He threw a punch at me that would have put a hole in a brick wall. I crouched down under it though, grabbing his wrist as I did, and came up behind him twisting his arm and wrenching his giant thumb.
Willie said, “Oh!” and knelt on the stair.
“I don’t wanna hurt ya, boy,” I whispered in Willie’s ear. “But you make me damage this suit an’ I’m a do some damage on you.”
“I kill you!” he shouted. “I kill all’a you!”
I let him go and moved down a few stairs.
“What’s your problem, Willie?”
“Take me t’Mofass!”
He stood up. In that shade I felt like David without his slingshot.
It’s hard for a big man to throw a punch downward. I let his fist snap somewhere off to the west and then I gave him one and two in the lower gut. Willie folded like a peel bug and rolled down the stairs.
He got right up though, so I ran down and hit him again, on the side of his head that time. I hit him hard enough to hurt a normal man, but Willie was more like a buffalo. I hit him as hard as I could and all he did was sit down.
“I don’t wanna hurt you, Willie,” I said, more to distract me from the pain in my hand than to worry him.
“When I get up from here we gonna see who gonna be hurt.” There were patches of bloody flesh on his face, scrapes from the granite stairs.
“Poinsettia ain’t nobody’s fault, Willie,” I said. “Let it go.”
But he lurched to his feet and came shambling up the stair. I lost patience and broke his nose. I could feel the bone give under my knuckle. I was considering his left ear when I felt a blow to my back. It wasn’t hard, but I was tensed for a fight, so I swung around, only to be hit in the face with something like a pillow. A tiny woman in a frilly pink dress was swinging her woven string purse at my head. She didn’t say a word, saving all of her energy for the fight.
She might have kept it up, but when Willie yelled, “Momma!” she forgot about me and ran to his side.
He was cupping his hands under the bloody faucet of his nose.
“Willie! Willie!”
“Momma!”
“Willie!”
She pushed him until he was up off his knees and then dragged him away, down the street.
Twice the pink-and-brown woman glared at me. She was tiny and wore white-rimmed glasses. Her lips caved inward where teeth once held them firm. Mrs. Sacks couldn’t lift her son’s arm, but I was more frightened of those killer stares than I would have been of a whole platoon of Willies.
“Sit down on the couch here next to me, honey, not way over there.” Etta patted the green fabric next to her.
We were in her new apartment on Sixty-fourth Street. It was a nice six-unit apartment building. Her place had two bedrooms, a shower, and blue wall-to-wall shag carpets. LaMarque was with Lucy Rideau and her two girls. They had all gone to Bible school and now they were having Sunday supper.
“I should really get on to work, Etta.”
“On Sunday?”
“I’ma be doin’ some extra work fo’ the church so I gotta make up my time on the weekend.”
“Now what you gonna be doin’ fo’ the Lord, Easy Rawlins?”
“We all do our li’l piece, Etta. We all do our li’l piece.”
“Like you makin’ so LaMarque an’ me ain’t gotta pay no rent to that terrible man?”
“Mofass ain’t so bad. He lettin’ you stay here, ain’t he?”
“He give me this furniture too?”
“We had an eviction last year an’ this stuff been in my garage. I tole’im I’d haul it off to the dump.”
“You coulda sold this stuff, Easy. That bed in there is mahogany.”
When I didn’t answer she said, “Come here, baby, sit down.”
I did.
“What’s wrong, Easy?”
“Nuthin’, Etta, nuthin’.”
“Then why you ain’t come by. You got me a house an’ furniture. You must like us t’do all that.”
“Sure I like you.”
“Then why’ont you come over an’ show me how much?”
Her hand was on my neck. She was much warmer than I was.
Etta’s dress was silken and flimsy under her jacket. The bodice was low-cut and her breasts bulged upward when she leaned toward me.
“I thought you didn’t wanna see me no mo’,” I said.
“I’s jus’ mad, honey,” she said as she leaned toward me. “Thas all.”
For some reason I imagined what Wendell Boggs must have looked like on his deathbed. There was fresh blood on his half-face and a whitish scab where one of his eyes should have been.
“Easy?”
“Yeah, Etta?”
“I got the papers to my divorce in the other room.”
She shifted slightly to bring her left knee over her right one, nudging my leg. Her dress looked very tight, like it wanted to burst.
“I don’t need to see ’em,” I said.
“Yes you do.”
“No.”
“Yes, Easy. You need to see that I’m a free woman and that I can have what I want.”
“It ain’t you, Etta, it’s me,” I said, but I kissed her anyway.
“You got me all riled up though, honey.” She kissed me back. “Gettin’ my house an’ my bed, takin’ me t’ church, mmm, I love that.”
We didn’t talk for a little while then.
When she leaned back, and I got a moment to breathe, I asked, “But what about Raymond?”
Etta took my hand and put it on her chest, then she gazed at me with eyes that I dream about to this very day.
“Do you want me?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
She pressed a finger against my shirt, where my nipple was.
“Then I tell you what,” she whispered.
“What?” Just that one word drained all the breath out of me.
“You don’t talk about him now an’ I won’t say nuthin’ ’bout him when we wake up.”
14
I got home in the early evening. The phone was ringing as I got to the door. I tried to get the key into the lock but I was too much in a hurry and dropped it in a pile of fallen passion-fruit leaves. The phone kept ringing, though, and it rang until I rummaged around, found the key, and made it inside the door. But I tripped on the doormat and by the time I got off the floor and limped to the coffee table the ringing had finally ceased.
Then I massaged my bruised knee and went to the bathroom. Just as I began to relieve myself the phone started ringing again. But I had learned my lesson. The phone rang while I rinsed my hands and dried them. It rang until I had made it back to the coffee table and then it stopped again.
I was in the kitchen with a quart bottle of vodka in one hand and a tray of ice in the other when he called again. I considered yanking the line out of the wall, thought better of it, and finally I answered the phone.
