The Twelfth Card

home.”
    “Home?”
    He looked at them curiously. “Jail.”
    As if, what else would he possibly mean?
    *   *   *
    Father and daughter got off the C train at 135th street and started east, toward Langston Hughes High.
    She hadn’t wanted him to come but he’d insisted on looking after her—which Mr. Rhyme and Detective Bell had insisted on too. Besides, she reflected, he’d be back in Buffalo by tomorrow and she supposed she could tolerate an hour or two with him.
    He nodded back at the subway. “Used to love to write on C trains. Paint stuck real nice . . . I knew a lot of people’d see it. Did an end-to-end in 1976. It was the Bicentennial that year. Those tall ships were in town. My ’piece was of one of those boats, ’long with the Statue of Liberty.” He laughed. “The MTA didn’t scrub that car for at least a week, I heard. Maybe they were just busy but I like to think somebody liked what I painted and kept it up for longer than normal.”
    Geneva grunted. She was thinking that she had a story to tell him . A block away she could see the construction scaffolding in front of the same building she’d been working on when she’d been fired. How’d her father like to know that her job had been scrubbing graffiti off the redeveloped buildings? Maybe she’d even erased some of his. Tempted to tell him. But she didn’t.
    At the first working pay phone they found on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, Geneva stopped, fished for some change. Her father offered her his cell phone.
    “That’s okay.”
    “Take it.”
    She ignored him, dropped the coins in and called Lakeesha, while her father pocketed his cell and wandered to the curb, looking around the neighborhood like a boy in front of the candy section in a bodega.
    She turned away as her friend answered. “ ’Lo?”
    “It’s all over with, Keesh.” She explained about the jewelry exchange, the bombing.
    “That what was goin’ on? Damn. A terrorist? That some scary shit. But you okay?”
    “I’m down. Really.”
    Geneva heard another voice, a male one, sayingsomething to her friend, who put her hand over the receiver for a moment. Their muted exchange seemed heated.
    “You there, Keesh?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “Nobody. Where you at? You not in that basement crib no more, right?”
    “I’m still where I told you—with that policeman and his girlfriend. The one in the wheelchair.”
    “You there now?”
    “No, I’m Uptown. Going to school.”
    “Now?”
    “Pick up my homework.”
    The girl paused. Then: “Listen, I’ma hook up with you at school. Wanna see you, girl. When you be there?”
    Geneva glanced at her father, nearby, hands in his pockets, still surveying the street. She decided she didn’t want to mention him to Keesha, or anybody else, just yet.
    “Let’s make it tomorrow, Keesh. I don’t have any time now.”
    “Daymn, girl.”
    “Really. Better tomorrow.”
    “Wha-ever.”
    Geneva heard the click of the disconnect. Yet she stayed where she was for some moments, delaying going back to her father.
    Finally she joined him and they continued toward the school.
    “You know what was up there, three or four blocks?” he asked, pointing north. “Strivers Row. You ever seen it?
    “No,” she muttered.
    “I’ll take you up there sometime. Hundred yearsago, this land developer fellow, named King, he built these three big apartments and tons of town houses. Hired three of the best architects in the country and told ’em to go to work. Beautiful places. King Model Homes was the real name but they were so expensive and so nice, this’s the story, the place was called Strivers Row ’cause you had to strive to live there. W. C. Handy lived there for a time. You know him? Father of the blues. Most righteous musician ever lived. I did a ’piece up that way one time. I ever tell you about that? Took me thirty cans to do. Wasn’t a throw-up; I spent two days on it. Did a picture of W. C. himself. Photographer from the Times shot it and put it in the paper.” He nodded north. “It was there for—”
    She stopped fast. Her hands slapped her hips. “Enough!”
    “Genie?”
    “Just stop it. I don’t want to hear this.”
    “You—”
    “I don’t care about any of what you’re telling me.”
    “You’re mad at me, honey. Who wouldn’t be after everything? Look, I made a mistake,” he said, his voice cracking. “That was the past. I’m different now. Everything’s going to be different.