“Yeah,” Vanessa said, looking away and puffing hard on her cigarette, “I guess you are. I guess you tired a talkin’ to drunks an’ whores. You tired a drinkin’ gin, you want dry martinis.”
“You don’t just change your whole life overnight,” Brown said. “It takes time. Like lots a things.”
Vanessa snorted.
“You catchin’ cold, or is that just some a your goddamn nosiness comin’ out?”
Vanessa ignored him. She stubbed out her cigarette, blew out the last lungful of smoke. “You get over there with her, you ain’t never comin’ back.”
“Shit,” Brown said.
“Shit, yourself. You’d be crazy if you did. Ain’t nothin’ worth comin’ back to, is there?”
Brown looked at her. “Finish your drink,” he said. He stood up. Vanessa looked up at him in surprise. Brown leaned over and kissed her on the nose. She got up awkwardly and followed him as he walked toward the front of the bar, stumbling slightly in her high heels. She caught up to him and hung onto the back of his belt. Brown turned to wave to Leo and ran right into the oscillating form of Rayburn.
“I wanna talk to you,” Rayburn said.
“Later,” Brown said.
“Not you, nigger, you,” snarled Rayburn, looking beyond Brown to Vanessa. “Bitch, where’s your littermate?”
“Only bitch I know is your mama,” Vanessa snapped, stepping out from behind Brown.
Rayburn took a step toward her, but Brown shot out an arm and blocked him. “Just take it easy, now,” Brown said.
“I’ma ask this whore some questions.”
“Her name’s Vanessa,” Brown said.
Leo came out from behind the bar, working the thong of his billy club onto his wrist.
“You don’t move that arm, nigger, you gonna be dead.” Rayburn’s arm moved and the razor flashed. Brown blocked the stroke with his forearm and gave Rayburn a hard shot over the breastbone with the heel of his hand. Rayburn stumbled backward into Leo’s arms, gulping and gasping. Leo grunted in disgust and shoved him against the wall. Brown leaned over and picked up the razor. Rayburn moaned and looked at Vanessa. “Tell me where she is.”
“You know,” Vanessa said.
“Shup, ’Nessa,” Leo said urgently.
“I got a right,” Rayburn said.
“You know,” Vanessa said. “You pretend you don’t, but you know.”
“Tell me,” Rayburn said.
Vanessa looked at him, pity and disgust mingled on her face. “She’s with Leroy.” She stepped around him and out the door.
Brown looked at Leo, then at Rayburn. He held out the razor. “You keep droppin’ this,” Brown said.
Leroy Briggs sipped a cold Ballantine ale and peered through the halo of street lights at the dark rectangle that was Brown’s door. Below him, cars sped down South Street on whispering wheels, winos wandered, ladies of the evening loitered in purplish clots. Young men clumped at light poles, talking jive and drinking cheap wine from bottles cloaked in brown paper. Leroy looked down on it all, hearing nothing but the hum of the air-conditioner that pulled in air, cleaned it, cooled it, and left the odor of the street outside. Behind a closed door a thin, saffron-skinned prostitute named Doris practiced her trade on firm and silent springs. Leroy looked down at the dark doorway while he loaded and unloaded the gun.
The bedroom door opened and Doris came out, wrapping a thin nylon robe around her. “You still here?”
Leroy turned. “No.”
“You’re makin’ ma friend nervous,” Doris complained. “He thinks you’re gonna roll him.”
“Tell him only gumshoe niggers an’ greedy honkies works on Saturday night, not me.”
“Then what’s the gun for?”
“Pleasure,” Leroy said. “Pure pleasure.”
“Well, I do work on Saturday night. Can’t you go someplace else to get your rocks off?”
“Where the hell you go to get your rocks off ’cept a whore?”
“Call girl,” Doris corrected.
“Shit,” Leroy said. “I like your view. An’ you got air-conditionin’.”
“How about some music?” Doris said sarcastically.
Leroy turned back to the window. “That’s a good idea. Put on some Sam an’ Dave.”
“Jesus,” Doris said. She shook her head and went into the kitchen.
Leroy turned. “Hey, how ’bout that music?”
“I ain’t got no Sam an’ Dave.”
“What you mean, y’ain’t got no Sam an’ Dave.” Leroy stalked into the middle of the room and stood, arms akimbo.
“I mean,” Doris said, coming back carrying a tray covered with a small, oddly-shaped loaf of bread, several cuts of cheese, a bottle of good red wine, and two glasses, “I ain’t got no Sam an’ Dave. I ain’t got no Temptations, neither. I ain’t got no Supremes. I ain’t got no Motown at all. Berry Gordy can kiss ma ass.”
“Who?” said Leroy.
“Never mind.” She eased open the door to the bedroom, slid inside, closed it behind her.
“What is this shit,” muttered Leroy. He stomped over to the stereo and examined the record jackets. “Damn,” he growled, “who the hell is this?”
Doris reappeared. “Keep it down, will you? He’s nervous enough without thinkin’ I got one a Tarzan’s apes hangin’ around in ma livin’ room.”
“Who the hell is this Batch?” Leroy demanded.
“Bach,” Doris told him. “It’s baroque.”
“I don’t want to hear it anyways,” Leroy said, putting the record down.
“Ma customers like it,” Doris said. “I got a very sophisticated clientele.”
“What the hell’s that mean? They use scented rubbers, or do they just eat you out with a knife an’ fork?”
“You’re gross.” Leroy smiled, stuck the gun in his belt, and headed for the bedroom. “Stay out a here,” Doris screamed. Leroy pushed her out of the way.
There was no one visible in the bedroom, but there was a big pile of blankets in the middle of the bed that quivered slightly. Leroy went over and lifted a corner of the pile. “Peekaboo, I see—Jesus!” Leroy flipped the covers back and stared in amazement. “It’s a honky! Doris, why didn’t you tell me you was fuckin’ a fuckin’ honky in here?”
“What damn difference does it make,” Doris snapped. “You prejudiced?”
“It makes a lot a difference. Why here I thought you had some simple-ass nigger in here, an’ here it’s a white gentleman, a member of the master race.” The gentleman member of the master race was huddled in a tight fetal ball. Leroy spread the covers over his pinkness. “Beg pardon, sir,” Leroy said deferentially. “Didn’t nobody inform me you was payin’ a little visit to the cabins. I hope you’ll forgive me.” Leroy waited a minute, then drew his gun and prodded the pile of covers. “You do accept ma apologies, don’t you, bwana?”
“Yes,” said the pile.
“Let him be, Leroy.”
“I ain’t hurtin’ him,” Leroy said. “I was just tryin’ to apologize. I got to be on ma best behavior. I feel bad. Ma man here came down to get laid, an’ I done spoiled some a his fun. I want him to have a good time. You hear that, boss? I definitely want you to have a good time. I want you to go on back to your fuckin’, an’ I’ma go on outa here an’ let you be. But you know, if you wasn’t to fuck all night, I might think you didn’t have a good time. You wouldn’t want me to think that, would you?”
“No,” said the pile.
“Fine,” said Leroy. “I tell you what. You get on this hook—a young lady, here, an’ you have a good time. I wanna hear some screams a pleasure comin’ outa here. Ain’t no soul on the stereo, so I want you to take this fine black woman an’ make me some soul music. No fakin’ it, now, Doris. We gotta give our visitors the real thing.” Leroy paused to give the pile a last poke. “Nice seein’ you. Sorry we can’t spend more time together.” Leroy turned and strolled out into the living room.
“You know I ain’t gonn
a be comin’ for no John,” Doris whispered as he passed her.
“Sure, I know,” Leroy said, resuming his vigil at the window. “Whores never do.” He turned and looked at her. “That’s why I hates whores.”
Brown and Vanessa strolled along the sidewalk, holding hands, an equal-opportunity version of Barbie and Ken. They drifted past the open doors of taprooms, Christmas-tinseled watering holes, leaning away from the sounds and smoke that rolled out. They didn’t say much of anything. Brown hummed softly, a song that had once been blues, that might get back to being blues someday, striding along with his head up, his shoulders moving too much sometimes, sometimes not enough. Vanessa walked beside him, her head down, not looking where she was going. Her strides were a few inches shorter than Brown’s, and every few steps she took a little stumbling hop to catch up, throwing them either in or out of step. They paused at Nineteenth Street to wait for the light, then stepped off the curb and across the street. Brown slipped his arm around her, cupping her hip with his palm. Outside a bar on Seventeenth a covey of Saturday-night drinkers loitered, laughed, whistled at Brown and Vanessa—“Um, um, ma man has got hisself a live one! In-deed! That fox gonna be turnin’ him every damn way but a-loose!” Brown grinned. Vanessa lowered her head and smiled faintly.
They climbed the stairs out of heat and darkness into hotter heat and darker darkness. The walls of the stairway enclosed them. Vanessa’s knees sagged; she held onto Brown’s belt as they climbed. Brown half carried her inside, not bothering to bolt the door. “You okay?” Brown said.
Vanessa pulled his head down into the powder-sweet valley between her breasts. His tongue tasted talcum and salt. Vanessa dropped her arms and moved away from him. “You want a beer?”
“Later.”
“I want one.”
“Now?”
Vanessa grinned, leaned in and kissed his nose, danced away from his grasping arms like a picador toying with a bull. She went to the refrigerator, took out the beer, poured it into the jelly jars, gave one to Brown. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a weird broad?” Brown asked conversationally.
“I ain’t never met nobody who didn’t tell me I was a weird broad,” Vanessa told him.
“I can see why,” Brown said. “Who ever heard a drinkin’ beer after a Singapore Sling.”
“It’s a new drink. It’s called a Singapore Screw.” She went over to the window, leaned back against the sill, her face outlined against the skyglow. Brown kicked around until he found a chair, sat down, and sipped his beer. “When we was kids we useta play this here game,” Vanessa said. “We’d go up to Pine Street an’ get us some empty pop bottles, an’ then we’d go down to the store an’ get us some candy. I ’member these coconut candy things, sometimes they was yellow an’ pink an’ brown stripes, but mostly they was made to look like slices a watermelon. Three of ’em for two cent. One pop bottle. We’d get us some a that candy an’ go set on the doorstep an’ see how long we could look at that candy ’fore we just had to eat it. Then we’d set around an’ wait some more ’fore we ate the second one. Ma one sister, Lindalee, she useta start talkin’ an’ forget what she was doin’ an’ have hers gone. Les, she couldn’t hardly play. She spent all her time waitin’ to see who was gonna come in second. I almost always won. Same thing with Christmas. ’fore Daddy went to hell he useta tell us he could make it any day we wanted. Les, she’d say make it her birthday so she could get a present. Lindalee’d say she wanted it to be Christmas, so everybody could get a present. That simple fool had us believin’ he could change the world.”
“What day did you want it to be?” Brown said gently.
“Me? I wanted it to be Christmas Eve, ’cause then no matter what happened, the next day was gonna be Christmas. If it already was Christmas, the next day was December twenty-sixth. Who gives a damn about December twenty-sixth?”
“The British,” Brown murmured. He put his beer down, stumbled through the darkness, and put his hands on her bare shoulders. Vanessa shivered. “Maybe you ain’t so weird after all,” Brown said. He brushed her lips lightly with his. Vanessa closed her eyes. Then she pushed him away and almost ran into the bedroom.
“Ho, ho, ho,” Brown said as he drained his beer and followed her.
Cotton and Willie T. dragged despondently into the Elysium and came to rest against the bar. Cotton waved vaguely in the direction of the bartender before joining Willie T. in a slump of utter defeat. “What you havin’?” the bartender asked.
“Poison,” Willie T. said.
The bartender looked at him and sniffed. “Straight up or on the rocks?”
“Nemo,” Cotton said, “remind me to put you up for the Emmy Award.”
“Yeah,” Willie T. said, “posthumous.”
“Past what?” Nemo demanded suspiciously. “Don’t you be comin’ around here with none a them fifty-cent words from the Temple night school. I done had me a hard day.”
“Community College,” Cotton corrected, “an’ he means after you’re dead.”
“You startin’ trouble, Willie?”
“Hell, no,” said Willie T. “Pretty soon we gonna have so damn much trouble around here, they gonna be haulin’ it away in garbage trucks.”
“When was the last time you seen a garbage truck around here?” Cotton demanded. “They gonna use paddy wagons.”
“What kinda trouble?” Nemo asked.
“Chef Boy-ar-dee trouble,” Cotton told him.
“Yeah,” said Willie T. “Spaghetti an’ minced niggers.”
“Dry niggers,” Cotton corrected. “What about them drinks, Nemo?”
“I can’t give you no drink ’less you tell me what you want.”
“Somethin’ strong. Give us some a Leroy’s private.”
“Leroy’s private? I don’t know—”
“Shit,” Cotton said, “we gonna be dead so soon it ain’t gonna make no difference.”
“Huh?” Nemo said. “How come you gonna be dead?”
“Not just us. You, too. Give me that drink an’ I’ll tell you.”
Nemo brought up a sealed bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon and two glasses. Cotton broke the seal and poured two healthy slugs. “Now, what’s this shit about dyin’?” Nemo demanded.
Cotton leaned back against the bar and belched heavily. “Ma man, you see that door over there?”
“Yeah,” Nemo said.
“Well, when Leroy comes through that door you better lean over an’ grab ahold a your ankles an’ kiss your ass good-bye, ’cause about half an hour later they gonna declare World War Three, Little Italy against Little Africa, an’ the suckers got us outgunned.”
“Uh huh,” Nemo said. “Well in that case we been fightin’ for an hour an’ a half, ’cause Leroy come in about midnight.”
“Leroy’s here?” Willie T. gasped.
“Aw, shit,” Cotton said. “Here I coulda been enjoyin’ ma last few minutes a life—”
“Wait a minute,” said Willie T. excitedly. “Maybe he didn’t do it.”
“Do what?” asked Nemo.
“Course he did it,” Cotton said.
“He didn’t do it last night,” Willie T. argued.
“Do what?”
“That’s ’zactly why he done it tonight,” said Cotton.
“Done what?”
“You’re right,” Willie T. said morosely.
“I ain’t got time for you silly-ass niggers anyway,” Nemo said angrily, and stumped away.
Cotton poured another round and regarded the closed office door. “Maybe he didn’t do it.”
“Yeah,” said Willie T. “An’ maybe there really is a Santa Claus, an’ maybe Jefferson really was a nigger, an’ maybe—”
“All right, all right, I was just thinkin’.”
“Thinkin’, hell, you was prayin’.”
They drank a few shots in silence. “Hey,” said Willie T. suddenly. “There’s Les settin’ over there. If he’d a done it, he’d be fuckin’ her someplace, wouldn’t he? Guess that
means he didn’t do it.”
“I don’t know,” Cotton said. “Maybe the last thing you want after killin’ somebody is a woman.”
“Oh,” said Willie T. “Guess that means he did do it, then.”
“Hell,” Cotton said, “I don’t know.”
“I wonder if I’d want me a woman after I done killed somebody,” Willie T. mused.
“I wonder if I’d want to kill somebody enough to do it,” Cotton said.
Willie T. stared at him. “You mean you ain’t never killed nobody?”
“Sure,” Cotton said, “but it ain’t like I ever hated anybody to go huntin’ ’em like they was an animal. Shoot ’em ’cause they’re tryin’ to shoot you, or ’cause they’re in your way, or ’cause they pissed you off right then an’ there, that’s one thing. Trackin’ a man down, that’s somethin’ else. Takes somethin’ strange inside.” Cotton drained his glass, poured another slug.
“You think Leroy’s got somethin’ strange like that inside him?”
“Who the hell knows what somebody else got inside ’em? Got enough trouble with ma ownself. Maybe you got it inside a you.”
“Oh no,” said Willie T. “No, I couldn’t never kill nobody.”
“Y’ever done it?”
“Hell, no!”
“Then how you know you couldn’t?”
“What?” said Willie T. “That don’t make no sense.”
“Sure don’t,” Cotton agreed. He picked up the bottle, examined the label. “Good bourbon.”
“Yeah,” said Willie T. “Cotton?”
“Whahuh?”
“How long you think it’ll take ’fore Gino sends somebody down here?”
“Who the hell knows.”
“Maybe we could get outa town?”
Cotton slammed the bottle down. “I ain’t runnin’ from no goddamn white man.”
“Even if he’s comin’ to kill you?”
“’Specially if he’s comin’ to kill me,” Cotton snapped.
“Maybe he’ll only kill Leroy.”
Cotton sighed. “Willie, sometimes you’re so damn dumb there ain’t no words for it. I don’t know why I’ma spend some a ma precious last minutes explainin’ this to you, but I guess you got a right to know why you’re gonna die. Gino gonna send somebody to get Leroy. We gotta stop ’em. Gino’s gonna keep sendin’ people until they get us. It’s that simple.”
South Street Page 41