The Bridge by Solomon Jones Page A

minute?”
    â€œI don’t think so,” Lily said, looking him up and down and taking in everything the crack had taken out of him.
    â€œIt ain’t about me, Lily,” he said, looking around before leaning in to whisper. “It’s about Kenya.”
    She looked into his eyes and saw fatigue. There was none of the quick and flinching desperation that always accompanied his lies, none of the darting eyes and dry-mouthed gibberish that came with his addiction. There was only a sad, deflated picture of something she hadn’t seen from him in years: the truth.
    She closed the door and unhooked the chain lock, then opened it and let him in, leading him past the sleeping Janay and into the hallway between the bathroom and bedroom.
    â€œHow you been, Lily?” he asked quietly.
    She didn’t answer, but glanced at his sweat-stained clothes and the flaky residue that had dried to form scaly layers of gray skin on his face.

    â€œLook, I know you care about Kenya,” he said, fidgeting slightly as he spoke. “That’s the only reason I came down here. I needed to talk to somebody who cared about her.”
    He paused and looked down at Lily. “And somebody I cared about.”
    She stared into his eyes, and for a moment, the man he used to be shone through. But instead of exciting her, the way it used to, the thought of being in his arms saddened her. His arms, like everything else, no longer belonged to the man who had held her through the worst time of her life.
    In the fall of 1987, just weeks after Janay began first grade, her father died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. Two weeks later, Lily lost her job as a receptionist. Left with only a night job as a part-time barmaid, she was trapped once again in the mind-numbing poverty she’d been working so hard to escape.
    That autumn, the loneliness of it all began to consume her. She was mourning. She was vulnerable. And so she did what she’d seen many others do. She lost herself in the pulverizing grind of the projects.
    During the lazy afternoons when Janay was in school and the Bridge paused in preparation for its nightly ruckus, Lily would sometimes walk to the seventh floor to visit Judy. She knew that Judy’s niece was in the same class as Janay, and that’s what the two of them talked about at first.
    By winter, Lily was revealing bits and pieces of the grief she felt over the losses she’d experienced, and Judy was listening. By spring, they had shared laughter and tears, gossip and secrets. Their friendship was genuine, and the trust was real.
    When Kenya began to spend nights at Lily’s apartment, Judy would send Darnell to pick up Kenya.
    It was then that Lily saw something about him that she hadn’t seen before. The way his broad shoulders gave way to the hard muscle of his arms and chest. The way his dark skin poured over
his languid body like syrup. The way he looked at her when he arrived at her door, asking for his niece, but wanting Lily.
    He was young enough to be Lily’s son, but with the eyes of a man. He used them to see the soft caramel that was Lily, to take in the voluptuous curves that lingered beneath the cheap, silk dresses she’d wear on the mornings when he would come.
    His hunger and her loneliness made their coupling inevitable. And when she took him, it was because they both wanted it to happen.
    Lily didn’t tell Judy at first, because she didn’t think she would understand. But as she grew closer to Darnell, their relationship became more difficult to hide.
    By the time Judy saw it in their eyes, it didn’t matter that she knew. Everything about her relationship with Lily had already changed.
    Judy chose the crack trade over friendship. And Lily, who had stopped coming to Judy’s apartment because of the drugs, chose Darnell over gossip-filled afternoons.
    Judy was resentful. She felt that Lily had only befriended her to get closer to Darnell. She thought