The Twelfth Card

whisky bottle a few years ago, had thought: You never did, true. She now wiped her hands on her apron, walked to the curtain and looked out.
    The man was gone.
    Okay, stop spooking yourself. It’s—
    But wait . . . She saw motion on the front steps. And believed she saw a corner of a bag—a shopping bag—sitting on the porch. The man was here!
    What was going on?
    Should she call her boyfriend?
    Should she call the police?
    But they were at least ten minutes away.
    “There’s somebody outside, Mommy,” Britney called.
    Jeanne stepped forward fast. “Brit, you stay in your room. I’ll see.”
    But the girl was opening the front door.
    “No!” Jeanne called.
    And heard: “Thanks, honey,” Thompson Boyd said in a friendly drawl as he stepped inside the house, toting the shopping bag she’d seen.
    “You gave me a fright,” Jeanne said. She hugged him and he kissed her.
    “Couldn’t find my keys.”
    “You’re home early.”
    He grimaced. “Problems with the negotiations this morning. They were postponed till tomorrow. Thought I’d come home and do some work here.”
    Jeanne’s other daughter, Lucy, eight, ran into the hallway. “Tommy! Can we watch Judge Judy ?”
    “Not today.”
    “Aw, please. What’s in the bag?”
    “That’s the work I have to do. And I need your help.” He set the bag down on the floor in the hallway, looked at the girls solemnly and said, “You ready?”
    “I’m ready!” Lucy said.
    Brit, the older girl, said nothing but that was because it wouldn’t be cool to agree with her sister; she was definitely ready to help too.
    “After we postponed my meeting I went out and bought these. I’ve been reading up on it all morning.” Thompson reached into the shopping bag and pulled out cans of paint, sponges, rollers and brushes. Then he held up a book bristling with yellow Post-it tabs, Home Decor Made Easy. Volume 3: Decorating Your Child’s Room.
    “Tommy!” Britney said. “For our rooms?”
    “Yep,” he drawled. “Your mom and I sure don’t want Dumbo on our walls.”
    “You’re going to paint Dumbo ?” Lucy frowned. “I don’t want Dumbo.”
    Neither did Britney.
    “I’ll paint whoever y’all want.”
    “Let me look first!” Lucy took the book from him.
    “No, me!”
    “We’ll all look together,” Thompson said. “Let me hang up my coat and put my briefcase away.” He headed into his office, in the front of the house.
    And returning to the kitchen, Jeanne Starke thought that despite his incessant travel, the paranoia about his job, the fact that his heart didn’t join into either his joy or his sadness, the fact that he wasn’t much of a lover, well, she knew she could do a lot worse in the boyfriend department.
    *   *   *
    Escaping down the alley from the police at the Langston Hughes school yard, Jax had piled into a cab and told the driver to head south, fast, ten bucks extra you roll through that light. Then five minutes later he’d told the man to circle back, dropping him off not far from the school.
    He’d been lucky, getting away. The police were obviously going to do whatever was necessary to keep people from getting close to the girl. He was uneasy; it was almost like they’d known about him. Had that asshole claimer Ralph dimed him, after all?
    Well, Jax’d have to be smarter. Which is what he was trying to do right now. Just like in prison—nevermake your move until you’d checked everything out.
    And he knew where to look for help.
    City men always gravitated together, whether they were young or old, black or Hispanic or white, lived in East New York or Bay Ridge or Astoria. In Harlem they’d gather in churches, bars, rap and jazz clubs and coffee shops, living rooms, on park benches and doorsteps. They’d be on front stairs and fire escapes in the summer, around burning trash drums in the winter. Barbershops too—just like the movie from a few years ago (Jax’s real first name, Alonzo, in fact, had come from Alonzo Henderson, the former Georgia slave who became a millionaire by creating a popular chain of barbershops—a man whose drive and talent Jax’s father had hoped would rub off on the boy, vainly, as it turned out).
    But the most popular place for men to congregate in Harlem was on basketball courts.
    They’d go there to play ball, sure. But they’d also go just to bullshit, to solve the world’s problems, to speak of women fine and women mean, to argue sports, to dis, and to boast—in a modern,