She weaved across the yard, and fell into the ruined Mercedes. I said, “Tyra, don’t be stupid.” But she’d already turned the key. “Jason, do something.” She got the car started, but he showed the same pitiless stare. Tyra gave him the finger, as wheels spit out grass and dirt, and she slammed into another car. “Jason, come on…”

“Fine. All right.”

He crossed the yard as she struggled with the gearshift, metal grinding. “Gibby’s right, Tyra. Let me have the keys.”

He was ten feet away when she bent for something on the floor, and reappeared with a gun in her hand. “You stay away from me.” The gun was small and silver. Jason acted as if it wasn’t there. “I’ll pull the trigger. I’ll do it.”

She pointed the gun at his chest, but was spilling tears that cut tracks in the mascara, and turned back at the corners of her mouth. People were moving, ducking for cover. Only Jason was calm. “You shouldn’t have the keys or that gun.”

“You don’t love me. You don’t get a say.”

“I’m trying to help you, Tyra.”

“Stay back.” She worked the clutch, the stick. The car lurched, and metal scraped. She forced a different gear; rolled forward and stopped. For an instant more, Jason was pinned on the barrel of that small, slick gun. “It would have been easy,” she said. “You could have said yes.”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t follow me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

It was the wrong answer, I thought, fuel on a burning fire. The look on her face was terrible as she struggled to contain whatever emotion burned hottest. Fury. Want. Need. The tension stretched until she tossed the pistol on the seat beside her, and rocked the little car off the curb. She looked back only once—another tortured gaze—then she gave my brother the finger, and gunned it.

7

I didn’t tell anyone what happened between Jason and Tyra, but thought about it all night and even when I woke. I’d never seen such raw emotion in a woman or a man so cool in the face of it. Tyra’s volatility was beyond question, yet in two short encounters, she’d bared everything a woman could bare—body and soul—and I was frustrated at how small I felt afterward, how my own life felt made of expectation, stillness, and pent-up frustration.

I wondered what Robert would say about that.

And what Jason was doing.

After school, I drove by the house on Water and Tenth, but no one there had seen Jason since the dustup with Tyra. They didn’t know where he’d gone or when he was coming back. “What about Tyra?” I asked.

“That crazy bitch?”