He looked up at me. I would have thought that wide-eyed vul-nerability was fear in another man’s face.
“Glass?”
“Yeah. People would walk past me an’ look back because they saw sumpin’ but they didn’t know what it was. An’ then, then I bumped inta this wall an’ my arm broke off.”
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“Broke off?” I said as a parishioner might repeat a minister’s phrase — for emphasis.
“Yeah. Broke right off. I tried to catch it but my other hand was glass too an’ slippery. The broke arm fell to the ground an’
shattered in a million pieces. An’ the people was just walkin’ by not even seein’ me.”
“Damn,” I said.
I was amazed not by the content but by the sophistication of Mouse’s dream. I had always thought of the diminutive killer as a brute who was free from complex thoughts or imagination.
Here we’d known each other since our teens and I was just now seeing a whole other side of him.
“Yeah,” Mouse warbled. “I took a step an’ my foot broke off. I fell to the ground an’ broke all to pieces. An’ the people jes’
walked on me breakin’ me down inta sand.”
“That’s sumpin’ else, man,” I said just to keep him in the conversation.
“That ain’t all,” he declared. “Then, when I was crushed inta dust the wind come an’ all I am is dust blowin’ in the air. I’m everywhere. I see everything. You’n Etta’s married an’ LaMarque is callin’ you Daddy. People is wearin’ my jewelry an’ drivin’ my car. An’ I’m still there but cain’t nobody see me or hear me. Ain’t nobody care.”
In a moment of sudden intuition I realized then the logic behind Etta’s periodic banishment of Mouse. She knew how much he needed her, but he was unaware, and so she’d send him away to have these dreams and then, when he came back again, he’d be pleasant and appreciative of her worth — never knowing exactly why.
“You know, Easy,” he said. “I been wit’ two women every night 1 8 9
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since I walked out on Etta. An’ I can still go all night long.
Got them girls callin’ in languages they didn’t know they could talk. But even if I sleep on a bed full’a women I still have them dreams.”
“Maybe you should give Etta another chance,” I suggested. “I know she misses you.”
“She do?” he asked me with all of the innocence of the child he never was.
“Yes sir,” I said. “I saw her just today.”
“Well,” Mouse said then. “Maybe I’ll make her wait a couple’a days an’ then give her a break.”
I doubted if Mouse connected the dream with Etta even though she came into the conversation so easily. But I could see that he was getting better by the moment. The prospect of a homecoming lifted his dark mood.
For a while he regaled me with stories of his sexual prowess. I didn’t mind. Mouse knew how to tell a story and I had to wait to ask for my favor.
Half an hour later the door downstairs banged against the wall and the loud women started their raucous climb up the stairs.
“I better be goin’, Ray,” I said. “But I need your help in the mornin’.”
I stood up.
“Stay, Easy,” he said. “Georgette likes you an’ Pinky gets all jealous when she got to share. Stay, brothah. An’ then in the mornin’ we take care’a this trouble you in.”
Before I could say no the women came in the door.
“Hi, Ray,” Pinky said. She had two champagne bottles under each arm. “We got a bottle for everybody.”
Georgette lit up when she saw that I was still there. She perched on the table in front of me and put her hands on my knees.
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Raymond smiled and I shook my head.
“I got to be goin’,” I said.
b u t t h e e v e n i n g
wore on and I was still there. I had nowhere to go. Mouse popped three corks and the ladies laughed. He was a great storyteller. And I rarely heard him tell the same story twice.
After midnight Pinky started kissing Ray in earnest. Georgette and I were on the couch with them, sitting very close. We were talking to each other, whispering really, when Georgette looked over and gave a little gasp.
I turned and saw that Pinky had worked Ray’s erection out of his pants and was pulling on it vigorously. He was leaning back with closed eyes and a big smile on his lips.
“Let’s go in the other room and give ’em some privacy,” Georgette whispered in my ear.
The bedroom was small too, only large enough to accommo-date a king-size bed and a single stack of maple drawers.
