Cinnamon Kiss

day laborer still and all.”

“What did Axel say?”

“Am I fired?”

“No,” she said after a very long pause.

“Let Lee call me back and say that.”

“Robert E. Lee is not a man to fool with, Mr. Rawlins.”

“I like it when you call me mister,” I said. “It shows that you respect me. So listen up — if I’m fired then I’m through. If Lee wants me to be a consultant based on what I know then let him call me himself.”

“You’re making a big mistake, Easy.”

“Mistake was made before I was even born, honey. I came into it cryin’ and I’ll go out hollerin’ too.”

She hung up without another word. I couldn’t blame her. But neither could I walk away without trying to make my daughter’s money.

i s a u t e e d chopped garlic, minced fresh jalapeno, green pep-per, and a diced shallot in ghee that I’d rendered myself. I added some ground beef and, after the meat had browned, I put in some cooked rice from a pot in the refrigerator. That was my meal for the night.

I fell asleep on the loveseat with every light in the house on, the television flashing, and John Coltrane bleating about his favorite things.

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24

Imoved the trunk in front of the big brass elephant. Underneath was the crushed, cubical body of Axel Bowers. I watched him, worrying once again about the degradation of his carcass. I told him that I was sorry and he moved his head in a little semicircle as if trying to work out a kink in his neck. With his hands he lifted his head, raising it up from the hole. It took him a long while to crawl out of the makeshift grave — and longer still to straighten out all of the bloody, cracked, and shattered limbs. He looked to me like a butterfly just out of the co-coon, unfolding its wet wings.

All of that work he did without noticing me. Pulling on his left arm, turning his foot around until the ankle snapped into place, pressing his temples until his forehead was once more round and hard.

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

He was putting his fingers back into alignment when he happened to look up and notice me.

“I’m going to need a new hip,” he said.

“What?”

“The hip bones don’t reform like other bones,” he said. “They need to be replaced or I won’t be able to walk very far.”

“Where you got to go?” I asked.

“There’s a Nazi hiding in Egypt. He’s going to assassinate the president.”

“The president was assassinated three years ago,” I said.

“There’s a new president,” Axel assured me. “And if this one goes we’ll be in deep shit.”

The phone rang.

“You going to get that?” Axel asked.

“I should stay with you.”

“Don’t worry, I can’t go anywhere. I’m stuck right here on my broken hips.”

The phone rang.

I wandered back through the house. In the kitchen Dizzy Gillespie had taken Coltrane’s place. He was standing in front of the sink with his cheeks puffed out like a bullfrog’s, blowing on that trumpet. The front door was open and The Mummy was playing outside. The movie was now somehow like a play being enacted in the street. On the sidewalks all the way up to the corners, extras and actors with small roles were smoking cigarettes and talking, waiting to come onstage to do their parts.

Egypt, I thought and the phone rang.

I came back in the house but the phone wasn’t on its little table. Above, on the bookshelf, Bigger Thomas was strangling a woman who was laughing at him.

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W a lt e r M o s l e y

“You can’t kill me,” she said. “I’m better than you are. I’m still alive.”

The phone rang again.

I returned to the brass elephant to tell Axel something but he was back in his hole, crushed and debased.

“My hips were my downfall,” he said.

“You can make it,” I told him. “Lots of people live in wheelchairs.”

“I will not be a cripple.”

The phone rang and he disappeared.

I opened my eyes. The Mummy, with Boris Karloff, was playing on T V. Coltrane had not been replaced, and every light in the house was still on.