Tempted by Trouble by Eric Jerome Dickey

man up and make sacrifices like I have.”
    That barbed wire swiped at my ego and left an impenetrable silence between us.
    I asked, “What have you done?”
    “More than you.”
    “What?”
    “Don’t ask again. Please. Don’t ask again.”
    My wife cried soft tears and told me that she had done all she could do for now. And there was only one thing left she could do to boost our pathetic income. My heart caught fire and my eyes watered.
    She choked. “Men offer me that every time I go to work at that place. I was at the mall and a man who had been to the club recognized me. He came up to me, in the mall, and offered me money to go to a hotel with him. I smiled at him, but something inside me died. This is what I have become. Once you become . . . one of these women . . . once you do this . . . they never see you as anything but a whore.”
    She told me about the dancers who left with men, some with women who looked like men; some serviced customers who paid for acts of sadomasochism that rivaled the most disgusting Siffredi film. She repeated her question, asked me if I wanted her to cross that line.
    She sounded destroyed.
    And she wanted me to feel her pain, wanted to destroy me with her words.
    I looked down at my callused hand and then looked up at the wall and saw my framed degrees. My wife complained about her life, but this wasn’t the existence I’d mapped out for myself either. This life wasn’t even close to what I had mapped out. I thought I’d end up with a sorority girl, a decent woman with a Ph.D. I wanted children who were White House-bound. I wanted a house filled with lawyers and leaders. Everybody fantasized until reality came along and knocked us flat on our rear ends.
    I should’ve abandoned Detroit and my wife and her brand-new fur coat, my mind double-daring me to leave at that moment, my heart telling me that neither Detroit nor my wife would miss me. There was only so far a man could get when cash was low and credit cards had been maxed out. Only so much gas a man in my economic position could afford to burn.
    The only thing I knew with any certainty was that my love for Cora hadn’t changed.
    In a hardened tone I said, “If your friend can use me, I’ll be his getaway man.”
    She paused a long moment before she whispered, “I’ll call Eddie Coyle.”

7
    Now Sammy was dead and Rick might be speeding down that same road.
    Numbness had covered Jackie and me. We’d kept moving from morning until evening. We’d passed our hideout several times but put off going inside. We wanted to be sure that it was safe. Los Angeles had the world’s largest population of Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Filipinos, Koreans, Samoans, and Armenians outside their native countries, and I think that we had seen every one of them at least twice since the fiasco at Wells Fargo. The darkening of the day had helped to lessen my fears, but not enough for me to feel at ease. Jackie and I lurked in the shadows of the safe house in Koreatown. Over a thousand bars, karaoke spots, spas that offered happy endings, pool halls, and clubs were alive and it sounded like I could hear the overlapping din from each and every one of them. Jackie parked on the crowded streets and we monitored the area. The earphones were in place and my iPhone was running the app that kept me in touch with both LAPD and the sheriff’s department.
    Jackie said, “You hear anything?”
    “Nothing.”
    “It’s safe.”
    “Why are you so sure?”
    “Rick isn’t a snitch. He has kids and a wife he loves.”
    “That’s enough to make a man snitch.”
    “Not on this crew. Rick knows if he snitches, he’ll be buying coffins for his family.”
    Jackie had changed clothes a few hours ago, back when we had dumped the van and traded it for the four-door Pontiac she’d rented from Hertz when she had arrived at LAX. She had lost the T-shirt and jeans, traded up and become a woman adorned in clothing by Givenchy, Calvin Klein, and Marc