My stomach was turning.
“When you had sex with her…did you use protection?”
Please say yes.
After a pause, he said, “I can’t remember every single time, son.”
“How can you not remember?”
“I think she said she was on the pill, but honestly…it was so long ago.”
I raised my voice. “You never used a condom?”
“No. Never.”
“How could you do that?”
“I guess I trusted her. It wasn’t responsible. Anyway, why are you asking me all of this?”
“I saw Bianca’s sister tonight for the first time.”
“And?”
“Dad...” I swallowed. “She looks like you.”
Silence.
“You think she’s my daughter?”
The rain started to pelt down on me.
“I think there’s a chance.”
“How can you be sure that you’re not just looking for similarities because of what I told you about the affair? You might just be paranoid and looking for trouble.”
“No. I wish that were the case. The thought never even entered my mind until I saw her face. She resembles you too much. But, God, I could have never imagined that you would have been so irresponsible as to allow this possibility. How could you do this?”
“Nothing is confirmed. And even if what you’re saying is true…what are you so worried about?”
“You can’t possibly be asking that? You’re telling me that you could technically be the father of my girlfriend’s sister, that you were sleeping with their mother during the time period when both women were conceived. There are only a couple of years between them. Now I can’t even be sure whether I’m in love with my own sister! How the fuck can you not know what I’m worried about?”
People on the street were staring as I yelled into the phone.
“Calm down, Dex.”
“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down. The only thing that will get me to calm down is to wake up from this nightmare!”
I couldn’t even remember hanging up the phone. The next thing I knew, I was in a liquor store, leaving with a large bottle of Fireball in a brown paper bag.
When Sam pulled up outside, there was only one place I could bear going.
“Where to, Mr. Truitt?”
I took a sip and relished the burn of the alcohol sliding down my throat. “Brooklyn.”This shit is disgusting.
Not that I cared. By the time I arrived in Brooklyn, I’d already made a dent in the repulsive tasting bottle of alcohol. I’d told my driver not to wait, so when Jelani didn’t answer his buzzer, I took up residence on the stoop of his house and proceeded to swig from the brown paper bag like a homeless person. Oddly, as I sat there for more than an hour in the dark, I started to wonder if this was what a homeless person felt like on the inside. Granted, they didn’t have a multimillion dollar penthouse overlooking the park to go home to, but I felt homeless at the moment—like I had no anchor, no one to turn to. In the months I’d known Bianca, she’d somehow become home in my heart and having an actual place to go had become meaningless. I took another big swig from the bag and relished the warmth that traveled through my body. I could see how people used drinking to replace warmth in their cold lives.
I must have nodded off for a while, because one minute I was contemplating the meaning of life while drinking my new cinnamon tasting best friend, and the next my feet were getting kicked.
“Trying to see how the other half lives, my friend?” Jelani was standing over me and smiling as he roused me back to consciousness. I stumbled as I climbed to my feet, feeling the full effect of the alcohol on my balance now.
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
Jelani nodded as if he understood and invited me in. He spoke as he unpacked some groceries from a canvas satchel that was slung across his chest. “Woman or family problems?”
Isn’t that ironic? “Both.”
“How about some coffee?” He motioned to the bottle I was still clutching. “I think that might be a better idea than whatever you have in that brown paper bag.”
Jelani ground some beans and put up a pot of coffee in an old silver percolator on the top of his gas stove. While he was busy, I took a seat and checked out the new carvings he had lined up on the kitchen table. The first one was a small walrus, the same spirit animal Jelani had suggested I buy the first time we met. “I bought the billy goat, but you were right in suggesting the damn walrus.”
“Ah. The keeper of secrets.” He set two cups of black coffee on the table and slid one in front of me. “Your lady friend has some skeletons in her closet that have brought you to question if she is the right woman for you?”
“You could say that.”