Chapter 4
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A very groggyLamar answered the phone just as Stacy was about to hang up and try Ange’s cell. Should’ve called Ange first,he thought. Without preamble he told Lamar, “Come get me.”
Lamar balked. “Stace, now? Do you know—”
“It’s my birthday.” Was that a footstep he heard down the hall? His momma’s door was still shut, but was she out of bed already? “I ain’t going to school today, Lamar, and if you don’t want to drive out here to pick me up then I’ll call Ange.”
“Shit, boy,” Lamar grumbled, but Stacy knew him well enough to know it was only an act. There was an unspoken rivalry between the two friends, and all Stacy had to do to spur Lamar into action was threaten to ask Ange instead. Before he even got the words out, Lamar would be giving in. “Now hold up. I never said I wouldn’t…” Fifteen minutes later tires spun in the gravel drive and Stacy pulled the front door shut behind him quietly before falling into the passenger seat of Lamar’s ‘86 Firebird Trans Am.
The sports car was Lamar’s sole love in life. Painted a deep blue flecked with silver sparkles to catch the sun, windows tinted a shade that was barely legal, the bass cranked so high that houses shook when it drove past—Stacy once called it a pimp-mobile and had to duck out of the path of Lamar’s swinging fist. All it needed was a pair of fuzzy dice dangling from the rear-view mirror and the image was complete, but Lamar had a gold cross there instead, hanging from a thick chain he got at a pawn shop downtown real cheap. The cross was huge, more ornamental than religious, solid gold diamond-cut to look expensive. More than once it pulled the mirror off and Lamar had to super-glue it back to the windshield.
Also hanging from the mirror was a small square key-chain, clear plastic with a rolled up condom inside. Across the plastic in big black Army-issue letters was the legend, “In case of emergency, break glass.” Stacy had gotten off many times in that car but there was never any need for thatcondom—Lamar kept one in his wallet at all times, and there was a half-empty box in the glove compartment, behind some wipes to keep the leather interior clean. “You come on my seat,” he told Colin once, Stacy and Ange half drunk and giggling like schoolgirls in the back, “and you’re licking it up yourself, you hear me, motherfucker? I don’t care if the wipes smell like babies, you ain’t squirting your load in here unless someone swallows it down. And don’t look at me.”
At quarter after seven in the morning Lamar wasn’t quite so tough. Without Ange and Colin for an audience he was reserved, almost an artist’s pencil sketch of his usual colorful self. His pale brown skin looked gray by the morning light, his face ashen, his close hair scruffy over his scalp like a day old beard. When Stacy slid into the seat beside him, he looked at him over the top of his black sunglasses with blood-shot eyes and muttered, “Happy fucking birthday, kid.”
“Shut up.” Stacy was secretly pleased that Lamar said something before he could remind him. “You’re only two years older than me, man. Don’t call me kid.”
They drove in silence, Lamar glowering at the morning world in front of them and Stacy gripping the seatbelt, anxious for no real reason at all. Sixteen, he thought, though the number meant nothing to him—he’d been sexually active for almost a year now, ever since he met the guys, they got together sometimes just to get off.
He already smoked—cigarettes mostly, weed when he could get it—and drank Colin under the table, quite a feat seeing as how he was a good hundred pounds lighter than his friend. And since he’d been in Driver’s Ed, Ange was letting him get behind the wheel of the cars at the shop, just pulling them into the garage, or parking them in the lot when done, but once he went around the block in a candy-apple red Corvette while Ange looked the other way. “You get caught and it’s myass that gets busted,” his friend had said, holding out the keys.
Stacy tried to palm them but Ange held on. “Stace.” His low voice cut right through Stacy’s excitement. “I’m trusting you, monada.Don’t fail me.”
“I know, I know,” Stacy said, plucking at the keys. Ange still wouldn’t let them go, and the way he stared without blinking unnerved Stacy. “I get so much as a scratch on her and I shouldn’t even bother to come back, I gotcha.”
But Ange wasn’t satisfied. “I’m not Lamar,” he purred. Stacy stopped tugging at the keys and dropped his gaze, chastised by the slight reproach in his friend’s voice. “I don’t need to threaten you.”
Stacy whispered, “I know.” Ange let go of the keys, finally, the heavy weight falling into his open palm, and Stacy damn near crawled around the block, no waywas anything fucking up that car while he had it. Now that he was sixteen and able to get his license, he didn’t think driving would be as exhilarating as it had been only yesterday, when being behind the wheel had been illegal.