‘Hell, that’s gotta be the nicest way anyone’s called me a tramp!’ I laughed, my skin burning with his words.
‘I ain’t callin’ you a tramp,’ he said, feigning hurt. ‘I sayin’ you got the power to make a man think as you is. Think as he’s gonna get so lucky, you done gone twisted him round your pinkie twice before he’s noticed. Hell, you’re that good, he’d still think you’re kissing him when you’s driving off in his car.’
‘You think I’m that twisted?’
Paris leant closer, and I noticed his eyes, or I remembered noticing they were dark blue, not brown. His lips were moments from mine when he said, ‘You might well be, but that’s my point, I don’t care if you’s the devil hisself, right now.’
He kissed me and the heat of the street beat at the windows and my heart thudded deep and dark inside me. It was pathetic, really; he was pathetic. Give a man an hour’s attention, pretend you think he’s something special, it’s too easy. What was that about if you knew what a man desired, you could con him?
That first night, we walked back to the place I’d rented. I’d been there for a week already, making it look like I intended to stay. I only had days left, my contract was short on purpose. I needed to watch him, I needed to meet him and then I needed to be homeless so I needed his help.
I didn’t turn on the lights. The moon was big and heavy in the sky, full to the brim with expectation, shedding light enough for us both. I touched his face, the edge of his cheek, then the hollow where his skin smoothed under his collarbone. I went to kiss him, but he took hold of my wrist and smiled.
‘You really wanna?’ he asked. ‘We don’t got to do nothin’ here, maybe we’ve already got the best of it. I can go now, I don’t mean to impose on you none.’
‘Do I wanna?’ My cheeks flushed.
‘I’d be careful, opening your doors to strangers,’ he said, but he wasn’t a stranger, I’d been watching. I thought I knew him.
‘I’m pretty good at lookin’ after myself.’
‘I dare say you is.’ He let go of my wrist and slid his hand round my waist, rocking me gently as if we were dancing. ‘So what now? We gonna see how good you are at takin’ care o’ Paris?’
I guessed he was lonely. I guessed he liked me. I guessed he was already doing the math. I guessed that he needed me almost as much as I needed him.
‘Whatever,’ Margarita said, ‘you got him. That’s all we need.’
The first place we stayed together was long and low, a scatter of whitewashed buildings under a neon sign that buzzed on, buzzed off. It shone through our window, painted us from blue to shadow over and over.
He told me – he told Margarita – he was the baby of the family, just like me. Not Margarita, she didn’t have any family, not one she was going to admit to yet, anyway.
‘Baby of the family, Momma always said so.’ She always said he was the clever one too, and that was the thing, people never understood that. Paris was clever.
‘You only got to look at him to see it, but he just don’t fit the way they think he should. Not school clever,’ he said, doing her voice, a smirk at the corner of his eyes. The youngest of the family, all those sisters he named and I couldn’t remember, and aunts and cousins, all there to baby him. I imagined their men, solid, monosyllabic, part of the family and yet somehow outside, circling like basking sharks.
He said his mother said he was clever, but they just couldn’t see it – when he was in detention, when he didn’t make his grades, when he got into trouble. He was clever at school though, just not in the regular way, he said. He learned how to make money.
‘Always ways to do it, even if it were only nickels and dimes. Bug racing, holdin’ my hand up for things other people done wrong, takin’ their punishment, passing love notes. Nickels and dimes.’ Which it had been, at the start. There was never any money at home, certainly not for Paris, however clever – and he hated it. He hated the hand-me-down clothes and the homemade lunches, of whatever his mother could find, and the welfare that was never enough. She did her best, she really did, and when he told me that, the smile was gone from his eyes. She cleaned, worked two jobs, three when she could, with five of them still at home, and their father drifting as if caught in a riptide.
‘Nickels and dimes, then dollars, just so as I could bring something home. Slip it into her purse when she were asleep on the couch, closing her eyes after work.’
I wasn’t sure, but the way he talked, it seemed as if they’d moved from place to place when he was a kid, the father finally getting lost on the way, dropped on the kerb and nobody bothering to go back for him. He told me about one place, out in the sprawling, put-up put-down suburbs, a camelback owned by a friend of an aunt, long, low and painted pink place, that stank all ways round. There was a hole in the roof, and the stairs ran with water when the rain came, and the smell of gasoline and drains, of a tide gone through and gone out. No matter how his momma scrubbed the place, and all of her children, they could never get the stink out.
‘Back then, she were cleanin’ house for this rich old,’ and he paused, only a half second, but enough for me to know he bit back the word white ‘… old lady, livin’ in one of them houses in the nice part of town. One all painted and iced-up somehow, like a wedding cake: white windows, blue walls. Sometimes, me an’ Sally May,’ who was, I think, the sister next in age to him, ‘we’d get the bus over an’ walk round to the place, ‘cause the lady there didn’t mind us if we kept to the kitchen. Momma didn’t like us bein’ in that pink stink-house alone; said the wires weren’t safe.’
They’d drink milk from glasses that weren’t plastic, through candy-striped straws. The old lady even let their mother give them cookies, on real china plates that matched, so long as they didn’t make crumbs.
‘We crept through the house once,’ he said. ‘When the ole lady got Momma to drive her some place. Momma told us to stay in the garden, which we didn’t. Took our shoes off and went all through, lookin’ in that, poking in this. Didn’t take nuttin’, because we was too scared Momma might lose her job if we got caught, but we looked all right.’ I thought of their little fingers, and their eyes: Sally Mae’s brown and Paris’s blue, wide and white rimmed, silently looking into that fancy kind of furniture you get in old people’s houses, with fusty names and the smell of mothballs. The squeak of long closed drawers, summer dresses still in dry-cleaner’s plastic wrap. Black bare feet on a polished wooden floor.
‘Didn’t last though. Momma found the old lady dead, and that were that. Her family had the place sold from under her, ‘bout the time I started Junior High.’ Where he learned how not to be there when he didn’t have to, and not get caught, and how to spend the endless summers keeping out of the sun.
‘I has this friend o’ mine, smaller than the rest of us. Only white kid in our class.’ He was called Jude, or Jute maybe, this kid. They were drawn to each other, both on the edge of things, both cleverer than the world seemed to give them credit for. One time, they’d been picking pennies from the sidewalk, heads bowed for the glint of metal in the gutter. They’d done well and got themselves an ice cream to share. Only, in turning away from the stand, a woman in the queue behind had caught Jude’s arm with her bag, and Jude had dropped their cone. Splat – white exploding against the asphalt.
‘She was all upset about it, o’ course,’ Paris said, ‘oh my, look at that, you poor thing,’ and Jude, smaller than Paris, young looking, burst into tears. ‘So she bought us both another, sprinklings an’ all.’
‘Your first con,’ I said, rolled in sheets that crackled with static, that made the hairs on the back of my neck dance.
‘’Suppose,’ he said. ‘That summer, it was all snow cones, an’ king cake, an’ cotton candy, high as hogs we were. Worked with him, him bein’ all l’ill, an’ white, seein’ as nobody was gonna give the time o’day t’some raggedy ass black kid, now were they?’ Like his momma always said: clever, just not school-clever.
He got up
and went to the bathroom, his long, lean arms loose at his sides. He ran water into the basin and washed his face with his hands. It wasn’t a big room, so he wasn’t that far from me, and I could watch the droplets of water trace his dark skin darker, drawing down his spine, all of him touched with the blue of the neon light. On, off, on, off.
‘Better than picking pockets,’ he said. ‘Dippin’ gets ya caught in the end, same wiv’ shop liftin’, no need for it. People come with money to spend, might as well spend it on a bit of local colour.’
He was taller than Jude, looked older. They hadn’t been friends for long, hardly knew each other by the next summer. He thought Jude’s mom had gotten suspicious of something, said she didn’t like them hanging out together. That’s just how it goes, he said. By the next summer, he’d made a whole lot of new friends and was selling weed – nothing big, just dollar wraps here and there, more to get talking to the herds of college kids and out-of-towners there for a good time, more for a way in, than the money. Then he was taking tips to find them the best tables for an authentic slice of the city, and the best bars for blues and jazz, and the hookers in the walk-ups, one step above the street girls. He was hanging round the edge of places, learning to play cards, craps, dice, running messages, keeping a look out. A lot of money to be made, when you were too clever for school.
‘Helped Momma get her salon, when I could. She started doing weaves an’ shit at home, when the mall she worked at closed, an’ she lost one of her jobs. Got to invest, I told her, make something grow; gotta put the time in.’
‘But not you,’ I said.
‘Naw, not me,’ he said, ‘I ain’t got the time for it, waitin’ round for something to happen.’
It meant there was always somewhere to go, once Momma had the new place over the salon. The salon was something permanent, anchored and weighed down with all those sisters and cousins, and the neighbourhood women coming and going, because his mother, Beatrice, let them pay what they could when they could, knowing as she did that sometimes a wash and set was all that got a woman through the week. All those women, all sure he’d been there when he said he had, should someone come asking after him. Why, hadn’t they seen him come in, taking his time to say hello to them all, each and every one? Such a nice boy, so kind, polite, good to his momma. Sure, he’d been there, well, they were almost sure he had been. As sure as made no difference.
In the motel room, he ran a bath in the narrow, tide-marked tub and got in, his knees up above the soap bubbles like dark cliffs in an arctic sea. I went to the mirror, leaning over the basin to pluck my eyebrows, naked but for the static from the sheets. He watched me, and behind my reflection, I saw him settle his hands behind his head, elbows high.
‘Pop, pop, pop, firecracker,’ he said, his smile flicked over by the neon blue buzz from outside. ‘You’s all fourth of July.’ I smirked at him, just to let him know I was grateful I was.
‘You ever work with someone else, someone now?’ I asked him, turning round to lean against the cold rim of the basin. ‘I mean, I could be like that kid, the one with the ice cream?’
‘Hell, I dunno …’ he lowered his arms, sat forwards in the water.
‘Oh come on, you can’t always work alone, right?’
‘Hell, I ain’t alone. Haven’t I been sayin’, I got my Momma, my—’
‘You know what I mean,’ I said. ‘Think of all the shit we could pull together, what we could do.’ He was laughing, shaking his head. ‘Oh come on, don’t say you haven’t thought about it.’
‘You wanna get rich quick too?’ he asked.
‘You think you’re rich?’ I said, and I stepped right in there with him, water boiling and spilling onto the floor, him struggling to make room for me, laughing, sure the tub was gonna split open on us. ‘I got a thought ‘bout that – us getting real rich, real quick.’
He was so fucking easy, I almost felt sorry for him.
Chapter 17
IN THE MONTHS BEFORE I arrived, I’d been busy. I’d immunized myself to fear. The first time I walked alone into a bar, bought a beer and sat on a dirty plastic stool, my heart pounded at the back of my throat as if it were running the other way. I forced myself to stay put, till a man looked at me and smiled, then I scuttled back to my car.
I made myself talk to them, as I thought Lisa had. I picked out a man in the crowd and saw if I could get him to come to me, to sit next to me, to buy me a drink. Some of them were repugnant, some of them were good company. It didn’t matter. What mattered was how soon I could make them come to me, then it mattered how quickly I could get away.
Paris was different. He was nicer, more charming, more handsome – nice enough to make it a pleasure. A pleasure for Margarita anyway. He was right up her alley, quite her cup of tea. I might have thought him attractive, after a fashion, in passing, though perhaps only Margarita would have slept with him. It didn’t matter; I could only have met him as I did, lounging in a basket chair in the heat of the afternoon.
‘You got the most amazing eyes,’ I told him, my lips brushing his cheek. And he really did, dark blue ones, which I’d never seen before.
‘Momma always said eyes are like birthdays. Women take more notice of ‘em.’
I could see that moment suddenly, sharply, so bright it hurt. The shiver of his mouth on mine, the memory of the heat of his lips so real I touched my mouth. I gasped, pressed the back of my hand to my face, a sob caught in my throat.
He was with me again, but frozen, trapped between the gaps in my memory. Like fireflies, recollections were scattered through the house in the backwoods, eluding my grasp.
Paris – where was Paris?
I remembered the motel, the ‘Pelican Inn’, stretched out along the side of the road, far enough from everywhere for no one to mind much about it. Two floors of orange walls with copper green roofs, a scaffolding of plaster columns and vending machines. There was even a pool, and it was open.
I’d had my hair cut in preparation. Paris hadn’t wanted me to, but he’d agreed to it in the end, after a perfunctory argument. I knew he would, I was good at reading him before I met him, and two months in, I thought I was a past master at it. We’d been testing each other, seeing how far we’d go. We’d both gone further than we’d intended, or so I thought. He didn’t know my real name, but he knew me. Well, he knew Margarita.
It was a nice pool, better than the place that surrounded it. I was a swimmer, and Paris wasn’t, so when I swam each morning, I knew I’d be alone.
‘Did you get it?’ I asked when Paris came into the room. I looked up when I heard his passkey in the door, and my hand lingered over the gun in my vanity bag until I saw his smile.
‘Next time, you can get this sorta shit.’ He grinned. ‘You shoulda seen the look the clerk give me.’
‘Who cares what she thought?’ I said.
‘She? You weren’t there, he thought I was going to look real pretty!’ Paris hooked his hand on his hip and struck a pose. ‘Real purdy!’
‘Stop messin’,’ I said, laughing at him. He threw the bag at me and closed the door.
‘This why you got your hair cut, why you so set on bein’ blond?’ He came into the room and threw his jacket on the chair. He stretched his long, limber arms up above his head. ‘Sure is hot out there today, you’s gonna be sweatin’ in that thing.’
The wig was wrapped in a plastic bag, with a smiling woman looking back at me from it. I took it out and jammed it on my head, my vision fogged with platinum strands until I wiped them clear. My sister’s face looked back at me from the mirror over the vanity table.
‘Shoot,’ Paris said, and I knew he saw it too. He sat heavily on the bed, looking at me.
‘What you think?’ I said, unable to resist the urge to make him slip up.
‘I’ll take me the brunette,’ he said. ‘I think I like her more.’
‘Really?’ I stood up and came over to him, reached out with my finger and touched his shoulder. ‘You don’t want to cheat on
me with me?’ I put my finger in my mouth and bit down.
‘Aw c’mon, please …’ I climbed onto the bed, onto his lap, and he couldn’t resist, couldn’t help getting hold of my thighs as I encircled his neck with my arms.
‘Come on, don’t you want a piece of this …?’
‘Sure, but that wig …’ He smiled at me, shaking his head, his thumb idly slipping under the edge of my shorts.
‘It ain’t for your benefit.’ I smiled, eyes wide and watching him. ‘It’s for old Red Rooster and his Daddy, so he thinks as I’m a sweet li’l thing what needs his help.’ I reached up and gathered the wig into bunches with my hands. ‘You think this is too much, or is it just the right side of white trash?’ I laughed, but Paris didn’t. He let go of me and leant back, elbows on the bed behind him and looked away from me.
‘Take it off,’ he said. ‘It’s too hot for it now, you gotta wear it tomorrow. Anyway, like I said, I prefer you dark.’
‘What’s eatin’ you?’ I said. ‘Look, this all an act, you know that?’
‘Sure I do.’ I made a move to get off his lap, but he grabbed hold of my waist. ‘I said take off the wig, not get off o’ me.’ He grinned, but he didn’t look in my eyes until I’d dropped the wig on the bedroom floor, then he turned the full power of his gaze on me.
‘Why you gettin’ all freaky?’ I asked, running my fingertips along the edge of his neck. I traced the hard line of his collarbone, his skin made velveteen by the bloom of sweat.
He took hold of my leg. ‘Freaky? Hell, girl, I’ll show you freaky.’ His thumb ran up the inside of my thigh, letting it lead his fingers underneath the leg of my shorts. ‘If you’s in the mood for a li’l freaky.’
‘You know what I mean.’
Paris laughed, his smile deep and wide as he pulled me closer.
‘Oh, I know what you mean.’ He twisted off my shirt, and we made love in the dirty heat of the motel room, with the sound of the road outside and the whirl and buzz of the air conditioning, until the money ran out and it juddered to a stop.
Nemesister: The gripping women's psychological thriller from Sophie Jonas-Hill Page 13