opinions to myself, but I don’t regret getting to know you.”
She stared down at the table for a few seconds. “Van, you don’t even know me.”
“Not yet.”
Her eyes came back to mine.
I smiled a little. “I know you got knocked down by my dog and still rubbed his head afterward. I know you made that empty-ass house look good as hell. And I know you just told me the truth when you could’ve lied.”
“That ain’t knowing somebody.”
“No, but it’s enough to make me want to know the rest.”
Leona studied me for a second. “So what you saying?”
“I’m saying we can be friends.”
“Friends?”
“Yeah.” I sat back and looked at her. “You got a man. I heard you loud and clear.”
She kept looking at me like she was trying to figure out what kind of game I was playing, but I wasn’t playing one. I was attracted to her, and there wasn’t any point lying to myself about that. But she’d told me she had a man, and I could respect that without pretending I wasn’t interested.
Finally, Leona let out a breath. “I guess I could use a friend.”
“Good.”
She pointed at me. “Just don’t go getting no ideas.”
I laughed. “Little late for that.”
“Van.”
“What?” I picked up my water. “I said I can be your friend. I didn’t say I stopped being interested.”
She stared at me.
“I’m not asking you to do anything about it,” I added. “You told me your situation, and I can respect it. I’m just not gonna sit here and lie to you either.”
That seemed to catch her off guard because, for once, she didn’t have anything to say.
The waitress came back with my card and two to-go boxes. I signed the receipt, then slid one of the boxes across the table to Leona. Once we had our food packed up, I grabbed my box and slid out of the booth. Leona grabbed her purse and followed me toward the door.
Outside, I walked with her across the parking lot toward her Mercedes.
She glanced over at me. “You ain’t gotta walk me to my car.”
“I know.”
“Then why you doing it?”
“My mama raised me right.”
Leona laughed. “Oh, okay.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head as we reached her car. “Thank you for lunch.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And for the TV.”
“Anytime, neighbor.”
Leona smiled before getting in, and I closed the door behind her.
I waited until she pulled out before heading back toward my Jeep.
I still didn’t understand how she could do five years for JB and come home wanting to be with him, but after the way lunch had gone, I knew better than to keep questioning her about it.
If all she was offering me was friendship, I could respect that. At least I was gonna try.