He Was Her Man

by Sarah Shankman

  6

  LATEESHA ROLLINS WAS in big trouble. Which is why she was standing in a phone booth at the corner of Malvern and Church about to call her second cousin Early Trulove, who everybody knew was a stone killer, bodyguard to Mr. You Know Who. She was practicing what she was going to say. Early, I’ve fucked up bad. You’ll come and help me, won’t you, pretty please with sugar on top and chocolate sprinkles.

  It had all started last week with what her friend Denice had said about Aunt Odessie’s boobs.

  Well, maybe it had started because Lateesha had been on the honor roll at Hot Springs High for six semesters in a row and was a soloist in the choir of the Rising Star Baptist Church, which is why her girlfriend Denice was always calling her Little Miss Too-Good.

  So when Aunt Odessie, who’d taken Lateesha to raise when Lateesha’s momma was killed in a drive-by in New Orleans, heard Denice say, “Yo auntie’s got the biggest effin’ bazooms in the state of Arkansas,” it wasn’t half a second before Aunt Odessie, who’d been sitting on the porch with Cousin Early, got on the phone and called Denice’s mom, gave her an earful about bad language and home training, and said Lateesha couldn’t hang out with Denice anymore. Denice’s mom grounded her for a week, and it was then that Denice started in calling Lateesha Little Miss Too-Good for real.

  Denice was making fun of her at the Harvest Foods on Malvern where they both worked after school, saying, Watch Little Miss Too-Good Computer Brain add up yo’ groceries, folks. That girl be a robot, for sure. Just because Lateesha had this mathematical aptitude, she could run her eyes over the groceries, add ’em faster than the electronic cash register. Numbers were just her thing, she’d tried to explain that a million times to Denice.

  It really hurt Lateesha’s feelings that Denice would do her like that, being her best friend since the eighth grade and all. But that was the thing about friends. They knew you better than anybody, so when they decided to dump on you, they could do it the best. Or the worst, depending on your point of view.

  But Lateesha had taken just about all the crap she was going to. Now she was going to show Denice she wasn’t just Little Miss Too-Good. That’s why, when Lateesha was out on her bike this afternoon, and she was riding down Lake Loop Road out in the woods, when she saw that super fresh old car parked in that big old stone house’s carport alongside a silver Mercedes, that’s why something went off Pow! in her head.

  She was going to steal that car. The old one. Because it was in her favorite colors, black with a little bit of gold, which were also the colors of Hot Springs High School. She was going to drive it up to Denice’s house, and say, Hey, Miss Thang, you wanta go for a spin in my wheels?

  That would show Denice and put an end to that Little Miss Too-Good stuff once and for all.

  Except she didn’t know how.

  Oh, yes, you do, this little voice had spoken up. This little voice of the devil. Girl, ain’t you watched enough TV to know how to do that thing, smart girl like you?

  It was amazing how the devil’s voice sounded exactly like Denice’s. And the voice was right, too. She did know how. She’d watched this segment on Prime Time Crime about these gangs of kids stealing cars in Newark, New Jersey, car-theft capital of the United States, and she most certainly knew how to get into the car, assuming it was locked, which, she cruised up and checked, it was. But it only took her 10 minutes to zip back out to the big road, and sure enough, there was a gas station, and she wheeled in and said to the semi-mentally retarded wormy white boy, all Miss Innocent Do-Goody, Do you have one of those slim-jim things I can borrow, there’s an old lady back down the road, got out of her car, locked the keys in, she’s about to have a fit? Well, she knew he wasn’t gonna loan her shit, black girl on a bike, but he said, just like she thought he would, here, take this here coat hanger, sometimes that’ll work; if it don’t, just wait for the Highway Patrol, they’ll be along directly.

  It didn’t take her very long at all to work the straightened end of the coat hanger over the top of the window and lower the hooked end to the door handle. She had to fish for a bit, but then there it was! She tugged on it a couple of times, and she was in. Now what? They definitely hadn’t left the keys in the ignition. Well, she knew from the crime show if she had some lamp cord with clips at either end she could hot-wire the engine, but she didn’t. And she didn’t have time to go find any either. Somebody could be walking out of that house any minute, she’d be in juvie so fast it’d make your head spin, and she could just hear Aunt Odessie screaming and praying and praying and screaming. So she started fooling around with the stick, it wasn’t an automatic, and the next thing she knew, she must have gotten it into neutral, and the house was up on a hill with this steep drive, the car just started rolling out, backwards, down the driveway, Jesus!, she was flying, she was going to be killed, except nobody was coming when she hit the blacktop, and all she had to do was hold it in the road, still going downhill, which was easier said than done, and then she was losing it, she’d lost it, and the car was bouncing off down this grade and into the woods, where it crashed against the foot of this pine tree.

  So Lateesha had scrammed, and now here she was, scared to death. Scared that a policeman was going to come along, find that car, lift her prints off the steering wheel, and come and throw her in the pokey.

  Cops around here, cops like that Archie Blackshears who was always lurking around the school, they’d bust a 15-and-a-half-year-old in a New York minute. That’s what everybody said. Said you didn’t want to know what Archie’d do to you once he got you in that jail.

  So Lateesha didn’t see but that she had but one option, asking Early for help. The phone was ringing. But Early wasn’t home. And he didn’t have an answering machine either. Not that she’d thought he would. Most assassins probably didn’t.

  7

  SAM HAD BEEN CHATTING with Kitty and Jinx for about 15 minutes, and her smile was beginning to feel like a baloney sandwich left lying on the kitchen counter too long. Jinx hadn’t changed a whit. She ran on and on. She never asked a single thing about you and didn’t even pause for breath, jumping from a room-by-room description of the new house she and the groom were about to build, to where she had her hair done, her latest shopping trip to Manhattan, her engagement ring—which, as Sam had predicted, was a diamond you could use for Ping-Pong.

  “And we’re honeymooning at this exclusive resort in Hawaii. We’re flying first-class direct to Maui, and then we take this little plane to the resort, where we have our own cottage. The cast of L.A. Law stays there every chance they get, and it’s very exclusive and very expensive.”

  Sam couldn’t stand it. “Jinx,” she interrupted, “tell me about your altars—is that what you call them? Praying to one of them really won you that lottery?”

  Jinx batted her baby blues. “Not praying exactly, but I swear, Sam, you sound so cynical.”

  Before Jinx could finish, her mother, Loydell, cruised up to them like a royal blue Olds 88 heading for a reserved parking spot. The old lady in her satin dress, tan knee-highs, and sensible black shoes gave Kitty a big hug, said Howdy to Sam, then got right up in Jinx’s face.

  “Have you seen Olive? She said she’d be here, and she’s never late. I’ve been standing in one spot waiting for her because I’m dying to tell her about that letter I got from our friend Wanda. You remember Wanda? I locked her and Olive up at the same time once, in the same cell. Anyway, Wanda wrote that her sister Nell, who lives in Lubbock, was out in the garage with that no-good husband of hers working on their car, and he kicked the jack, at least that’s what it looked like. She was under there 25 minutes before the police came, and he was only then just starting to jack that car up again. He was drinking a beer and eating a turkey, mayo, and cranberry sauce sandwich he’d stopped and made. Killed her dead as a doornail. What I say is they ought to just take him out, drop a sledgehammer on him about a hundred times, starting down at his feet making hamburger meat out of him. You know, sort of like that Kathy
Bates did in that picture show about that romance writer. Did you see that one?”

  “Oh, Mother,” said Jinx. She sounded 13 years old.

  Sam had suspected that any friend of Olive’s would be someone she liked, and from the minute she’d seen Loydell’s sensible shoes she had. The fact that Loydell embarrassed her daughter was just the icing on the cake. “I met your friend Olive just a couple of hours ago,” Sam said. “I stopped in her store to buy some gas. What a great lady.”

  Jinx looked at Sam as if she’d lost her mind, but Sam saw no need to tell the Original Floozie that when she’d dissolved in tears over Harry at the Gas ’N Grub, Olive had wiped her nose. In fact, she didn’t want Jinx to know about Harry at all.

  “Olive is something special,” said Loydell. “We go way back. I can’t tell you all the things we’ve been through. Old friends, that’s what every woman needs. Push comes to shove, they’ll be right there beside you.”

  Sam caught her old friend Kitty’s eye. “I couldn’t agree with you more.” Then, turning back to Loydell, she said, “I told Olive she’d better save me a dance. Any idea what’s keeping her?”

  Loydell said, “I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what. I’m going to go and find me a phone, give her a ring.”

  Jinx reached out and grabbed her mother’s arm. “Hold up a minute. Do you think while you’re at it you could call up to your suite? Speed said he was just running up to take his allergy pills and he’d be right back down. He ought to be here by now.”

  Good, thought Sam. That would give her an opportunity to see if Speed was something Jinx had found on sale at Neiman Marcus, ran on batteries.

  “Men,” said Loydell. “You can’t trust ’em. Let ’em out of your sight for two minutes, I tell you, Jinx, he’s probably gone off with one of those cute look-alikes you had heading up your big show-off into the ballroom. Probably with the one who’s about sixteen. I told you those girls was a mistake.”

  “Mother! What an awful thing to say.”

  Sam grinned. Loydell was mean as a snake, a trait that Jinx had inherited. Except Loydell didn’t sneak and hide around with it. You got it right in your face.

  Now Loydell was saying, “Well, it’s beyond me why you’d want to get married again anyway, looks like you’d have learned your lesson by now. First that football player turning out strange.…”

  Kitty never would say what happened to Jinx’s first husband.

  “Then Harlan…”

  That was the second one. He’d gotten himself into some kind of business tight.

  “Running out on you with that cheerleader, then losing all y’all’s money and ending up in the pokey to boot, cheating all those people. Same mentality as those S&L robbers. Put ’em all on the chain gang, I say. Family values, I tell you, the families I know teach their children not to steal other people’s money, that’s what they do.”

  “Moth—urrrr.” Jinx hit the word like an electric drill. “About Speed?”

  Loydell held up a hand. “Okay,” she said. “Hold your horses. I’m on my way.”

  “And I’m going to run upstairs and take something for my headache,” said Sam, seizing the opportunity to make a getaway. What she really aimed to do was get into her pajamas and snuggle up in bed. She’d miss seeing Speed again, but what the hay? Truth be told, she was much more interested in Olive and Loydell. Maybe tomorrow afternoon, when they came back from their hike, she and Kitty could invite the old ladies for tea. Olive and Loydell could fill them in on the local dirt, whatever weird there was, and she’d have to ask them about Mr. You Know Who—now, that would be fun.

  8

  HEADING TO BED, yes, indeedy, that was Sam’s plan. Harry, 500 miles of rainy bad road, a stomachful of junk food, a reunion with Jinx Watson, she was pooped. But on her way through the Palace’s lobby, she was sidetracked.

  First, there was the space itself, which she’d hadn’t had time before to take in. It was enormous, arching three stories, a magnificent creation of black and gold and silver Art Deco with a little Moroccan around the edges. To the right was a stage and a bandstand with a dance floor before it. The middle area was filled with dozens of small tables occupied by prosperous-looking Southern white folks dressed up in their very best. On the far left wall was a mural of the Oaklawn grandstand as the horses pulled into the finish. Racing was a major industry in Hot Springs, and the Palace’s lobby was a favorite rallying spot for the fans. A bar stretched the entire length of the wall beneath the mural. And just in front of the main bar stood a baby grand piano surrounded by stools.

  It was the black woman sitting at that piano whose voice had waylaid Sam. As she’d started to stroll by the lobby’s edge on her way to the elevators, she’d been stopped cold by the woman’s driving left hand and her throaty contralto. Sam hadn’t heard anyone she liked so much since she’d first heard Nina Simone rattle the rafters of the old Atlanta Civic Auditorium with “Mississippi Goddam.”

  That’s why Sam, who hardly made it a practice to frequent drinking establishments, found herself perched on a stool of black leatherette and curvy chrome pulled up to the side of the ebony grand piano, the only vacant seat in the room. She was sipping a mineral water, Mountain Valley, the local brand.

  The room was gorgeous. The music was wonderful. So why, all of a sudden, did she slide from fatigue into anxious depression? Low-down. Mean. Blue. Only halfway through her drink, three songs into the set, she felt like she wanted to crawl under the piano and die. Maybe drag something under there with her and kill it, too.

  The lady in blue velvet was singing “Baby, Get Lost,” the old Dinah Washington standard about a two-timing son of a gun. Maybe that had something to do with her mood? Intimations of Harry?

  Harry, sweet Harry. Why was it when somebody did you wrong, you only remembered the sweet times? Wouldn’t it be better to think about the things you hated? Like all those perfectly gorgeous weekends he made you waste, sitting glued to the tube watching football games. Except Harry didn’t do that. Nor did he chew with his mouth open. He didn’t snore. He didn’t insist of having his way all the time, but he wasn’t such a pushover that she didn’t respect him. He wasn’t a whiner. He was both a great storyteller and a great listener. He was a passionate and considerate lover. He was unnecessarily handsome. He was a great traveler. Remember that week on the Cape? Atlantic City and that huge round pink bed? Hot days sea-kayaking in Belize, hotter nights beneath the mosquito netting?

  So if he was so great, so perfect, what the hell was her problem? Why couldn’t she commit to this man? Because he was a cheat, that was why. Yes, Sammy, but when had he cheated? After she had committed to him, or before? Well, she never had said she would move in with him, settle down, so it couldn’t very well be after, could it?

  Oh, the hell with Harry. The hell with men. She was perfectly fine by herself. She had plenty of girlfriends. Well, she had Kitty. And her sponsor. She liked spending time alone. She adored her own company.

  She slowly checked out the room. Yep, all these people, and she was the only unaccompanied woman in sight, and damned proud of it. Everywhere she turned were couples holding hands. Their heads leaned toward one another like tulips in a vase. People played footsies, and a dozen couples twirled cheek-to-cheek, arm-in-arm, belly-to-belly on the little dance floor. How conventional. How recherché. How passé, all this dependency. Couldn’t any of these people stand on their own two feet? She certainly could, and she preferred it that way.

  Though why she was suddenly blinking back tears, she couldn’t explain.

  It was the dancing. Oh, Jesus, she loved to dance with Harry. They were like Ginger and Fred, born to fly together across polished hardwood.

  Well, they wouldn’t be dancing anymore, would they? Vertically—or horizontally.

  She bit her bottom lip and struggled for control. Come on, girl, buck up. You’re going to end up being one of those old ladies who sits around bars, crying in their beer.

  And that would be a rerun
, wouldn’t it? She’d already gone through that phase, as a young lady. Tall, curly-headed girl, snockered out of her mind. Knocking back the booze. Telling strangers her sad tale—whichever one had seemed appropriate at the moment.

  And she’d done more than her share of dancing atop the bar. Oh, yes, the young Sammy was famous for her hootchy-kootch. Sometimes she stripped, too. Another form of dancing that you didn’t need a partner for—unless you counted Mr. Jack Daniel’s or Mr. Jim Beam.

  Now the singer was doing the old Simone standard “You Can Have Him.”

  Oh, no. That was too much. Pushing the edge of the envelope. For the ironic words of the song spelled out every romantic reason in the world why she did want him. You couldn’t have him at all. She’d scratch your eyeballs out if you even got close, girl. Little blond thing. Oh, shit. She did want Harry. She wanted him desperately. But on her terms. Her way.

  For no, unlike the song, she didn’t want to give him a baby for every year. She was too old, for one thing. And she’d never wanted children, for another.

  Yes, she wanted to run her fingers through his curly hair.

  And, yes, she loved that occasional Sunday when they spent all day in bed.

  But did she, like the song said, want to meet his every need, bow to his every whim? No way!

  She wanted, as Olive had deduced, to be close, but not too close. So, that was a problem. So, it was hard to make that work. But it was all she could manage.

  Jesus! She’d been abandoned so many times before, big-time. Her parents killed in a plane crash when she was 12. Lovers split hither and yon: her first love, Beau; Frank, whom Jinx had snagged; her husband, Jimmy. Sure, by Jimmy’s time she’d been a drunk, but she was sober when Sean—who’d for sure been the love of her life, was mowed down in San Francisco by a hit-and-run driver. That was when she’d turned tail and returned home to the South.

  Don’t think she didn’t know she had an intimacy problem. She’d talked talked talked about it at ninety bucks per 50-minute clip. Talked talked talked with her AA sponsors in San Francisco, in Atlanta, in New Orleans.