"First he want me to kiss his be-hind," I said. I noticed that Coretta's glass was already empty. "You want me to freshen that, Coretta?"
"Maybe I'll have another lil taste, if you wanna pour." I could feel her smile all the way down my spine.
Dupree said, "Shoot, Easy, I told him that you was sorry 'bout what happened an' he's willin' t'let it pass."
"I'm a sorry man alright. Any man without his paycheck is sorry."
Dupree's laugh was so loud that he almost knocked poor Odell over with the volume. "Well see, there you go!" Dupree bellowed. "You come on down on Friday an' we got yo' job back for sure."
I asked them about the girl too, but it was no use.
At midnight, exactly, Odell stood up to leave. He said goodnight to Dupree and me, then he kissed Coretta's hand. She even kindled a fire under that quiet little man.
Then Dupree and I settled in to tell lies about the war. Coretta laughed and put away whiskey. Lips and his trio played on. People came in and out of the bar all night but I had given up on Miss Daphne Monet for the evening. I figured that if I got my job back at the plant I could return Mr. Albright's money. Anyway, the whiskey made me lazy—all I wanted to do was laugh.
Dupree passed out before we finished the second quart; that was about 3 a.m.
Coretta twisted up her nose at the back of his head and said, "He use' to play till the cock crowed, but that ole cock don't crow nearly so much no mo'."
6
"They done throwed him outta his place cuz he missed the rent," Coretta said.
We were dragging Dupree from the car to her door; his feet trailed two deep furrows in the landlord's lawn.
She went on to say, "First-class machinist at almost five dollars a hour but he cain't even pay his bills."
I couldn't help thinking that she wouldn't have been so put out if Dupree held his liquor a little better.
"Throw'im in there on the bed, Easy," she said after we got him through the front door.
Dupree was a big man and he was lucky that I could pile him in the bed at all. By the time I was through pulling and pushing his dead weight I was exhausted. I stumbled from Coretta's tiny bedroom to her even smaller living room.
She poured me a little nightcap and we sat on her sofa. We sat close to each other because her room wasn't much larger than a broom closet. And if I said something halfway funny she'd laugh and rock until she bent down to clutch my knee for a moment and then she'd look up to shine her hazel eyes on me. We spoke softly and Dupree's deep snoring drowned out a good half of whatever we said. Every time Coretta had something to say she whispered it in a confidential way and shifted a little closer to me, to make sure I heard her.
When we were so close that we were passing the same breath back and forth between us, I said, "I better be goin', Coretta. Sun catch me tiptoein' out your door and no tellin' what your neighbors say."
"Hmm! Dupree fall asleep on me an' you jus' gonna turn your back, walk out the door like I was dog food."
"You got another man right in the next room, baby. What if he hears sumpin'?"
"Way he snorin'?" She slid her hand into her blouse, lifting the bodice to air her breasts.
I staggered to my feet and took the two steps to the door.
"You be sorry if you go, Ease."
"I be more sorry if I stay," I said.
She didn't say anything to that. She just laid back on the sofa, fanning her bosom.
"I gotta go," I said. I even opened the door.
"Daphne be 'sleep now," Coretta smiled, and popped open a button. "You cain't get none'a that right now."
"What you call her?"
"Daphne. Ain't that right? You said Delia but that ain't her real name. We got real tight last week when her date an' my date was at the Playroom."
"Dupree?"
"Naw, Easy, it was somebody else. You know I never got just one boyfriend."
Coretta got up and walked right into my arms. I could smell the scent of cool jasmine coming in through the screen door and hot jasmine rising from her breast.
I had been old enough to kill men in a war but I wasn't a man yet. At least I wasn't a man the way Coretta was a woman. She straddled me on the couch and whispered, "Oh yeah, daddy, you hittin' my spot! Oh yeah, yeah!" It was all I could do not to yell. Then she jumped off of me saying, in a shy voice, "Oooo, that's jus' too good, Easy." I tried to pull her back but Coretta never went where she didn't want to go. She just twisted down to the floor and said, "I cain't get up off'a that much love, daddy, not the way things is."
"What things?" I cried.
"You know." She gestured with a twist of her head. "Dupree's right there in the next room."
"Fo'get about him! You got me goin', Coretta."
"It just ain't right, Easy. Here I am doin' this right in the next room and all you doin' is nosin' after my friend Daphne."
"I ain't after her, honey. It's just a job, that's all."
"What job?"
"Man wants me to find her."
"What man?"
"Who cares what man? I ain't nosin' after nobody but you."
"But Daphne's my friend …"
"Just some boyfriend, Coretta, that's all."
When I started to lose my excitement she gave me her spot again and let me hit it some more. In that way she kept me talking until the sky turned light. She did tell me who Daphne's boyfriend was; I wasn't happy to hear it, but it was better that I knew.
When Dupree started coughing like a man about to wake up I hustled on my pants and made to leave. Coretta hugged me around the chest and sighed, "Don't ole Coretta get a little ten dollars if you fines that girl, Easy? I was the one said about it."
"Sure, baby," I said. "Soon as I get it." When she kissed me goodbye I could tell the night was over: Her kiss would have hardly roused a dead man.
7
When I finally made it back to my house, on 116th Street, it was another beautiful California day. Big white clouds sailed eastward toward the San Bernardino mountain range. There were still traces of snow on the peaks and there was the lingering scent of burning trash in the air.
My studio couch was in the same position it had been in the morning before. The paper I'd been reading that morning was still folded neatly on my upholstered chair. The breakfast plates were in the sink.
I opened the blinds and picked up the stack of mail the mailman had dropped through the door slot. Once I'd become a homeowner I got mail every day—and I loved it. I even loved junk mail.
There was a letter promising me a free year of insurance and one where I stood a chance of winning a thousand dollars. There was a chain letter that prophesied my death if I didn't send six exact copies to other people I knew and two silver dimes to a post office box in Illinois. I supposed that it was a white gang preying on the superstition of southern Negros. I just threw that letter away.
But, on the whole, it was pretty nice sitting there in the slatted morning light and reading my mail. The electric percolator was making sounds from the kitchen and birds were chirping outside.
I turned over a big red packet full of coupons to show a tiny blue envelope underneath. It smelled of perfume and was written in a fancy woman's hand. It was postmarked from Houston and the name over the address read "Mr. Ezekiel Rawlins." That got me to move to the light of the kitchen window. It wasn't every day that I got a letter from home, by someone who knew my given name.
I looked out of the window for a moment before I read the letter. There was a jay looking down from the fence at the evil dog in the yard behind mine. The mongrel was growling and jumping at the bird. Every time he slammed his body against the wire fence the jay started as if he were about to fly off, but he didn't. He just kept staring down into those deadly jaws, mesmerized by the spectacle there.
Hey Easy!
Been a dog's age brother. Sophie give me your address. She come back down to Houston cause she say it's too much up there in Hollywood. Man, you know I asked her what she mean by too much but she just say, "Too much!" And you know every time I hear that I get a kind of chill like maybe too much is just right for me.