“Where you get all this?” I asked.

“When Paul told me they was trying to raise money to get Cal out of jail, I figured you’d get in on it. So I went back to where we got the letters from …”

“Tyrone’s?”

She nodded.

I thought about a whole lot of things to say. Things like she shouldn’t have done it, and she could have been killed if Tyrone caught her, stuff like that. But the money was laying there, and I needed it, and I took it.

I went over to her and sat next to her on the bed. She put her head against my chest.

“I figure one day, when we laying on our fancy rug, we going to look back on all this and say cool things about it,” she said.

“One day that’s just what we’re going to do,” I said. “C’mon over to Aggie’s with me. We’ll take the money downtown and get some free air for Cal.”

“Can’t,” she said. “Gotta go back over to the club, so Tyrone don’t think I did it.”

“Ain’t you scared?”

“Ain’t grits groceries?”

I kissed her again and went over to Aggie’s. She had got part of the money from where she worked, and we went downtown to the bondsman. He was a little fat cat with the smallest hands I ever seen on a man. The fingers weren’t even as long as the palm. He counted the money twice, then put it in a drawer. Then he took out his pistol and checked it. I guess that was for my benefit in case I was thinking of taking him off or something. He took out some papers, filled in a few lines, and then me and Aggie went behind him over to the jail.

Cal looked old. Old and mad. Aggie took him by the arm, and he just ignored her. There was a swelling upside his head. He didn’t even look black, but kind of grayish.

He didn’t say nothing to us, even when we asked him questions, and after a while we didn’t say anything to him. The only person who did any talking was the bondsman.

“Anything happen you let me know,” he said, “anything at all. He commits suicide or something, the first thing you do is call me. That way you got your money covered.”

Cal was like a zombie in the cab and going up the stairs. We got him sat down in the kitchen, and Aggie started serving up some food she had made. Every once in a while she gave me a look, like she didn’t know what was going on with him. I didn’t know what was going on either. I knew the guy didn’t feel good. I been in the slam and I know where that’s at.

“What we doing here?” Cal said.

“What you mean?” Aggie asked. “We getting ready to eat.”

“This ain’t my house,” Cal said. “I can’t go on playing this game like we’re making it and I got a life to be coming home to. I’m tired of playing these games.”