One Safe Place (18 page)

I have a fire to put out involving the old man who sleeps in the woods behind my condo and bungalow where Evita stays. He knows to go down to the corner store if he needs me. He is the watchman for my watchdog that is kenneled in the back yard of the bungalow house. My dog knows him and accepts the old man living out back in the woods behind my place. The old man went to the corner store and had them contact me that there was a problem.

I call Evita, and she does not return my calls. It's not unusual. She does her own thing, and I just let that be. I'm not her husband or her man in the true sense. She is just someone I love dearly.

I keep tabs on her to a certain degree without trying to run her life. She can be troubled. Evita tried to commit…she tried to take her own life once. That was ten years ago, so I do worry about her to a point.

Her office phone message says she is out of the office for the week. Usually that means she's in Atlanta with her lover. Evita and I cleared the air about her choices. I know Evita swings both ways, and I don't care. I love the person she is to me, and all she means to me. I met her female lover, Esperanza. She's from Argentina, but lives in the heart of the Dirty South, in the Inman Park area of Atlanta. She's an actress who also produces B and independent movies.

Evita, Esperanza, and I have hung out, but Esperanza is possessive of Evita. All I can do is stand back if that's what Evita wants. There is something that excites her about being in those types of situations. I have to wonder if I acted more possessive toward Evita,
would we be complete lovers? Then I realize, I'm where I am, to be in her life as her protector when I need to be.

Something I don't understand is why Evita and Suzie Q act like a cat and dog that have to live under the same roof. They never fight or act rude to each other. They can sit in the same room or even sit close, but clearly they don't like each other.

I can advise Gabrielle on world affairs and spot an enemy out to do harm in most cases. I can do many things that the average person cannot, but I don't understand those two who are seemingly ready to bite, scratch, and claw. Q won't even talk to me about Evita. Evita says I'm tripping over nothing.

I assume Evita is in Atlanta, but she should have let me know she was going out of town. My dog is in her care because she wants it there at the bungalow.

I'm driving across the West Seattle Bridge, and it's raining as if I'm in a carwash. It hasn't rained this hard in a while. Cars and trucks leak oil and over time it dries, but let it rain like this and it brings the oil up on the road. These fools on the road are weaving and changing lanes with no regard. All of a sudden they are tailgating on slippery, oily roads. I'm glad to get off the bridge and just as I do, Velvet calls.

“What do you want?” I talk crazy to her all the time and she pays me no attention.

“Darcelle has a thing for Big Boy.”

“You're talking about your friend who I'm helping out of her freaky circus sideshow, and the man, who if one of his arms waves in the air, it would knock her out?”

“You're talking loud and saying nothing. For a man as smart as you are, I respect you, but your jokes are ill-timed.”

I hate being told off by a woman when I could have kept my mouth closed. Velvet, for all of her impressiveness and importance
to my company, can be like a shark in a tank of bloody water. She wouldn't hold her tongue even if she put her own foot in her mouth and bit it off. Her mouth can chew anyone a new asshole. I let her rant and rave for the most part and stay calm until she calms down.

“Psalms, I'mma let you off the hook today, so be nice. Big Boy, he's a nice guy, and she needs a likeable guy. Even if it's not a love connection, Darcelle needs a gentleman to go out on a few dates with to help her see there are sweet guys in this world. And hey, maybe they'll hit it off.”

“Are you expecting me to play matchmaker? Oh, hell no, and—hold on. I'm pulling into a coffee stand.”

“Not that nasty one with the anorexic women serving coffee while wearing thongs with flat booty cheeks and bras with size-zero breasts?”

“Sounds as if you like their coffee to know all that. Now look who's not being nice. And I'm not at that place, so hold on.”

“Are you at Espresso Africa?”

“Yeah, I am, and there is a line, so hey, let's finish this convo when I get to the office.”

“Okay, but bring me a Café Bombón in a grande clear glass. I'll pay for the glass, and tell them I'll stir it—and don't spill it in your fancy sports car.”

“Damn, what else can I do for you?”

“Darcelle and Mintfurd Big Boy.”

“I'm not going to stop you from getting in the middle of some boy-girl shit, but asking me to be a part of that—oh, hell no.”

“Hurry up with my Café Bombón, so we can talk about this.”

“You got selective hearing. I pay your medical. Go to the doctor about that problem.”

“Velvet? Velvet—”

She hung up on me.

I step into the office and give Velvet her extraordinarily expensive coffee. Hell, it doesn't even have a shot of 80 proof or anything. I let her know I'll be right back.

In the back yard of the bungalow, my dog is in lousy shape. She doesn't have water or food, and it looks like it's been days. I'm pissed! My sweet Doberman—I take her to the vet right away, and drop her off. I want her kenneled and watched for a day or two. I call Evita again. No answer.

Even though I have some expensive, classic stereo equipment and furniture in the house, it is her place to live and come and go as she pleases. I don't go in the house unless she invites me or I ask. I don't run her life, but I'm pissed. She is normal in her behavior almost every day, but then, she'll suddenly step off a cliff. She has definitely stepped off.

“Y
ou think you want to live. There may not be an option.” The Voice chuckled. “A nasty little piece you are. A little dick and a pussy…what kind of circus freak are you? You have nice-sized chi-chis.”

Evita felt a hand roam her breasts, and then a forceful hand grabbed the back of her neck. In her defiance, she didn't flinch. The hand forced her onto her stomach. The hand slapped her behind hard, twice, then twice more with more stinging vigor.

“Ah yes, that feels good to really lay in to a piece of chocolate ass. That excites me; I need to go fuck a little now, but not you, my little, sweet, nasty girl. It's too bad I cannot do you, but then again, I would never want your little dick to touch mine. Oh but, your ass is perrr-fect.” He spanked her again with what felt like a belt.

She groaned but refused to scream. A few seconds later, the sound of a belt buckle being refastened relieved her ears.

“Don't try to escape or you'll feel a lot more of that.”

Evita recognized the voice from the night she was drugged and kidnapped. This was the first time someone had spoken to her, days after she'd been tied to a bed.

She still wasn't sure about his accent. She wasn't sure that first night, either. She was guessing—guessing someone cared enough to have not killed her yet.

“Has she been drinking fluids and eating?”

No one verbally responded to the voice.

“Good. Get her in the shower. She's starting to smell, and her pussy or dick—whatever that is—it looks unwashed after sex.”

Because Evita had both male and female genitals, she had to wash often. She was the type of woman who seemed to stay wet, with or without any sexual arousal. Adding to the current problem, she had been sexually played with; her body had responded, although her mind did not appreciate the molestation.

Evita had been there before. Her father had a good old time playing with his little girl from early on in her life until the day she ran out of the rear of the house, naked and bleeding.

At sixteen, Daddy had been touching her for at least ten years. Some days he touched her as if she were a boy. Sometimes he fondled her as the girl she really was, but then came the day he entered inside her as a man, an ugly man. Her father thought she'd lie there after he finished his business with her. The moment he got up, he pulled up his pants and went to untie her mother. Father forced Mother to watch. When he stooped down to untie her mother's ankles, Evita jumped up and ran.

She ran out of her house buck naked and through the back door of her teenage friend, Psalms Black. Evita's father ran behind her, more worried he would be found out than wanting her to come back.

Once inside the basement of Psalms' house, all hell broke loose. Twenty seconds later,
Boom! Boom!
A gun ended the possibility of Evita's father molesting her ever again. Justice had been served; the judge and jury sentenced a man to die for his sins.

Psalms was not home at the time, but his grandfather and his twelve-gauge shotgun were. Grandfather dressed Evita and told
her what to say when the police came. Psalms' grandfather was not fazed by Evita's nakedness, and of whatever he had seen in her genitals, he never said a word.

This was in the days before women were always examined by a doctor in a hospital. Psalms' grandfather's midnight lover at the time was a female doctor. He called her to his home, and everything was taken care of with the police and Evita's privacy long before Psalms came home from a school track meet.

Psalms wrestled with the fact that his grandfather had to kill a man because he had been protecting a friend who knew to run to Psalms for help. His grandfather helped him to understand that, as his grandfather, he would sleep just fine for doing what had to be done. He encouraged Psalms to be there for Evita all her life if he could; she would need him. Grandfather knew Evita was going to need someone she could rely on with what he knew about her sexual situation physically and emotionally. Grandfather decided he was not the one to tell Psalms that Evita was a hermaphrodite.

• • •

Evita's body shivered, not from being cold, but the cold feeling of knowing people had died when she had been in trouble.

“Keep her feet tied and neither one of you touch her. Make sure her hood cannot come off.”

Evita smirked under the hood knowing now she could cause some form of a rift between her captors. She could blurt out now that she had already been touched, but she had to think. She had to figure out the best move, and when to make it.

There were two people who had been watching her and the voice belonged to their boss. A bit of inner relief made Evita take a deep breath. She would get a shower. Evita felt nasty having used
the toilet several times, and her genitals had been played with, twice.

“Is something funny?” The Voice wanted to know why it appeared Evita was laughing under her hood. She coughed several times trying to change the Voice's train of thought.

Evita noticed the other two never spoke: a man and a woman. She heard the man's grunts and groans while he jacked off when he touched her. The woman's pussy scent gave her away. Her scent sprayed the air with female aroma whenever she played in her own pussy while touching Evita. She smelled of a woman with a bad diet who ate fast-foods and not much else.

The two had some apprehension about what they were doing. They had fear of being caught. The Voice had no fear. He was in control and with the tone of his speech, he verbalized that control. The other two were disposable. Evita assumed those two would flee rather than fight if put in a conflict.

The smell of fast-foods permeated the air. Evita heard a few steps and then the door closed. The Voice left, and she was alone with her thoughts and the knowledge that the two left behind to watch her were vulnerable.

Tied and hooded, Evita felt less vulnerable herself after hearing the Voice, yet a twinge of fear still weighed on her heavier than hope. She'd had a nervous tic ever since childhood, either to bite her nails to sharp points or grind them against each other to sharpen them. Evita was nervous.

P
salms shifted gears, speeding up and passing other vehicles in the rain. Seattle's bipolar weather, with sunshine and rain at the same time, confused whatever season it's supposed to be. He was driving his classic 1962 Pontiac station wagon, a much different ride than his Mercedes Gullwing Coupe. Psalms had inherited his grandfather's classic. From the days when people ordered options such as a stick shift for any car they wanted, it also had a big, powerful engine. Psalms had it restored to look as if it had just come off of the showroom floor, and added some modern updates: nice wheels and tires on the slightly lowered body, tinted windows, cruise-control, air conditioning, and a high-end stereo.

Driving the classic 1962 Pontiac station wagon lightened stress, taking his mind back to childhood days of riding along with the man who'd raised him, his grandfather. He could drive the station wagon and feel as if he was riding along in the countryside of the Puget Sound inland and islands.

His grandfather, Leo, was a landscape engineer and surveyor. Highly sought after for his expertise during a time when a black man could be, and usually was, harassed for being in the outlying area where blacks didn't live and so few Negroes ever ventured, he was contracted by rich whites to design and tend to outdoor living
spaces and golf courses in the 1950s and 1960s. His station wagon carried tools, a portable drafting-drawing table and surveying equipment, and always a dog.

As his grandfather had access to the best hunting and fishing in the state of Washington, Psalms learned to shoot firearms as a young child. As a young child, he was the only black entrant in marksman competitions and archery tournaments, and always the winner. The place Psalms loved the most was a sprawling piece of property on Orcas Island. There was a small replica of a castle there, with rolling hills and small ponds.

Psalms and his grandfather would stay in a small house adjacent to the castle. Almost every weekend, his grandfather tended to the many gardens and other parts of the land.