“Maybe not in the bed. But I’m not talkin’ about love, J. I’m talkin’ about gettin’ my ass kicked — hard.”
Jessa sat up to look down on me. “I’m not gonna tell Tiny about you. I don’t tell him nuthin’. He just came back because he thought I’d take him in. But you know I’m easin’ him out.
By next week he’ll be gone and forgotten.”
“I don’t know if we should be seeing each other,” I said. I might have been more convincing if my voice hadn’t gone up an octave.
“Come on, lover,” she said, looking deep into my eyes. “You want this.”
I did. I really did. Even though I knew better, I saw no use in that knowledge. The only reason I learned things was to be in a situation like I was there: lying on the floor in the entranceway of my bookstore, all tangled up with a girl that made my blood boil.
She kissed me.
“I can’t let you go, Paris,” she whispered.
Jessa Brown was from a whole slate of southern states. Her mother had moved around quite a lot. Her family was from the Midwest somewhere, but she never saw them because they called her and her mama trash. She could barely read, but she sang beautifully and had come to Los Angeles with a man named Theodore who had promised to get her an audition.
I didn’t know that much about her, but it was enough to know that she was trouble.
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But there I was on that floor, floating in a dream and not even thinking about waking up.
That’s when the front door slammed open, breaking the lock and splintering part of the frame.
Jessa was on her feet in no more than a second. I was on my back, moving backward on all fours, under the shadow of one of the largest white men I had ever seen.
“Tiny!” Jessa shouted, and I remembered, quite clearly, why I stayed away from women like her.
“Kill you, bastard!” came from Tiny’s lips. He had a movie star’s voice, loud and strong.
It was his threatening tone that got me to my feet.
It was my youth and sexual prominence that saved my life.
Tiny was mad but not blind. He did a double take when he saw my diminishing erection. That one moment of hesitation was enough for Jessa. She grabbed a hardwood bookend from one of my shelves and threw herself at the behemoth. I didn’t wait to see how it went.
With my pants in one hand and my drawers in the other, I made it up the staircase in triple time. At the top of the stairs I kept a large oak bookcase that only had towels and sheets on it.
This light load was by design. I tipped the bookcase over so that it blocked entree to the second floor. Then I scooted out the window and onto the tar paper roof.
I plan for calamity. The roof I was on covered the back porch of my house. There were three beams along it that could bear the weight of a man. I knew the route of those beams and went quickly along the center timber and into the apple tree in the yard.
A great bellow came from the house as I stepped onto the 17
Walter Mosley
top pole of the wire fence that separated my backyard from the alley behind Florence. The volume of that shout made me lose my footing. My bare foot got tangled up in the top mesh, and I fell to the asphalt below.
The fence was only six feet high, but I landed on my right shoulder blade and it hurt like hell. For a moment I lay there feeling as though I could never get up. But then I saw my maple desk chair crashing through the window I had just gone through.
I dropped my underpants and jumped into my jeans as I ran.
I came out on Central in a matter of moments. I couldn’t hear Tiny, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t after me.
There I was in the twilight, wearing only my jeans with no shoes or socks. The pain from the fall was returning. Somewhere on the run I had cut my right foot, so I was limping now and trailing blood behind me on the white sidewalk.
I looked like a hobo. And not only that, I looked like trouble and so I had to figure what establishment I could duck into that wouldn’t eject me into Tiny’s murderous embrace.
“Paris!” a voice called. I nearly fainted.
“Paris, what’s wrong?”
The voice was coming from the street, not the alley. There was a yellowy green Studebaker, maybe ten years old, right there in the left lane. Sir Bradley was sitting behind the wheel.
I heard a shout. It might have been anybody, but I couldn’t take that chance.
“They tryin’ to get me, Sir,” I cried.
“Jump on in, boy. Let’s move.”
I opened his car door and hopped into the backseat. Before the door was closed, Sir hit the gas and we were off across the intersection. I heard a loud thump, turned, and saw Tiny run-18
FEAR OF THE DARK
ning only a foot or so behind us. Cars were honking in the intersection, and Sir swerved to avoid a collision. Tiny swung his fist and struck the trunk of the Studebaker again.
