He never felt unsafe in his neighborhood.  There was that one elderly white couple, in the cottage by the entrance, the ones who never waved at him when he drove past.  The same folks who violated the covenants by keeping that rusty RV parked in their driveway.  But he just took them as rude, not ornery or prejudiced, not the type to seek out problems where there weren’t any.

“Be careful, Rodney,” his mother warned, still.  “I don’t like the thought of you on them backroads alone, with no way to protect yourself.”

“Don’t worry, Mama,” he’d said.  “Nothing ever happens here.”

“I bet that young man in the video thought the same thing.  And look at him now.”

He’d seen The Video, everyone had.  The innocent Black man hunted down by two vigilantes, interrupted, bloodied, taken, as though he wasn’t someone’s son, friend, lover. Because he’d crossed a line he didn’t even know existed.  Oh, Rodney had seen it, and he was angry about it like everyone else, but that wouldn’t stop him from running.

On them backroads behind his subdivision, on the cracked cement until it turned to red dirt, across the footbridge over Willow Creek, up to the top of that massive, grassy hill, and back again, totaling a distance just over three miles.  

He had to run.  

The gyms were closed, most of the stores were closed, the office was closed.  The virus had taken damn near everything.  Running was supposed to be the one activity it couldn’t steal.  He thought the outdoors was the safest place he could be.

If anything, the only threat to his health was his own ambition.  He cut the figure of a sprightly athlete, his lean frame dripping with sweat every time he returned home from a run.  But his 35-year-old bones told a different story.  His shins were tender to the touch, his calves wound tight, strung up like the arms on a ventriloquist’s puppet, his bunions sore from the worn-out insoles in his old trainers.  No more was he the long-legged distance runner of yore, accustomed to gliding over miles and miles of trail.  He was now the achy-limbed gymgoer who missed his beloved treadmill, where the conditions were only challenging if he wanted them to be. He could cruise at a speed and incline level just difficult enough to make his forehead bead up with sweat but keep the rest of him dry.

That minimum-effort sweat could be wiped away with the back of a hand in just one swoop, and his body usually returned to equilibrium after a five-minute cooldown.  But he found it harder to recover from his outdoor runs, his pores dumping out sweat some twenty minutes after he’d stopped moving.  

He was still sweating as his mother lectured him about the dangers lurking on the backroads.  

He was still sweating as he scrolled through his Twitter feed, swiping past reposts of The Video, often annotated with incisive commentary.  

He was still sweating, and dabbing his oily face with a handkerchief, as he dialed in for the company Zoom call about The Video.

“Guys, there’s just so much going on right now,” Janice, the CEO, said, exasperated as though The Video had caused her some kind of personal hardship.  She sat before a wall plastered with pleasant, modern wallpaper, a beige base with some kind of green geometric print.  Her camera was centered just right to ensure the frame showed the single, brown floating shelf above her head.  It was decorated with small, faux succulents and nonfiction books by Brené Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Seth Godin.  It was hard for Rodney to imagine her as a person who ever experienced friction, who had problems that couldn’t be solved by New York Times bestsellers.

“I wanted to pull us all together to talk about things.  I want to know how you’re feeling, how you’re processing, how you’re dealing.”

She looked into the camera with sympathy and kept her voice soft, a bit like a New Age therapist preparing to lead the group in a guided meditation.  She made it sound as though the things she wanted to talk about were minor inconveniences, like a slow internet connection, an unpleasant spa experience, a long line at Starbucks, instead of lifeless Black bodies, decades of injustice, a modern-day plague.

Janice insisted on the Black and Brown employees speaking first, because their stories had value and their perspectives were most relevant to the moment, though of the twenty people on staff, there were only two Black people, Brianna, the People Manager, and Rodney, no one Brown.  

“I just can’t keep watching these videos,” Brianna said.  Her voice was firm, maybe even a bit agitated, but her eyes looked pregnant with tears.  

Though many of their coworkers attended calls in old band tees and shoddy basics, Brianna still dressed as though they were going to the office.  On this day, she wore modest, gold hoop earrings, a maroon lip, and a sleeveless white blouse with a ruffle collar.  Brianna had once told Rodney that neither one of them could ever be perceived as unenthusiastic or “less invested in the mission”, because there was already a perception that they’d provide less value and they were obligated to prove everyone wrong.  Rodney had spent most of his life in predominantly white settings, neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces, and he’d always exceled with what he believed was his best effort, which he wouldn’t classify as particularly enthusiastic.  He didn’t carry the same load as Brianna, and he often found it exhausting that she expected him to do so.

She continued, “This isn’t the first one, you know.  This is so triggering for us, and they keep getting shared and shared and shared like any other piece of content.  It makes me angry.  And it makes me feel unsafe everywhere.”

Brianna went on to share times when she’d felt unsupported by her white peers, pausing here and there for a very audible sniffle or to compose herself.  She talked about ways that everyone could make the office more inclusive and welcoming for people of color.  Janice nodded, the kind of tentative nod you use to pretend that you understand what’s being said when you don’t.  The kind of nod that says you don’t intend to do more than listen.

“Those are all great solutions, Brianna.  We’ll definitely take a look at them.”

It was like Brianna had suggested they switch to a different brand of printer paper.  

When Rodney was asked to share his insights, he declined.  Sure, there was validity to what Brianna had said about the videos being triggering, a man’s last breaths retweeted throughout his timeline as flippantly as one shared a viral dance, and sure, he’d encountered racism.  He’d recognized its sting at various points in his life, including the subtler form that was Janice’s specialty, the kind that was masked as a compliment so as to appear racist-adjacent instead of purely racist.  Like those moments when she effusively praised him for being such a good writer as though all of his emails were pieces of canonical literature, or when she used the word articulate to describe how he spoke, on more than one occasion, or when she twirled Brianna’s 4c curls around her pale finger like she was soothing a dog, or how she continuously expected them to believe only two Black folks were qualified enough to join the team.  Once, when Brianna had suggested that the company partner with a local chapter of The Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Janice declined, suggesting they find a charitable endeavor that was more “brand appropriate”.  

Not to imply that Rodney was in any way disgruntled.  He cared about the company’s purpose (making tutoring affordable for all families through a user-friendly app) and his role in it (marketing and branding), but to stay driven and committed was to overlook those little moments.  They were innocuous in their immediate aftermath but they eventually morphed into grievances, and he chose not to address them to avoid feeling angry or being perceived as such.  Instead, he settled for weary, a deep-seated exhaustion that could be suffocating at times but, outwardly, always appeared to be nothing more than the cost of relentless dedication to one’s job.

Thus, he determined that the virtual town hall wasn’t the place to be honest and tick off his complaints one by one.  He saw the meeting for it was, not so much a way to meet the moment but a way to look as though they were meeting the moment.  It was a way for Janice to watch news reports about riots in faraway cities and feel like she’d done her part to quell the unrest.  She’d fostered positive race relations, she’d checked the proverbial box.

Way to leave me hanging, bruh. 

It was Brianna, wondering why he’d dropped his end of the load.

He closed her message without responding.  

Instead, he listened to the rest of the team speak in buzzwords.  Racial equity, verb, intersectionality, verb, good allyship, verb, social justice, verb, and so on.  Janice concluded the call noting that there’d be another in less than two weeks’ time, which would be a great opportunity for those who were still processing to share.  Rodney imagined she’d be staring right at him if the meeting had taken place in the office.  

He signed off before she could finish saying goodbye.  

***

Running wasn’t something Rodney did absentmindedly or halfheartedly.  It was an activity that carried weight, and not just his two hundred pounds of flesh, bone, and muscle pounding the pavement.  It was the kind of weight that demanded ritual.  

Before each run, he pulled on his Lycra running shorts and sleeveless shirt, his running shoes, running cap, elastic armband sleeve to hold his phone, sport sunglasses, hydration pack, wireless earbuds.  Anyone who looked at him might find his getup extravagant, but was there such a thing as overdoing it when it came to preserving your life?  When people saw him, there’d be no question that he was a runner, that he belonged on the backroads, that he was palatable and non-threatening, that he existed and he had every right to do so.

On this particular day, a muggy one with moist air and hazy sunlight, he went through his usual motions, letting gravity propel him down his sharply angled driveway, the soft wind against his back, a lightness in his step that would become hefty once he was on level ground. He moved past the nearly identical cobblestone houses that lined his street. Each one had just a minor flourish to establish its “uniqueness”, like burgundy shutters on a front-facing window instead of brown or a dramatic arched entrance instead of a more welcoming porch.  He tried to focus on a different house each day for novelty’s sake, a little mind trick to help him remember that even though he rarely left the neighborhood now, time hadn’t stopped.  

As he neared the corner, he passed a car parked just ahead of the stop sign, at the corner of Knotty Pine and Heritage.  It was an Oldsmobile Alero, an unexciting, rectangular sedan that had to be at least twenty years old.  It was practically archaic on a street where minivans, SUVs, a few convertibles, and even a Tesla or two sat in the driveways.  

Rodney noticed a fair-skinned white man sitting inside.  He had a shaved head, some dark, patchy fuzz under his bottom lip, and a somber look.  Perhaps he was lost, or too early for a meetup with a friend, or too late. 

The man and the car struck Rodney as strange, noticeable, an unusual part of an otherwise usual day, but not worrisome.  He continued on his run.  

The Oldsmobile was parked in the same spot when he returned, but still he thought nothing of it.  He was more worried about how to soothe his achy knees.  Besides, he’d only been gone for half an hour.  Surely, if the shoe were on the other foot, he wouldn’t want some nosy neighbor policing him while he waited outside a friend’s home.  He’d want a baseline level of trust, an assumption that he was innocent until he proved otherwise, a mutual respect, citizen to citizen.  So many men like Rodney were denied that courtesy, Rodney would give it to this stranger.

But the Oldsmobile didn’t move.  It was there for the remainder of the day, an increasingly imposing presence in his life, there when he went out to check his mailbox, there when he took a walk around the block to get some fresh air after work, there when he peeked out through the blinds that night just before he went to bed.  Even odder, the somber white man still sat there, frozen in place as if he and the vehicle were one.  Though it was improbable, Rodney questioned if the man had moved at all.  He was either in dire need of help or the reason everyone in the neighborhood would need it.  In that moment, for Rodney, there was no in-between.

Momentarily, he wondered if he should do something, call someone.  

But no, no, someone in the neighborhood had probably already done that.  

And he didn’t want to be that person, the nuisance who called the police reporting suspicious people.  

People who looked like him couldn’t be those people.  And this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where you had to worry about those things.  There were HOA fees and ladies’ wine nights and Girl Scout cookie sales.  The most sinister threats to the neighborhood were seasonal graduation parties, when music thumped well into the night and strangers’ cars parked bumper to bumper down the length of the street, sometimes blocking him in his own driveway.  

Otherwise, there was nary a concern.  

The Oldsmobile and its owner would be gone by morning, he was sure.  He’d let someone else make that call.

He slept easy and went about the next morning as he normally would, soft scrambling eggs, brewing coffee, answering emails, and prepping for his weekly one-on-one with Janice. During their video chat, he was unsurprised when she brought up the company call about The Video, subtly chiding him for staying silent.

“I just thought that you’d be eager to share, you know. You’re so well-spoken, and you always have such great insights. And this, this seems like the perfect time for you to chime in.”

“Yeah,” Rodney said, averting his eyes even though Janice’s face filled up his entire laptop screen.  “I’m still thinking it all through.”

There was something voyeuristic about her interest in hearing him speak and it made him uncomfortable. 

“Oh, of course.  I don’t want you to feel pressured.  And I want our conversations to be a safe space for you.  Brianna, too.  If you’re nervous about how I or the rest of the team will react, don’t be, okay?  We’re all ears.”

He tried to imagine the look on her face when he told her that complimenting the way he spoke was condescending.  I’d really prefer it if you didn’t celebrate my public speaking skills like they’re a triumph, he’d say.  He’d ask her why she never praised the white employees the same way, especially the ones who represented the company at national conferences.  He’d ask how many Black people she knew outside of work.  She’d get that stunned look on her face, the one she had when she was furious but tried instead to project calm, when she pursed her thin lips to suppress her indignation and tilted her head to the side to indicate she was thinking deeply about an appropriate, respectful response.  Yet no matter how she answered, Rodney was sure he’d be disappointed.  

They moved on, to discuss copy ideas for a new round of digital ads and to filter their content strategy through “a pandemic lens”.  Once their hour was up, Rodney couldn’t sign off fast enough.  He always seemed to be escaping her, or something.  Instead of digging back into his work, he daydreamed about all his unused vacation time and where he would travel if it was safe to do so without contracting the virus.

He allowed procrastination to take over.  He folded his laptop closed and stepped out front into the midday summer sun.  He’d recently read an article about the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in Black people, so even if he wasn’t being productive, he was getting something out of this detour. 

But he soon realized he wasn’t alone.  

The Oldsmobile was still there, in the same spot, the driver in the same position with the same somber look, now a menace instead of a mere annoyance.  

He decided to get a little closer, see if he could investigate inconspicuously.  He crossed the street and moved at his regular pace on the sidewalk, a few feet of curbside grass between him and the beat-up vehicle.  He attempted to peek inside without making eye contact with the interloper.  He could see some tied garbage bags in the backseat. The man was wearing a ragged, plaid button-down, and his radio was tuned to an oldies station.  Rodney could hear the muffled tune through the car’s closed windows, the third verse of Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s Me”.  Think of me/You know that I’d be with you if I could!  The man didn’t look old enough to know the song but perhaps the music had some kind of importance in his life.  Rodney, too, was young, but his father had indoctrinated him in seventies pop.

When Rodney reached the back of the car, sure that the man’s head hadn’t turned to spy what he was up to, he snapped a photo of the license plate and texted it to Douglas, an officer from the local police department whom he slept with from time to time.  Maybe a plate search would reveal who this odd man was, a vagrant, a thief, a person of interest in some kind of crime.  If police officers did that sort of thing in real life and not just on network television procedurals.

You can’t just ask for favors like that without giving me something.

Rodney knew what “something” he wanted.  Usually he’d refuse, because he wanted Douglas to know that he could offer more than amusement, but this wasn’t the moment to assert himself.  He liked the thought of having a police officer in his home, of having access to a firearm should the stranger across the street become a more perilous threat.  

So often he felt Douglas used him, for pleasure, as a distraction, to pass the time.  But tonight he’d use Douglas, for protection, as a show of force, to put up a convincing front.  Rodney hoped the sight of a squad car in his driveway would intimidate the stranger across the street, send him on his way, wherever that was, and foil his plans, whatever it was he intended to do.

While he waited for Douglas, he googled neighborhood crimes, perhaps looking for commiseration or creative solutions or confirmation that what was happening wouldn’t end in a worst-case scenario.  Mysterious man parked in car on my street.  Neighborhood watch statistics.  How do I know if someone’s dead?  Citizen’s arrest rights.  Citizen’s arrest laws.  Is it illegal to loiter?  What is loitering?  White intruders.  Crimes by white people.  Home invasions.  Self-defense techniques.  Douglas arrived before Rodney could crawl any further down the rabbit hole.

“I mean, technically, he ain’t doing nothing wrong,” Douglas said in his syrupy drawl once he was inside.  He sprawled out on the cream sectional in the living room, his tactical boots still on.  Rodney motioned at them, irritated, the way a mother silently scolds a child for coming indoors with muddy shoes.  

“He’s just sittin’ there, peaceful, mindin’ his business,” Douglas said as he obliged Rodney and pulled his boots off.

Douglas had a round, boyish face and a slight paunch that hung over his waistline.  His skin was blotchy and red.  He’d spent most of the day patrolling protests at the pavilion downtown, and he’d forgotten to wear sunscreen.  Though he had a firearm hanging from his waist, Rodney couldn’t help but think of him as a surly boy.

“You really should wear sunscreen,” Rodney said.  Douglas smirked.

“What, you my mama now?”

It was always like this, Douglas wanting physicality but none of the accoutrements that came with it. 

“Isn’t there some law against this?” Rodney asked.  “Or an ordinance or something?  I mean, the covenants don’t even allow soliciting.  That has to apply to weird men who just sit in cars in neighborhoods where they don’t belong.”

“Well, I’d need to see the covenants to enforce ‘em, wouldn’t I?”

He just wanted Douglas to side with him, and maybe confirm that his mistrust was warranted, justified even.  He didn’t want to be antagonized.

Rodney asked about the plates instead.  Douglas shared that nothing came up, “Clean as a whistle, this man.”

Then they got to it, Douglas turning Rodney on his stomach, pressing his face into the cool softness of the mattress top, and climbing on top of him, breathing heavily in his ear, grunting when he came.  They lay there, Douglas falling asleep almost immediately, Rodney’s mind racing not about the man next to him but the stranger outside.

Douglas declined to stay for breakfast the next morning, his usual pattern.  Rodney tried to plant a quick kiss on his lips before he opened the door, but Douglas turned his head to the side.

“You know how I feel about that,” he told Rodney.

Though this routine was so familiar that Rodney could move through the motions with his eyes closed, this part still frustrated him, the reminder of the world Douglas existed in.  It wasn’t his line of work.  All those old boys’ clubs like the police and the military had their fair share of gays now.  It was his upbringing; he was born and raised in town, by a socially conservative, religious family that he claimed to love.  It seemed they hadn’t taught him how to love himself.  

Rodney watched him slide out to his squad car.  And he saw the Oldsmobile, still there, still imposing, still disrupting his sense of normalcy.  He didn’t feel any more assured, informed, or protected than before Douglas had shown up. He may have been better off burrowing through the rabbit hole.

***

It had only been a few days and yet Rodney had reached a point of obsession.  The trespasser hadn’t actually trespassed but his presence was everywhere.  In the sly way Rodney lifted a single slat of his blinds to monitor the street, in his wishful thinking that the problem would simply resolve itself, in his darker thoughts about how the predicament might actually end.  

He studied the man’s car, its fading gold gloss, the missing hubcap on the back left tire, the rust where the paint had peeled away on the hood.  He wondered why a man would hold onto a car long enough for it to deteriorate to that degree, why he wasn’t embarrassed by it, what he’d done to deserve it.  

Rodney also wondered about his story, taking the liberty to fill in some of the details.  He saw the man as a wanderer, with a simple, traditional name like John or Joseph or Earl.  He’d been to all 50 states, likely in search of a place where rents were cheap and his past was too far in the rearview to destroy his present.  He’d probably explored enough cities to know which were his favorite.  But before he could put his roots down, he had to reunite with the love of his life, a woman who’d landed in the house across the street from Rodney’s.  Perhaps she was on vacation and he’d vowed to wait for her until she returned, however long it took.  He was a man of conviction and patience and resolve, prone to grand gestures and extremes, which made him both a hopeless romantic and a masochist.

Rodney knew all of this was implausible, a ridiculous mythology that offered little more than refuge from the truth.  He also knew it couldn’t go on like this, allowing someone he didn’t know to occupy so much of his space.  How long would the standoff go on? Because surely that was what it was now, a standoff.  How long until everything else melted away and every day was just him, the strange man, and the Oldsmobile?

Rodney decided if the car wasn’t gone by the next afternoon, there’d be no more guessing.  He’d go over and find out the details firsthand.  He’d get this man’s story, and then he’d get him to leave.  He’d restore the peace, peacefully.  He’d no longer abdicate his neighborly responsibilities.  He’d relieve himself of the duty to give strange, imposing, white men the benefit of the doubt.  

Don’t do nothing stupid. 

A warning from Douglas, a sign that perhaps he did care.  

If he ain’t gone by Sunday, me and the boys’ll take care of it.

But that was too long.  By Sunday, the man would’ve been squatting for a week, occupying space and thoughts and a psyche he had no rightful claim to.  Why didn’t Douglas, a member of law enforcement, whose job it was to protect and serve, have more of a sense of urgency about protecting and serving him?

We gotta make sure these idiots wear masks and don’t have no gatherings bigger than 10 people.  

We gotta watch these protestors.  

We got our hands full.  

If that man ain’t killed no one, then we got better shit to do.

It was settled then.  Rodney, too, had better shit to do than wait around to be rescued. He would take the matter into his own hands, for his sanity and for the safety of his community, but more so for his sanity.  

He had all this in mind on Friday afternoon when he marched over to the Oldsmobile and knocked on the window, startling the somber stranger.  Rodney watched as he rolled his window down slowly, all the while carefully eyeing Rodney as though he had the right to be suspicious.  Rodney imagined this must have been how the jogger in The Video felt, suddenly unwanted and out of place even though, by all accounts, he belonged.

“You a cop? You don’t look like no cop,” the man said.

“I’m a concerned citizen,” Rodney said, trying to sound authoritative but coming off nervous like a dim-witted father unsure of how to wield his power.  He realized that neither of them were wearing masks, and it was these conversations, the prolonged, close-range variety, that could easily spread the virus.  He took two steps back, which did nothing to strengthen his positioning.

“Well, you don’t need to be concerned about me.  I’m just waiting for my sister.”

They were barely a minute into the conversation and already the narrative Rodney had crafted was falling apart.  It wasn’t an estranged lover the intruder was waiting for.  It was Carla, Rodney would come to learn.  And the man was called Bryant.  Bryant was a veteran, honorably discharged from the Army after four years of service, because that life wasn’t for him.  When he got out, he took a job as a part-time salesperson at an electronics store and worked his way up to manager.  But once the stay-at-home orders started, headcount was reduced and he was let go.  He tried and tried to get unemployment to no avail, and his landlord wasn’t the patient type.  He grabbed his belongings, tossed them in the car, and jetted, on the way to his sister’s, or at least to her last known address.  They hadn’t spoken in years but now she was his only lifeline.

This was the real story.

Rodney felt guilty almost immediately.  The sinister threat to the neighborhood was a homeless veteran, a life derailed by the pandemic, a patriot left behind by society, a person who was much worse off than him or any of his neighbors. He would have been a criminal, too, if Rodney’s neurosis hadn’t slowed him down.  

What an asshole he’d been.

“Well, if it helps, I have a friend who works with the police department.  Maybe he can find out if she still lives here?”

“Oh, that’d be great, man. That’s awfully kind of you.”

Bryant smiled up at Rodney, a genuine, toothy smile, and Rodney returned it, all the while scanning Bryant’s slightly sunken cheeks, sympathizing with his plight.  He seemed kind, honest.  And for a moment, with the sun setting above them, his face tinted by orange light, Rodney found him attractive.  But he quickly talked himself out of it.  It seemed extreme to graduate so quickly from the terror of suspicion to the throes of desire.

Rodney began to walk back to his house.  The mystery was solved, the boogeyman wasn’t real.  But now he’d inherited a new problem.

Was he doing enough to help Bryant?  Was it sufficient to ask Douglas to scan an address, instead of offering a homeless veteran money or food or shelter?  This wasn’t the same as telling a grocery store clerk that you didn’t want to round up your purchase to help an abstract cause.  The cause was right there, in the flesh, and surely, Rodney could do better.  He could be kinder.  

He went back to the Oldsmobile and offered to order a pizza for the two of them while he waited to hear back from Douglas.  And if Bryant wanted, he could take a hot shower, too.  

Bryant took him up on both offers without hesitation.  He moved the Oldsmobile into Rodney’s driveway.  His eyes widened as he took in the details of Rodney’s house, the crown molding on the living room ceiling, the large, flat screen TV mounted to the wall above the fireplace mantle, the almost overwhelming smell of lavender-scented plug-ins.

While Bryant showered, Rodney ordered an Italian sausage pie and set the kitchen table, which was tucked off to the side in a nook.  The quarters may have been too close given all that was going on with the pandemic and perhaps a touch too intimate for strangers who didn’t yet trust one another.  He scanned his fridge to find he only had a pitcher of water and a half-consumed bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to drink.  He placed both on the table.  Strangely, he found himself being overly critical of his cleanliness.  He grabbed a duster to clear the thin film of grit on the windowsill, which you could only see if you looked closely.  He rinsed the dirty glasses in the sink that he’d left there earlier that afternoon.  He knew that he wasn’t messy, but it had become harder to keep the place squeaky clean now that he was home so often.  He also knew that none of it should matter to Bryant, who had been living in his car and was likely pleased being inside a place with four walls and air conditioning.  Still, there was something about hosting a person for the first time.  He always wondered what kind of impression he gave off, and if a dusted windowsill played a factor in it.  He’d been the same way during his first night with Douglas, rushing around fluffing pillows and sweeping floors though they barely had time to say hello before landing in his bed.

Bryant chose the water, Rodney had the leftover wine, figuring it would relax him and keep his judgment of Bryant from swaying too far in either direction.  Rodney watched Bryant as he folded slice after slice and devoured them, oily juices dribbling down his chin.  He barely stopped to breathe between bites.  It was only once half the pie was gone that they began to talk, boilerplate stuff at first, about the weather, how fast the year was going by, how Rodney liked working from home.  Rodney only stopped being bored when Bryant asked how he felt about the civil rights protests unfolding across the country.  He’d driven past one on his way into town.

“I don’t know,” Rodney said.  “I guess I understand it.”

“I thought all that was finished business, with the laws being the way they are.”  

“I’m not sure that’s accurate.  I think the laws make things more difficult in some instances.”

Bryant looked at him a bit confused.  Rodney talked about redlining, about laws in some states that restricted people with felony convictions from voting, about gerrymandering.  As he said these things, Bryant just continued looking at him, not nodding to affirm or shaking his head to disagree.  Rodney felt that he may have been overloading him, or contradicting him in a way that was impolite when hosting a guest.

“Of course, I get it if you think I’m wrong,” Rodney said self-effacingly.  

“No, no, I don’t think that.  It’s just I ain’t really been around people who could share those things with me.”

Rodney took this to mean he didn’t have a lot of, or any, Black friends.  As they continued talking, Rodney realized that he and Douglas had never had these conversations, which would likely turn heated given Douglas’ profession.  Perhaps if they’d broached these topics, they wouldn’t still have whatever it was they had.

“I wish people would fight for us the same way,” Bryant said.  

“People respect veterans.  You guys have laws, too, and VA hospitals.”

Bryant shook his head.

“I don’t mean vets, I mean us.” 

He pressed his finger into his chest repeatedly.

“The people that the rest of y’all forgot.”

Rodney wasn’t sure he knew what Bryant meant, and he felt uncomfortable.  On one hand, he found the man’s earnestness appealing.  If he had two more glasses of wine, he’d be liable to make a move.  But he absolutely could not fuck the homeless man.  That could not be part of the charity.  On the other, there seemed to be an unpredictability to Bryant, and not just because they hardly knew each other.  There was something raw, red, and untamed lurking underneath his skin, and Rodney saw flashes of it when Bryant lumped him into the apathetic “y’all” he spoke about.

As the night went on, Douglas texted that he wouldn’t be back at the precinct until the next day, so there’d be no answer on Carla’s address until then.  Rodney wasn’t sure what to do.  He hadn’t told Douglas that the stranger was now inside his house, that he’d used his bathroom, that he’d walked the same paths that Douglas had walked many times before.  Maybe it would’ve made him jealous.  Maybe it would’ve driven him to action.  

What exactly was he supposed to do?  Send Bryant back to his car for the night?  Surely there’d be some kind of awful karmic retribution.

He shared the disappointing news with Bryant.  Unsure of what to say after that, especially when he saw hope empty from the man’s face, Rodney told him he could stay the night.  

“I don’t know what difference it makes in the grand scheme of things, since it’s just one night, but I hope it helps.”

“Aw, man, it’s more of a help to me than you’ll ever know.”

Now, the man in the Oldsmobile, Bryant not John or Joseph or Earl, was his houseguest.  So he did for him what he would do for any other guest. He put fresh sheets on the bed in the guestroom, he set a stack of clean towels in the guest bathroom, for surely this man with no home would want to shower again in the morning, and he showed him where the glasses were, in case he felt thirsty during the night.  All of the spaces for guests were on the opposite side of the house, and Rodney wanted to minimize the need for Bryant to come to his side.

“What about the alarm?” Bryant asked.  “Nice houses like this always have an alarm.  Sometimes I like to step out for a smoke during the night if I can’t sleep.”

“I don’t have one.  I know I probably should, but I just never got around to it.  The neighborhood’s so safe, it seems like a waste of money anyway.”

“But the world we’re living in today, you can never let your guard down.”

“I’m more of an optimist.  I think there are still some good people in the world.”  

“I guess that’s right, I suppose.  You seem like one of them good people.”

Rodney thought Bryant seemed like one of those good people, too, the kind who just couldn’t catch a break.  

But perhaps Rodney’s original judgment of Bryant wasn’t so far off-base.  Just after two a.m., raucousness snapped Rodney awake.  He was disoriented for a few moments before recognizing what he was hearing – plates crashing to the floor, furniture being overturned with force, bags being unzipped and packed.  

He was being robbed.

He lay there paralyzed, unsure of what the right move was.  If he made any sounds or got out of bed, the perpetrator would hear him.  And who knows what he’d do to Rodney to make a clean escape with all his stuff.  What he wouldn’t give to have Douglas there at that exact moment, lying next to him, his firearm on the nightstand, their history notwithstanding.  Regardless of what was happening out there, he’d be protected.  But all he could do on his own was lie there helpless and listen while his home was cleared out.  There was no good choice.  He was a good person, by Bryant’s telling, without any good choices.

He didn’t want to believe it was Bryant clearing him out, even as he tiptoed across his bedroom to lock his door.  But if he truly feared that both their lives were in danger, he wouldn’t have insulated himself from it.  He wanted to imagine that this was a coincidence, that Bryant was lying in the guest bed behind a locked door, too.  And when it was all over, they’d check on each other, compare notes, and try to figure out what happened.  They’d both be shaken.  But there was no sense in trying to dream up another story.  The reality was unmistakable, loud, inevitable.

Rodney listened as a pair of feet scurried out the front door dragging what sounded like duffle bags behind them.  A few moments after the noise stopped, he cracked his door to see out, gauge the destruction.  It seemed like the invader (if you could call a guest that) was gone but he wanted to be sure.  

“Bryant?” he called out, wincing out of fear that he was still within earshot.  

Nothing. 

He flipped on the lights and took stock, of the empty mantel now missing its TV, of the smashed plates and glasses in the kitchen, of the missing tchotchkes, the emptied liquor cabinet, the missing man.  He walked to his front door and confirmed that the Oldsmobile he’d so badly wanted to disappear was indeed gone.

“This city ain’t as safe as you think it is,” Douglas said later that morning as he surveyed the damage, stepping carefully around the wreckage and scribbling notes on a small pad.  “You can’t go around inviting strangers into your house.”

“But that’s how we met.”

“On an app.  You didn’t find me in a fuckin’ car on the street, Rodney.  Be serious.”

Though Douglas was infuriated, it was the first time it seemed he cared for Rodney.  Rodney had sparked something in Douglas that upset him, and that meant something.

“I was trying to be a good person.”

“You should try to get an alarm system.”

The reasoning for the robbery wasn’t clear.  Douglas suggested maybe it was an elaborate scam, and Bryant’s story, his all too believable story, was well-rehearsed, expertly designed to elicit sympathy and earn strangers’ trust.  Because what evil bastard wouldn’t help a homeless veteran?  He’d likely cased the neighborhood, took note of who was and wasn’t home, and identified Rodney as an easy mark.  

“We’ll find him, one way or another.  You can’t be the first victim.”

Victim.  Bryant had called him a good person.  Now Douglas referred to him as a victim.  He wasn’t sure he saw himself as either.

A couple other officers arrived and sealed off parts of the house with barricade tape.  Douglas adopted a deeper, more formal tone with Rodney, as though they’d just met.  It wasn’t surprising behavior, but Rodney still felt slighted.  They stepped out front, out of view of the others.  Rodney didn’t know why they’d done so.  All of it had left him embarrassed, and he didn’t have any words.  Douglas pointed across the street, at the nearly identical cobblestone house where Bryant had sat in his old car.

“You probably already figured this out, but nobody named Carla lives there.  That house is vacant, been owned by the bank for almost two years.”

Rodney just stared ahead at the two things that set the empty house apart from the others, a pair of overgrown rosebushes and a pale-yellow front door. 

***

During his run, Rodney wasn’t focused on the trail or the nagging pain in his joints.  He could only hear the sounds from the early morning robbery, only see the face of the man he wished would’ve been more like the character he’d imagined, only feel disgust and shame about his naiveté and, worse, his fleeting attraction.  Think of me!  He would, and he wouldn’t be able to stop.  After an experience like that, forgetting isn’t something one can do.

As he dialed in for the next companywide call, to further discuss how a Black man had been so unsafe it cost him his life, it was his own safety that occupied his thoughts.  And at that moment, he wasn’t sure that he could feel safe anywhere, regardless of what he or anyone else said.

It didn’t take long for Janice to get things rolling.

“I thought this time we’d start with Rodney since these events were still a little too raw last time,” she said.  

She stared into the camera forcefully.  Since she was the only one speaking, her face had expanded to fill the entire screen, once again encroaching on his freedom.  So, though the entire team was present, it felt as though Janice were looking directly at him, like they were alone, like he had no choice but to give in to her whims.  She may have been gently prodding, but there was no mistaking, her ask was a demand.

“Just some stream of consciousness thoughts about what’s transpiring around the country,” she continued, “and where you fit in and what we can do to make it better.”

Rodney sighed.  The view shifted again, and all twenty squares reappeared.  He scanned all their faces.  He saw Brianna’s full, glossy, pursed lips, the combative look on her face, clearly waiting for Rodney’s reflections, or rather for his reflections to reinforce what she’d shared previously.  Janice raised her hand and motioned for him to start, coaxing him like he was an actor who’d missed his cue.  And there he was, onstage but unprepared, his mind elsewhere, evidence of his run beading up across his forehead as usual.

When he’d gone out earlier that day, and his heels had hit the ground one after the other, he hadn’t broken, but he’d felt his knees pop.  He envisioned the bits of cartilage wearing away with each stride.  Today it was a bother, maybe later it’d be a dull pain, in a few months or a year, it’d be a tear, either salvageable or irreparable.  He had to change something, preserve himself, ensure that one day his legs wouldn’t crumble under his weight, that he wouldn’t crumble under this weight.

So he hung up on the team.  

He closed his laptop and stepped outside.  Fresh air, brutal but golden sun, a block free of cars and men who didn’t belong.  He crossed the street to look at the empty house, and at the oil slick left behind on the pavement where Bryant’s car had sat.  Then he walked, a light breeze tickling his face.  He wasn’t sure where he was headed or how long he’d wander, but in that moment, he was untethered from his burdens, unconcerned about what happened to anyone else, indifferent to the plight of others, and, for a moment, unscathed.