The Old Man in the Club (4 page)

“I remember my father when he was my age and he seemed to think that meant watching Johnny Carson and going to bed. Well, not me. I always had this sadness about my dad, like he was missing out on life. He never went anywhere. My recollection of him
is that he was always this old man. Even when I was a kid he seemed old and settled and not quite like life was treating him right.

“The reality is that life doesn't treat you; you get out of life what you want out of it. There is too much available in the world, especially nowadays, to be this old man who has his place.

“I don't have one place. I have a lot of interests and a lot of opportunities and I'm making it happen for myself. Does it look crazy to some, seeing me at sixty-one years old in a club full of youngsters my children's age? I guess so. A guy called me ‘the old man in the club' tonight. Guess what? It didn't faze me. It was true. I wasn't offended.

“When you live the life I have lived, you are thankful for each day more than most people. I missed out on my twenties. I didn't get to be young and carefree and enjoy life.

“Well, I have that chance now. I'm angry about some of the things that happened to me. But I am here; I'm still here. So I'm going to do what I damn please. And I don't care what anyone thinks about it.”

Tamara did not interject when Elliott paused. She was not sure if he was done. But after several seconds, she figured he had said his peace—or all he wanted to up to that point.

“I see you're really passionate about this,” she said. “What happened to you?”

“I can't tell you everything at once; it'd be too much for you to handle,” he said. “But I will tell you about what happened with my children, why they weren't exactly happy to see me tonight.”

“Let me guess,” Tamara said. “You cheated.”

“I could be insulted,” Elliott said, “but I'm going to let it go because you don't really know me yet. But—”

“That's right,” Tamara interrupted, “and you said you want to
have sex with me, even though you admitted you don't know me.”

“I said that you don't know me; I
know
you,” Elliott said.

“Now how can that be?” she responded. “Never mind—don't even answer that now… Go ahead.”

Elliott smiled and poured Tamara a glass of the champagne he brought to the balcony.

“Maybe you should go.” He looked away from her.

“Why? I don't want to go.”

“We'll see about that,” Elliott said, and the way he said it made Tamara uneasy, but not scared.

“I'm here because I want to be here, Elliott. What happened?”

“You notice that when we talk during the day, I am always out walking?”

“I did notice that. Why?”

“I'm always out walking because all of my twenties and some of my thirties—almost twelve years in total—I was confined. Prison. I had a limited space I could travel. So walking wherever I want confirms that I am free.”

He delivered every word while looking directly into her eyes. He was searching for her emotion.

“What?” Tamara asked. “Why? What happened?”

“They said I raped and killed a woman in Virginia.” Elliott was looking away now, toward the darkened sky, as if it was an enormous movie screen and he could see that part of his life playing out in front of him.

Tamara, meanwhile, was stunned—and scared so much that she was frozen in her seat and speechless.

“You still want to be here?” Elliott asked with sarcasm.

Tamara said nothing.

“I was in my last year of college, at home working in Woodbridge,
Virginia at a car dealership for the summer,” Elliott began. “This woman who had come to do a test drive with me earlier that day was found raped and murdered near her home around the time I got off work that evening.

“I was driving back to my parents' house in D.C. The route took me past the woman's home. Before I could get to Interstate 95, police sprung up from every angle, with their guns drawn. Scared me so much I was afraid to pull my hands off the steering wheel to roll down the window or open the door. Before I knew it, I was snatched out of my car, on the ground, roughed up and in the back of a police car. I thought I was dreaming.”

Tamara's fear eased. She was not sure why, but it did. “Why did they think you did it?”

Her question pleased Elliott. She could have asked, as another young lady had, “Did you do it?” Asking the question Tamara did sent the message that she hadn't judged him.

“It was crazy,” he said. “When her body was found, sometime before I left the dealership, this woman said she saw a man drive away in a yellowish car. I had a yellow 1969 Duster and—”

“A what?” Tamara asked.

“Oh, wow,” Elliott said. “There was a car at that time called a Duster. It was made by Dodge. This was 1971. They haven't made them for a while now. You're so young.

“But anyway, they said my car matched this witness' description of the car leaving where the body was found.

“So I'm in jail and not sure what the hell is going on; no one said anything to me about this crime. So, finally a detective comes in and shows me a photo of the lady's driver's license picture. He asked if I knew her. I looked at the photo and said I didn't. She didn't look familiar.

“They then questioned me over and over about why I was in that area, where was I going, I mean, just about anything they could think of, they asked me. I left out something, though: I had stopped at this little area that was off the beaten path, not far from the job, down by a lake. I went there to smoke a joint. I got high back in those days. It was a long week and I would do the same thing every Friday—go to this place, loosen my tie and smoke a joint while sitting there in my car, listening to music.

“Well, they finally tell me that the woman in the photo was dead—and that they knew I had killed her after raping her because she was jogging in that same area where I had my joint.

“I'm sitting there looking at them like they were crazy. I stood up and told them I didn't do it, wouldn't do it and couldn't do it. They didn't believe me. After taking my mug shot and fingerprints and making me feel like a criminal, I was put in a cell and given an arraignment date. My parents, my whole family, was scared and angry.

“But why did they think it was you?” Tamara wanted to know.

“A crazy list of coincidences,” Elliott said. “The lady in the picture was a woman I had gone on a test drive of a car with earlier that day. She had told her girlfriend that she had visited the dealership, and when they checked with my boss, the records showed that I took her on the test drive. But she didn't look like the photo on her license, which I did not see at the dealership when she had the test drive because an office assistant made the copy of it. Her hair was different and she wore glasses. I didn't recognize her. And I just did not recall her name.

“But they said I was lying about that, and if I was lying, that meant I was hiding something.

“And they found my fingerprints on her car door. They were
there because I walked her to her car when she was leaving the dealership and opened her door for her. They didn't believe that. They said I opened the door while she was in the car and pulled her out.

“They also said someone saw my car at the lake and saw me sitting in the car as the woman jogged past me. I didn't remember her. But because I didn't tell them that I stopped to smoke a joint, they used that against me, saying I knew that if I had told them that I was there, they would link me to being where the woman was.

“It was crazy. My family went broke paying for lawyers to defend me. They lost their house. My father even lost his job because it was a horrific crime. The woman was white, a mother of a young boy, and by all accounts a great lady. I remember feeling that way about her during that ten-minute test drive. She was very pleasant. Anyway, the people on my dad's job associated my charges with him and didn't want him around the office anymore. It was a total mess.”

Tamara sat there listening intently, as if she were hearing a storyteller weave an intriguing drama. Only it was Elliott's life.

“And although so much money was spent and because the crime was so horrible—the woman's head was bashed in with a tree branch—they had to find somebody guilty of it. And that somebody was me.”

Elliott turned to Tamara and looked into her eyes, eyes that expressed confusion and empathy at the same time. “Do you know what it's like to stand before a courthouse full of people and be called guilty, knowing you did nothing?” he asked, his voice much softer and poignant. It was as if telling the story pained him.

“I was a total mess. It was unreal, unbelievable. In the newspaper the reporter in the courtroom wrote about me pinching myself after the verdict was announced. I thought I was dreaming and I
needed to pinch myself to see if I was awake. I kept doing it, hoping I wouldn't feel it, but I did. And I started crying. I looked at my family and friends and they were all so upset. It was crazy.”

“Elliott,” Tamara said with sorrow in her voice, “I'm so sorry. I don't even know what else to say.”

“Your empathy says a lot,” Elliott responded. “I appreciate that more than you know.”

He looked away and took a deep breath. He had not told this part of his story in some time, but with each sharing of it came pain and anger that was so intense he could almost touch it. He was not the most fun person to be around when he was that way. He was sensitive and quick to lose his temper, even thirty years later. But Tamara made it more tolerable because she did not look at him with judgmental eyes and shared no doubting comments or body language.

In fact, she rose from her chair and went over to Elliott and kneeled down in front of him. She rested her arms on his knees.

“I am so sorry you went through that,” she said.

He hugged her, and they remained embraced for a few minutes, neither of them saying another word.

T
he next morning, as the sun peaked above the Atlanta skyline, Elliott awoke to the sound of the shower. He was slightly disoriented and it wasn't until he grabbed his glasses from the nightstand and put them on that Tamara's dress came into focus, sprawled over a chair in the corner.

He pulled the sheets up to cover his body. He was in fantastic shape, considering his age, with still-muscular arms. But the slightly protruding belly bothered him. He was not the Adonis he once was; he was a stereotypical prisoner in one way: He buffed up while behind bars. But over time, his workout regimen waned. He was conscious of his body because he figured Tamara was used to twenty-something physiques with low body fat.

The more he sat there, the more the night came back to him. He recalled that they left the balcony and Tamara was not interested in spending time in the living room.

“Why sit in here?” Tamara said. “It's late. Let's go to bed.”

“Makes sense to me,” Elliott said. That morning, he had taken the pill Cialis, which enhances a man's sexual potency. Just in case. He had no idea if Tamara would end up in his bed, but if she did, he wanted to be ready. Elliott was not impotent, but he was not the sexual dynamo he was a decade before. With the younger women that attracted him, he wanted to be up to the task.

And yet, the details of the night were blurry. Images flashed in his head, but they were sketchy. He needed coffee. And just as he got up to retrieve his robe, Tamara emerged from the bathroom.

They stood there looking at each other, naked.

“I thought you were in the shower; the water is still running,” Elliott said. He did not consider covering himself up; it would have signaled weakness at best, insecurity at worst. Tamara was proud of her body that was fit and curvy; she stood in the nude with her hands on her hips, her perky 32B breasts sitting up as if on a perch.

“I let the water run because I was about to clean up the shower,” she said. “But I can turn it off.”

She turned to go into the bathroom.

“Wait; don't move,” Elliott said. “I like what I see and I'm not finished looking.”

Tamara smiled and began to put on a show, offering Elliott seductive poses.

He smiled at her. “I see you're feeling good this morning,” he offered.

“How can I not, after what you did to me last night? I wasn't sure what to expect from you. But I'll be damned if you didn't make a statement for senior citizens.”

Elliott smiled. He felt proud, but he would have felt better if he could remember the stream of events, not just pieces. He stared at Tamara's naked body, and it helped him recall how it felt to caress her.

“What are we doing, Elliott?” Tamara asked.

“We're going to have breakfast.” He slipped into his robe. “Don't take this the wrong way, but don't be a typical woman right now. We're still in the moment. Let's let it last a little longer before it turns into something else.”

Tamara loved that position. Elliott slowed her down and taught her about being a woman, not a typical woman.

“I don't know what to expect from you,” she answered. “I told you that I like that about you… Okay, breakfast it is. And I'm cooking.”

Tamara attempted to walk past Elliott on his way to the bathroom. He clutched her wrist and pulled her into his body. “There's a lot I like about you, too,” he said into her ear. He kissed her on her neck. “A lot.”

Her infatuation with Elliott grew, especially when he smacked her on her ass as she walked away. She took that to mean he was in charge, and she liked that.

Tamara's last boyfriend was a twenty-six-year-old sales manager for Coca-Cola. He doted on her, treated her like a fragile piece of jewelry. It was exactly what she did not want. She thought she felt that way before her night with Elliott; she
knew
it afterward.