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I sent everything that I found to your tablet. I think you’ll find some of it informative.”
    â€œNow what is this thing I need to do for you?” I asked.
    â€œPB, let me put you on hold, for ten seconds.”
    â€œAll right.”
    While she has me on hold, I see a man who sleeps outside on the wooded hill behind my place, and spends his day on the beach reading books. He always has books by Aristotle, Socrates, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Wiley, Malcolm X, Zora Neale Hurston, and Iceberg Slim. He often recites passages from books by Gandhi, Bruce Lee, Bill Russell, Hannibal, and Shakespeare.
    I walk over to him and hand him my business card. I do this almost daily or have Evita feed him. He knows to take my card down to the neighborhood store, and he can get free food—no beer or wine. He can eat free at Salty’s Fish and Chips or any food or coffee joint along Alki. I pick up the tab. Food should be free to the hungry, no matter how they became that way.
    I’m not a Bible thumper, but I am God-fearing, and His Son fed thousands with a fish and some bread. So the least I can do is to help a man who wants to eat.
    I start to cross the street and I see Evita looking out the window. She knows I’m going next door to my condo. She knows and has always known about my other lover. I’m in love with two beautiful women. One has my soul, and the other one has my body and mind. Evita has made it clear that she loves me in a waythat makes no sense. She pushed me in the direction that I’m going now. This morning happened to be a rare morning that we spent together.
    Velvet breaks my concentration. “Okay, I’m back. I have a friend—I believe you may have met her at Sterlin and Lois Mae’s wedding, Darcelle. She has been the victim of poor choices in men. She may have been watching me all these years of slipping, tripping, and falling down with the wrong man.”
    â€œVelvet, what are you asking me, and why are you telling me about a woman’s misfortune with men? Is she in danger?” I look up and down the block, and back across the street. I’ve had my eye on three different SUVs: blue, black, and brown, all with tinted windows.
    â€œPB, please listen. Darcelle was married to a pro-baseball player. He played for the forever-losing Mariners.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œClarence Thomas.”
    â€œOh yeah, an irrelevant man he is, like the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. But he hasn’t played for the Mariners for at least fifteen years. I know he bounced around from team to team before baseball sat his washed-out ass down.”
    â€œWell, asshole Clarence, while married to Darcelle, had ass waiting for him in every ballpark. Babies started popping up. The babies all had white or Asian or European mamas. Strange he wouldn’t have a child with his black wife. Mr. Swinging Nuts avoided having sex with her, and when they had sex he wore condoms and put his pinky-finger-size penis in her ass, and only in her ass. How sweet of him to protect her from disease, and wimp out on impregnating her.”
    Velvet can be long-winded and sometimes I have to help her tothe point. “Okay, Velvet. Sounds like a reality show, but what do you want?”
    â€œPB, please listen. Mr. Swinging Nuts threw his back out, so with his career about over, he turned physically abusive when he couldn’t swing a bat anymore. Lois Mae, Sterling Baylor’s wife, helped Darcelle many years ago to get the courage to leave. That was long before Lois Mae met Shelton.
    â€œDarcelle remarried a white guy from England. She has never said it, but I believe the white dude on her dance card might have been to save her from the so-called evils of the Black Man.”
    â€œInteresting. Have you heard other black women thinking like that?”
    â€œNo, but Darcelle is different. She wasn’t raised around black people. Adopted as a baby, she grew up