Читать книгу Airtight Willie and Me - Iceberg Slim - Страница 10

It was late summer back in the Nineteen Forties. The weeks before, I had graduated from a Federal prison. I was stalking ’ho runs in an Ohio burg. It was my birthday. I was ’holess, without a sou in my raise. I was decked out in a gold silk vine and accessories an old pal junkie ’ho had boosted the day before in Chicago.

Around twilight I stopped by Pretty Phil’s, a pimp pal’s juke saloon and two-storey trick hotel. We embraced. He wiggled his lips against my ear lobe as we disengaged. I thought about the rumors that he now dug stud tours of his sphincter cave.

I cracked it was my birthday. He got on the phone and ordered a monster cake and several cases of Mumms.

We sat down and snorted white lady until two a.m. We gazed through the venetian blinds of his front window. A cavalcade of tricks, flat-backers, stuff players and thieves paraded past. I shifted uneasily when I caught Phil’s assassin Harlequin Great Dane eyeballing me enigmatically. Phil stroked her muzzle. She sighed and nested her head in his lap.

Phil gave me a rundown on every qualified, stealable ’ho that passed. His rundowns were boss. Sure, I appreciated the crystal blow and his plans to celebrate my birthday. But had he forgotten what a blue ribbon pal I had been back in Cleveland several years before? He had blown into town with no ’ho. And worse, no wheels and frozen fireworks exploding off his dukes, necessary to cop a star ’ho.

I had loaned him my total flash. He had gone on to pimp a zillion. I had too much player pride to smooch his rearend to nudge his sense of all out reciprocity. I seriously mulled the odds that Phil would test out as a chicken-poo poo amnesiac.

I stared thoughtfully at Phil’s yellow bitch face. Like my scarlet doubt was a tennis ball, Phil bombed back the serve when he cracked, ‘Slim, honey, you hip, I know, that you got my personal pad upstairs and the use of my new wheels and ice to catch you a ’ho. And Pally, since you my size, play your ass off in any and all of them sixty ’ho catchers hanging in my closet.’

He dropped a key into my shirt pocket. He picked up a phone and called upstairs to have the linen changed. I would’ve kissed the gaudy mother if I hadn’t been leery of inviting his tongue up my jib. Phil eased out a portly bankroll. He peeled off several ‘C’ notes and scooted them across the table top.

I slid them into my shirt pocket. I was about to tell him what a thoroughbred, stand-up Nigger he was when an ebonic money magnet seized my eyes and struck me mute. She crossed the street and stood on ’ho point. You know, big exquisite props wide spread. Her crotch humped out to bulge her obese sex nest against her gauzy red dress. Her luminescent skin shone like indigo velour in the neon razzle. She was certified to be a bantam bundle of voluptuous headache for suckers.

Oh, I knew at first gander she was a cold-blooded magician. I saw it in her arrogant body lingo. I saw it in the wizard choreography of her long tapered fingers. It was confirmed by her fierce killer-falcon eyes.

I said dreamily, ‘Phil, I gotta own that slave . . . gimme a rundown on her and her master.’

Phil curled his lupine lips. He gave me a look like I was that dingbat humpback of Notre Dame. He sneered, ‘Easy Massa, since you gotta dream, go to Shitcon City. You could faster and more safely steal Betty Grable, Hedy Lamarr . . . every top mack man from coast to coast has a hard-on to cop that package over there. Her old man’s a stone gorilla. He’s shot and stomped a half-dozen niggers about that ’ho. She’s got his nose open wide enough to shove in a coffin. Catch on, Pally? She’s Black Sue. She can pick a chump clean from all pockets and stashes in thirty seconds. Pally, that bitch is a superfox hall of famer ’ho . . . now gander the sweetness of the ’ho’s style on that paddy cutting in to her.’

We watched a brawny white joker in a new Buick honk desperately at the instant that he spotted the pygmy ball lyncher. I’ve seen excited suckers in my time, but that lame has remained without peer in my memory. He just let his chariot drive itself. He coasted through a near-collision cacophony of honking horns as he stretched his neck back and ogled her with phosphorescent eyes.

She flashed her teeth like a rabid panther. She undulated her flat gut to hook him for the killing floor. She jerked her head toward the yawning vestibule of a condemned flea bag hotel behind her. The sucker was so hot to sock it to her, he couldn’t risk parking or going around the block. His wheels screeched like a cat in an osterizer when he U-turned. He parked crookedly in front of Phil’s sucker trap. He leapt out and galloped through graveyard traffic to her side of the stem.

We had seen a gleaming gold watch on his wrist. A dime-sized jeweled stick-pin had been shooting pastel fire from his necktie. She stood smiling at him behind the cobwebby glass of the vestibule. Almost immediately we saw their silhouettes merge. It was like they were dancing to the seductive beat of a top ten hit parade tune.

Phil said, ‘Count the seconds, Pally. That voodoo bitch is pure magic.’

I started counting in my head. I had counted fifty-five seconds when the mark stepped out. He patted his hip pocket as he bullet-assed it down the sidewalk. He went into a hotel at the end of the block. His watch and stick-pin were playing hooky. Black Sue peeped out and oozed down the alley across the way.

Phil said, ‘That Houdini bitch took them extra seconds to lift his jewelry . . . ain’t she a motherfucker? She’s sent that mark to check in for fun and games. He ain’t got the five bucks for the room. He’s gonna piss in his pants when he finds the ’ho has cleaned him out and put his wallet back . . . and rebuttoned his pocket!’

I said, ‘That ’ho is two and a half tons of sweet bread . . . Phil, I gotta steal that fox. I ain’t never gonna be satisfied if I cop a thousand girls. Phil, I deserve that ’ho and the ’ho deserves me. I’m gonna toss the craps for her! Back me up, old Buddy!’

Phil shrugged, ‘Any and everything, Pally. But like I laid it out front, you ain’t got nothing but sucker odds. So if you want to buck the saw and get in the pit with her gorilla . . . He don’t allow the ’ho to even rap with nothing but suckers . . . and don’t forget he lugged her from New Orleans. Them pimps and ’hos offa Rampart Street got their own understanding of one another’s crazy shit and savvy of their thing together. One more time, Slim! Let the ’ho be! Darling I don’t want to cry like a cunt at your funeral.’

Then Phil sighed, ‘Good luck, Pally . . . promise to bury you in a blue silk vine with a three-day wake.’

We watched the stricken sucker stumble out to the sidewalk. He streaked back to the vestibule killing floor. He kicked out the door glass panels. He scooted up and down the block peeping into every joint and cranny. He was cavorting and hurting like his balls had been blow torched. Finally he sad-sacked into his Buick. He stomped the horses and blasted off to shakedown the ghetto catacombs.

Phil’s main ’ho, dwarfish Bitsy Red, and several ’hos of his stable came in to set up the joint for the after hours action and my birthday party. You know, stringing bunting and glitter crap around the mirrored joint.

I said, ‘Phil, how long has that ’ho been down in this burg?’

He said, ‘A week or so . . . why?’

I said, ‘A ’ho with her voltage is about due to hit the wind any time . . . you know, with the heat and all . . . I better get in the streets now to make some kinda contact with the ’ho. How about laying some more fast run-down on me . . . like has her old man got any chump shortcomings . . . craps, hard shit or what not?’

Phil grinned, ‘Like every nigger mack fresh outta big foot country, he’s sizzling for young white ’ho pussy . . . he’s sported his dick twice at Aunt Lula’s joint out at the lip of town . . . he’s a half a “C” note trick . . . cons himself he can steal one with his jib and dick. You ain’t got to hit the stem to take your shot at that ’ho . . . every pimp and ’ho in town will ease in here before day-break. Please Pally! . . . be cool and don’t make Jabbo Ross, that’s the gorilla’s moniker, waste you in here and sour my roller fix for my joint.’

I said, ‘I’ll be cool, Brother . . . does Bitsy know the ’ho?’

Phil’s Persian Cat eyes ballooned with righteous indignation. Bubbles, the Dane, jerked her two hundred pounds to an ominous crouch.

Phil’s contralto rap box quavered. ‘Slim, darling, you my main man, and I love ya. Ain’t no doubt, you hip, I’d cut off my right wing and my swipe for you. But I ain’t gonna let you throw my bottom ’ho, Bitsy, in no cross with that crazy Nigger Jabbo and that girl. Nigger, you got a chump yen for the morgue! You ain’t taking Bitsy on that trip!’

I leaned to pat his shoulder. Bubbles issued a doomsday snarl.

He whispered harshly, ‘’Ho, everything is cool. Lay your bad ass down somewhere.’

Bubbles sighed. She crashed down behind his chair and stared at me with malevolent eyes.

I said, ‘Baby, you read me wrong. I don’t want Bitsy to cut into the ’ho with no messenger cupid bit. Maybe Bitsy is got some inside info on the ’ho. You know, personal scam that only a ’ho would be hip to.’

Phil turned toward the bar and snapped his fingers. Bitsy looked up from dumping silver into the cash register. Phil’s head waggled her to our table. She sat down. I had met her in Cleveland. She smiled.

Phil said, ‘Give my homeboy a rundown on Black Sue.’

Bitsy said in a squeaky voice, ‘We did a lot of rapping ’fore Ross cut us loose . . . she’s twenty-two or three . . . I think. Got a crumbcrusher, a daughter, in a state foster home back in New Orleans. Her old man, Ross, ain’t had Sue but a year. The crumbcrusher’s daddy was wasted inna card game . . . cotch, I think. Ross ain’t got Sue really tight. He’s too strict. Don’t see why he ain’t blowed her ’fore now . . . ’cept maybe she done got freakish to his foot in her ass. She’s been an orphan since twelve . . . saw her daddy waste her mama with a butcher knife. That’s it, Slim. Oh yeah . . . happy birthday!’

Bitsy got to her feet. She laughed scornfully. ‘That dizzy ’ho is aching to be a lady ’ho . . . wants to cop lots of book learning . . . cop nice proper speech and all that phony shit. Ain’t that a bitch?’

I said, ‘Ain’t it! Thanks, L’il Sis.’

She scurried back to the cash register.

Phil said, ‘You ain’t gonna get the chance to play for Sue, the airtight way Ross bird dogs her. He’ll shoot or stomp a mud-hole in your ass.’

I said, ‘Phil, I gotta figure an angle to make her hit on me. You know, give me the first lick. How about laying a rod on me . . . to back me up?’

Phil shrugged. ‘Not now, Pally. I got to think about it nigger, it’s gonna take more than my flash and your bedroom eyes to make that ’ho give you that lick. Guest of Honor, you better just handle the licks you gonna get here in the joint before daybreak . . . lots of qualified black and white ’hos gonna be here letting their hair down.’

The joint’s band drifted in and started tootling and blowing a few practice riffs on a bandstand beside the bar.

Single mud-kickers, black players and their interracial stables started to park far out pimpmobiles up and down the block. They peacocked into Pretty Phil’s all decked out in psychedelic threads.

Phil introduced me to the strangers. Many of the players I knew. The inside of my mitts were flaming from the palms I slapped. It was phantasmogoria. They wantonly danced to the funky band’s erotic pound. In the red-lit murk, there was the counterpoint bedlam of profane ribaldry as they loaded their skulls with cocaine and the bubbly. The mirrored globes revolving in the ceiling speckled their faces with flashing light. The meld of their perfumes was a near suffocating cloud. It was like Dante’s Inferno updated.

By four a.m. the joint was claustrophobic. I had gotten several ’ho licks and birthday wishes galore. But I felt lonely and blue, like a joker in a haunted house. I was in the basement of a pit. The superfox ’ho target hadn’t shown and I was still just a welfare case of Phil’s.

I retreated into a booth in the absolute rear of the joint next to the ’ho crapper. I eyeballed the front door with the radiant zeal of a weasel.

Bubbles, the Dane, had taken station near the front slammer. She was coldly sweeping her eyes over the crowd like the stompdown security guard Phil had cracked she was.

Phil threaded his way to my booth. He leaned into my ear and whispered harshly, ‘You blind or something, Pally? That redhead white ’ho at the bar is pinning you and about to come on herself. Latch on to the ’ho’s eye! Honor the lick! It’s catching time, nigger! Flow and glow, Pally.’ He shook his head and moved away.

I was turning my head to yank the package he’d fingered, when Miss Superfox herself pranced through the front slammer. Alone! Appropriately, a drumroll of summer thunder announced her entrance. A shard of lightning flashed like a klieg light behind her.

My ticker rioted. A delicious stealing lust electrified my genitals. She was dap and down in a black chiffon chemise vine. A white mink stole was draped casually across her shoulders. She smiled frostily as she side stepped through a gauntlet of cracking and hitting players to a stool at the bar.

I had to string together a stealing tune based on Bitsy’s rundown. Like I said, I was just a welfare case. You know, with no stable and power like Phil. With a powerbase I would’ve blitzed her. You know, dazzled her witless. At least I’d have to fake a bankroll. I wrapped Phil’s welfare handout of ‘C’ notes around a wad of play money.

I was forced to take my shot at the Superfox’s soft underbelly. I’d have to be like a mirror reflecting her secret needs and dreams. She’d have to see me as the means to these gratifications. It was a long shot and dangerous all right since Ross, the gorilla, was her boss.

The dynamite package had seated herself beside the redhead Phil had fingered. I sipped rum and spied the bar through my booth’s wall mirror.

Phil stood near Bubbles at the door. He hawk-eyed me and Miss Superfox with a salty look on his girlish face. The perspiring band blazed out raunchy toe-tappers. The dancers whirled and boogied as if energized by demons.

The redhead, Lucille Ball’s look-alike, rocked on her stool to the music. The tipsy flat-backer turned her back to the bar. She zeroed in on me with hooded blue eyes. Her dress was hiked nearly to her moon, and aimed at me.

The Superfox got off her stool and wafted Chanel #5 up my nose on her way to the john. I saw Phil peer out the front venetian blinds. He spun and frantically winked his eye. A moment later a brute faced colossus, togged to the teeth in a shocking pink ensemble, stopped his six eight or nine feet of bulgy muscles past the top of the front door.

Despair descended. It had to be Ross and my stealing dream was lost. He strode the length of the joint with his Neanderthal skull swiveling as he shook down the joint. He was two booths from me when he stopped. He leaned into a booth. Moments before a pint sized loser, in a tattered vine, had slid into that booth beside a brunette silk girl. Phil had introduced her to me as one of the girls employed at Aunt Lula’s cathouse.

The loser copped a heel in terror. The alabaster beauty fled the joint like Ross had goosed her with an icepick. Ross went out behind her.

The front door was still closing when Superfox came past me from the crapper. I suffered the thought of what a miserable break it was that she didn’t dig him leaving with the white girl.

I was sitting there regretting that she didn’t have to just pee when a loud mouth ’ho called Miss Bowlegs, eased out of a booth ahead. She went to the bar grinning. She whispered into Sue’s ear. She swirled on her stool like she was making a country break for the door. Instead she frowned and hailed a bar-maid like she was settling in for some sho ’nuff tippling. The fire and brimstone patron saint of pimps was in my corner all right.

Black Sue was tossing double shots of Scotch down her gullet as fast as the harried barmaid could lug them. She had a lulu lump under her right eye. The sight of it shot a thrill my way. Had the gorilla’s right cross and the wire from Miss Bowlegs put him in the cross to blow the fox to me?

After a band break, Phil went to the bandstand and rapped with the leader. A barkeep unveiled my birthday cake and hors d’oeuvres on a table set up on a corner of the bandstand.

Lanky Phil adjusted the mike up to his jib and shouted, ‘Pallies, damper the rapping! My main man, Candy Slim, from the Big Windy is gonna cut his cake and rap a taste.’

I rose and moved out to applause. As I passed the redhead, she grabbed my arm and slurred, ‘Candy, as a pair we’d be dandy. Huh?’

Sue leaned in close, with bright racist eyes, to dig my response to the symbol of black women’s pain and mortal enemy. I nearly swooned with joy to play my opening card.

I batted the alabaster hand away and cracked icily, ‘Look you jive flat-backing zero bitch, stay out of my face! Don’t fuck with me. Huh!’

The redhead, moist eyed and humiliated, sagged and about faced to the bar. Sue’s eyes glowed with admiration as I boogied away to the bandstand. The band struck up a raucous ‘Happy Birthday.’ I polished the next card I’d play as I cut the cake. I went to the mike and swept the crowd with doe eyes. I slipped on a mournful mask, faking the emotions of a dude with hurtful blues.

I stood there in the silent red haze for a dozen heart-beats before I pitched, ‘Sugar Babies, most of you are hip that I just got up from a fall. Only Phil, my home boy, is hip that I lost my bottom rib and our daughter in a car crash a month before I split the joint. She was a thoroughbred, my woman! She stacked up long scratch in the kip for me. I’m happy if I don’t look it. Sugar Babies, you’ve lifted me like a blow of crystal. I know that somewhere way out there past the sky, my woman and angel kid are happy this morning, happy ’cause I’m honored here by blue ribbon people. You can’t stop a stepper, Sugar Babies, and I love ya!’

I went back to the booth through a chant of ‘Happy Birthday, Slim!’ back slapping and warm congratulations. Black Sue followed me into the booth like a doll on a string.

She just sat there studying me, with our eyes locked. It was a long time before she said, in a satin drawl, ‘Sugar, Black Sue is gotta tell you, you something else and then some. Them sweet words relating to your dead daughter and bottom lady nearly got me bawling like a squealer. Slim, you something else! . . . lemme buy you a taste.’

I leaned and whispered into her ear, ‘Later, I just want to be with you.’

I decided to play Sweet Willie all the way. I feather stroked the inside of her wrist with my fingertips. Her bottom lip trembled. I glanced past her. Phil glared cutthroat murder at me and whirled out the front door into the rain. That was good. Phil could pull my coat if the gorilla drove up. I pressed her hands against my lips and gazed into her eyes. She swept a fearful glance over the joint.

I crooned, ‘Baby Sue, let’s flee to a taste and some talk in my crib upstairs. I’m convinced something boss is happening between us . . . dollface, maybe you need me . . . let’s find out.’

She said seriously, ‘My old man is Jabbo Ross . . . you hip to how he is . . . about me?’

I said, ‘I’ve heard.’

She murmured, ‘And you ain’t leery?’

I said stoutly, ‘I’m not into pussy. Sugar Pie, I’m game to climb up the devil’s mother-humping ass with you this morning.’

She laughed shakily, ‘Well, let’s go, sweet Chicago Slim.’

I dropped the twister to Phil’s pad on the table top and said, ‘We might give some jokers in the joint diarrhea of the jib if we split together. I’ll cop some blow and wine and follow in a moment.’ She scooped up the key. She squeezed my hand and started to slide her awesomely curved rearend from the booth. She braked and dug into her midnight cleavage. She excavated a roll of bread. She peeled off a ‘C’ note and shoved it into my shirt pocket.

I felt my scrotum spasm. I was zeroed in on her now, reading her tactics. She was playing star ’ho test shit on me. I wasn’t uptight about that. After all she had to check out my pedigree. She was at the very least unconsciously considering me as her new boss! I leaned and eased the booby trapped ‘C’ note back down between her epic peaks. The plum colored tips gleamed through the chiffon gauze.

To certify my pedigree, I slipped on a mask of terminal pain and cracked a mild reprimand, ‘Sugar Sue, you got to know what starts right, goes right . . . up front, I’ll spring for the nitshit refreshments.’

I flashed my fake bankroll with the solid funny money guts.

I said, ‘You’re sweet to be concerned about me just out of the joint and all. Now you can stop worrying about the little things.’

She smiled crookedly and split. Phil came in from the rain with his silky black hair shining in wet ringlets. He sat down across from me.

He said, ‘Nigger, the joint sure as hell didn’t damper your speed. Too bad it’s Ross she’s gotta dump.’

Phil slipped a thirty-eight snub nose from his waistband. I took it off beneath the table top. He rammed a balloon of blow into my shirt pocket as he got to his feet.

He said, ‘Some ploy to prime the ’ho . . . I’ll send up some sauce.’

I got up and said, ‘Sugar Baby, I know you’re royal blue and I’m your horse if I never win a race.’

He said, as he moved away, ‘Pally, kiss my yellow ass ’til it’s royal blue.’

I left the joint. I stood on the sidewalk for a moment engorging my lungs with rain-spiced air. I went next door through the hotel entrance to the dim musk of the lobby. An elderly desk clerk, with a brown clown face, nodded toward the stairway. He winked obscenely as he made a lopsided circle of A-OK with pudgy fingers shiny greasy with bar-be-que he was gnawing. I slowly ascended the foot-mauled stairway carpet to polish the next stealing card I’d play.

I went to the suite door and pressed my ear against it. I heard the erotic confection of Dinah’s voice dripping her sugary ‘I’m Confessin” from Phil’s Hi Fi. I heard the muted thunder of the shower.

I turned the knob. Surprised that she hadn’t locked the door, I stood at the threshold gazing about Phil’s pimp dream arena. I’ve guested at the Chase in St Louis, the Ambassador East in Chicago, the best at the Drake in the Big Apple. Phil’s white and gold ’ho trap paled the other cribs.

I chained the door. I moved beneath a crystal chandelier in the entrance hall to the airy carpet of the living room. I familiarized myself with the three rooms so I could move about with assured ease when she joined me. I hung my jacket in Phil’s closet and slipped on a gold satin smoking jacket. I selected a blue silk pajama top for her.

I went to the living room’s white satin sofa. I arranged my bag of coke into sparkling columns on the blue mirrored cocktail table. Across the way she suddenly opened the bathroom door. She stood still lifed, naked holding a towel. Her blue black curves shimmered like sealskin in the amber glow. I got an instant, throbby, quality erection. Small wonder. I had a helluva time willing my hoodlum organ limp again.

She looked so young, the crafty eyes now softened and fawn like. I realized she was like me and every other street poisoned nigger spawned behind the invisible walls of ghetto stockades. She was trapped, vulnerable, but hurtingly human beneath the tough facade of leopard rage and bravado. But in the cruel nature of our special entrapment, and my survival, my comrade in pain was ironically my prey. I would have to scrape to the raw nerve ends of her emotions, put her on the rack to steal her.

I stood up to break our trance. She patted the towel against her splendor coming to me. I kissed the tip of her nose and the plum blossoms of her swollen nipples. I toweled off the wet sheen as tenderly as a mother would a baby.

I heard a feline purring in her throat as I blotted her vulva. I assaulted her mouth with teeth and tongue. She squealed in the painful thrill of it. I vanquished her tongue in a sugary duel. She seized me. She clung to me moaning gutterally.

I finger stroked the invisible forest of fuzz on her buttocks, the insides of her thighs, across her shoulders, the pits of ecstasy beneath her ears, the valleys behind her knees. I never once touched her skin. I was certain each one of the super-charged, zillion hairs was jolting her with the electricity of inexpressible excitement.

I swooped her off her feet down to the couch. I slipped her into Phil’s pajama top to break the action. I moved away across the cushions. She pursued. To escape, I rolled up a ‘C’ note and dipped my head to snort up a row of coke. I passed the paperhorn her way to cool her fever. I watched her snort up a row of blow.

I’d have to be cool to out-play her. Otherwise I’d wind up at dawn with just a belly full of pleasure. No money, no ’ho. No contract!

I watched her go into the bathroom to rummage among her things. I watched her squat and extract a thin package from her vaginal stash. She detoured on the way back to the Hi Fi in the corner. She belly danced her way back to the sofa to Hamp’s ‘Flying Home.’ She dropped the soggy package from her cat on the cocktail table top. I guessed it was a sting she hadn’t checked in to daddy gorilla. She fell on to the sofa with her head on my lap. Her big pony eyes were all a sparkle, gazing into my face.

She sighed, ‘Slim, I feel so good with you . . . really good! You feel groovy, too, with me?’

I gently knifed a fingernail across her kneecap. She shivered.

I cracked, ‘More than I ever remember . . . with somebody else’s girl.’

I knew it was an off key crack as soon as it exploded against my ears. She leapt up and went to the floor to ceiling windows. She stood there staring out at Miss Rain tap dancing a zillion diamond feet against the window pane.

She said over her shoulder, ‘I like rain . . . Jabbo thinks it’s a drag.’

I had broken the stealing spell and unveiled the threat, the reality of the gorilla. I checked myself just as I decided to join her to recast the spell. I had to keep her coming to me to cop.

I lit up two bomber sticks of dynamite gangster. I blew several blasts of pungent smoke her way. The vision of her four-inch cone of thick bush between the sculpted thighs was lost for an instant. I wondered if my chance to steal her was lost.

She turned and walked over. I handed her a joint. She pranced back to the window hitting the joint. I unwrapped her toilet paper package a bit to peep. A dime sized circle of jewels winked at me from an inner wrapping of ‘C’ notes and fifties. It had to be the sting from the husky sucker in the Buick. Had she baited it out like that to excite me out of position when I cracked to see the contents?

I restored the wrapping and went to the bedroom. I was on my way to the shower when the doorbell chimed. I opened to the old joker on the desk with Phil’s jeroboam of bubbly and glasses. He nearly tripped himself gazing at Sue’s caboose as he went to the cocktail table with the tray.

I said, ‘Thanks Pops, I’ll take care of you when I come down tomorrow.’

He made that lopsided circle with his fingers before he split.

I speed showered and added on French cologne with its dusting powder. I heard the pop of a cork. I slipped into a pair of Phil’s crimson satin pajamas. I stood before a mirrored wall and brushed my hair until it shone. My reflection, with my widow’s peak and slumberous eyes made me look a bit like Satan. Well anyway, at least like one of Satan’s pets afire in the red pajamas. I was beginning to feel like a pimp again, all right. I hit the gangster roach and stepped into the arena.

She was lounging on the sofa with her legs agape. As I passed her, I paused to check for trance. She sipped and gazed up at me over the rim of her glass. She was on her way under again. Her eyes were getting dreamy and smoky hot again.

She gave me a glass of wine. I dipped a finger in and painted her lips. I licked and sucked it off her mouth. She pressed her cheek against my crotch. She kissed the imprint of my organ as I moved to sit on the cushions at the other end of the sofa. The big vein on the side of her neck was swollen and jerking.

‘What a womb sweeper,’ she exclaimed.

She lunged to my side and glued her curves against me. I held her and silently sipped my wine for several minutes like a joker with his mind on a private expedition to secret things and places. Sweet Dinah was dripping ‘I’m Confessin” from the Hi Fi again. She nibbled through the satin to my nipple.

It tickled when she whispered into my chest, ‘You thinking about her . . . your dead lady . . . ain’t you?’

I said, ‘No, Babykins . . . a living lady . . . my Mama.’

She snuggled closer and said, ‘What’s she like? Tell me about her.’

This was my cue to push her emotional buttons to prep her for the contract. I sang the tune slowly from the bitter roots of my own pain and poisonous ambivalence for Mama.

I stage whispered, ‘All right, but something bothers me, Babykins. I can’t figure why I’m not with Mama . . . after the joint . . . on my birthday. Jesus Christ! She’d be so happy. She was a country girl . . . barefoot ’til she was sixteen. My old man ambushed her with sucker sweet talk and popped a squealer in her gut . . . me . . . they split the Big Foot cotton slave scene and hit the Big Windy kitchen slave scene in Nineteen Eighteen. You know, white folk’s mansions and hotels. They had discovered the promised land all right.

‘Right off, my old man copped some loud mouth suits . . . his introduction and sample of white pussy . . . it freaked the nigger out! I was six months old . . . must have been a sonuvabitching stumble block to his night life chumping around. He and Mama fought like pit bulldogs one early bright . . . he pranced home stone broke with his fly fouled with “come” . . . his mustache starched with cunt juice . . . he beat the puking, living crap out of Mama . . . he bounced me off a tenement wall to close his act . . . he split with a cardboard suitcase and his pearl grey spats flashing in the zero wind. Mama had a nice round ass, with a Watusi face and lollipop knockers. Why shit, any other young country broad equipped like that would’ve dumped a squealer and split to the bright lights and some high class dick.’

Sue trembled against me as she finger stroked my temple. Her eyes were damp with empathy.

‘. . . But Mama was a blue ribbon Mama to the bone . . . she bundled me in an old army jacket . . . took a curling iron and some grease to the streets . . . dressed hair door to door for a lousy half buck a shot . . .’

She pressed her glass against my lips. I took a sip, then raced my tongue, a few laps, inside her mouth.

‘Tell me more, Slim! Tell me more!’ she pleaded.

I went on with the painful narrative, ‘Well, somehow she put together a survival kit that took us through the soup kitchens, bread lines, apple hucksters on every corner nightmare of the great depression. I was nine . . . maybe ten when she got tired, I guess . . . you know, the struggle must have been a bitch of a drain . . . anyway, a big, ugly black galoot chased her until she caught him. He wasn’t her style . . . she was a sucker for good looking bums . . . like my old man.

‘I remember how Mama would cringe away from Henry’s kisses . . . she hated him. But he was the only father I ever knew . . . and I loved him! Mama dreamed I’d be a lawyer . . . Henry swore he’d see to it . . . opened the plushest black beauty shop in Rockford, Illinois for Mama. She got the hots for a two bit hustler one day who brought his pretty face her way . . . dropped in to get his nails done. Just like that, she split with him back to the Windy. I cried until my guts dry locked . . . the pretty bastard was so cruel to us! Tried to turn her out. Mama cut him loose finally. But it was too late for me . . . I was already street poisoned. Maybe I got a secret hate for Mama hidden deep in my soul, because Henry died from a broken heart after she split. Maybe that’s why I’m punishing her. Why I’m not with her on my birthday. Maybe I want her dead and stinking like Henry. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to see her happy for even one day.’

The Mama rundown worked like a MoJo. She leapt to her feet with eyes brimming tears. Her body was twanging emotion.

She said with righteous heat, ‘Slim, you all fucked up in your head about your mama. You ain’t hip she’s a saint? Shit, lemme tell you about my chippie ass, dead and stinking Mama – that half-white Creole bitch treated Papa and me like dogs. You know why? ’Cause we had black skins. She only married him ’cause he had a farm and a few bucks. Her ass was dragging. She was played out as a chicken-shit flat-backer ’ho in Baton Rouge.

‘I got an older sister that thinks she’s white – she got the new shoes and pretty dresses. She was high and mighty Miss Anne. I had to wait on that bitch hand and foot or get my head busted. Papa and me picked the motherfucking cotton and slopped the hogs. Papa and me did the cooking and the washing. Mama and Miss Anne kept their asses pretty and prissy like muckety muck white bitches. Papa caught her sucking a white man’s dick in the barn. He killed her and the white man.’

Her voice broke, staggered the bitter rim of hysteria: ‘I’m glad he did. I’m glad she’s in her grave, dead and stinking. I’m just so sorry poor Papa had to do it.’

I pulled her down beside me. I said, gently, ‘What happened to your papa?’

She made a strangulated sound of anguish in her throat. She stared into nowhere like a sleep walker.

She almost whispered, ‘I found him in a pond. I didn’t know what the thing was at first there in the bloody water. They beat, shot and axed him to pieces . . . poor Papa!’

She collapsed in my arms. Great heaving sobs of sorrow racked her. I rocked her in my arms like an infant until she got herself together somewhat.

She said, ‘Slim, will you do something for me?’

I said, ‘Sure, anything.’

She looked me dead in the eyes. ‘Go over there and call your mama.’

I said, ‘What the hell am I gonna tell her?’

She said, ‘Tell her you love her, Slim. Make her happy . . . make me happy, Slim.’

She followed me to the phone, embracing my waist from behind. I put through the call and awakened Mama in Milwaukee. I talked to Mama for twenty minutes. She kept whispering to me to introduce her. I did and she and Sue hit it off swell for an hour.

Before Sue hung up, she made me happy. She said to Mama, ‘Honey, we will be dropping in on you one day soon.’

She looked into my face for a long moment. She said, ‘Kiss me. I wouldn’t bullshit your mama. I’m your girl!’

I kissed her for real.

She said, ‘Close your eyes, Birthday Bunny.’

I did. Shortly, I felt her fingers at my pajama coat. I opened my eyes. I fingered the stickpin. She slapped the roll of bills in my hand.

She said, ‘There’s fifteen hundred there . . . now let’s fuck, Daddy!’

I led her on off to bed. We made love until noon. I wondered whether I could beat the gorilla to the draw when I staked my claim to his woman. I couldn’t have legal pimp title until I faced him with her since he was available in town. We laid in Phil’s emperor-sized bed, steeped in the odor of our love juices. We made our plans to hustle tough for a year before we would make a home for Carla, her daughter.

Finally I said, ‘Let’s get up and do what we have to do.’

She said, ‘You mean catch a plane out of here?’

I said, ‘No, I mean let’s go drop the bad news on Jabbo. You know, and get your things.’

She propped herself up in the bed and squeezed my face with her eyes before she said, ‘We don’t need to take a risk like that. You don’t know Jabbo. I boosted everything I got. I can steal a new wardrobe. Let’s just split, Daddy. Okay?’

I eased Phil’s snub nosed rod from between the mattresses. I said, ‘We’ve got to do it right . . . we’ve got to face him . . . this rod makes us equal.’

She sighed and slipped out of bed to the shower. I lit a joint and tried to figure just how to accomplish the mission and leave it in a perpendicular position. I mean alive! I called the desk to locate Phil. He answered from Bitsy’s room.

He said sleepily, ‘Pally, you and that ’ho are in serious trouble if you ain’t got no understanding. Miss Bowlegs pulled Jabbo’s coat that you and Sue were fucking around.’

I said, ‘She’s my girl. We’re on the way to break the news to him. Then we’re splitting. I’m gonna check out the afternoon plane schedules.’

Phil chuckled, ‘Bring me my piece, nigger. Did the ’ho give you claiming dough to cop a Forty One Hog that runs like a scalded dog?’

I said, ‘Look, Phil, I need your piece to brace that Nigger. Who’s selling the Hog? And what’s the bite?’

He said, ‘It’s my old Hog, and the bite is a measly grand to you, Pally. C’mon and cop it so you can ease in and cop the ’ho’s clothes and hit the road.’

I said, ‘Phil, you drunk? You think that nigger will let us ease in his crib like that? If he’s not there, he’ll be staked out for sure.’

He said, ‘He ain’t in town. I dropped the word in the street that you and the ’ho had split to Akron. I tailed him to the highway myself . . . get here, nigger, and take care of your business!’

I hung up woozy with relief.

Phil’s Forty One Fleetwood I bought was a black beauty. At a distance, it was almost as clean as his new Forty Six. We made a fast raid and copped Sue’s clothes. Late that night a rain storm struck at the edge of a town in Illinois. I was dozing on the seat beside her.

Suddenly she said, ‘Daddy, look!’

She pointed at a skeletal white man with a slicker draped across his gaunt shoulders, cape style. There was something eerie about him. He was standing motionless. His stark white face glowed in the storm. He looked like a statue of Count Dracula.

As she cruised the Caddie past him, she said excitedly, ‘That paddy gives me wild stinging vibes. You take the wheel when I pull over. I’m going back and shake him down. Daddy, he’s sweet and loaded. I feel it!’

She pulled to the curb two blocks away. She started to open the car door.

I said, ‘Sugarface, pass him up . . . don’t play for him. I got a helluva bad feeling nudging me about him.’

She sprang out of the car and slammed the door. I slid across the seat fast to open the door to physically stop her. I mean, that joker really turned me off. She turned twelve feet away. In an explosion of lightning, her dollface was radiant with stealing lust. She blew me a kiss and waggled ‘bye bye’ with her fingers. You know, like a little kid who is just going to the grocer on the corner.

I’ll never forget how I felt as I watched her tiny figure disappear, forever, in the storm. In the distance, I saw what looked like the tail lights of a pickup truck flash on like bloody orbs and disappear into the raging blackness.

For thirty-six hours, I didn’t shave, eat, or bathe. I searched everywhere. I called into the local police station.

I disguised my voice. You know, laced it with a Slavic accent, pitched down to a gutteral register to make it sound indigenous to the area. I reported that I had seen a nigger girl kidnapped into a pickup truck. I gave the description of the ghoul in the slicker. I hung up when asked my name. I went to the local newspaper office and bought a subscription to their rag. I gave Mama’s address in Milwaukee.

I was in a blind fugue of shock all the way home. I had no recollection of the trip. My room, and its mementos of my junior high school days were intact. I looked about it and guessed that Mama had preserved it as a kind of shrine to cushion her loneliness and guilt for her hots for that ’ho faced sonuvabitch long ago.

There on the wall, a faded blue felt banner. On the dresser top, a gleaming trophy I won for the hundred yard dash. There against the wall, a rickety Flexible Flyer sled. An eight by ten blow-up of me at five seated on the lap of a padded department store Santa Claus.

Holy Christ! . . . what a rack of torture she must have been on. Blaming herself for my terminal street poisoning. Suffering that I wasn’t that upright, silver tongued mouthpiece she’d dreamed me to be.

I got really blue and sad that fate had dealt us a black card from the bottom. I was torn down with that, and Sue to make it worse. I went to Mama’s bedroom. You know, to comfort her, to tell her I loved her, like Sue had begged me to do. Mama was on her knees praying for Sue before a homemade altar. What the hell could I do but get down on my knees beside her and pretend to pray?

At midnight, that first day, I unpacked Sue’s bags. I sat on the side of the brass four poster and opened her album of pictures. Ah!, there she was, barefoot in a rough cotton dress, squinting in the sun as she lovingly held a puppy against her cheek. A shot of her father, riding a mule, a black as midnight tiny guy. His face was seamed and ruined by stoop slavery in the cotton fields beneath the inferno sun.

Her octoroon mother, the Baton Rouge strumpet, appeared surprisingly beautiful and innocent in a white dress. The closet monster was posed with Sue’s porcelain skinned sister before the backdrop of the scabrous death barn watching a polka dot sow suckling piglets. Ah! Sue and her daughter, with Sue’s string bean Cajun husband, standing proudly in front of the gumbo greasy spoon they owned before the gorilla came Sue’s way and turned her out.

I closed the album and went to bed. I hadn’t closed my eyes all night when Mama called me for breakfast at eight. Two days later, the first paper from Illinois arrived. Sue had made news all right. Horrendous news! I uncontrollably jiggled the paper as I read the account of her end. The fiend she had played for was an escaped nut from an asylum for the criminally insane. He had taken her to an abandoned farm house. He had crucified her and tortured her to death with his teeth and a hunting knife.

Two teenagers, hunting rabbits out of season, and drawn to the presence of the fiend’s stolen pickup truck, had peeked through a window and saw her nailed to a wall. When the rollers showed, the fiend was in a drunken stupor on the floor beneath her corpse.

Mama and I flew to claim the orphan’s body. I can’t forget that sunny afternoon I walked into the morgue to identify her, that is what was left of her. The attendant pulled her out of the cooler bin. He jerked away a blood and filth pocked rubber sheet like she was dog meat. I gazed down at her and retched.

That inhuman cocksucker had hacked and scraped off her crow breast mane of shining hair that had leapt from her temples in spectacular, voluptuous waves. Her skull was criss-crossed and gouged with knife slashes. Her dollface was unrecognizable, except for the stable pony eyes staring blankly into mine. The cupid bow mouth had been lumped hideous from punches. Her teeth were bared in a macabre grin. Her body was measled with cigarette burns. Her honey dipped breasts were ragged stumps. The satin belly was disemboweled from her breast bone to pubic hair. Her fingers were missing and the butt of a cigarette protruded from her vulva. I staggered away, vomiting all the way to the sidewalk.

We buried Sue, that week, from Mama’s church. We got the location of Sue’s infant daughter’s foster home from Sue’s address book. Mama shipped Sue’s stuff to Carla.

In the limo, on the way from the cemetery, I told Mama about Sue’s plans and dreams to square up and open a restaurant to make a decent home for Carla, her daughter. Mama broke down and wailed like a crumbcrusher. Small wonder. Mama had lost her dream too, a billion tears ago.

Thirty years later, whenever I see a pygmy fox with indigo, velour skin and pony eyes, or see a shimmering mane of crow breast hair, or hear a smoky voice, I get a lump in my throat remembering Black Sue.