by Odie Hawkins
He heard his words and felt, somehow, that they were a continuation of some argument they had had, from some other time.
“That’s the kind of thinkin’ that will keep you down in the ghetto, just another li’l black hustler!” she shot back at him, also going back to an earlier “discussion,” both of them feeling slightly nutted out on their highs.
“You neurotic white punk bitch!”
He was across the room, slamming his fists to her head and jaw before the word was fully released. “Nigggg …!” A few wild chops cut her down. He stood over her feeling murderous.
“Oohhh, my God! I didn’t mean … I didn’t mean to call you anything wrong … I’m sorry … sorry … sorry …”
He looked down into her pleading eyes, hating her. “Bitch! The nerve of you! callin’ me a nigger. I oughta stomp your ass into the ground!”
Clotille groveled on the rug around his pants cuffs, a caricature of a woman begging for absolution. “Phillip, please forgive me … I didn’t mean …”
He stumbled, pulling his leg out of her grasp, walked to the door and turned to spit on the floor before opening it. “That’s what I think of you!” he said coldly and walked out scowling.
Outside in the corridor, he leaned his ear against the door to listen to her drunken sobs, feeling pleased with himself about it all, about how quickly he had handled things.
He had double feelings, heading toward the elevator … one part of him aroused by her pathetic sounds and the treatment he knew she would give him if he went back. But his head prevailed. She would be more and more a problem as time went on because that’s where they had been headed from the beginning … his vibes had told him that, and besides, she was a Taurus.
Waiting for the elevator, a developing erection flashed his mind back and forth, from going back down the hallway to Clotille to paying Ramona Brown a visit. Ramona, he decided, that’s what I need, a li’l soul work …
He didn’t pay the woman much attention as she stood beside him, waiting for the elevator … just another middle-aged, trying-to-be-young white woman with a crinkly tan.
She crinkled her mouth into a patronizing smile as she hesitantly stepped into the elevator with him. “Are you delivering something in the building?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m delivering bad, black vibrations. You want some?”
She shook her head unconsciously and stared at the wooden panels in the elevator with the dull look of someone who had been severely shocked.
“And you too, ol’ jiveass, Unca’ Tom son of a bitch!”
He called back to the doorman, watching him kowtow to the white woman as he walked down the street, looking for a cab, on his way to Sister Brown’s house.
He felt her eyes on his face even before he was fully awake. Which one was this? he asked himself as he slowly fluttered his eyes open.
Ramona. Yeah, right. Now I remember. Fucked up, being stopped by the pigs over on the Other side, taken to the nearest bus stop. A bus to 35th Street and then a cab to Ramona’s.
He stared at her. Five feet, two inches tall, coffee ’n cream colored, one hundred and fifteen delicious pounds, unmarried, under twenty-four years old and square as a brick.
“Phil?”
Elijah frowned slightly, a bad, thick taste in his mouth. Phil? Oooh yes … I am Phillip Dobson. God! I bet this young bitch would die if she found out that she had been screwin’ a dude whose name wasn’t even what she thought it was … either that or she’d go nuts.
“Hmmmmmm?” he mumbled, sliding his left leg across both of her lush thighs.
“You know … my boyfriend is really mad at me.”
Elijah reached over to the bedside table for a cigarette, decided to smoke the rest of the joint they had started on last night. Nothing better than starting off the day high. Wonder where she gets this dynamite?
“Why?” he asked, holding his second deep hit in.
“Well … he wanted to see me on Friday, but you said you were coming over, so I cancelled him out … but you didn’t show up.”
“Had somethin’ to do, baby. You know how that is.” He spoke softly and blew a stream of smoke into her face.
“Then he called me at work yesterday to ask me if he could see me tonight … but I didn’t know if you were coming over, so … I … uhh …”
Elijah cocked a hot eye at her bare breasts. “When are you all supposed to be gettin’ married?”
“Next month,” she answered shyly, pulling the cover up over her breasts.
Elijah stubbed the joint out and slid down in bed, pulling her with him.
“Heyyyy, baby,” he reassured her, feeling a slight resistance. “I can’t git it all. There’ll be enough left for that young fool. I’m just seasonin’ it up a li’l bit for ’im.”
She buried her face in the muscles of his chest and sighhhed. “Phil, you just make me feel terrible … just terrible.”
He smiled down on her perma-straightened head. Yeah, I just bet I do …
CHAPTER 8
Elijah blew a long whistle of amazement to discover that there was a parking space practically in front of the Afro Lounge … known up until two weeks before as the Tiger Lounge.
The sign in the window said in bold, florid letters, “Under New Management,” but Elijah and the other regulars knew that there was no new management, the owner’s ol’ lady had just simply gotten tired of calling the place the Tiger Lounge and had decided to go for something she felt would be more relevant.
He made certain that the fast ladies tripping around outside the club and all of the telegraphers spotted him as he was parking his car. It was two years late but filled with gleaming fixtures and stuffed with imitation black panther upholstery.
The Toe was responsible for him having it, clearing the deck with someone to make certain he was riding, at half the price someone else would have had to pay. “A dude who can sell like you, bruh … oughta be in the saddle.”
Elijah had added gangster whitewalls and now he was on the scene, stylin’ for the people who could really dig such things.
He took his time to lock the door and to double-check his defense system, installed primarily to prevent dope fiends and others from ripping his tapes and cassettes off.
He straightened up and turned to face the flickering neon lights, on stage, his stage. The street vibes and the Bolivian cocaine in his nostrils told him it was Saturday night and all was well.
His timing was excellent. They were all there, even the ones he had wanted to see when he first returned to the set, but couldn’t. Yeahhhh, they were all there, waiting for him, it seemed to him … staring down at the twisted faces, the smiling faces, the ugly faces, the pretty faces, the faces of all the people he had been seeing in dreams and nightmares, ever since he had decided to do his thang.
“Bruh ’Lijah, c’mon on over here, lemme spend some o’ this dirty money on buying you a drink!” Precious Percy, the pimp, called out to him, admiring his stance in the door, recognizing coke macho. Elijah slowly strutted along the length of the bar to a stool beside Precious, nodding coolly to the people he felt some cohesion with.
Precious ordered drinks and turned to Elijah, loaded himself. “You oughta come on into my line o’ work, bruh … you were cut out for it, and believe me, I wouldn’t say that to one nigger in a thousand … ’course, I have to admit that ho’s ain’t quite what they used to be …”
“Too much strain ’n pain, Precious. I’m havin’ enough trouble tryin’ to keep my shit together, freelance … and besides, I couldn’t take the hours.”
Precious laughed quietly and shrugged. “Yeahhh, I hear ya, brotherman, I hear ya.”
Sid the Shark paused between the two men, checking out the action out of the corner of his eye. “What the fuck you two slick ass motherfuckers plottin’?”
Both of them turned smiles on him … Sid was not one to be casually out on Saturday night, his thing was business, business and more business.
“Heyyy,
Sid, what’s goin’ on?”
“Yeahhh, what’s happenin’, Sid?”
Sid roved his pouchy, foxy eyes all over a trio of dazzling young female bodies at a nearby table before answering. “I got my hands full … tryin’ to keep these young fools away from what’s righteously mine.”
Percy and Elijah exchanged winks, following Sidney’s gaze; if there was one thing the Shark really loved, it was young pussy.
He drifted away as Nick and Leelah strolled in; Nick, catching sight of Elijah before Leelah did, looked away nervously. Elijah smiled maliciously in their direction.
“See. Now that’s the kind of shit that makes your job hard.”
Precious nodded at the sight of two women in a gossip session on the sidewalk. He paid for the drinks and started out. “I’ll catch you in a li’l bit, blood … I gotta git out here ’n shake this young bitch up.”
“Got somethin’ new?” Elijah asked, checking out the scene beyond the plate glass and the neon.
“I keep somethin’ new, that’s the name of the game.”
Elijah studied the reaction of the two women as they saw Precious Percy walk out of the bar. The one who didn’t belong to him immediately eased across the street in a rush.
As though it were a scene from a play in pantomime, the young, inexperienced prostitute’s eyes wobbled in fright.
The blow, a hard, fast, right hook caught her under the left ear. Elijah involuntarily grimaced with vicarious pain.
Percy grabbed her under the armpits and forced her to stand up, mouthing quick, precise instructions as he did so. Elijah knew, from having heard it many times before, that Precious Percy the Pimp was re-stating the ground rules.
He finished his drink and decided to move on, to make an entrance at some other joint. He turned slowly on the bar stool to stare coldly at Leelah and Nick, seated at one of the tables on the other side of the room. What the hell, he thought, why create a scene? when you move you lose.
Nick wet his lips and struck up a sudden conversation with a couple at the next table. Leelah stared back defiantly.
Elijah slid off the stool and made a grand exit, his head smoky, his chest out, his cool intact.
Percy strolled over to him as he walked out of the door, massaging his knuckles.
“She shapin’ up, Precious?” Elijah asked, knowing that the eyes of the players inside were checking them out.
“She’ll be awright in a couple nights, or else she’ll be on a train to Montana, or … somewhere.”
“Tough titty …” Elijah started off, holding out both palms for the five-soul spank.
“But we needs the milk.” Precious finished off the sentence and gave Elijah double fives.
“Oh … if you see Nick ’n Leelah inside, with sweat beads runnin’ down the sides of they faces, tell ’em the big E said hello, willya?”
Precious allowed a brief smile to coat his mouth, enjoying the flavor of the lightweight intrigue. “Right on, blood … you gettin’ on, huh?”
“Yeahhh,” Elijah winked, “I got some business to take care.”
“I hear ya, man … later.”
“Yeahhh, later on, Precious.”
Elijah popped into his ’chine and started driving, his moods alternating between high and low.
The lights of the Southside purred, flickered to him, made him park his car a few times and wander in and out, under their invitations.
A drink in the Living Room, the last of the cocaine in the men’s room of the Matador Club, the powder almost slipping from his thumbnail as two drunks pushed their way into the narrow toilet. A flirtatious conversation with a forty-year-old housewife, out in the family station wagon, trying to get a little bit of what she had been hearing about for ten years of dull, married life. The Singapore for a funny-named drink and some greasy wonton, more flirtation, this time with a couple gays from California … what the hell, if it wasn’t for ass, where would pussy be?
Two a.m., the after hours set at Livin’ Swell’s place.
“I know all you motherfuckers is jealous o’ me.”
“Why man?” someone was obligated to ask, a line that always had to be recited at some point, on Saturday night, in Livin’ Swell’s place.
“Why? ’cause I’m livin’ swell, that’s why,” the fat man blew on cue and kept tending bar, charging a quarter more per drink because it was after hours, and he needed all the money he could make, to keep on livin’ swell.
Listening to the developing roar of the crowd as the horses headed into the stretch, and the old gowster’s tall, sad story of what the old days used to be like was exciting, disturbing, interesting. He glanced up at the board and casually ripped his lost bet in half. Another dog.
“Ain’t havin’ too much luck, huh, junior?” The old gowster pinned him with a shrewd look.
Elijah glared at the old dude postured in front of him, half man, half facade, all hustler, and smiled. Yeahhh, to him, at fifty odd, having played all games, everybody was junior something or other.
“You know how it is, you win some, you lose a few.”
The old timer swallowed his sarcastic reply and looked over both shoulders, as though suspecting a hand would snatch him away. “Uhhh, say, looka here, junior … I wonder if you might be able to slap a slat on me? I got a hot tip on this next one.”
Elijah leaned back on the kidney-shaped sofa, watching Toe divide a medium-sized pyramid of cocaine into six thick lines, fifteen hundred dollars in his pocket. The smile on his face stemmed from and covered the memory of the last five races. What had happened after he had loaned (given, actually) the ol’ hustler (what’shisname?) ten dollars?
In a word, everything! he decided; at least it came to one grand and a half. A lot to smile about. Luck? why not call it that?
Toe’s lady, a half something and half something else, with eyes like a cat’s and stacked stone to the bone wandered through, fluffing up the pillows on the sofa across from them. Toe nodded her out of the room and handed Elijah a strawed-up twenty-dollar bill. “Here you go, blood.”
Elijah bent over the low, Afro-Danish coffee table in front of them and snorted a line up each nostril.
Toe did the same thing and called out, as though he were signalling to a favorite pet. “Hassani, com’mere!”
She reappeared from one of the other rooms, billowing in in a see-through caftan, her reddish-black hair streaming down behind. Was she an Arab? No wonder Toe was sitting up in blood-red polka-dot drawers and undershirt.
She held her hair gracefully off to one side and bent over to snort two lines. Elijah tried to keep his eyes on some neutral spot in the room as she flowed away.
“Go ’head, man … the last two is yours.”
Elijah bent back over the table, feeling as though cold wire brushes were being brushed across the bridge of his nose, a zing feeling.
The last two lines froze the zing feeling, slowed it down. When he held his head back up, he had the sensation that he was sitting up straighter than he had ever sat in his life.
“So, you wanna cut us loose, huh?”
He had to pinch his nostrils together a few times, to somehow control the zing feeling that had now turned into a dry ice cube oozing down the back of his throat. Goddamn! talk about coke! This shit must be almost pure girl.
“Well, like I told you before, man … I wanted a stake, you know, to get the front I needed. You gave me that and I’m grateful … but now it’s time for me to get down with my very own thang.”
“Yeah, I hear ya, bruh … I hear ya, whatchu got in mind?”
Elijah looked around the room, collecting himself. “Oh, I got a couple or three ideas.”
Toe responded with a sly look on his face, his eyes widened by the coke. “That’s cool. You don’t have to run it down to me. I know it must be somethin’ really groovy if you wanna cut the pots ’n pans thang loose.”
“Well, you know how it is … if you used to doin’ your own thang … besides, the pots ’n pans scene is to
o much like work.”
Toe burst into hysterical laughter for a full minute, leaving Elijah to wonder whether or not he was laughing at what he had just said, or whether he was just laughing period.
“Yeah, I can dig it! I can dig it! run it down to me? Hassani, come get somethin’ on the TV!” Toe ran things together, forgetting that he had just absolved Elijah from explaining what his new deal might be.
The coke in Elijah’s head made him stare boldly at the full moon split of Hassani’s behind as she bent over to adjust the huge color television set a few feet across from them.
“You don’t want the sound, do you?” she asked without looking around.
“Nawww, just the picture. Ain’t she got a helluva ass on ’er?”
Toe’s question jarred Elijah slightly. “Uhhh … right on!”
As she eased away from in front of the screen, the colored images flickering in front of their faces pulled them both into the tube. Elijah blinked his eyes with the clarity of what he was seeing. Who was the black dude on the screen raising hell in front of all those people? Who was he?
“Motherfucker sho’ got a big mouth, ain’t he?”
Toe broke the spell.
The militant young dude in front of the store … the day he and Nick had been out doing the short change game? Yeahhh, the same one. He must really be serious.
“I been checkin’ into the black, black thing,” Elijah started off slowly, his eyes glued to the figure on the screen.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, you know, Afro pride ’n shit. There’s a lot o’ dough to be made in all that. ’Member Wimpy?”
“Wimpy the junkie?”
“Uh huh, Wimpy the junkie. I got word in the joint that Wimpy had gotten hisself together, got somebody to write him up a proposal, sent it to some government office and would up with twenty-five grand to set up an anti-drug rehab program … twenty-five grand!”
“Yeahhh, yeahhh, that’s happenin’ these days. When they ain’t throwin’ niggers in concentration camps, they givin’ money to set up en-counter groups ’n shit … to try to keep everybody cooled out.”