blue suit, jacket nipped into the waist, straight skirt skimming her knees, Kelly held her neat head high – flaxen hair like a slick of gold paint across her shoulders. Several male heads turned, eyes bewitched, blatantly undressing her, and for a brief possessive moment Jay wanted to hit one particularly lecherous pot-bellied executive. Yet the object of all the attention was totally oblivious. Jay supposed it was the nature of the beast: such a combination of beauty, charisma and raw sex appeal was bound to be so acquainted with admiring glances and goggle eyes that it becomes immune to them.
He fell into a quick trot behind her, only holding back as she strode out into the sunlight and dipped into a waiting limousine. Moments later, Jay was in the back of a taxi. The black stretch, three cars ahead, inched forward, indicating left. The taxi followed, fitting in behind on the Beltway leading to the I-75 that went into Washington. As the limo picked up speed, Jay imagined Kelly in the back sitting with legs crossed. Idly he wondered if she was wearing pantyhose or stockings, and, if the latter, whether her garter belt was white, black or the flesh colour of her skin.
In prison every time he’d seen a film clip of a couple in the back seat of a limo, he’d had erotic fantasies of hitching up a full skirt to find stocking tops and milky white thighs belonging to a beautiful, scented woman who wanted him. Always, he would go down on her, while the driver politely readjusted his rear view mirror and turned up the radio.
The cab had followed the limo across the Potomac river, passing the Marriott Hotel where he was staying as of late last night. When they entered Georgetown they got snarled up in traffic, losing the limo for a few nervous moments. Then Jay caught sight of it again and directed the cab driver into M Street, where the limo was gliding to a halt outside an imposing colonial-style house.
Jay looked with a pang of envy at the red brick façade, white portico and gleaming sash windows. The house was seriously elegant, it reeked of money and understated grandeur. He watched Kelly get out of the car and go inside before he asked his cabbie to take him back to the Marriott.
An hour later he was in his room, freshly showered, wearing a towelling bathrobe and sitting in front of a club sandwich and French fries. He’d just taken the first bite when the phone rang. Jay picked it up after four rings. It was the call he’d been waiting for.
‘Good to hear you, Luther. When did you get in? Hotel OK?’
Luther’s voice sounded jaunty. ‘It sure beats the dump I’ve been living in for the last eight months.’
‘Good, I suggest we meet for breakfast here in the coffee shop – eight-thirty in the morning.’
‘Have you located the –’
‘Yes,’ Jay interrupted abruptly; he didn’t trust telephones. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’
‘I’ll be there.’
Jay replaced the telephone and sat down on the bed, closing his eyes. But he had too much going on inside his head to contemplate sleep. In prison the nights had been his time for solitary contemplation. How he’d longed for the zookeepers to lock the cages, to shut out the incessant and repetitive male babble. The close of another monotonous day in hell had always been, for him, a relief. Time to dream.
But tonight, on the outside at last, there was no time for dreams or introspection, tonight was for plans. Jay believed in careful and strategic planning. Every move had to be thought out, like chess of which he was a master, with precision and patience. He had both and he relished the long hours ahead; while others slept he would plot. And by dawn he knew he would be more alert than if he’d had eight hours’ undisturbed sleep.
Jay hadn’t seen Luther Ross for six years, but he would have recognized his big head anywhere. It was still shaven and gleaming like a bowling ball. When Jay approached the corner table, Luther looked up and his button black eyes were the same, if a little duller, and the gap-toothed grin hadn’t changed – it was as broad and as warm as Jay remembered. He’d used bits of Luther for a character in his first book; not the best bits either, yet Luther had been delighted, thrilled to taste a meagre morsel of fame.
When the other man stood up he seemed smaller than Jay recalled, but maybe that was the outside – on the outside the world seemed to dwarf everyone in it. As if to compensate Luther had gained a lot of weight and his stomach protruded over the top of his trousers. He extended his hand.
‘Jay, man! Good to see you.’
Jay felt Luther’s firm grip. Genuinely pleased to see the ex-boxer, he returned the greeting. ‘It’s good to see you too, Luther.’
Luther was smiling as Jay slid into a chair. He began the ritual of ex-cons everywhere. ‘You been out long?’
‘Just a few days, but it seems like years. Hell, it feels strange after all that hoping, waiting, longing for a normal life on the outside. Living through movies and books doesn’t exactly prepare you for the real thing, does it? I wake up in the middle of the night convinced I’m still in the pen, waiting for the familiar sounds, and it takes me hours to get back to sleep – if ever. Some days I feel like I’m acting, like this is not real life and I’m going back inside when it’s over. Weird. I suppose it’s going to take a long, long time. I’ve been locked away for a quarter of a fucking century.’
Silently Luther nodded, he’d heard the same story too many times, from too many friends encountered on the outside. He let Jay continue.
‘Thank God I started to write; when I think back I don’t know what I’d have done without that as an escape. My sales are doing well, so my agent tells me. According to him, I’m the Hemingway of the nineties, and – check this – Hollywood is interested in Killing Time.’
‘Geez, man, you’re doing good! Fucking great, Jay. Waddya say I look after security on the set. Uh?’ Luther laughed.
A waiter approached and Jay ordered coffee, eggs sunny-side up, bacon and toast.
‘So how have things been for you, Luther?’
‘Not so good, buddy; but then …’ He pointed to his temple, ‘You’ve got a great brain, man. I got no muscle up there. I think when Randy Lewis knocked me out in sixty-eight, I left a whole heap of brain cells on the canvas and forgot to pick ’em up.’
Grinning, Jay said, ‘You working?’
‘Kind of.’ Luther paused, sipped his coffee, then said, ‘I was straight for three years.’ He stuck three fingers in the air. ‘Worked as a kitchen porter, room service waiter, and a cab driver. I was real straight, man; no shit. I met a woman, a good woman. A great-looking broad with a good job, a duty manageress in the St Regis Hotel.’ He whistled. ‘Legs, like you’ve never seen legs! Long enough to be continued. And an amazing butt, big and beautiful. Oh yeah, and the face of an angel. Believe it or not, Jay, this incredible chick fell for Luther Ross. Can you imagine? She’s crazy about me. It’s enough to send anyone straight. So we get ourselves an apartment together. Not a bad place on the lower Eastside. Shirley, she does it up real smart – white sofas and white cotton sheets. I ain’t never slept on cotton like that … yunno? White folk cotton. Anyway I have the best time of my life – I mean the best, man. And just when I’m telling myself it can’t get any better, Shirley goes and quits on me.’
He clicked his fingers with a loud snap, lowering his head at the same time. ‘Big C, man. First it’s in her right breast, they take that away. Then they find some more of the shit. But this time they don’t operate cause it’s gone into her lymph glands, and spreading fast; like fucking weed, man. She was
