Razor's Edge (Underworld Kings)

I got on the Harley with no place to go, revved the engine and peeled out of the neighborhood. Two streets down, I saw a group of kids walking back from the store. I didn’t know what to do. I had no guide for situations like this one.

Slowing to a stop, I waved casually at the kids. Adele stopped, focused more on a popsicle than me, while the others kept going.

“Hey,” I said to her. It was lame, but it was a start. “You’re Ellison’s kid? I’m an old friend of your mom’s,” I told her by way of introduction. The heat waves were visible on the asphalt and cicadas buzzed loudly in the trees.

“You’re Calvin, right?” she asked me. Red popsicle juice dripped down her arm and it seemed like something she should be able to control by her age. I didn’t know why it struck me, but it made me wonder if she was okay.

“Yeah, I’m Fox’s brother,” I told her. She obviously knew who Fox was. It seemed he was a big part of her life. “Is Fox your dad?” I asked her. I was unsure of my own words, didn’t know if it was appropriate to even ask her. But somehow it felt safer to me, safer to ask this gangly kid than my own brother or ex-lover.

“No, he’s my uncle,” she said. She slurped the melting treat and then noticed the trail of red down her hand and wiped it on her jean shorts. “My dad’s in jail,” she said frankly.

“Oh yeah?” I said. “I’m sorry to hear that. I mean, must be hard, not having your dad around.”

“S’okay, I’m used to it,” she told me. This time, she took a bite of the popsicle and then made funny faces as it froze her teeth. Teeth which looked too big for her face, just like mine had at that age. I thought back to nine and ten and getting my first guitar, learning how to climb the tree in the back yard and to flatten pennies down on the train tracks.

“Do you want to see him?” I asked her.

“Nope,” she shook her head. Adele made eye contact with me and it felt like looking into a fun house mirror, a mashup of my past and my future all condensed into this other human. She was beautiful. She was perfect. It was the trippiest experience of my life, fighting the urge to grab her to me and hug her, and hating myself for missing out on this, for abandoning both her and Ellison. “He won’t talk to my mom. He broke her heart and so now she’s just mad at him. She’s moving on. I’m supposed to be helping her with that.”

“You?”

“But it’s hard because I remind her so much of my dad. Everyone says I look like him.”

“You do.”

“Did you know him, too?”

“I… yeah, Adele. I did. He’s got a lot of catching up to do, and a lot to apologize for.”

Adele looked at me and shrugged, bit the last hunk of red popsicle off of the stick.

“Have you ever ridden a Harley before? I could give you a ride back. I’ll go slow.”

“I ride with Uncle Fox all the time. He takes me to school on his bike and all the boys think it’s so cool,” she said in a sing-song tone meant to mock them. She hopped up on the bike easily and I handed her my helmet, which she plopped on her head like a little expert and held the backrest instead of grabbing onto me.

Good girl, I thought in my head.

We drove the two blocks back to my childhood home and I wished the wheels of my bike could unwind the passage of time, that I could take back my pride and my immature wounded heart and hand it all to Adele to make up for what we’d lost.

Chapter 37

ELLISON

When I saw the other kids arrive back to Fox’s place without Adele, my whole world stood still. My worst fear in life was losing Adele. I ran to the other kids, my heart in my throat and at the same time searched the yard for her blue t-shirt and jean shorts.

“Where’s Adele?” I accosted the other two children.

“She stopped to talk to some guy,” Brandon said. I wanted to hit him over the head with my bottle of hard cider.

Fox, as was typical, noticed my panic right away and came running over.

“Where’s Adele?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I gasped.

Then we both heard the rumble of his dad’s bike and I took off toward the front of the house. I ran down the front steps just as Calvin and Adele pulled up on his dad’s bike.

I knew I had to play it cool and not explode in front of my daughter, but I wanted to kill him, tear him limb by limb and never even let him in her vicinity. I knew it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t even possible, but I was so furious with Calvin for the years of rejection that I wanted him to feel the same burning loss that I’d felt.