Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents)

  He said, “Now you can question me if you want to, Clarence, but I know what I know. And right now I know that you got some hot young girl on your mind,” he insisted. “I can smell it all over you like a skunk.”

  Clarence had to watch himself. He realized the more he said, the more convinced Maurice would become in his assumptions. And the thing that made it worse was that his devious coworker was right. Clarence had been thinking about the joy and pain of Brenda’s body all damn day; the joy of how good she felt when he hugged her, and the pain he felt about it being wrong.

  Shit! he thought to himself. Just leave it be, man, leave it be.

  He told Maurice, “If you say so, man,” and left it at that as they reached their separate cars.

  Clarence climbed into his full-sized, light-blue Oldsmobile, and Maurice climbed behind the wheel of his long, black BMW. And when they pulled out together toward the exit with Clarence out in front, he could see Maurice smiling his ass off from inside of his rearview mirror.

  Clarence shook his head and ignored it.

  Outside in the small parking lot of the bank, Clarence sat behind the wheel of his Oldsmobile, contemplating his emotions. It wasn’t just the money he was ready to withdraw for the distressed college girl, but how he felt about giving it to her.

  I didn’t feel this way with her about the buddy pass flight tickets, he told himself. But I do the buddy pass with a lot of people. This right here is something different, he reasoned. So he sat there unmoved in his car as the time inched closer to four o’clock.

  “Look, either you’re gonna do it or you’re not,” he told himself out loud. “You already told the girl that you would do it. So get on in there and take care of business.”

  He forced himself to climb out of his car and write a check to withdraw six hundred and fifty dollars of hard cash from his personal bank account. Then he called Brenda on her cell phone to meet up.

  “Hel-low,” she answered, sounding irritated.

  Clarence didn’t expect her sour tone, so he paused a minute. So her disturbing tone of voice created a feeling of regret and apprehension.

  “Hey, it’s ah, Clarence,” he answered calmly.

  Brenda’s attitude changed instantly. “Oh, hi, Clarence. I’m sorry. I thought it was someone else calling me. But did you get the money?”

  He hesitated again. Damn. She ain’t wasting no time getting to the money part, is she?

  “Yeah, I got it. Ahh…”

  He continued to pause. He didn’t feel as confident as he wanted to about his decision.

  I got a bad taste in my mouth about this, he told himself. Is this girl supposed to have this money or not? How well do I really even know her?

  Outside of helping Brenda with her travel back and forth to Baltimore and a few other places, Clarence hadn’t hung out with her or talked much to the girl. So why in the hell was he ready to advance her a $650 loan that he felt queasy about?

  “Well, let’s meet up at Subway again,” she suggested.

  Clarence took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay.” But as soon as he hung up his cell phone with her, he thought of stalling.

  “Maybe I need to think more about this,” he mumbled. He couldn’t seem to figure out why he was so indecisive.

  Six hundred dollars is a whole lot of money to loan to a relative stranger, he pondered.

  But he had told her that he would do it. Nevertheless, he decided that he would meet back up with her and see how she would act when he got there. Then he would make his final decision of whether or not he would give her the money.

  Well, as soon as Clarence showed up outside of the Subway shop, a little late from driving slow, he spotted Brenda in a skin-tight, lime-green T-shirt, causing her high-beam titties to shine, with a pair of black, form-fitting jeans, showing off her camel-toe high heels that elevated everything. She appeared as if she were a living statue that was ready and willing to be worshipped by mere mortals out in public. And her T-shirt nearly matched her green car, making her look coordinated in the extra glare of the sunlight.

  Got’ dammit! Clarence panicked, simply from looking at her. From her sight alone, he figured his decision was already made. It would take a pocket full of Krazy Glue to stop that old man from giving that young college flirt his money. He was damn near ready to hop out of his car with his money extended to her in his hand.

  Jesus help me! he prayed. It seemed the young woman looked three times better than he ever remembered her from her travels through the airport.

  Maybe that’s because she’s all out in the open now. Nobody travels all jazzed up for a airplane ride, he reasoned. It’s uncomfortable. And then they make you strip everything down for security.

  Clarence parked his Oldsmobile a few cars away from her RAV4 and climbed out before she could reach him. And when rounded off the corners of the parked cars that separated them, and walked right up to hug him again, hers curves felt even better than the first time.

  “Clarence, I thank you so much for this,” she told him. “I could just… ahhh,” she exhaled loudly.

  Clarence had no idea how to respond. What exactly did she mean? What did she want to do? He was even tempted to ask her, but he couldn’t force himself to do it.

  Maurice would ask her, he thought instinctively. But I’m not Maurice. I’m a decent and caring man.

  However, he also felt like an aroused man. And he could smell the aroma of Brenda’s perfume again—a powdery, clean smell, as if she was giving him a clear signal that her kitten would be fresh and floral, as if flowers would float up off of the bed if he ever got a chance to fuck her.

  Clarence cringed at the thought of it, believing himself to be in the wrong again.

  Just give her the money and move on, he told himself. Even if I never get it back from her, at least I can prove that I’m a decent man.

  So he dug into his pocket and gave her the bank envelope with the money in it, upside down so no one could read it. However, instead of her trusting that the money was all there and counting it later, Brenda turned the bank envelope over, took out the money, and counted every bill until it added up to six hundred and fifty dollars.

  Shit! Why did she have to do that right out in the open, Clarence asked himself. She did it so quickly he didn’t have time to speak up before it happened. He then looked around to see if someone else had spotted her counting it. They were out in a damn parking lot in the broad sunlight before five o’clock in Florida.

  Well, maybe that was my fault. I should have gotten her to sit inside the car with me to make it a more private transaction, he mused. Or maybe if she sat in my car, that would look a little too personal.

  Then again, he was giving the young woman more than six hundred dollars of his money. The shit was personal! Clarence wasn’t a rich man. And he had his own children to provide assistance to, who were nearly her same age. What would his nineteen-year-old daughter think? She was in college, too, down in Tampa.

  Yeah, let me get the hell out of here, he told himself. Yet, he couldn’t budge from Brenda’s presence. It was as if she had a Medusa spell on him that had made him immovable.

  She said abruptly, “Well, I have a meeting to make tonight, so I have to go now. But call me sometimes, okay? And thanks again.”

  She was walking away from him with his money, and they had not even discussed the terms of her payback.

  We’ll get to that later, Clarence told himself. That’s why she told me to call her up. So he was satisfied with that.

  When Clarence drove off in his car, he felt good about himself. He felt that he had been a good Samaritan without any strings attached. So he smiled down the road toward home listening to his new John Legend CD.

  “I’m ready to go right now / I’m ready to go right now…” he sang along with the chorus. And it was a good feeling.

  But two days later, Clarence couldn’t seem to get the college girl off of his mind. He was even daydreaming at work about her.

  “Hey,
Clarence, what are you thinking about today, man?” one of the younger skycaps asked him at the airport. “Are you trying to make some extra change today, or what?”

  The old man had missed out on plenty of his usual tip money by not being aggressive enough to secure bags. On a good day, a busy skycap could make up to two hundred dollars on tips alone.

  Maurice looked over and caught the conversation from the computer, while he checked in another flight.

  “Mmm-hmm,” he grunted with a knowing smile. That motherfucker got that woman on his mind again. And she’s messing up his money now. He better talk to me about it soon, he determined.

  On cue, Clarence eyed Maurice smiling from behind the computer station, and he could imagine what he was thinking about.

  Looks like I’ve done it now, Clarence told himself. I’ve gotten myself involved in a situation that I have to find my way back out of.

  But he still was not willing to talk to anyone about it. For what? Why incriminate himself so early in the game when he hadn’t even touched the girl yet? He figured he most likely never would. But in the meantime, he was surely thinking about her, and that made it bad enough.

  After work, Clarence was itching to call her.

  She told me to call her up sometime, he reflected. But maybe this is a little too early yet. It’s only been two days.

  Then again, a phone call was just a phone call. Why should he feel guilty about calling a girl he loaned more than six hundred dollars to? So he went ahead and pulled the trigger on his cell phone.

  “Hello,” she answered more pleasantly than the last time.

  “Hey, Brenda, this is Clarence. I’m calling you up to see how you been doing. You told me to call sometimes and check up on you,” he told her quickly. He was still unsure about the call and was talking fast like a salesman.

  Brenda responded, “Oh, hi, Clarence. Yeah, I’m good, but I’m at work right now, so I’ll call you back when I get off. Okay?”

  “Ahh…okay,” he answered.

  Just like that she was off the line with him.

  Clarence shrugged and commented, “Well, she’s at work. She’ll call me back when she can.”

  By eleven o’clock that night, while he watched the latest NFL football news on ESPN, Brenda still had not called him back. He looked at his watch, and it read: 11:16 PM.

  “I should have asked her what time she gets off,” he commented. But that may have sounded too pressed, he countered. Everything was a second guess.

  He finally shook it off and stated, “This is crazy. I should be able to call this damn girl whenever the hell I want. I gave her six hundred dollars.”

  So he dialed her cell phone number after eleven o’clock. She’s a college girl; she ain’t in bed yet, he rationalized. But there was no answer. And when her message machine came on, he hung up.

  No sense in leaving her a message if she said she was gonna call me. She knows what she said she was gonna do, he told himself.

  But Brenda never bothered to call him back. She didn’t even call him the next day. So Clarence grew nervous about it.

  Is she trying to dodge me now? he contemplated. Nonsense! It’s only been three days. It hasn’t even been a week yet. What the hell is wrong with me?

  So he forced himself to leave it all be for awhile and focus on other things. He took his mind off of her, he even called up a woman he had dated on and off, who was closer to his age. He wanted to see if she would go out and grab a bite to eat with him, just for the hell of it.

  “And we can take my younger kids with us?” she asked him.

  Clarence had forgotten all about it. That’s why he had stopped calling the woman. Everything was a package deal with her. And her kids were cumbersome.

  Shit! She can never just go out on the fly? What the hell I even call her for like this? he snapped. He remembered that he was forced to plan a week in advance to go out with her. Either that or bring her younger kids along with them. But Clarence was not interested in starting the hell over with a family again; he simply had some manly needs to deal with. He wanted some pussy.

  In fact, sometimes he wished that he had never gotten divorced. The dating game for an older man was not as simple as he thought it would be. Everything involved some form of sacrifice or complication. And if the woman didn’t have kids to negotiate around, then she wanted to drag a good man to the altar and plan on having some. But Clarence was not fast to jump at that idea either.

  So he responded, “You know what, you can ah, call me back when you feel like going out again as a regular woman and not as a momma.”

  “Well, I am a momma, Clarence. That’s what it is,” she refuted. “I can’t make believe. So any man who can’t understand that, well…”

  Clarence didn’t waste any more time with her. He said, “Okay, well… good luck with that.” And when he hung up, it only pushed him closer to the college girl. He was tired of all the extra baggage of older women.

  By that second week, Brenda had finally called Clarence back.

  She explained, “I’m sorry I haven’t called you back earlier, but I’ve been so busy with school and my job and everything that I ran out of time.”

  Clarence didn’t care. He was overjoyed to hear from her again.

  “Oh, believe me, I understand. That’s what you’re down here to do, take care of business. But I’m glad you got back to me. How is that car of yours doing?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, somebody hit me last night while my car was parked on campus. Ain’t that some shit? And my insurance deductible is five hundred dollars.”

  Clarence was sorry he had asked. But he damn sure wasn’t bailing her out of that one. She still owed him on his first loan. And now that money seemed in jeopardy.

  “Well, let me ask you a question, Brenda. Does somebody have a voodoo doll on this car of yours or what?” he joked.

  That caught her off guard and made her laugh. She said, “I know, right? And just when I was starting to get back on my feet and catch up on my bills.”

  Clarence told her, “Well, it sounds like you’re gonna have to ride around with that thing looking ugly for awhile. You can still drive it, right?”

  “Yeah, I can still drive it…a little,” she answered.

  It sounded like a set-up. Clarence assumed that she wanted him to ask her what she meant by “a little” so that she could go into a more detailed sob story. So he began to smile at it all.

  Okay, here comes the pitch, he mused. “A little? Well, can you still drive the thing or what?”

  “Well, whoever hit me, they pushed my back bumper into the left side wheel, you know, on the driver’s side. So now like, the bumper is rubbing up against my back wheel. Ain’t that crazy? I can only drive like, thirty miles an hour now. And it’s so embarrassing. Everybody on campus was looking at me like I was crazy. I can’t keep driving around like that. I have to get this thing fixed.”

  Clarence shook his head with his cell phone in hand and grinned. She’s not getting me with this shit, he convinced himself.

  “Well, what it sounds like you need someone to do is to pull the bumper back away from the wheel. But you don’t have to get the whole thing fixed. You’re still young. This is only a starter car.”

  “No it’s not, I love my car. I had a starter car two years ago,” she argued. “And I’m not going back to that.”

  Clarence heard her out and went silent over the line. He had said all he planned to say about it. The rest was up to her.

  She said, “So, I don’t plan on asking you to help me out again, but I guess it’ll take me a little longer to pay you back now.”

  Clarence figured he could kiss that money good-bye. At the rate she was going, she wouldn’t see an extra six hundred dollars unless Santa Claus existed, or she lucked up and hit the damn lottery.

  He asked, “Well, do you have any student loans or anything that you might be able to use?”

  “Yeah, but I used all of them already. Remember, I’
m in my senior year now.”

  Clarence remembered that she was a marketing major. “Do you have any good leads for a job, as soon as you graduate?” He was already planning to wait long-term for Brenda to turn things around for herself. It was what all college students had to do, dig themselves out of a hole. His own daughter would have to go through it in a few more years herself.

  “Well, you gotta hang on in there then,” he advised Brenda.

  “I know, but…I wish I had some help sometimes, you know what I mean? But my parents can’t help me at all. They’re struggling right now to take care of my younger brother and sister back home. And with me being the oldest, they’ve gotten used to me finding a way to make things happen for myself, but I get so tired of this sometimes.”

  She was pouring the sob story on thick, and Clarence was prepared for it, as soon as she mentioned that her car had been hit.

  He said, “You need some help, hunh? Well, I’ve already given you help.” And what have you done for me? he asked himself. She was forcing him to think with the wrong head again.

  She pleaded, “I know, but if you could like, help me out again, I swear to God, I will pay you back. Honestly.”

  “I mean, you think I got like, extra money lying around like that that I can loan you for a year or two?” he questioned. What the hell does this girl think I got going on over here?

  She said, “Clarence, you guys get tips at the airport every day. And like, in two to three days, you could get five hundred dollars easy. I know it. And then I would get the car fixed with my money, and by the end of the week, you could give it back to me, and then I would have to work harder, or whatever I have to do to pay you back. I mean, for real.”

  Clarence couldn’t believe his old ears. This young college girl was really pushing him hard now. She was even counting his pocket change at the airport.