I looked down. Spanky was looking up at me, his eyes searching mine for a reaction. I pushed him away. “That’s enough.” Pulled up my pants. “Give me the rocks.”
Spanky picked up the lollipop and wineglass and sat down. “I don’t think so. You didn’t get hard. Deal was you had to get hard.”
Too numb to speak, I glared at him.
Spanky curled a lock of orange hair with a finger and said, “We can try again, but you’ll have to show more interest in it.”
I hurried out the door, walked a few steps before vomiting on the sidewalk. Two girls saw me and ran away. Later, when I stepped behind a house to piss, I saw lipstick where it shouldn’t have been and vomited again.
* * * * *
Alfred wouldn’t tell Mama I was on the phone. He and Mama had been married seven years, right after I moved out. I didn’t know the man. Didn’t care to know him either.
I told him I was headed over there and he said, “I’m not letting you in.”
“Old man, you can’t stop me seeing my mama.”
It was going dark. Unseasonably cool for October. The regulars loitering in front of the the liquor store on Woodrow Street already had their coats on. Red, gold, and auburn leaves stumbled down the street on a light breeze. In a silk shirt I might as well been naked.
Alfred said, “Your mother’s sister told her all you did when you were down there. She held up fairly well, but when they left…My God. She’s hurting. Man to man, I’m asking you to leave her alone a few days. Let her get some rest. I’ve never asked you anything, but can you do that for me?”
The phone dropped out of my hand, dangled on the cord. Not paying attention I almost walked into a car pulling out of the drive-thru. The driver said, “You got bumpers, nigger?” I kept walking. Two blocks away I sat down on a concrete bench and stared at an empty basketball court, the interstate behind it, rush-hour traffic stopped, a line of red lights going for miles. The sun and the temperature dropped in conjunction, but I barely noticed.
In the morning I was still there, awakened by two boys playing on the basketball court. A gray sky. A boy across the street yelled that the bus was coming and the two boys stopped playing and ran across the street just as the bus was pulling up. The air smelled heavily of exhaust fumes. I started walking.
Fifty’s BMW was parked in front of his apartment. He looked out the window and asked, “Who you with?”
I told him nobody and he still took a long time opening up. Sweat poured down his face, and he hastily locked the door once I stepped in. He had a gun in his hand. A butcher knife was on the table, next to a pipe and a liter of Absolut Vodka.
Fifty peeked out through the curtains and said, “The shirt you got on looks just like one I got.” I sat down on the couch and inspected the pipe. “Those pants, too.”
“They’re yours.”
Fifty grunted. “Not anymore. You had your ass in em I don’t want em back.”
“Where’s Cindy?”
“That’s the million dollar question. Bitch ganked me.” He moved away from the window, sat down on the couch. Shirtless. Bags under red eyes. “I forgot the damn jug. Bitch ran off with three turkeys. Three fucking turkeys! Two of em belonged to Batman. I forgot the damn jug!”
“She’ll come back. Maybe she got lost.”
Fifty gave me a look. “You like that backward bitch, don’t you? She was coming back she would’ve been back. I rode up and down the highway two days looking for her.” He reached under the couch and pulled out a big rock. “This all I got from three turkeys.” Broke a piece off and put it in the pipe. “You got a lighter? Had one but can’t find it.” There was a green lighter on top of the television; I got up and gave it to him. “She in the rental, I’m behind her…” He lighted the pipe, held in the smoke, and handed it to me.
“Yeah, yeah,” already feeling the smoke inside my head.
“I had to piss when we left Houston, but I thought I’d brought the jug. Got close to Texarkana I couldn’t hold it any longer. Sped up and motioned her silly ass to pull over, she pretended she didn’t see me. That should’ve clued me shit was in the game. I pulled off on the shoulder, pissed on the side of the road--no more than two minutes--shot after her ass a hundred miles an hour and I couldn’t find her.”
Enough problems of my own, I tuned him out and concentrated on the smoke filling my lungs, taking me way short of the experience I’d felt that first time.
Fifty was back at the window. I broke off another piece and loaded the pipe.
“Batman gonna kill me.” Sounding worried about it.
“Tell Batman what happened. Cindy ran off with the chickens, I mean turkeys. You lost, too. He don’t like it tell him kiss your ass.” I lighted the pipe. “Short punk--he fuck with you, he fucking with me!” Inhaled, held it as long as I could, and exhaled. “I got your back.”
Fifty turned and stared at me, his expression that of a drowning man tossed a rubber ducky. He returned his attention to the window.
“Where’s the Caddy? I don’t see it.” I didn’t answer and he said, “You loved that car. Bet you let some gal low on common sense and high on crack talk you into selling it, didn’t you?”
I didn’t want to discuss that. “You talk to Spanky?” Fifty nodded. “He mention anything about me?”
“No. He should be back any minute. He went to talk to Batman.”
“Here? He’s coming here?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s got a cell phone, don’t he? You can call him.”
“Here he comes now,” Fifty said, and I got up and went to the bathroom and stayed there a long time until I heard the front door open and close. Shit, Spanky was still there, sitting on the couch looking like a damn fire hydrant, red shirt, red mini-skirt, and red stockings in red boots that came up to his knees. Fifty was still looking out the window.
Spanky smiled at me. “Last I saw you you were tossing your cookies on the sidewalk. You feeling better now?”
Just looking at him made my stomach queasy. I went into the kitchen and sat down at the dining table, where he couldn’t see me, nor me him.
Fifty said, “Spanky, when are you telling me what Batman said?”
“I forget which,” Spanky said, “Romans, Greeks, one of them. The messenger delivered bad news they killed him. Makes sense if you think about it. Folks in your business, all that he-said-she-said shit--you wouldn’t have any of that. On the other hand, one of your peeps died nobody will have the guts to tell you.” Spanky laughed. “One person at the funeral, the preacher.”
Damn! Cedric The Entertainer in a wig.
Fifty said, “Spanky, you fucking with me. What did he say?”
A long silence.
Spanky said, “He told me to tell you you got thirty-six hours to produce his shit.”
Fifty cleared his throat. “Or what?”
“Lewis, Lewis, Lewis, listen to yourself. You sound like somebody’s child. You know the score. How much money do you have?”
“Not much.”
“Not good,” Spanky said.
Fifty hit the door with his fist. “Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!”
“Calm down, Lewis. There may be a way to fix this.”
“Talk to me, Spanky.”
“My mother used to say, ‘You don’t miss what you can’t measure.’ You follow me?” Fifty shook his head. “Let me put it to you like this. Two cats in your debt, right? One running round pretending he don’t owe you a damn thing, right? Got everybody thinking you weak, you let cats piss on you. The other cat got ghost. Nobody’s seen him, right? Which one, you tell me, is most likely to be found stanking?”
Fifty didn’t answer that. Instead: “You think I should get ghost?”
“What I think don’t mean a goddamn thing. I figured that out a long time ago. What I do, that’s something. I were in your shoes I’d be thinking of an extended vacation. You follow me?”
“Yeah,�
� Fifty said. “A vacation. I’ve been thinking about taking one. I got an unc in New Orleans. Always wanted to go there. Tomorrow I’m gone.”
“Lewis, I can see you on the beach, sipping a magarita, watching the cuties walk by.” He came into the kitchen, hands on his hips, and stared at me. “What about your homeboy here, Lewis? You taking him with you?”
“If he wants to go.”
I picked up a newspaper on the table, pretended to read it.
When Spanky left I hurried back to the rock on the table. “Sounds like he’s running game on you, man. A vacation? You don’t even have a job.”
Fifty took the pipe out of my hand, hit it, and gave it back. “I got a job now, getting the hell outta here as quick as I can. You going with me?”
I sucked on the pipe. “Nope.”
He picked up the bottle and went back to looking out the window. “I leave I’m just taking my clothes and a few other things. Everything else you can sell if you wanna. Rent due in two weeks. Five Franklins and some change. You pay it no one will know the difference.”
Thanks was on my tongue but I couldn’t spit it out.
Fifty said, “You’re welcome. Look under the couch. Dokes dropped it off.”
I knelt on one knee and looked. Another rock--lying bastard!--and a manila folder. Inside was a restraining order instructing me to stay fifty feet away from Dokes, Doreen, and Lewis.
“When did Dokes bring this?”
“Last week.”
“Why the hell they put Lewis’ name on it?” I refilled the pipe.
“There’s more to it.”
The lighter flicked but didn’t light. “What?” There it go, a small blue flame.
“Doreen’s pregnant.”
The flame flickered out. “What!”
“Dokes a bold sumbitch, all up in my face with that shit. I should’ve popped him, told the police he broke in.”
The thought of a baby made my head hurt, made me want to throw up. Wait a minute! “Hell, it might be my baby! That’s the case, Doreen gotta come back!”
“Dokes said you would say that. Told me to tell you Doreen was six-weeks pregnant.”
That dashed all hope. What the hell was Doreen thinking? It was over between me and her. Over! Doke’s baby? Doke’s ugly, bugeyed baby? Hell no! O-V-E-R! Even if she begged me, got on her damn knees, I wouldn’t take her back.
Fifty shook my shoulder. “You all right?” He took the pipe out of my hand; it was bent. “Dokes also told me to tell you the police are looking for you.”
“For what?”
“To serve divorce papers.” He took a long swig of vodka, offered the bottle to me. “You thinking ’bout doing something to Dokes, ain’t you?”
I wiped the top with my hand and gulped a cupful, my throat and stomach on fire. “It crossed my mind.”
Fifty said, “It crossed my mind too.”
* * * * *
Alicia Keyes was on the TV, playing a piano, her voice sounding almost as sexy as she looked. Her hair in braids she reminded me of Doreen.
Fifty sat on the couch, the vodka bottle half full now in his lap. He was drunk, too drunk to stand at the window. It was dark out. The rock on the table was half its original size.
Fifty waved the bottle at Alicia and slurred, “The beautiful ones, they’re the ones who get you, the ones you can’t let go.” Missy Elliot replaced Alicia. “The ugly ones will get you too--you just don’t tell nobody.”
He took another swig of vodka and descended into a diatribe about Cindy. Her breath stank, she couldn’t cook, her titties were misaligned, she had an incurable foot fungus, she pissed the bed.
“You lying!”
Fifty struggled to his feet, tilting back and forth. “I’ll show you.”
I followed him to the bedroom. A large metal frame bed dominated the room. To the left of it was a half-finished oil painting of Olive Oyle on an easel. Fifty snatched the pink duvet and sheets off the bed, exposing a pee-stained mattress.
“See?” Fifty said. “See! If she missed a night, the next she doubled up. Wake up soaking wet, backstroking, thinking I’m on the damn Titanic.”
I studied the painting. “Man, you got a thing for cartoons, don’t you?”
Fifty staggered over and ripped up the canvas.
Back in the living room I loaded the bent pipe. Slumped in the recliner, Fifty said, “Remember I told you there were two kinda people smoke crack?”
I blew smoke his way. “You were lying.”
He rested his chin on his chest and stared at the bottle. “Yes, I was. Fucked up, that’s the only kinda person smoke crack.”
Putting the lighter to the pipe, I said, “Then why you offer it to me?”
Fifty stared at the gun and butcher knife on the table and started laughing. “If I told you you’ll kill me.”
“Serious, man. Why you offer the shit to me?”
“I didn’t. Cindy, dirty bitch, that’s who offered you the shit.”
“No, she didn’t. In fact, Cindy told me you insisted she turn me on. She didn’t want to do it, refused to do it. She said something I got you want.”
“You ain’t got shit!”
“That’s what I told her.”
A roach, the first I’d seen there, crawled down the TV and covered Biggie Smalls’ nose. The gun attracted my attention. It felt cold. I pointed it at Biggie, said bang. Even on television he presented a large target.
The crack, the vodka, something, was telling me to point it at Fifty, pull the trigger. In my periphery I saw him sitting up straight, eyes on the gun, hands clutching the ends of the armrest.
When I laid the gun down Fifty got up and picked it up. No longer staggering he took it to the bedroom. Coming back he said, “What the hell am I thinking? Crack and a gun, that’s a deadly combo.”
A little before midnight Fifty decided now was a good time as any to go to New Orleans. I helped him load his clothes in the BMW. The easel wouldn’t fit. We split what was left of the rock on the table. The one under the couch Fifty had apparently forgotten, and I wasn’t about to remind him.
We shook hands and I lied about coming to see him once I got on my feet. I watched the BMW taillights disappear around the corner before going back inside. Before I could sit down there was a knock at the door. Fifty. I let him in and he moved directly to the couch, knelt down and swept his hand under it.
“I forgot something,” he said.
Chapter 22
The stove and the fridge created a problem. No vehicle, I sold Fifty’s furniture by word of mouth. “Excuse me, ma’am, you wouldn’t be interested in a bedroom set, would you?” If so: “You know somebody with a truck?”
Yesterday a guy knocked on the door, said he heard I was selling furniture and stuff at a good price. There wasn’t much left to sell. The guy asked about the stove and fridge, asked how much I wanted for both. “Two-fifty,” I said, and the guy said, “You got a deal.”
Just as the guy was driving away with the stove and fridge in the back of his pickup, the white woman in the apartment next door came out and asked me if I had permission to sell the two appliances.
Yes, I told her. She said she couldn’t believe the apartment manager would allow me to do that, said she would go ask him. Knock yourself out, I told her.
The next morning, after a night of intense leg watching, I heard keys jingling outside the door. Voices. A man and the white woman next door. I stepped inside the utility closet a few seconds before the door opened.
The man’s voice: “I’ll be damned!”
The nosy white woman: “I told you! I saw him. Sold it to another colored man in a brown pickup truck. I got the license number.”
The man’s voice: “Good.” A walkie-talkie keyed up. “Mrs. Lyle, I’m inside apartment one-fifteen. He took the stove and the refrigerator. Call the police. Damn dopehead!”
Waiting for the police, the nosy white woman rattle
d on about the former occupants. TT, that’s what she called Fifty and Cindy. Trashy and Trifling. She said Trifling had a mental problem, an obsession with looking out the window. She couldn’t sleep well with a colored looking out the window all the time. She insisted she wasn’t a racist.
“I’m not. But ya know that’s why God banished the Children of Israel for forty years, that mix-matching mess. Ya know He couldn’t tolerate that sort of thing.”
The police finally arrived and took a report, and I realized the nosy white woman mistook me for Fifty, who had an outstanding warrant for parole violation.
They left, but I didn’t get out. Later I heard the door open, tools banging. Someone was changing the lock.
Fifty hadn’t been gone two weeks.
It was snot-freezing cold outside. No coat. No food and nothing to put food in. No money. Yet my primary concern: Dokes and Doreen, naked, doing all kinds of nasty stuff, Doke’s ugly baby inside Doreen’s womb witnessing everything.
The next two days I held up in the apartment, stepping out of the utility closet only at night, keeping quiet and still in the day, praying and hoping that whoever was cleaning and vacuuming wouldn’t open the door and find me hunkered under the heating and cooling unit.
Hunger broke the routine. Daylight in the window, I tiptoed to the front door, opened it as quietly as possible, and almost had a heart attack. Spanky was standing there, his fist poised to knock.
He stepped in. “I didn’t think you’d be glad to see me.”
I closed the door, grabbed the woman’s coat he had on and shook him, upsetting the lime-green wig on his head. “I’m not the one! Hear me! I’m not the one!”
In a flash he pressed something hard against my temple. A small silver handgun. I let him go.
“Motherfucker, I’ll blow your brains out!” He was upset. “Don’t you ever put your hands on me!” I stepped back, held my hands up. “I just bought this damn coat!” He tried to smooth the wrinkles out of it with one hand. “What is your damn problem? Damn crackhead!”
“I didn’t know it was you, Spanky.”
Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction Page 19