“She do?” he asked me with all of the innocence of the child he never was.
“Yes sir,” I said. “I saw her just today.”
“Well,” Mouse said then. “Maybe I’ll make her wait a couple’a days an’ then give her a break.”
I doubted if Mouse connected the dream with Etta even though she came into the conversation so easily. But I could see that he was getting better by the moment. The prospect of a homecoming lifted his dark mood.
For a while he regaled me with stories of his sexual prowess. I didn’t mind. Mouse knew how to tell a story and I had to wait to ask for my favor.
Half an hour later the door downstairs banged against the wall and the loud women started their raucous climb up the stairs.
“I better be goin’, Ray,” I said. “But I need your help in the mornin’.”
I stood up.
“Stay, Easy,” he said. “Georgette likes you an’ Pinky gets all jealous when she got to share. Stay, brothah. An’ then in the mornin’ we take care’a this trouble you in.”
Before I could say no the women came in the door.
“Hi, Ray,” Pinky said. She had two champagne bottles under each arm. “We got a bottle for everybody.”
Georgette lit up when she saw that I was still there. She perched on the table in front of me and put her hands on my knees.
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Raymond smiled and I shook my head.
“I got to be goin’,” I said.
b u t t h e e v e n i n g
wore on and I was still there. I had nowhere to go. Mouse popped three corks and the ladies laughed. He was a great storyteller. And I rarely heard him tell the same story twice.
After midnight Pinky started kissing Ray in earnest. Georgette and I were on the couch with them, sitting very close. We were talking to each other, whispering really, when Georgette looked over and gave a little gasp.
I turned and saw that Pinky had worked Ray’s erection out of his pants and was pulling on it vigorously. He was leaning back with closed eyes and a big smile on his lips.
“Let’s go in the other room and give ’em some privacy,” Georgette whispered in my ear.
The bedroom was small too, only large enough to accommo-date a king-size bed and a single stack of maple drawers.
I closed the door and when I turned to face Georgette she kissed me. It was as passionate an embrace as I had ever known.
Our tongues were speaking to each other. Hers telling me that I had her full attention and everything within her power to give.
And mine telling her that I was desperately in need of someone to give me life and hope.
I put my hand under her coral blouse and laid the hot palm at the base of her neck. She groaned and so did Pinky in the next room.
Georgette reached for the lamp and turned it off.
“Turn it back on,” I said.
She did.
I sat on the bed and stood her between my knees. Then I 1 9 1
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started on the buttons of her blouse. She stood still, breathing lightly as I drew the silky top down and dropped it to the floor.
She moved then, attempting to sit next to me, but I grabbed onto her forearms, making it clear that she was to stay where she was. I moved close to get my arms around to unhook the black bra she wore.
Her nipples were long, hard things. I licked them very lightly and she held my head, moving it the way she wanted my tongue to move.
The black miniskirt was tight around her butt, and taking it off while kissing her hard nipples I pulled the pink panties down too. Her pubic hair was broad and dense. I buried my face in it to get the full scent of that field of tomatoes. If I had any notion of stopping, it evaporated then.
Georgette was a large woman. And even though she was slim of waist her belly protruded a bit. Her navel was a deep hole, dark against even her dark skin. Tentatively I poked my tongue inside.
She gasped and jumped back, holding both hands in front of her stomach.
“Come back here,” I said.
Georgette shook her head with a pleading look on her face.
Pinky started yelping in the next room.
“Come back here,” I said again.
“It’s too sensitive,” she said.
I held out a hand and she allowed me to draw her near. I positioned her between my knees again and moved slowly toward the belly button.
This time I stuck my tongue all the way in so I could feel the rough skin at the bottom. I moved the tip of my tongue around and she shuddered, holding my head for support.
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After a few seconds she cried, “Stop!”
I moved my head back and looked up into her eyes.
“This is like food to me, Georgette,” I said. “Do you understand? Food for me.”
She replied by pressing my face against her stomach. My tongue lanced out again and she screamed.
After another minute she moved my face back.
“Can I lay down now, baby?” she asked.
I moved to the side and she got down on her back.
We did things that night that I had never done with any woman. She did things to me that even now make me tremble with fervor and humiliation.
We fell asleep in each other’s arms, still kissing, still rubbing.
But when I jolted awake, I found myself alone.
I stumbled to the toilet and then back into the living room.
Mouse was laid out naked on the couch with his hands crossed over his chest like a dead king on display for the public to mourn.
Pinky was gone.
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30
Sensing me, Mouse roused from his slumber. He opened his eyes and frowned. Then he sat up and moved his head in a circle. His neck bones cracked loudly.
“Mornin’, Easy.”
“Ray.”
“The girls gone?”
“I guess so.”
“Good. Now we can take care’a business an’ not have to mess with them.”
He stood up and stomped into the bedroom toward the toilet.
I sat down and fell asleep in that position.
The flush of the toilet jolted me awake.
When Raymond came back in he’d put on black slacks and a black T-shirt — his work clothes.
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“Place ain’t got no kitchen,” he said. “If you want coffee we gotta go to Jelly’s down the street.”
“What time they open?” I asked.
“What time you got?”
“Twenty past five.”
“Let’s go.”
w e w a l k e d
the few blocks down Denker. The sun was a crimson promise behind the San Bernardino Mountains.
“What you got, Easy?” Mouse asked when we were halfway to the doughnut shop.
“Man up in Frisco hired me to find a black girl named Cinnamon. I went to her boyfriend’s house and found him dead —”
“Damn,” Mouse said. “Dead?”
“Yeah. Then I came back down to L.A. I found the girl but she told me about a dude in a snakeskin jacket she thinks killed him.
That day a man in a snakeskin jacket come around askin’ at my house for me.”
“He find Bonnie an’ the kids?”
“She and Feather are in Switzerland and Jesus is out on his boat.” I decided not to mention that Ray’s ex-girlfriend was with my son.
“Good.”
“So the guy shows up at my office. Says his name is Joe Cicero. He’s a stone killer, I could see it in his eyes. He threatened my family.”
“You fight him?”
“I took out the gun you gave me and he left.”
“Why’idn’t you shoot him?”
“There was other people around. I didn’t think they’d lie for me.”
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Mouse shrugged at my excuse, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the logic I offered. We’d arrived at the doughnut place.
He pushed the glass door open and I followed him in.
Jelly’s seating arrangement was a long counter in front of which stood a dozen stools anchored in a concrete shelf. Behind the counter were eight long slanted shelves lit by fluorescent lights. These shelves were crowded with every kind of doughnut.