by Odie Hawkins
“He wasn’t furst, I wuz,” a little, wizened black lady spoke up and handed her items over to the salesgirl.
Elijah circled the first floor of the store, waiting for Nick to get waited on, checked out the prices on a number of items he planned to cop in the near future.
Finally, noting that Nick had been waited on, he headed for the men’s room. Nick walked in seconds later, mumbling obscenities. “Mahnnn, ah’m tellin’ ya, these bitches really irri-tate me left nut at times!”
They exchanged packages, each of them stapled with the sales ticket at the top, a clever way to prevent thieves from putting more into the bag than they had paid for.
Elijah squeaked, Flip Wilson-Geraldine style, “He wasn’t furst, I wuz,” as he made his exit.
Nick the Geech smiled at his partner’s humor and leaned close to the mirror. Dahm blackheads! Gotta start gettin’ facials more often.
Elijah strode through the store with a straight look about him, as though he were on his way to right a wrong.
He waited patiently through three customers at the lingerie counter.
“Yessir?” the salesgirl smiled brightly at him, liking the hat, his pea-green see-through shirt, despite the smudge on the front, the whole, hip, black fashion effect of him. “May I help you? Back for more goodies?”
Elijah pushed back his urge to smile at where she was coming from … like, this was sho’ ’nuff business and no time to be jivin’.
“I hope you can help me, Miss … I gave you a twenty-dollar bill a few minutes ago, for these items.” He held the bag up as though he were doing a mirror league medicine show bit.
Nick smiled at the performance from the far side of the store.
The salesgirl frowned, remembering him and his ten-dollar bill. It had been a ten-dollar bill, she was certain of it. “May I see your sales receipt, sir?” she asked coldly.
Elijah took a deep breath … time for the moment of lie. “My sales receipt!” he nutted up on her, loudly. “My sales receipt! For what!? I’m tellin’ you I gave you a twenty and you only gave me change for a ten and you wanna try to put me through a lotta changes. What kinda place is this?!”
Nick frowned, looking around in the pocketbook section. It was always a drag when attention had to be called to the performance, lots of times the salesgirl would just simply give it up after a little hesitation … this was one of those assholes trying to protect the company’s money. Nick frowned again at the salesgirl. Bitch should be caned. And smiled at Elijah waving his arms around like a nut.
Several people, nice, clean-cut, home-made types, stopped to watch the angry black man.
“I shouldn’t have to show my receipt … I’m an honest man, I work for my money! I’m tellin’ you, I didn’t get my right change. You didn’t …”
The salesgirl, suspecting some kind of game, but not hip to what it might be, cut him off.
“Sir, I’ll have to call the floor manager.”
“Hey! I don’t care who you call! All I want is the rest of my change! I work too hard for my money to be giving it away.”
The salesgirl ignored him and signaled to a small penguin-shaped figure of a man with a flower in his buttonhole strolling by with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Mr. Morrison … uh, Mr. Morrison! Counter four, please.”
Elijah stood slightly off to one side, his nostrils flared out. Morrison looked at Elijah with the look he reserved for Chicanos, Blacks, Indians and other obviously inferior people.
“Yes, what is it, Mizz Jenkins?”
Elijah caught Nick’s worried expression from the corner of his eyes, and signaled to him with a positive gesture that everything was going good.
“Mr. Morrison, this gentleman purchased some items a short time ago …”
Elijah held his package up as Exhibit A.
“And he says I gave him the wrong change.”
Morrison, an old hand at making adjustments, took out a small white pad. “Yes?” he lisped.
“Well … well, I’m almost certain I gave him the right change. He gave me a ten-dollar bill, his items were $4.85, and I gave him the right change!” she closed off aggressively.
“Look, Miss … I told you. Now if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a dozen times, you didn’t …”
Morrison, a smug expression on his narrow face, held up both shapely hands pontifically.
“May I see your sales receipt, sir?”
Elijah glared at the salesgirl and pretended that he was about to search his pockets.
Morrison, patronizing the childlike mentality of the forgetful black, reached over delicately and took the store’s brown bag, with the sales receipt stapled to the top, out of Elijah’s hand. “May I?”
Morrison quickly noted that the sales receipt showed that the change for a twenty should have been given.
“I’m afraid you have made a misthake, Mizz Jenkins.” He passed the bag over for her to look at, vaguely pissed because of the hassle it had caused.
“I … I’m sorry, Mr. Morrison, I could’ve sworn …”
Elijah, the gallant winner, winked and rapped.
“Ain’t no big thang. I just knew I had paid you with a twenty because … hahhhahhahh … it was the only one I had. My woman almost ripped it out of my hand yesterday, wantin’ it for something else, so I had to whip a li’l piece a tape across the split.”
The salesgirl pursed her lips skeptically, anxious to go and take care of other customers. So maybe he was right, but she still didn’t believe it.
Morrison, feeling the need to assert his power, chewed on Mizz Jenkins a li’l bit.
“We’re not paying you to establish store policy, Mizz Jenkins. Your job is to give our customers the best possible service. Please refund this gentleman hith proper change and make the necethary corrections on your regithter. Sorry for the inconvenience, sir.”
“Aww, like I said before,” Elijah announced grandly, “ain’t no big thang.”
Nick took a deep breath as he watched the floor manager go one way, and Elijah the opposite way, after the salesgirl had counted his change out.
Nick started for the exit. Shit gets on my left nerve sometimes, or maybe I’m gettin’ old.
Miss Jenkins followed Elijah’s jaunty exit as she turned her attention to a waiting row of customers.
She rang the first sale up and quickly leafed through the twenty-dollar bills in her cash register drawer as she made change. The frown distorted her features painfully.
“Anything wrong, my dear?” the little old lady she was making change for asked.
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” she answered, carefully counting change out into the little old lady’s hand, puzzled, puzzled, puzzled.
Elijah and Nick walked quickly to the next downtown corner, the next huge department store complex.
“Why did it take so long to get over?” Nick asked from the corner of his mouth, con style.
“I’ll tell you about it later, I don’t want to break my concentration now.”
Nick rolled his eyes around, expressing absolute skepticism, but who could complain? Elijah was a winner, always on his job, and you never had to worry about not gettin’ into something, maybe his concentration helped.
After all, he was the one who had figured out how much you could make, just playing five stores for a li’l taste from each one of them. Say you started off with a base thirty bucks, ten to one and twenty to the other. Running the short change game, even for chump change, was likely to fill your pockets up …
Elijah had made a believer out of Nick the Geech by running the chump change-into-grand-theft-dough game down to him. “See, dig it Nick, lotsa dudes make the big moves, get busted and that’s all she wrote. My way is steady and pretty goddamned well organized, if I do say so myself.
“Here’s how it works: with the twenty-dollar switch, with the change comin’ from it, we can wind up with between forty-five ’n seventy-five bucks for an hour’s work, between the hours of fiv
e ’n six, you know, right in the middle of the rush hour … and during Christmas time ’n holidays like that … shit! we clean up. Think about it. One hour’s work a week, if you only score for the minimum, that’s what? Two hundred twenty-five bucks. If you come away with the maximum, that’s three hundred seventy-five … now then, if you only manage to come off with the minimum for six months, half a year … well, you can see.”
Nick had seen, was seeing and working at it. It was his turn to return to the salesgirl for the change she had forgotten to give him.
She was nice as pie.
“Oh, sorry, I guess it just isn’t my day.”
Nick smiled indulgently, stuffed the change into his pocket, and casually strolled past Elijah, on their way to the next one. They practically yawned their way through the last number, feeling cocky, at ease, with the practice of a string of four stings behind them.
“Dig, brother Geech, you gon’ have to get your indignation thang together a li’l bit better.”
Elijah started into his critique as they filed through the cafeteria line of Bowman’s in the basement, a favorite of the fast and semi-fast people on the loop track.
“How so?” Nick asked, studious lines across his forehead, beating Elijah to a choice piece of apple pie.
“Well, the way you came up on the broad the third time, for example. The bitch was supposed to be feelin’ so threatened by your nigger nasty-ass behavior that she damn near forgets she countin’ change out to me … but that ain’t what happened ’cause you had let your energy level drop too low.”
“Uhh huh, I dig whot you’re sayin’, I got t’ be the nigger they think I am, the unloved one, and you be the loved one.”
Elijah stabbed the back of Nick’s head with both eyes as they went through the checkout station, barely able to contain himself.
“Look, man!” he talked urgently across the cafeteria table into Nick’s face, “I don’t give a fuck how them people feel about me. All I know is this, in order to play on how they minds work, we got to have our shit up tight. Can you dig where I’m comin’ from, brotherman?”
Nick spooned up a heap of bland macaroni. “Hey mahn, you know I’m just jivin’. The name of the game is success.”
He reached his free hand over for Elijah to slap, and started into the assorted plates on his tray in earnest, wishing that there was some goat meat on one of them.
Elijah studied his movements for a few seconds. That’s the groovy thang about Nick the Geech, he takes every fuckin’ thing seriously. They nodded to the regulars smoking their after-dinner cigarettes, on their way out, bellies puffed out, wallets fat.
“Well, that’s what that was. They don’t have good food but at least it fools you into being full.”
Nick slapped his palm and looked over his shoulder at the cafeteria entrance, disdainfully.
“Yeahhh, you can say that again.”
A moment of mutual good feeling passed between them, taking in the balmy Chicago air.
“Think I’m gon’ call it a day, bruh Nick … I feel almost like I been workin’.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Nick slid in slyly, signifyin’. “Somebody tol’ me they saw Dee Dee rip you off the corner. I had doubts about us gittin’ down when I heard …”
“Ain’t been a piece o’ pussy slit that would keep me from takin’ care business. And Lawd knows Dee Dee has sho’ ’nuff got a good ’un.”
“How long you and that broad been into it?”
Elijah followed the woman’s body passing by with an expert’s interest. Forty-two, three, on her last legs but still tryin’ to look good. Too bad she didn’t do some sit-ups when she was younger, it might’ve kept her belly from hangin’ down between her legs like that.
“What did you say, man?”
“Yeah, that bitch sho’ has got a helluva turdcutter on it, ain’t she?” Nick contributed his own esthetic considerations. “I was askin’ how long you ’n Dee Dee had been into it?”
Elijah smiled slightly. Nick would love to fuck Dee Dee, I know he would.
“Awww man, ever since I was in high school. I dropped out in my second year, she graduated, shacked up or married a couple times, nobody really knows, had a couple crumbcrushers and we ain’t never stopped doin’ it durin’ all that time. I just don’t seem to be able to cut the bitch loose.”
Nick adjusted his hat, preparing to get on off into Saturday. “Well, if you ever decide to, let me have first shot.”
Elijah gave his hustlin’ partner a quick, understanding wink. Like, hey nigger, you ain’t gon’ never get none o’ the pussy if you expect me to ever step aside ’n let you in.
“Uhh huh, riight on!” he mumbled. “You goin’ back down on the block?”
“Yeahhh, I was thinkin’ ’bout playin’ a li’l poker tonight. What’re you up to?”
Elijah started backing away, wanting to move, his blood still alive from the day’s games.
“I don’t know, a li’l this ’n a li’l that.”
“Right on!” Nick winked, made a clenched fist, Black Power salute in a tight arch at the chest level, and started for the nearest El station.
Elijah watched him, dipping a bit in the knees, body alert for whatever, mind even sharper, heading for the Southside, and some barbeque, probably.
Elijah accidentally released a sound as he smiled about the way his friend functioned in the world. Good ol’ Nick the Geech … couldn’t find too many like him. You could pull it off with him ’cause he knew how to play. Yeahhh, he was a player.
A stem-faced, white-haired white man in a mackinaw shirt and a straw hat smiled indulgently at Elijah in his, to his mind, funny clothes, as they passed each other on the steps of the train station, one coming, the other going.
Elijah methodically checked the usual nesting spots of the station’s detectives. His eyes went from track No. 16 to No. 20 on the left and from No. 1 to No. 9 on the right … he spotted the one he and Brotherman had nicknamed Dolores because he was such a punk that he didn’t even know it himself.
He brushed Dolores away with a thought. He’ll probably be goin’ off into the men’s toilet in a couple minutes to see if he can catch a couple of these gay commuters playin’ with each other’s li’l pink peckers. And besides, he’s on the other side of the shopping plaza.
He took one last sweep before reaching the ground level. Beautiful, nobody treacherous in sight.
Keeping an I-got-a-purpose-here look on his face, he dug through his pockets in the wall locker storage section, opened one of the lockers and pulled out his “grab bag.” The house bricks inside the valise gave his arm just the right amount of strain when he picked it up.
The grab bag. He had to do it fast because they all knew him at the station. Sometimes, when he was high, and consequently invisible, he knew that they couldn’t see him, but he wasn’t high now, although he really wanted to be.
As usual, it popped up in front of him as though someone had deliberately placed it there.
With that sly, all-encompassing look that allowed him to see everybody in a room full of people all at once, he swept the station floor, checking out every face that might seem to be checking him, even as he watched the tall, erect, well-dressed white dude head for the schedule-of-departure board. Satisfied that it was cool, he stood near the suitcase the man had left sitting in the middle of the station.
Elijah sometimes felt like the only man in the world when he did the grab bag … because it was as though everyone knew what he was doing, and out of the hundreds milling around, it seemed only natural that someone would scream on him, but so far, in three years straight, he had only been paranoided out of his game five times.
He took a deep breath as he bent slightly and placed his suitcase near the expensive number. Beautiful, just about the same size.
It didn’t matter if the color were different, that was cool … from a distance the mark would think he had misplaced his bag and be bewildered just long enough for Elijah to cut a corner and
be gone.
He paused in the magazine section, set the suitcase down and browsed through Players for a full fifteen minutes, his heart skipping against his chest like a wet towel.
His whole self wanted to be trotting up the stairs to the outside, to a cab, but he knew from experience that that’s how dudes got caught a lot of times … they’d start rushing up the steps like they were going to catch a train, and what they never remembered … the white man wasn’t stupid, any nigger running up any stairs, anywhere, had to be up to no good.
Finally, calmed down and feeling supercool, he started up the stairs, being careful to pause after every few steps, to allow his hands and wrists a rest from their heavy burden.
Outside the station he hailed a cab and felt such a sense of power that he felt tempted to go back and exchange the valise he had for somebody else’s.
“Where you wanna go, man?” the cab driver, a working man, looked up in the mirror at the man of wits and sneered.
“Forty-seventh ’n King Drive, good brother,” Elijah answered him quietly. Didn’t do too much good to get egotistical with cab drivers, they could help you out sometimes, in different ways.
He looked at the grab bag closely. Nice grained leather, expensive make. Wowwww! I really got one today.
He watched the shading of the people, of the neighborhoods change … from the brick, metal and glass world of where he had gone to feed, so to speak … turn to the rich, soft, lush velvet of black people getting ready to do a beautiful summer Saturday night number. At 43rd Street, he started thinking about what he was going to wear and where he was going to style it off. Maybe with Leelah. I know she’s probably home by now.
CHAPTER 2
He eased into the room behind the sound of Coltrane, checked out the trio of clock radios, the chair with six expensively tailored suits flopped across the back, the two portable television sets, both color, and the wooden box with the wristwatches in it on the dresser. All thieved for.
Leelah Dobbs was sprawled out flat on her belly, talking on the telephone as usual, he noted.
He closed the door softly, sat the grab bag down and looked closely at his main lady. Small, brown, fine. An old slash mark running from her left ear to her cheekbone made a spectacular dimple when she smiled … a thug bitch if ever there was one, both of them out of the same can of worms.