“Yeah. You know him?”
“Always hang around with white girls? His father sells used cars?”
“That’s him.”
“He owe me fifty dollars,” I declared. “Fifty.”
“Over what?”
“He was out with some white girl, at the Python Club. She wanted champagne for her and her girlfriends, and the niggah just had to act all big and say okay. You know he wanted to get in her drawers so bad you could smell it.”
Charlotta hummed her disapproval at BB’s depravity.
“Anyway,” I said. “He didn’t have the cash, and they don’t take personal checks at the Python because they get stuck with a service charge if it bounce. So I ponied up the forty-two bucks I got paid that afternoon and BB promised to pay me back fifty. That was six months ago at least. You know I called the mothahfuckah but he moved. I went to his father but he told me he didn’t keep up with his son. Fifty dollars.”
I was sinking deeper and deeper into the role I had made for myself. The cursing might have disturbed Charlotta, but she had to believe in who she was talking to.
“I thought you said you was from up north?” Charlotta asked then.
“You thought my name was Thad too,” I said. “I just told Miss Moore that so nobody would know who I am. Them men after me want some money. But you know, if I could get that fifty dollars I might be able to buy me a few more days.”
“I don’t know,” she said suspiciously. “Here you in Kit’s room and you just happen to know his friend . . .”
“I know a lotta peoples,” I said. “And that mothahfuckah BB owe me fifty dollars.”
“How much you owe them men?”
“Three hunnert dollars.”
“How much would you pay if you could get to BB?”
“Pay? Nuthin’. Shit, I need every penny. Even if I turn over the whole thing, it might just only buy me a week as it is.”
“You could give me twenty and take the rest and leave town. The fifty ain’t gonna help anyways, and you only got two dollars in your billfold.”
“If I’ma leave town I’ma need more than thirty-two dollars,” I reasoned. “Bus ticket to San Diego cost eight forty-five. Then I need to pay for a room till I get a job.”
“If you don’t find BB you only got two bucks,” she reminded me.
“You know where he is?”
“Maybe.”
“I could give you fifteen, Charlotta. That’s a lot for just a couple’a words.”
She pretended to consider my offer. I could have talked her down to five bucks, but it was all make-believe anyway. Why not be generous with a payoff that would never come?
“Okay,” she said. “But only ’cause you so sweet. Ooo, look. All that talk about money made you hard again.”
She was right.
“You wanna lie back down a little while?” I asked her.
“No, baby,” she said. She stood up too. “I got to get up early to get to work.”
“What am I gonna do about this?”
“Either take care of it yourself,” she said with a sympathetic smile, “or wait till tomorrow afternoon when I get home with BB’s numbers.”
“You don’t have ’em in your room?”
“Uh-uh. No. But I know somebody prob’ly know where he is.”
She looked down on my hopeless excitement and issued a deep grunt of appreciation. Then she walked out the door, leaving me to the foolishness of manhood.
23
I LAY BACK IN THE BED afterCharlotta left. It had been a good night’s work. Even if it was only loving that young woman, it would have been worth it. She was right, I hadn’t been with a woman in over four months. I didn’t like the clubs because they were too loud, and I couldn’t keep a girlfriend because I didn’t make much money selling books and my favorite pastime was sitting alone and reading. Women lived with me the same way that they’d go on a vacation: after a week or two they were ready to get back to the lives they knew and loved.
The truth was that I had become a man of moderate means after my last adventure with Fearless. I owned my building and had money in the bank, but I never bragged to anyone about it. I loved my little business and I would have been selling books for a nickel profit even if I had to do it off the back of a truck. That being true, I thought that any woman who wanted to be with me had to believe in the man she saw.
