left the joint. I 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 bar-be-que 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. 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. I 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. 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. I 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 fawn like. 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 gutterally.
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 super-charged, zillion hairs was jolting her with the electricity of inexpressible excitement.
I swooped her off her feet down to the couch. I slipped her into Phil’s pajama top to break the action. 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 paperhorn her way to cool her fever. I watched her snort up a row of blow.
I’d have to be cool to out-play 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 table top. 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 window pane.
She said over her shoulder, ‘I like rain . . . Jabbo thinks it’s a drag.’
I had broken the stealing spell and unveiled the threat, the reality of the gorilla. I checked myself just as I decided to join her to recast the spell. I had to keep her coming to me to cop.
I lit up two bomber sticks of dynamite gangster. I blew several blasts of pungent smoke her way. The vision of her four-inch cone of thick bush between the sculpted thighs was lost for an instant. I wondered if my chance to steal her was lost.
She turned and walked over. I handed her a joint. She pranced back to the window hitting the joint. I unwrapped her toilet paper package a bit to peep. A dime sized circle of jewels winked at me from an inner wrapping of ‘C’ notes and fifties. It had to be the sting from the husky sucker in the Buick. Had she baited it out like that to excite me out of position when I cracked to see the contents?
I restored the wrapping and went to the bedroom. I was on my way to the shower when the doorbell chimed. I opened to the old joker on the desk with Phil’s jeroboam of bubbly and glasses. He nearly tripped himself gazing at Sue’s caboose as he went to the cocktail table with the tray.
I said, ‘Thanks Pops, I’ll take care of you when I come down tomorrow.’
He made that lopsided circle with his fingers before he split.
I speed showered and added on French cologne with its dusting powder. I heard the pop of a cork. I slipped into a pair of Phil’s crimson satin pajamas. I stood before a mirrored wall and brushed my hair until it shone. My reflection, with my widow’s peak and slumberous eyes made me look a bit like Satan. Well anyway, at least like one of Satan’s pets afire in the red pajamas. I was beginning to feel like a pimp again, all right. I hit the gangster roach and stepped into the arena.
She was lounging on the sofa with her legs agape. As I passed her, I paused to check for trance. She sipped and gazed up at me over the rim of her glass. She was on her way under again. Her eyes were getting dreamy and smoky hot again.
She gave me a glass of wine. I dipped a finger in and painted her lips. I licked and sucked it off her mouth. She pressed her cheek against my crotch. She kissed the imprint of my organ as I moved to sit on the cushions at the other end of the sofa. The big vein on the side of her neck was swollen and jerking.
‘What a womb sweeper,’ she exclaimed.
She lunged to my side and glued her curves against me. I held her and silently sipped my wine for several minutes like a joker with his mind on a private expedition to secret things and places. Sweet Dinah was dripping ‘I’m Confessin” from the Hi Fi again. She nibbled through the satin to my nipple.
It tickled when she whispered into my chest, ‘You thinking about her . . . your dead lady . . . ain’t you?’
I said, ‘No, Babykins . . . a living lady . . . my Mama.’
She snuggled closer and said, ‘What’s she like? Tell me about her.’
This was my cue to push her emotional buttons to prep her for the contract. I sang the tune slowly from the bitter roots of my own pain and poisonous ambivalence for Mama.
I
