It was my turn to throw in a line but I didn’t.
Moms picked up on my reluctance and nodded. “Jackson said you was all broke up when your friend died last year. When you lose somebody from when you were comin’ up it’s always hard.”
I didn’t even know the madam’s Christian name but still she had me ready to cry.
“That’s why I’m here,” I said, after clearing my throat. “You know I never went to a funeral or anything like that for Raymond. His wife took him out of the hospital and neither one of them was ever seen again. I know he’s dead. I saw him. But Etheline met somebody who sounded a lot like him a few months ago, up in Richmond. I just wanted to ask her a couple’a questions. I mean, I know he’s dead, but at least if I asked her there wouldn’t be any question in my mind.”
Moms shook her head again and smiled sadly. She felt sorry for me, and that made me angry. I didn’t need her pity.
“So is Etheline here?”
“No, darlin’,” she said. “She moved on. Left one mornin’ ’fore anybody else was up. That’s almost four weeks ago now.”
“Where’d she go?”
Another woman entered the room. She wore a man’s white dress shirt and nothing else. All the buttons except the bottom one were undone. Her lush figure peeked out with each step. She was maybe eighteen and certain that any man who saw her would pay for her time.
When she sneered at me, I understood her pride.
“Inez,” Moms said. “You know where Etheline got to?”
A man came stumbling out from the doorway behind Inez. He was fat, in overalls and a white T-shirt. “Bye, Inez,” he said as he went around the sofas, toward the door.
“Bye,” she said. But she wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were on me.
“Well?” Moms asked.
“What?” Inez’s sneer turned into a frown at Moms’s insistence.
“Do you know where Etheline has got to?”
“Uh-uh. She just left. You know that. Didn’t say nuthin’ to nobody.” Inez kept her gaze on me.
“Well,” Moms said. “That’s all, Easy. If Inez don’t know where she is, then nobody do.”
“You wanna come on back to my room?” Inez asked, sneering again.
She undid the one button and lifted the tails of the shirt so I could see what she was offering. For a moment I forgot about Etheline and Mouse and why I was there. Inez was the color of pure chocolate. But if chocolate looked like her I’d have weighed a ton. She was young, as I said, and untouched by gravity or other earthly concerns.
“How much?” I asked.
“Thirty dollars up front,” Moms said, no longer pitying or even friendly.
I handed the money over and followed the woman-child down a short hallway.
“You got thirty minutes, Easy,” Moms called at my back.
At the end of the hallway we came to a right turn that became another, longer passage. Inez stopped at the fourth door down.
Her room was done up in reds and oranges. It smelled of cigarette smoke, sex, lubricant, and vanilla incense. Inez let her shirt drop to the floor and sneered at me.
I closed the door.
“You shy?” she asked.
I scanned the room. There were no closets. The bed was just a big mattress on box springs. There was no frame that someone could hide under.
“How do you want me?” Inez asked.
“On a desert island for the rest of my life,” I said.
There was a bench at the foot of her bed. It was covered with an orange and cream Indian cloth that had elephants parading around the edges. I took a seat and gestured for Inez to sit on the bed. She mistook my meaning and got down on her knees before me.
“No-no, baby. On the bed, sit on the bed.” I lifted her by the elbows and gently guided her to sit.
“How you gonna fuck me like that?”
“I need to find Etheline.”
“I already told you. She left. She didn’t say where she was goin’.”
“What did she say before she left?”
“What do you mean?” Inez was getting a little nervous. She covered her breasts under crossed arms.
“Did she have any friends? Was there some neighborhood she lived in before she came here?”
“You family to her?”
“She might know something about a friend’a mine. I want to ask her about him.”
