“What you mean, not today?” Mofass’s deep voice echoed down the stairs. After that came the strained cries of Poinsettia.
“Cryin’ ain’t gonna pay the rent, Miss Jackson.”
“I ain’t got it! You know I ain’t got it an’ you know why too!”
“I know you ain’t got it, that’s why I’m here. This ain’t my reg’lar collectin’ day, ya know. I come to tell you folks that don’t pay up, the gravy train is busted.”
“I can’t pay ya, Mofass. I ain’t got it and I’m sick.”
“Lissen here.” His voice dropped a little. “This is my job.
My money comes from the rent I collect fo’ Mrs. Davenport.
You see, I bring her a stack’a money from her buildin’s and then she counts it. And when she finishes countin’ she takes out my little piece. Now when I bring her more money I get more, and when I bring in less…”
Mofass didn’t finish, because Poinsettia started crying.
“Let me loose!” Mofass shouted. “Let go, girl!”
“But you promised!” Poinsettia cried. “You promised!”
“I ain’t promised nuthin’! Let go now!”
A few moments later I could hear him coming down the stairs.
“I be back on Saturday, and if you ain’t got the money then you better be gone!” he shouted.
“You can go to hell!” Poinsettia cried in a strong tenor voice. “You shitty-assed bastard! I’ma call Willie on yo’ black ass. He know all about you! Willie chew yo’ shitty ass off!”
Mofass came down the stair holding on to the rail. He was walking slowly amid the curses and screams. I wondered if he even heard them.
“Bastard!!” shouted Poinsettia.
“Are you ready to leave, Mr. Rawlins?” he asked me.
“I got the first floor yet.”
“Mothahfuckin’ bastard!”
“I’ll be out in the car then. Take your time.” Mofass waved his cigar in the air, leaving a peaceful trail of blue smoke.
When the front door on the first floor closed, Poinsettia stopped shouting and slammed her own door. Everything was quiet again. The sun was still warming the concrete floor and everything was as beautiful as always.
But it wasn’t going to last long. Soon Poinsettia would be in the street and I’d have the morning sun in my jail cell.
2
'You got your car here?” Mofass asked when I climbed into the passenger’s side of his car.
“Naw, I took the bus.” I always took the bus when I went out to clean, because my Ford was a little too flashy for a janitor. “Where you wanna go?”
“You the one wanna talk to me, Mr. Rawlins.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go to that Mexican place then.”
He made a wide U-turn in the middle of the street and drove off in the direction of Rebozo’s.
While Mofass frowned and bit down on his long black cigar I stared out the window at the goings-on on Central Avenue. There were liquor stores and small clothes shops and even a television repair shop here and there. At Central and Ninety-ninth Street a group of men sat around talking-they were halfheartedly waiting for work. It was a habit that some Southerners brought with them; they’d just sit outside on a crate somewhere and wait for someone who needed manual labor to come by and shout their name. That way they could spend the afternoon with their friends, drinking from brown paper bags and shooting dice. They might even get lucky and pick up a job worth a couple of bucksand maybe their kids would have meat that night.
Mofass was driving me to his favorite Mexican restaurant. At Rebozo’s they put sliced avocado in the chili and peppered potato chunks in the burritos.
We got there without saying any more. Mofass got out of the car and locked his door with the key, then he went around to my side and locked that door too. He always locked both doors himself. He never trusted that someone else could do it by holding the door handle so that the lock held. Mofass didn’t trust his own mother; that’s what made him such a good real estate agent.
Another thing I liked about Mofass was that he was from New Orleans and, though he talked like me, he wasn’t intimate with my friends from around Houston, Galveston, and Lake Charles, Louisiana. I was safe from idle gossip about my secret financial life.
Rebozo’s was a dark room with a small bar at the back and three booths on either side. There was a neon- red jukebox next to the bar that was almost always playing music full of brassy horns, accordions, and strumming guitars. But even if the box was silent when we walked in, Mofass would always drop a few nickels and push some buttons.
The first time he did that I asked him, “You like that kinda music?”
“I don’t care,” he answered me. “I just like to have a little noise. Make our talk just ours.” Then he winked, like a drowsy Gila monster.
Mofass and I stared at each other across the table. He had both hands out in front of him. Between the fingers of his left hand that cigar stood up like a black Tower of Pisa. On the pinky of his right hand he wore a gold ring that had a square onyx emblem with a tiny diamond embedded in its center.
I was nervous about discussing my private affairs with Mofass. He collected the rent for me. I gave him nine percent and fifteen dollars for each eviction, but we weren’t friends. Still, Mofass was the only man I could discuss my business with.
“I got a letter today,” I said finally.
“Yeah?”
He looked at me, patiently waiting for what I had to say, but I couldn’t go on. I didn’t want to talk about it yet. I was afraid that saying the bad news out loud would somehow make it real. So instead I asked, “What you wanna do ’bout Poinsettia?”
“What?”
“Poinsettia. You know, the rent?”
“Kick her ass out if she don’t pay.”
“You know that gal is really sick up there. Ever since that car crash she done wasted away.”
“That don’t mean I got to pay her rent.”
“It’s me gonna be payin’ it, Mofass.”
“Uh-uh, Mr. Rawlins. I collect it and until I put it in yo’ hands it’s mine. If that gal go down and tell them other folks that I don’t take her money they gonna take advantage.”
“She’s sick.”
“She got a momma, a sister, that boy Willie she always be talkin’ ’bout. She got somebody. Let them pay the rent. We in business, Mr. Rawlins. Business is the hardest thing they make. Harder than diamonds.”
“What if nobody pays for her?” “You will done fo’got her name in six months, Mr. Rawlins. You won’t even know who she is.”
Before I could say anything more a young Mexican girl came up to us. She had thick black hair and dark eyes without very much white around them. She looked at Mofass and I got the feeling that she didn’t speak English.
He held up two fat fingers and said, “Beer, chili, burrito,” pronouncing each syllable slowly so that you could read his lips.
She gave him a quick smile and went away.
I took the letter from my breast pocket and handed it across the table.
“I want your opinion on this,” I said with a confidence I did not feel.
While I watched Mofass’s hard face I remembered the words he was reading.
