Mavis laughed and shook her head at the white floor. “I know better now. Men like him ain’t never had no chance at no normal life. If that child-wife’a his woulda lived it wouldn’ta mattered. If that baby had lived he woulda been left with some woman in some town suckin’ on a wet rag an’ cryin’ fo’ some daddy he never had.”
Mavis smoked and stared directly into the lamp behind Soupspoon.
“Bob left in the mornin’. I kissed him goodbye. Then I got Cort from down at my cousin’s where I left him t’go dancin’. I found out from her about where Rafe an’ them had gone. After two days I heard that two men and one woman had already died from smoke. The county law was askin’ questions about me, so I took up Cort an’ run down to La Marque, Texas, where my older sister Martha lived. I did it ’cause Cort needed his momma an’ I couldn’t go to no jail. I mean, it wasn’t my fault that them people died, but they woulda taken me down to the women’s prison if they wanted. So I run. An’ ’cause I did my baby is dead today.”
Mavis lit the last cigarette and smoked it slowly while she stared off.
He remembered all the years that they had together. His broken leg, her first job with the church choir. They had come from the deepest, saddest south — not much better than slaves — and made it up into the twentieth century with automobiles, telephones, and indoor plumbing. He remembered everything but it all seemed like a play. He had said his lines and Mavis recited hers.
Not one moment of that life was like the two weeks after he met RL in Arcola. Those days went beyond everything. What they discovered was new and nobody could predict what would happen next. It was a hard song of disease and death. A wild dance and Soupspoon and Robert Johnson played the tune.
He remembered the fire. He was scared out of his mind. But somewhere he knew that this was the last great moment of his life.
Now he saw that the same was true for Mavis.
He had met her later, down in Texas. But that was after Cort had died. She was never wild again.
“Thank you, Mavy.” Soupspoon reached down to touch her again but she stood up.
“You got what you wanted?” she asked him.
“I don’t know. I thought that Rudy said you wanted t’see me.”
Mavis took a half-smoked butt out of the ashtray and struck a match.
“I did,” she said. “But you come on in here wit’ yo’ tape recorder an’ yo’ questions ’bout Robert Johnson. Well... I done answered yo’ questions. Is there sumpin’ else?”
“I don’t know, Mavy. I just wanted to talk.”
“Well, you done talked an’ now it’s time for me t’get back t’my flowers.” She turned her face toward the door.
He watched her back, knowing that there was something he should say. He wanted it; she did too, he knew. But all he had left in him was the truth. A barren marriage behind a bare blues life. He never cared enough to find her again after they broke up. He didn’t even know that she was back in New York until Rudy told him.
All he really wanted was on that tape recorder.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he said.
Nineteen
On Tuesday Kiki went to work, pistol stashed in her shoulder purse. Her friends didn’t talk to her. Sheldon Myers said hardly a word. At noon, while she was outside eating a hot dog for lunch, she ran into Motie and Clive Tooms. They were smoking a joint near the statue across the street from the office building.
Motie told her that somebody had forged a million-dollar insurance policy. That building security had come to Fez’s desk, thrown all of his stuff into a box, and escorted him from the building. He was fired but there might also be criminal charges. They stopped the numbers game and the bar.
“I hope they deep-fry the motherfucker,” Motie said. Kiki didn’t say anything. She could tell that Motie hadn’t connected the files he routed for her with Fez’s problems. She didn’t even take a hit off the joint when Clive, a tall and redheaded black youth, offered.
“I gotta get back,” she said.
That night she dreamed about the stone boy again. This time he caught her. He cut off her arm with his black blade.
On Wednesday Soupspoon borrowed fifteen dollars from Randy down at the “bookstore” on St. Mark’s. He went to a music store on Forty-sixth Street and got strings for his guitar. The subway stairs were hard on his hip. He could feel the pain, but he had a trick that kept the feeling at bay. He “walked around” the pain. He took one step with his right leg, then he’d look quickly to the right, or left, and take a fast step with his painful side. That way the ache was contained, almost forgotten. Soupspoon made it a point to look at something special when he took his walk-around step; like a pretty girl or an interesting face. Often he watched babies at play or the domestic and wild animals of the city. Soupspoon loved the wildlife of the big city. Frisky dogs, hungry squirrels, and feral rats. Some of the bigger cockroaches reminded him of old men dressed in their stiff tuxedos. Sometimes he’d point his gaze up high, because in New York there was always something to see up on the sides of buildings and rooftops. There were gargoyles and statues, trees that sprouted right out of the concrete it seemed, brooding men and women looking back down at him.
That day he saw a hawk just as it swooped down from a ledge and snagged a pigeon by the throat. The hawk arched high with its prey, leaving a few tattered feathers to float down toward the street. Soupspoon turned to see if there was somebody else who saw that poor dove’s angel of death — but he was alone.
Kiki was sitting at her desk on Thursday morning. She glanced down at her nails. They were ragged and rough. For a moment she thought of doing them but decided against it.
A small bald man in a light green suit was coming down the hall. He wore wire-rimmed glasses. Behind him were three large men in good dark suits. The men ran from slender to fat but they all looked powerful, as if their work was in a rock quarry instead of an office.
“Miss Waters?” the green-suited man asked when they got to her desk.
Kiki felt for her pistol in the bag at her side.
“Miss Waters?”
“What?”
“My name is Mr. Cause,” he said.
Kiki found the name funny.
“Do you know me?”
“I don’t think I’d forget that name.”
“I’m vice president in charge of personnel, Miss Waters. Your position here has been terminated.”
“What?”
Out of the side of her eye she could see Sheldon peeking around his door.
“You will leave the building now, escorted by myself and these men...”
Kiki saw a red cloud around Mr. Cause. She felt her finger on the trigger inside the handbag. There was a loud bumblebee in place of the words the little man was saying. She felt an intense, definitely sexual pleasure down her body. A cool sweat went across her face — even into her mouth. When she smiled, Mr. Cause got a quizzical look on his face. One of the men, a dark-skinned white man, moved to help Kiki out of her seat.
“Thank you.” She allowed the man to help her up by her gun arm. A potent attraction for this man went through her. His face was lean and his tapered ears were back against his head like a wary hound’s ears. His eyes were truly black. He had no smell at all that Kiki could sense.
The little man was still talking. He said that she could only take her purse and her jacket. Everything else that was hers would be sent home. His high-pitched voice hurt her ears. She waved around the side of her head as if waving away the bees that hovered about the magnolia tree of her childhood.
She was wobbly on her feet toward the elevator doors. The olive-skinned man’s long finger lit the button sensor. She leaned against his hard chest. “My things?”