Bad Boy Brawley Brown

goin', Coretta. Sun catch me tiptoein' out your door and no tellin' what your neighbors say.'

'Hmm! Dupree fall asleep on me an' you jus' gonna turn your back, walk out the door like I was dog food.'

'You got another man right in the next room, baby. What if he hears sumpin'?'

'Way he snorin'?' She slid her hand into her blouse, lifting the bodice to air her breasts.

I staggered to my feet and took the two steps to the door.

'You be sorry if you go, Ease.'

'I be more sorry if I stay,' I said.

She didn't say anything to that. She just laid back on the sofa, fanning her bosom.

'I gotta go,' I said. I even opened the door.

'Daphne be 'sleep now,' Coretta smiled, and popped open a button. 'You cain't get none'a that right now.'

'What you call her?'

'Daphne. Ain't that right? You said Delia but that ain't her real name. We got real tight last week when her date an' my date was at the Playroom.'

'Dupree?'

'Naw, Easy, it was somebody else. You know I never got just one boyfriend.'

Coretta got up and walked right into my arms. I could smell the scent of cool jasmine coming in through the screen door and hot jasmine rising from her breast.

I had been old enough to kill men in a war but I wasn't a man yet. At least I wasn't a man the way Coretta was a woman. She straddled me on the couch and whispered, 'Oh yeah, daddy, you hittin' my spot! Oh yeah, yeah!' It was all I could do not to yell. Then she jumped off of me saying, in a shy voice, 'Oooo, that's jus' too good, Easy.' I tried to pull her back but Coretta never went where she didn't want to go. She just twisted down to the floor and said, 'I cain't get up off'a that much love, daddy, not the way things is.'

'What things?' I cried.

'You know.' She gestured with a twist of her head. 'Dupree's right there in the next room.'

'Fo'get about him! You got me goin', Coretta.'

'It just ain't right, Easy. Here I am doin' this right in the next room and all you doin' is nosin' after my friend Daphne.'

'I ain't after her, honey. It's just a job, that's all.'

'What job?'

'Man wants me to find her.'

'What man?'

'Who cares what man? I ain't nosin' after nobody but you.'

'But Daphne's my friend …'

'Just some boyfriend, Coretta, that's all.'

When I started to lose my excitement she gave me her spot again and let me hit it some more. In that way she kept me talking until the sky turned light. She did tell me who Daphne's boyfriend was; I wasn't happy to hear it, but it was better that I knew.

When Dupree started coughing like a man about to wake up I hustled on my pants and made to leave. Coretta hugged me around the chest and sighed, 'Don't ole Coretta get a little ten dollars if you fines that girl, Easy? I was the one said about it.'

'Sure, baby,' I said. 'Soon as I get it.' When she kissed me goodbye I could tell the night was over: Her kiss would have hardly roused a dead man.

7

When I finally made it back to my house, on 116th Street, it was another beautiful California day. Big white clouds sailed eastward toward the San Bernardino mountain range. There were still traces of snow on the peaks and there was the lingering scent of burning trash in the air.

My studio couch was in the same position it had been in the morning before. The paper I'd been reading that morning was still folded neatly on my upholstered chair. The breakfast plates were in the sink.

I opened the blinds and picked up the stack of mail the mailman had dropped through the door slot. Once I'd become a homeowner I got mail every day—and I loved it. I even loved junk mail.

There was a letter promising me a free year of insurance and one where I stood a chance of winning a thousand dollars. There was a chain letter that prophesied my death if I didn't send six exact copies to other people I knew and two silver dimes to a post office box in Illinois. I supposed that it was a white gang preying on the superstition of southern Negros. I just threw that letter away.

But, on the whole, it was pretty nice sitting there in the slatted morning light and reading my mail. The electric percolator was making sounds from the kitchen and birds were chirping outside.

I turned over a big red packet full of coupons to show a tiny blue envelope underneath. It smelled of perfume and was written in a fancy woman's hand. It was postmarked from Houston and the name over the address read 'Mr. Ezekiel Rawlins.' That got me to move to the light of the kitchen window. It wasn't every day that I got a letter from home, by someone who knew my given name.