Airtight Willie & Me

She turned and walked over. I handed her a joint. She pranced back to the window hitting the joint. I unwrapped her toilet paper package a bit to peep. A dime-sized circle of jewels winked at me from an inner wrapping of “C” notes and fifties. It had to be the sting from the husky sucker in the Buick. Had she baited it out like that to excite me out of position when I cracked to see the contents?

  I restored the wrapping and went to the bedroom. I was on my way to the shower when the doorbell chimed. I opened to the old joker on the desk with Phil’s Jeroboam of bubbly and glasses. He nearly tripped himself gazing at Sue’s caboose as he went to the cocktail table with the tray.

  I said, “Thanks, Pops, I’ll take care of you when I come down tomorrow.”

  He made that lopsided circle with his fingers before he split.

  I speed showered and added on French cologne with its dusting powder. I heard the pop of a cork. I slipped into a pair of Phil’s crimson satin pajamas. I stood before a mirrored wall and brushed my hair until it shone. My reflection, with my widow’s peak and slumberous eyes, made me look a bit like Satan. Well, anyway, at least like one of Satan’s pets afire in the red pajamas. I was beginning to feel like a pimp again, all right. I hit the gangster roach and stepped into the arena.

  She was lounging on the sofa with her legs agape. As I passed her, I paused to check for trance. She sipped and gazed up at me over the rim of her glass. She was on her way under again. Her eyes were getting dreamy and smoky hot again.

  She gave me a glass of wine. I dipped a finger in and painted her lips. I licked and sucked it off her mouth. She pressed her cheek against my crotch. She kissed the imprint of my organ as I moved to sit on the cushions at the other end of the sofa. The big vein on the side of her neck was swollen and jerking.

  “What a womb sweeper,” she exclaimed.

  She lunged to my side and glued her curves against me. I held her and silently sipped my wine for several minutes like a joker with his mind on a private expedition to secret things and places. Sweet Dinah was dripping “I’m Confessin’ ” from the hi-fi again. She nibbled through the satin to my nipple.

  It tickled when she whispered into my chest, “You thinking about her . . . your dead lady . . . ain’t you?”

  I said, “No, babykins . . . a living lady . . . my mama.”

  She snuggled closer and said, “What’s she like? Tell me about her.”

  This was my cue to push her emotional buttons to prep her for the contract. I sang the tune slowly from the bitter roots of my own pain and poisonous ambivalence for Mama.

  I stage-whispered, “All right, but something bothers me, babykins. I can’t figure why I’m not with Mama . . . after the joint . . . on my birthday. Jesus Christ! She’d be so happy. She was a country girl . . . barefoot ’til she was sixteen. My old man ambushed her with sucker sweet talk and popped a squealer in her gut . . . me . . . They split the Big Foot cotton slave scene and hit the Big Windy kitchen slave scene in nineteen eighteen. You know, white folks’ mansions and hotels. They had discovered the Promised Land, all right.

  “Right off, my old man copped some loudmouthed suits . . . His introduction and sample of white pussy . . . It freaked the nigger out! I was six months old . . . Must have been a sonuvabitching stumble block to his nightlife chumping around. He and Mama fought like pit bulldogs one early bright . . . He pranced home stone broke with his fly fouled with ‘come’ . . . his mustache starched with cunt juice . . . He beat the puking, living crap out of Mama . . . He bounced me off a tenement wall to close his act . . . He split with a cardboard suitcase and his pearl grey spats flashing in the zero wind. Mama had a nice round ass with a Watusi face and lollipop knockers. Why, shit, any other young country broad equipped like that would’ve dumped a squealer and split to the bright lights and some high-class dick.”

  Sue trembled against me as she finger-stroked my temple. Her eyes were damp with empathy.

  “. . . But Mama was a blue-ribbon Mama to the bone . . . She bundled me in an old army jacket . . . took a curling iron and some grease to the streets . . . dressed hair door to door for a lousy half buck a shot . . .”

  She pressed her glass against my lips. I took a sip, then raced my tongue a few laps inside her mouth.

  “Tell me more, Slim! Tell me more!” she pleaded.

  I went on with the painful narrative. “Well, somehow, she put together a survival kit that took us through the soup kitchens, bread lines, apple hucksters on every corner nightmare of the Great Depression. I was nine . . . maybe ten when she got tired, I guess . . . You know, the struggle must have been a bitch of a drain . . . Anyway, a big, ugly black galoot chased her until she caught him. He wasn’t her style . . . She was a sucker for good-looking bums . . . like my old man.

  “I remember how Mama would cringe away from Henry’s kisses . . . She hated him. But he was the only father I ever knew . . . and I loved him! Mama dreamed I’d be a lawyer . . . Henry swore he’d see to it . . . opened the plushest black beauty shop in Rockford, Illinois, for Mama.

  “She got the hots for a two-bit hustler one day who brought his pretty face her way . . . dropped in to get his nails done. Just like that, she split with him back to the Windy. I cried until my guts dry locked . . . The pretty bastard was so cruel to us! Tried to turn her out. Mama cut him loose finally. But it was too late for me . . . I was already street poisoned. Maybe I got a secret hate for Mama hidden deep in my soul, because Henry died from a broken heart after she split. Maybe that’s why I’m punishing her. Why I’m not with her on my birthday. Maybe I want her dead and stinking like Henry. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to see her happy for even one day.”

  The Mama rundown worked like a mojo. She leapt to her feet with eyes brimming tears. Her body was twanging emotion.

  She said with righteous heat, “Slim, you all fucked up in your head about your mama. You ain’t hip she’s a saint? Shit, lemme tell you about my chippie-ass, dead and stinking Mama—that half-white Creole bitch treated Papa and me like dogs. You know why? ’Cause we had black skins. She only married him ’cause he had a farm and a few bucks. Her ass was dragging. She was played out as a chickenshit flat-backer ho in Baton Rouge.

  “I got an older sister that thinks she’s white—she got the new shoes and pretty dresses. She was high and mighty Miss Anne. I had to wait on that bitch hand and foot or get my head busted. Papa and me picked the motherfucking cotton and slopped the hogs. Papa and me did the cooking and the washing. Mama and Miss Anne kept their asses pretty and prissy like muckety-muck white bitches. Papa caught her sucking a white man’s dick in the barn. He killed her and the white man.”

  Her voice broke, staggered the bitter rim of hysteria. “I’m glad he did. I’m glad she’s in her grave, dead and stinking. I’m just so sorry poor Papa had to do it.”

  I pulled her down beside me and said gently, “What happened to your papa?”

  She made a strangulated sound of anguish in her throat and stared into nowhere like a sleepwalker. She almost whispered, “I found him in a pond. I didn’t know what the thing was at first there in the bloody water. They beat, shot, and axed him to pieces . . . poor Papa!”

  She collapsed in my arms. Great heaving sobs of sorrow racked her. I rocked her in my arms like an infant until she got herself together somewhat.

  She said, “Slim, will you do something for me?”

  I said, “Sure, anything.”

  She looked me dead in the eyes. “Go over there and call your mama.”

  I said, “What the hell am I gonna tell her?”

  She said, “Tell her you love her, Slim. Make her happy . . . Make me happy, Slim.”

  She followed me to the phone, embracing my waist from behind. I put through the call and awakened Mama in Milwaukee. I talked to Mama for twenty minutes. She kept whispering to me to introduce her. I did, and she and Sue hit it off swell for an hour.

  Before Sue hung up, she made me happy. She said to Mama, “Honey, we will be dropping in on you one day soo
n.” Then she looked into my face for a long moment and said, “Kiss me. I wouldn’t bullshit your mama. I’m your girl!”

  I kissed her for real.

  She said, “Close your eyes, Birthday Bunny.”

  I did. Shortly, I felt her fingers at my pajama coat. I opened my eyes. I fingered the stickpin. She slapped the roll of bills in my hand.

  She said, “There’s fifteen hundred there . . . now let’s fuck, Daddy!”

  I led her on off to bed. We made love until noon. I wondered whether I could beat the gorilla to the draw when I staked my claim to his woman. I couldn’t have legal pimp title until I faced him with her since he was available in town. We lay in Phil’s emperor-sized bed, steeped in the odor of our love juices. We made our plans to hustle tough for a year before we would make a home for Carla, her daughter.

  Finally I said, “Let’s get up and do what we have to do.”

  She said, “You mean catch a plane out of here?”

  I said, “No, I mean let’s go drop the bad news on Jabbo. You know, and get your things.”

  She propped herself up in the bed and squeezed my face with her eyes before she said, “We don’t need to take a risk like that. You don’t know Jabbo. I boosted everything I got. I can steal a new wardrobe. Let’s just split, Daddy. Okay?”

  I eased Phil’s snub-nosed rod from between the mattresses. I said, “We’ve got to do it right . . . We’ve got to face him . . . This rod makes us equal.”

  She sighed and slipped out of bed to shower. I lit a joint and tried to figure just how to accomplish the mission and leave it in a perpendicular position. I mean alive! I called the desk to locate Phil. He answered from Bitsy’s room.

  He said sleepily, “Pally, you and that ho are in serious trouble if you ain’t got no understanding. Miss Bowlegs pulled Jabbo’s coat that you and Sue were fucking around.”

  I said, “She’s my girl. We’re on the way to break the news to him. Then we’re splitting. I’m gonna check out the afternoon plane schedules.”

  Phil chuckled, “Bring me my piece, nigger. Did the ho give you claiming dough to cop a forty-one hog that runs like a scalded dog?”

  I said, “Look, Phil, I need your piece to brace that nigger. Who’s selling the hog? And what’s the bite?”

  He said, “It’s my old hog, and the bite is a measly grand to you, pally. C’mon and cop it so you can ease in and cop the ho’s clothes and hit the road.”

  I said, “Phil, you drunk? You think that nigger will let us ease in his crib like that? If he’s not there, he’ll be staked out for sure.”

  He said, “He ain’t in town. I dropped the word in the street that you and the ho had split to Akron. I tailed him to the highway myself . . . Get here, nigger, and take care of your business!”

  I hung up woozy with relief.

  Phil’s forty-one Fleetwood I bought was a black beauty. At a distance, it was almost as clean as his new forty-six. We made a fast raid and copped Sue’s clothes. Late that night a rainstorm struck at the edge of a town in Illinois. I was dozing on the seat beside her.

  Suddenly she said, “Daddy, look!”

  She pointed at a skeletal white man with a slicker draped across his gaunt shoulders, cape style. There was something eerie about him. He was standing motionless.

  His stark white face glowed in the storm. He looked like a statue of Count Dracula.

  As she cruised the Caddie past him, she said excitedly, “That paddy gives me wild stinging vibes. You take the wheel when I pull over. I’m going back and shake him down. Daddy, he’s sweet and loaded. I feel it!”

  She pulled to the curb two blocks away and started to open the car door.

  I said, “Sugarface, pass him up . . . Don’t play for him. I got a helluva bad feeling nudging me about him.”

  She sprang out of the car and slammed the door. I slid across the seat fast to open the door to physically stop her. I mean, that joker really turned me off. She turned twelve feet away. In an explosion of lightning, her doll face was radiant with stealing lust. She blew me a kiss and waggled “bye-bye” with her fingers. You know, like a little kid who is just going to the grocer on the corner.

  I’ll never forget how I felt as I watched her tiny figure disappear, forever, in the storm. In the distance, I saw what looked like the taillights of a pickup truck flash on like bloody orbs and disappear into the raging blackness.

  For 36 hours, I didn’t shave, eat, or bathe. I searched everywhere. I called the local police station.

  I disguised my voice. You know, laced it with a Slavic accent, pitched down to a guttural register to make it sound indigenous to the area. I reported that I had seen a nigger girl kidnapped in a pickup truck. I gave the description of the ghoul in the slicker. I hung up when asked my name. I went to the local newspaper office and bought a subscription to their rag. I gave Mama’s address in Milwaukee.

  I was in a blind fugue of shock all the way home. I had no recollection of the trip. My room and it’s mementos of my junior high school days were intact. I looked about it and guessed that Mama had preserved it as a kind of shrine to cushion her loneliness and guilt for her hots for that ho-faced sonuvabitch long ago.

  There on the wall, a faded blue felt banner. On the dresser top, a gleaming trophy I won for the hundred-yard dash. There, against the wall, a rickety Flexible Flyer sled. An eight by ten blowup of me at five seated on the lap of a padded department store Santa Claus.

  Holy Christ! . . . What a rack of torture she must have been on. Blaming herself for my terminal street poisoning. Suffering that I wasn’t that upright, silver-tongued mouthpiece she’d dreamed me to be.

  I got really blue and sad that fate had dealt us a black card from the bottom. I was torn down with that, and Sue, to make it worse. I went to Mama’s bedroom. You know, to comfort her, to tell her I loved her, like Sue had begged me to do. Mama was on her knees praying for Sue before a homemade altar. What the hell could I do but get down on my knees beside her and pretend to pray?

  At midnight, that first day, I unpacked Sue’s bags. I sat on the side of the brass four-poster and opened her album of pictures. Ah! There she was, barefoot in a rough cotton dress, squinting in the sun as she lovingly held a puppy against her cheek. A shot of her father, riding a mule, a black-as-midnight tiny guy. His face was seamed and ruined by stoop slavery in the cotton fields beneath the inferno sun.

  Her octoroon mother, the Baton Rouge strumpet, appeared surprisingly beautiful and innocent in a white dress. The closet monster was posed with Sue’s porcelain-skinned sister before the backdrop of the scabrous death barn watching a polka-dotted sow suckling piglets. Ah! Sue and her daughter, with Sue’s string bean Cajun husband, standing proudly in front of the gumbo greasy spoon they owned before the gorilla came Sue’s way and turned her out.

  I closed the album and went to bed. I hadn’t closed my eyes all night when Mama called me for breakfast at eight. Two days later, the first paper from Illinois arrived. Sue had made news all right. Horrendous news! I uncontrollably jiggled the paper as I read the account of her end. The fiend she had played for was an escaped nut from an asylum for the criminally insane. He had taken her to an abandoned farmhouse. He had crucified her and tortured her to death with his teeth and a hunting knife.

  Two teenagers, hunting rabbits out of season and drawn to the presence of the fiend’s stolen pickup truck, had peeked through a window and saw her nailed to a wall. When the rollers showed, the fiend was in a drunken stupor on the floor beneath her corpse.

  Mama and I flew to claim the orphan’s body. I can’t forget that sunny afternoon I walked into the morgue to identify her—that is, what was left of her. The attendant pulled her out of the cooler bin. He jerked away a bloody and filth-pocked rubber sheet like she was dog meat. I gazed down at her and retched.

  That inhuman cocksucker had hacked and scraped off her crow breast mane of shining hair that had leapt from her temples in spectacular, voluptuous waves. Her skull was crisscrossed and g
ouged with knife slashes. Her doll face was unrecognizable, except for the stable pony eyes staring blankly into mine. The cupid bow mouth had been lumped hideous from punches. Her teeth were bared in a macabre grin. Her body was measled with cigarette burns. Her honey-dipped breasts were ragged stumps. The satin belly was disemboweled from her breast bone to pubic hair. Her fingers were missing, and the butt of a cigarette protruded from her vulva. I staggered away, vomiting all the way to the sidewalk.

  We buried Sue that week from Mama’s church. We got the location of Sue’s infant daughter’s foster home from Sue’s address book. Mama shipped Sue’s stuff to Carla.

  In the limo, on the way from the cemetery, I told Mama about Sue’s plans and dreams to square up and open a restaurant to make a decent home for Carla, her daughter. Mama broke down and wailed like a crumb crusher. Small wonder. Mama had lost her dream too, a billion tears ago.

  Thirty years later, whenever I see a pygmy fox with indigo, velour skin and pony eyes, or see a shimmering mane of crow breast hair, or hear a smoky voice, I get a lump in my throat remembering Black Sue.

  LONELY SUITE

  I tossed restlessly in the emperor-size bed in the Big Windy. The moon-drenched branches of a wind-mauled tree outside the bedroom window cavorted spectral shadows about the suite. Raucous March gales screeched off Lake Michigan. I felt a bleak loneliness, a nameless apprehension. I chain-smoked as a blond console in the living room issued Ellas’s new hit wail about the loss of her “Little Yellow Basket.”

  I was startled from my counting of the gold satin ruffles on the bed’s canopy by the jangle of the telephone on the nightstand. I froze and stared at the phone for a long moment. Three A.M.! Was it Phyl, my one and only mud-kicker calling from the slams? Had some mugger on Sixty-third Street slugged and robbed her? Had some trick maimed her?

  I picked up with vast relief to friend Gold Streak’s frog-in-a-log voice. “How ya doing, Slim?” he shouted above a background of honky-tonk pandemonium.

  “Great, Streak,” I said. “You must be balling at Small’s Paradise, or maybe at the Cotton Club?”