Brighton (10 page)

SHE BUMPED
her hip against his as they picked their way along Charles Street, then began the narrow climb up Pinckney to where it wound back down into Joy. Lisa circled her arms around his waist as he fumbled for the key, running her lips across his neck, brushing up against the stubble on his cheek. They kissed in the darkened living room, with the anxious traffic below in the street and the front door still ajar. She kicked it closed as she led him to the couch. He started to take off his shirt. She tore it, buttons bouncing and rolling crazily everywhere. They started on the couch but wound up in front of a fireplace they’d used once, nearly burning down their apartment in the process. Kevin closed his eyes and lost himself. She watched him until the very end, then dropped her head back, bared her teeth, and let it wash over. When it was done, she lay curled on her side and stared at an inch-wide sliver of moonlight striped across his bare chest. She thought he might be sleeping and slipped from under his arm, padding into the bedroom to get a robe. By the time she returned, he’d put on a pair of blue boxers and found some cold chicken and half a bottle of wine in the fridge. They ate sprawled on the wooden floor, using pillows for cushions.

“My boyfriend, the Pulitzer Prize winner. I like it.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Two pints.”

“Imperial pints. That’s twenty ounces. And you were drinking Guinness.”

Lisa wasn’t drunk but didn’t mind that he thought so. She traced his flat stomach lazily with a finger. “You realize it’s been almost a year.”

“Be a year next month.”

“Very good, Mr. Pearce. You remember how we met?”

“I know it was at a party.”

“What party?”

Kevin picked at a piece of chicken. “Might have to take the Fifth on that one, Counselor.”

“Idiot.”

They’d met at a party thrown by one of her colleagues, a prosecutor named Ronnie Coleman. Ronnie loved to play matchmaker and, for some reason, considered Lisa his greatest challenge. She told him she could get herself a date, or anything else she wanted, whenever she wanted. Still, Ronnie liked to dabble. So he’d introduced her to Kevin on a soft spring evening, with the windows open overlooking Marlborough Street and Alicia Keys playing somewhere in the background. Everything was perfect. Then Kevin opened his mouth. Most guys in Boston had one major problem. They couldn’t get over themselves. Whether it was their career, their clothes, their imaginary prowess in bed, or just checking their hair in a mirror every five minutes, they were more boys than men. Kevin was all that for sure, but in an innocent, Hugh Grant sort of way, mumbling into his beer, barely making
eye contact with her, and hustling back to his circle of pals first chance he got. He left the party a few minutes after they’d met without saying good-bye. At the door, however, his eyes sought her out and she raised her glass. He nodded and was gone.

It should have been nothing more than amusing, another child in a man’s suit of clothes, but something lingered. She liked his disheveled smile, liked the way he walked, and especially liked that he wasn’t a raging, fucking egomaniac. After he left, the party seemed washed out and boring. She found herself wishing he’d stayed. The next day she tracked down Ronnie, who provided her with the essentials. A reporter at the
Globe
. Never mentioned that. Covered crime. Never mentioned that. He must have known who she was. Never mentioned it. Lisa decided she wanted a second helping. Fortunately, Boston’s a small town. She ran into him two weeks later at the Starbucks on the corner of Beacon and Charles. Away from the party, sipping his coffee, Kevin relaxed. And she found something there that comforted her, made her feel safe. Cared for. She remembered thinking that as he kissed her for the first time and she took him to her bed. The rest of it, of course, snuck up on her, belting her across the side of the head the way those things always did. She should have expected it, but who didn’t say that? So she fell like everyone else who lived and breathed for a living fell. One minute he was a sweet guy she’d date for the summer. Then she caught herself looking at him as he walked into a restaurant and it all changed into something different, something thrilling, something electric. Something. She knew it would end. Everything ended one way or another. But she’d fallen, in that moment of time and space. Pretty fucking hard, too.

“Your pal, Robbie or something.” She had to give him credit. Kevin was hanging in there, still trying to piece together their first meeting. “It was a party at his place.”

“Ronnie Coleman.”

“Ronnie Coleman. That’s it. Lives on Comm Ave.”

“Marlborough Street.”

“Marlborough, right. Maybe I should give up while I’m ahead?”

“You’re not ahead, but, yes, you should give up.” Lisa pointed her toes and ran them along his shin. “By the way, are you ever gonna shave?”

He scratched at his stubble and pushed a hand through brown hair that fell halfway to his shoulders. “I’m going for Kurt Cobain, circa 1991.”

“That’s wonderful, Kevin, but this is the Pulitzer. Interviews, pictures, publicity.”

“Am I running for office or something?”

“Just think about it, darling.”

“You never call me ‘darling.’”

“I never asked you to cut your hair, either. Tell me what you did today after you found out. Did you see your family?”

“I went back there, yeah.”

“They must have been thrilled.”

“They were excited. You want some more wine?”

She held out her glass and watched as he filled it. He never talked about Brighton. And never asked her about growing up in the ’Bury. It was part of their unspoken pact. Nothing about their pasts. Nothing about families, friends, old flames. First times, last times. Who they’d fucked. Who they’d fucked over. And nothing, especially nothing, about their childhoods. There’d only been the one exception. A gray Sunday morning when they’d just made
love and were lying in the afterward, a bell from one of Boston’s ancient churches tolling the hour then falling silent. Lisa recalled holding her breath and feeling the weight of everything that wasn’t. No cars in the street, no rustle of breeze, no clap or shout. She’d wondered idly if they weren’t the only people left in Beacon Hill, in all of Boston, in all the world, if perhaps she’d hear the clip of hooves striking off the cobbles below, the city’s ever lurking past reborn as they’d slept. Then Kevin had touched the scar that ran along her scalp line, white against coffee cream skin, and asked where it came from. And she’d told him.

“Nigger, get back on that bus.”

The cop glared at Lisa through the scratched Plexiglas shield covering his face and poked at her with the rounded end of his baton. Lisa’s first instinct was to retreat back up the steps. Then she heard Mrs. Pendleton. The woman had a rawboned voice and smooth skin that shone in all its blackness. She dressed severely but professionally, face scrubbed of makeup and pretense. Fierce, intelligent, a leader. When she told her freshman class they’d “volunteered” to be the first bus into South Boston, they nodded as one and got on board. In the beginning it wasn’t so bad—just a lot of hard, white faces, layered three and four deep on every block, staring at the caravan of yellow as it rolled past. Then they turned onto G Street and the first rock cracked a window. Mrs. Pendleton was standing in the aisle, explaining what to expect when it hit. She didn’t miss a beat, smiling and thanking the locals for the warm welcome. The kids chuckled nervously. Then another rock hit, followed by a milk crate, a bottle, more rocks, and then too many objects to count. The school bus crawled to a stop in the middle of the street and began to sway on its springs as people hurled themselves at the windows.
Middle-aged men with faces carved out of roast beef, kids with zits and shaved heads carrying cut-down hockey sticks like war clubs, mothers with rollers in their hair and their children with signs that read
WELCOME BONEHEADS
and
WHITES HAVE RIGHTS TOO
! A thousand different flavors of ugly, coming at the windows in waves. Lisa kept her eye on Mrs. Pendleton, who only got calmer as the world got crazier. She strolled to the front, touching a child here and there as she passed before whispering to the driver. He shook his head at first, then edged the bus forward. The faces fell away as they picked up speed. Cops on motorcycles swung in on either side, escorting them the rest of the way down the block. The bus groaned to a stop and the crowd fell quiet. The driver looked back at Mrs. Pendleton, who walked down the aisle and crouched beside Lisa. Mrs. Pendleton had always made Lisa feel special, like she was destined for something “great.” Maybe “great” started today. And maybe “great” wasn’t really all that wonderful. Lisa wasn’t sure, but when Mrs. Pendleton asked if she’d be willing to go first, Lisa found herself nodding. Then she was on her feet and walking to the front. The driver cranked open the door and there she was, with the cop and the Plexiglas shield, the black baton and the word
nigger
burning in her ears. And Mrs. Pendleton right behind her.

“What did he say to you, honey?”

“Nothing, ma’am.”

“All right, then.”

Mrs. Pendleton waited. They all waited. Everyone on the bus, the double line of cops in riot gear and more on horseback, the ranks of tight pale faces behind the cops who didn’t want their children shipped off to a strange neighborhood halfway across the city, the million plus who’d sit safe and smug in their suburbs and watch on TV. All of them wondering if Lisa Mignot would make it to the
front door of South Boston High School. Or if she’d be heading back to Roxbury in a pine box.

Lisa pushed the cop’s baton away and stepped off the bus. Her eyes followed a pigeon, flapping its wings once and riding a gray wind across the façade of the school before perching on the corner of the building like a small, silent statue. Lisa took another step. There was a young white cop to her left. He slipped the visor up off his face and smiled. She smiled back. A green golf ball struck him just under the eye. He dropped to the ground and didn’t move. The golf ball was followed by a baseball, slapping the pavement a foot or two in front of Lisa and sailing off into the crowd. Then it all came down. A fusillade of rocks and bricks, batteries and bottles, pinging off Plexiglas and popping all around her. Something told Lisa not to run. Running was fear. And fear was oxygen to the hatred burning all around her. So she ducked her head and just kept walking. Another cop went down to her right. Someone grabbed her under the arms and nearly lifted her off her feet, hustling her up the path toward the front door of the high school. She was twenty feet away when another golf ball snapped off the pavement. The carom caught Lisa near the temple. She went to a knee. There was a thread of blood on the curb and more on her hands. Above her a voice called her name. Then Mrs. Pendleton was there, wiping her face with a handkerchief.

“Can you go the rest of the way?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good, because if you can’t make it, they don’t stand a chance.” Mrs. Pendleton pointed back toward the buses and a string of eyes staring out from the windows. Lisa nodded. The older woman took her hand.

“Head high, Lisa. Never be afraid.”

And that was how they walked, hand in hand, the final five strides. And then, officially, South Boston High School was integrated.

Kevin wasn’t a racist. Not a bit. Still, when she’d told him the story that Sunday morning, his face had clouded over. She was, for just a moment, one of “them”—the little black girl all of Boston had seen walking off the bus that day. She took a small sip of wine, rolled onto her back, and stared at a wooden picture rail that ran naked around their living room.

“What are you thinking about?” he said.

“Nothing. You. The Pulitzer.” She lied because it was easy. Kind, even. Meanwhile, her mind turned to the part of herself she kept separate. Like a stone, it sat silent and cold and heavy in her stomach, absorbing neither heat nor light, reflecting only itself.

“Tell me something,” she said, wary of the conversation now, leading things carefully away from where they couldn’t go.

“Whatever you want.”

She propped herself up on an elbow, the curve of her hip outlined in light from the street. “What does a Pulitzer mean for a journalist’s career?”

He chuckled. “Good question. Probably nothing. If I wanted to leave Boston, maybe I could go to the
Times
.”

“But you don’t want to leave Boston.” She knew he’d never leave. For Kevin, Boston was Boston. And everything else wasn’t. Lisa didn’t feel that way, but, again, why get into it? Especially now. Somewhere a cell phone rang, a soft purr coming from the general vicinity of the couch.

“I think that’s mine.” She dug around in the cushions until
she found her phone. “Gotta take this.” She retreated down the apartment’s short hallway, dropping her voice to a whisper. After another minute, she returned and started picking up clothes off the floor.

“What is it?” Kevin said, climbing to his feet and stretching.

“Remember I wanted to talk to you about something in the Sevens?”

“One of your cases.”

“A girl was murdered last night. I can’t go into all the details, but it’s a big-time heater.”

“And you need my help?”

She stopped collecting clothes and turned to face him. “What if I did?”

“Like I said, it’s a violation of the rules.”

“But you’d be willing to make an exception?”

“I’d be willing to make a trade.”

She pulled him close, kissing him hungrily and running a rough nail across his cheek. Then she escaped into the bathroom, leaving him alone in the living room, half naked and bathed in a pale splinter of light.