Cinnamon Kiss

“There was a guy here asking for you a few hours ago. He was scary looking.”

“Black guy?”

“No. White. He wore a jacket made out of snakeskin I think.

And his eyes . . . I don’t know. They looked mean.”

“What did he say?”

“Just if I knew when you were coming back. I asked him if he had a message. He didn’t even answer. Just walked off like I wasn’t even there.”

Pulley was afraid of a car backfiring. He once told me that he couldn’t watch westerns because the violence gave him 1 3 5

W a lt e r M o s l e y

nightmares. Whoever scared him might have been an insurance agent or a door-to-door salesman.

I was taken by his words, though, Like I wasn’t even there. Pulley was a new neighbor. He’d only been in that house for a year or so. I’d been there more than six years — settled by L.A. standards. But I was still a nomad because everybody around me was always moving in or moving out. Even if I stayed in the same place my neighborhood was always changing.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll look out for him.”

We shook hands and I drove off, thinking that nothing in the southland ever stayed the same.

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21

My first destination was the Safeway down on Pico. I got ground round, pork chops, calf ’s liver, broccoli, cauliflower, a head of lettuce, two bottles of milk, and stewed tomatoes in cans. Then I stopped at the liquor store and bought a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black.

After shopping I drove back down to South L.A.

Lena Macalister lived in a dirty pink tenement house three blocks off Hooper. I climbed the stairs and knocked on her door.

“Who is it?” a sweet voice laced with Houston asked.

“Easy Rawlins, Lena.”

A chain rattled, three locks snapped back. The door came open and the broad-faced restaurateur smiled her welcome as I had seen her do many times at the Texas Rose.

“Come in. Come in.”

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W a lt e r M o s l e y

She was leaning on a gnarled cane and her glasses had lenses with two different thicknesses. But there was still something stately about her presence.

The house smelled of vitamins.

“Sit. Sit.”

The carpet was blue and red with a floral pattern woven in.

The furniture belonged in a better neighborhood and a larger room. On the wall hung oil paintings of her West Indian parents, her deceased Tennessee husband, and her son, also dead. The low coffee table was well oiled and everything was drenched in sunlight from the window.

When I set the groceries down on the table I realized that I’d forgotten the scotch in the backseat of my car.

“What’s this?” she asked, pointing at the bag.

“Your name came up recently and I realized that I had to ask you a couple’a questions. So I thought, as long as I was comin’, you might need some things.”

“Aren’t you sweet.”

She backed up to the stuffed chair, made sure of where she was standing, and let herself fall.

“Let’s put them away later,” she said with a deep sigh.

“You know it takes a lot outta me these days just to answer the door.”

“You sick?”

“If you call getting old sick, then I sure am that.” She smiled anyway and I let the subject drop.

“How long has it been since you closed the Rose?”

“Eight years,” she said, smiling. “Those were some days. Hu-bert and Brendon were both alive and working in the kitchen.

We had every important black person in the country, in the world, coming to us for dinner.”

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C i n n a m o n K i s s

She spoke as if I were a reporter or a biographer coming to get down her life story.

“Yeah,” I said. “That was somethin’ else.”

Lena smiled and sighed. “The Lord only lets you have breath for a short time. You got to take it in while you can.”

I nodded, thinking about Feather and then about Jesus out on some beach with Benita.