Nanette Hayes: Rhode Island Red Part 24

"Morris Melon. That's it. He was a teacher. Anthropology, wasn't it? Or sociology. Yes, right. He wrote a book-one of those pioneering studies about the black community in Chicago. Or am I thinking of Black Metropolis? It was something like that, anyway. d.a.m.n, what was the name of that book? Or was it the study of the Gullah Islands? I should interview him sometime. Find out his story."

He went on chattering. I was only half listening. I got up and began to walk around the room slowly, a sense of fear rising steadily inside me.

Andre had pulled himself out of his compulsive trip down memory lane. "What's the matter, Nan? What are you doing?"

I began to open the bureau drawers then, checking, I'm not sure what for. I looked inside my sax case and all seemed well there. I could find nothing missing. But I knew that someone had been looking through my things. I just knew it: earrings placed at the right-hand corner of the bureau instead of the left; a tube of hand lotion set on its side rather than on end; pantyhose rolled up with the toes outside rather than in. But things disturbed so minutely that it was possible I was imagining the changes. I told Andre what I was thinking. Moreover, I said, I think it might have something to do with my aunt.

"What do you mean? It was probably just the maid."

I shook my head. "No. No, something's..."

"What? What were you going to say?"

"Something's happening."

"Like what? What's happening?"

I had to shrug my shoulders. I had no idea what I meant.

He smiled at me and got me settled down again, almost convinced me that it was my imagination. I sat back at the window with him and finished my drink, but that weird feeling never went completely away.

"I'd better go," Andre said a while later, his voice low. "You need to get to bed."

I nodded. "So do you, friend."

He nodded, too.

A darkness moved across his face then. I didn't understand it. We stood for a minute in the doorway, saying a final good night, and then he left.

Seconds later, there was a knock at the door. He had come back.

"Forget something?" I asked.

"No. Look-uh..."

I waited in silence. The darkening in his face was full-blown midnight by now. Something was very wrong.

He dropped the bomb then: "You think I'm a f.a.g, don't you?"

"Of course not." Oh yes, I did.

I hadn't known it before, but of course I did. What else could it mean for a handsome young man to be staying chez "one of my profs."

"I'm not," he said, threatening. He reached for my wrist but at the last moment pulled back. "I'm not gay."

I caught my breath. I didn't speak. He was looking at me so intently that I lowered my gaze from his.

"I'll come over to have breakfast with you tomorrow-if that's okay," he said finally. "We have to do something about your aunt."

We have to do something?

I nodded. "See you in the morning."

Okay, so maybe he wasn't a closet case. But surely there was more to his life story than brilliantly gifted mixed-race kid fights his way out of the ghetto and becomes the toast of Gay Paree. It wasn't that I suspected what he had told me was untrue; there simply had to be some juicy bits that he'd left out.

We.

When he was gone I locked the door and placed my grip in front of it.

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About the Author.

Charlotte Carter is the author of crime novels including the Nanette Hayes Mysteries-Rhode Island Red, Coq au Vin, and Drumsticks-featuring a saxophone-playing street musician and crime solver. Though Nanette is from a solidly middle-cla.s.s black family, her salty language, boho ways, and irreverent humor undercut her bourgeois upbringing-and often land her in the middle of a murder case. The books have been translated into French, Spanish, German, j.a.panese, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch.

A recipient of the Chester Himes Black Mystery Award, Carter has worked as an editor and teacher. A longtime resident of downtown New York City, she has also lived in France and North Africa, where she took writing workshops with Paul Bowles.

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All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fict.i.tiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 1977 by Charlotte Carter.

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