This place wasn’t bad, not for what Lula paid. Two bedrooms, if you counted that little one in the back, had no closet, where the baby slept. Wasn’t his money paying for it, anyway, so he didn’t care how much it was. He didn’t work, not a sucker’s job, anyway. Neither did Lula, for that matter. Her government checks paid for everything. Which meant he had to hide or be out when the welfare man came around. Inconvenient is what it was, but the price was right, and it was better than being out on the street.
Jones sat back down, took the last drag off his smoke, and crushed it into the ashtray that rested on the cushioned arm of his chair.
He was gonna need some money soon, though. You couldn’t live off a woman all the time. Man had to look like something when was walking down the street. Have a roll in his pocket if he was gonna talk to a woman in a club and offer to buy her a drink. Cash for things like cigarettes, liquor, and gage. He had his eye on an El D he’d seen at this dealer’s lot, too.
So he was gonna have to get up off his ass and do some work. He’d done a bus robbery recently, one late night over on Kenilworth Avenue in Northeast. Stepped onto a D.C. Transit with one of Lula’s stockings over his face, showed the driver his.38, and took him for everything he had. Not much cash and too many tokens, but enough money to last him a few weeks. Those were the kinds of games he ran. One hustle, robbery, break-in, or purse snatch at a time. Once in a while something big to make the ride last. He’d been studying on some small hotels on the white side of town, over on 16th. All those places had cash on hand, and safes. That’s what this boy of his said, anyway, and this boy knew a lot. Punk motherfuckers worked those front desks, too, so it wasn’t like there was much risk. And there was this corner market near Lula’s crib, settled their debts with the neighborhood regulars the first of every month. He and his cousin Kenneth had been thinkin’ on that place for some time.
He’d made mistakes. Done some jail time for small things, strong-arm robberies and the like. No prison time, though. And he hadn’t been caught for any of the homicides he’d done, grudge-type, passion-type, murder-for-hire shit, which could set you up for half a year. A couple of times he’d killed ’cause his blood had got up.
He thought about that last one. How he’d followed some cat out of a bar who’d said something smart to a woman Jones was with. How he’d taken a blade to this cat’s cheek in the alley behind a low-rise apartment building, one of those reurbanization projects, the fancy name the government gave to ghettos. Jones had cut him, and the man was bleeding through his fingers and had begun to beg: I ain’t mean nothin’, brother, and Please not today, Lord, all that. But Jones had already begun to feel that tick tick tick coursing through his veins, that thing that told him to kill. Jones stuck him right in his chest and twisted the blade before he withdrew it. Must have been the heart he hit, ’cause the blood was bright red and pumping out fast. There was a witness, a young dude, but Jones had fish-eyed the motherfucker as he walked away from the scene. He knew this dude would not come forward. Few in that neighborhood, especially if they were young, would talk to the police. Jones didn’t lose any sleep over it either way. He was thinking, Man shouldn’t have talked to my woman the way he did.
And then he started thinking, Where is that bitch with my drink?
Lula Bacon came into the living-room area with a glass in her hand, like God had answered his question. He took the glass from her and drank bourbon deep.
“Where you been?” said Jones, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Puttin’ him to sleep.”
She stood over him in a sleeveless shift, tapping her foot. She was wearing a pair of pumps with a little cloth bow on top of each one. He guessed he was supposed to notice her shoes.
“New kicks?” he said, giving her a little something, thanking her, in his way, for bringing him a drink.
“For Easter. But I wouldn’t mind wearing them out tonight.”
“Who’s gonna look after the kid?”
“My mother would.”
“Well, I ain’t goin’ no goddamn where but this chair. My cousin and his boy are comin’ over with some smoke, and I am going to get my head up right here.”
“We could go to Ed Murphy’s.”
“What, I hit the number and no one told me?”
“You just cheap.”
Jones liked Ed Murphy’s Supper Club, over on Georgia. The kitchen made a mean shrimp creole, and the bartenders poured with a heavy hand. He went there once in a while when he was looking for something fresh. But what was the use of taking a woman out and spending good money on her when he already had her ass for free, right here, twenty feet from the bedroom?
“You ain’t never want to go out,” said Lula.
“What, you still runnin’ your mouth?”
“Lazy motherfucker.”
“Shut up, girl.”
“Look -”
“I am warning you, either you shut that mouth of yours or, or…”
Lula put her hand on her hip. “Or what?”
“You keep talkin’, I’m gonna put a size ten and a half up in your ass.”
“Ten and a half?” she said, her eyes gone playful. “Now, you know you a ten. Why you men always tellin’ lies behind your shoe size?”
“If I’m lyin’, I’m lyin’ on the low side. You know that.”
Lula smiled.
Jones looked her over in that shift, cut up way above her knees. Nice legs, and they went up to an ass so good, made your friends jealous you’d gotten your hands around it first. Young girl, just past twenty. She hadn’t lost a goddamn bit of shape birthing that kid, either. Big brown eyes, too. Girl looked like Diana Ross, with titties.
Jones put his drink on the floor and opened his arms. “C’mere, girl.”
“You’re gonna wake the baby,” said Lula.
“You the one be makin’ all that noise.”
She chuckled, and he knew he was there.
“ Alvin?”
“What?”
“Can we go out?”
“We gonna have to see.”
“I got somethin’ you can see right here.”
“When?”
Lula lifted her shift up to her waist. She sauntered toward him. The front of her panties was dark where her sex had dampened. The sight of her black mound behind those white panties made him grow. He was a small man, so there was room for them both on the chair. She straddled him there and unzipped his slacks.
“Can we go out?” she said.