After Life

When the chips fall

MICHAEL-JOHNSON NEWMAN

'Baited' the last text in the chat says. It's a little less intriguing than what's above it – a picture of me covered in blood and bullets. A 'necessary evil' the detective called the ploy, despite mom's protests. I would have done it – really done it – even without the incentive of possibly tricking someone.

"Here you go sir!" The buzz of the coffee shop and the soft hum of music in the background pulls me back to the present, where a cashier who can barely see over the counter beams at me with a hot cup of coffee in her hand and a bag of goodies. I put my phone away.

"Have a good day!" she says with eyes squished shut from a smile that lifts her plump, rosy cheeks.

I nod and wish her the same, realizing with each step I take away from the counter, that good days for me have been rare. Francie smiled for the first time yesterday since moving to that place we've been forced to temporarily call home, and that might have been a good day, but the muffled sobs I heard coming from her room later in the night suggested my optimism was unfounded.

I eased my shoulder against the glass door and opened it to the afternoon downpour. There was a time when rainy days were good days – when mom, Francie and I would make hot cups of chocolate tea and sugar dumplings and listen to the droplets against our zinc roof, but those days have been replaced by trips to a coffee shop in some strange place.

"Yow, beg yuh some nuh?"

Without sparing a glance, I know the groggy voice shouting above the rain is Jasper's, a 'mad man' who frequents the coffee shop but is never allowed entrance.

He repeats his request and props himself up off the ground, this time adding 'please'. He hops over a puddle and lands in a stream before me, his barefoot making a splash big enough to cause some of the water heading to the drain to wet my pants.

"Sorry mi boss, sorry mi boss!" he shouts, reaching in to dry my pants as he gets wetter by the second.

"Dat good, man," I told him before guiding his hand away. He looks apologetic but needy as his eyes follow the hot cup of coffee going up to my mouth.

"Here." I hand him the barely touched cup of coffee and shuffle around the bag to get him one of the sandwiches I bought. He seems to search my face for approval and flinches as I shove the sandwich at him when he hesitates to take it.

He says a single word without repeating it as he often does. "Thanks." He sits back down in the corner in the soaked sweater, the one I gave him when we first got here. I swallow the tinge of guilt on my tongue as I commit his face to memory – the man who has nothing and no one. He latches onto my kindness and is the object of other people's shame. That's why when I have the stomach for it – if the man with the accent is to be believed – he will be the first one I kill... for my family's sake. I look at him one last time before walking off into the rain.

I arrive on the veranda drenched as I close the lock behind me.

For a brief moment, I hesitate, waiting to hear mom's complaints about me 'nastying' up her veranda. There was none. This isn't home, I remind myself as I removed my shirt and opened the door. Only mom budges from the couch as the hollow door creaks open. She sends me a light wave with a smile before closing her eyes again. Francie is knocked out on the other couch with a book resting on her stomach.

Putting the bag with sandwiches down, the absence of hot chocolate at a time like this reminds me how much things have changed.

After making it to my – this room, I close the door behind me and stare at the bed. Though it's not the same place, flashes of Sophie haunt me as I throw my wet clothes into a pile and get into some dry ones. I settle onto the floor on my makeshift bed and lie there, staring at the spot Sophie would have been if we were still home that night. In a lot of ways, I'm still at that place.

A buzzing sound I've mostly ignored is back. It's coming from the pile of wet clothes I just took off and it dawns on me that that's where my phone must be. I find it as the buzzing stops and almost just as quickly, it starts buzzing again. The detective's name is on the screen.

When I greet him, there's laughter on the other end. I'm confused.

"Hello?"

Before I could call to him again, he speaks. "Trust me," he begins, unable to hide the excitement in his voice, "your friend is resourceful and relentless. Now, I'm 110 percent sure he's involved, and possibly led the attack."

"What?"

"Listen Michael, in a short while from now, you're gonna have to make a gamble. I don't know how exactly he figured it out, or how deep his connections run, but something nuh right than we first thought."

"Douglas, who you a talk 'bout?"

"Quan," he says, excitement and nervousness intertwined with his baritone.

There's a knocking sound at the grill.

"Michael, Quan found out where your mother and sister are. That means he's also found out where you are. He's already –"

"The code. Give me the code," I demand of him as I slip over to the bed and pull a block box from beneath it. There's a digital screen connected to an intricate lock system. The detective gave it to me for certain cases – no, he gave it to me for this very reason. It will only open with his code.

"Michael, slow down. Listen to me. Before I give you the code, I need you to consider this: if you show yourself to him, the trap we're setting for him will all be undone and we'll have lost all the progress we've made. On the other hand, we don't know what his intentions are for showing up there. He thinks that you are dead. For our plan to work, he has to keep thinking that. But, there's a chance he may be there to finish what he started and in that case, I wouldn't advise you stand by and watch. We're on our way there as quickly as we can, but it will take a while. Now..."

There's another knock at the grill while the detective rambles on. Luckily, neither mom nor Francie has heard it. They are both still asleep.

I peek from my room but am unable to see who's standing out front.

"... You understand what that means, right? Michael, are you listening to me?"

"Douglas, I get it. Give me the code." I have a chance to end it all here and protect mom and Francie. There's a thin line between doing nothing and being strategic. This is the gamble. I will not lose this time.

There's another knock. Mom springs up from the couch, startled while rubbing her eyes.

"The fucking –"

"DM190elJ@"

I quickly put the code in and hang the phone up. It's buzzing again but I ignore it as I crack my door slightly open to get an angle as mom pulls the curtain to look outside. And there he was. Quan, swollen, black and blue and looking a shell of himself, at the door.

I am shocked to see him that way – so is mom, but there is no sympathy here. I can see the back of a black sedan parked at the front of the yard. As mom opens the door, the box slowly opens up and what looks like a Beretta is encased between two magazines. Comes what may, I'll be ready.

"Cleon...? Is that you?" mom asks. Francie is slowly waking from her slumber and though I can't see their faces, I can't begin to imagine their surprise at him showing up to a place no one should be able to find us.

"Can I come in?" he asks her. Francie looks around frantically, perhaps checking to make sure I wasn't there.

"Yes, come," mom says hesitantly. He hobbles through the door and into the hall. I can see him much more clearly now. Much clearer than I've ever been able to see him.

Leaving my door at just a crack and with a gun in my hand, I wait for my moment to strike swiftly and decisively.

If there will be death today, it will not be ours.