“You all right?” I ask.

“I’m fine. I guess. I hope there’s not going to be a scene.”

“Don’t worry about that, Jamil. All I want to do is make sure this dude never puts his hands on you again. If he does, he’s going to jail. And that’s that.”

There goes that grin again. We don’t say too much for the next forty minutes, when we get to Simi Valley and pull up in front of their house. It’s the same shade as cantaloupes, one of those cheap stucco things I was building before my arthritis got too bad. I don’t know why they all have to be fruity colors, and all set back at the exact same spot as the next house. If you ever came home drunk, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell your house from the neighbors’. But they’re new. And people like new anything: shoes, cars, and especially houses. They like the smell of new. The look and feel of new. I can’t much blame ’em. If I could afford it, I’d be living in one, too.

I wonder what possessed Donnetta to wanna live way out here? What a dumb-ass question, Lewis. She’s got a white husband. Which means she probably thinks like everybody else: that the further away you get from black folks, the safer you’ll be. But look what happened to Rodney King, which wasn’t that far from here.

Jamil opens his side faster than I thought and is out the car and at the front door before I can even turn the engine off. By the time I limp up the sidewalk, Donnetta is standing in the doorway with one hand on her hip, squinting. She looks better than I remember. Her skin is still smooth and creamy, like it’s been dipped in caramel. Her hair is sandy brown and wavy; now it’s way past her shoulders. And for somebody who just recently had a baby, she looks good: thinner than I ever remember her being.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

“I just came to talk to you and your husband. I didn’t come out here to cause no trouble, so don’t worry.”

“Who’s out there, honey?” I hear a man’s voice that sounds almost like a woman’s say, but he doesn’t even come to the door.

“It’s Lewis,” she says, and I’m surprised when she backs away to let me in. “Please don’t make me have to get another restraining order,” she mumbles.

When I walk in, I realize some things don’t change. The house may be new but the stuff in here is old and out of style, with the exception of that big-screen TV. She’s got that same J. C. Penney’s couch we bought right after we got married and the La-Z-Boy, too. The tables weren’t even real wood, but I didn’t care back then, it was all we could afford. I see what must be four years of trophies and pictures of Jamil in his soccer and Little League uniforms on three glass shelves. It smells like Glade air freshener in here, but that’s about it.