Devil in a Blue Dress

hating each other. Back then, before ancestry had been discovered, a Mexican and a Negro considered themselves the same. That is to say, just another couple of unlucky stiffs left holding the short end of the stick.

I met Primo when I became a gardener for a while. We worked together, with a team of men, taking on the large jobs in Beverly Hills and Brentwood. We even took care of a couple of places downtown, off of Sixth.

Primo was a good guy and he liked to run with me and my friends. He told us that he'd bought that big house so that he could turn it into a hotel. He was always begging us to come out and rent a room from him or to tell our friends about him.

He stood up when I came up the path. He only came up to my chest. 'How's that?' he asked.

'You got somethin' with some privacy?'

'I got a little house out back that you and the senorita can have.' He bent down to look at Daphne in the car. She smiled nicely for him.

'How much?'

'Five dollars for a night.'

'What?'

'It's a whole house, Easy. Made for love.' He winked at me.

I could have argued him down and I would have done it for fun, but I had other things on my mind.

'Alright.'

I gave him a ten-dollar bill and he showed us to the path that led around the big house to the house out back. He started to come with us but I stopped him.

'Primo, my man,' I said. 'I'll come on up tomorrow an' we do some damage to a fifth of tequila. Alright?'

He smiled and thumped my arm before he turned to leave. I wished that my life was still so simple that all I was after was a wild night with a white girl.

The first thing we saw was a mass of flowering bushes with honeysuckle, snapdragons, and passion fruit weaving through. A jagged, man-sized hole was hacked from the branches. Past that doorway was a small building like a coach house or the gardener's quarters on a big estate. Three sides of the house were glass doors from ceiling to floor. All the doors could open outward onto the cement patio that surrounded these three sides of the house, but they were all shut. The front door was wood, painted green.

Long white curtains were drawn over all the windows.

Inside, the house was just a big room with a fallen-down spring-bed on one side and a two-burner gas range on the other. There was a table with a toaster on it and four spindly chairs. There was a big stuffed sofa upholstered with a dark brown material that had giant yellow flowers stitched into it.

'It's just beautiful,' Daphne exclaimed.

My face must've said that she was crazy because she blushed a little and added, 'Well it could use some work but I think we could make something out of it.'

'Maybe if we tore it down …'

Daphne laughed and that was very nice. As I said before, she was like a child and her childish pleasure touched me.

'It is beautiful,' she said. 'Maybe not rich but it's quiet and it's private. Nobody else could see us here.'

I put her bags down next to the sofa.

'I gotta go out for a little while,' I said. Once I had her in place I saw how to get things moving.

'Stay.'

'I got to, Daphne. I got two bad men and the L.A. police on my trail.'

'What bad men?' She sat at the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. She had put on a yellow sundress at the motel, and it showed off her tan shoulders.

'The man your friend hired and Frank Green, your other friend.'

'What does Frankie have to do with you?'

I went up to her and she stood to meet me. I pulled my collar down and showed her my gashed throat, saying, 'That's what Frankie done to Easy.'

'Oh, honey!' She reached out gently for my neck.

Maybe it was just the touch of woman that got to me or maybe it was finally realizing all that had happened to me in the previous week; I don't know.

'Look at that! That's the cops!' I said, pointing at the bruise on my eye. 'I been arrested twice, blamed for four murders, threatened by people I wished I never met, and …' I felt that my liver was going to come out between my teeth.

'Oh my poor man,' she said as she took me by the arm and led me to the bathroom. She didn't let go of my arm while she turned on the water for the bath. She was right there with me, unbuttoning my shirt, letting down my pants.

I was sitting there, naked on the toilet seat, and watching her go through the mirror-doored medicine cabinet. I felt something deep down in me, something dark like jazz when it reminds you that death is waiting.

'Death,' the saxophone rasps. But, really, I didn't care.