will be a novelty kick for me. She’s so beautiful the tricks won’t notice a tiny irregularity after I’ve turned her out.”
I said, “Baby Melody, you haven’t opened the door to a square. As fine as you are I wish you had two heads. Now get on that bed on your back. I’m gonna make love to you black panther style. You got some long towels?”
She went to the hall linen closet. She gave me four long slender ones. She slipped off the red top and panties. She lay on her back in bed. I saw her flaw. Was this her entasis? I saw no crotch hair. She looked completely bald downstairs. I tied both her legs to the posts at the foot of the bed. I tied her left arm to a post at the head. The phone jangled on a nightstand at her side. She picked up the receiver with her free right hand.
She said, “Hi Mother, I’m fine. Are you and Dad still having fun? Mother, I miss you both so terribly. Are you coming home tomorrow as planned? Oh good, I’ll be at the airport on time. I’ve gone to bed. I’ve gotten out that ‘Anthology of Africa.’ I’m going to have a wild time researching the Watusi Warrior. Good night, Mother. Oh, tell Dad to bring me some of that heavenly Miami beach wear. I’ll be a sensation here on the beach this summer.”
I had taken my clothes off when she hung up. I lashed her free arm to the fourth bedpost. I looked down at her. Her eyes were pleading.
She said, “Remember Blood darling, you are not an unsophisticated bumpkin. You are not prone to shock states. I know you are going to find my entasis as sweet and desirable as the rest of me.”
I wondered why she still worried about her entasis. She knew I saw she was hairless downstairs. I put my knee on the bed. I stroked her belly. I felt cloth. I took a close look. A custom flesh-colored jock belt bandied her crotch. I ripped the elastic top down over her round hips. I jumped back. My rear end bounced on the floor. I struggled to my feet.
I shouted, “You stinking sissy sonuvabitch!”
His real entasis had popped up pink and stiff. It was a foot long and as thick as the head of a cobra.
He was crying like I had put a lighted match to his entasis.
He sobbed, “You promised to understand. Please, Blood, keep your promise. You don’t know what you’re missing. It’s delicious you fool.”
I said, “Look man, I made my promises to a broad, not a stud. I’m a pimp, not a faggot. I’m getting the hell out of here. I’m charging you the porker for my time and your bullshit.”
He lay there blubbering. I speed dressed. I took the porker off the table and stuck it under my arm. I walked toward the stairway. I looked back. His beautiful face was ugly in anger and hate.
He screamed, “You dirty Nigger liar, thief! Untie me you Coon Bastard! Oh, how I wish I had your black ass tied here on your belly!”
I said, “Man, as slick as you are you’ll untie yourself before long. Yeah, that entasis could murder me all right.”
I walked down the stairway. I went through the house to the back door. I walked down the driveway to the street. I walked for an hour before I got out of the residential sprawl. I was lucky to hail a Yellow Cab as soon as I got to a busy intersection.
When it got me to the Haven, the meter read fourteen-thirty. I gave the cabbie a fin and a saw buck. I looked up at my window. The runt was at it. It was two A.M. It had been like a nightmare Halloween all the way. All trick and no treat. I was icy sober.
Then it struck me riding up on the elevator. That white faggot could cross me. What if he couldn’t free himself by the time his folks got home? He was a cinch to cover himself. He’d say a Nigger burglar or holdup man had robbed him and trussed him up.
I was a two-time loser. Five to ten would stick to me like flypaper. Even if he untied himself right away he might be mad enough to frame me. I remembered the Dalanski-Pepper cross. I was sweating salt balls when I retrieved my stash in the broom closet.
I went to my watch pocket with the cocaine. I knocked on fourtwenty. The runt opened the door. She was grinning.
She said, “Hello, Daddy-angel. Your dog bitch bumped her black ass off tonight. Gotta piggy bank, huh?”
I said, “So whatta you want, bitch, a medal for doing your whore duty?”
I didn’t answer her question. I looked down to see if she’d sprouted an entasis. She was buck-naked. I stepped inside and bolted the door. There were seventy slats on the dresser. I turned and lowered my face. She kissed me. I put the porker on the base of the “Kiss” statue.
I gave her the can of grass. She sat on the bed. She shook some grass out of the can onto a newspaper in her lap. She started rolling a joint. I took my clothes off. I went into the bathroom to shower and scrub the sissy taste out of my jib. The piercing heavy odor of the gangster wafted to me.
Over the roar of the shower I shouted, “Girl, there’s a gap under that slammer. Chink it up with a rag or something. Torch a coupla sticks of incense.”
I came out of the bathroom and got into bed beside her. She handed me a joint. I lit it and sucked it into a roach. I squeezed tobacco from the tip of a cigarette. I stuck the butt of gangster into the empty tip. I twisted the end and lit it. It was a good reefer.
I could feel my skull go into a dreamy float. I got one brilliant thought after another. The trouble was, each one I tried to hold long enough so I could put a saddle on it stampeded. It was maybe like the painful irritation a drunk wrangler suffers trying to corral a herd of greased mustangs.
Gangster was sure a whore’s high. That reefer confusion was no good for a pimp’s skull. That beautiful sissy had buried a hot seed in my guts. The wild flower blossomed. I dreamily drifted into the runt. I rolled sleepily out of the warm churning tunnel. I wouldn’t need a yellow tonight.
8. GRINNING SLIM
I opened my eyes. I saw glinting stars of dust whirling like a golden hurricane through a bright shaft of noon sun. I looked through the open bedroom door. I saw the runt sitting at the living room window. She was doing her nails. She lifted her eyes from her nails. She looked into the bedroom.
I said, “Good morning, li’l freak puppy. I’m gonna call Silas to run across the street for ham and eggs. Are you hungry?”
She said, “Yeah, I’m hungry, but the way he moves around it would take him a week to cop. I’ll slip on something and go myself.”
She went to the closet and slipped on her blue poplin rain-orshine coat. She took a fin off the dresser and held it up for my consent. I nodded my head. I heard the door shut when she went out.
I lit a cigarette. I thought, “I wonder if Melody has the heat looking for me. I’ve only got a day or so left before Glass Top takes me to Sweet Jones. I’m gonna cool it. I won’t go out at all. I’ll stay right here in the hotel until Top calls me.”
The phone rang just as the runt came through the bedroom door. She put the plates wrapped in wax paper on the dresser. She picked up the receiver. I got up, took my plate and started to eat with a plastic fork.
She said, “Hello. Oh, Chuck, how are you, sweetie? I was just thinking about you, lover. No, I can’t. I wish I could come out for a few drinks, but my brother won’t be home from work until six. Mama’s not well at all. I have to stay here during the day to take care of her. I could slip out around seven. Yeah, I could do that until eight for twenty. Bye, bye, sugar blue eyes.”
She hung up the phone and her coat. She sat naked on the side of the bed eating.
I said, “Bitch, I got an idea for that cat of yours. You gotta take a stiff brush and brush the hair straight down every time you think about it. Put some hair grower on it until you got maybe a four-inch cone. Your tricks will pant to bury their beaks in it. It will make your cat unique with that extra dimension.”
She mumbled, “Where on Earth did you get a jazzy idea like that?”
I said, “Bitch, ain’t you hip yet? I’m a pimp with great imagination, that’s all.”
She finished her flapjacks. She got up and gathered up an armful of our soiled clothing. She went into the
