Stand Your Ground: A Novel (20 page)

“Where was what?” Wyatt frowned and shook his head.

“Your phone? Where do you keep it?”

“On the table, by the door.”

“Is that where it was?”

“Yeah!” Wyatt said clearly agitated. “I told you . . .”

“Detective,” Newt jumped in again. “I’m going to have to stop—”

But the detective held up his hand. He said, “I think I have enough . . . for now. Thanks again.”

We didn’t take a single breath as the detective walked toward the door. But then, before he put his hand on the knob, he held up his finger as if he were remembering one more thing. “Did you witness any of this?” he asked me.

“No, she didn’t.” Again Wyatt spoke for me.

The detective’s eyes bored through me, and if he had even an iota of Superman’s powers, he would have seen the secret I kept.

As if my husband hadn’t spoken, the policeman said, “Mrs. Spencer?” and then waited for the answer to come out of my own mouth.

I shook my head. “I was in our house.” That was the truth.

He said, “So you didn’t see anything out of the window?”

“No.” Another truth.

“Did you see anything at all?” the detective asked me.

“I told you,” Wyatt jumped in, stopping me from having to tell my first lie. “She didn’t see anything! She was inside; I was outside.”

“Detective Ferguson, this has been traumatic for everyone. I think my client just wants to protect his wife.”

“Because she has nothing to do with this,” Wyatt said. “I shot that boy.”

The detective let a couple of beats of silence go by before he said, “Yes, you did.”

The detective’s eyes narrowed, but my husband glared back. I always thought of Wyatt as such a bright man. But he wasn’t smart enough to realize that he couldn’t intimidate a detective. This man wasn’t like the black teenagers who stuffed cheesesteaks between bread or senior citizens who swept the floors at Wyatt’s Cheesesteak Castles.

Finally, though, it was Ferguson who gave a slight smile. And now, I felt that if I had Superwoman’s powers, I would be able to see the secret that the detective held.

He said good-bye to all of us and gave me a look that had nothing to do with the dress I was wearing.

Detective Ferguson closed the door behind him, and seconds
ticked . . . one, two, three . . . seven, eight, nine . . . before Newt spoke up.

“You let Ferguson rile you up and set you up.”

“What are you talking about?” Wyatt barked.

“You forgot what you said when they taped you down at the station. You said you went upstairs to get your cell phone. That’s why your call went in to 911 three minutes after the girl’s, remember?”

“I forgot.” Wyatt shrugged. “What’s the big deal?”

“It’s a major contradiction that Ferguson didn’t have before he walked in here. There was always a hole in your story, Wyatt, about why you didn’t call the police right away. Why was there that big gap of time? And if your cell phone was right by the front door, there wouldn’t have been a three-minute gap.”

“So what? I just forgot.”

“That might’ve worked if your contradiction wasn’t coupled with your temper.” Newt blew out a long breath. “Before he walked in here, it was over.”

Wyatt folded his arms. “I was tired of answering the same questions.”

“The police can ask the same question one hundred times. You always have to answer.”

This time, all my husband did was huff.

Newt laid his arms on the table and sighed. “I have a feeling that we’re in a fight now. And if that was round one, I think we lost.”

I
glanced at the closed bedroom door where Wyatt had been hunkered down since the meeting with Ferguson yesterday, watching every news report about Marquis Johnson and Wyatt Spencer. I couldn’t believe the nonstop coverage; it was too much to me. But even when the news shifted to another story, Wyatt stayed in front of the television, since he recorded every segment with the TV/DVR that he’d had Newt bring to the hotel.

“What does the NAACP have to do with this?” I heard Wyatt shout.

Leaning against the wall that was right across from the bedroom, I slid down until my butt hit the floor, then crossed my legs in the lotus position. I needed to meditate, so that I would be ready for whatever happened next.

I closed my eyes and saw the events from May 12 again, as if they were on a never-ending repeat reel.

This was not working. I opened my eyes, stretched out my legs, and stared at the bedroom door.

I wanted to remember something different. So I took myself to a different day, a better day, another time, when Wyatt had changed my life.

Even though I would always remember Wyatt the Walrus somewhere in the recesses of my mind, he was all but forgotten until I walked into Twin Peaks for my shift the next day. He was almost blocking the door when I stepped into the restaurant.

“Hi,” I said, at first glad to see him. But then my mind went straight to that tip—had he realized how much he’d given me and was here to take it back?

But he knocked that fear right out of my mind with, “I came back to see you. I wanna have lunch, but told them I’d wait for you.”

“Okay.” I’d never had anyone do that before, but it worked for me. “Where are your buddies?”

“Those guys aren’t my friends; they’re business associates. So today, I came alone.” Then, his voice got shy-soft. “I wanted to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too. I’ll be right back,” I said.

His smile twisted into a grin.

“I just have to change into my uniform.”

His grin twisted into a frown.

“They don’t let us wear them to work.”

“That’s a good thing; you can’t walk around the streets looking like that.”

I nodded. “Don’t go anywhere.”

That brought his grin right back, but I was only saying it because if he tipped me today like he tipped me yesterday, then I’d be one hundred dollars closer to my goal.

I dashed to the back, determined to dress in record time so none of the other girls could get near Wyatt.

Seven minutes after he greeted me, I was back on the floor; he was seated at a table and had put in an order for a Cobb salad and a scotch on the rocks.

“So what’s a
nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” he asked when I set his drink in front of him.

It didn’t surprise me that he couldn’t come up with a better line. Even though I could tell his suit was kinda expensive (the Macy’s kind of expensive rather than the Rittenhouse Row expensive) and he was well groomed, looking like he’d recently had a manicure, there was a part of him that seemed out of place. Like he wasn’t really all that comfortable in that suit . . . or his skin.

But still, I answered his question. “I actually just started working here.”

He shook his head. “Walking around like that.” Like the day before, his eyes roamed over me, but not in a sneering, leering kind of way.

“It’s my job,” I said.

“Why don’t you look for another one?”

“Because I like it here.” I was getting annoyed. I mean, why was he coming down on me for being a waitress at Twin Peaks? At least it was an honest way to get a day’s pay.

He must have sensed my attitude because he held up his hands. “I was just thinking that you’re such a beautiful woman and I can tell that you’re smart.”

Now, that was a pretty good cleanup line. “How can you tell that?”

“By the way you handled my associates yesterday. A person has to be smart to be quick.”

“Well, thanks for the compliment. Let me get your food.”

By the time I served his salad, the lunch-hour crowd had packed the place and I was working four tables. So I couldn’t chat anymore; I just hoped that wouldn’t affect my tip.

It didn’t.

Wyatt left me another one hundred dollars; this time, the tip was more than his bill. I rushed into the locker room just so I could let out a whoop.

When I showed Keisha my tip, she cheered with me. “Dang, girl. What do you think Pops wants from you? Did he ask for your number or something?”

I laughed. “Pops?”

“Yeah, he’s old.”

“How old do you think he is?”

“I dunno. Like forty, fifty.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think, but he didn’t ask for anything. He’s definitely not interested in me that way. He just doesn’t like us walking around in these uniforms.”

“Yeah, all right.” Keisha laughed. “Trust me, if you weren’t wearing that, he wouldn’t be giving you one-hundred-dollar tips. Let’s just hope that he comes back.”

And Keisha’s hope became my reality. Day after day, Wyatt showed up for lunch. And day after day that turned into week after week, I served him.

I began enjoying our talks, or rather I enjoyed his interest in me because our talks were always just a series of questions.

“So, did you go to college?”

“No, I wasn’t that kind of student.”

“I can’t imagine that. You probably didn’t have the right guidance.”

Then:

“If you could be anything that you wanted to be, what would you choose to do?”

“I don’t know. I guess be a doctor.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause they make the most money.”

“I’m not talking about money; I’m talking about what’s in your heart. What would you do from your heart?”

I thought for a second. “I’d wanna be a good wife and a great mother. I wanna have a family.” I stopped because I had never thought of that before. Is that what I really wanted? I guess I did—people always wanted what they never had.

I got so used to seeing Wyatt that I stopped counting the consecutive days (stopping at thirty-three) that he’d shown up, though I didn’t stop counting those tips. One hundred dollars every day, five days a week—serving Wyatt was the best gig I’d ever landed. I’d never had more than fifty dollars in my bank account at any given time, but now I had over three thousand dollars. Because of him, I started looking in the paper for affordable apartments.

But then he stopped. Without a word or a warning, he didn’t show up one day, which turned into two, then three and four. By the fifth day, I knew that I wouldn’t see him again.

And I missed him. It was more than the tips. It was that I’d never had anyone show any kind of interest in me—ever.

I got to that point where I forgot about him. So of course, that’s when he showed up three months later. I was heading out of Twin Peaks and he was heading in.

“Hi!” I said with all kinds of glee in my voice. “Where’ve you been?”

“You didn’t think that I was going to eat Cobb salads for the rest of my life, did you?”

I laughed. “You can order something else.”

He took a quick peek inside the restaurant and said, “Nah, I only came by to see you.”

That made me shift from one foot to the other. Now that I thought
about it, wasn’t it kind of weird for someone to be at a restaurant every single day? And now he just happened to waiting for me outside of Twin Peaks?

But then in the softest, kindest, gentlest voice, he said, “Why don’t you have dinner with me?”

“Thanks, but we’re not allowed to fraternize with the customers.”

He frowned. “How would they know?”

That was a good question. And actually, no one had explained that rule in the employee manual to me.

Still, I didn’t know a thing about this guy. But then I thought about all the tips. And though I didn’t think he’d given me those tips for this purpose, I said, “Instead of dinner, what about a cup of coffee in that Starbucks across the street?”

“Okay, that’s good enough for me.”

After we ordered—hot chocolate for me and a black coffee for him—we parked at one of those café tables and talked and talked and talked.

Just like in the restaurant, Wyatt asked me questions about everything.

“So what do you do for fun?”

I said “I take on as many shifts working as I can.”

That made him frown. “I know your life is more than that. A beautiful girl like you. You must have dozens of suitors lined up waiting to take you home every day.”

“I don’t know what’s funnier,” I said, chuckling. “Dozens or suitors? My mom uses that word and it always makes me laugh.”

The way the corners of his lips turned down a little bit, I felt like I’d hurt his feelings.

“But I like it. I mean, I don’t have dozens of suitors. I don’t have any. Guys just don’t ask me out.”

“Is there something wrong with you?”

I laughed again.

He said, “Because that can be the only reason; I mean, look at you.”

“Awww, that’s so nice, but no, there’s nothing wrong with me. Guys have told me that I’m unapproachable, though I don’t know what that means. I once heard Halle Berry tell Oprah that the hardest thing for her to do was get a date on Friday night. And I understand that.”

He shook his head. “These young guys don’t know what they’re missing.”

“Young guys?” I took a sip of my hot chocolate. “How old are you?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you know you’re never supposed to ask a man his age?”

I laughed. “I thought that was only for women.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re right.” He paused, as if he didn’t want to tell me. As if he were calculating in his head, trying to come up with some number that I would believe.