Chicago Hustle (21 page)

He pulled on his pants, snuffling and snorting the dry phlegm down his throat, loving and hating the alkaloid aftertaste. Praise be to the Chink, who giveth us Almighty Coke!

Laughing aloud at the thought, he slid his arms into an off-lemon-colored shirt. Elijah Brookes, in love!? That sho' 'nuff is a laugh.

Buttoning his shirt up, he turned super serious. But do I love her? The weight of the thought pushed him down into a slumped, sitting position on the side of the bed.

Ain't this a bitch! I'm in love. In love with a bitch that I ain't never done nothin' with but kiss, and she was the one that did that. We ain't fucked, ain't had no kind o' dealin's at all, and I'm in love. What kind o' fucked-up trip is this?

Could Toni love me? Does she know as little about the whole thing as I do?

He whipped a beaver-tailed tie around his neck, took it off, wrapped it around again and finally decided to leave it off altogether. Niggers should never wear neckties, considerin' how many of our necks've been stretched.

He bent over to snort up the last two lines, his whole being cocaine light, his thoughts sweeping from place to place in supersonic fashion.

It's true, I don't know a goddamned thing about it, about what the squares call love.

He slurred the word disdainfully through his mind. Love … what the fuck was it, really?

I guess it's this, he said to himself in ultra-sober fashion, making final adjustments on himself in the mirror.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, please don't tell all, but is not Elijah the fairest nigger of them all?”

Laughing at his own ego trip, he gently patted a palmful of Canoe on both cheeks and strode out of his apartment as though he were cake-walking past a brigade of inspecting generals.

CHAPTER 11

Despite the fact that there were at least fifty people making up the immediate background, he could see only one.

She leaned against the door frame, a cocoa-colored vision in a long, split up to the thighs skirt, capped by a brocaded bolero jacket, barely shielding a wisp of a bra.

He felt his eyes being pulled toward her by the ruby stuck in her navel. Wowwww … and I thought my chartreuse pinstripe was gon' be radical!

She stepped out of the door frame and greeted him with a kiss. “I didn't think you were comin',” she said quietly and led him into the apartment.

“You really know how to turn folks on and off, don't you?”

“I'm in no position to take chances with strays,” she spoke in the same quiet voice.

Elijah bristled up slightly, the cocaine feeding him little jolts of ego. “If I look like a stray to you, you don't know a pedigreed nigger when you see one! what kinda jazz is this you be tryin' to pull …?”

She linked her arm through his and tapped her forefinger across his lips. “No bad vibes tonight, okay? I feel too groovy for bad vibes.”

He smiled sheepishly, cooled out, and let himself be guided through the crowd to one of the three bars positioned around the huge room.

“Is your man here?” he whispered to her as they approached the bar.

“My men are everywhere,” she answered with an arrogant turn of her head. “What would you like?”

“I been hornin' coke all evenin', I'd hate to mess that up with anything else.”

Without another word, she led him across the room, to the bar at the opposite side of the room, whispered into the bartender's ear, below the plush sounds of East Indian ragas and down-home blues. The bartender placed two miniature spoons of cocaine, styled like miniature popcorn-makers, in front of them. They snorted in unison.

“You really know how to take care business,” he said, impressed.

Elijah felt slightly self-conscious horning cocaine in a room full of people, and she sensed it.

“Heyyyy, it's cool to do anything you want to do, up in here, this is Momma Mathews' turf.”

They did the coke and sat back, side by side, checking out the party scene, sharing telepathic feelings.

A tall, well-built sister, obviously a dancer, began to move to the music, to give her rhythmic version of what she thought of things.

“Does she do that often?” Elijah asked, admiring her fluidity.

“Only when she doesn't feel like talkin',” Toni answered, clapping her hands together lightly, in tune with Olatunji. He leaned back on the bar, stylin', and checked the scene out completely.

A room full of people, people, wall to wall. A quintuplet of black fags doing a hora, passing the pipe around to members of their circle, obviously an In In group. A lush black lady, really lush, in the way that black women can be, posing against a vanilla-shaded wall, her darkness contrasting starkly with the wall, as half a dozen camera persons snapped and flashed their cameras on her young-Earth-Mother-figure. A David Bowie, white artist-freak-type dude, tailored by Savile Row, rapping with a black p.r. man … a deal? And a collection, beyond that, of poisoned pen holders, musicians, New World Africanists, psuedo counts 'n contessas, blackjack dealers, telephone starlets, slumming dishwashers, haiku salesmen and professional pickpockets.

Elijah was startled out of his dope reverie to discover that the man at his right side was embracing his woman, his … woman?!

Toni turned to Elijah with a coy expression on her face. “Elijah, this is Marcel Suchan, Marcel, this is … this is my good friend, Elijah Brookes, the First.”

Elijah felt something weird happening when Marcel shook his hand, but couldn't really place where the feeling was coming from. “Enchante, M'sieur, and 'ow are you dewing?” the Frenchman asked, bowing slightly.

“Mellow here,” Elijah responded, on guard.

Toni patted Marcel on the cheek and said playfully, “Give it all back … mind your manners, Marcel.”

Elijah stared at the hand holding out his watch and wallet to him. A pickpocket! a super pickpocket!

“Pardon, Toni … Elijah … I was only … 'ow you say, practesein'? he seemed to be such a gud subject.”

Elijah put his watch back on, smiling at Marcel. What the fuck else could you do but smile at a professional?

Marcel bowed grandly and eased back off into the crowd.

Elijah and Toni stared meaningfully at each other for a few seconds. So this is what your friends are like, huh?

She allowed him ten full minutes of taking it all in, waving or nodding to a friend from time to time, the number of people preventing any real hostessing from being done … a freeform set.

“Let's go somewhere a li'l quieter?” she suggested. Elijah nodded, not feeling the need for words.

She threaded her arm through his and made their way through the people stacked up in the room.

The couple on the bed turned toward the slit of light widening on them with impatience.

“Sorry 'bout that,” Toni mumbled, closed the door with the air of a naughty little girl, and led Elijah down a long hall to another room. She pulled a trio of small keys out of her bolero jacket pocket. “If there's somebody in here, they're in trouble.”

She unlocked the door to her combination library-office and flicked on an old-fashioned desk lamp.

Elijah strolled in, his hands clasped behind his back, his thoughts triphammering. Who was the real Toni Mathews? What did she do? What was she into? Where was she coming from? What? How did she put all this together?

She sat on a long Danish modern sofa and watched him strolling around the room, his eyes darting from one book title to another.

“I don't have anything to taste on in here, if you want …?”

“I'm cool. You got a lot o' books.”

“A lot of them belonged to my husband.”

“Your husband?” Now we gettin' somewhere.

“I was married, once upon a time.”

Elijah sat comfortably close to light her cigarette and his, a question mark in both eyes.

Toni eyed him coolly, party sounds drifting in on them, not giving an inch more than she felt like giving.

Elijah, realizing that she was not going to be pumped about her past, slid off in another direction.

“You know, there's somethin' I been dyin' to ask you ever since we first met.”

“What's that?”

“What were you doin' at that square ass party?”

“Someone asked me to go with him, so I went.”

“I didn't see you with anyone.”

“He'd gone to get me a drink.”

“Oh wowwww! that must've been a cold shot for him when he got back and found you gone.”

“Your friend must've been a li'l put out too, when she looked around and couldn't find you.”

They stared at each other for a minute, their senses of what was absurd and ridiculous polished by the cocaine, and then smiled, slyly … birds of a feather.

Elijah moved closer, casually draped his arm around her shoulder and stroked the side of her face.

“You knew I wanted to be your man the minute you laid eyes on me, didn't you?”

“Is that a question or a declaration?”

“Both.”

She kissed his fingers … was the manicure working?… and undraped his arm.

“Are you sure you're ready for me? I'm built on a different scale than your girlfriend. What was her name?”

His frontal lobes throbbing from the effect of the drug, his sense of macho being taken on a trip, made Elijah flare up. “Hey! fuck her! we didn't come in here to talk about her, we came in here to talk about us.”

“I travel in pretty fast company,” Toni said quietly, ignoring his static.

“Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Is it all illegal?”

“Nope, none of it is,” she replied in the same quiet voice. “I'm strictly on the up 'n up. What I'm concerned about is the dude in my life who's just tryin' to keep up, my man has to be out front.”

Elijah felt a nervous spasm work through his right shoulder, the desire to smash his fist into her jaw flowing up and away. Who did this bitch think she was? Cleopatra or somebody?

Toni studied his reactions carefully.

“Look!” he finally burst out. “You say that to say what!? awright! awright! take me off into you li'l ol' thang if you want to. I was just askin' a real question, tryin' to get a real answer.”

The continued calm in her voice made him seeth with anger. “Brothers be playin' games sometimes, Elijah. Some of 'em get off so far into games that they forget how to stop playin'. You know what I mean?”

The sincerity in his voice even surprised him, it had sunk to the same quiet level as Toni's. “Toni, I dig you. I know, comin' from a lot of people that wouldn't be meanin' too much … but, from me, it means a whole lot. Yeah, you right … a lotta brothers do be playin' games, but this one ain't … not this time anyway.”

She nodded slowly, as though agreeing with him, and skirted back to answer an earlier question. “You were askin' me if what I did was illegal? like I said, no … I'm what you might call a hip square in business for herself.”

Elijah, feeling like a player in some kind of abstract chess game, frowned. “A what?”

“A hip square, a businesswoman, in other words.”

“Run it down to me.”

“Nothing to run down. I have some connections that I use to help other people get ahead with, and myself in the bargain.”

Elijah's frown lines deepened.

“I do p.r. work for several rock groups, a couple well-known stand-up comedians and, occasionally, as a favor, a guy named Billy Eckstein,” she added with a sly smile.

Elijah slumped back on the sofa, his mouth forming a large, round O.

“That all you got to say?”

“What else can I say, it's obvious that you on your job.”

“Thought you might like to know how much I gross every month?”

Elijah stood up slowly, the coke making him feel taller, and started for the door. What sense did it make to be going through all these kinds of changes? He felt insulted because his honesty was being pissed on.

“Elijah?” She stood up and held her arms out to him.

He turned and hesitated. Was she playing a game? “Elijah, I'm sorry,” she said, drifting to him. “I'm sorry, baby … you just get so used to protecting yourself sometimes that it's hard to stop. It's like I was sayin' about brothers playin' games? sisters get so caught up at protectin' ourselves from the games sometimes, that we don't know when to stop.”

They stood, swaying in each other's arms, locked up.

“No, baby … this is no game, I'm fo' real,” Elijah mumbled into her ear and squeezed a little more gently.

Yeahhh, Momma … I'm gon' get my shit together for you … yessuhhhh …

CHAPTER 12

Elijah peeked around the shoulder of the woman in front of him, number four in line.

Damn! what's taking so long?

He gazed around the airport lobby, trying to look nonchalant, just a dude with a stolen airlines credit card, doin' a li'l number.

“Heyyy, 'Lijah baby, gimme fifty for this?” Li'l Bruh, the dope fiend's dope fiend, had asked, knowing that he would never put the card to any use, and had accepted twenty grudgingly, one foot shuffling off to the pusher before the money was in his hand good. Another five was enough to buy the wallet and the identification papers that it contained. What did Li'l Bruh care? He was satisfied with the eighty-five he had pulled out of it … a double score for a score.

It had only taken Elijah a few seconds of close questioning to find out that the card had only been ripped off hours before; Li'l Bruh was never more than two hours before, or two hours after any theft, which made him an ideal to deal with.

Elijah's first impulse was to put the card on the open market himself, but, feeling romantic, he decided to work it a bit before passing it on.

He pushed his shades up on his nose and fingered the tips of his shirt collar. Wonder what kind of reaction I'll get when I plunk two tickets to Jamaica down in front of her?