King of Ashes

Roman left Khalil and the girls at his penthouse and went downtown to where the offices of Carruthers and Associates held court among the numerous financial investment firms that seemed to spring up overnight in Atlanta like magic beanstalks.

“Have Simon take my meeting with that new singer from Sony,” Roman said to his assistant Keisha as she furiously took notes on a tablet. “Have Gary and Nick take on the meeting with the two new Housewives of Atlanta. Reschedule the meeting with Elian Rhodes. I don’t want anyone but me talking to him. The Falcons have serious concerns about his spending habits. Cancel my follow-up with Lil Glock 9. Postpone my meeting with the Kee Law Group. And don’t let anyone talk to the president of Morehouse until I get back.”

“How long do you anticipate being gone?” she asked.

Roman had paused. “Long enough to make sure my daddy isn’t going to die.”

His flight didn’t take off until 8:00 P.M. That was the earliest one he could get, even though he lived in one of Delta Air Lines’ major hubs. He’d had time to pack, he’d handled his work responsibilities, and he’d given Khalil his spare key. He was all set to go home.

He just had one more stop to make.

He checked his watch. He’d arrived on time for his appointment, but it was now ten minutes past the time they had agreed on. He knew it was all part of the experience, but it still annoyed him a little.

He was sitting in the exquisitely understated anteroom of a high-end two-story classic colonial-style house at the end of an exclusive cul-de-sac just off of Peach Tree Road in Buckhead. A New Age instrumental song was playing over hidden speakers as barely noticeable incense burned in both corners. Roman tapped his knee with his index finger as the music reached a crescendo.

Finally, Miss Delicate came through the door.

She was tall, nearly as tall as Roman, which made her close to six feet. Her dark skin was smooth as a night gone black. A long, thick black braid spilled down her back to her firm, rounded backside. Roman pegged her age at around forty-five or fifty. It was hard to tell. Her face was bereft of wrinkles and her body was more toned than the woman he had spent the night with just a few hours ago. If she was fifty, that made her exactly fifteen years older than him.

He liked that. Or, more accurately, he needed that.

“You can come back now,” she said. Her voice was conversational in tone but direct and implacable.

“Yes, Mama,” Roman said with a tongue that felt like a roll of cotton.

The cuffs bit into his wrists just enough so he knew they were there. They didn’t hurt, not really. The pain, real pain, would come later. The sting from the restraints was an almost welcome sensation. A familiar feeling that made him comfortable even as his breath began to come in rapid-fire gasps. He wasn’t afraid. They had a firm safe word. Miss Delicate would release him the moment he uttered that word. The moment it flowed from his lips he’d be free.

Physically, at least.

But there was a place in his mind, between the shadows of his desire and the sunset of his self-loathing where time slowed and the real world fell away, where the safe word didn’t work. Where Miss Delicate ignored his protestations. Where he was given what he craved in the deepest, darkest caverns of his heart.

Penance. Punishment. Absolution.

Usually he only had an appointment here once a month, unless he was having a particularly stressful week, like when one of his clients tried to convince him to invest all his savings, nearly forty million dollars, into a cryptocurrency corporation. It was during those times, when he felt like Atlas carrying the full weight of his clients’ lives, their legacies, their earned or unearned prosperity on his shoulders, that he came here for a “supplemental” appointment.

He knew that in many ways he was the stereotypical client for someone like Miss Delicate. A rich businessman who wants to give up the power he wields so blithely during his workday and surrender to the control of another. And, if he was being honest, that was definitely a part of it. But in reality, that was a small part of why he came here, why he sought out a place like this. It wasn’t about sex. It was sexual, yes, but it wasn’t sex. Sexuality was just the pen they used to write the story he needed to read again and again.

The story where he stops his mother from leaving the house that day and vanishing without a trace. The folktale where he is the classical hero that stops his mother from disappearing like the morning dew in the light of the rising sun.

Miss Delicate walked around the Saint Andrew’s Cross, her stiletto heels making a sharp report with every step. When she stopped, she was behind him. He could feel her breath on his neck.

“Are you sorry? Are you sorry for being such a worthless son?” Miss Delicate said. Her voice was deeper than it had been in the anteroom. It was melodious and rich.

An angel with a black halo.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” Roman whispered.

Miss Delicate walked back in front of him. She was carrying a cat-o’-nine-tails. She unfurled it and the leather straps sounded like the dry, whispery wings of a bat.

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

An hour later, Roman was buttoning his light blue Blugiallo shirt as Miss Delicate, not her Christian name, was putting away her toys under the soft pink LED lights that lined the ceiling along the cove molding. Roman often thought her setup was less Gothic dungeon and more salacious boudoir.

With a cat-o’-nine-tails.

Roman cleared his throat. “I need to cancel next week’s session. My dad was in a car accident. I need to go back to Virginia. I don’t know for how long,” he said softly.

Miss Delicate sucked at her teeth.

“And yet you came here before getting on a plane and going to your father’s bedside?” she asked.

Roman felt his cheeks begin to burn. “Yes. I … There’s just … I don’t go home a lot. There are bad memories there. This helps me deal with them,” he said.

She walked over to him, black stiletto heels tapping. She stood in front of him, staring into his eyes. He could smell her sweat. He’d asked for and had received an intense session. Beneath her sweat he could smell her body wash or soap. And beneath that was her natural scent. Raw and intoxicating.

“The session is over, but consider this a professional courtesy. You will never forgive yourself if something were to happen to your father while you were here. And you already have a problem with forgiveness,” she said in a low voice.

She leaned forward and whispered in his ear.

“You like to create situations where you need to be punished. Even if you have to punish yourself. This isn’t one of those situations. This is your father. Go. Now,” she said.

“I am, I just wanted to … I needed—” he started to say, but she cut him off with one raised eyebrow.

“It wasn’t a request,” she said sharply.

Now, hours later, he was sitting in first class sipping a Jameson on the rocks from a plastic cup as the flight attendants went over the safety protocols, which always struck Roman as a bit ridiculous. Seat belts on a plane were like helmets during a skydive. They mainly existed to make you feel better about this incredibly dangerous journey you were embarking upon. When it was the human body versus the ground, the ground was undefeated.

He finished his drink and closed his eyes. He thought about the power of tragedies. How they came into your life unbidden and upended your world without any care or concern. He’d once dated a woman who was a theoretical physicist. She would lie on his chest after making love and tell him about her kids, who were nearly his age, or her latest article in a scientific journal, but one night she started talking about the nature of the universe in almost biblical tones.

“I used to be afraid the universe was evil. Now I almost wish it was. Because evil can be bargained with, evil has a purpose, no matter how horrible it may be. But what I’ve come to realize is the universe is indifferent, and that is so much more terrifying,” she had said.

As the plane taxied down the runway, Roman thought he disagreed with her assessment. The universe was both evil and indifferent. It was both horrific and idiotically apathetic. It was like a god that strode through time and space full of anger and bereft of concern.

Behind his closed eyes a movie played starring his mother, missing now for nineteen years, and his father. He saw them both fading away, turned to dust and lost in the wind as the universe shrugged and continued on its way.

CHAPTER TWO

As soon as the plane landed at the Richmond International Airport, he called Neveah. She answered on the first ring, her voice raspy as eighty-grit sandpaper.

“Yeah.”

“It’s me,” Roman said.

“Oh, I didn’t even look at the phone. Thought it was the hospital. What time is it?”

Roman looked at his watch.

“Nine forty. You at the house?” Roman asked.

“Yeah.”

“Dante there?” Roman asked. His sister made a noise halfway between a grunt and a groan.

“I haven’t seen him since the accident. I don’t know where he is. That ain’t nothing new,” she said. Roman heard the acrimony there, ignored it, and moved past it, because he knew she had some for him as well as Dante. Dante was just a closer target.

“I’m at the airport. I’m renting a car. You want me to come pick you up, or you wanna meet me at the hospital?” Roman asked.

“Rome, it’s past visiting hours,” Neveah said.

“Nev, I’m going to see him. You wanna come or not?” Roman said.

Neveah didn’t say anything for a few seconds. What wasn’t said in those moments spoke volumes. Roman could hear what she wasn’t saying.

Oh, now you’re concerned about him?

Oh, now you wanna come into town like Big Willie big-money grip?

You haven’t been home for five years. Five fucking years.

None of that came through the cell phone towers or across the phone signals. All he heard was a heavy sigh. A sigh his sister had seemed to utter since the beginning of time.

“I’ll meet you there.”

Roman got off Interstate 64 at the Jefferson Run exit behind a tractor trailer blowing black smoke out of the vertical pipes that ran along both sides of the cab. He felt his stomach tighten as he guided the four-door sedan around the gentle sloping curve of the exit and merged onto Harper Street. He passed the abandoned bus station, went through the first of the four stoplights in this part of Jefferson Run, and passed two adult video stores, anachronisms that survived off the prurient needs of the citizens of Jefferson Run. The two stores, across the street from each other, also sold sex toys, costumes, and fake boner pills. A veritable cornucopia of items that catered to the basest desires of the flesh.

Hypocrite much? he thought as he adjusted himself in the seat of his rental and felt the welts on his back. He drove past the plethora of Mexican restaurants and check-cashing places, on past a consignment shop and then more abandoned buildings, more abandoned warehouses. He turned left onto Lillyhammer Street and past Church’s Chicken, a business that stubbornly refused to go under, with a staff that were well versed in serving you chicken or fists.

He came to a stop sign. There was a hospital to the left. But if he turned right, headed out to the city limits, he’d come upon an industrial park, one of those brutalism-inspired monstrosities. Most of the businesses that were there when he was a kid were gone now. He knew that from conversations with his daddy. But the Carruthers crematory was still standing, a dusty red-brick monolith set against the crumbling skyline of the city of Jefferson Run.

Roman thought calling Jefferson Run a city was as generous to the formerly bustling hamlet as it was insulting to real cities across the Old Dominion. When he had been a senior at Jefferson Run High (home of the Mighty Stags), he’d done a paper on the once-vaunted manufacturing history of his hometown. Situated at the junction of two rivers and two interstates, Jefferson Run was once a manufacturing center. The city had been home to a large automotive brake pads factory, tobacco warehouses, a mason jar factory, and was home to one of the state’s oldest HBCUs, Prosser State University. They were also called the Mighty Stags. Roman always thought that was hilarious.

As he drove toward the hospital, passing boarded-up buildings and broken streetlamps, he thought Jefferson Run, or Jefferson Got the Runs, as he and his friends had called it back in the day, was like a patient on life support who was too stubborn to realize they were dead.

It wasn’t lost on him that the same analogy might be applied to his father, lying in bed trapped in that nether region between life and whatever comes after life. But Keith Carruthers wasn’t a dying city. He was a man who had sacrificed everything for his family. More than most could even imagine. He wasn’t dead yet, and Roman wasn’t ready to let him go. Not by a long shot.

He saw Neveah standing in the lobby of the hospital, squeezing herself tight. His sister had their father’s frame. Thin but wiry, with a light brown complexion. A close-cropped haircut accentuated her large eyes and full lips. His sister was a beautiful woman, but Roman could see the years on her face, creeping in around the edges. Years of helping their daddy run the crematory while Roman was down in Atlanta, that new Black mecca, establishing himself while learning to deal with the bougies who called A-Town home, and Dante … well, Dante played the role of the little prince.

“Hey,” Roman said.

Neveah turned and set her mouth in a tight line that you might call a smile if you squinted hard enough. Roman went to her and put his arms around her, and after a beat she returned the embrace. Yes, there was bitterness between them, and yes, he hadn’t shared the weight the way he should have, but they were sister and brother. The three of them, Dante, Neveah, and Roman, had shared the same womb, been brought into the world with the same alchemy of love, passion, and need that had lived between their parents. That magic united them for all time even if it didn’t give the same solidarity to their parents. They were siblings, flesh of the same flesh. What they knew, no one else could possibly know or understand. They kept each other’s secrets. Much the same way it was with most families.

“What happened?” Roman asked.

Neveah rubbed his back before releasing him from her embrace. Roman tried not to flinch as her hand moved over the still-fresh welts there.

“Truck ran him off the road near the train tracks. Train hit his van. Doctors say both hips broke. Nine broken ribs. Bleeding on the brain. He even got a broken pinkie, Rome,” she said as she started to cry.

“Let’s go see him. I need to see him,” Roman said.

“They won’t let you. It’s past nine,” she said.

“I’m going to see my daddy. Which room is he in?”

“Two forty-five, but I’m telling you, they won’t let us go in.”

Roman didn’t respond, but walked down the hall past a sign that said ROOMS 201–245 toward a semicircle nurses’ station. A tanned white woman with her blond hair pulled back in a severe bun was working at a computer as he walked past.

“Excuse me, sir, visiting hours are over,” she said.

Roman stopped and turned to face her.

“I just flew in from Atlanta. My father is here and I’ve been told he is in a coma. I’m not trying to be difficult, but I’m going to see my father. Now, if you want to call security or the police, well, that’s a decision you can make. But my sister has a cell phone and I’ll make sure she records the entire exchange. By eight tomorrow Jefferson Run Memorial will be on every social media platform going viral because you accosted the son of a local business owner when all he wanted was to see his father. Is that the road we want to go down?” Roman asked.

The nurse turned red under her tan. “Please keep it under five minutes,” she choked out.

The fluorescent lights in the room were low and emitted a bluish hue. They gave the room a submerged appearance, as if they were all underwater. His father was lying on his back with his eyes closed but his mouth slightly agape, with a thick clear tube extending from it. A ventilator pumped up and down in the corner. Roman went to the bedside and gently grabbed his daddy’s hand. He felt the scars there, the burned places, the nicks and divots. Hands that told a story of determination and setbacks. Of success and sorrow.

Roman squeezed his daddy’s hand. He hoped he’d receive a squeeze in return, but the hand remained inert. Neveah moved to the opposite side of the bed and put her hands on the railing.

“The doctor says we should talk to him. That people in comas can hear us. I don’t know if I buy that,” she said.

Roman squeezed his daddy’s hand again.

“It’s Rome, Daddy. I’m here,” he said.

His daddy’s face remained impassive.

“How long you gonna be in town?” Neveah asked.

Roman shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve got a lot of stuff going on back home.”

“I guess it is your home now,” Neveah said. Roman ignored the comment. “I was asking because I got like six bodies that gotta go in the oven over the next few days. Dante is supposed to help, but I ain’t heard from him since Daddy had his accident. I mean, that’s what they calling it,” she said.

“What do you mean, ‘that’s what they calling it’?”

Neveah licked her lips. “About two weeks before this happened, somebody slashed all the tires on both of the vans. A week before that, somebody spray-painted ‘187’ on the front door. Now Daddy gets run off the road? Just seems like too many coincidences to me,” Neveah said.

“Who would want to hurt Daddy? It ain’t like he competing for business with other crematories. Like he says, long as people dying, he gonna be in business,” Roman said.

“I don’t know, and that’s what’s bothering me. But like I was saying, you think you can come up to the shop tomorrow? I got one guy who I know is every bit six hundred pounds,” Neveah said.

Roman let go of his daddy’s hand. He wiped at his eyes even though there were no tears to be found. He wanted to cry, but it felt like the shock of seeing his daddy hooked up to all these tubes and machines had locked the door to his heart and barricaded his tears behind a dam.

“Yeah. I’ll come up.”

“Thank you,” Neveah said.

“You know you don’t have to thank me for anything,” Roman said.

Neveah’s phone buzzed. She pulled it out of the pocket of her jeans. “Hey, I’ll be right back.”

“Is it Dante?” Roman asked.

“No,” she said as she stepped out the door.

Roman squeezed his father’s hand, then touched his father’s face. The skin felt cool and damp. His father’s left eyelid was partly open, exposing a sliver of white.

Roman winced, took a deep breath, then turned to follow his sister into the hallway. She was leaning against the wall murmuring into her phone. Roman paused to give her some privacy, but he still heard her end of the conversation.

“Yeah, well, I’ll try. Just text it to me. I said I’ll try. I’m here with my brother visiting my dad. Yeah, okay. ’Bye,” Neveah said before putting the phone in her pocket and turning to face Roman. There was a look on her face that he couldn’t completely decipher. It wasn’t anger, but it wasn’t joy either. It was more like resignation.

“I’m going to the house,” he said.

“Here’s the key. I have something to do. Just leave it under the planter on the porch,” Neveah said, pulling a key ring out of her pocket and slipping one off the metal circle. She handed the key to Roman.

“Okay. You all right?” he asked.

“No. I can’t stand seeing him in that bed. I can’t stand thinking of running the crematory by myself. This feels like losing Mama all over again. I’m not all right at all, Rome,” she said.

Roman touched her shoulder. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Neveah patted his hand, then waved him off.

“I know. It’s just been a rough year. We’re busier than ever. Covid damn near broke us. And it was just me and Daddy for most of it. Things have just marginally let up.” She sighed. “I just been stressed, Rome,” Neveah said.

Roman wanted to tell her everything was going to be all right. That he was home now and they were going to right the ship and this time he would do his part. Tell her her big brother was here to lay the crooked places straight. But he didn’t, because that would be a lie. He’d help her tomorrow because that was the right thing to do, but if he was being honest, and he knew among family honesty could be a rare commodity, he didn’t want to work at the crematory. He didn’t want the scent of burning flesh in his nostrils or ashes in his hair. He wasn’t ungrateful for the life flames had given him and his brother and sister. But he had no desire to be the King of Ashes. That title belonged to his father, and Roman was content to let it live on through him or burn with him.

CHAPTER THREE

Roman parked the rental in the asphalt driveway of the house his daddy shared with Neveah and Dante, a two-story modern farm-style house with a porch that ran from one corner of the house to the other. He grabbed his bags from the trunk and carried them inside to the guest room. This house was three times larger than the one they had grown up in while his father and mother scraped and saved to open the crematory. That was when his daddy worked as a grave digger for Bama Mathews Vault Company, out of Petersburg, and his mother was a surgical tech at the same hospital where his daddy now hovered over the border between this world and the next. Roman could remember the suffocating heat that enveloped him like a shroud and the bitter cold that stole his warmth when they had stayed in a single-wide mobile home near the outskirts of Jefferson Run in the Shady Hill Trailer Park.

Time and perseverance had taken them from that aluminum rectangle to this twentieth century manor on the hill in the land of HOAs and gated communities. A beautiful four-thousand-square-foot house his mother lived in for all of six months before she disappeared after her night shift at the hospital.

According to the police, June 6th, 2003, Bonita Carruthers walked out of Jefferson Run Memorial and vanished like a cloud of dust caught in the summer breeze.

Roman went to the kitchen, dropped to his haunches, and opened the cabinet below the sink. His daddy’s bottle of scotch was still there, like it had been when he and Dante used to sneak sips back when they were both less than teenagers. He poured himself a drink over two ice cubes.

As he took his first sip, he stared at a ceramic teddy bear cookie jar that sat on top of the fridge. That bear had been there since before his mother disappeared. A smiling light brown teddy bear with a bright red bow. The head of the bear was the lid. Roman used to tell Dante they were cutting the head off the bear whenever they pulled a chair from the dining table to grab some cookies before dinner. After what happened with their mother, Neveah didn’t think the joke was funny anymore.