Airtight Willie & Me (4 page)

By four A.M. the joint was claustrophobic. I had gotten several ho licks and birthday wishes galore. But I felt lonely and blue, like a joker in a haunted house. I was in the basement of a pit. The superfox ho target hadn't shown, and I was still just a welfare case of Phil's.

I retreated into a booth in the absolute rear of the joint next to the ho crapper. I eyeballed the front door with the radiant zeal of a weasel.

Bubbles, the Dane, had taken station near the front slammer. She was coldly sweeping her eyes over the crowd like the stomp-down security guard Phil had cracked she was.

Phil threaded his way to my booth. He leaned into my ear and whispered harshly. “You blind or something, pally? That redhead white ho at the bar is pinning you and about to come on herself. Latch on to the ho's eye! Honor the lick! It's catching time, nigger! Flow and glow, pally.” He shook his head and moved away.

I was turning my head to yank the package he'd fingered when Miss Superfox herself pranced through the front slammer. Alone! Appropriately, a drumroll of summer thunder announced her entrance. A shard of lightning flashed like a klieg light behind her.

My ticker rioted. A delicious stealing lust electrified my genitals. She was dap and down in a black chiffon chemise vine. A white mink stole was draped casually across her shoulders. She smiled
frostily as she sidestepped through a gauntlet of cracking and hitting players to a stool at the bar.

I had to string together a stealing tune based on Bitsy's rundown. Like I said, I was just a welfare case. You know, with no stable and power like Phil. With a power base I would've blitzed her. You know, dazzled her witless. At least I'd have to fake a bankroll. I wrapped Phil's welfare handout of “C” notes around a wad of play money.

I was forced to take my shot at the Superfox's soft underbelly. I'd have to be like a mirror reflecting her secret needs and dreams. She'd have to see me as the means to these gratifications. It was a long shot and dangerous all right since Ross, the gorilla, was her boss.

The dynamite package had seated herself beside the redhead Phil had fingered. I sipped rum and spied the bar through my booth's wall mirror.

Phil stood near Bubbles at the door. He hawk-eyed me and Miss Superfox with a salty look on his girlish face. The perspiring band blazed out raunchy toe-tappers. The dancers whirled and boogied as if energized by demons.

The redhead, Lucille Ball's look-alike, rocked on her stool to the music. The tipsy flat-backer turned her back to the bar. She zeroed in on me with hooded blue eyes. Her dress was hiked nearly to her moon, and aimed at me.

The Superfox got off her stool and wafted Chanel No. 5 up my nose on her way to the john. I saw Phil peer out the front Venetian blinds. He spun and frantically winked his eye. A moment later, a brute-faced colossus, togged to the teeth in a shocking pink ensemble, stopped his six eight or nine feet of bulgy muscles past the top of the front door.

Despair descended. It had to be Ross, and my stealing dream was lost. He strode the length of the joint with his Neanderthal skull swiveling as he shook down the joint. He was two booths from me when he stopped. He leaned into a booth. Moments before, a pint-sized loser in a tattered vine had slid into that booth beside a
brunette silk girl. Phil had introduced her to me as one of the girls employed at Aunt Lula's cathouse.

The loser copped a heel in terror. The alabaster beauty fled the joint like Ross had goosed her with an ice pick. Ross went out behind her.

The front door was still closing when Superfox came past me from the crapper. I suffered the thought of what a miserable break it was that she didn't dig him leaving with the white girl.

I was sitting there regretting that she didn't have to just pee when a loud-mouthed ho called Miss Bowlegs eased out of a booth ahead. She went to the bar grinning. She whispered into Sue's ear. She swirled on her stool like she was making a country break for the door. Instead, she frowned and hailed a barmaid like she was settling in for some sho 'nuff tippling. The fire-and-brimstone patron saint of pimps was in my corner all right.

Black Sue was tossing double shots of scotch down her gullet as fast as the harried barmaid could lug them. She had a lulu lump under her right eye. The sight of it shot a thrill my way. Had the gorilla's right cross and the wire from Miss Bowlegs put him in the cross to blow the fox to me?

After a band break, Phil went to the bandstand and rapped with the leader. A barkeep unveiled my birthday cake and hors d'oeuvres on a table set up on a corner of the bandstand.

Lanky Phil adjusted the mike up to his jib and shouted, “Pal-lies, damper the rapping! My main man, Candy Slim from the Big Windy, is gonna cut his cake and rap a taste.”

I rose and moved out to applause. As I passed the redhead, she grabbed my arm and slurred, “Candy, as a pair we'd be dandy. Huh?”

Sue leaned in close, with bright racist eyes, to dig my response to the symbol of black women's pain and mortal enemy. I nearly swooned with joy to play my opening card.

I batted the alabaster hand away and cracked icily, “Look, you jive flat-backing zero bitch, stay out of my face! Don't fuck with me, huh!”

The redhead, moist-eyed and humiliated, sagged and about-faced to the bar. Sue's eyes glowed with admiration as I boogied away to the bandstand. The band struck up a raucous “Happy Birthday.” I polished the next card I'd play as I cut the cake. I went to the mike and swept the crowd with doe eyes, then I slipped on a mournful mask, faking the emotions of a dude with hurtful blues.

I stood there in the silent red haze for a dozen heartbeats before I pitched, “Sugar babies, most of you are hip that I just got up from a fall. Only Phil, my homeboy, is hip that I lost my bottom rib and our daughter in a car crash a month before I split the joint. She was a thoroughbred, my woman! She stacked up long scratch in the kip for me. I'm happy if I don't look it. Sugar babies, you've lifted me like a blow of crystal. I know that somewhere way out there past the sky, my woman and angel kid are happy this morning, happy 'cause I'm honored here by blue-ribbon people. You can't stop a stepper, sugar babies, and I love ya!”

I went back to the booth through a chant of “Happy Birthday, Slim!” backslapping, and warm congratulations. Black Sue followed me into the booth like a doll on a string.

She just sat there studying me, with our eyes locked. It was a long time before she said, in a satin drawl, “Sugar, Black Sue is gotta tell you, you something else, and then some. Them sweet words relating to your dead daughter and bottom lady nearly got me bawling like a squealer. Slim, you something else! . . . Lemme buy you a taste.”

I leaned and whispered into her ear, “Later, I just want to be with you.”

I decided to play Sweet Willie all the way. I feather stroked the inside of her wrist with my fingertips. Her bottom lip trembled. I glanced past her. Phil glared cutthroat murder at me and whirled out the front door into the rain. That was good. Phil could pull my coat if the gorilla drove up. I pressed her hands against my lips and gazed into her eyes. She swept a fearful glance over the joint.

I crooned, “Baby Sue, let's flee to a taste and some talk in my crib
upstairs. I'm convinced something boss is happening between us . . . Doll face, maybe you need me . . . Let's find out.”

She said seriously, “My old man is Jabbo Ross . . . You hip to how he is . . . about me?”

I said, “I've heard.”

She murmured, “And you ain't leery?”

I said stoutly, “I'm not into pussy. Sugar Pie, I'm game to climb up the devil's mother-humping ass with you this morning.”

She laughed shakily. “Well, let's go, sweet Chicago Slim.”

I dropped the twister to Phil's pad on the tabletop and said, “We might give some jokers in the joint diarrhea of the jib if we split together. I'll cop some blow and wine and follow in a moment.” She scooped up the key, squeezed my hand, and started to slide her awesomely curved rear end from the booth. She braked and dug into her midnight cleavage and excavated a roll of bread, peeled off a “C” note, and shoved it into my shirt pocket.

I felt my scrotum spasm. I was zeroed in on her now, reading her tactics. She was playing star ho test shit on me. I wasn't uptight about that. After all, she had to check out my pedigree. She was at the very least unconsciously considering me as her new boss! I leaned and eased the booby-trapped “C” note back down between her epic peaks. The plum-colored tips gleamed through the chiffon gauze.

To certify my pedigree, I slipped on a mask of terminal pain and cracked a mild reprimand. “Sugar Sue, you got to know what starts right, goes right . . . Up front, I'll spring for the nit-shit refreshments.”

I flashed my fake bankroll with the solid funny-money guts. I said, “You're sweet to be concerned about me just out of the joint and all. Now you can stop worrying about the little things.”

She smiled crookedly and split. Phil came in from the rain with his silky black hair shining in wet ringlets. He sat down across from me.

He said, “Nigger, the joint sure as hell didn't damper your speed. Too bad it's Ross she's gotta dump.” He slipped a thirty-eight snub
nose from his waistband. I took it off beneath the tabletop. He rammed a balloon of blow into my shirt pocket as he got to his feet and said, “Some ploy to prime the ho . . . I'll send up some sauce.”

I got up and said, “Sugar baby, I know you're royal blue, and I'm your horse if I never win a race.”

He said as he moved away, “Pally, kiss my yellow ass 'til it's royal blue.”

I left the joint and stood on the sidewalk for a moment engorging my lungs with rain-spiced air. I went next door through the hotel entrance to the dim musk of the lobby. An elderly desk clerk with a brown clown face nodded toward the stairway. He winked obscenely as he made a lopsided circle of A-OK with pudgy fingers shiny greasy with barbecue he was gnawing. I slowly ascended the foot-mauled stairway carpet to polish the next stealing card I'd play.

I went to the suite door and pressed my ear against it. I heard the erotic confection of Dinah's voice dripping her sugary “I'm Confessin' ” from Phil's hi-fi. Then I heard the muted thunder of the shower.

I turned the knob. Surprised that she hadn't locked the door, I stood at the threshold gazing about Phil's pimp dream arena. I've guested at the Chase in St. Louis, the Ambassador East in Chicago, the best at the Drake in the Big Apple. Phil's white and gold ho trap paled the other cribs.

I chained the door, then moved beneath a crystal chandelier in the entrance hall to the airy carpet of the living room. I familiarized myself with the three rooms so I could move about with assured ease when she joined me. Then I hung my jacket in Phil's closet and slipped on a gold satin smoking jacket. I selected a blue silk pajama top for her.

I went to the living room's white satin sofa and arranged my bag of coke into sparkling columns on the blue-mirrored cocktail table. Across the way she suddenly opened the bathroom door. She stood still-lifed, naked, holding a towel. Her blue-black curves shimmered like sealskin in the amber glow. I got an instant, throbby, quality
erection. Small wonder. I had a helluva time willing my hoodlum organ limp again.

She looked so young, the crafty eyes now softened and fawnlike. I realized she was like me and every other street-poisoned nigger spawned behind the invisible walls of ghetto stockades. She was trapped, vulnerable, but hurtingly human beneath the tough facade of leopard rage and bravado. But in the cruel nature of our special entrapment, and my survival, my comrade in pain was ironically my prey. I would have to scrape to the raw nerve ends of her emotions, put her on the rack to steal her.

I stood up to break our trance. She patted the towel against her splendor coming to me. I kissed the tip of her nose and the plum blossoms of her swollen nipples. I toweled off the wet sheen as tenderly as a mother would a baby.

I heard a feline purring in her throat as I blotted her vulva. I assaulted her mouth with teeth and tongue. She squealed in the painful thrill of it. I vanquished her tongue in a sugary duel. She seized me. She clung to me moaning gutturally.

I finger-stroked the invisible forest of fuzz on her buttocks, the insides of her thighs, across her shoulders, the pits of ecstasy beneath her ears, the valleys behind her knees. I never once touched her skin. I was certain each one of the supercharged zillion hairs was jolting her with the electricity of inexpressible excitement.

I swooped her off her feet down to the couch, where I slipped her into Phil's pajama top to break the action. Then I moved away across the cushions. She pursued. To escape, I rolled up a “C” note and dipped my head to snort up a row of “coke.” I passed the paper horn her way to cool her fever and watched her snort up a row of blow.

I'd have to be cool to outplay her. Otherwise, I'd wind up at dawn with just a belly full of pleasure. No money. No ho. No contract!

I watched her go into the bathroom to rummage among her things. I watched her squat and extract a thin package from her vaginal stash. She detoured on the way back to the hi-fi in the
corner. She belly danced her way back to the sofa to Hamp's “Flying Home.” She dropped the soggy package from her cat on the cocktail tabletop. I guessed it was a sting she hadn't checked in to daddy gorilla. She fell on to the sofa with her head on my lap. Her big pony eyes were all a sparkle, gazing into my face.

She sighed, “Slim, I feel so good with you . . . really good! You feel groovy, too, with me?”

I gently knifed a fingernail across her kneecap. She shivered.

I cracked, “More than I ever remember . . . with somebody else's girl.”

I knew it was an off-key crack as soon as it exploded against my ears. She leapt up and went to the floor-to-ceiling windows. She stood there staring out at Miss Rain tap-dancing a zillion diamond feet against the windowpane.