Seen It All and Done the Rest by Pearl Cleage Read Free Book Online Page A

was pointing at one of the larger Victorians. It was beautifully restored and even had a little gaslight burning out front. An impressive magnolia rose up from the middle of the carefully manicured front lawn. I met Blue Hamilton in Paris once, years ago when he was married to a friend of mine. We all went to dinner and I couldn’t stop staring at his eyes. I apologized to my friend when we were alone later and she just laughed. That was before he became West End’s godfather.
    “Didn’t he get married again?”
    Zora nodded and turned onto Oglethorpe Street. A woman walking a big dog waved, and Zora waved back but didn’t slow down.
    “A couple of years ago,” she said. “He and his wife just had a baby. They’re in Trinidad for a while so Blue can help his friend write a song for Carnival.”
    That surprised me. Was the godfather finally tired of his task?
    “So who’s watching the store?” I said.
    Zora pulled over in front of another big gingerbread, turned off the motor, and popped the trunk. She considered the question and then shrugged her narrow shoulders.
    “I guess we are.”

SIX

    W hen you said you were house-sitting, I pictured you in a cozy little bungalow with a manageable yard and a front porch swing,” I said as Zora gave me a tour of the place where we were staying.
    “I told you it had a heated pool, remember?”
    “But you didn’t tell me it was so…”
    “Fabulous?” she said, borrowing my favorite word, but the fact of its fabulousness didn’t seem to give her any pleasure.
    The place was beautifully and expensively decorated in soothing earth tones with enough colorful accents and eclectic pieces of art to keep it from being boring. There were lots of windows and high ceilings, and the uniform color scheme created the feeling that one room flowed into the other with no visible effort at all. The art was mainly oversize abstracts except for the kitchen, which had one whole wall covered in photographs of smiling, healthy-looking people.
    “Which one is your landlord?” I said, stopping to look at the pictures but not recognizing anybody.
    Zora pointed to a couple standing in front of a plateglass window that said
The Atlanta Sentinel
in big white letters and underneath, “Tell the truth to the people.”
    “Louis and Amelia,” she said. “She’s a lawyer and he publishes
The Sentinel.
”
    “Is that Louis Adams?” The man’s face looked vaguely familiar.
    “Louis Adams, Jr.,” Zora said. “Do you know him?”
    “He was a couple of years behind me in high school. I remember the paper. His father was a force to be reckoned with. A real race man.”
    “Louis is like that, too, but Amelia’s teaching at a university in Beirut for two years, so Louis went with her.”
    The woman standing next to him in the picture was tall and slim with a very close-cropped haircut and a great big smile. Nobody with any sense would let that smile go off into the world alone for two whole years. Louis, Jr., sounded like the perfect combination of race man and romantic.
    “So they left you holding down the fort?”
    “Well, they had another woman staying here, but her reserve unit got called up for Iraq,” Zora said, as we walked from the kitchen back to where my bags were still standing by the front door. “Want to see your room?”
    “Absolutely,” I said, “And then I want to see that pool you promised me.”
    She bumped my big pulling suitcase up the stairs behind her while I brought up the rear with my carry-on and the garment bag. I followed her into the third door on the left near the end of a long hallway. It was a lovely, peaceful room. All blond wood and beige comforters. Over the head of the bed was another one of the abstracts that I had noticed downstairs. This one had lots of turquoise and other shades of blue. It was like having a little unexpected piece of sky in the room.
    There was a rocking chair by the window and a small table and chair in the corner. The curtains