The Tragic Flaw Read online

  “I’m getting there, just hold on, Kameron,” Brad reassures him. Cicero remains silent and attentive.

  “So we go in and have a seat on her divan,” Brad says. “Then the next thing I know, we’re kissin’ and huggin’. Just goin’ at it!”

  “Finally!” Kam yells, throwing his hands up.

  “Yea, this is good stuff, man, and she’s aggressive too,” Brad says. “So then, she grabs my hand and leads me to her boudoir.”

  “Her what?” Kam blurts. The candle’s flame flickers and bounces off one of his two-carat baguettes, lighting up the room.

  “So anyway, she sits me on the bed and tells me to get undressed,” Brad continues. His Louisiana accent is thick. “And I’m like, no problem, honey. It’s been a while, if you know what I mean.”

  Cicero and Kam both chuckle. They don’t know what he means. They’re constantly fighting women off.

  “While I’m unbuttoning my shirt she goes into the bathroom and comes out a few minutes later in this unbelievable ruby silk negligee,” Brad ex-plains. “Just as I’m about to pull my loafas off, she says, ‘No, leave them on.’”

  Kam and Cicero look taken aback.

  “Yea, now I was a little perplexed by this, because here I am in briefs and dress shoes,” Brad says.

  The two-member audience laughs.

  “All of a sudden, she bends over on this freaky black leather bench in the corner and tells me to kick her in the ass as hard as I can.”

  The drinking Kam spits water from his mouth, dousing the table’s candle.

  “Are you serious?” Cicero asks in astonishment.

  “What the fuck?” Kam adds.

  “Yea, I couldn’t believe it,” Brad responds. “This quiet, petite girl asks me to kick her in the ass with my shoes on. And I’m kind of a conservative guy, so this is simply unbelievable, man.”

  At that moment the waiter returns with two piping hot plates and Brad’s salad.

  He immediately digs in without waiting for the freshly crushed pepper. Kam and Cicero frustratingly stare at him, eager to hear his story’s dénouement.

  Sensing their eyes on him, Brad looks up with a mouth full of vinaigrette-smothered tomatoes and immediately resumes his tale.

  “Oh, so after I kick her in the ass like sixteen times—” Brad says before he’s interrupted by Cicero’s and Kam’s uncontrollable laughter.

  “Damn, Brad, sixteen times?” Cicero asks.

  “Yea, I counted, man,” Brad answers in a staid tone. “But anyway, all of a sudden she freaks out and tells me to leave.”

  His two listeners continue to laugh; Kam’s nearly in tears.

  “I’ve seen her at work once or twice since then but we don’t speak to each other,” Brad says, shaking his head. Cicero takes a bite of his trout as the waiter refills their water glasses and says, “You’re a wild man, Bradley.”

  “Hell naw, you’re a sick bastard,” Kam says and he again bursts into laughter. “But fuck it. I would have kicked her in the ass too.”

  Thirsty from his laughter, Kam squeezes juice from a lemon wedge into his water and goes to take a drink when he notices something adrift in his goblet.

  A winged insect, about the size of an infant girl’s earring, floats lifeless in his glass.

  Kam, remaining calm, gets their server’s attention. The thin, middle-aged waiter leisurely strolls over from near the bar and snobbishly asks, “Yes, sir, how may I be of service?”

  “Yea, there seems to be a bug or something floating in my water,” Kam states as politely as he can. “Can I please get another glass?”

  The waiter laughs, and Kam is dumbfounded.

  “You must be joking, sir. We don’t provide that type of service here,” the waiter says with conviction. “You must have put something in your water.”

  “What?” a flabbergasted Kam asks, struggling to suppress his anger. Brad and Cicero sit and observe the situation, listening carefully.

  “Yes, what are you trying to do, get a free meal or something?” the waiter says. “Please don’t force me to escort you to the door, sir.”

  “That’s ridiculous, man,” Brad weighs in.

  “Thanks, Brad, but I got this,” Kam assures him. “Look, mothafucka, I have enough cheese to buy ten of everything on this fuckin’ menu,” Kam tells the waiter, his voice now louder. “I just want another glass of water. Are you going to get it?” Kam stares at him with unflinching eyes.

  The waiter shrugs and begins to walk off. Kam looks at Cicero in bewilderment. Cicero’s face is blank. Brad looks uneasy.

  Kam immediately leaps up from his seat and grabs the waiter by the back of his collar. Brad stands up in shock, while Cicero sits peacefully and continues to enjoy his meal.

  Enraged, Kam uses his strong six-foot-two-inch frame to easily swing the feather-light waiter around, who is completely stunned, and slams his face on the group’s table. Cicero grabs his snifter so his precious cognac doesn’t spill. The face-to-table action makes an amazingly loud crashing sound as saucers and salad forks clatter, a glorious accompaniment to the French words being belted from above.

  “Ah! qui pourrait me résister? Suis-je pas né pour la bataille,” the baritone resonates, as Kam slams the arrogant waiter’s face into the table again and again, and then begins driving it into his plate. Truffle red wine sauce runs down his battered face. He yelps in pain.

  “Malheur à qui m’ose irriter! Malheur surtout à qui me raille,” the words go, functioning as a score for an urban gladiator’s offensive.

  “How you like that, mothafucka?” a ferocious Kam yells. The restaurant’s other diners watch the ensuing mêlée. Several call 9-1-1 on their digital phones.

  “Please! Please, stop!” the waiter begs. He’s using his arms as a buffer between him and the plates and table.

  Realizing this, Kam yanks the man up and begins dragging him through the bistro toward the kitchen. Some customers, as well as employees, are horrified and run out of the restaurant.

  Cicero downs the rest of his drink and drops three hundred dollars on the table to cover their meals and any inconvenience or psychological damage the afternoon beating may have caused. He and Brad then follow Kam through the kitchen and out a back door, which Kam has courteously opened with the waiter’s swollen mug.

  In the rear of the establishment is a repulsively filthy alley, and Kam tosses the beleaguered waiter to the pavement, face first. He hits the ground with a hard thud and begins to squirm.

  “Please, sir, I apologize!” he cries. “Please, sir, I’m sorry.” His pedigree-engrained politeness and professionalism are now absolute non-factors.

  Wanting to really get through to the maître d’, Kam pulls a black Saturday night special from the small of his back and begins to pistol whip him.

  Brad is visibly nervous. The magna cum laude grad never envisioned being an accessory to murder.

  “Are you going to stop him?” he yells to Cicero. He’s on the verge of panicking. Cicero is a bit more concerned now, but he doesn’t intervene.

  Kam grabs the man by his hair and strikes him over and over in the temple, forehead, and face. Blood squirts from his head, staining Kam’s outfit and the concrete. He pummels the man until Cicero steps in and grabs his thrashing arm. He instantly stops. His face, hand, and torso are splattered with blood. Chest heaving, he looks like an animal.

  “I hope you didn’t have anything planned for the weekend, mothafucka!” Kam yells as he spits on his victim.

  The barely breathing waiter knocks on death’s door, but does not enter.

  Back at Brad’s job without further incident, booming thunder is heard and it begins to rain.

  “You alright?” Cicero asks his friend. While Brad doesn’t necessarily fly the straight and narrow, he has never participated in such an event or even seen someone nearly killed.

  “I’m cool,” he answers. They stand under the column-support overhang avoiding the sky’s moisture. Kam rests comfortably in the car o
n the butter-soft leather, still fuming.

  After a brief moment of silence, Brad asks, “Did you take care of that?” referring to some unspoken nasty deed.

  “Yea,” Cicero answers.

  “You took care of that?” Bradley asks, stressing disbelief in his friend’s involvement.

  “No, not me. The Ninja,” Cicero clarifies, naming an accomplice by code word. Even though he could, he doesn’t point out Brad’s outrageous hypocrisy: his mescaline and Ecstasy dealing, his meth lab. The rain suddenly comes down harder, in bigger drops, blanketing the area.

  “It was good seeing you, C. I’ll have that for you later, man,” Brad says with a sly look. He turns to walk in the building, but stops and says with a grin, “Hey, try to stay out of trouble.”

  Cicero smiles.

  Trying his best to dodge the rain, Cicero runs from under the steel awning and hops in his coupe. He checks the caller ID on his ringing cell and ignores it.

  Cicero looks like something is on his mind, and Kam, still sporting another man’s internal Merlot, asks his friend, “You okay, dog?”

  “Chillin’,” Cicero responds.

  “Hey, dude, I’m still hungry,” Kam tells his friend, flashing his diamonds.

  Cicero just looks at him, then mashes the gas pedal and leaves the state-of-the-art compound cloaked in a cloud of burnt rubber.

  Chapter 5

  Five-inch stilettos delicately tap the pavement on a sunny late-September day. It’s unseasonably humid, and her fuchsia dress is diminutive, exposing excessive amounts of firm thigh and calf, skin resembling warm caramel.

  A light breeze easily makes the airy fabric flow. Full hips and a slim ab-rich midsection sway under it. Passersby, male and female, young and old, ogle this delicious creature in awe.

  “Damn, she’s fine,” one city worker says to another as they both pause and stare, further neglecting that perennial pothole. Tax dollars hard at work.

  She traverses several city blocks in the deteriorated working-class neighborhood, suede purse in hand, bosom, angelic. Sycamores line the avenue. Her ethnicity is hard to pinpoint. Spaghetti straps reveal toned arms and femininely soft shoulders, which are partially concealed by long wavy black hair.

  “You need to get with me, baby, this is real pimping over here,” yells a manager of streetwalkers from his old-school Cadillac with gold trim.

  She wears a look of confidence as she turns to her left, up a short flight of stone stairs, into the pristine Church of the Risen Christ.

  When the riots of 1964 engulfed everything in the neighborhood, the church and its spectacular stained-glass windows stood untouched. It’s rumored that the granite hand-carved statue of Mary, the mother of God, wept on that day in the church’s outdoor atrium.

  Even though she’s inappropriately dressed, the femme fatale pulls one of the large wood doors open as it creaks from age.

  She takes several steps into the lofty cathedral before stopping and turning back to dab her forehead with holy water. She pauses for a moment, expecting it to sizzle.

  The church, first built to serve the area’s well-to-do white community, now serves the elderly black community that once fought to live there. Unfettered sun rays pass through depictions of the Twelve Apostles and the Lamb of God. Golden glass rings denote their heavenly halos and perfectly etched pieces in brown mark their long hair and walking staffs.

  Dozens of candles burn near the altar, lit for the sick and dying, and the hardheaded and evil. A few senior parishioners are scattered about, kneeling and praying, holding rosaries. The church smells of incense and faintly of dust.

  Her heels are now silent on the carpeted floor as she walks to the front of the church, passing row after row of wooden pews, to where an old woman kneels, just to the right of the altar.

  The grandmother’s face shows time and love as she looks up at her child’s daughter. Her expression changes from reserved, to smiling brightly.

  “I’m glad you came, honey,” the old woman whispers as her granddaughter genuflects, then takes a seat next to her in the pew. She’s delighted to see tomorrow’s future.

  “How have you been?” she asks with genuine interest.

  “Fine,” Olivia curtly answers, her eyes looking down.

  There’s a lull in the exchange. A creak in the floor echoes as a parishioner exits a confessional. A married forty-year-old father of five has been uplifted. The weight of sin, much more than that of the rear axles he’s lugged for years at the Ford plant, has been whisked away by the glory of God. He leaves the church in search of purity, and an end to his fifteen-year affair with his brother’s wife.

  “Have you looked at those admission forms I gave you for Penn Valley?”

  Olivia doesn’t want to disappoint her, but she truly loathes lying.

  “No. I really don’t want to go to a community college, Grandmother.”

  “Well, I know, honey, but it’s—”

  “And besides, what’s the point?” Olivia asks, frustrated.

  At that moment an elderly Hispanic woman rises from a pew in the back of the church and saunters to the front near the altar. She lights a candle for recent earthquake victims in her native Peru. The cataclysm measured seven point two on the Richter scale, devastating Lima and leaving thousands dead or homeless. In the tongue of her father and his father before him, she offers a prayer:

  “Dios tenga merced sobre las victimas del terremoto y les enseñale el camino,” the stout woman prays in a low voice. “Dale paz y tranquilidad, ahora, en su tiempo de necesidad. Dios, esté con ellos hoy y siempre. Amén.”

  Olivia stares at her and wishes she still had such faith in the unseen. Her grandmother has that faith, and in many ways wishes to reintroduce it to the wayward Olivia.

  Aware of her granddaughter’s yearning, the wise mother of four looks at her and says, “Olivia, God loves you.”

  Olivia’s face remains blank as her eyes again begin looking downward. Her fresh beauty and lavender rouge stand out against the church’s waning façade.

  The caring grandmother grabs Olivia’s hand, which rests on her bent knee. Pigeons take flight from the church’s soaring steeple. The sound of their fluttering wings is piercing and resonates throughout the sanctuary and the empty balcony.

  “Kneel with me, Olivia,” her grandmother instructs. And she does, reluctantly.

  “God will be with you, honey, you just have to have faith,” she reassures her. “You just have to have faith. Trust me, you will have a long and beautiful life.”

  Olivia briefly contemplates what she’s heard. Then desperately asks, “Why did this happen to me, Grandma? I’m not a bad person.”

  “Olivia, no one knows God’s plans. No one.”

  “But what about my plans, my future? I can never have a family now, or be married.”

  “I know. I know, but—”

  “And Grandma, you even liked him,” Olivia vents as she begins to become emotional. “I mean, how was I supposed to know he was…” and she stops. Her heart sinks. Vibrations in her purse signal a new text message has arrived on her credit card-sized communicator. She grabs the device and flips it open.

  The small rectangular screen reads: “Carne. Favre.”

  Olivia checks her pink, ruby-and diamond-encrusted wristwatch. It’s three forty-seven p.m. She composes herself and stands to her feet.

  “I have to go, Grandma.”

  Her grandmother rises, then sits in the pew, as she watches the beautiful Olivia sashay out of the house of God and into the world of the pagans and idolaters.

  “This is him,” Cicero tells Olivia as he slides her a wallet-sized photograph. They’re in a small midtown coffee shop. The clientele is an eclectic mix of old businessmen and women in suits, and young slackers with dreadlocks and baggy pants. Conversations range from why the T-bond market tanked to astonishment regarding Tony Gonzalez’s retirement.

  The shop is dimly lit with low-wattage track lighting. Splashes of pumpkin and cardi
nal red adorn the interior of the cozy little spot. Ficus trees repose in unconventional spaces.

  Olivia and Cicero convene at a corner table securely out of sight and earshot. They’ve sat here many times before, and the employees know not to disturb them.

  Olivia studies the photograph closely, examining every detail and making mental notes: small scar over his right eye, chipped front tooth, sinister smile. Tattoos.

  A long curly lock falls from the top of her head and lands to the right of her thin nose. It captivates Cicero for a brief moment.

  Olivia is silent, but finally nods yes. She looks a bit hesitant. Cicero notices, but doesn’t inquire. Roasting coffee beans and seasonal gingerbread yield an aromatic bouquet.

  A couple of wasted stoners wander over to the conspirators’ secluded section with café lattes in hand. Their unwashed, loose-fitting cargo pants drag along the Spanish-tiled floor. Young guys, probably part-time college students taking less than five credit hours, had spotted an open table next to Cicero and Olivia in the crowded shop and decided it was fair game.

  But Cicero thinks otherwise, which is why he calmly lifts his cream-colored cotton sweater and flashes a black forty-caliber pistol at them and says, “This area is occupied.”

  Sobered fast, the younger of the two turns one hundred and eighty degrees and speed-walks out the front door while the other puts up both hands and stutters, “It’s cool, man.” He promptly does an about-face as well and follows his friend out.

  Cicero looks at Olivia and says, “Cold steel is often an antidote for intoxication.” She simply grins.

  He lowers his sweater and pulls a thick brown envelope from under his slacks and milky ostrich boots. Cicero passes the package under the table to Olivia, whose hand is there waiting for it.

  “It’s all there. You can count it later,” Cicero tells her. She nods again, this time with a more determined look on her face, as she sips her mochaccino.

  Chattering voices flood the cozy coffee shop as Cicero stands and drops a fifty-dollar bill for their coffee and walks out with his espresso. Olivia pulls out a torch of a lighter and incinerates the photograph. It catches fire and immediately turns to ashes. A deliberate breath blows from her mouth and the ashes disperse. She sits there a few moments, idle, five-thousand dollars richer, and deep in thought. After taking a few more sips of her coffee, she walks out of the shop with much on her mind.