Soul Circus(112)

After raw oysters, soft-shell crab sandwiches, and a couple of beers at the U-shaped bar, Strange and Janine went back to the house on Quintana and made slow love in their bedroom as Greco slept at the foot of the bed. The house was quiet, with only the sounds of their coupling and the low hum of the window air conditioners running on the first and second floors. Lionel was in College Park, having started his freshman orientation.

Strange and Janine held each other for a while, kissing but saying little, after both of them had come. She looked up into his eyes and wiped some sweat off his brow.

“You’re troubled.”

“Even with all this,” said Strange. “I mean, with all I have, with you and Lionel. It’s crazy, I know.”

“You can’t hide it. Especially not in our bed.”

“I just feel like doin’ something. Making some kind of a difference. ’Cause damn if it don’t seem like I been chasing my tail these past months.” Strange put his weight on one elbow. “You know, the night Terry got shot—”

“Derek.”

“The night he got shot, Janine, he told me that all he wanted was to feel like he accomplished something.”

“Derek, don’t.”

“That’s what I want to feel now, too.”

“Maybe you haven’t felt that way lately. But you will.”

“I never should have let him go home alone like he did. I should have brought him back here that night to hang with all of us.”

“But that’s not what happened.”

“I know it.”

“Lie down,” said Janine. “Hold me and let’s go to sleep. Can’t remember the last time we had an afternoon to ourselves like this, just to do nothing but rest.”

“Okay,” said Strange. “I need to rest. That sounds good.”

But when he awoke, late in the afternoon, his feelings had not changed.



STRANGE drove down to 9th and Upshur. He had not yet read the paper, so he picked up that day’s Post at Hawk’s barbershop and told one of the cutters he would return it.

Going into his shop, he went through the reception area and into his office, where he had a seat behind his desk. The vinyl version of Round 2, the Stylistics’ follow-up to their debut, was leaning up against the wall, facing out, directly behind his chair. Lewis, from the used-book store in downtown Silver Spring, had mailed it to Strange, and Strange had not yet taken it home. Like the gum wrappers still in the top drawer of Quinn’s desk, it was something he had not wanted to deal with just yet.

Strange went right to the Metro section. Between the roundup columns, “In Brief” and “Crime,” there had been five gun-related murders reported over the past weekend. Many of the victims had gone unnamed and all were in their late teens or early twenties. One had occurred in east-of-the-park Northwest and the others had occurred in Far Southeast. At the city’s annual Georgia Avenue Day celebration, a teenager had been shot by random gunfire, sending some families fleeing in panic and causing others to dive on their children, shielding them from further harm.

Strange went to the A section. Deep inside, a congressman from the Carolinas dismissed the need for further handgun laws and vowed to continue his fight to hold Hollywood and the record industry accountable for the sexual content and violent nature of their product. This same congressman had threatened to cut off federal funds to the District of Columbia, earmarked for education, if D.C. did not agree to change its Metro signs from “National Airport” to “Reagan National Airport.”

Strange turned his head and looked at the Stylistics album, a birthday gift from Quinn, propped up against the wall.

Do something.

“I will,” said Strange, though there was no one but him in the room. His voice was clear and emphatic, and it sounded good to his ears.



STRANGE turned on the light-box of his storefront, returned the newspaper to Hawk’s, and drove north to his row house on Buchanan. From his basement he retrieved a couple of red two-gallon containers of gasoline, one of which was full, and carried them out to the trunk of his Caprice. He went to the Amoco station next, filled up his tank and filled the empty container with gas. He placed it next to the other in the trunk and used his heavy toolbox to wedge them tight against the well. Then he drove down Georgia to Iowa Avenue along Roosevelt High and parked in the lot between Lydell Blue’s Buick and Dennis Arrington’s import.

The boys were down in the Roosevelt “bowl,” doing their warm-ups in the center of the field. The quarterback, Dante Morris, and Prince, another veteran player, were in the middle of the circle, leading the team in their chant. Strange could hear them as he took the aluminum-over-concrete steps of the stadium to the break in the fence.