“My boss up at the Owl used to give me five dollars when I Frenched him,” she said. “Then he got tight and wanted me to do it again so that I could keep the job. Oh that was a hell of a job up at the Owl.”
“If you sucked him off the way you were working on me he got his money's worth. You don't know how close you came to having a mouthful of jism shot down your throat.”
“He got his money's worth, all right. I think the son of a bitch shoved cotton up his cock so he couldn't shoot. Maybe he thought I should be paid by the hour for blowing him. He took longer to shoot than anybody I ever Frenched. And when he couldn't hold it any longer he'd try to choke me with it. That was a hell of a job up there.”
I couldn't lie and watch her jerk herself off any longer. I slid up on her and she held her cunt open and socked my cock into her so hard that I thought I heard one of the bedsprings snap. Her cunt was like her mouth, rough and hot and big, and when she got a taste of my prick in it she laughed in a way that white people never laugh, or maybe can't laugh anymore.
“You're not as white as your skin,” I said.
“One of my grandfathers was Spanish, and I think my father was Irish,” Patty said. “But when I fuck I'm all nigger.”
I bucked up and down on her, but she said I was going too fast for her, so I slowed down taking it easy and reaching for the top of her belly when I shinnied in. After I had jazzed until it was almost as though somebody had left a valve open inside of her, and we made a sound like a piston working in oil.
“My god, you're good cunt,” I said. “God, but you're hot jazzing.”
I meant it, too. That lazy way she had of drawing herself up and heaving her brown belly had my prick boiling, and I was glad I had seen Paul that morning. I hadn't even known he had a sister, let alone a cunt like Patty.
“I had to practice to get good. I wasn't much good the first couple of times I was jazzed,” she said.
“You must have practiced awfully fast,” I said. “You aren't old enough to have been practicing very long.”
“I'm old enough to remember the parties Snub-nose Jones used to throw,” she said.
Snub-nose had been in Atlanta seven years then, almost eight, and it seemed longer than that.
“You must have been just a kid.”
“I wasn't much more than that. I was part of a show he hired for one of his parties, and his boys put the boots to me in one of the bedrooms. I was so damned scared I was afraid to say anything about it. I'd like to see them try it now.”
“And you hadn't been jazzed before?”
“Sure I'd been jazzed before, but not the way they did it. I guess it must have been their idea of fun.”
“Anyway you're good cunt,” I said. “Look at what you've done to my prick.”
I took my cock out of her and showed it to her, and she said she liked to look at it, but she liked to be jazzed better. I speared her again, and I had just started to jazz her when I shot. Patty felt the jism in her cunt, I suppose, and she couldn't have helped feeling the throbs, and she socked it in as far as she could make it go and then wiggled her ass. I held on, and I fucked her until I just couldn't fuck any longer, and just at the last minute she came.
I was sweating when it was over, and so was Patty. Her skin was shiny and between her legs was really wet. She asked me if I wanted to jazz her again, and I did, but I thought I ought to get back to my place and see if the check I was expecting had come and if Ruth was still there or moved someplace else by now, and I said I had some things to do. Patty said to call her up any time I wanted another jazzing, and I said I would and the next time we'd see how good she was at a couple of other things, and I went downstairs where Paul was still sleeping and I got my records and went out.
I felt pretty good on the way back to the place, except that the sherry had left a slight headache, but when I got there I didn't feel so good any more, because Toby was going out of my place just as I arrived. I didn't ask him to come back in, and I didn't spend any time talking to him.
“What the hell was he doing here?” I asked Ruth. “I don't like that bastard coming here.”
“He had a letter for me. From my father. That's important enough for him to come here, isn't it?”
“I don't care what it is; I don't like him around. What about the letter?”
“I haven't opened it yet. What will you bet? What will you offer me for it?”
“If there's one for me I'll trade even.”
Ruth wouldn't trade, so I took the letter that had come for me and she took hers and we sat on the couch to open them. I knew what was in mine, but I wanted to be sure that it was right, so I took it out and waved it under Ruth's nose.
“I should have traded,” she said.
But when she opened her letter it was a check for four hundred and fifty dollars. That made seven and a quarter; not bad for a morning's mail.
“We're rich,” Ruth said. “We're filthy rich! What are we going to do with it all?”
“You'd better read the letter. Maybe there's a catch to it.”
Ruth had never seen her father. There wasn't really any way of knowing that the checks that sometimes came were from her father and not from some nice old man who had taken her name from the telephone book and decided to pretend he was her father. When her mother was alive she had never heard from him, and everyone had assumed that he had died sometime after he got tired of being married and left the family. But about a year after her mother had died the first of the letters had come, and there was a check in it for two hundred dollars, and the letters had come more or less frequently after that. Sometimes there would be a check for fifty dollars in it, and they had run as high as five hundred. The letters seldom came from the same place twice, and it was never clear just what business the man was supposed to be in. He was forever writing that in a few months he hoped to be able to see her, but he never showed up, and Ruth had come to take the whole thing more or less for granted. She didn't mind having a little mystery in her life; especially when it was such a profitable mystery.
“He says he's coming to visit me,” Ruth said when she finished the letter.
“We've heard that one before. What are we going to do with the money?”
“We could get drunk.”
“You can't get that drunk.”
“We could rent a place in the country and rest.”
“Oh god, no! I tried that once. It's all snakes and mosquitoes and spiders.”
We talked about what we were going to do with the money, and I decided that the first thing I was going to do was to take fifty dollars and go and buy some of the books I wanted. Ruth wanted to go out to the bank with me, but she had to dress first, so I went in the bedroom and watched her change her clothes.
“What did you do this morning?” Ruth asked.
“I met a friend of mine when I was coming back from Toby's. We bought these records and then I went home with him and laid his sister.”
“That must have been fun. Did he lay her too?”
“Not while I was there. He fell asleep. I don't believe she was his full sister, anyway, so he probably lays her when he gets a chance.”
“Wouldn't he jazz her if she was his full sister? Is it less incestuous the way it is?”
“I don't believe he bothers to think about that. He never mentioned it.”
“He must be a very good friend if he takes you home to give you his sister. Don't I know him at all?'
“I haven't seen him in a long time, and we didn't go there to see the girl. We went there to play some records, and the rest was accidental.”
“Incidental, with you. Was she very pretty?”
“She was prettier after she'd been laid. She was brown. She was brown all over.”
“Is that a joke? If it is I don't understand it very well, I'm afraid.”