“I see you watching me, every day, all day,” she said, her eyes locked on his. “You don’t have to say what you want. I know what you want because I want it too. But everything comes with a price. Nothing is for free, not in this world.”
“I hear that,” he replied, thrusting one hand into a pocket to subdue his growing excitement. “What is your name?”
“You know it. Don’t play dumb. I hate an ignorant man.” She stepped back some.
“I really don’t know it. I didn’t ask. I wanted to hear it from you.” That made her smile, the full soft lips parting like lush rose petals.
“Amina. What’s yours, Mister Man?”
“Terrance Stokes. My friends call me Terry. What is it you want? What is the price?”
He moved back within kissing range, so close to her that she could feel the heat of his flesh through his cheap uniform.
“I want out,” she hissed at him, the coloured heat sparking in her words. “You get me out and you can have me any way you want. Nothing is too kinky, too freaky. Anything you want but you must get me out first. Once I’m back in the world, baby, I’m yours to do with as you please. How does that sound?”
“Hey, I’m no fool,” he said, afraid to admit to himself that he was even weighing such an offer. “How do I know you’ll keep your end of the bargain? How? I’m risking everything here. My life will be fucked as soon as I break you out. It’ll be over.”
Amina laughed softly, the sound of it much like the tinkling of piano keys. She reached down, unzipped her hospital-issue pants, and inserted her fingers into herself. That got her squirming a bit and she coated her digits with her juice, laughed again, and brought them to his lips. Tart yet sweet, like the taste of an exotic fruit from a tropical island untamed.
She knew how to close a deal, playing on his dissatisfaction with his job and life, putting a spotlight on the collection of failures and disappointments that had hounded him from the very day he graduated from high school. He was a loser. But this would change things. It was a chance to tell the whole world to kiss his black ass. The entire planet, all the doubters and badmouthers. Now he was calling the shots in his life for once.
Everybody would know his name, if only for a hot moment. His fifteen minutes of fame, coming right up.
Busting her out was not that hard. All it took was a few Benjamins for the guys at the main gate, some more for the crew on the supply truck, several lies and even more for the cat with the small plane to take them to the Texas border. The pilot, with his tiny Cessna eggbeater that shook and fluttered with every breeze, was spooky with his endless talk of the ancient Aztecs and their knack for human sacrifices. Terry didn’t want to hear that mess.
Just get them to the border. When it was all done, he was tapped out, very little green in his reserves. Spent some more bucks on a little cheap Tex-Mex grub and a run-down 1949 black Mercury Club Coupe. Slipped the Mexican guards a fistful of Yankee dollars, ensuring that they were not stopped at the border nor were their suitcases opened and searched.
“When do I get a chance to collect?” he asked while they walked in an open market among the stalls, buying sombreros and sandals in a Godforsaken, unnamed Mexican village. “When do I get my night? I’ve done my part.”
“Be patient.” She laughed, showing very few teeth. “I gave you my word.”
They crossed the street to where the car was parked, in this area where gringos were rarely seen, especially black ones. He concluded that Amina was a beautiful pit bull with a mouth-watering body and vacant eyes, more Hustler than Penthouse and Playboy. The town was essentially dead, except for the burst of activity at the market. Walking together, they entered the battered hotel, its awning hanging by a couple of bolts, and went up to the desk where the sombre man took their money and gave them a key.
“I’m beat, wore out,” Amina mumbled. “I need some sleep. A few winks and I’ll be as good as new. Then you’ll get your surprise, big man.”
She shed her clothes quickly and quietly, allowing him his first real look at her shapely brown body. It didn’t seem to matter to her that he watched her so intently. The heat was stifling. He wondered if this was normal, if it was because of the diminished ozone layer or the abundance of satellites in the atmosphere. What was he doing with this crazy woman? He knew some things about her, much of her troubled history, her dark fugue states, her loose grasp of reality. Her criminal file was sealed, so much of the information he really needed to know was lost to him. Getting off the plane, she’d hinted she was a murderer, but didn’t elaborate on that bombshell. Before she went to sleep, she told him she’d forgotten to bring her Thorazine when he broke her out of the state hospital back in St Louis.
He lay on the bed beside her as she slept, their bodies clinging together with a sensual dampness, close in spoon fashion. Through the window, he could see an old man wearing a frayed sombrero leading a swaybacked mule packed with baskets of fruit slowly across the square. His red-lidded eyes followed the man’s wobbly steps, one by one, until he disappeared from view. Amina stirred in slumber, mumbled under her breath, then flopped her curvy brown leg over his.
Gently, he took her tiny hand in his big one and kissed it, noticing the diagonal lacerations along both wrists, deep and multiple. Tributes to her madness. He felt a strange compulsion to lick her wounds, softly and lovingly, but he moved closer instead to kiss her full on the lips. Suddenly she opened her hypnotic eyes, the stare in them still vacant and unforgiving, and did nothing while he tenderly planted kisses on her heart-shaped face.
“I think you’re frightened of me,” she said. “You know I killed somebody.”
“But you explained that. You said it was an accident. You said he came at you wrong and you had to cap him. Shoot him before he raped you.”
She worried her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Yeah, right, forced vaginal entry. He wanted to pop the coochie. I told you that, but I left out some things.”
“What did you leave out, Amina?” He couldn’t afford to let her off the hook.
“Nothing I want to get into right now,” she replied flatly.
Quietly, they lay on their sides, naked and sweating from the unnatural heat, pressing their fronts against one another full length. A total body hug. This was driving him over the edge, the nearness of her and her deep red voice, the touch of her soft bronze skin. Occasionally she kissed him, near the ear and on the neck, swift and popping kisses much like a boxer’s jab. He couldn’t stand it. But then nothing had gone exactly as he’d planned it. The thought that he couldn’t go back to his old stale life lurked in the back of his mind, and then there was what she’d said: But I left some things out. What the hell did that mean?
To be honest, he didn’t want to think about whatever she had not told him. But that was not cool either. What you didn’t know could kill you. This was their third day together.
Finally, with some coaxing, she started talking, first about her family, about herself and her hospitalizations, and once she began, there was no stopping her. Her past suicide attempts. Both wrists, pills, overdoses. A dive off a four-story balcony, a fall broken by a landing on some bushes. Her walking in front of a car on the turnpike. The things she heard and saw in her head. Paranoid, schizophrenic, slightly delusional, with psychotic thoughts. But none of that mattered. She was a beautiful black woman who had survived, was still standing despite everything, and maybe all she needed was some guy who loved her. Really loved her.