“You sick is all I can say!”
“‘Sick’!” he say. “Sick?” His expression turns from hurting to pissed off. “My last gal used to say that. That’s why she’s my last.”
I’m grounded now.
“I thought you wanted to help me. Help us.” He walks away from me this time, back to Mr. Shepard’s door.
“Thought you wanted to help us get out of here,” he say. “Together.”
“But I cain’t do that,” I say.
“I was gonna win the money back,” he say. “Go to Boston, Mimi. . take vows.” He turns to me, “I’ve never asked a woman to be my bride.”
I don’t know what to say. He leans back against the wall, hanging his head. Won’t look at me now. Instead, he turns to that wall, beats his forehead against it once, twice, rests it there, his arms fall to his sides, then he twists around forward, looks up at the ceiling. I grab his hand through his fingers. He’s crying.
“I never wanted to do anything to hurt you, Mimi. I would’ve forgave you for it. I would’ve. Now you have to forgive me for asking.”
I wipe my own tears. “I wouldn’t even know what to do.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about it now. There’s nothing wrong with staying around this brothel all our lives and not getting married.”
“You cain’t sell more of your family things?”
“It’s gone, Mimi. Everything! I bet it all for us. Guess I was wrong about you being my lucky charm.” He throws my hand and walks away.
“Jeremy?”
My future leaving me.
“Jeremy!”
He’s about to turn the corner into the saloon.
“Tell me what to do!” I say.
“What?” he say, sniffing his tears and coming back.
“Tell me how to do it.”
I swear he’s floating back down this hall to me, keeping his eyes on me like he loves me. Like we don’t belong to this place, these women, this time. He takes my hand and kisses the back of it. “I guess it would be like tasting sweets,” he say. “Like what I do for you all the time, but different.”
I watch the floor.
“It don’t matter anyway, Mimi, I won’t ask you to do it.”
“You want this money?” I say. “Just one more hand and you can win it all back?” I walk him back up the hall with me to the saloon.
“What are you doing, Mimi?”
I reach over Sam’s bar and pour me a shot of whiskey and finish it like a drunk would, feeling it warming my cheeks. “You said you want this money?”
I start back to the gambling parlor and he reaches for my hand trying to stop me but I shake him loose, walk down the hallway alone. The walk feels longer this time.
I don’t go through Mr. Shepard’s door right away. I wait. Then open it. Let it close behind me. Locked.
It looks different in here during the day.
Empty with only Mr. Shepard here.
The chalk lines that were drawn on the floor last night from a game of craps look like a child’s game in this light. The solid wood tables that were beaten by men’s fists only hours ago look feeble and small and only fit for light reading. This room’s a library. And I’m its newest fixture.
I stand on the wrong side of this door with my belly quivering, waiting for Mr. Shepard to greet me. He’s counting his money, slipping bills through his pinchers. He folds a wad of dollars and slides it through a silver clasp and into his pocket.
I shift in the doorway, hope he see me move.
He don’t.
He lops a deck of cards in his bag, his dice, then fastens it closed. I clear my throat. “Uh-hum,” I say softly. Louder, “Uh-hum?”
“Didn’t know y’all served breakfast,” he say, and stacks his chips in piles on his table, then sits down. “You here for my order?”
“N — naw, suh, Mr. Shepard.”
I try to think about Jeremy, the secret wedding we gon’ have when he win, what I’m gon’ wear when we promise. But just as I think it, the thoughts get ripped away, blurred and in pieces. I say, “S — somethin else I can do for you, suh?”
He sits back in his chair, puts his feet up. “It’s a damn shame, really. Most men take at least a day, a week before they send their girlfriends, their wives, their sisters. But you. . almost immediately. He did send you, didn’t he?”
I don’t say nothing.
“Twenty years and I’ve seen hundreds of gals like you. Chasing a chance for some man they think loves ’em. A sad occasion. I’ll do you the favor of some advice. Leave him while you still got a soul.”
I don’t want to look at him.
I wipe my sweaty hands down the sides of my dress, whisper, “Can I do something for you, suh?”
“Speak up!”
I try to remember me and Jeremy, why I’m here. . the way we love each other. How this can help us leave here and start a new life.
He say, “What makes you think I’d ever touch your kind?”
“I. . I could take good care of you, Mr. Shepard. I’m experienced.” I lean my back against the door, raise one hand above my head, put one foot flat against the door, pucker my lips.
He watches me. Finally, he gets up and comes to me. “Charlie,” he say. “Call me Charlie.”
“Yes’sa, Charlie, suh.”
“Tell me what you’d do exactly,” he say.
I lower my voice so it’s sexy and raspy like Cynthia’s when she charming. I say, “I’ll make you happy.”
“Then talk dirty to me,” he say.
“Dirty, suh?”
“You do know how to talk dirty? With that voice you just made and all.”
I fidget a little, lower my arm and foot, wipe my hands on my dress again, put ’em back on the door in place.
“Tell me what makes you special?” he say.
“I’ve only been with one man, suh. I. . I ain’t had no children so I’m still tight.”
He puts his hand gently behind my head. I shiver as he kisses my cheek softly. Only Jeremy’s kissed me there. That way.
He slaps it. Grabs my face around my cheeks, squeezing too hard. “Tell me you’d fuck me,” he say.
I hesitate.
“Say it!”
“I. . I’d fuck you, suh.”
“Say, ‘I want to fuck you.’”
“I–I want to. .”
“Say, ‘I like it rough.’ You do that?”
“Y — yes, suh.”
“Don’t say, ‘suh.’”
“Yes, Mr. Shepard.”
“Charlie!” he say.
“Yes, Charlie.”
“I got a big dick, too. You like that? Split you open?”
“Yes, suh. . Charlie.”
“You can make me hot? Make me come.”
“I. .”
He turns me around, pushes my face into the door. “Tell me you’d suck my cock.”
“I’ll tell you anything.”
“Tell me!”
“I’ll suck it.”
“Spill my seed where I want to? Your mouth?”
I nod, my cheekbone grinding on the door.
“Your boyfriend want a chance that bad? Give up his tightness for me?” He clutches my ass, presses his face on the side of mine. I flatten to the door as he breathes in my ear, telling me things I don’t want to hear. Telling me about me. About Jeremy. Nasty things I won’t tell nobody.
He unlocks it, pushes me out the door, tells me to go.
I stand outside his door alone.
The morning light is stale now. Withered away. And I’m nasty.
My skin feels spitted all over, hocked and loogied, brushed on and stanking.
Jeremy’s waiting for me.
I cain’t go to him like this. Cain’t let him feel me sticky and smell me this way. I smell of the breath of dead things. This hallway, an empty tunnel of bones.
“Naomi?” Jeremy say.
Don’t come near me.
“Naomi?”