Blossom

'An old friend.'

'You know a lot of tricks for a country girl.'

She propped herself on one elbow, eyes luminous. Leaned across my chest, found the cigarettes. Stuck one in her mouth, snapped a match alive, took a drag. Handed it to me.

'My mother ran a bawdy house. That's what they called them then. I was raised with working girls. My mother was one herself, before she went into management. You know West Virginia?'

'A little bit. I worked the riverfront once. Both sides. Steubenville in Ohio, Weirton in West Virginia.'

'That's the spot. Mama started with a little crib on Water Street, back in the sixties.'

I remembered. Only place I'd ever been where you could buy moonshine and heroin on the same block. Made Detroit look like Disneyland.

The red tip of the cigarette pulled highlights from her hair, flowing loose around her shoulders.

'My mother got left with a baby. Pregnant prostitute, you heard all the jokes. That was my sister Violet. She made it by herself, did what she knew how to do.'

'You were never…'

Blossom laughed. 'I never went to church. Mama wasn't enough of a hypocrite for that. And the kids at school, they knew. I learned how to fight real young. But turn a trick? She would've taken the skin right off my backside. Same for the other girls…the girls in the house, I mean. Some were silly, some were mean. But most, they were real sweet and loving to me, like family. I used to have to take four baths a day, scrub off all that perfume and powder they'd put on me when I was a little girl.'

Two girls. How many faces? I turned to her. 'And you went to medical school…'

'Yes.'

'Those houses were rough joints. How'd your mother keep things quiet?'

'She always had a boyfriend. And we had a manager. House man. He wasn't for the girls, Mama did that. He'd work the door, handle things. She had the same one, J.B., long as I can remember. Boyfriends, they'd come and go, but J.B. was always there.'

'Never got busted?'

'Oh, sure. Once in a while. It was never much of anything. Pay a fine, pay the sheriff, Mama said it was all the same. It was a sweet house. Blue light. No rough stuff. You could gamble downstairs, but it was no house game. Just the boys playing cards among themselves. No dice, no wheels. You give a man a card table, some good whiskey, let him smoke his cigars, have some pretty girls walk around in high heels and fishnet stockings, serve the drinks, light their smokes, they'll stay all night. Mama used to tell them, you set aside enough cash to spend an hour upstairs, and you go home a winner, no matter what.'

'She knows how it works.'

'She died five years ago. When I was almost twenty-four. Lung cancer.'

'That's why you went to medical school?'

'Partly. Funny, I was always the one Mama worried about the most. Violet was wild, but she settled right down. And Rose, she was quiet. Everybody's pet. I spoiled her rotten my ownself.'

'Why'd she worry about you?'

'Mama used to say, a girl who's got a taste for a trouble-man once, she keeps it forever.'

'And you did?'

'Chandler Wells. God. Used to be I could just write his name in my school notebook and get trembly right above the tops of my nylons thinking about him. He was a wild boy. Not bad, not evil like some. But wild. He ran 'shine just for the kick of it. Gambled away all the money he made. Folks said he'd be a stock-car champion, he could ever settle down long enough, get him a good ride at the track. He even tried it a couple of times. Told me it wasn't much of a thrill going round in circles.'

'What happened to him?'

She wasn't listening. Her long nails absently scratching my chest. Back there, then.

'Mama ran him off a dozen times. She couldn't get mad at him, not real mad. He'd come around to the back. And the girls, they'd help me sneak out, be with him. One time, the troopers chased us. Just for speeding, but Chandler, he wanted to play. He had this old Mercury he put back together from a stock car and there wasn't a car in the county could catch him when he was flying. The troopers had the road blocked off at one end. They used to leave just enough space between the cars to let one through. Just enough. Like a challenge: that opening looked like a slit when you were going fast enough. They played it square: you got through, they wouldn't chase you anymore that night. But if you didn't, they'd call the meat wagon. Chandler was smoking down this old dirt road when we saw it. 'You want me to stop?' he asked me. 'Go on through, honey,' I told him. Holding on. 'I love you, Blossom.' It was the first time he said that to me. Like he did then. We shot through the roadblock like it was a mile wide. Weeks after that, folks would come to see Chandler's Mercury…there was paint streaks down both sides from where he passed so close. When he finally brought me home that night, Mama grabbed a strap, chased me all around the place. The girls had to sit on her, hold her down, she was so mad. Later, when she was calm, she sat me down. Told me what Chandler was. A trouble-man. She said some men are rogues and ramblers, and some women are just drawn to them. After a while, the good ones, they settle down. But a trouble-man, he never gets quiet.'

'Chandler never got quiet?'

'Got real quiet. Dead quiet.' A tear tracked her face. 'He got into an argument with another boy in one of the riverfront joints. Chandler asked him to step outside. The other boy had a knife. Chandler didn't. He was twenty- two. I was still in high school then. Thought I'd never stop crying.'

I lit another smoke. 'Some people, they never get to find their love.'

'You ever love a woman, Burke?'

'Two.'

'Where are they?'

'One's dead. One's gone.'

'The girl's who's gone…why'd she go?'

I dragged on the smoke. 'The woman who died, Belle, it was my fault. It didn't have to be. I used to think all the time about the woman who's gone, Flood. Why she left. Now, maybe I know. Maybe she knew what you know. Didn't know what to call it, but she knew.'

'Trouble-man,' she whispered, coming to me.

103

LIGHT WAS BREAKING across the bedroom window. Blossom lying on top of me, wetness still holding us together below the waist.

'Trouble-man,' she said. 'Troubled man, you are. What did you go to prison for?'

I looked into the center of her eyes— the way you do with a parole officer. 'For something I didn't do.'

'And what was that— what was it you didn't do?'

'Get away,' I told her.

Her body trembled against me, giggling. 'You want a cigarette?' she asked.

'Yeah.'

She lit one for me, supporting herself on her elbows, holding it to my mouth.

'Cigarettes are an addiction.'

'Bullshit.'

'You could stop anytime you wanted?'

'Sure.'

'I know how to do a lot of tricks I never actually did myself. Listening to the girls. You want to see?'

'Un-huh.'

'Close your eyes.'

I put my cigarette in the ashtray, felt her eyelashes flutter on my cheek. 'That's a butterfly kiss. You ever have one before?'

'No.'

'You like it?'